Wikipedia:50-year rule
 | 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.
The proposed rule
[edit]Articles whose subject is a person, organisation, band, or otherwise falls within the scope of CSD criterion A7, and whose claim to notability is less than 50 years old, should be subject to a stricter criterion of notability called great stature.
This criterion should not apply to articles that do not fall under the scope of CSD A7.
The 50 years is measured from the events that made the subject notable. It does not refer to the age of the subject.
Great stature
[edit]A subject has great stature if at least one of multiple sources is a film or book from a reputable publisher who is independent of the subject and is entirely devoted to discussing the subject. A subject of great stature would be expected to have multiple sources discussing the subject in great depth, but they do not all need to be full-length books or films. Great depth is a more stringent requirement than the general notability guideline where a paragraph or two might count as discussion in depth. Great stature requires more than this, perhaps a chapter in a book, or a substantial portion of a film.
Grandfathering
[edit]To avoid a Stalinist purge of existing articles, the 50-year rule should not be used as a rationale for nominating an article for deletion at AFD. However, participants at AFD are free to use the 50-year rule as an argument for deletion once an article has already been nominated on some other basis. This is therefore not a firm grandfather clause, but mass nomination of established articles will not be acceptable.