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I don't know where this fits in, but it's excellent advice for a Jewish writer on writing biography — both online and off. The expression "maran" means our teacher:

• Yehuda Azoulay. "But are the stories really true?". Community Magazine.

Background

I've recently went through the experience of nominating several articles for AfD, which resulted in interesting discussions, with the possibility that an RfC may be recommended to deal with this issue on a global basis:

• Nominations of articles on Knight's Cross recipients for deletion -- discussion with an editor who opposed the nominations
• KC holder suggested RfC -- discussion with an editor who suggested the RfC idea
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Walter Gerth -- AfD created by another editor

The issue appears to be complex, so I would appreciate further input from the community, as there are over 3,000 articles on Knight's Cross holders, and a substantial amount of them fail GNG. Clarification: The award can indeed by verified, but no other RS coverage appears to be available.

Sample articles:

• Created by editor DocYakoo: Hans Stern (SS officer) -- with Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spam/LinkReports/ritterkreuztraeger-1939-45.de and not much else. Gerhard Fischer (soldier); Johannes Kümmel; Alfred Montag; Hermann Lang (Wehrmacht officer); Gerlach von Gaudecker-Zuch; Otto Barth; Wilhelm Weber (SS officer); Ernst Philipp; Eckart Afheldt; Wilhelm Walther; Clemens-Heinrich Graf von Kageneck; Hans-Jürgen Burmester; Heinrich Krafft; Felix Adamowitsch

• Created by editor Jim Sweeney: Friedrich Holzer -- non-RS websites; Kurowski; etc. Günther Degen; Lino Masarie; Otto Paetsch; Ernst Stäudle; Ernst Häußler; Otto Schneider (SS officer); Heinrich Debus (SS officer); Alfred Großrock; Berndt Lubich von Milovan; Hans Endreß; Erwin Bachmann; Adolf Pittschellis; Hans Hirning; Johann Fiedler; Karl Nicolussi-Leck; Walter Girg; Miervaldis Ādamsons

I reached out to both, but did not hear back, except from DocYakoo on an AfD: response

The results of the AfDs were mixed, but some good discussion points within:

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Peter Arent -- Result was delete
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alois Kalss -- Result was delete
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paul Senghas -- Result was delete
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hans Weiss -- Result was redirect to List of Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross recipients (W)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Helmut Wendorff -- Result was delete
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Georg Schönberger -- Result was redirect to List of Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross recipients (Sa–Schr)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hermann Lang (SS officer) -- Result was delete and redirect to List of Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross recipients (L)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Heinrich Kling -- Result was keep
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fritz Amling -- Result was no consensus
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alfredo Carpaneto -- Result was no consensus
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hans-Babo von Rohr -- Result was no consensus
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rudolf Roy -- Result was no consensus

Here are some points that would be relevant:

• WP:Soldier states that "In general, an individual is presumed to be notable if they have received significant coverage in multiple verifiable independent, reliable sources. In particular, individuals will almost always have sufficient coverage to qualify if they: Were awarded their nation's highest award for valour."

• WP:LISTPEOPLE states: A person is typically included in a list of people only if all the following requirements are met:
  • The person meets the Wikipedia notability requirement.
  • The person's membership in the list's group is established by reliable sources.

More policies are discussed on this link: KC holder suggested RfC

I would really appreciate some help in framing the discussion and formulating an RfC if needed. K.e.coffman (talk) 02:28, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

WP:SOLDIER also says "Were awarded their nation's highest award for valour". Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross meets the criteria, so all awardees are presumed notable. GNG should not matter in these cases. Chris Troutman (talk) 02:36, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Yes, I am aware of WP:Soldier; it states that "In general, an individual is presumed to be notable if they have received significant coverage in multiple verifiable independent, reliable sources. In particular, individuals will almost always have sufficient coverage to qualify if they: Were awarded their nation's highest award for valour." -- the notability is presumed, it's not guaranteed. WP:Soldier does not trump GNG, as I understand it, and "significant coverage in reliable sources" still matters.

The RS for these subjects do not appear to exist; some of the articles that were part of my AfDs came from the list of the article Panzer aces, and the coverage for them was indeed available, but in the non-RS Wehrmacht/Waffen-SS romancer literature, such as by Franz Kurowski or Gordon Williamson (writer). Please see Waffen-SS in popular culture for other similar writers.

The coverage (whether RS or not) does not appear to exist at all for the articles in the Sample list. The articles that I've listed above were created in 2008 (Jim Sweeny) and 2012 (DocYaco) and have not been enhanced since. K.e.coffman (talk) 02:41, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You state that coverage does not appear to exist for these articles. However, this medal was only awarded between 1939 and 1945, I think, so most contemporary sources would likely be published by Nazi newspapers and publishers in German. Most of these are unlikely to be on-line and translated to English. When you say that there are no reliable sources, have you made a serious attempt to find off-line German language sources? If not, I believe that we should presume such sources likely exist. (Note that WP:V still applies - the medal must be verifiable, and if there's insufficient info to write an article, redirect to a list is certainly acceptable.) Pburka (talk) 03:01, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The only RS source in the articles is the one that verifies that the award was indeed bestowed. That is not in dispute. But this does not amount to "significant coverage" since each recipient only gets a line in the source. Please see: sample from Fellgiebel.

"Off-line German language sources" are not available to me -- both physically and linguistically. I assume that would be true for most English wiki editors. Contemporaneous sources published between 1939 and 1945 would be highly unreliable, having been produced under the totalitarian regime. I expect they would not be of any use, unless covered by reliable secondary sources as part of WWII historiography. K.e.coffman (talk) 03:08, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Contemporaneous sources are extremely reliable. German sources are fine, per WP:NONENG. Hawkeye7 (talk) 04:15, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not following -- how would 1939-45 sources be reliable? We don't use them for example to source articles on WWII battles. Also to clarify, I'm not arguing against German language sources; my point is that none have been added in eight years, so it's unrealistic to expect that they would be in foreseeable future. K.e.coffman (talk) 04:57, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The point about "presumed notability" is that certain things cause a subject to be of sufficient interest to the general public that there will be significant coverage, and sufficient sources to write an article will almost certainly exist. WP:SOLDIER does not trump WP:GNG; it merely says that experience has shown that WP:GNG will be met. Now, for example, in The class the stars fell on, the class itself is notable, although not all West Point classes are, and all the generals in the class are presumed notable under WP:SOLDIER and are therefore included in the list under WP:LISTPEOPLE. (To test this, we selected two at random, and were easily able to create articles on them.) Hawkeye7 (talk) 04:15, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that an award of a single Knight's Cross does not "cause a subject to be of sufficient interest to the general public that there will be significant coverage", as the AfDs above demonstrated. Even though some articles survived the AfD process, no RS citations have been added to any of the articles. This tells me that either (a) RS sources do not exist on these subjects; (b) there's no interest in the Wiki community to search for and add them; or (c) both. Perhaps WP:Soldier needs to be adjusted? My experience with these articles demonstrated that it's much more likely to see coverage for a divisional commander in the German army, rather than a person who had been awarded a Knight's Cross, and even the higher grade, the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves.

As I mentioned, most of these articles came off the list of German "panzer aces", in which there continues to be an interest. For example, please see this copyvio revert from today in Kurt Knispel, who is supposed to be the top scoring "tank ace" of all times, but even for him, significant RS coverage does not appear to exist.

As an aside, here's the Panzer ace article before I and others edited it: Nov 2015 version. It appears to have been sourced to the ubiquitous Franz Kurowski, as his work was the only one listed in References: * Kurowski, Franz (2004). Panzer Aces: German Tank Commanders in World War II. Verlag Stackpole Books. ISBN 978-0-8117-3173-7 K.e.coffman (talk) 04:57, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Per WP:IMPATIENT: Sometimes an article is nominated for deletion that is not being worked on very much, or has not been edited by a person for a long time, and thus might not be in very good shape. This does not necessarily mean that the topic is unsuitable for Wikipedia; it may be that the topic is obscure or difficult to write about. An article should be assessed based on whether it has a realistic potential for expansion, not how frequently it has been edited to date. Remember that there is no deadline. The article shouldn't be deleted for its current status only because no one has improved it yet. Such deletion would prevent editors from improving it in the future. Hawkeye7 (talk) 05:59, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It has been eight years for some of these articles, so it's a fair assumption that no sources would be forthcoming in the future. I follow a different philosophy that there is indeed a deadline: WP:NOW -- why not correct the problem now? These articles have been tagged refimprove since as early as 2009. I made a similar comment to editor PeaceMaker (who objected to my nominations): "My involvement with these articles has been on-going since I came across them via the German panzer aces list. I've taken several passes at the articles to remove dubious, unsourced and unreliably sourced material, and I've not seen attempts from other editors to improve the articles. This suggests to me that the wikipedia community is not overly concerned about having these articles as part of its body of knowledge." (talk) 06:14, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Here is an example of an article for an airman who had two aerial victories and never received a high award for valour: Graham Leggett. The article references two non-RS websites; I chose it randomly from a list of Battle of Britain pilots. I doubt anyone would nominate that article for deletion. The argument here is that Germans are more likely to be included in Wikipedia despite a lack of reliable sources. But "reliable source" does not mean "infallible source," and a person does not become non-notable because they are only mentioned in potentially unreliable sources. That is, the source could be wrong on minor details, but that doesn't mean the person didn't exist or wasn't awarded a Knight's Cross. Unlike "fancruft", which is about fictional works, these articles are about real people, and it would be a disservice to Wikipedia if they were deleted.Roches (talk) 09:24, 19 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It absolutely does matter. Articles require reliable sources, that is, those which are editorially controlled and fact checked. Any article for which substantial reliable referencing doesn't exist (note, this doesn't mean the sources must be currently cited, just that they must be out there) should be deleted or merged to a parent article. Interest doesn't matter, "It's a..." doesn't matter. SNGs are useful guides as to when substantial sourcing is likely to exist, but it still must, in every individual case, in fact exist. If it turns out an SNG covers a lot of cases where substantial reliable references don't exist, the SNG is erroneous and should be adjusted or removed. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 13:44, 19 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Not so, not in the least. You're imaging the GNG to be policy, whereas its a guideline that says right at the top that it is not the only possible criterion. The GNG is just a guideline, and we can have other guidelines also. The relationship between the GNG and the SNGs can be whatever we decide by consensus. The clearest two examples are the rules for natural geographic features, where above a certain level if we have more than just a name on a map, they are always notable, and WP:PROF, which explicitly and by firm consensus states that it is alternative to the GNG. Similarly, we include early players in the Olympics on such as basis. We make the rules. We are not constrained to follow the GNG unless we have consensus to do so--this consensus cannot be assumed. There is no higher body handing down the rules to us , and just letting us tinker with the details. We have made every guideline here by consensus, and it means what it is take to mean by the community, as shown in the case of notability , by practice at afds.

I think its firmly established that the highest award for valour is always notable, as long as we have a RS for the award to meet WP:V,Decisions in the other direction are aberrant--there is always a certain amount of error--, and the thing to do is to rewrite the articles.

Alternatively, it can be viewed as a compromise: we have had considerable trouble on holding the line for people whose notability is a n award lower than the highest, and since in this case there's a firmly defined line, it makes for a good compromise. Personally, I thing the highest award guideline is sometimes a little less than ideal, for example with some early holder of the VC and the Medal of Honor, and it might well be for other countries also (I have the Soviet Union in mind, much more than Germany). But it is still better to have the compromise and devote our time to writing better articles, not worrying about just which ones to accept. Too many AfDs end up with a detailed examination of sources--and depending on how we want to interpret the wording in the GNG, can in any borderline or ambiguous case give whichever result one wants. Far better to have a predictable guideline in fields where one can be established. DGG ( talk ) 05:39, 23 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The French Legion of Honour has been awarded about 1 million times since its creation (by Napoleon) - and has currently about 95000 living members. Following the argument by User:DGG above all those million should be considered inherently notable and their articles if ever created should not be deleted. I think this is seriously problematic. Arnoutf (talk) 07:06, 23 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The French Legion of Honor is an award with multiple levels. Only the highest level counts. (and most of these are civilian, not military awards) For military valour, according to our article, the highest award in the Légion d'honneur rule à titre militaire) is awarded jointly with a Mention in Dispatches. "It is rarely awarded, mainly to soldiers who have died in battle." This indicates the importance of what I said earlier, that we need to discriminate and count only the very highest level. (I cannot find a count, but the 2nd highest honour, has been awarded only 1061 times. DGG ( talk ) 07:32, 23 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Arnoutf I agree with DGG. My understanding is that, in order to be considered to have been awarded to military personnel for bravery/valour, the French Legion of Honour must be awarded concurrently with a mention in dispatches. That would drastically reduce the number who would meet SOLDIER, assuming that the figure of 1 million is even accurate (while we don't use WP as a source, the current article for the Legion of Honour mentions less than 100K awards, not 1 million...). From that figure, all of the awards to French and non-French civilians can be discounted, as can those to French military personnel for long service. Raw figures of this type distort things considerably, and are almost useless in this discussion. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:58, 23 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Minor comment. If you read the text of the article, there is indeed a limit of 100K Legion of Honour awardees - at any moment in time - which means that no more than that number of awardees can be alive at any moment. If you read a bit further and in other sources you will find that right now there are about 95K living awardees of the LH. So the numbering is a bit off. Arnoutf (talk) 08:10, 23 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As was discussed elsewhere in the thread, the KC was awarded for other things besides valour, so only those who received the award for valour would qualify under SOLDIER1. But it's not discernable from readily available sources which recipients got it for valour and which for distinguished service. Nazi Germany itself did not make the distinction apparent. Hence the dilemma: more than KCs 7000 were awarded, resulting in the award being much more common than, for example, MoH or VC, which were awards only for valour. K.e.coffman (talk) 08:03, 23 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't the whole point of a presumption of notability that it is up to those claiming non-notability to prove their case? The whole point of the rule is that there are probably reliable sources, but that they may not exist online at the moment. The question then becomes: is this true for this particular award? Should the whole guideline be refined a bit more? john k (talk) 18:57, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Part 2

• There are a few issues to deal with here. One, there are several classes of this award, and the actual "highest class" only ever had one recipient - Adolf Hitler. Therefore, there is an argument that could be made that no one else ever received "the highest award" and thus cannot meet GNG by receiving it. Two, according to the KC article, there were 7,161 awards of this decoration in six years. That's four times as many in that period as there have ever been for the VC, and twice as many as there have ever been for the US MOH. Those awards are also not multi-classed; the "lower class" is a totally different award that does not confer GNG via reception. So I think that the class of the award as well as the rarity of presentation certainly needs to be taken into consideration for determining notability. Recipients of the KC often have no other sourcing for them other than their KC citation, which is not saying much when we compare it to the sources we have on VC/MOH recipients. Therefore, there's a preponderance of evidence that indicates that it doesn't seem to be prestigious enough to merit inclusion based solely on receiving it. MSJapan (talk) 06:20, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps WP:Soldier should be adjusted specific to the Knight's Cross? I do not see that "experience has shown that WP:GNG will be met". As the AfDs have demonstrated, "significant coverage" on these subjects appears not to exist, or it has not made itself apparent in eight years.

Then the question may become:

1. Does the award of a single Ritterkreuz in any way meet the bar for WP:SOLDER#1 and/or WP:ANYBIO#1? If not, is the Ritterkreuz with Oak Leaves (ie: second award ~860 recipients) sufficient?

K.e.coffman (talk) 06:33, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have suggested elsewhere that SOLDIER should be adjusted (or a note made) regarding the Knight's Cross because of the confusion it causes. First though, I disagree at a philosophical level with the deletion of many these articles, despite the claim that they do not meet GNG. The only way to determine that would be to conduct a search of off-line sources in German. Contemporary and later accounts in newspapers, for example (including obituaries), may well hold sufficient information to justify these articles under GNG. But we have a serious systemic bias towards English language sources on en WP, and many would not know how to locate such sources in German. A similar situation would apply to Heroes of the Soviet Union or recipients of the Yugoslav Order of the People's Hero. A Google Books search is a very blunt instrument, especially for subjects whose mother tongue was not English. Secondly, the Knight's Cross was awarded for several things, including for valour, for military leadership, and for reaching a certain number of kills for fighter aces and submarine captains etc. A lot of colonels and generals were awarded it for leadership, rarely for valour. Only Knight's Crosses or higher levels of the award awarded for valour would meet SOLDIER, and that is a small subset of the total. Thirdly, the Knight's Cross was the highest award available to a soldier who did not already have one. You could not be awarded the Oak Leaves without being awarded the Knight's Cross for an earlier separate action, and so on. There was no way of being awarded the Diamonds for a single action unless you had already been awarded all the lower levels for separate actions. So, despite claims that only Diamonds recipients are "really" the highest level, that just is not the case. If a soldier was awarded the Diamonds and all the previous levels for valour in each case, that would mean that they had been awarded the highest award for valour available to them on multiple occasions. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:19, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Should this work (locating sources) has been done prior to creating an article though? WP:Notability states: "If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list. "Significant coverage" addresses the topic directly and in detail, so that no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic of the source material." It looks to me that a mention in Fellgiebel (please see sample above) is a "trivial mention".

I've left messages for the two editors who created the bulk of the articles under discussion, and they have not responded, even though editor DocYako has edited today. There are probably hundreds of these articles, for example, those included in this List of Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross recipients of the Waffen-SS. So this is a systemic issue which was created by mostly two editors. I do not know their motivation. K.e.coffman (talk) 07:53, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Not necessarily. I don't know when they were created or by whom, or what policies or guidelines existed when they did that. Things on en WP change over time, policies have been adjusted, guidelines written and essays like SOLDIER developed and tweaked. SOLDIER makes presumptions about military people that are likely to be notable, and it doesn't trump GNG. That doesn't mean you have to run down all these articles and PROD them either. Where the award was for valour, I would be giving the subjects of these articles the benefit of the doubt. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:01, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

How would one know whether the KC was given for "valour" ("extreme battlefield bravery") vs "successful military leadership"? K.e.coffman (talk) 08:30, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I expect there was a citation which explained the award, and the lower the rank, the less likely it was awarded for anything other than valour. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:01, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This is clearly contentious, so neither automatically keeping nor automatically deleting these articles seems appropriate. The award of such a top medal ought to be a factor contributing notability, but needs to be corroborated by sources detailing the heroism or other notable deeds of the medal holder. Before requesting WP:AFD, the article creator and other significant contributors ought to be invited to provide additional evidence of notability if needed and text should not be unilaterally deleted, but discussed at the talk page if felt to be dubious. So I propose we slow down the process of deletionism and anti-deletionism and all those involved should seek to improve the articles if they can be improved. If the article appears on de.wiki, I'm happy to contribute by translating the additional information if that helps. Cheers all. Bermicourt (talk) 13:34, 18 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with MSJapan's point that a distinction needs to be made so that the Nazi regime award winners are not all given webpages. The fact that a totalitarian state handed out 4 top award medals every day to their soldiers shouldn't surprise anyone but Wikipedia is not a directory or an index so that it shouldn't be controversial not to include this. That said, some of these people clearly are notable and I think the only way to proceed is to go on a case by case basis. Bermicourt's suggestion that we "slow down the process of [deleting]" these articles is not correct either. There is clearly a problem here and doing nothing or deliberating slowing down an already very slow process is not going to help improve Wikipedia.Monopoly31121993 (talk) 15:38, 19 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't suggesting slowing down the whole process of sorting this out, if the proper validation of articles can be speeded up - great! What I was cautioning against was a hasty deletion of articles without any proper research on the assumption that none are notable. --Bermicourt (talk) 15:44, 19 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That would be great, if we could simultaneously slow down the hasty creation of articles before finding the references that would be necessary to sustain one, and verifying that there is in fact enough of it to write a full article. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 18:52, 19 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I'd like to suggest that this may be a false dilemma. If the Knight's Cross was not the highest decoration, then there would be no no presumption of notability. I suggest that the establishment of additional levels of the award was essentially the establishment of new and higher awards. There could be two possible ways to break the horns of the dilemma. The first would be to recognize recipients of the Knight's Cross prior to the establishment of the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, then the recipients of the new, higher award until the Knight's Cross with Swords was established, an so on. The alternative would be to establish another level as the "highest" level. The number of awards at the oak leaves level would appear roughly equivalent to the equivalent awards. I prefer the first as it recognizes that the standards for awards of decorations change over time. --Lineagegeek (talk) 22:36, 19 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• That just isn't correct. See my explanation of the Knight's Cross above. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:13, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Alois Kalss existed and was awarded a Knight's Cross. There are photos of him at the Axis History Forum. I suppose those are primary sources and unreliable, but they're photos of a person with a Knight's Cross, and the "extract from his recommendation" describes his role in the fighting at Hill 112 on 11 July 1944. There are few wartime German newspapers available in digitized form, but the Leipziger Neueste Nachtrichten is available, along with some others. Every day, the new recipients of the Knight's Cross (Neue Ritterkreuzträger) are listed on the first or second page. Recipients of the Oak Leaves are almost always front-page news (Neuer Eichenlaubträger...). The LNN gives at least this much information:

"New Oak Leaf Bearer in the Waffen-SS: The Führer has given the Oak Leaves of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross to SS-Obersturmbannführer Karl ULLRICH, commander of the SS-Panzer-Grenadier Regiment "Theodor Eicke" in the SS-Panzer Division "Totenkopf", as the 480th Soldier of the German Wehrmacht."

