Wikipedia talk:Notability (artists) (failed proposal)

message: Picking up my own suggestion (Feb 20) about a 3-section structure, I've now put a few basic sentences of introduction into the text. If we feel that what we want to say about "not notable" can be covered concisely in this first section, then I admit that my idea about "negative indicators" is unnecessary.  But, otherwise, if there is going to be more "nn" detail then I feel that ought to come later - after the "positive" stuff - as a matter of style and presentation.  --Mereda 08:18, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Structure 

message: I have been looking around re. fine art awards and found many more than I have expected so I would like some input of which ones we should take: 
Most fine art awards are seemingly awarded in Europe where even small cities like Bonn award 4 with substantial price money. Additionally there are hundreds of private prizes. Price money ranges from 5000 Euros (6.000 dollars) to about 50.000 Euros (1500 Euros in beginner's awards). On the other hand there are prizes that have been awarded since the beginning of last century where prize money is seemingly secondary because it is pretty low.
To be considered for these awards in some cases one has to apply, in others contestants are chosen by an independent jury of art experts.
My proposal would be that we certainly take the older ones (i.e. more than 50 years) regardless of other circumstances. The ones where contestants are chosen should also be on our top list.
The negative list would be awards sponsored exclusively for publicity reasons (i.e Film manufacturers photo contests etc.) and awards that are awarded only once or the amount of prize money and/or press coverage make it evident that they are geared towards amateurs. 17:26, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Many notable awards, for example in the real of literature, are younger then 50 years. While fine arts does not include literature, I wonder if by excluding newer awards we are not excluding many notable awards: consider that some pretty notable countries (ex. Czech Republic, Slovenia, Ukraine) did not even exist 50 years ago. I'd suggest a different approach: a notable fine art award is, simply, notable - it should be able to holds its own as an individual article (i.e. mentioned in variour reliable sources, etc.). We may want to apply this same rule of thumb to exhibitions, museums, and any kind of source which we would consider are enough to make an artists mentioned/related to them notable.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  18:30, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  sounds good, does anybody have an overview about articles already existing, if not should we start a list? Alf photoman 19:32, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There's :Category:Art awards to start with. There are probably a lot of gaps in Wiki coverage (like only starting Vincent Award from these discussions) so a list with redlines makes sense to me. The logical point is that "notability" = WP:N, so the redlines are awards that we expect properly-sourced articles can be written about. Beyond the ones we can spot in advance, there are always going to be other valid awards around the globe and IMO the practical answer for them is not a list. The practical answer is more likely to be a statement of principle in a guideline.Mereda 20:49, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Re the above, the annual Turner Prize is by MILES the biggest UK prize, & any winner is absolutely notable just on that. One winner per year - though I think they split it once? It was founded in 1984, prize money £40,000 (80,000 near enough USD).  Shortlist of 4; I think even being on that would be fair evidence of notability - you will see on the article only a handful of the 80-odd short-listed artists are currently redlinks.  Some very prestigeous prizes don't need to give big bucks though. Johnbod 03:48, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Most don't give big bucks, but there are additional perks... I rather take no money and a highly publicized exposition than 80 grand, it is going to net more due to TV reports, inclusion in Sunday supplements and so on Alf photoman 15:05, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of notable fine art awards 

