 | This is an essay on notability. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Ultimately, the community decides if a subject is intrinsically notable. |
Inherent notability is the idea that certain subjects on Wikipedia qualify for articles on the English Wikipedia merely by the nature of their subjects, and without considering whether the subjects meet the Wikipedia's notability guidelines for inclusion or whether any material on the subject can be verified. The contrasting view argues that nothing is inherently notable since notability requires verifiable evidence and is not conferred by association with other topics.
The word inherently means that, by the nature of the subject, it intrinsically belongs in a given group, regardless of any other considerations. Notability in wikijargon is a claim, based on WP:N, about whether an article belongs in the encyclopedia. To say that a subject is inherently notable, then, is to say that the subject intrinsically belongs in the encyclopedia, regardless of any other considerations—even including such critical considerations as whether or not it is possible for the resulting article to comply with the core content policies of Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research, and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view.
What makes a member of a category "inherently notable" or "not inherently notable" is really the way they tend to be viewed by the Wikipedia community. A sense of this can be given in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes. There are some topics for which editors have accepted all member subjects as notable, e.g. census-designated places. Every geographic area used by the U.S. Census Bureau now has an article on Wikipedia whether or not it is the subject of "non-trivial coverage by multiple sources".
On the other hand, there are other topics for which not all member subjects are considered to be inherently notable. For example, bands are only viewed as notable if they seriously are shown to meet Wikipedia's inclusion guidelines.