"New Iron Cross Holders: The Führer has given the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross to Major Heinrich IBUERMANN, commander of a Frankish armored engineer battalion, born on 6 September 1907 in Reppen..."</quote>

This is from the second page of the LNN for June 7, 1944. What I mean to achieve by stating the above is that, most likely, most German newspapers printed lists of new Knight's Cross recipients. The most reliable sources just happened to be undigitized, unsearchable and in Fraktur. Roches (talk) 05:29, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. Note that accepting Knight's Cross holders as inherently notable actually creates a lower standard of notability for German soldiers than for British or American soldiers, since the Knight's Cross was often awarded for actions that would have resulted in a second-level decoration in Britain or the USA as opposed to the Victoria Cross or Medal of Honor (if you read the circumstances, many of these men would have clearly received a DSO or DCM in Britain, not a VC - the ubiquitous Knight's Cross received by so many U-boat captains being a perfect case in point). That's why so many more were awarded. This is the problem with regarding recipients of a country's "highest" decoration as inherently notable; it favours countries that do not have a defined three-level decoration system as Britain, the Commonwealth and the USA do. Most countries, in fact, do not (hence the debate we have had as to whether the Legion d'honneur is France's highest decoration; it is and it isn't!). -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:05, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Yes, the Knight's Cross was awarded for things other than valour, and in many of those cases the equivalent award in the British system would have been the DFC or DSO, but those awarded the Knight's Cross for valour are necessarily a subset of the total. It doesn't create a "lower standard", it is just more nuanced than the British or US systems, which had one level of one award, which was for valour only. What is needed is a closer examination of the individual award to determine if it was for valour (and therefore relevant for WP:SOLDIER). I'm all for reconsidering the notability of some Knight's Cross recipients who appear to have been awarded the Knight's Cross for "successful leadership" or on another basis more akin to a DSO or CBE. What we risk doing here is creating a systemic bias in which every lower ranking member of the German armed forces who received the Knight's Cross is given less benefit of the doubt than their equivalent in other systems. Some sort of "victor's justice" when it comes to awards, especially when you take into account the destruction of records and newspapers etc in Germany during the war. As a function of their rank, it is those of lower ranks who are much more likely to have received the Knight's Cross for valour, yet some of the discussion here would skew the system against them significantly. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:44, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

They're fundamentally different awards. The British and US awards were for valor above and beyond the call of duty. In essence, the Knight's Cross (RK) was very often an award for successful fulfillment of duties. It also had prerequisite rewards (both grades of Iron Cross, EK1 and EK2), which the US and British awards did not. Sometimes the awards were concurrent, as for Gustav Altmann who received the award for capturing Fort Eben-Emael in May 1940. The difference in the awards might be illustrated by the Medal of Honor awarded for D-Day; the American command decided only one would be given for actions that day, and it was given to Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., who personally led troops on the beaches, not to Eisenhower.

The Germans did not make a distinction, at all, as to what the RK was given for. It was the highest award for military service, period. The newspaper accounts don't seem to say much about new RKs or new Oak Leaves, just names and dates and places of birth. The articles on the Swords (I haven't found one on Diamonds yet) are longer. There seems to have been a journalistic standard that stories about the Swords and possibly the Oak Leaves were front-page news no matter what, because the June 6, 1944 papers include a story about that. The Knight's Cross was front-page news on D-Day. Likewise this paper from July 22, 1944, the first after the July 20 plot, mentions Swords on the front page and new RKs on the second. Note that per WP:GNG the fact that the Knight's Cross generated coverage in secondary sources is to be taken as evidence for notability, even if it is so because the Nazi government placed a very high emphasis on medals given for military service. Roches (talk) 17:11, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If we would be consistent here, we should add article for all recipient of the French Legion of Honour, the highest French medal (and awarded over a million times; with a about a 100,000 living recipients today). It seems WP:Soldier assumes that highest award are rare (as they are with the VC in the UK or the medal of honour in the US (both in existence well over 100 years and on average awarded fewer than 30 times a year over the time). Arnoutf (talk) 21:20, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It is always based on coverage in sources; WP:SOLDIER is not policy. The problem here is that the sources are predominantly in German, and many sources are not searchable. So, what concerns me is nominating a page for deletion, or voting "delete", based on a search of English-language sources. Roches (talk) 00:03, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree entirely with this comment by Roches. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:08, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Concur - Roches makes an extremely valid point. German (and other) language newspapers should enjoy the same credibility/weight that we give to the Telegraph for example. 06:23, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Is anyone disputing they shouldn't be given equal weight? -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:14, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. The initiator of this discussion said: "Off-line German language sources" are not available to me -- both physically and linguistically. I assume that would be true for most English wiki editors. Contemporaneous sources published between 1939 and 1945 would be highly unreliable, having been produced under the totalitarian regime. I expect they would not be of any use, unless covered by reliable secondary sources as part of WWII historiography. I strongly agree with Roches' point and disagree with K.e.coffman's dismissal of off-line German sources. Pburka (talk) 15:06, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I also stated: "I'm not following -- how would 1939-45 sources be reliable? We don't use them to source articles on WWII battles, for example. Also to clarify, I'm not arguing against German language sources; my point is that none have been added in eight years, so it's unrealistic to expect that they would be in foreseeable future." There was no response on why contemporaneous sources would be reliable.

I believe that German sources (in particular newspapers) were brought up in the context of verifying the award; see for example from Roches: "most likely, most German newspapers printed lists of new Knight's Cross recipients. The most reliable sources just happened to be undigitized, unsearchable" -- this is not needed since Fellgiebel or Scherzer are already included in these articles; they are generally accepted as RS to confirm the award.

The issue under discussion is not whether the subjects received the award, but about them failing GNG due to lack of "significant coverage in reliable secondary sources". Reliable secondary sources in WP:MILMOS#SOURCES context are discussed as follows:

Policy requires that articles reference only reliable sources; however, this is a minimal condition, rather than a final goal. With the exception of certain recent topics that have not yet become the subject of extensive secondary analysis, and for which a lower standard may be temporarily permitted, articles on military history should aim to be based primarily on published secondary works by reputable historians. The use of high-quality primary sources is also appropriate, but care should be taken to use them correctly, without straying into original research. Editors are encouraged to extensively survey the available literature—and, in particular, any available historiographic commentary—regarding an article's topic in order to identify every source considered to be authoritative or significant; these sources should, if possible, be directly consulted when writing the article.

K.e.coffman (talk) 15:54, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Official documents, even (or perhaps especially) of a totalitarian regime, about awarding medals to individuals can probably be considered reliable primary documents. The issue at stake is not so much whether there is sufficient evidence these medals were awarded but instead whether being the mere recipient of one of these medals implies notability at a level of GNG even in the absence of further evidence. For VC or medal of honour I would say yes - in part because of their rarity, for the KC I would say no. Arnoutf (talk) 16:16, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment I agree with BrownHairedGirl in that this is really not about ANYBIO1, it is about possible amendment to WP:SOLDIER, specifically with regard to the Knight's Cross. The application of ANYBIO1 is far wider than the highest military award for valour in each country, and it is really a red herring in this discussion. The presumption of notability for Knight's Cross recipients comes from WP:SOLDIER, not the far wider ANYBIO1, of which the SOLDIER presumption constitutes a very small subset. In fact, because we are specifically talking about the application of SOLDIER, the discussion should be taking place in project space where it will get greater exposure to editors with a clue about such things. If WP:MILNG or WP:SOLDIER need modification, the place to have the discussion is Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history. Also, from my reading of the extensive discussion here, I can't see any likelihood that a consensus will be reached that we dispense with the AfD process for hundreds? of articles and give carte blanche to anyone to turn them into redirects to the alphabetical lists, so there seems to be little point in continuing the back and forth. I suggest that interested editors work their way through the Knight's Cross lists, make an assessment of whether they individually meet the GNG, then AfD those that they don't believe meet the GNG, proposing they be redirected to the relevant alphabetical list. Then they can each be discussed on their merits, some will be kept, some will end up as redirects. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:22, 25 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Notice of dispute resolution request

I requested dispute resolution on this issue, naming myself, K.e.coffmann and Peacemaker67 as involved editors, although there are many editors involved. It's clear that no editor will convince another that a source is reliable or not. Further, large numbers of articles have been affected by this apparently well-intentioned effort at denazification. It would be impossible to resolve each issue separately, and beyond impossible to ensure a fair standard was applied to all the involved articles. Roches (talk) 03:37, 28 July 2016 (UTC) Roches, do you mind linking to the DRN discussion? I don't seem to have been pinged. Thanks, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 03:53, 28 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Here it is: Dispute resolution for this page. My assessment of the discussion may or may not be accurate, but so many articles are affected now that there has to be a single standard in place for all of them.

I looked over Wikipedia coverage of recipients of the highest award for valor in World War II:

• List of Second World War Victoria Cross recipients 100% of 182

• List of Medal of Honor recipients for World War II 100% of 464

• Hero of the Soviet Union 100% on Russian Wikipedia, but <1% on English

• Category: Recipients of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 45.9% of 7,365 = 3381

• Category: Recipients of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves 100% of 890

• Category: Recipients of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords 100% of 160

• Category: Recipients of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds 100% of 27

There is near-complete coverage for the high grades of the Polish Virtuti Militari and the Japanese Order of the Golden Kite, but very little other information. But note that all recipients of multiple Knight's Crosses have an article. Roches (talk) 06:06, 28 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment -- The KC holder category on German Wikipedia contains 323 entries. It seems implausible that the KC recipients would be 10 times more notable in English than they are in German. K.e.coffman (talk) 15:38, 28 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment, that only means they have not written as many articles on the subject as of yet; one could argue that is true as far as any number of articles for all other Wikipedia's in other languages; English Wikipedia has far and away many more articles overall then any other one. Kierzek (talk) 15:59, 28 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is clearly some kind of anomaly. For example, roughly 500 of KC holder articles were created by editor Jim Sweeney between Oct 2008 and Feb 2009 (pls see history from that period. Editor DocYako's creation of KC holder articles was more spread out: between 2010 and 2016 they created over 1,500 (see history, maybe more. With just two editors responsible for over 2,000 cookie-cutter articles, I can't say that this is wikipedia community coming together organically to create content. K.e.coffman (talk) 01:35, 29 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal 1 (new WP:Soldier criteria for Nazi Germany)

Proposal 1: We modify the WP:Soldier criteria for all Nazi-era Knights Cross winners to only include those who were awarded the knights cross with Oak Leaves. If I understand the discussion above correctly then this was in fact the country's second highest award (after the one that only Hitler received, and yes, I checked and he already has a page).Monopoly31121993 (talk) 20:26, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Support: I support this proposal because it will be more in line with other countries WP:Soldier criteria and will not have the effect of biasing the creation of Wikipedia pages in favor of award winners from a totalitarian state whose purpose in providing thousands of these awards was propagandistic and part of a broader strategy to manipulate the population of Europe towards barbarism.Monopoly31121993 (talk) 20:26, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose For several reasons (1) The essay (not a guideline) in WP:Soldier is within the remit of the Milhist project. This discussion should be done there (2) The WP:Soldier discussion only suggests that receiving the highest honour is likely linked to be sufficient report, but does not make a definite claim it is sufficient. (3) Making an exception for a specific (no longer existing) state would require that all states are reviewed. And indeed there seem to be reasons to limit this clause for other cases as well. For example, for the French Legion of Honour it seems to be consensus that only the higher classes are considered notable because of the currently about 100,000 living recipients. (compared to e.g. the Dutch Military William Order with only 4 living recipients at the moment). So all in all, this seems to be solving a non-existing problem, or if the problem exists, to solve only one part of it. To take this further - please argue there is a problem, and secondly, propose a generic solution rather than a state specific one. Arnoutf (talk) 21:09, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per Arnoutf. This is a matter for MILHIST. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:13, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose this is not only incorrect, as I have tried to explain in some detail above, but it is a matter for MILHIST. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 23:19, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per above. This is incorrect -- also, unless I'm mistaken, Hitler refused to wear any medals besides his World War I Iron Cross and Black Wound Badge. You may be thinking of Goering's Grand Cross of the Iron Cross. Roches (talk) 23:55, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose This is a misunderstanding of the award, which does not have the same structure as the Legion of Honour, but also of WP:SOLDIER. All it says is that our experience has been that sources are available to write articles. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:07, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Note that although WP:SOLDIER does not claim that meeting its criteria = inherent notability, that is certainly how it is almost invariably interpreted, so I would be wary about taking the exact wording too literally. I would agree that only the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and above confers inherent notability, for the reasons I have outlined before (i.e. the Knight's Cross is far too common to equate to the Victoria Cross or Medal of Honor and while some awards definitely did equate to the level of bravery required for those awards, many more did not), but I would not agree that an unadorned Knight's Cross does not confer inherent notability (as a single second- or third-level award does not). It depends entirely on the circumstances of award. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:25, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Just a point of clarification. Your response doesn't address Knight's Crosses awarded prior to the creation of the Oak Leaves. ie prior to Barbarossa. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:01, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Makes no difference to what I said. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:24, 25 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, an artificial and arbitrary cut-off as to who to include and exclude is not the way it should be done. They should be looked at on a case by case basis with there being a rebuttable presumption of notability. Kierzek (talk) 17:40, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Strongly Oppose, such a cut off is an arbitrary criterium. It would mean the same as arbitrarily saying that people who were awarded an upgraded MoH don’t deserve an article. – fdewaele, 25 July 2016, 16:50 CET.

Proposal 2

We modify the WP:Soldier criteria so that single reception of a highest honour is only considered sufficient for presumed notability when the highest honour is awarded less frequently than 50 times on average over the life of the honour. That would count for both (single) Knights cross and (French) legion of honour awardees. Arnoutf (talk) 21:26, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Support This would exclude in an unbiased way situations where high honours are not rare. Arnoutf (talk) 21:26, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose This is a matter for MILHIST. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:13, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Per Chris T. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 23:19, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose per above. I do not support automatic notability. Roches (talk) 23:55, 20 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Agree that this is a matter for MILHIST. But for the record, the actual criteria for an award is not what is important here. We are not in the business of deciding if one award is more worthy than another. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:07, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, but we essentially are. We have already decided that (under the Commonwealth and American systems) the recipient of a single first-level award is inherently notable whereas the recipient of a single second-level award is not. Obviously the former award is higher - that stands to reason - but it is we who have decided that its recipients are worthy of inclusion on Wikipedia whereas the recipients of the latter are not. This is simple enough under those systems, but it is not at all simple for countries that do not use such a structured system (i.e. most of them). And that's our problem. Does a medal awarded to 7,000 people in six years confer the same inherent notability as one awarded to 1,300 people in 150 years? Clearly it does not, unless the former nation is over a hundred times larger than the latter nation or the former's soldiers are over a hundred times braver, both of which are obviously a nonsense. Yet under WP:SOLDIER we would give both awards equal weight because they are both the "top" award for gallantry, despite the former clearly being often awarded for "lesser" acts than the latter. -- Necrothesp (talk) 16:30, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Here’s a thought: None of the single awards of a KC qualify under SOLDIER1 since it cannot be reliably determined whether they were awarded for valour vs other things, due to the fact that the award was not structured that way. This automatically takes off presumption of notability off a single-award recipient, in the absence of other military notability factors, such as “commanded a significant body of troops (division or higher)" and/or held a "general officer rank”.

The sources included with the articles provide a one line entry for each subject. They reliably state that an award was presented to a named individual, their rank, and the unit they served with at the time of the nomination, and the date of the presentation. The rest of the information presented in the articles was apparently sourced from dubious websites such as lexicon-der-wehrmacht.de; ritterkrauzerjager1939-45.de (or some such); das-reich.ca or frontjkemper.nl, among others. K.e.coffman (talk) 17:57, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree and I have argued that in the past, but been shouted down by those who claim that SOLDIER applies to any "highest" award even if it's awarded to many thousands rather than tens or hundreds. It's always needed a bit of common sense to interpret the criterion and realise that it can only really apply to the Commonwealth/American system. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:27, 25 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: Monopoly31121993 makes a valid point about totalitarian regimes where high awards were used for propaganda purposes, among other things. I've done some "original research" by comparing the award rate of the U.S. Medal of Honor to the Knight's Cross. My inputs were: 464 Medal of Honor recipients out of appox. US 18M servicemen in WWII (0.0026% award rate). For Germany, 7,300 KC recipients out of approx 20M servicemen (0.036% award rate). For the Knight's Cross to be as prestigious and rare as the Medal of Honor, it would have needed to be awarded in about 500 cases. Unless my math is completely off, this equates roughly to Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, of which ~860 were awarded, a much lower number vs the Knight's Cross.

Similar to the KC, the title of Hero of the Soviet Union (HSU) was a mass award: ~11,600 recipients out of 34M personnel during WWII. This equates to an award rate of 0.034%, on par with that of the KC. However, currently WP has 625 articles in the HSU category (for about 5% of recipients), so hopefully these are genuinely notable subjects.

In contrast, there are about 3750 KC holder articles, that is, roughly 50% of recipients (all grades) have a WP article. This seems way out of proportion to either Western Allies (due to the rarity of the awards for valour) or the Soviet Union (due to the general lack of English sources and the language barrier). It also appears that two editors (DocYako and JimSweeney) were responsible for the creation of the bulk of the article that have caused my notability concerns (at least hundreds each); so these articles were not created “organically” by a diverse group of contributors—an unusual circumstance. (I again left msg for both editors to see if they would like to engage with the discussion here).

