Wikipedia:Notabilitymandering

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.

Shortcuts WP:NOTABILITYMANDERING WP:NOTEMAND WP:NMD WP:NOTEEXCEPTIONS WP:MANDERING

This page in a nutshell: When designing or debating inherently notable categories or other notability criteria, keep it simple, stupid.

Notability guidelines, whether categories which are considered inherently notable or something along the likes of WP:GNG, should be as consistent and simply defined as possible. Any such guideline which contains inadequately justified exceptions, provisos, and/or loopholes is an example of notabilitymandering (a portmanteau of "notability" and "gerrymandering").

Consider the following example:
All foo are inherently notable except for/provided that bar

Such statements can be acceptable at times, given that bar is a reasonable and non-arbitrary exception. But if bar is a single article, or a few articles, that is/are excluded from the category for such reasons as WP:IDON'TLIKEIT or WP:WHOCARES, or a proviso such as length or number of redlinks that is irrelevant to the article's content and/or relationship to the category it should be removed. (Practical considerations, such as the number of all foo potentially drowning out notable foo, may be permissible sole reasons for such an exception, but in that case the most reasonable bar ought to be chosen.)

This starts becoming more important if there are multiple such exceptions and provisos, or especially when they are nested. Consider:
All foo are inherently notable except for bar, but including article fizz within group bar

Such criteria should be avoided unless there is a really good reason for their inclusion.

Even though "inherent non-notability" doesn't exist on Wikipedia, any category of articles that is discouraged or prohibited (such as WP:NOT, or what the community has decided as not inherently notable) should also follow this principle. Consider the example

Foo is not an inherently notable category, but article foo1 within foo is inherently notable

Such criteria should be avoided without really good cause lest it become the analogous evil of nonnotabilitymandering.