message: :First of all, we need to make sure we are not contradicting Wikipedia:Notability (people). We should also not try to create more restrictive guideline: i.e. if an artist passes WP:N(P), he should pass WP:N(Artist) and vice versa. Our proposal should simplify dealing with artists, not make it harder for them to get included on Wikipedia or add another layer of beaurocracy.
:Second, if we are dealing with Fine art only, the current title is somewhat confusing - as musicians described in Wikipedia:Notability (music) are artists, obviously, but not 'fine artists'. This should be included in the title: if we keep 'arists' we should include musicians, if not, we need to change the title.
:Third. One way or another, Wikipedia:Notability (pornographic actors) should be subsumed into our guideline. Fine arts includes film by (our) definition, thus actors - I see no reason why they would need a separate notability guideline. I actually would suggest working closely with Wikipedia:Notability (films) and developing a secton on notability of actors in general with the help of editors interested in that aspect.
:-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  18:22, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  regarding "Third": A wonderful idea in principle, but note the pornographic film industry is rather extreme in the film industry in many ways: very large number of units produced, extremely low mainstream coverage relative to industry size, extremely high Internet coverage relative to industry size... --AnonEMouse (squeak) 18:38, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I tend to agree that actors and painters are generally notable for different reasons. An actor is generally noted by the degree of recognition among the broad public, while most painters are noted by the recognition of a small group of specialists. Actors are generally there for the moment (cause, sincerely who really knows nowadays who E. J. Robinson or Ed Wood was, yet in their day they were notable) while so far sculptors and painters have left a legacy through their work that lasts centuries and therefore measured by a totally different standard as actors Alf photoman 22:24, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overlapping with similar guidelines 

message: It seems like all we need to add is a line in WP:BIO that says "producers of notable works, though those known solely for their affiliation with a single work may be better off merged with its page" and that'd work for authors of notable books, creators of notable paintings, directors of notable films, etc. Notability in general is nontrivial coverage in independent sources, and things like art reviews or criticism would obviously pass that.  I'm not sure if there's anyone this standard would allow the inclusion of who's currently dubious. Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 03:36, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Basically this guideline is supposed to serve as clarification and helpful reference during the AfDs. Sure, WP:BIO is enough in theory - but nonetheless we have a growing number of specific guidelines, which help as instead of applying general guidelines and translating it into the language of the subfield (academia, artists, politicians) every time we have this shortcut (and consider that this is the same logic that WP:BIO used when split from WP:N - we are have adapted notability from general ideas to people, and are now adopting it to specific groups of people).-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  03:55, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: And we started the whole discussion with the practical issue of interpreting "painters, sculptors ... whose work is widely recognised" for contemporary artists advertising their work widely on the web. As someone said Feb 14 "I think we need something more specific to prevent - as one of the commentators on AFD put it - turning Wikipedia into an artist webdirectory." So far at least we've not boiled down our thinking into something concise enough that would fit within WP:BIO, but let's see what we end up with. If we can clarify a broad field of artists then that would be worth a neat separate guideline.  --Mereda 07:52, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

text:  There is where the discussion started, the problem is with one or two lines we cannot remedy the biggest problem, avoiding that Wiki turns into an artist webdirectory. Almost every artist, notable or not, can come up with some mentions in a newspaper about opening an exposition or being part of one. That would suffice WP:BIO criteria (heck, even I can come up with those) but that is not a reliable indicator of notability because nothing is said about the quality of the exposition Alf photoman 14:32, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It wouldn't meet WP:BIO as it would be trivial. Editors have commonsense and a few lines in a newspaper about an exhibition in the village hall would obviously not be seen as sufficient. There will be grey areas of course, but they will be scrutinised in the debate, and considered along with any other factors. Tyrenius 02:18, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

text:  Or sportsman webdictionary, politician webdictionary, etc. WP:BIO is a catch all, but its useful to have helpful detailed policies on most popular subgroups, so we don't have to reinterpret WP:BIO for each group. Think of it as 'writing down precedents': this guideline (and similar) is nothing new, it's just details of consistent WP:BIO interpretations that has been (re)invented over and over again during many artists AfDs.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  18:43, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

text: *Okay, try "one or two paragraphs" in WP:BIO? I mean, yes, you do have a good point, but it's going to be seriously confusing if we come up with a dozen or so biography-related guidelines for various professions. I would really prefer keeping them on one page for clarity's sake. >Radiant< 10:47, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Is this necessary?