From this math it appears that the issue is indeed country-specific: Germany during WWII. Perhaps it needs to be handled as a special case? K.e.coffman (talk) 00:11, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The problems with your maths is that a) not all Knight's Crosses were awarded for valour, and b) such a system (limiting to Oak Leaves and above) doesn't take into account awards before the Oak Leaves were created, and c) it is terribly skewed against lower-ranking soldiers awarded the Knight's Cross for valour. I believe all the arguments have been made above, so there is no point in repeating them all here. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:28, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The proposal does not bias against lower-ranking soldiers if they have sufficient RS in order to meet the general requirements to have a biographic reference in Wikipedia. A major problem right now is that there are lots of pages that don't even meet that criteria and that is the case because two editors decided to create hundreds of article of Nazi-era Knights Cross awards winners (often using one of 2 German language texts as RS, which, in at least in one case, even the text's author cautions against).Monopoly31121993 (talk) 08:05, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the U.S. Medal of Honor has been awarded for propaganda purposes (eg Charles Lindbergh and Douglas MacArthur). That is not what is important. What is important is that the award attracts sufficient interest that readers want to read about them, and sufficient information becomes available for us to write about them. That is the case with the Medal of Honor, and it is the case with the Knight's Cross. Hawkeye7 (talk) 01:07, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The propaganda aspect is important because we are assuming that there is comparability been these awards across all countries. If tomorrow, North Korea decided it wanted to issue it's highest award to 4 people every day there's no way Wikipedians would agree on parroting that information into Wikipedia pages for each of them but that is exactly the situation that we have here for the Nazi regime.Monopoly31121993 (talk) 08:05, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I was surprised that so many Knight's Cross holders have WP articles, so I checked some similar awards. Every one of the Medal of Honor and Victoria Cross recipients for World War II has a Wikipedia article. Although there are very few English articles, every Hero of the Soviet Union has an article in Russian Wikipedia. Roches (talk) 02:47, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

And there we are back to the core of the issue. Are KC, VC, and Medal of Honor similar awards. With the total number of VC being 1358 since its inception in 1856, and only 181 being awarded during WWII; with the KC being awarded 7,364 times (all during WWII) - which is roughly 40 times as many. Therefore I would argue these awards are in fact NOT similar (unless we can agree that the German armed forces across the board showed 40 times as much valour compared to the British forces (or about 15 times a valorous compared to the US armed forces looking at the number of medals of honour awarded). Arnoutf (talk) 08:26, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The statement "not all Knight's Crosses were awarded for valour" problematic, as it's unknowable which were awarded for "extreme battlefield bravery" and which were awarded for "successful military leadership", since Nazi Germany itself did not appear to make this distinction. Fellgiebel and Scherzer (two of the most frequently sources cited in WP to establish the fact of the award) do not provide this information. Suggesting that editors figure out which was which on their own and "give the subjects of these articles the benefit of the doubt [re: valour]" is inviting OR.

Here's a sample article on a low-ranking Waffen-SS KC holder: Otto Kron -- it is cited entirely to the dubious web site fronjkemper (which apparently used to be a Norwegian Waffen-SS fan site, now dead); describes his "suffering through the Russian Winter"; and in general looks like a WP:Memorial. More of the same: Max Seela (tagged refimprove since 2012). Both came off the Template: KC recipients in SS Division Totenkopf.

K.e.coffman (talk) 08:50, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's only problematic because you can't access their recommendation documents or newspaper articles about them, including obituaries. I've made the point about non-English sources above. It's certainly not "unknowable". Just because you can't access the offline sources that may have information about them or their award doesn't mean they don't exist. Several other editors have pointed out the same thing. Giving them the benefit of the doubt is not OR, it is based on a presumption made by SOLDIER that sources exist that would meet GNG. BTW, Seela's exploits are described in Sydnor's Soldiers of Destruction published by Princeton University Press, and they certainly appear to meet the valour criteria. A simple Google search would have located that reference on the first page of results. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 23:58, 21 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the comment above that nomination documents would be reliable WP:Primary sources, if these were available (they are not in Scherzer and Fellgiebel).

In contrast, contemporaneous secondary sources (I.e. newspapers) are either

• limited, as in the sample presented by Roches—simply a list of KC recipients, which is a trivial mention; moreover, same information is already available in Scherzer and has been cross checked with archival material and is thus more reliable
• unreliable journalistic accounts, put through the prism of war-time propaganda. Wikipedia does not consider propaganda, whether Allied or Axis, to be a reliable source.

I looked into obituaries; they are not listed in WP:RS main page, but here’s what I found in the WP:RS Talk archives as a proposed addition:

Obituaries can be an invaluable resource for biographical articles, providing essential details like birth and death dates, family relations, education, and a timeline of major accomplishments. News obituaries, which are written by journalists and subject to fact checking, can provide essential biographical details and a good summary of a person's acheivements. Classified obituaries, which are written and paid for by the deceased's family, should be considered self-published sources and do not contribute to satisfying the General notability guideline.

And:

(a) Obituaries at newspapers and other publications are frequently not written by staff journalists but by outsiders who have an especially informed perspective on the deceased party - sometimes, indeed, people who knew him. For example, if astrophysicist X dies, astrophysicist Y (if she is a good writer) might be invited to contribute an obituary. (b) The addition perpetuates the myth (acknowledged even in fact checking) that newspapers fact-check on a rigorous and routine basis. They don't - for that matter I don't think even the U.S. newsweeklies do it the way that they used to be famous for.

Obituaries most likely would be controversial when used as a source to establish GNG. For MilHist, preferred sources are discussed as: "With the exception of certain recent topics that have not yet become the subject of extensive secondary analysis, and for which a lower standard may be temporarily permitted, articles on military history should aim to be based primarily on published secondary works by reputable historians." In the absence of reliable secondary sources, GNG can be challenged if only established by primary or self-published materials. K.e.coffman (talk) 04:04, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Look, I get that you're on a bit of a mission to get rid of Nazi hero worshipping authors and websites from en WP. It's a laudable aim. I've deleted many links to axishistory and feldgrau and other fansites myself over the years. But I'm afraid you are getting a bit carried away with this particular campaign, and risk creating a systemic bias against German military biographies on en WP. Let's use an example. Recommendation documents for WWI and WWII soldiers of Australia have been digitised and are available free online. Australian obituaries are easily available via the National Library of Australia Trove website that provides free digital copies of all but the most local of newspapers. Given my first (and only fluent) language is English, it makes it very easy for me to access them and use them to cite articles on Australian soldiers. Where are the equivalent German recommendation documents? Presumably at the Bundesarchiv, but not digitised as far as I can tell. There are also de-Nazification records, probably also there, undigitised. Have German newspapers been digitised to the same extent as Australian ones? I don't know, but I am certainly not aware of where they might be held if they have. I've made an effort to look too, as I have an FA or two on German-speaking soldiers, and expect there will be more information available on them, if only I could access it from Australia. My German is very scratchy however, so I would struggle to find the relevant information even if both types of information were fully digitised and searchable as they are in Australia. But the German information can quite reasonably be presumed to exist. How many German-language books on WWII have been digitised and are available in Google Books preview? Not very many, I'll give you the drum. I repeat, you risk creating a serious systemic bias against German military biographies by going around PRODing articles because you don't personally have access to the offline sources that might mean someone meets GNG. I note you haven't acknowledged the fact that I found a mention of Seela in a book without even trying, even though you used him as an example of what is wrong with having articles on Knight's Cross recipients. I have to say that you are undermining your own argument a bit here. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 05:47, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Gentlemen, regardless of whether the reasons for giving these awards is reliably discernable or not, which is an issue in it of itself, the problem remains that simply too many Knight's Crosses were awarded, taking away from their relevance. You can hardly call the award notable when it's been awarded 40 times more often that it's foreign equivalents. And what's with this "victor's justice" nonsense, Peacemaker67? You should know that history is written by the literate, not the victors. You can't expect anyone to take you seriously when you make such statements. You call K.e.coffman out for excess of zeal, but your borderline apologist affirmations make me more wary of you.--MaxRavenclaw (talk) 07:16, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I couldn't care less if you are wary of me, my record of quality content creation in highly-contested areas of WP speaks for itself. The problem isn't with the number awarded, it is with the attempt to apply a blanket approach to it (because K.e.coffman is apparently too busy to look at each one individually). They should be handled on an individual basis, based on when they were awarded and for what, not some arbitrary number comparison, which also shows Anglo-American systemic bias given the number of Hero's of the Soviet Union awarded. Next thing you'll be telling me that I have a borderline apologist approach to the Soviet Union. Give me strength... Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:34, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not the only one wary of you, mate. Your record of quality in general doesn't mean you are unbiased, and frankly, the borderline Wehrmacht circlejerk you and your group indulge in is alarming. --MaxRavenclaw (talk) 08:34, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"My group"? What "group" is that? FFS. Go carefully, Max, personal attacks are verboten. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 09:23, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I believe editor Peacemaker has self-identified this "group" (whether real or imagined) via statements such as ""these deletions are not in consensus in the Milhist community" and "That is not how we do military biographies on en WP". Indeed, editor Peacemaker makes frequent allusions to "en Wiki" as in this discussion between MilHist coordinators: "de WP is a very different beast from en WP (...). I don't think en WP will benefit from accommodating the [anti-Nazi] hard line that is apparently standard there". Another editor chimes in with: "I've also had encounters with the diehard anti-Nazis, to my chagrin" while the rest of the participants look on.

In this thread on my talk page, an uninvolved editor described these statements as indicative of WP:OWN and WP:FACTION attitudes, with editors "engaging in their own internal, insular processes". Similar commentary was offered at a recent GAR: "appears to be a kind of echo chamber"; "I would suggest that there is a systemic issue for articles of this kind."; "WP:LOCALCONSENSUS"; etc.

Editor MaxRavenclaw is clearly not the only one being concerned over this. K.e.coffman (talk) 21:46, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

To be honest, as I argued above, the French Legion of Honour and indeed the hero of the Soviet Union have the same issue. Far too many awarded to presume notability merely based on the award. If anything seems Anglo-American biased, I would argue it is the WP:Soldier essay.

Your argument above, that a case by case analysis for notability should be made seems relevant. However, this places their inclusion in the GNG domain. The issue now becomes whether this case by case analysis is up to those claiming notability or that those who dispute notability merely based on WP:SOLDIER should provide the (negative) evidence the person is actually not notable. The latter is in my view impossible as with all negative evidence (and the point that obscure German sources are not readily available becomes a valid point here). So if we put this back to the original supporter of the article the argument becomes that WP:Soldier is not sufficient for keeping the article. Close to what was proposed at the start of this post. Arnoutf (talk) 17:45, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Many of the arguments presented for keeping the status quo have not been convincing: "WP:IMPATIENT"; "GNG should not matter in these cases"; "Contemporaneous sources are extremely reliable" [how is propaganda reliable?]; "a person does not become non-notable because they are only mentioned in potentially unreliable sources"; "the risk of creating a systemic bias", "apparently too busy to look at each one individually", among others. The allusions to "victor's justice" and arguments along the lines of "if you delete German KC holder articles, you should also delete articles on Allied personnel" especially do not hold water.

The Max Seela article is relevant here. It's been tagged refimprove since 2012, so if it only took 10 minutes to find a source, why has not this happened in the four intervening years? This goes back to my point that these articles cover topics that are not that interesting to the Wikipedia community, and by extension, to the general public. What's the point in keeping these memorial / stub articles if no improvements are forthcoming?

Since Peacemaker raised the issue of me being a "campaigner", I would like to point out that it's not the first time that this has come up. Here are a few examples of prior content disagreements:

• In the discussion of what the editor acknowledged was "uncited or poorly cited" material: " I recommend you just restrict yourself to making the language more neutral where necessary".
• Edit summary: "That is not how we do military biographies on en WP". We^[who?]?
• I have previously raised the issue of sources at MilHist FA/GA articles in the April MilHist FA/GA discussion. The results were inconclusive, with some editors noting "Problem is that if we start scouring through the pile we will inevitably get ourselves dirty", while editor PeaceMaker called me a "campaigner", writing: "This whole process has been dubious. .. I've seen that before in the areas where I edit, and it usually says more about the campaigner."
• More recently, Peacemaker and another MilHist coordinator defended the use of extensive quoting from German war-time propaganda broadcasts on the grounds that it is "historic testimony": see Bach-Zalewski discussion, as well as that on Manstein Talk page. Editor Peacemaker in particular suggested that these quotes should stay in because Nazi propaganda isn't just propaganda, its also news, concluding with: "In this case it may have included euphemisms for criminal actions, but it may equally have been referring to bravery in combat against armed fighters of the Home Army." (Indeed, going door to door shooting civilians is hard work). In the end, Peacemaker has reconsidered their position, so perhaps my "campaigning" is having an effect?
• The sourcing issues are not recents and have been raised before by other contributors, such as in these links from 2013: (1) Deletions of so called unreliable sources and (2) "Immortal German Soldiers", in which same editors defended keeping right-wing sources.
• Regarding recent AfDs: "I suggest you stop, otherwise I will take your conduct to ANI" (BTW, I don't believe I've PRODed any KC holder articles, as Peacemaker alleges; perhaps I am being confused with another editor?).
• More commentary can be found on my Talk page (User_talk:K.e.coffman#GAR), including a link to a discussion where Peacemaker describes my actions as a "problem" due to "hard line anti-Nazi" attitudes; and yes, that's probably the first time that I've heard the term anti-Nazi used pejoratively, including by a MilHist lead coordinator.

Editor Peacemaker has accused me of being a "deletionist" on several occasions; but I would argue that "keepism" (the term I learned just recently) is indeed a problem, as this thread has demonstrated. In any case, this seems to be headed to an RfC as the views appear to be polar opposites. K.e.coffman (talk) 18:31, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

K.e. different opinions are held and differences of opinion stated. Stating that "many" don't hold water is not going to win the day; it is a difference of stated opinion; I see it all the time in my day job. And unlike my day job there is not a judge to rule on the matter (and even then they get appealed and reversed at times). As for me I stated my opinion above and stand by it. And I agree with the editor above who noted that the Germans are not the only nation with awards and articles which have problems. The Soviet Union especially comes to mind. I don't believe we should throw the baby out with the bath water. Anyway, I don't see a conclusive outcome as to this matter herein at this time on this board. Kierzek (talk) 18:50, 22 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This can only be solved by RfC, but we should not slow down the process of assessing notability of individual RK articles. There's clearly a problem of perceived notability not being borne out by sources. And Peacemaker66, if anyone's behavior is alarming, it's yours. Nobody but wehraboos would want to read individual pages of so many German soldiers. A single page with a list and shot descriptions should have been enough, but in your fervor you're throwing threats and only making yourself look bad. You clearly have an agenda. --MaxRavenclaw (talk) 08:34, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I have an agenda? You have less than 200 edits in a year on en WP, and no articles created. And no edits on any other language WP. Yet you are engaged in a detailed discussion of a WP guideline, strongly supporting one editor and disparaging those that oppose his POV. That's a very steep learning curve for anyone. I smell sock, or meat... Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 23:28, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I see that threats and accusations are favourites with the above editor. Indeed, it's extremely odd that there might be other alleged "anti-Nazis" on Wikipedia. :-) Next thing they would see collusion / socking here as well: Neo-Nazi publications or Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Otto Kittel/1. K.e.coffman (talk) 23:47, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Come on boys, enough with the mud slinging, stay on point. Kierzek (talk) 00:04, 25 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree but I don't like being called a "campaigner" and my contributions dismissed as a "crusade" or "being on a mission". I believe that these are issues of concern to the community overall. K.e.coffman (talk) 00:08, 25 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose, such a cut off is an arbitrary criterium. There should never be a numerus clausus on valour. Plus this effort depicts a lack of understanding of the award, which didn’t only military success on a strategic or tactical level (generals, which almost automatically means they meet notability in itself) but also recognized individual feats of valour, but also continuous/repeated valour (tank destroyers, pilot aces, U-boat aces,…) and had in due time as war progressed more categories to distinguish those continuous acts of valour– fdewaele, 25 July 2016, 16:50 CET.

ANYBIO1

• Procedural comment. Please move this discussion to project space. It is about proposed amendments to an essay, whereas this page is for discussing Wikipedia's notability policies. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:19, 23 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't necessarily agree about moving the discussion, because WP:ANYBIO is also in play, as it has been brought up as justifying the keeping of KC holder articles. This section of the notability guidelines read:

Any biography:

1. The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, or has been nominated for one several times.
2. The person has made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in his or her specific field.

Some editors interpret KC as meeting ANYBIO1; see for example: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Josef_Preiß, "No need to debate about which military medals are more valuable than others, there is actually a very broad Special Notability Criterion for WP inclusion. WP:Notability for Biography, "Any Bio no. 1," which states: "The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, or has been nominated for one several times." That's all there is to it, there is no need to meet an arcane Military project hoop. This subject passes on that basis."

My interpretation is that there's no equivalence between the KC (if used as #1) and #2 "widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record"; they are just not on the same level. So perhaps ANYBIO1 needs to be clarified? I.e. a Nobel Prize qualifies, but another award doesn't?

Thus any potential RfC may need to address whether or not a single award of a Knight's Cross qualifies under ANYBIO1. K.e.coffman (talk) 21:37, 23 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the clarification. ANYBIO1 is way too broad, and as well as being narrowed it should offer no more than a rebuttable presumption of notability. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:02, 23 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@BrownHairedGirl: Here's an idea -- should ANYBIO1 be dispensed with altogether? A Nobel Prize winner has indisputably "made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record", so ANYBIO1 is not needed. Thoughts? Otherwise, as you point out, ANYBIO1 is way to broad and ambiguous, while being subject to POV interpretations. K.e.coffman (talk) 23:41, 23 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As a largely disinterested observer in this particular discussion, but as someone who has dealt with ANYBIO1 a fair few times, I'd say that it needs significant clarification, as it does nothing at all to define "well-known and significant". To use examples in my area of editing, the main Australian honours system goes from AC at the top through AO and AM to OAM - all significant and well-known honours, but only the first two really consistently include people who can safely be assumed to be notable. We've had this discussion a lot at AfD with people trying to use OAM, for example, as evidence of notability - and according to ANYBIO1, they're not necessarily wrong. Evidently this kind of thing happens with most honours systems, and even at the top eschelons of some as we're seeing. Perhaps ANYBIO1 should be moved to a specific section and narrowed and clarified quite substantially, or even turned into a sub-essay of its own with detailed explanations. Frickeg (talk) 03:47, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@K.e.coffman: The purpose of an SNG should be to avoid cluttering up AFD with a flood of nominations of underdeveloped articles on a set of topics where it is overwhelmingly likely that the sources do exist to meet GNG. In this case it seems that the spread is too broad to achieve that purpose, and is giving a presumption of notability to sets topics which are actually unlikely to pass GNG.
So, can it be narrowed without becoming too verbose? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 10:05, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@BrownHairedGirl:: My suggestion would be to trim and reword as follows:

Any biography:

1. The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, such as the Nobel Prize.
2. The person has made a widely recognized contribution that is part of the enduring historical record in his or her specific field.

I think "nominated several times" is unnecessary, and including the Nobel Prize as a point of comparison would be helpful to editors. Such as in "Is the KC in any way, shape or form comparable to the Nobel Prize? No—nothing to see here, please move along." K.e.coffman (talk) 21:16, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Isn't that what's known as a wrecking amendment?

