 | 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: Articles on individuals or groups whose notability is less than 50 years old should be subject to a stricter test of notability than WP:GNG. The subjects of such articles should have great stature. |
Wikipedia is becoming overwhelmed with the creation of numerous articles on non-notable individuals, bands and organisations. Every day there is a new tranch of dozens, or even hundreds of them. Many of them are obvious-enough promotion that they can be dealt with by speedy deletion (CSD), but many others cannot; the authors have learnt that they require references and make some attempt at not using so much marketing language. Nevertheless, they are still promotion when the sources are poor quality, give only passing mention, or are the sort of promotion known as churnalism, that is, sources based entirely on the subject's own press releases.
These articles have to go through the articles for deletion (AFD) process to sort them out. The sources have to be examined in detail to get the right decision. This uses up a great deal of our volunteer editor resource and makes the AFD project much more of a chore to be involved with than it needs to be. A simpler and easier to apply criterion is needed for such articles.
The vast majority of problematic pages are on subjects that are currently active. Pages on historic subjects tend not to have these problems. It could be argued that a historic subject being remembered at all in itself makes it somewhat notable.