Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)

message: Since the above attempt resulted in more general discussion, I am starting a new subsection to discuss how an RfC should be phrased. Please avoid general discussion or arguments about the merits of either side. Here is my current proposal based on the discussion above:
Pinging . voorts (talk/contributions) 20:19, 9 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  RfC proposal 

message: According to WP:NPOL people who have been elected to national parliaments and state, province or equivalent legislatures are presumed notable but not people in local bodies. 
My question is what about the autonomous regions that we have in India? They are parts of a state but these aren't mere districts or municipalities, they are far larger than districts and sometimes cover most of a state. In most countries similar autonomous regions are their own province/state. 
Tripura has 8 districts but Tripura TAADC covers 3/4ths of the state; districts and TAADC borders not matching. Meghalaya has 12 districts and is fully covered by 3 autonomous councils: Garo Hills ADC, Khasi Hills ADC and Jaintia Hills ADC composed of 5, 5 and 2 districts respectively. The LAHDC Leh and LAHDC Kargil covers half and half, covering all of Ladakh, etc. There are other states which are smaller and less populous than some of them. Should the people elected to these bodies also be presumed notable similar to state bodies? MrMkG (talk) 23:29, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I remember this came up at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Kali Kumar Tongchangya, where the consensus was to delete (with quite a bit of dissent). The community has been growing less and less tolerant of articles that don't meet the GNG in recent years (for good reason, in my view), so I'd recommend not creating an article unless you have in-depth sourcing, especially given that the NPOL argument is an edge case at best. But the situation at AfD is still unsettled; this one closed as keep while this one (and the one I linked above) closed as delete. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 01:41, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

text: I would say no right now, only because it's not clear whether members of these bodies meet WP:GNG, or only meet WP:GNG through routine coverage. I'd make sure any article passes WP:GNG. SportingFlyer T·C 09:31, 29 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question re [[WP:NPOL]] 

message: Hi guys, would anyone like to help me expand this article? On the it.wiki page there are 203 references (https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabrizio_De_Andr%C3%A9), while on this page there are only 39; this difference is absurd. JacktheBrown (talk) 15:39, 28 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Fabrizio De André]] 

message: Greetings, all. This is to gauge the community's views about a specific criterion regarding the notability of artists, and specifically of artists who exhibit in galleries, e.g. painters, sculptors, and others. The guideline on creative professionals states that "a person is notable if...the person's work (or works) has...4.(b) been a substantial part of a significant exhibition." I recommend that we consider the elimination of that criterion, because the field is full of vanity exhibitions, or, in other words, of exhibitions in galleries whereby the artist undertakes to pay all expenses and the gallery's fee. (A practice similar to vanity publications.) This is a significant, if under-appreciated by the wider public, problem for art appreciation. And the significant percentage of vanity galleries should prompt us to eliminate the criterion for an exhibition in a gallery on its own. It only demands one exhibition but asking for more than one will not ameliorate the noise. Here's a small litany of relevant reports:
*"At the National Art Museum of China, most of the galleries are at present disgraced by near-kitsch vanity exhibitions paid for by the artists or their backers—a routine practice in all of China’s underfunded art institutions, whether public or private." Art in America
*"Not every paid opportunity is a scam, but some are. Paying to exhibit your work in a vanity gallery is not a good career move and will almost never generate sales." Medium
*"A vanity gallery is an art gallery that promises to show and sell a contemporary artist's work for a fee, but in reality, their services are often little more than a scam. In some cases, vanity galleries may even encourage the artist to buy back their own artwork at a significantly inflated price. These galleries have no affiliation with any major gallery or museum and lack the credibility to truly help sell an artist’s work." Cultivate 
*"The situation is compounded by the current overabundance of eager-to-exhibit artists and, believe it or not, the overabundance of artists with willing cash."Painters' Keys
*"The vanity gallery model is NOT a scam, from a legal point of view." The Art Edge
It is asking too much of editors who examine the notability of a painter or a sculptor to peruse the history of each gallery in order to ascertain whether it is a legitimate, non-scamster, non-vanity gallery. Opinions? -The Gnome (talk) 19:27, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I'm not interested in the notability in general of artists but simply and exclusively in the criterion of notability that demands "a significant exhibition." We are inundated with lists of exhibitions in galleries without any indication of said galleries or said exhibitions that they're significant. Hence, my proposal to do away with the 4b criterion altogether. -The Gnome (talk) 19:47, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: That is what I am trying to get at... IMO exhibition significance is going to have to be assessed on a case by case basis. Its a bit like the significant coverage standard, we don't closely define what significant is... We largely leave it up to editorial discretion. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:52, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I understand. I believe that the current wording unnecessarily makes such a discretionary effort more difficult. -The Gnome (talk) 12:52, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