It's just a verbose way of saying "The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, such as the Nobel Prize". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:45, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Part 3

• Attempted restatement/summarisation of the masses of text above:

1. The RK was awarded for valour and/or leadership and/or success (confirmed kills, etc). An RK award for valour was the highest such award in Nazi Germany. However WP:SOLDIER is indicative and not presumptive, and it’s possible to meet WP:SOLDIER#1 ("Were awarded their nation’s highest award for valour") and yet not meet notability requirements.
2. Approximately 9133 RKs (to ~7945 individuals) were awarded during WW2. On the numbers, relatively few RKs would meet the level of valour required for the VC or MOH (181 and 471 respectively during WW2).
3. Higher grades of RK (Oak Leaves, etc) were achieved only through multiple awards of the RK. Someone could hypothetically have achieved one grade for valour, another for leadership, and a third for a combination. Higher grades may not be sufficient indication of notability.
4. Between May 1939 and the introduction of the Oak Leaves in June 1940, relatively few RKs were awarded (though still higher than VC/MOH rates).
5. There are over 3000 RK recipients with individual pages on en-wp. The majority have little personal information (perhaps birth and death) besides a list of medals and campaigns. In most cases, the sources used do not indicate why they received it.
6. It is likely that where a recipient is a soldier of low rank, they would have received their RK for valour. It is likely that where a recipient is of high rank that they would have received their RK for leadership. This is not certain, however, and would still require verification.
7. Scherzer can be considered a sufficiently reliable source for confirmation of award. Feldgiebel is slightly less reliable. Neither provide reasons for award.
8. A source can potentially be sufficiently reliable in one way while being unreliable in another. Official and/or contemporaneous records (eg, newspaper) can be used to confirm that an RK has been awarded even if there’s propaganda aspects elsewhere. Obituaries can be used for birth and death dates and places.
9. Confirmation that award has been made is not sufficient to confirm notability.
10. Records indicating reasons for awards are generally inaccessible, would be offline if anywhere, may be fragmentary or lost particularly for late stage awards, and would mostly be in German.
11. Many of the articles as they stand do not meet GNG evidentiary standards. Although some would, due to lack of ready evidence a determination cannot easily be made as to which would meet other notability criteria if all relevant sources including offline ones were to be used. WP:NORUSH applies, however it has been 8 years. Unfortunately there’s not an easy way to determine if any particular RK recipient is notable.
12. All guidelines are guidelines (and not necessarily consistent with each other).

• My main concern is to avoid thousands of individual AFDs for RK-recipient articles of questionable individual notability, which I’d consider more harmful on balance (in terms of editor time and energy) than retention of these articles (WP:NOW doesn't really apply on the presumption that the articles are basically correct, if of questionable notability).
• Not everyone requires an article regardless of notability (eg WP:BIO1E). Where an RK recipient's notability remains uncertain, my preference would be for merge&redirect to list (either standalone or article subsection) instead of deletion This could be treated as an uncontroversial reduction if list entries encapsulated current articles' sourced information, redirects preserved categories, and lists were at the lowest level possible rather than in one of the alphabetical monstrosities. Noting that this does not meet standard criteria for WP:LISTPEOPLE, might for WP:LISTN, and arguably avoids WP:NOTDIRECTORY, would there be a problem with this? ^~Hydronium^~Hydroxide^~(Talk)~ 05:51, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment -- this is well reasoned and also timely, since I went through the exercise of checking the articles listed in this discussion against German Wiki. The inputs were 43 randomly selected articles that I posted at the opening of this thread (including the AfDs that concluded) + two articles from the later in the discussion, including Seela.

I located 3 articles on the German wiki, and another one on the Latvian Wiki. It works out to 9% of the articles in the sample having a corresponding article in their native language. For detailed listing, please see User:K.e.coffman/Sandbox. K.e.coffman (talk) 06:19, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment I think Hydronium Hydroxide's point about the comparative harm of thousands of AfDs versus retention is highly valid. I agree that WP:NOW really doesn't apply, so if any editor is that concerned about these articles, they should be worked through individually. There is WP:NORUSH, and certainly no basis for some sort of en WP-wide blanket approach that this thread seems to be aiming for. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:18, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I belive the suggestion is "Where an RK recipient's notability remains uncertain, (...) merge & redirect to list (either standalone or article subsection) instead of deletion This could be treated as an uncontroversial reduction", not for maintaining the status quo. K.e.coffman (talk) 08:13, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • I agree on the list. Just as I suggested previously, it'd be far better than having a myriad of individual pages nobody visits. --MaxRavenclaw (talk) 09:15, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Thanks for that recap. I agree with Peacemaker67 that we should not spend time and effort removing all these articles. On the other hand, I do agree with K.e.coffman that is such an article comes up for deletion and the only sourced claim to notability is the award of a KC that would almost certainly not suffice to keep it. Arnoutf (talk) 08:20, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comments: WOW!! this has become interesting. I am not a deletionist and have found some obscure sources on foreign (other than English) articles so I know information is likely out there "somewhere". A problem is usually with translations as I only know English and translator sites are poor at best. I do agree that a biography stub, with almost no content, started because the subject was the recipient of a Knights cross, with zero information as to why it was given, is an issue. I do not ever want mass AFD's because throwing out good material to get rid of possible trash is ludicrous.

I also think that if time is not the issue (8 years is a long time though) then this should have/could have been dealt with at the project level. It is sad to me that there are literally thousands of Playboy bunny articles, the majority being one-time-wonders with only one primary source, mainly because of the nudity aspect to the male species, but we can't find references for instances of valor or instances of "duty above and beyond the call of duty" where actual heroic deeds were accomplished, because of a language issue or location of a reliable source. This is not deserving to the "hero's" but I would never want to know that some officer or soldier received any award, listed as valor, or performance of duty, when this was a result of doing a good job exterminating people. We should also remember The Nuremberg Trials, Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings, Nazi hunters, and trials in other countries, could not have caught all the "bad guys".

We also don't need an article on every recipient "just because" as that would be about equal to having an article on every Eastern Front Medal recipient. "IF" there is "no" reference as to why the award was given, then I have hesitation.

I understand Peacemaker67's position but "can not" fault K.e.coffman for his position either. It is too bad we couldn't get enough interested editors to go through the "list" that seems to be from 300 to 3000, making it a project, and discuss these with Wikipedia enhancement ---and I feel reader protection (excluding awards for atrocities)--- as a goal. Editors just don't get awarded for cleaning up articles the same as creating them. Short of any thoughts of mass deletions, or a perceived idea that it is acceptable, I suppose "merge&redirect" to some list is a better choice.

@ K.e.coffman, Peacemaker67, and @AustralianRupert: I agree that just receiving a Knight's Cross should not make a recipient inherently notable, "especially" if there is no source as to why the award was given. I have a lot going on but I am willing to help explore neutrally weeding out controversial articles (controversial can = under referenced and can = merge) as long as that is a goal and not just deleting to delete. A notable hero is still a hero and it does not matter if he/she was on the losing side so bias noes not need to be involved. We must be hesitant using the wording uncontroversial reduction. Fritz Amling was equivalent to a platoon sergeant (correct?), received the Iron Cross and the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, to "recognise extreme battlefield bravery or successful military leadership", which it appears is generally what they all state, and a AFD was "no consensus". I noted the rationale for deletion, Peacemaker67's suggestion that was followed, the one "keep" (creating the no consensus), and AustralianRupert's "redirect" to List of Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross recipients (A) because of the possible " language barrier" issues. Had I seen this I would have also probably replied with "redirect".

One of my issues is that I agree with Peacemaker67 concerning references that aren't in English, that appear to be along the line with AustralianRupert. Rajka Baković is a good example. I stumbled across some references that have been "out there" but was not used regarding what I feel is interesting (to those of interest) content but I had to use a translator.

• Lino Masarie (stub article) could be subjected to the same criteria, "except", he was awarded multiple times, receiving the German Cross in gold (repeated acts of bravery or achievement in combat), as well as the Wound Badge, and I can not tell which. This would possible place him in a German category comparable to and List of Medal of Honor recipients for World War II, would this be true? If so, and we are striving for bias neutrality, then this would seem to be eligibility for a stand-a-lone article just needing references. Also if true then this is a very good example why we have to watch using words like "uncontroversial reduction". A solution will likely take more than one day and mass moving articles, or mass anything, provides room for mass errors. It is not really a question concerning should we "spend time and effort removing all these articles". If an article does not belong on Wikipedia it or they should be removed. We should not allow bias, claiming reasoning for exclusion of some articles that can "lead to the removal of information that is valid", while upholding inclusion of other like articles, because language barriers or obstacles to finding sources is the problem, and not actually a lack of such resources. Otr500 (talk) 22:26, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As I said before, the award is such where for the recipient who has an article there should be a "rebuttable presumption", which if there are no RS sources which are there or cannot reasonably be found, "redirect" to the proper list should be done, which I know is also what Otr500 suggests. The course of direction for an article should be pretty easy for ones where there clearly is nothing reasonable to be found, other than this man received the award on this date. I also believe mass removal and deletions is not the answer. I trust it is fair to say, we all want this volunteer project of ours to be well done for readers, well to do things right often takes time. What is the rush. Kierzek (talk) 23:58, 24 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Support the redirect proposal as a good compromise between "keepism"/"deletionism". AfD/PROD would not be required and the article history would be preserved. In cases where the sources become available, the article could be easily restored to its prior state and new content added. I'm not sure if editor Hydronium Hydroxide means these and similar lists —List of Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross recipients (R) — when they say "one of the alphabetical monstrosities", but for expediency, I think the alphabetical lists may be preferable. They are thoroughly cited, while the divisional lists, such as List of Knight's Cross recipients SS Division Norland, are not, or they are cited to axishistory.com (online forum). The corner cases where the award itself is in dispute, and significant coverage in RS is not present, could be addressed via PROD, such as this one: Willy Albrecht. I think this may be a workable solution. K.e.coffman (talk) 00:23, 25 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I must admit to having only skimmed most of the two sections above. My views are probably not fully in line with the current notability standards but I think they need a shake up anyway. However, where we have multiple pieces of information about an individual we should give them their own article. If we only know that they got the award we put them in an encyclopedic list (not a flat directory, it must also have some other details) only. No matter how notable someone is according to any guideline, if the article is only ever going to be permanent micro stub with only one or two sentences, then just redirect their name to the encyclopedic list with the stub's details in the list entry instead. Not every interesting thing deserves an article, but it probably deserves to be in the encyclopedia. Notability should be about getting them into the encyclopedia, but not necessarily how. I would like to propose we have a whole new standard WP:Articlability versus Encyclopedic Listablity. So in this current discussion, yes all recipients should be in an encyclopedic list, but only those for which we can write more than they got the award should have an article of their own. Aoziwe (talk) 13:38, 25 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I think all German Knight's Cross holders are at least listable. If multiple sources exist, the RK holder qualifies for an article. It's often overlooked here that it's the sources that matter and not what the person did to get a Knight's Cross. We are also overlooking the files archived in Germany. There are surviving documents that would corroborate secondary sources to establish that a given person did in fact receive an RK. The archives don't cover all RK holders but most are included.

Those opposed to the inclusion of these articles, as I've said, need to consider that German archives contain primary and secondary sources that have never been translated. Probably many of them have never been seen by an English speaker. Many would be in Fraktur or old-style ("Sütterlin") handwriting.

So, if we know that sources are almost certainly available but not in English and not online, we should keep the article, because we know sources to establish notability exist somewhere and can be added to the article later. Roches (talk) 22:06, 26 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think the issue here is the claim that "we know the sources are almost certainly available". Is that really the case, and do these sources really contain sufficient material to make notability stick? As far as I know the special notability rules are put into place to lighten the burden in cases where the sources very likely exist AND do give enough reason to assume notability. In the case of KC (and other often bestowed awards) it is the latter part that is doubted. Arnoutf (talk) 15:13, 27 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Support per K.e.coffman and ArnoutfMonopoly31121993 (talk) 08:21, 28 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've made my points many times by now. Articles exist for half of the recipients of one RK and all of the recipients of more than one. Every RK recipient was named on the front page of every German newspaper at least once. It would be original research to decide which RK recipients have enough coverage and which don't, because all have some coverage. Roches (talk) 01:02, 29 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Fairly bold claim that each and every RK was mentioned on the front page of each and every German newspaper. That includes local newspapers and even (if they existed) underground/resistance newspapers. That also makes the claim that this was the case until the very last awards (May (or even June) 1945) while it might be doubted that there were still any Nazi newspapers around (and would include German newspapers in Allied territory which I somehow doubt to print this on the frontpage). Altogether, extremely bold statements are you sure these can be made? Arnoutf (talk) 20:11, 1 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: Here’s interesting math that may be relevant. For the full years that the Oak Leaves were in effect, the following numbers were awarded:
  • 50 in 1941
  • 111 in 1942
  • 192 in 1943
  • 328 in 1944
  • 194 in the first four months of 1945.

The rate of award was almost doubling every year. At the rate the High Command was going, they would have awarded 600 Oak Leaves by the end of 1945, almost as much as in the three preceding years.

It’s unlikely that the German soldiers were getting exponentially braver, or the commanders were getting dramatically more successful in their military leadership (quite the opposite, as the Wehrmacht was retreating on all fronts). I would venture to say that there was certain inflation of the awards as the war progressed, and the Oak Leaves awarded in 1941/42 was quite a different award from the OL in 1944/45. I expect same goes for for the first-time award of the Knight’s Cross. It’s peculiar that a nation in defeat would be so generous with the awards—and probably speaks to the propaganda nature of the mass award program. K.e.coffman (talk) 23:29, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Roches: I find your statement that "It would be original research to decide which RK recipients have enough coverage and which don't, because all have some coverage" puzzling. WP:V requires an assessment of source quality and WP:GNG, WP:AFD, etc, require editors to determine whether articles have sufficient coverage available to demonstrate notability, etc. Such source assessment is not considered OR, but rather standard and expected practice. In the case of a fair number of RK recipients, there's currently only passing coverage (eg: someone appearing in RK awardee lists in 5 newspapers and 7 books, but who has no details of why they received their service or any service history other than a brief list of campaigns and medals would not appear to have been demonstrated to meet any notability criteria), and should they happen to be brought to an AFD, if future results are anything like previous ones, would appear likely to receive a delete or redirect result depending on who happens to vote. ^~Hydronium^~Hydroxide^~(Talk)~ 13:17, 5 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions: Ok, here's a stab at a set of suggestions that may not make anyone particularly overjoyed, but could hopefully find some slightly less miserable middle ground than repeated AFDs or MILHIST discussions:

1. A page for the RK should be set up at MILHIST with key information on the RK.
2. Further individual articles (other than possible redirects) for the ~4700 RK recipients (or really any other bulk creation) who have not yet been created should be disallowed under an explicit MILHIST project rule/guideline unless sources are specifically provided which actually show evidence of notability rather than just RK award.
3. Redirection to some kind of aggregation (whether alphabetical list or service list or embedded in a unit article) should be considered to be acceptable for some subset of RK recipients
4. A standard format/content expected for encyclopedic lists of RK holders should be determined (noting that there's currently significant variance between what's in various lists, infoboxes, navboxes, etc).
5. Noting that some of those awarded RKs for leadership, etc, would meet other notability criteria, it would seem that there are certain groups which on balance of probability might be kept as individual article for the moment (possibly a very long moment) without further immediate evidence unless more in-depth sourcing indicates that they actually don't meet notability requirements. This is in no way an ideal solution, or presumptive of notability, just a pragmatic and long-term but temporary way ahead. An explicit set of such Balance of Probability groups should be determined, for instance:
   1. Those whose articles contain more information than just that of a standard boilerplate RK article
   2. Those of low rank (all enlisted personnel, or only lowest levels...?) who can be reasonably presumed to have been awarded it for valour at the highest level rather than leadership or success??
   3. Those who received other medals on the same day as the RK (iron cross + possibly wound badge?)??
   4. Those awarded the RK posthumously??
   5. Those awarded the RK up until ?3 June 1940? (introduction of Oak Leaves)??
   6. Those awarded higher grades for multiple RKs??
   7. ...?
6. Once explicit criteria for Balance of Probability groups have been specified, editors may choose to do the following (but are not necessarily encouraged to do so):
   1. assess RK articles against those explicit criteria
   2. Note how the article passes/fails each criteria on its talk page - checklist
   3. merge information to aggregate articles/encyclopedic lists per the determined format/content and then redirect (if all criteria failed)
   4. explicitly list this process as having been done at MILHIST with the assessment linked. (if merge/redirect performed)
7. Editors performing such an assessment must perform it carefully/properly. Repeated failure to perform assessment correctly is grounds for requiring such assessment to cease. Idiosyncratic interpretations and determinations (especially source assessment) are to be avoided.
8. Assessment of which sources (for instance those listed by MisterBee1966 below) are sufficiently reliable should be sought and considered at MILHIST when assessment of a source is actually needed. A record of RS determinations should be kept, and discussion/determination linked.
9. An explicit note/link on the RK should be added to WP:SOLDIER#1 (noting that any footnotes might be clearer at the bottom of the section than the bottom of the page with hover)
10. AFD should be an absolute last resort for any of the RK awardee pages (much less thousands of them).
11. Balance of Probability criteria (particularly BOP1), and the articles retained under them, could eventually be considered for revisitation/rediscussion if required, but only after all remaining RK articles have either been determined to be notable, have been kept under an initial BOP assessment, or are redirects. There is no particular hurry to get to such a state.
12. Restoration of redirected pages to a full article should RS evidence of notability be found should of course be considered as expected/desirable.
13. Detailed discussion and determinations should be moved to MILHIST sometime.

...Some of these suggestions should really go without saying, and those which receive broad in-principle support could have their details thrashed out either by further discussion/consensus or by something more formal. (Those which don't? Well, it was worth a shot) ^~Hydronium^~Hydroxide^~(Talk)~ 14:55, 5 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Might be worth noting here that many KC/RK recipients have a further SOLDIER presumption of notability based on their rank (Generalmajor/Brigadeführer or higher, both were one-star equivalents in WWII) or other criteria such as commanding a division or similar-sized formation (which can apply to officers of the rank of Oberst/Standartenführer on occasion). I would expect any officers of those ranks or higher, or who held such a command, who also received the KC/RK, would be avoided in any system of re-assessment. I agree broadly with the above. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 04:17, 6 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It is also worth adding that every single German one-star and above of WWII has an entry in Dermot Bradley et al's multi-volume Die Generale des ... 1921–1945, each entry of which covers their military career in some detail over a couple of pages. Add this to the works by Tessin/Nafziger/Mitcham (some of which are in MBs list below) which detail the various commands each general held, including dates of appointment and relief, promotion etc, we can show that we will easily meet the GNG for every one-star, including those that fulfilled senior staff and other non-command roles, even those that were directors of branches of governmental departments that held one-star equivalent ranks. What this reinforces is that when we are looking at KC recipients, we can set to one side from the start all those that reached the rank of Generalmajor/Brigadeführer or above. Given this, tagging of articles for notability when they are about general officers awarded the KC is a fatuous practice that demonstrates a total lack of good faith. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 04:49, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm on board with the suggestions above. My one comment would be not to take the list below at face value (sources used by Scherzer), as it includes several non RS (i.e. Patrick Agte). Many writers and historians use unreliable sources, either to make a point (by comparing & contrasting) or because they have the resources to cross check them with reliable information, such as archival data.

