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Many wikipedians have debated the issue of notability, or more precisely where to draw the line between which articles to keep and which to throw out. This essay assesses the need for debating notability with the outspoken bias against using notability as a criterion in and of itself.
Notability is inherently a vague and ambiguous term, and for that reason many may misinterpret the meaning of this essay. Notability is a term that can be used to mean any of the following:
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Other connotations may also exist. Some of those connotations are necessary for wikipedia (namely verifiability), but many are against the nature of wikipedia. Because there are so many different connotations, this essay argues that people should not use notability as any form of criteria. Note however that if any article fails WP:V, WP:NPOV, or WP:OR it must be fixed or deleted - that is non-negotiable.
Non-notability is a shorthand used by some editors to describe articles whose subject has not achieved sufficient attention to enable editors to verify that it is covered neutrally. Above all, Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, a collection of that which is already known that can be documented from reliable sources, but is not an indiscriminate collection of information.