text: Thanks for the response, with which I entirely agree. To your point: When we have an exhibition in a non-notable gallery, it's practically impossible to assess its significance. Hence, we should be asking for more evidence that the subject is notable. (Which is why I believe we should do away with the WP:NARTIST part about "a substantial part of a significant exhibition," which places an extremely low barrier, i.e. Have one exhibition anywhere and you're in Wikipedia! And let its editors fight it out as to whether your exhibition was "significant" as opposed to "insignificant" or even to a "vanity" one. The current wording, practically, invites Wikipedia to host a directory for all artists who have ever been exhibited. -The Gnome (talk) 12:52, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

text: Thank you for your contribution, SouthernNights. Do you have any suggestions as to how editors could establish a gallery's notability or even whether it's a vanity gallery? This is the crux of the issue, as far as I'm concerned, because vanity galleries are rarely, if ever, designated as such in the media or elsewhere. I do not dispute the significance of national museums. Cases like the National Art Museum of China have fortunately, and also fortuitously, been reported, and, therefore, we can legitimately be suspicious of exhibitions in such establishments of otherwise little known artists. But let's set aside national or established museums. The problem are galleries that exhibit anyone and anything at a price. And they are myriads of 'em. So, we are basing notability on one, single, very unstable criterion. -The Gnome (talk) 12:38, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Have you considered an information page like perennial sources? That page is used to sort out reliable media sources from those that can't be trusted. Perhaps a similar information source could be created for museums and galleries? SouthernNights (talk) 14:33, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

text: *Excellent idea. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 22:03, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

text: *The same principle could be applied to ANYBIO #1. Establishing a list of honours and awards that are considered acceptable (or not) to establish N might help resolve some of the ongoing debate about that matter too. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 08:26, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Obviously, in theory, but in practice the two extremes are too entrenched for this to be likely to happen. Ingratis (talk) 08:50, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Fair enough, yet WP:RSP states right at the top that it is an information page which , etc. Notwithstanding, it provides useful information that I would imagine helps guide editors (and reduces the overall number of disputes about reliable sources). -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 09:11, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I was responding specifically to your comment about ANYBIO#1, not to the suggestion about a museum/gallery equivalent of reliable sources. Ingratis (talk) 10:29, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: If we created the info page as an overall list of honors and awards, we could also include museums and galleries on that list. For example, an exhibit at The Louvre could be listed as a honor indicating notability while a museum that accepts vanity payments would be noted as such. (Note: I struck the idea of combining awards and honors with museums and galleries, which would make all this more difficult) We'd need to have reliable sources for the entries, but I agree with Cl3phact0 this might reduce some ongoing debates on all this. SouthernNights (talk) 11:47, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Not sure how combining the two sets would work. I'll take a pass on that. Regardless, one threshold for inclusion on such a list might be that the event or award or distinction would itself have an article on enwiki (which may even be too low a bar, depending on one's point of view) . -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 11:56, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

text: Noted. Let's not commandeer the discussion about "Artists' notability criterion" with yet more ANYBIO #1 chat, let's park it there. A museum/gallery equivalent to WP:RSP seems like an excellent idea. -- Cl3phact0 (talk) 11:49, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: We can totally just focus the list solely on museums and galleries. If the list works, we can always create a different one for awards and other honors. SouthernNights (talk) 12:20, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

text: *Not a bad idea at all, this, SouthernNights. I'll give it a thought after searching for what kind of relevant data, or, at least, information, is out there. -The Gnome (talk) 20:28, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

text: SouthernNights, Cl3phact0, Ingratis, Curbon7, Horse Eye's Back.
*:I worry that by emphasizing exclusion of "vanity" galleries we are creating a false binary of "significant exhibition" vs "exhibition at a vanity gallery", which could lead people to believe "not vanity" is equivalent to "significant". Maybe it would be better to simply add a note to the current criterion at the word "significant" stating that editors should beware vanity exhibitions and that these can occur even at major art galleries and museums such as NAMC. JoelleJay (talk) 23:22, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Artists' notability criterion