What would be the possible next steps? K.e.coffman (talk) 08:01, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

There is nothing approaching a consensus for such action here. On top of that, you are not taking into account the biographical information on each recipient in the multi-volume works by Thomas, Wegmann and Dorr which are listed below. They are in German and not available in even snippet view on Google Books, yet they have an entry on all these people, organised into volumes for infantry, parachute, mountain troops, assault guns etc. Then there are volumes by other authors like Range and Patzwall that provide biographical details on all the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine recipients. Then there are books by some authors focussing on recipients from different regions of Germany, like the Saarland, or others focussing on the recipients of the Oak Leaves. I just don't think a blanket approach to this issue is appropriate. More than likely all the recipients have biographical details in one or more of the books below, we just don't necessarily have access to them. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:19, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I must have misunderstood the statement above "I agree broadly with the above." What was it referring to? K.e.coffman (talk) 08:26, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, so in summary - I think we all agree that there are overviews of people who were awarded the medal. That these overviews in themselves are reliable sources even though they are not available online and not in English. That still leave open the question to me, whether inclusion in such an overview in itself indicates notability. In fact many people are reliably sourced in phonebooks but that does not make them notable per se (see: WP:NOTDIR). Arnoutf (talk) 09:51, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Arnoutf But the books I am referring to above aren't like a phonebook at all (unlike some listings of KC recipients such as Scherzer and similar). They have biographical details, place and date of birth and death, career information including training courses attended and posting history, dates of promotions, dates of awards, photographs of the recipient etc. Rather like the expectations we have of bio articles. Far more information than a source that says they were awarded the KC on a given date and what their posting was at the time of the award. They run to several pages on each recipient. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 10:02, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am not saying that the material from these sources is irrelevant. The point I want to make is that the mere inclusion in some kind of listing (regardless of the amount of detail) in itself does not give sufficient grounds for notability. Criminal records, for example, also give a lot of detail, but do not in themselves are sufficient reason for assuming notability. Once notability has been agreed upon, these sources are obviously of high value to pull relevant information from. Arnoutf (talk) 10:59, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

But surely we are talking about whether these people meet GNG? The fact that there is at least one source which provides extensive biographical information about each recipient (plus multiple sources that mention the recipient's highest award at least in passing) must surely be grounds for considering that they meet the GNG, let alone SOLDIER? Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 11:09, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The number of sources does not really matter, if the claim to notability is based on only one even (see Wikipedia:Notability (people)#People notable only for one event). And indeed, that brings us back to the earlier discussion whether frequently awarded highest awards imply the same level of notability as rarely awarded highest awards. In my view the discussion about sources above (and below) does not add beyond the arguments already given (and the compromise to largely leave as is now). Arnoutf (talk) 12:02, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I am able to see a preview from Franz Thomas & Günter Wegmann: please see Die Ritterkreuzträger der Deutschen Wehrmacht 1939-1945 (sample), plus another one. I can see that the listing includes the awards and dates of ranks. This source is already being used in the related articles to substantiate the various awards, such as here: Alfred Montag. I don't believe the content from Thomas & Wegman is indeed "biographical sketches" sufficient to meet GNG & produce an encyclopedia entry. Separate sources may be available for those who received the second award (Oak Leaves), but they are not being considered as part of this discussion as I understand. Ping @Arnoutf and Peacemaker67: to have a look. K.e.coffman (talk) 19:25, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hardly more than a phonebook listing. In fact, even the information of a clearly notable awardee like Heinz Guderian is hardlt more than a listing [1]. Seems relevant to source some details, but not really more (including assessing notability). Arnoutf (talk) 19:45, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That snippet (not preview) for Barmetler hardly shows anything about the information provided in that book. Each recipient has a "pen picture" of their career, plus a list of dates of promotions, list of dates of awards, plus photographs, obviously the amount of detail varies. As I said, not available in preview (and snippet view is very misleading). Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 12:42, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: One can sometimes search using a distinctive phrase found in snippet view, and then bridge to another distinctive phrase to extend one's view. It's a tedious jigsaw of variable reliability and limited scope that's rarely recommended even if a native speaker. For instance this extends to this (Kreta, Raum Malames appears to be the paratroop landing at the start of the Battle of Crete) extends to this extends to this to this and so on. ^~Hydronium^~Hydroxide^~(Talk)~ 13:55, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: the above German text sounds like it could be the award citations: German: "Am 25. 5. erkannte Oberleutnant Barmetler, daß die rechts von seiner Kompanie gegen die Höhen von Galatas vorgehenden Gebirgsjäger nicht vorwärts kamen. Bevor der Befehl des Bataillons-Kommandeurs, ..." English: "On 25 5. Lieutenant Barmetler recognized that the foregoing right of his company to the heights of Galatas Mountaineer did not come forward. Before the command of the battalion commander ..." The citation (if this is it) plus the list of dates of promotions, list of dates of awards, photographs looks to be WP:ROUTINE coverage for a Knight's Cross winner, and BIO1E still applies.

This aligns with what MrBee is stating below: "Authors such as Dörr, Thomas and Wegmann provide a detailed coverage of the military career based on the military records of the German National Archives. This information includes trainings, units assigned to and commands held and date of promotions and other awards presented. In many instances, if this information was not lost, they also state who, for what actions, and who approved the nomination of the KC." This is looks more like a directory listing and is not sufficient to meet GNG. K.e.coffman (talk) 19:00, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it does. You are trying to use snippet view to discount a source you haven't seen. I have sourced copies of a few entries from Dörr, Thomas and Wegmann's books for bio articles, and the ones I have are far more extensive than what you suggest. It is quite a reasonable assumption that Dörr, Thomas and Wegmann provide significant coverage of each recipient, and many have coverage in other books such as the directory style of Von Seemen etc and other books about their units etc. Frankly, you're grasping at straws here. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 23:30, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not convinced that an entry in the KC winners' catalogue by someone who's not trained as a historian (as I understand) is significant RS coverage. The other trivial mentions such as by Fellgiebel and Scherzer are part of the WP:ROUTINE coverage that's expected in WP:BIO1E situation. K.e.coffman (talk) 01:11, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Then we disagree. You haven't seen the source in question (except in snippet view), and you have produced nothing that questions the reliability of the authors or the publishing house. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:50, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

German sources referenced by Veit Scherzer

In addition to the German National Archive, Scherzer makes use of following books (see below). In addition to information pertaining to the KC, Scherzer provides information on date and place of birth, and if applicable states date and place of death. He also provides information on final rank in the Wehrmacht, and Bundeswehr or Austrian Army (if applicable). Authors such as Dörr, Thomas and Wegmann provide a detailed coverage of the military career based on the military records of the German National Archives. This information includes trainings, units assigned to and commands held and date of promotions and other awards presented. In many instances, if this information was not lost, they also state who, for what actions, and who approved the nomination of the KC. I hope this info helps this decision process. Maybe not every listing below meets the standards of Wikipedia. Cheers MisterBee1966 (talk) 17:55, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This came up in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/William Henry Lyttelton (1820–1884). I was sure that we accepted everyone in the Dictionary of National Biography as being notable, but I don't know if that has ever been enshrined in policy. I was wondering if it could/should be added to WP:ANYBIO: "3. The person has an entry in Dictionary of National Biography or similar publication." (We currently have a footnote that excludes "biographical dictionaries that accept self-nominations", so it would need to be read in the light of that.) StAnselm (talk) 02:18, 1 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Clearly, the Victorian editors of the DNB (copy here) considered him of at least minor importance because of his publications, which is exactly the part left out by the author of the Wikipedia article. I'm not sure why these publications were significant, but perhaps they were major best-sellers or influential at the time. The Victorians appear to have thought this to be self-evident and saw no reason to waste space in a paper publication on explaining why he was included. --Hegvald (talk) 03:56, 1 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

No, it's simply that the original Victorian DNB included a comprehensive list of publications as standard. To quote from the 2004 ODNB's principles of inclusion, "The Oxford DNB has followed the twentieth-century supplements, however, in not including a complete list of a person's published works within the account of the life. Now that library catalogues are so abundant and full, the comprehensive booklists valued by the Victorians are no longer required. Instead, contributors have been encouraged to bring out in the text the significance of the person's principal publications." In line with that, His entry (subscription or UK library card required) in the 2004 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography deals with his published work in a single, somewhat dismissive sentence: "Besides contributing a chapter on the physical geography and geology of the Clent district to William Harris's Clentine Rambles (1868), Lyttelton published some minor works of apologetics." It seems likely to me that this is one of the entries included in the revised work because, to quote our article, "Matthew decided that no subjects from the old dictionary would be excluded, however insignificant the subjects appeared to a late twentieth-century eye". Qwfp (talk) 10:47, 1 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Yes, a DNB entry such as Lyttelton's proves notability because it demonstrates that the subject passes WP:BASIC. Notability is not about the importance of a subject; it's about the existence of sources. A DNB entry is such a source and will typically cite other such sources. Andrew D. (talk) 05:31, 1 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Certainly it's significant coverage in one independent, reliable source, but WP:BASIC requires multiple such sources. Although DNB does typically cite other reliable sources, surely there's no guarantee that any one of them alone gave the subject significant coverage. Qwfp (talk) 10:47, 1 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• To quote our article, "The Dictionary of National Biography (DNB) is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history ..." Is that statement incorrect, or does the word "notable" not mean "notable"?
  It's obvious, surely, that the original DNB contained only people who were considered notable at the time, who must therefore have been covered in significant sources, but most sources of that period exist only in print and are not instantly accessible via Google. William Henry Lyttelton is a case in point: it's not obvious why he's included, either from his DNB entry or from the sources that the DNB cites; yet he's there, so he must have been notable at the time.
  The present ODNB's principles of inclusion state "Both the DNB and the Oxford DNB have sought to reflect the full range of national life, and to include noteworthy people of all kinds. Influence – whether for good or ill – is the principal criterion for admission. Coverage includes many people of achievement, merit, or worth, but is by no means confined to them: it is concerned also with impact, which may sometimes stem from celebrity and even from notoriety." Wikipedia's principles of inclusion might well be stated in those same terms!
  — Stanning (talk) 18:36, 1 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Yet another example of the recentism bias that pervades wikipedia. Sometimes we may have only one source from over 100 years ago, but if it's a strong one, it should work. Montanabw^(talk) 04:04, 2 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Yes, strong consensus has long been that anyone with a DNB entry is considered to be notable enough for Wikipedia. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:49, 2 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Right, thanks for all the feedback. So the question is - should it be mentioned on this page? StAnselm (talk) 19:34, 2 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Adding it explicitly. No, at least, not unless we add a similar reference work for most of the countries in the world. Otherwise we add a British only condition to what should be a globally useable set of conditions. Arnoutf (talk) 17:14, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This may be of interest to folks here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Beauty Pageants#RFC on creation of consensus standard. Montanabw^(talk) 19:07, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

This guideline currently contains the phrase "he or she" in the "nutshell" box: A person is presumed to be notable if he or she has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject.

This is inaccurate for those on the list of people with non-binary gender identities, who are neither "he"s nor "she"s. The actual guideline pluralizes the subject to take advantage of the English gender-neutral third-person pronoun: People are presumed notable if they have received...

I propose that the nutshell box adopt the same wording. FourViolas (talk) 14:57, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Support, since the change is natural English, and makes the passage more concise (which not all attempts at gender-agnostic language are or do). Prior discussion is not required for non-controversial minor copyedits, even to central policy pages. So, it's not necessary (and may trigger WP:NOT#ADVOCACY complaints) to post micro-proposals like this; WP is not populated by people who just now awoke from a 50-year slumber and missed out the on last few decades of TG awareness.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:46, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. Almost a BOLD why even ask I would have thought ? Aoziwe (talk) 11:42, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

AUTHOR point 3 currently says that a creative professional is notable if:

The person has created or played a major role in co-creating a significant or well-known work or collective body of work. In addition, such work must have been the subject of an independent book or feature-length film or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews.

This came up at AFD, and some of us (E.M.Gregory —Coolabahapple) thought the wording of the second sentence shouldn't be limited to specific media types: for instance, a television series that's based on a work ought to count for the derivative work. Also, I think the clause should be amended to require that the derivative work must be notable. Accordingly, I propose changing the second sentence to read:

In addition, such work must have been the primary subject of an independent and notable work (for example, a book, film, or television series, but not a single episode of a television series) or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews.

Thoughts? Rebbing 01:42, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Endorse To eliminate the artificial distinction between "film" and a "television series" or book inspired by a creative work. The qualifier, that such a work must be "independent and notable" in order to validate the notability of the work that inspired it, is the key.E.M.Gregory (talk) 10:33, 15 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
•  Done as unopposed. Rebbing 14:59, 19 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: Suggest the addition of one word: "...but usually not a single episode of a television series". A television episode can be an independent and notable work, for example "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen." Is the intention actually to exclude all television episodes, or is it to indicate that most episodes aren't individually notable? Pburka (talk) 17:08, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm glad you thought of this! My intention was to make explicit the requirement that derivative works be significant and notable but also to permit consideration of all media types, not just books and films; the examples weren't meant to be limiting. If an individual episode is notable, I think it should count. Anyway, since having multiple independent articles or reviews will satisfy point 3, the bar isn't astronomically high: I suspect it's easier to find multiple reviews of a work than even one notable episode derived from it.

    As I assume this is an uncontroversial change, I went ahead and made it. (Hope you don't mind.) Rebbing 20:19, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  • Agree with the need for this clarification and was actually going to mention the very same episode! I'm not 100% certain that "usually" won't be gamed or a source of dispute; it might be better to do this: ... (for example, a book, film, television series, or notable TV series episode) ... and leave it at that.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:00, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Replace whole and replace with:

In the case of subjects who do not pass the GNG the only additional criteria are:

• winning a significant and well known industry award that is not scene related and where the award category has itself been subject to meaningful discussion in independent reliable secondary sources; or
• is a member of the AVN or XRCO hall of fame.

The intent of the change is to set clear boundaries on who should be allowed a BLP violating article where they would otherwise fail to meet the GNG. Far too much recent discussion about low level or actually non-notable award cetgories as a reason for NN pornstars to have articles. This has to stop. Discuss... Spartaz ^Humbug! 14:27, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• No BLP-violating article should be allowed. That is already policy, but it seems to be ignored in the case of pornographic actors, with nearly all of them lacking any reliable sources but with many people in AfD discussions arguing that bios hosted on porn industry web sites are reliable, when they are obviously nothing of the sort, being both made up and promotional. What we need is more closing admins with the confidence to enforce the BLP policy rather than base decisions on vote counting. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 20:49, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong oppose The rationale behind this proposal is spurious. No BLP-violating articles are permitted, and Spartaz, who has been editing for more than ten years, knows that. — MShabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 21:29, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• The problem is that the WP:PORNBIO guideline is routinely interpreted at AfD to trump the WP:BLP policy. Of course it shouldn't, but that is what actually happens, so a possible way to deal with that problem is to change WP:PORNBIO to remove any possible confusion. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 21:57, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Not only is that untrue, but it assumes that Wikipedia administrators can't tell the difference between valid keep arguments and invalid ones. That's not true either. — MShabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 23:03, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• BLP expects us to rigorously source BLPs but Pornbio is used as device to maintain inadequately sourced blps. MShabazz obviously knows this but would rather dismiss the issue rather than address this, the bottom line is why anyone should condone inadequately sourced blps. Spartaz ^Humbug! 22:33, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Spartaz, your contempt for articles about pornography -- and the editors who write them -- is legendary. Put up or shut up. Where are these BLP-violating articles that have survived AfD? — MShabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 23:03, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• You just need to look through the list of porn related afds to find examples of inadequately sourced articles kept for ridiculous awards. Superslut of the year or analist of the year comes to mind. We are having stupid discussions about stupid wards for people who clearly do not meet the gng. oh an playing the man already? Contempt is reserved for those that promote shit articles not the articles themself. My stance on sourcing blps has been consistent for years and is not confined to this genre of articles but why let facts get in the way of an ad hom. Spartaz ^Humbug! 23:10, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Ava_Addams_(3rd_nomination) - This is an example of an article that clearly fails the GNG not being deleted because of bogus award arguments - Nightmoves couger/MILF of the year of some such. The argument was that because nightmoves was sourced all award categories are sufficient even though, and you said this yourself she clearly does not pass the GNG. That's what this change will prevent. Spartaz ^Humbug! 05:06, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Then just state that while getting a notable award for being in a Hollywood film, for a major scientific breakthrough, etc, makes you notable, this does not apply to pornography, soapbox derbies, biggest Girl Scout cookie sales person of the year award winners, and other such unnotable things. Wouldn't that solve the problem? You want to eliminate something, do it directly, don't try to make wording vague and just dismiss any guideline you disagree with in AFDs. Dream Focus 11:26, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• That's why the inclusion threshold, both for ANYBIO and PORNBIO, was raised from "notable" award to "well-known and significant" award years ago, supported by strong consensus. The fact that a few users don't accept this -- mostly in the context of porn performer bios -- doesn't justify the ongoing disruption to frustrate enforcement of well-established consensus. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by administrators since 2006. (talk) 12:05, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong support Wikipedia has had far too many inadequately sourced articles about pornographic actors for far too long. It's time to clean out the stables. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 22:52, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• So only pornbio articles need good sourcing?  Arguments like this one are a reason to mark WP:N historical.  More practically, we need to reinforce the idea for all articles supported by SNG notability that WP:V#Notability and WP:RS are still required, and that wp:notability does not guarantee that we have the NPOV material to source an article.  Unscintillating (talk) 23:03, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

All articles need good sourcing. It just so happens that PORNBIO is a rogue special notability guideline which causes the inclusion of articles that would be deleted if evaluated under standards similar to any other SNG. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 23:07, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

So your response does nothing to support WP:V, WP:RS, or WP:BLP; and falls back on a proof by assertion that this is a problem somehow solved by tinkering with an SNG so that more pornbio articles will be deleted at AfD.  The first step in solving a problem is identifying a problem.  Unscintillating (talk) 23:49, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

David did identify the problem, which is that articles about porn actors are routinely kept on the basis of WP:PORNBIO even if they fail WP:V and WP:BLP by being sourced only to web sites that have no reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, and in fact have a reputation for publishing fantasy rather than fact. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 20:37, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Then your problem is that WP:V and WP:BLP were not considered at the AfD.  This is much more, though, because the basic concept of wp:notability is the evidence that a topic has attracted the attention of the world at large over a period of time (WP:N nutshell).  How old does one have to be to be aware that this industry involves physiological attraction, and that this attraction is a worldwide phenomenon?  Most of the bios considered at AfD are many orders of magnitude more notable than 15th century kings.  So if you don't like what is happening at Wikipedia, don't look at notability to fix what to you is a problem, because your problem is not wp:notability.  Try WP:NOT, and try pushing back on the pornbio industry to get bios written by reliable sources such as Bloomberg; but attacking notability is merely undermining our policies and guidelines.  Unscintillating (talk) 00:09, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm rather taken aback by the concept that 15th century kings who are inevitably going to be the direct subject of numerous scholarly and encyclopaedic papers, books and studies are inherently of less interest then porn performers whose career is inevitably going to be relatively short lived and of passing interest. Can I check that you are aware that this is a project about an online encyclopedia and not a database of random ephemera? Spartaz ^Humbug! 08:36, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, some academics track the Kings of Denmark.  How many people in the US have thought even once about a Danish king in the 15th century?  I see five: Margaret I, Eric VII, Christopher III, Christian I, and John.  Your assertion is "numerous scholarly and encyclopaedic papers, books, and studies".  But your assertion is not supported by the state of four of these five articles.  As per the tags on these five articles: Margaret I, "is written like a personal reflection or opinion essay that states the Wikipedia editor's personal feelings about a topic, rather than the opinions of experts"; Eric VII has "insufficient inline citations" and "needs additional citations for verification"; Christopher III has "insufficient inline citations"; and Christian I "needs additional citations for verification".  Penthouse, on the other hand, had monthly circulation of over 100,000 in 2012. 

