This page is within the scope of WikiProject Wikipedia essays, a collaborative effort to organise and monitor the impact of
Wikipedia essays. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the
discussion. For a listing of essays see the
essay directory.EssaysWikipedia:WikiProject EssaysTemplate:WikiProject EssaysWikiProject Wikipedia essays pages
Note: this list includes articles about people, things or incidents which were newsworthy and have 2 or more press or TV citations, but some do not judge to be encyclopedic. In a few cases, there are news articles about the subject, but no one bothered to add the news sources.
Edison 15:57, 8 June 2007 (UTC)reply
I no longer have the time to try to include 100% of such articles,from AFDs. Others are encouraged to add those they spot.
Edison 16:31, 18 September 2007 (UTC)reply
Closed as Keep (widespread news coverage continues.)
Edison 03:22, 12 May 2007 (UTC)reply
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Stacy Meyer May 11, 2007. Worker entered electrical vault at Scientology premises without authorization or safety precautions and was electricuted. Anti-scientology sites
[1] called it was a suspicious death,but officially an accident.
Edison 20:59, 12 May 2007 (UTC)reply
Closed as No consensus, default to KeepEdison 18:21, 29 May 2007 (UTC)reply
Deleted after second AFD, which closed 24 Dec 2010.
Edison (
talk) 18:53, 25 October 2017 (UTC)reply
(
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wang Jeu June 8, 2007. Chinese woman stomped a kitten to death and video was posted on the web, gained publicity. Closed as Delete Closing said "The result was Delete per
WP:NOTNEWS and
WP:BLP. - KrakatoaKatie 22:22, 15 June 2007 (UTC)"
Edison 05:39, 8 June 2007 (UTC)reply
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jessica Michalik June 17, 2007. 15 year old at concert died of asphyxia in mosh pit at concert when crowd surged. result was Delete. Overturned by
WP:DRV on June 28 and article was Restored and keptEdison 16:32, 18 June 2007 (UTC)reply
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Margita Bangová Roma begger in Canada, whose whole body shakes, called a fake by newspaper columnist. Result was Keep.Then 20:03, 2 July 2007 JzG (Talk | contribs) deleted "Margita Bangová" with comment"(Egregious violation of WP:BLP. Local news story masquerading as a biography, nothing but a vehicle for bigotry.)"
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Hiroshi Maeue June 22, 2007. Man in Japan sentenced to die for killing 3 people he met online in a "suicide club" who thought he was going to commit suicide with them. He murdered them instead. Result was KeepEdison 19:08, 23 June 2007 (UTC)reply
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Patrick Knight June 27, 2007. Murderer of two people said he wanted a joke to tell as his last words. Later changed his mind before execution. Result was No Consensus.
Edison 15:31, 27 June 2007 (UTC)reply
Articles for deletion/Al Gore III and Noelle Bush July 10, 2007. (AFD title malformed, copied it as listed) Offspring of politicians got in the news for sppeeding, and or drug problems. After lengthy debate for the two articles, the debate was closed as "no consensus" with a suggestion that in the future if
Al Gore III or
Noelle Bush are nominated it should be separately.
Edison 19:50, 12 July 2007 (UTC)reply
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Charlotte Cleverley-Bisman July 18, 2007. Baby in New Zealand got meningococcal infection requiring amputation of arms and legs; press coverage continues three years later as "face of campaign" to get immunizations, and covering her learning to use prosthetics. Closed as KeepEdison 15:54, 18 July 2007 (UTC)reply
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rachel Scott Aug 6, 2007. A shooting victim at Columbine High School. Her family wrote books about her and started a foundation named after her. Result was KeepEdison 02:16, 7 August 2007 (UTC)reply
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Larisa Arapdate=2007 August 9 Aug. 9, 2007. (AFD title malformed, copied it as listed)Russian political dissident involuntarily locked up in psychiatric hospital in what papers call a return to Soviet style psychiatric abuse.KeepEdison 19:46, 11 August 2007 (UTC)reply
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Glenn Murphy Jr. Aug. 11, 2007. Leader of Young Republicans (born 1974) resigned "during a criminal investigation for (allegedly) sexually assaulting a sleeping 22-year-old man after a Young Republicans party on 29 July 2007." Result was KeepEdison 18:27, 11 August 2007 (UTC)reply
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Connie Talbot Aug. 19, 2007. 6 year old girl was runner up in "Britain's Got Talent" show, got and lost record contract, had Youtube video with 8 million views. Result was No consensusEdison 15:48, 20 August 2007 (UTC)reply
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Azia Kim Aug 26, 2007. Posed as Stanford University student for 8 moonths in 2006-2007, attending classes, staying in dorm.
Edison 21:04, 27 August 2007 (UTC) - result was delete BLP1.reply
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Camille Cleverley Sept 18, 2007. College student disappeared, last seen alive on August 30, 2007, and her body was found on September 9 at base of cliff. Presumed dead from accidental fall.
Edison 16:31, 18 September 2007 (UTC) result was Deletereply
University of Florida Taser incident Sept 19, 2007. Student tasered at Kerry Q&A session at a college when he would not yield the microphone.
