Wikipedia:Notability (web)

This page documents an English Wikipedia notability guideline. Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on this guideline's talk page.

Shortcuts WP:WEB WP:NWEB WP:WEBPAGE WP:WEBSITE WP:WEBNOTE

This page in a nutshell: Wikipedia should avoid articles about web sites that could be interpreted as advertising. For material published on the web to have its own article in Wikipedia, it should be notable and of historical significance. Wikipedia articles about web content should use citations from reliable sources.

From WP:NOT § INTERNET:

Internet guides. Wikipedia articles should not exist only to describe the nature, appearance or services a website offers, but should also describe the site in an encyclopedic manner, offering detail on a website's achievements, impact or historical significance, which can be kept significantly more up-to-date than most reference sources, since editors can incorporate new developments and facts as they are made known. See the Current events portal for examples.

This page gives some rough guidelines which most Wikipedia editors use to decide if a form of web-specific content, being either the content of a website or the specific website itself, should have an article on Wikipedia. Web content includes, but is not limited to, blogs, Internet forums, newsgroups, online magazines, other media, podcasts, webcomics, and web portals. Any content accessed via the internet and engaged with primarily through a web browser is considered web content for the purposes of this guideline.^[1]

Wikipedians are averse to the use of Wikipedia for advertising, and the idea that Wikipedia articles are not advertisements is an official policy of long standing. Advertising is either cleaned up to adhere to the neutral point of view or deleted.^[2]

Wikipedia is not a web directory, in that it is not a site that specializes in linking to other web sites and categorizing those links. Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files. Articles which merely include an external link and a brief description of its contents may be deleted.

Topics that do not satisfy notability criteria are dealt with in two ways: merging and deleting. Articles that may be non-notable can be marked with the {{notability}} template to make other editors aware of the problem. When such articles are being listed for deletion, the articles are discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. Alternatively, the proposed deletion process may be used for articles that are uncontroversially deletion candidates, while the {{db-web}} template can be used to mark an article for speedy deletion; see criterion A7 for details.