Notability
Related: fame - influence - significance - importance
Contrast: obscurity
The question of notability
In search of the nature of Wikipedia
A topic has notability if it is known outside a narrow interest group or constituency, or should be because of its particular importance or impact. It is an extension of the notion of prominence for biographical articles. It differs, however, from fame and importance; while all articles on "famous" and "important" subjects are notable, not all notable subjects are famous or important.
There is no official policy on notability. However, there are a number of consensual guidelines regarding notability within a limited subject field, such as for bands, for characters from fiction, and for websites – and some others are under development. See the template to the right. An article's failure to meet these suggested requirements is frequently used as an argument to delete said article on WP:AFD.
Lack of notability is often designated by the phrase "non-notable" or the abbreviation "nn". Whenever using the term or its abbreviation, please explain briefly why you consider the subject to be not notable (e.g. "has written a book but it was never published").
Although notability is not formal policy (and indeed the whole concept of notability is contentious), it is the opinion of some editors that this is what is meant by Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information (which is a formal policy). Many editors also believe that it is fair test of whether a subject has achieved sufficient external notice to ensure that it can be covered from a neutral point of view based on verifiable information from reliable sources, without straying into original research (all of which are formal policies). Failure to meet these criteria does not mean that a subject must not be included; meeting one or more of these criteria does not mean that a subject must be included. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability [Jun 2006]