message: I thought maybe there's no point re-inventing the wheel, so as an experiment, I took the page Wikipedia:Notability (music) as a model, adapted it and did a bit of self-brain-storming, which is on my Draft 1 page above. It is only a draft for a draft, maybe a catalyst.  I think it's important to remember we are trying to draw up guidelines, not rules, so they don't need to be too specific in terms of mentioning actual examples. Some of the above conversation is getting too pedantic and prescriptive. The judgement of editors will makes a suitable interpretation if the right principles are enunciated. We need to think in terms both of how editors have evaluated artists in AfDs etc, and also how the world and the art world reach an evaluation in real life. Through stating some possible means whereby sufficient notability can be merited, we instantly exclude the definite non-notable and instantly include the absolutely notable, while giving a gradation in between where the only deciding factor possible will be editorial evaluation. What we don't want is a rigid "tick list", which would be impossibly unwieldy to achieve and is not the wiki way. We are "editors" in order to make editorial judgements! I'm not quite sure where to go from here, so I'll see what sort of reaction I get first. Tyrenius 06:17, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I like that, but every "major", "significant" etc begs a question (as in the current draft), and I think some of the criteria are covered by the basic & normal book/media coverage one:6, 11, 13, 15, 19.  What distinguishes notability for artists from that for other people are the significance of exhibitions, prizes,and sales to major collections (or for major prices).  I appreciate yours is very comprehensive, but I think where people pass anyway on normal WP:BIO, we don't need to spell out things here.  My thoughts.  Johnbod 05:19, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems reasonable enough, though I think it is OK to use terms like "significant" and allow them to be interpreted by editors when making their assessment. A degree of latitude is not disasterous, and would certainly rule out something which is patently not significant. Tyrenius 06:04, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Feel free to take what you want from it. Tyrenius 06:04, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[User:Tyrenius/Draft_1]]

message: What has evolved here is not significantly different than what is evolving at WP:BIO.  I suggest that this has become redundant and in the interest of simplicity and preventing further instruction creep this be rejected. --Kevin Murray 04:36, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Disagree. This is much more useful for artist-related AfD then WP:BIO.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  05:58, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Can you cite some specifics? --Kevin Murray 06:20, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Hang on. The reworking of creative professionals in WP:BIO has moved a good bit towards meeting our concerns for clarification in this field; and, personally, I'd rather have one good guideline than a clutter of mini-guidelines. But what we've got here as a group of editors is a focus on applying a guideline in practice. It feels too soon to me (since we started talking and testing AFDs in mid-Feb) to say that development here should be stopped. --Mereda 07:51, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: * But, could these fine efforts be focused to a broader effort?  Could the more specific issues be discussed in an essay? --Kevin Murray 08:03, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Consider also that WP:PROF was in development for over a year, and it first started to be used as an argument at AfD debetes and only after it became a custom, it was seriously considered for a guideline (and I am suprised it is not one yet, actually).-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk  14:40, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

text: A group of editors concentrating on artist AfDs are discovering issues that are particularly pertinent to artists, who tend as a breed to be rather more self-promotional than the average doctor or fireman. Notability within their field may not be so apparent through the usual means as it would be for a politician, for example, as it is a more specialised and often less publicly covered occupation. I suggest that this proposal is allowed to work through such issues to determine what they are and how they should be treated. At such point, it would be appropriate to see if a happy integration can be achieved with WP:BIO. Artists have been a relatively neglected area on wiki hitherto, and it would be good to take advantage of the fact that editorial interest is now being focused on them. Tyrenius 01:31, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

text: *That is a reasonable approach. If you want to discuss artist-specific issues and can demonstrate consensus for that, go for it. I am somewhat dubious as to whether there will be consensus to keep it on a separate page, but feel free to prove me wrong. >Radiant< 10:20, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

