Wikipedia talk:Notability (comedy)

message: however, you might want to remove the first-person stuff in the final proposal. Looks good though. Crystallina 02:13, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. Good point. I really appreciate your response. --Chris Griswold  (☎☓) 02:17, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sounds good so far; 

message: What it says on the tin. This is not filling a needed gap, it's just adding yet more bureaucracy and arbitrary criteria that thousands of editors adhere to blindly. No, no, no, and no, without prejudice to the contents. Change the existing ones if you must, but we don't need more in this byzantine web of pages.--SB | T 05:03, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I disagree. I see an awful lot of articles about non-notable groups, and it needs to be addressed. --Chris Griswold  (☎☓) 06:59, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Additionally, nobody should blindly adhere to these guidelines; all editors should challenge what they disagree with. Notability guides are there to help editors in creating articles and in judging the validity of articles. Your problem seems to be with how editors use the guides. I'm telling you they are needed. Can you give me a more helpful response? --Chris Griswold  (☎☓) 07:11, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  We don't need more notability guidelines. 

message: I've made a change to a single word in guideline #3. Instead of saying, "Contains at least one person", I've changed it to, "Contains at least one comedian who was once a part of or later joined a group or show that is otherwise notable; note that it is often most appropriate to use redirects in place of articles on side projects and such." The reason for this can be seen at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Foe Pa, which is about an unknown troupe in Los Angeles whose only ability to assert any notability whatsoever is that two of its members already have articles on Wikipedia. The problem is that they both have articles because they're anime voiceover artists. Neither article says anything about them having any comedy background at all. I think this tiny change will prevent other similar gimmick troupes from being able to assert nobility unless they pass one of the other criteria. (After all, if Mike Wallace decided to start an improv group for kicks in the basement of his condo, I don't think it would automatically deserve a Wikipedia entry just because he's on 60 Minutes. --Aaron 05:30, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point. --Chris Griswold  (☎☓) 11:48, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changing one word in guideline 3 to tighten requirements 

message: This guideline has so far proved useful in the deletion discussions for All Sorts of Trouble for the Boy in the Bubble Sketch Comedy, Women Fully Clothed, Swami X, and Foe Pa. --Chris Griswold  (☎☓) 12:01, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Usefulness 

message: I believe that it would be better to add a paragraph on comedians to WP:BIO than to create separate guidelines for various professions. (Radiant) 11:45, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How would that work? BIO currently is not set up for individual types of people. The items in this guideline cover all of the bases with regard to comedians and groups; can it all be pasted into BIO? --Chris Griswold  (☎☓) 09:42, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:BIO]] 

message: I just wanted to expand and clarify some things as you seemed to misunderstand what I had to say on notability:
*The whole point of notability is to establish that an article can actually be written about a subject.  Since all information must be verifiable, one cannot include unreferenced and unsourced information to an article.  If there exists no references to a subject in reliable, third party sourced than there cannot be an article written about that subject.  It is that simple.  
*If a commedian wins awards, appears in a TV show, or any other of a number of things, it does not mean that there exists references about which we can use to write an article.  Notability is not about "worthiness".  It is about what kinds of verifiable information one can build an article around.  If all we have to write about a comedian is that they appeared on a show once, but there is not further information outside of wikipedia to reference, what article can we write?
*The main test is known as the Primary Notability Criteria: Does the subject of the article appear outside of wikipedia as the subject of multiple, third party, non-trivial references?  There is no need to establish notability beyond "Someone else cared enough to write enough about this subject that I can use that information to write this article".  That's it.  Information such as awards, appearences, directories, yellow page entries, etc, may verify that the subject of the article is real, and it does exist, but those sorts of references do not provide enough information to populate the article with referenced facts.  If we cannot add any referenced, non-trivial facts to an article, why have an article in the first place.
*When any secondary criteria extends notability BEYOND the Primary Notability Criteria, it always should do so for a narrowly defined reason, which is a unique problem that could not otherwise be fixed by other means.  For example, in WP:CORP, there is the secondary criteria that "The company or corporation is listed on ranking indices of important companies produced by well-known and independent publications." This criteria is included ONLY to "ensure that our coverage of such rankings will be complete regardless. of whether or not the article on teh particular company will ever be a reasonably encyclopedic article.  To say it in another way, it means that a company that is part of the Fortune 500 list is automatically notable even if no relevent facts can be added to an article about the company beyond this, but this policy exists only to complete the coverage of the Fortune 500 list and for no other reason.  There is no compelling reason that Wikipedia needs complete coverage of, say, Comedy Central's Premium Blend show, and thus, merely appearing on the show should not cause a comedian to merit an article in absence of verifiable and non-trivial information availible outside of wikipedia.
*There does not seem to be any compelling reason that any comedian could be notable and never written about or discussed in reliable sources outside of wikipedia.  Thus, why have all of the 20 or so criteria that allow an article which could never be populated with verifiable, non-trivial facts to be kept.
I know that I was verbose here, but I want to explain in detail what notability means, and that articles still need to be able to contain real, non-trivial, verifiable information.  --Jayron32 03:48, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Response to comments at [[Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)]] 

message: Why should we limit this to comedy?  Why not make a broader "performer" guideline, so we can include things like theatrical troops and magicians who should follow similar guidelines, but whose performances aren't specifically comedy. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 19:03, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  why comedy specifc?