The only substantive part of your response in two sentences is the words "of less interest".  Why should Wikipedia editors say that we have more or less interest in a King of Denmark than in a pornbio topic with more than 100 film credits?  That is one of the main benefits of our notability guideline, that Wikipedia editors don't tell the world what attracts their attention.  You also indicate unreasonably that films, that do not expire, are "ephemera".  Again, most pornbio topics are orders of magnitude more wp:notable than 15th century kings, and gerrymandering notability to pick winners and losers undermines our policies and guidelines.  Unscintillating (talk) 04:00, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Opppose What porn awards get any coverage other than in the porn industry? What is "meaningful discussion in independent reliable secondary sources"? What meaningful discussion could you have about an award like they? I agree we should get rid of number 3 "Has been featured multiple times in notable mainstream media" since that just means a brief appearance in a popular music video or whatnot. Just use the same criteria that exists for other actors. "Has had significant roles in multiple notable films, television shows, stage performances, or other productions." Was the film popular? Shouldn't matter what type of film it is, be it pornography, mindless blood and gore horror film, horrible but high budget Hollywood film, or whatever. Why not have the rules other Entertainers have work for porn stars as well? This includes entertainers guideline 2 "Has a large fan base or a significant "cult" following."" The WP:ANYBIO bit at the top shows awards, etc. Should link to a page that list every award that is seen as notable and if its on that list it counts, no matter what field they are in. You can then discuss adding or removing things there. Dream Focus 23:18, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I would be fine with using the WP:NACTOR criteria. The problem, from your perspective, is that almost no porn films can be considered "notable", because they almost never meet the notability guidelines. It's the same reason we don't have thousands of pages for student actors who played roles in student films, nor would that change if student film producers gave out student film awards to each other. FuriouslySerene (talk) 17:37, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose - Pornography-related BLPs have been generally handled pretty well at AfD since the last update to PORNBIO several years ago. I suspect that this change here is mostly-related to trying to get rid of even more pornography-related articles than have already been purged recently from Wikipedia via the AfD/PROD process. The current "Has won a well-known and significant industry award. Awards in scene-related and ensemble categories are excluded from consideration." portion of the PORNBIO standard has been intentionally & significantly above the ANYBIO standard for quite some time now. Also, the current "Has been featured multiple times in notable mainstream media." portion of PORNBIO is very similar to our GNG standard, and it has not meant "a brief appearance in a popular music video or whatnot" at AfD either now or in the past.

It's also kind of an odd thing to see such a major change to our notability standards coming from someone that currently claims to be "retired"...how would that kind of user even know that there has been "Far too much recent discussion about low level or actually non-notable award categories" at AfD? The facts are that, at AfD (now and in the past), "inadequately sourced blps" routinely get deleted. Also, using trade magazine citations on Wikipedia from a related industry isn't new or controversial at all. Guy1890 (talk) 01:59, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Whether an editor has forgotten to update a status template on their userpage is not relevant to this discussion.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:52, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

SMcCandlish, he hasn't "forgotten"; see [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8]. -- Softlavender (talk) 03:00, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

OK, so it's a WP:HIGHMAINT game. Still doesn't seem germane to the substance of the discussion.  :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  03:06, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

What's really "germane to the substance of the discussion" is that the initial claims made by the OP aren't actually true. One only need to look at the recent history of pornography-related deletion discussions (since at least January of this year) to see that there have only been 2 BLP-related AfDs kept, 7 BLP-related AfDs closed as no consensus (which is usually a default to keep), and many, many times those numbers of BLP-related AfDs that were closed as delete to see that the "problem" originally cited here really doesn't exist in the first place. Guy1890 (talk) 03:41, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Spartaz, this discussion is listed in Centralized Discussion, therefore inviting the entire Wikipedia community to comment on it. However, your proposal does not even list or link to what the existing criteria/text are, so how are editors supposed to know what they are !voting to change or keep? Also, if you are retired as your userpage states, why are you starting a proposal to change a longstanding guideline? Softlavender (talk) 02:19, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment  The proposer has received a request to provide examples of the problem alleged to be "Far too much recent discussion..." but has refused.  Unscintillating (talk) 02:30, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment – Wouldn't the amended language of the second criterion exclude all actors outside the American film adult industry from qualifying under that criterion? Graham (talk) 04:03, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong oppose. There isn't much I can say that Mr. Shabazz hasn't already said, but this just seems to be the latest stretch in WP:IJDLI, as the proposer has a history of challenging several articles on pornographic actors, most of whom indeed pass PORNBIO (and whose articles have been kept; for example, Capri Anderson, April O'Neil, Nica Noelle). I also noticed that the only editors who seem to endorse this have also always seemed to !vote "delete" in porn-related AfDs; I'm sorry, people, but no matter how hard you try, Wikipedia is not going to get rid of pornography-related articles. Erpert ^{blah, blah, blah...} 09:52, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Support I agree with removing scene-specific AVN awards from PORNBIO. The SNG is too expansive when it results in a SNOW keep that should have been delete per BLP1E. I can understand fans of porn want their hobby included just as the folks at MILHIST defend WP:SOLDIER. In this case, I don't think Wikipedia as a project benefits from including this content especially when dealing with BLPs. Chris Troutman (talk) 13:51, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I hate to have to rain on your parade, but scene-related awards have been excluded from consideration for more than four years.[9] — MShabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 16:43, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • You are correct on that point. I still support tightening the requirements of this SNG. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:32, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose because my concerns above [10] have not been addressed by the OP. Softlavender (talk) 23:48, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• The current guideline under discussion is, obviously, on the project page with which this talk page is associated. Why on Earth should the person starting the discussion be required to state the blindingly obvious before you can give a reasoned opinion? And the presence of a template on one of that editor's pages is, again obviously, utterly irrelevant to the issue at hand. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 22:21, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Support in spirit; it's correct that scene-related awards are already excluded. I do think something needs to be done about the profusion of pseudo-sourced adult entertainer bios, much of the source material for which is obviously fictionalized and promotional, but the exact wording proposed probably isn't it. I would be happy to see a tighter proposal (but I don't edit in that area, so I'm not really in a good position to make one).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:55, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • There isn't any fictionalized source material in the articles that I've seen. And PORNBIO is pretty tight already; for example, aside from scene-related awards, nominations used to be allowed as well. Erpert ^{blah, blah, blah...} 09:44, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • Are you saying that you actually believe biographical information sourced to porn industry web sites? The whole point of such sites is to peddle fantasy, not fact. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 10:41, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • All porn industry sites are like that? And your proof of that is where? Erpert ^{blah, blah, blah...} 09:59, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Strongly Oppose. This seems to be an other attempt at narrowing the field by some people with I presume the not so secret agenda of step by step eliminating the subject in its enterity. As I think the current WP:PORNBIO criteria are already applied too stringent, I am in favour of the status quo and definitely not in favour of an other attempt to tighten the criteria. -- fdewaele, 23 August 2016, 15:32 CET.
• Support - the current criteria is way too low a bar and allows low quality and poorly sourced articles about pornographic actors. I personally would favor removing the subject specific PORNOBIO and just using the GNG, but as a first step this is an improvement. There's really no reason why Wikipedia allows the industry's own promotional tools, which get almost no coverage in mainstream media (unsurprisingly), to decide notability. FuriouslySerene (talk) 18:49, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Notability is not a content guideline.  The core content policies are WP:V, WP:NPOV, and WP:OR.  Notability is defined outside of Wikipedia.  Or are low-quality poorly sourced PORNBIO articles ok as long as the topic meets WP:GNG or any of the other SNGs?  Unscintillating (talk) 19:33, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• The most important point is that articles about porn actors need to comply with WP:BLP and WP:V, and so have sources that have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Porn industry web sites do not have such a reputation, because their whole purpose is to provide fantasies rather than facts. Therefore no article should be allowed that is only sourced to porn industry web sites. Whether this outcome is achieved by changing WP:PORNBIO to reflect those policies, removing it altogether, or by closers of deletion discussions basing their decisions on policy rather than a policy-defying guideline doesn't really matter, as long as it is achieved. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 20:31, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Can I count on both of your support if I propose that we bar articles about sports figures from citing sports websites and journals, which are at least as fantastic as anything related to pornography? And what if we bar the use of the business press in articles about businesses and businesspeople -- their job is to promote business, and the overwhelming majority of what they publish is reprinted press releases. And don't get me started on the Hollywood press corps. Or maybe we should all try to exercise good editorial judgment and not take everything we read at face value, without writing stupid guidelines unless we believe ourselves to be stupid people. — MShabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 22:56, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Sorry, no, your statement that "sports websites and journals, which are at least as fantastic as anything related to pornography" is false. The New York Times has a dedicated sports section. It does not have a porn section. FuriouslySerene (talk) 01:55, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I wasn't aware that The New York Times is now considered a sports journal, but it's been 15 years since I moved out of Manhattan, so I'm sure things have changed some. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 02:36, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Apparently you missed the "sports website" located at www.nytimes.com/sports. I think you are ignoring my point, though. FuriouslySerene (talk) 17:27, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• This isn't quite correct, because the notability guidelines don't apply to page content. For example, a porn article subject can currently be considered notable based on winning an industry porn award but be solely sourced to a DVD information page and other low quality porn websites, because the reliable source guidelines allows those types of sources for certain non-controversial information. FuriouslySerene (talk) 01:55, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Support as a step in the right direction, per SMcCandlish and FuriouslySerene. Even better would be to apply the WP:BLP policy to porn actors just the same as we do for everyone else, and require reliable sources rather than source articles to the fantasy biographies on porn industry web sites. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 19:26, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. The current PORNBIO is discredited and out of step with policy. Notability subguidelines are supposed to be indicators of likelihood to meet the GNG. PORNBIO doesn't do that. Continually, biographies meeting PORNBIO are deleted due to lack of independent coverage. If it weren't for the fact that PORNBIO is roundly rejected as meaningful at AfD, it would result in Wikipedia hosting a directory of porn stars, porn stars for whom there is nothing sourceable except directory information. Other websites exist for that purpose. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:07, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

  Not sure why that lie gets repeated so often. WP:NOTABILITY is quite clear that to be notable you either meet the general notability guidelines or the subject specific guidelines. They aren't "subguidelines" but subject specific ones. You have never had to meet both. When the concept of notability was being determined for Wikipedia, it was decided that winning a notable award, such as the noble prize, etc, or being responsible for a major scientific discovery, or other such things, made you notable, even if you didn't do interviews and get news media coverage. Not sure if anyone at the time thought winning a porn star award would count. Dream Focus 07:03, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• You are wilfully misreading WP:N. ("wilfully" because this has been explained to you before) The sub-guidelines are quick and easy indicators of notability, and WP-notability is a rebuttable presumption that the topic is worthy of a standalone article. WP:AfD is the final arbiter, and stubby porn biographies that meet the flimsy PORNBIO criteria are routinely deleted. Therefore, PORNBIO is a failure of documentation of practice, exceptions in the backwaters notwithstanding because they (PORNBIO-passing GNG-failing biographies) get deleted whenever wider attention is attracted. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:34, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Wikipedia:Notability "A topic is presumed to merit an article if: It meets either the general notability guideline below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific guideline listed in the box on the right;" See that? "Subject-specific" not "sub-guidelines". Quite clear. Dream Focus 07:49, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• For PORNBIO, the presumption is very frequently in error. It is bad documentation. When AfD discussions are well-attended, the deciding factor is whether the GNG is met.
• The "sub-guideline" language may have been edited at some point, but its meaning and intent was and is accurate. But this really is not a substantive matter. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:15, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• It very much is a substantive matter, because I think you are arguing to turn WP:N into a content policy.  The spirit of WP:N has nothing to do with having the content to write an article, and there is no need to change it.  There are various non-prose sources of evidence that a topic is notable, at which point we rely (or should rely) on our core content policies which includes WP:V#Notability.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:37, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• No, Unscintillating, I do not support turning the relatively high WP:N/WP:GNG bar into a content guideline. I support listification and prosification of GNG-failing pornstars who have won porn industry awards into articles on the award winners. One article covering all the winners of each award. Wikipedia:Verifiability#Notability is an empty line stating that WP:N is not empowered by WP:V. The core content policy sections limiting content are WP:PSTS and WP:DUE. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:25, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. As explained at WHYN, the purpose of the notability requirement is to ensure we can, with sufficient effort, write articles that comply with RS, NPOV, and NOTDIRECTORY. The SNGs, including BIO's additional criteria, serve as useful proxies for GNG that let us avoid time-consuming research and debates about whether a given quantity of coverage is "significant." But, averaged out, these heuristics need to approximate GNG; when subjects with almost no qualifying coverage are kept because of an SNG, the purpose of notability (and AFD) is defeated. Rebbing 11:56, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, WHYN is what is known as a "rationale" in standardization, and does not itself constitute requirements.  WP:N is not a content policy.  Look at the history in 2007 and I think you will see various efforts to elevate what is now WHYN to a requirement level, but this was rejected.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:37, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • Right—which is why I'm relying on WHYN as an explanation and not a requirement in its own right: it justifies our notability guidelines in light of our content policies, which are requirements. Without significant coverage in multiple independent reliable sources, it's difficult to write an article that doesn't run afoul of at least one of RS, NPOV, or NOTDIRECTORY, and ensuring that articles can, with sufficient editing, be improved to meet our policies furthers the aims of the Project. Rebbing 12:00, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • So you agree that WHYN is not a requirement, but then you generalize that it means that both GNG and all of the SNGs have a purpose to "ensure we can, with sufficient effort, write articles that comply with RS..."  Why would you even attempt an argument like that?  WP:N has only one requirement, that a topic be "worthy of notice".  Even with GNG sourcing, the material is not necessarily prose.  You've opened the door to the argument, "there is not the material to write a reliable NPOV article so the topic is not notable".  This becomes a new definition of wp:notability, and this is a content definition, which WP:N is not.  That is the work of our content policies and WP:NOT.  So exactly the opposite is the case, that wp:notability does not mean that we have the reliable NPOV material to write an article.  This is fundamental to understanding and preserving wp:notability.  Notable topics are not guaranteed articles on Wikipedia.  Unscintillating (talk) 13:23, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Support - Lends clarity to existing policy. Carrite (talk) 17:06, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• No one has yet been able to explain the changes.  What will this change?  Unscintillating (talk) 01:37, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• The changes do two things, they explicitly link PORNBIO to being subordinate to the GNG making it clear that theseBLPs require the same level of sourcing as we expect elsewhere. The second thing they do is take the borderline discussions away from ridiculous disputes about whether superslut of the year or analist of the year are qualifying awards by making that discussion about whether the award category has been discussed in indeoendabt secondary sourcing. Essentially this means that discussions will be based on sources not slanging messages between to pro porn keep everything crowd and what Rebecca1990 charmingly refers to as porn deletioners - i.e. those who think BLP sourcing rules and GNG apply. Since the sitewide consensus is that BLPs must have rigorous sourcing that's kind of an attack on the whole basis of article inclusion. What is interesting is that once you take out those with fioxed positions on porn the clear consensus amongst those editors with no skin in the game is that we should make the change. I think that proves my point. Spartaz ^Humbug! 04:48, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Support - per SmokeyJoe, etc. Ealdgyth - Talk 20:43, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong opposse - There are users who think the current PORNBIO guideline is too inclusive, and there are users, like me, who think the current PORNBIO guideline is too exclusive. If neither side is satisfied, doesn't that suggest the guideline is a reasonable compromise between both sides? And I'm tired of the porn deletioners being given an inch and taking a mile. The last tightening of PORNBIO has already resulted in over a hundred deletions of porn biography articles (so far). How about browsing porn biographies for more articles that fail the CURRENT guideline and delete them all before asking for a tighter guideline? This new suggestion to tighten PORNBIO even more is unreasonable. The new wording is also vague and open to (mis)interpretation, unlike the current PORNBIO guideline, which is more straightforward. Rebecca1990 (talk) 23:28, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • That's a very interesting response as clearly none of the articles deleted since the last change passed the GNG (or they wouldn't have been deleted) and therefore were inadequately sourced BLPs. Nevertheless your position is that we need more porn articles and that essentially means you are advocating the position that we should host BLPs that are inadequately sourced. Unfortunately, or is that fortunately, that's not how wikipedia works and we do have quite site wide consensus that if its a BLP we expect high standards of sourcing not lower because they are in porn. Spartaz ^Humbug! 04:48, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • Rebecca is absolutely right. No matter how tight PORNBIO becomes, deletionists are never satisfied. Scene-related noms takes away? Not good enough, let's omit all noms. All noms taken away? Still not good enough, let's take away winners except for hall of fame inductees. Soon, there won't be any porn bios left on Wikipedia—duh, that's what you guys want! ...Anyway, that's not how Wikipedia works. Erpert ^{blah, blah, blah...} 10:00, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • Do you have anything to say that's actually related to Wikipedia policies and guidelines regarding notability and inclusion standards? So far you're doing virtually nothing here but impugning the motives of, casting aspersions on, and misrepresenting the positions of editors who you disagree with. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by administrators since 2006. (talk) 11:53, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • You're assuming that biographies of pornographic performers would never satisfy GNG or BASIC—the standards to which we hold most subjects. I find that proposition dubious. Rebbing 12:03, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
      • No one has ever advocated deleting an article that meets the standards of the GNG as applied to BLPs. What your response actually boils down to is that you want to keep any porn article that fails the GNG and are labelling and personally attacking anyone that tries to apply the same standard to porn genre articles are the community expects for all other BLPs. Spartaz ^Humbug! 13:15, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
        • Responding to a user who is pretending to be retired but just happens to keep editing in an only anti-porn fashion is pointless, so...yawn... Erpert ^{blah, blah, blah...} 22:53, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong oppose, per DreamFocus and Guy1890. I think the current guidelines are too exclusive with the bar set too high. Are we seriously going to make it even worse? Also the I find the keep arguments troubling because they seem to suggest that prudishness is a non-issue in main-stream media or in wider society. Since I believe prudishness is an existent problem I do not trust the average-Joe-this-hurts-my-feelings to decide unbiasedly. Instead, I believe that the main way that we can protect ourselves from prudish tendencies in our midst is by having a separate venue where notability can be discussed more explicitly. Pwolit iets (talk) 10:12, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying to find "prudishness" in the notability guidelines - GNG - the SNGs - H-m-m-m-m. Well, I'm still looking - I'll have to get back to you. Wait! maybe it's in common outcomes - well, I still have to get back to you. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 12:52, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Strong support this is sorely needed. This will help to firmly place porno biographies into alignment and agreement with GNG and BLP along with our other policies and guidelines. It will also help to end the attempts to circumvent policies and guidelines as a tenable position in porno bio AfDs, which I have recently noticed has been occuring. I wish to personally thank User:Spartaz for doing this. Steve Quinn (talk) 01:22, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - I don't think that we should be making wholesale changes to our notability guidelines just because some Wikipedia editors/administrators don't like the commentary that others have (mostly unsuccessfully) made at certain types of AfDs.