text:  We have a very special case here, one the one side the artists who are mostly accomplished self-projectors, on the other hand we have a public that accepts about anything a gallerist tells them and art-experts more interested in keeping the value of their recommendations as high as possible to increase their fame as experts. In between all that is art, which is - at the end of the day - the only thing lasting. The biggest concern that crystallized out of discussion we had before is to keep the art in the center -- therefore a notable artist is he/she who created notable art and the definition should go more towards the notability of their creation  AlfPhotoman 20:49, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

text: * I don't see that being acomplished here any more solidly than it is at the revised BIO page; however, I agree with your premise that the body of work for any creative profession is the core of the notability (aka: encyclopedic suitability). --Kevin Murray 21:08, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  On the other hand... I don't really care where the guideline is, maybe even this fear of ending up with WP:MEDIC and WP:FIREMAN is not so unfounded  AlfPhotoman 21:10, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Well I agree we should let things continue at the AfD VA page (thanks for setting that up, which I don't think i've said before) & see what emerges. It is already interesting how discussions do focus on press & exhibitions, whilst other things in the drafts, especially prices, haven't featured so far as I've been following the page.  So we may harden up criteria (or we may not) in a way that can usefully be set as policy.  Johnbod 02:43, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

text: The factor that you're not taking into account, which at the end of the day is the most important one, is the good judgement of editors. The guideline might specify "award" which literally would include a £200 grant from a local arts council, but editors will simply rule in an AfD that such an award is not significant enough to merit inclusion by itself. Likewise a "group exhibition" will be assessed by editors as to whether it is a run-of-the-mill commercial gallery exhibit or something of greater repute. As I've already pointed out, these things are working fine at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Visual arts. It it ain't broke... Tyrenius 02:10, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I still think some specific guidelines would be a good thing on balance, especially since that offers potential authors some guidelines when considering whether to contributing an article. It also offers guidelines for editors who are considering whether to nominate for an AfD. While WikiProject Deletion sorting/Visual arts might be doing very good work, it might be have some guidelines for heading off problems before they reach AfD stage. Peter G Werner 06:20, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Propose rejecting this guideline

message: Please don't use bullet points for indenting talk. Use colons per WP:TPG. Thanks. Tyrenius 02:27, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Bullet points

message: (adapted from my post on Wikipedia talk:Notability (people))
We should be thinking in terms not only of who we consider notable (i.e. our award to the person, as it were) but also in terms of whom we should provide information about in order to properly inform a reader interested in the topic. They are often, but not always, the same.  I think wiki can provide a great service by collating information that exists (with  verifiable sources that support notability) but is not necessarily easy to get hold of or to find in one handy form. That's the purpose of an encyclopedia - a one stop knowledge shop. Take Hoxton/Shoreditch for example. It is an area with a worldwide reputation for "cutting edge" art. If it's doing its job properly, wiki should be able to give anyone interested in it a comprehensive insight into its activities, galleries, artists, shows etc. It may be harder to find information on some of e.g. the people involved, than it might be for a bog standard professional gallery artist, yet they are actually of more note in terms of historic interest. Editorial judgement has a part to play in this, and any guidelines must allow some flexibility. Rigid rules can sometimes produce the opposite outcome to that which they were implemented to achieve. 
Tyrenius 06:49, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Providing needed information

message: No progress has been made toward consensus to adopt this as a guideline and the topic seems well covered now at BIO.  I suggest that efforts to fine tune be focused at BIO.  --Kevin Murray 18:32, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Rejected Tag

message: User:Radiant! requested a third opinion on the matter of the inclusion or otherwise of the rationale for rejection on a number of project pages.  I believe that given this is quoting directly from WP:POL, this is duplication, and is not necessary.  However, if User:Kevin Murray feels that other editors may be in doubt over the matter of why the pages are considered rejected, it may be appropriate to leave a note on this talk page (possibly under the "rejected" header above).  Chris cheese whine 10:42, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[WP:3O]] 

message: A discussion is taking place to address the redirect :Notability (artists). The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 March 14#Notability (artists) until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion.  Oiyarbepsy (talk) 06:14, 14 March 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Notability (artists)" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]]