Edison 13:38, 19 September 2007 (UTC) result was keepreply
Other policies and guidelines with similar provisions
Since the discussions on this guideline proposal occurred, two official policy pages have had certain provision added similar to ideas expressed here, and have been cited in AFDs, as has this (now) essay:
WP:NOT#IINFO In
WP:NOT says 10:News reports. Wikipedia properly considers the long-term historical notability of persons and events, keeping in mind the harm our work might cause. The fact that someone or something has been in the news for a brief period of time does not automatically justify an encyclopedia article. While Wikipedia strives to be comprehensive, the policies on biographies of living persons and neutral point of view should lead us to appropriately contextualize events. The briefer the appearance of a subject in the news the less likely it is to create an acceptably comprehensive encyclopedic biography. Even when news events themselves merit an encyclopedia article of their own, additional biographies of person(s) involved may not be necessary as they could largely duplicate relevant information. Timely news articles, however, are welcome on our sister project Wikinews." This provision was added on May 28, 2007
[2] by
User:Jimbo Wales tp
Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not.
This agrees with the
WP:BLP section "Articles about living people notable only for one event" which says "Wikipedia is not a newspaper. The bare fact that someone has been in the news does not in itself imply that they should be memorialized forever with an encyclopedia entry. Where a person is mentioned by name in a Wikipedia article about a larger subject, but remains of essentially low profile themselves, we should generally avoid having an article on them. If the reliable sources only cover the person in the context of something else, then a separate biography is probably unwarranted. Court cases, crimes, and natural disasters, for examples, should be presented as unified articles that involve all sides, based on reliable secondary sources, and not primary-source material interpreted only by Wikipedians. Marginal biographies on people with no independent notability can give undue weight to the events in the context of the individual, and create redundancy and additional maintenance overhead. In such cases, a redirect is often the best option." This was added there by
User:Kusma[3]on May 28, 2007, based on earlier discussions.
These policies can be used to argue for deletion or redirects for articles about someone who was in the news (however widely covered) for some unusual manner of death, for having some rare disease or medical condition, or for committing or being the victim of a crime, for some embarrassing incident, or for being an internet meme because of a photo or video. It still leaves no obvious basis for arguing to delete a story which had multiple substantial coverage in reliable independent sources, but was a "watercooler story" about some freak occurrance such as a cute animal in distress, which tends to be a ratings booster for TV news shows, but of questionable encyclopedic nature. Clearly, if a child got a pumpkin-shaped bucket stuck on his head and was an internet meme and TV show and newspaper article subject, we have a basis for deleting an article about him. We should be equally able, through a policy provision, to delete a similar story about an animal.
Edison 18:42, 1 June 2007 (UTC)reply
Interesting deletion and closure of an AFD about an apparently non-notable Rabbi who got arrested for tax fraud and a bio article was created rather than an article about the alleged crime:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Naftali Tzvi Weisz.
WP:NOT#NEWS was cited to delete a story with 8 sources over a 2 day period.
Edison (
talk) 14:37, 24 December 2007 (UTC)reply
The results show that in the collective judgement of editors who participate in AFDs, there are some articles based on news stories which appear to satisfy
WP:N and
WP:A, with multiple independent reliable sources having substantial coverage, which may be newsworthy but are not encyclopedic. Murders are highly newsworthy. Any murder gets coverage in all local news media. If the victim is a child, it is likely to get national news coverage. If a child is kidnapped, and especially if the child is white and from a middle or upper class family, the coverage is likely to be international, such as
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Madeleine McCann. Missing white females are especially likely to get extensive news coverage. If the case leads to a "Megan's law" the creation of "Amber Alerts" or other corrective measures then the case had an enduring effect on society and seems likely to get kept in the AFD process. The new policy
WP:NOT#NEWS has been cited in numerous cases where a newsworthy story was deleted on the grounds that it was not encyclopedic. The article are likely to be reoriented as the "case" or the "murder" or the "kidnapping" or the "suicide" rather than a memorial article about the person, whoc like most of us has typically not led a notable life prior to the crime.
Edison 14:54, 18 July 2007 (UTC)reply
The policy
WP:N#TEMP says "A short burst of present news coverage about a topic does not necessarily constitute objective evidence of long-term notability." This undercuts claims that a subject is notable because there were lots of news stories about it in a short period after the story broke.
Edison (
talk) 04:52, 30 December 2007 (UTC)reply
It's worth mentioning it doesn't help that the
WP:NOTNEWS essay sets a significantly higher standard than the
WP:NOT#NEWS policy.
WikiScrubber (
talk) 20:49, 5 March 2009 (UTC)reply
I would like to second that this is a real issue (and one I've seen and been at fault for well before the linked debate above). While WikiScrubber's suggested name doesn't sound ideal to me, it is better than what we have now IMO.
Hobit (
talk) 20:26, 5 March 2009 (UTC)reply
Sorry, I haven't been able to come up with anything better. You're more than welcome to!
WikiScrubber (
talk) 20:49, 5 March 2009 (UTC)reply
I'm not convinced this page needs a shortcut at all.
WP:News articles is fine. Meanwhile, the NOTNEWS shortcut is definitely causing confusion with NOT#NEWS. I'm just going to be bold and redirect WP:NOTNEWS to the appropriate section of WP:NOT. I have nothing against essays (or even {{failed}} proposals subsequently labeled as essays, which is what this page is), but we want to avoid presenting them in a way that causes them to be confused with "official" guidance.--
Father Goose (
talk) 22:00, 5 March 2009 (UTC)reply
Did not even consider that option. Thanks.
WikiScrubber (
talk) 23:07, 5 March 2009 (UTC)reply
I agree with Father Goose: confusions like that should be avoid, especially when it's easy to do so.
Xasodfuih (
talk) 13:02, 11 March 2009 (UTC)reply