The facts are, again, that our notability guidelines (including the current PORNBIO standard) are cited all the time at AfD to delete pornography-related BLPs and that very few AfDs, since the last change to PORNBIO, have been kept at AfD (mostly due to them meeting the GNG standard). The facts clearly show that our standards are used way, way, way more often to delete pornography-related content than to "routinely" retain that type of content at AfD, even if that content is sourced to "Porn industry web sites".

PORNBIO is not a "low bar"...it's been intentionally set as a higher bar (even higher than it's associated NACTOR standard of which PORNBIO is actually a sub-category to) over the years to prevent the creation of "too many" pornography-related BLPs. No one that I know of on Wikipedia is seriously advocating for "more porn articles" on Wikipedia. It's also not at all true that "PORNBIO is roundly rejected as meaningful at AfD" at all...again, applying those exact, current standards has caused many, many pornography-related BLPs to be deleted from Wikipedia for many months (probablly more like years at this late date) now. Precident set at recently-decided AfDs routinely applies to later AfDs, whether they are "well-attended" or not. I think I can also safely say that there are exactly zero pornography-related BLPs being kept at AfD that are only "sourced to a DVD information page" on Wikipedia.

BTW, even the vaunted The New York Times has reviewed a few adult films over the years. Guy1890 (talk) 22:10, 27 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Guy, first of all this is not wholesale changes to our notability guidelines. Rather this seems to be only an attempt to explicitly tie PORNBIO to GNG and WP:BIO standards. From what I can see, It is not that the current Pornbio is low or high. It is the arguments I am seeing at AfD that claim the BLP subject is notable because he or she received an award per PORNBIO.

A pattern that I see is awards that lack any kind of acceptable sourcing per WP:V are being touted as significant - when it has not been determined one way or the other per WP:NRV. So, this causes the AfD discussion to be more contentious than it needs to be. With this adjustment to PORNBIO the indications of significance are more explicit.

Also, time and again, I see press releases and promotional materials being used as sources, which are, by far, not independent of the subject. These PR materials are touted as sources indicating significance and noteworthiness of both awards and BLP subjects. This seems to be a misinformed approach. Perhaps the idea is to not create articles based on only promotional materials or industry related materials in the first place. Hopefully this tweak will help with that.

Also, I am not seeing how prior AfDs that ended in keep or no consensus have any bearing on an ongoing AfD discussion. As far as I can tell they carry no weight - especially when the "kept" articles were sourced with only promotional materials - and somehow that was missed - like an oversight. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 00:59, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Again, we shouldn't be changing any of our notability guidelines based on arguments ("contentious" or not) that one sees & disagrees with at AfD. You and I have already been round & round at AfD recently about how your supposed "press releases and promotional materials" argument is completely false on the face ot it. Again, who would know better who won or didn't win a particular award than the awarding organization itself?? This is true for pretty much any awarding organization, including the Academy Awards.

The "subjects" of pornography-related BLPs are the people that the articles are written about, not the industry (or industries) that they might have worked in in the past. The idea that prior AfDs (regardless of how they were ultimately decided...keep, delete, etc.) don't have any relevance to a current AfD is also a plainly silly argument. Setting precedent is exactly one of several things that AfDs are for in the first place. Guy1890 (talk) 01:18, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comparing XBIZ Awards, for example, to Academy Awards is a WP:EINSTEIN argument. The latter is an essay, not a guideline, but appears to be relevant here. K.e.coffman (talk) 01:45, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Both the trade publication XBIZ and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are obviously reliable sources for their own award ceremonies...that's what's really relevant here. Guy1890 (talk) 02:32, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That's kind of the issue. Normally notability derives from a source independent to the event and under PORNBIO its coming from non-independent sources as the discussion tends towards ridiculous assertions rather than demonstrating the indepndant sources that discuss the award category. Spartaz ^Humbug! 07:07, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

As I've already, clearly pointed out far above in this thread, the only "ridiculous assertion" here is the entire premise of this change in the first place. When the PORNBIO guideline has been used for quite some time to delete content from Wikipedia (sometimes well in excess of 80% of the time via AfD/PROD) than to keep it, there's no underlying problem with the guideline itself. Beyond that, I have no interest in responding to an admitted "BLP zealot" that has recently, actively canvassed off-Wikipedia (on Wikipediocracy of all places) for this kind of guideline change. This user's unfortunate clear motivations have already been plainly discussed at length above in this thread...I need not add anything further. Guy1890 (talk) 19:47, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• [redact off-wiki content] [H]e doesn't seem to want to get his hands dirty by editing articles that he perceives to have BLP problems.  I checked his contributions and I had to go back to August 2015 [11] to find an edit to an article for being unsourced.  Unscintillating (talk) 22:30, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Do you want me to takew you to ANI for harrassment? If not, stop the opposition research and start working on discussing the policy concerns. Spartaz ^Humbug! 06:12, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Right, where the record will show that I stood up for you within the past 48 hours.  I also did research on the word "policy", which shows that I have used the word nine times in the discussion, more than anyone else.  Your post here was the first time you've used the word, but later today you added, "Basically the [obscenity deleted] about supersluts pretty much forced my hand to try and straighten the policy out. 08:46, 29 August 2016 (UTC)  Pornbio topics, including this "supersluts" I assume, are massively wp:notable, so your remedy does not lie in an SNG.  Get it?  I've made proposals like a guideline at WP:NOT, new standards for biographies of fictional people (meaning where only the trade name is known), pushback on the industry to provide bios by highly reputable sources such as Bloomberg, and support for WP:DEL7 deletions.  Unscintillating (talk) 01:17, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• @Unscintillating: - this is really inappropriate. I request you remove that comment. I agree that it is harassment. And Guy1890 did not explcility point out who they were talkikng about. The link does not work. So to me, this means you are jumping to conclusions. Guy1890 can you please not go on a tangent like that again. This almost caused serious problems as I hope you can see. Steve Quinn (talk) 06:44, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Agree entirely. And, to make things worse, Spartaz's actual statement has been rather grossly distorted in its presentation here. The actual statement was "I'm a bit of a BLP zealot. For barely marginal people they are magnets for any shit someone wants to throw at them and they won't be sufficiently patrolled to protect them from the crap" -- an opinion shared by many responsible editors here, and which really has no bearing on the the policy and guideline issues under discussion here. It's downright creepy to see how many contributors here have such an emotional investment in pornography that they feel free to blithely smear editors who don't share their affection for the subject, and disturbing to note the unwillingness of much of the community here to place appropriate limits on, and sanctions for, that behaviour. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo). Treated like dirt by administrators since 2006. (talk) 12:00, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Support -- the SNG in question needs to align to GNG; otherwise Wikipedia becomes a WP:WEBHOST for promotional BLPs, which often contain nothing much besides awards and nominations. K.e.coffman (talk) 04:21, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Support. In general, the purpose of the special notability guidelines is to provide a tool for quickly determining when a topic is highly likely to have significant coverage in independent, reliable sources. Accordingly, we tend to keep articles about Olympic athletes, state and provincial legislators and winners of major prizes like the Nobel, Pulitzer and MacArthur Fellowships because experience tells us that the reliable independent sources are almost certainly out there for these topics with an in-depth search. However, winning an award which is at best iteself marginally notable does not automatically confer notability on all its recipients. Our WP:BLP policy requires very high quality sources. Porn industry sources by their very nature blend fact with fiction with no way to verify the accuracy of any given statement. The typical porn biography sources are twitter, blogs, press releases about a third tier industry insider awards, porn databases and so on. I am not an "anti-porn" editor, I have no moral objection to porn, and I want this encyclopedia to have biographies of actually notable porn performers, with biographical information verified by references to actually reliable sources, as required by policy. PORNBIO in its current form is a failure because it encourages the creation of articles about non-notable porn performers, which are frequently deleted at AfD. Every industry has internal trade publications, trade shows and insider back scratching awards. We do not need biographies of non-notable locksmiths, kitchen remodeling contractors, dentists, financial advisors, plastic surgeons, machine shop owners or porn performers, just because they might have won insignificant industry insider awards, but have not received significant coverage in reliable, independent sources. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:17, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Support SNGs have several purposes: they provide quick indications of whether a subject is notable without investing substantial time in searching for sources, they indicate when a subject may be notable in topic areas where sources may not be readily available, and they can give guidance on how the GNG should be applied to particular topics. It isn't a good idea for SNGs to be set up so that lots of subjects pass the SNG but not the GNG - if the subject doesn't pass the GNG then we can't write a substantial article on the subject without running into serious problems. The fact that we do seem to be having a number of AfDs in which the subject fails the GNG but not PORNBIO suggests PORNBIO needs to be altered. Hut 8.5 16:44, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• If the problem is with WP:V and WP:BLP, why is the attention here going to wp:notability, which is defined outside of Wikipedia?  Do Wikipedia editors tell the world the topics to which they should be giving their attention?  Unscintillating (talk) 22:30, 28 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Notability is closely linked to WP:V and WP:BLP, as you can see from the fact that both of those policies incorporate notability-related material. If a subject genuinely does not have significant coverage in third party reliable sources then it is very difficult to write an article about it without falling foul of a core content policy unless the article remains very short. If the subject doesn't have much coverage in reliable sources then you'll have to use unreliable ones or leave the content unsourced, which poses serious verifiability problems. If the sources are all associated with the subject then the article will run into obvious neutrality concerns. And if the sources don't give much coverage to the subject then you may be forced to use unhealthy amounts of original research to string them together. These issues would all be compounded if the subject is a BLP. Hut 8.5 10:02, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• If an article fails WP:BLP and subsequently WP:V (which is one of the requirements of WP:BLP) it should be deleted and is generally deleted, these principles are not negotiable and have nothing to do with notability guidelines. Cavarrone 13:28, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose, especially with any language that requires the subject of an article winning an award. A nomination should be sufficient to qualify for inclusion. —Locke Cole • t • c 02:31, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • That ship sailed yonks ago. Spartaz ^Humbug! 06:12, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per MShabazz and DreamFocus. I also don't like the idea of applying a "meaningful discussion" standard only to porn over ANYBIO's well known and significant criteria. It sounds like requiring the category to be notable itself but meaningful can be interpreted any number of ways. Morbidthoughts (talk) 07:23, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Since we are on the subject of users motivation's being mentioned here lets just record that Morbidthoughts is one of the people who run IAFD and therefore presumably benefits from the click throughs they get from the IAFD posted below evcery porn article. That they are arguing to keep a wider porn inclusion standard against the GNG is not therefore surprising. Spartaz ^Humbug! 08:43, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm a volunteer editor there just like I am on wikipedia. I have no access to IAFD's web stats or financial information, and my previous history of pushing to tighten PORNBIO [12][13] would go against your theory that I am editing on behalf of IAFD's interest. Morbidthoughts (talk) 15:18, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per WP:NOTCENSORED. It is not exactly the news of the day that Spartaz has an agenda of opposing pornography and wanting a more conservative and censored Wikipedia (it is sufficient to look at his contributions, which since a couple of years are mainly opposition-to-pornography-related), but this is frankly becoming a bit odd. The proposed wording is vague and ambiguous, and the removal of points 3 and the trimming of point 2 are unexplained and silly (how a person who is described by reliable sources as having made an unique contribution to a specific pornographic genre such as beginning a trend in pornography could be assessed as non-notable is beyond me). Most importantly, I don't remember meaningful discussions about award categories in a bunch of very notable awards, have ever been the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film, the BAFTA Rising Star Award, or the David di Donatello for Best Actor categories ever discussed by some sources? Usually you can find articles about the people who won the awards, or articles which list the wins, but I doubt you will ever find sources discussing the categories themselves (generally the name of the category is clear enough to not require further "meaningful discussion"). I am ready to support this proposal if is part of a more consistent review of other people-related SNGs starting from WP:ANYBIO, otherwise it is just the application of a double standard towards a category of entertainers who is obviously biased by a part of editors (and by a part of the society as well) because of their moral or social or political views. Current guideline wording at best allows the creation of 5-10 articles a year about the major names in this industry who pass WP:ANYBIO by a country mile, which I consider pretty reasonable and strict enough, especially when other SNGs such as WP:ATH allows the daily creation of dozens of permastubs on niche and sometimes borderline-notable sports (in those cases no one cares, as sport does not offend sensibilities). The example below about CRICKET s quite enlighting. Cavarrone 07:32, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know when Spartaz supposed first exhibited this alleged crusade against porn, apparently out of the blue, but it is my impression that the anti-PORNBIO sentiments arose after all of the following:

• Wikipedia:Notability_(pornographic_actors) (last version) (quite a reasonable SNG) was merged into WP:BIO;

• The PORNBIO section of WP:BIO was shortened;

• WP:DRV (the only place that Spartaz & I ever hung out together) began to see reviews of particularly absurd cases of an article meeting the shortened PORNBIO subcriteria, but being a woefully inadequate article due to having zero secondary source coverage (not even requiring the secondary source coverage to be independent). What this means is that no source whatsoever contained any sentence that said anything qualitative or subjective about the subject. There was facts, directory information, films acted in, awards (and not even wikipedia-notable awards) nominated for. Clearly failing the last verion of Wikipedia:Notability_(pornographic_actors).

The problem appeared to me to be that PORNSTAR biogrpahies form a Wikipedia:Walled garden. Extremely few but all the porn fans care about them. When nominated at AfD, the porn croud alone might turn up, usually, but when a wider audience participated the article would be deleted despite meeting the then worded PORNBIO section.

For a while, I had a go at participating in pornstar AfDs. Interestingly, I found the out-of-touch PORNBIO criteria to be out of touch both ways. PORNBIO would frequently would support a starlet nominated for some narrow award, but subject to zero real coverage, but in other cases (including some today), someone is nominating a pornstar for failing to have been nominated for an award despite non-trivial coverage in the media.

Others at DRV also noted that the SNG PORNBIO was discredited.

Having reviewed this, I see that it might be better to de-merge Wikipedia:Notability_(pornographic_actors), to go back to the September 2007 guideline text.

User:Cavarrone, it is not at all about censorship. WP:ANYBIO, WP:ATH? I have suspected that WP:ANYBIO was created to obfuscate the extreme leniency with respect to needing coverage under PORNBIO. Only porn fans ever seem to mention ANYBIO. WP:ATH, is actually squarely in the same boat as WP:PORNBIO. Both serve to encourage directly-style coverage by way of biography permastubs of temporarily public people.

--SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:36, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Smokey is right, my interest in this area came from the ridiculous cases reaching DRV not from any purile small minded objection to porn. If the usual suspects were not so determined to oppose the clear community consensus on this subject I would have left the area to them to police long since. Since they are determined to stick two fingers to the community and insist on trying to keep every crappy porn article it requires external involvement. Basically the shit about supersluts pretty much forced my hand to try and straighten the policy out. Good work guys. Spartaz ^Humbug! 08:46, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Cavarrone you need to do your research. I agree that CRICKET seems absurd but bear in mind that every first class cricketer in the UK is profiled every year of their career in Playfield Cricket Annual and that most broadsheet newspapers in the UK used to cover every country cricket match although the level of coverage has reduced in recent years. Do your research further and you will see me arguing vociferously against the retention of a single match Sri Lankan player (S Pereara I think) where we have no dob or first name and taking this through to DRV so there is plenty of evidence that I am consistent in my position and not on a crusade. Spartaz ^Humbug! 08:43, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@SmokeyJoe:, I don't disagree with most of your analysis, but some editors making so much emphasis about pornography opposite way looser guidelines is a bit suspect. About WP timeline, wasn't WP:ANYBIO created before WP:PORNBIO (I don't really know)? Indeed, I am pretty active at AfD area (even when not commenting there, because I am uncertain or because I consider an additional pile-on vote useless), and I keep on seeing ANYBIO and derivates mentioned with variable results dozens of times (I can eventually provide examples). As I said, sub-guidelines should be consistent with ANYBIO, whatever the field the people belong. I am fine with tighting PORNBIO and even deleting all the award-justified porn-bios as long as we first edit ANYBIO and the other SNGs in a consistent way or align them to GNG (it would not be bad for the overall quality of WP), otherwise we are just applying a double standard with a category of people (who, coincidence, is often blamed if not despised by a consistent part of the society) opposite to all the others (sorry if I am repeating myself). About de-merging pornographic actors from WP:BIO and having a more accurate guideline, I'm absolutely in favour of your proposal, but at the end of the day are you sure the current wording is looser than the former?

@Spartaz:, I can trust your explaination about your interest in pornography, but really, could a couple DRV discussions lead a neutral editor to spend most of their wiki-time battling in this area? I could be wrong, but as a minimum I see some significant emotional involvement about the topic, otherwise if you are concerned by awards-improperly-leading-notability criteria you should ask for a consistent change of ANYBIO and relevant sub-guidelines, not just for tighning a sub-guideline such as PORNBIO. About researches on cricketers, the coverage in newspapers is in most of the cases spectacularly trivial and unusable. Most of our articles about cricketers consist of ONE or two lines, and several of them have unknown place and date of death, a few of them have also unknown date of birth. I could list in minutes a couple hundreds permastubs about cricketers which are worst sourced of the worst sourced pornography-related biography. And what about WP:NFOOTY, which allows articles about footballers who played 10 minutes in third-level leagues such as Lega Pro or 3. Liga and have no chance ever to come close to GNG? What about an article only sourced to a press release which just yesterday was de-salted and recreated on sight after a single game? The hated porn-voters just apply the rule of thumb "weakly passes a SGN while spectacularly failing GNG = notable" as others do with far more success and less examination on other less biased subjects, but the SNGs/GNG detachment question is way broader than saying that PORNBIO is actually a major issue, both in terms of quantity of poorly sourced articles and of AfD outcomes. Cavarrone 13:21, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. I have to agree with Cavarrone that clearly there is a double standard applied with regards to porn actresses/actors if compared to other individuals in other fields. A footballer who plays in the third division in Germany (which is quite low) is to be held notable enough according to the second standard applied by WP:NFOOTY, notability which I find doubtful, but a pornactress/actor with an individual award would be barred under this new criteria because that award is not deemed "notable" enough by some purists. -- fdewaele, 29 August 2016, 15:55 CET.

