What Notability Is Not

In consulting with clients on their Wikipedia articles, sometimes the concept of notability gets muddied. Wikipedia guidelines clearly state that a subject must be notable by Wikipedia standards in order to qualify for a stand-alone article. But what exactly constitutes notability? Rather than discuss what notability is, in this post I will try to define what notability is NOT.

*Notability Is Not Commendability
Many people have done things that are very commendable. You may have donated $1 million to AIDS research, done 1000 hours of community srvice or received the Employee of the Month Award at your job. These are all commendable, but the are not criteria for notability in the Wikipedia sense.

*Notability Does Not Mean Accomplished
An oral surgeon may have performed 100 successful root canal operations. While this may make her acccomplished, it does not necessarily make her notable. Notability has a historic and more broad reaching element to it.

*Notability Is Not Inherited
Your Great Uncle may have won a Pulitzer Prize. But his notable achievement is not passed on to you. Your notability cannot be inherited from his simply by virtue of birth or blood relatedness.

*Notability Does Not Mean Noteworthy
You may be a professor who has been cited in an article by a peer in an academic journal. But your research is not the main subject of the journal entry. You are noteworthy, but not neccesarily notable in the Wikipedia sense.

*Notability Is Not Infamy
Your boss may have robbed the company for hundreds of thousands of dollars. She may even have gone to trial and been put in prison for her crime. But if no major news publication covered the story, she is not for all that notable.

*Notability Does Not Equate to Uniqueness
Uniqueness can sometimes support a subject's notability, but they are not the same thing. You may be a lawyer who writes poetry. As far as lawyers go, you may be considered unique. But that doesn't mean you are notable. You may be the only person in your firm who does what you do, but if no one has written about it, you are not notable.

*Notability Is Not Citability
Your work or achievement may have been cited in other publications. But this in itself does not establish notability. The quality and type of the publication is key. If, however, your work is cited by the majority of authorities in your field, then you might be notable as a result.