I 100% agree with everything Cavarrone said (well, except for the cricket-related articles, as that's not my field.) Erpert ^{blah, blah, blah...} 22:00, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• User:Cavarrone, "but at the end of the day are you sure the current wording is looser than the former". Looking again, the difference may be subtle, but I read a devaluation of "well-known award". All the SNGs were more permissive then, PORNBIO remained and became more permissive. I think "well-known award" should mean a "notable award", if the award does not have an article, then being a winner or serious nominee is not good enough. It is bad enough suggesting that notability is inherited from the award, absurd to think that notability is inheritable from a non-notable award. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:47, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• To be honest, I always considered the notability of the award some sort of pre-requisite, so I certainly agree with the point and I agree in including the notability requirement in the wording of the SNG (and in ANYBIO too). Also, IMHO I would add a note clarifying that the notability of the award should be explicitly proofed through mainstream sources (not just trade publications). This would be a modification way clearer and reasonable that the proposed "meaningful discussion about the category" which is odd and potentially inapplicable: I just made indepht researches (which included some books I own) about David di Donatello and Nastro d'Argento, the main Italian cinema awards, and I found absolutely nothing coming close to a meaningful (or even passing) discussion for any of their categories, just general listing of award wins/noms and bios/articles about actors which mention the noms/wins. I am a bit worried several usually intelligent editors including you supported the proposal without addressing its contents, i.e. its confused wording and its general inapplicability, just because their generic bad feelings towards porn bios. Cavarrone 06:21, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• This is sounding like agreement? The original proposal reads to me as effectively saying this, although it could be clarified. I definitely support *something* being done, as PORNBIO is not a creditable SNG at the moment. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:18, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• fdewaele, User:Erpert, you are arguing WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS. But further, PORNBIO is worse than ATHLETE and ANYBIO in encouraging articles on temporarily public people because often with pornstars, unlike the others, the pornstarlets often use pseudonyms with poorly hidden real identities, and the Wikipedia article serves to enshrine their personal information even when they try to become private. If the pornstarlets devoid of real coverage were instead merged to articles covering collective award winners, there would be no encourage to dig into private information so as to completed the stub of a biography. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:47, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I'm not sure where you got the idea that I was using WP:OCE; but at any rate, your claim about "temporarily public people" goes against WP:NOTTEMPORARY. Erpert ^{blah, blah, blah...} 21:50, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• "PORNBIO shouldn't be tightened while other SNGs aren't" is textbook OCE.

"temporarily public people" is a BLP1E issue. A starlet who features in a few films, has zero coverage otherwise, this brief film career completely disconnected from her previous and subsequent life, this is a BLP1E violation, and BLP1E outranks NOTTEMPORARY. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:51, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

OCE refers to articles, not guidelines. And BLP1E outranks OCE? I'm not sure where that consensus is, but...since you brought it up, the example you mentioned is inaccurate to call a BLP1E violation. For example, Peter Ostrum had a single film role—in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. Is he non-notable now? Absolutely not. (And that's even a good article.) Erpert ^{blah, blah, blah...} 23:51, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment  I just did a Wikipedia search on "WP: WP:DEL9" and found only one hit.  Unscintillating (talk) 02:00, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose  The consensus should be to support our policies and guidelines, and in turn support our content contributors, which this proposal is not.  Unscintillating (talk) 02:15, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Support After wading through the mountains. "Notcensored" is irrelevant as an argument. The issues are "what is notability?" using a similar standard for all categories of BLPs across Wikipedia. To the extent that PORNBIO violates that principle, it ought to be deprecated. For instance, suppose there were established "CHEMBIO" stating that any chemist mentioned in any standard text is automatically notable? Or JOURNALISTBIO stating that anyone who has had a byline in any wire service or newspaper is "notable"? Sorry - the GNG sets a standard which should be at least marginally followed by any SNG. Collect (talk) 13:59, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• COMMENT But then you come back to the double standard issue again because there are BIOs who exactly state that as notability criteria. For instance WP:NFOOTY. Doing this change/tightening only with regards to PORNBIO is then a double standard and bias towards a particular type of bios. You should then only change it as part of a general overhaul of all separate BIO criteria and not just as part of an anti-porn crusade. -- fdewaele, 30 August 2016, 16:22 CET.
• Comment It seems to me, one of the main reasons for this proposal is because lately most Porno Bios that pass AfD are not actually passing GNG thereby satisfying BLP. When they pass AfD, it is not based on GNG because the sources time and again appear to be much less than adequate - industry promotional materials, and sometimes a twitter account and sometimes audience edited film database and sometimes a personal website, or a passing mention if they're lucky. Here are some examples [14], [15], [16], [17]. Also, there is no reason to mess with the other SNGs just because this one is being adjusted. The other SNGs do not demonstrate a failure to augment GNG. Steve Quinn (talk) 06:00, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Typical of those who support this ill-conceived proposal, this comment is untrue. Those articles have not passed AfD, as Steve Quinn asserts. Rather, each is currently at AfD. — MShabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 11:24, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• @Malik Shabazz: True, these are examples of Porn biographies that are in AfD. I wanted to emphasize these have he type of sourcing I have mentioned. Second, this is one of the persons I provided: this is Justine Joli's second nomination - the first was "keep" [18], which is one of the previous links. This is another one that fits the description in my post (but not one of the links orginally provided): [19] which just achieved "no consensus". Here is Gracie Glam (not one of the links originally provided), and K. Lockwood (not one of the links originally provided). Sorry about the misunderstanding, I was tired when I wrote that. Hopefully these four will suffice Steve Quinn (talk)

• Oppose wording I think that the SNG for porn is still too broad. But I think this is just going to cause less clarity. We should list the specific awards that meet the SNG with the understanding that the list will need to be updated every few years. The principle Spartaz has given (award category being covered) is a fine one, but I don't want to see a re-ligation of each award category on each AfD. And given the very strong feelings people have on both sides of this, that's exactly what's going to happen. So, IMO, the status quo is better than this proposal, but we do need a change. And I'd suggest we form a committee that creates a list of which awards should count for the SNG. It should probably be a list of 15-20 annual (one-person) awards (seems about right looking at the major Academy Awards and that there are probably 2 or 3 sets of awards out there (sorry I don't follow the field)). Hobit (talk) 09:03, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Support, per SmokeyJoe, and I'm concerned to see others say there are porn bios that might be violating BLP. SarahSV ^(talk) 19:31, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Support up to a point: I would actually propose that the guideline should be: Has been the primary subject of non-trivial coverage in reliable independent sources. Exactly as it is for everything, in fact. Winning a porn industry award or being in a hall of fame still does not mean we can have an article, because so much of what's written about performers on industry websites is fictional. It needs to be sources that are definitely reliable and definitely independent. Because, you know, WP:BLP and WP:NOTDIR and all those other things. Guy (Help!) 20:28, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • I don't think it's true that so much of what's written on industry websites is fictional. For example, XBIZ.com not only has press releases, but actual articles as well. Now, those would qualify as reliable sources; however, a message board post from XBIZ.com wouldn't. But the rest of this discussion should probably continue in the subsection below. Erpert ^{blah, blah, blah...} 23:38, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Support This is sorely needed. The spirit of SNGs is to identify people who have a certain enduring notability as well create a consistent standard. The problem with PORNBIO is that the standard of inclusion is way too low. (Actually SPORTS is too low as well). This essentially results in Wikipedia becoming a directory, which is precisely what we are not supposed to be per WP:NOTDIR. The problem with using just about any industry award is the same problem with using trade magazines for companies: it is easier to be featured in these sources. --Lemongirl942 (talk) 13:52, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. The SNG for porn actors is extremely restrictive by comparison to, for example, almost all the SNGs in WP:Notability (sports), and is routinely used to delete articles that get hundreds or even over a thousand views per day. BLP violating material should be removed, and is, routinely. It is obviously not necessary to restrict the SNG further in order to prevent BLP violations. --Sammy1339 (talk) 03:34, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Additionally, the wording is clearly designed in a way to eliminate the great majority of pornstar articles, as the OP well knows that the individual categories are never the subject of "meaningful discussion" in mainstream RS, although the award ceremonies as a whole are. --Sammy1339 (talk) 03:42, 1 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Tweaking the PORNBIO proposal

• I'd like to see merely being nominated for an award sufficient to justify inclusion. —Locke Cole • t • c 02:31, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • That ship has sailed, we are not expanding PORNBIO. We already had that discussion. Spartaz ^Humbug! 06:05, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• OK, since you disagree that there is a consensus, I have asked for a panel of independent admins to assess this discussion. I hope you will agree to abide by the outcome. See Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Need_a_Panel_of_Admins_to_close_a_contentious_discussion. Spartaz ^Humbug! 06:09, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Well, speaking as an admin (with quite a few years of experience editing), & admittedly an inclusionist, I have to say that at the moment I don't see a consensus. This discussion has only been open for a little more than a week. Counting noses, while I find 14 support the proposal & 11 oppose it, the difference is so small that it could change very quickly; it's entirely possible 4 more oppose votes could appear within 24 hours without any possibility of canvassing. I'd give this discussion another week, & maybe a consensus can then be identified. -- llywrch (talk) 17:33, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Have you looked at how many of these !votes show that they understand the proposal?  Unscintillating (talk) 02:15, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Unscintillating:, I don't understand your point. Spartaz asked for an opinion whether there is a consensus here. From the timestamp on the comments alone, I see an ongoing discussion; if there was a consensus, people would not be continuing to discuss this proposal. As a further datum, I noted the number of !votes to show that opinions were clearly divided. Now if the number of !votes were to support or oppose this were clearly on one side or the other -- say 25 support to 11 oppose or 14 support to 30 oppose (roughly 2-to-1) -- one could argue that there is a consensus, & that the losing side was simply filibustering the obvious. But to come to that conclusion, one would need more closely at the discussion -- but there is no consensus, so to do so is unnecessary.

And as for "understand the proposal" ... that is a loaded question. The discussion is about what this proposal means, & how it will affect Notability policy, & I see part of the disagreement here about what the proposal means. Some argue it will not change the current policy significantly, some that it will; there isn't even a consensus about that. So the only solution I see is ... more discussion. It may not be the best choice, but it will do the least harm.

And lastly, Wikipedia's coverage of porn is a contentious & controversial issue. Anyone interested in how porn is covered will need to accept that it will be unusual for any change in policy to be accepted in a week's time. I expect this will drag on much longer, with tempers fraying on all sides. Better that everyone interested discuss the matter here, & hope that all parties remain civil & find some common ground, than someone declares a consensus too early, make people resentful & angry, & risk losing volunteers. Especially when we're having problems holding on to veteran editors as it is. -- llywrch (talk) 18:22, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The thing is, users that appear to be wholly anti-pornography are an interesting sort, as they try to tighten the PORNBIO guideline literally every year. Now, I personally am a fan of porn, but I don't think any porn biography (or any other article) should be kept if it isn't notable; in fact, I've actually started a few AfDs on porn stars ([20] [21]). However...when it has been proven that the porn stars indeed pass Wikipedia's notability standards, that's when the antis suddenly want to tighten the guideline. In addition, the "tempers fraying" that you suggested generally come from the antis in the form of insults; and frankly, the insults seem to be more about the people defending the actors rather than the actors themselves. Now, I don't remember ever crossing your path, but that's actually a good thing; neutral users giving their input on the situation is exactly what is needed to keep things balanced.

Finally, I agree with everyone who suggested that PORNBIO shouldn't be tightened while other SNGs aren't. But the one thing I would add to PORNBIO is that a porn actor's notability should mainly come into question if pornography is all s/he is known for. Erpert ^{blah, blah, blah...} 22:09, 30 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why has this tag been added to the article?

Pornographic actors and models

Shortcuts WP:PORNBIO WP:PORNSTAR Template:Policy-discuss People involved in pornography: Has won a well-known and significant industry award. Awards in scene-related and ensemble categories are excluded from consideration. Has made unique contributions to a specific pornographic genre, such as beginning a trend in pornography; starred in an iconic, groundbreaking or blockbuster feature; or is a member of an industry Hall of Fame such as the AVN Hall of Fame, XRCO Hall of Fame or equivalent. Has been featured multiple times in notable mainstream media.

Unscintillating (talk) 23:31, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Because an editor thinks his proposed change to PORNBIO is the most important thing in the world today. — MShabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 23:38, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Support removing the tag (with no shade thrown to the editor who placed it). The merits of changing PORNBIO notwithstanding, I see no reason to think the current version lacks consensus. Rebbing 00:11, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• It should just say the guideline is being discussed, not try to cast doubt on its merits once again. This discussion has happened many times over the years. Dream Focus 00:18, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• As long as this tag isn't used at AfD to try & say that our currently-amended PORNBIO standards are "depreciated", I don't have a problem with this tag remaining on the page. Guy1890 (talk) 01:56, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• In accordance with WP:PAG, I replaced this template with the more appropriate {{under discussion}}. — MShabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 17:12, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Agreed that {{Under discussion}} is more appropriate. This {{Policy-discuss}} should probably be TfDed. It's a holdover from Ye Olden Tymes, when things were wild and wooly and people were making up alleged policies right and left. We're in a totally different phase of the organizational life cycle now, and this template no longer serves a practical purpose, just WP:POINTy use.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  01:56, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We need to list notability guidelines for businesspeople. This seems to be an issue at present. Editors who nominate articles about businesspeople for AFD say there is no guideline for hiring tens of thousands of employees or making hundred million dollar mergers for example. If we want Wikipedia to reflect the reality of our capitalist societies, we need to make sure major economic actors are represented here. A chief executive is often far, far more prominent than a minor entertainer.Zigzig20s (talk) 08:17, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a fan of SNGs but I know large parts of the community are not. It's easier to apply GNG across the board. I'd be glad to see a draft SNG for businesspeople but I'm wondering how you could sell specific criteria like being involved in a merger. Are there cases where we have reliable sources discussing these details about subjects that otherwise can't pass GNG? Do you have any articles in mind that are borderline GNG or have been deleted but should have been (in your opinion) retained? Chris Troutman (talk) 13:26, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User:Chris troutman: Yes, there are currently two AFDs on my talkpage, about articles which appear to meet GNG but some disagree. Lots of references and both prominent in their own rights. Have a look there if you need more background information. This has had a chilling effect on my editing as I was working on articles about other businesspeople but I've put them on hold to avoid wasting my time. If I take the time to create referenced articles about prominent businesspeople, I want to make sure I'm not doing it for naught. So I think we need specific guidelines here.Zigzig20s (talk) 00:20, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I think also a SNG (Special Notability Guideline, I think) for businesspeople would be great, exactly for the reasons for you describe. One at-bat for the Cubs in 1887 gets you an article, being a major player in the economic history of a whole country doesn't, and that's silly. It's not impossible that an SNG for businesspeople could pass. Herostratus (talk) 13:42, 22 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with this idea, for the reasons given.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:31, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I was the one who directed Zigzig20s here, after I nominated his articles for deletion discussion. I sill think they fail GNG/BIO with the possible exception of meeting "multiple independent sources may be combined to demonstrate notability", through as we know that often leads to impass regarding whether this minor coverage is trivial, reliable, etc. However, what I've noted in those two AfDs is that the majority consensus seem to be not that the sources are particularly good but that those businesspeople are important. Of course, this goes against WP:ITSIMPORTANT, but when the consensus is that they are important, that essay should give room to a consideration of SNG like what we do here. It stands to reason that in a capitalistic world, businesspeople should be no less important then politicians, yet they are awarded no special treatment. We need some kind of criteria here. All I can think of now, from past AfDs, is to suggest one - being a CEO of a top company. Of course, what is a top? Notable? List on stock exchanges? Something else? In either case, being CEO is probably not the only criteria for notability for businesspeople, and I hope we can work out some rules here, to prevent future AfDs on articles like the ones that brought us here. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:57, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We also need to more directly address the problem of minor, ephemeral "celebrities" getting articles here, by tightening their notability criteria. The most obvious way to do this is to rule out the entertainment press as independent sourcing. They are not in fact independent; the vast bulk of their income comes from movie, TV, and record company advertising (mostly the same megacorporations across different markets, if you trace the subsidiary relationship, and they often own the publication, too), so these almost-house-organs have a very strong incentive to write in glowing terms about whoever is putting an album out on Warner, appearing in an upcoming Sony Pictures movie, or in an HBO TV series, to scratch the backs of their cash cows. These sources are utterly indiscriminate. If someone is pretty, was seen with someone pretty, or went shopping in ugly clothes, they get full-page spreads. The result of treating them as RS for notability purposes is a firehose of articles like Chipo Chung, which have no reason to exist here, and they do not improve after they narrowly survive AfD. "I found bit-part work, more than one time, as an actor" does not mean "notable" it means "apparently competent or at least well-connected". ("I started a small charity" != notability either.) Similarly, "one-hit wonder" musical acts do not need articles, and should be covered at the article on their one hit. We have tens or hundreds of thousands of celeb-of-the-week fancruft articles like this, because GNG, while a reasonable starting off position, does not really fit all situations. For actors in particular, IMDb already serves the "basic bios of the not-really-famous" purpose to satisfy the curious. In policy terms, this INDY/GNG loophole has led to a WP:NOT#WHOSWHO and WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE problem.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  02:31, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's curious that you've chosen Chipo Chung as an example. A quick Google search shows that she easily passes WP:GNG without invoking the entertainment press at all. She's got extensive coverage in The Evening Standard, The Independent, and BBC. I'm not convinced that there is a "problem of minor, ephemeral celebrities getting articles here," and if there is, I don't think she's a good example. Pburka (talk) 03:05, 23 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

We have statistics for that (which I could cite if needed, but see here for now), and what they do show is that what are drowning other bios are not entertainment celebrities, but minor sport biographies, which constitute something like HALF of all bios created. If we want to tighten the criteria, we need to do something about that. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:04, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• There's four other discussions currently on this page — Knight's Cross Holders, Beauty Pageant Winners (linked), Porn Stars, and Businesspeople — that fundamentally deal with all or part of the same three questions:

1. Where a particular vocation tends to have specialist coverage rather than general/popular coverage, under what circumstances should the subject of an article actually be considered notable? (Is there an SNG or similar?)
2. For a particular specialist achievement (including awards, levels of attainment, or activities), how do we tell whether that achievement should be considered notable in its own right rather than just providing some minor weight, and what sources can be considered fully and/or sufficiently reliable? (Do SNG items minimise ambiguity to help eliminate the need for editors to repeatedly thrash out the same factors at individual AFDs?)
3. If an article does not meet notability requirements, under what consistent set of circumstances would it be expected that the article be merged/redirected (and to what) rather than deleted? (Do SNGs provide guidance* for where aggregated inclusion in wikipedia should be applied? * More common for non-BIO guidelines than BIO guidelines)

For partially dealing with Q2, the suggestion by Dream Focus that "The WP:ANYBIO bit at the top shows awards, etc. Should link to a page that list every award that is seen as notable and if its on that list it counts, no matter what field they are in. You can then discuss adding or removing things there." at the PORNBIO discussion above looks like it could be a useful starting point. ^~Hydronium^~Hydroxide^~(Talk)~ 13:09, 25 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but no, we don't need to stop writing articles about people who are of no interest to you, just because you imagine that that somehow detracts from articles about people who are. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:28, 26 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

User:Hydronium Hydroxide, this is a very good summary, through I'd also add problem number four, which is that such individuals often have in-passing coverage in more mainstream media, and I think our guidelines on what kind of coverage is trivial and which is not is solely lacking too, compounding the problem. Anyway, list of awards is something I am and I am sure others suggested repeatedly. It is a big task, but perhaps there is a way to simplify it: an award is significant if it is notable. Then we just have to enforce Wikipedia:Notability (awards). Oh wait, that never passed so... well, just enforce GNG for awards, and that will take care of that. Still, that leaves the first important question - on coverage by niche, specialist sources - for more discussion. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:43, 29 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• I don't understand the "drowning out" thing. Does someone read Wikipedia front-to-back? How does an article on some "less important" person, impact our article on George W Bush? I just feel people are looking for a problem. WP:NOTPAPER is key. Hobit (talk) 12:45, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Quite. There are reasons for tightening some of the guidelines, in particular where they appear to allow articles about living people to have only unreliable or promotional sources, but "drowning out" is certainly not one of them. No number of articles about minor entertainers or any other type of minor topics can possibly drown out any other article. 86.17.222.157 (talk) 18:10, 31 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]