Wikipedia:Not every single thing Donald Trump does deserves an article
 | 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: Not every single thing Donald Trump does deserves an article. If the latest outrage has no significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed not to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list. |
It happened again, didn't it? Donald Trump, "esteemed" former President of the United States, did something stupid/made a weird tweet/"owned the libs"/contradicted himself/etc. Again. Quick, let's add it to Wikipedia! Well... not so fast.
Why not?
[edit]As a former President, a lot of things that Donald Trump does are in fact covered on Wikipedia, but only in proportion to what reliable, secondary sources give them. Most chatter on Twitter and other social media is neither reliable nor secondary. If no "real" media source has covered this latest outrage, stop there; Wikipedia can't cover it either. If there are at least some news stories talking about the issue... it depends. Was this an actual policy change, or just everyday celebrity churnalism? Are the sources heavily partisan ones (far-left, far-right, or opinion blogs)? Per Wikipedia is not a newspaper:
Even if there is media coverage, if it's passing insubstantial coverage, consider leaving the topic alone – much of news is vulnerable to WP:RECENTISM. It didn't matter; it'll just be clutter in a year's time that nobody cares about. (More formally, consider checking recency bias against 10-year or 20-year test.) In the case where a seemingly random tweet becoming relevant later – then we can fix it later, too.
Examples (not limited to the US Presidency)
[edit]- President Trump's tweets about Eddie Gallagher proved to in fact be an early sign he was going to intervene in the case, and were adequately covered by the media.
Typical complaints
[edit]"This topic totally qualifies by all your criteria! Why was my article deleted / redirected?"
- So maybe your topic is relevant, but that doesn't mean it deserves its own separate article. It may well be best served as a short paragraph in an existing article. Check out Presidency of Donald Trump and its many sub-articles – Immigration policy of Donald Trump, Donald Trump judicial appointment controversies, False or misleading statements by Donald Trump, and so forth. If the section gets really long, it can always be split back off to a separate article later.
"Why are you covering up this horrible crime Trump revealed?" (Or, alternatively...)
"Why was my section on this wild, obviously false accusation that shows Trump is crazy deleted?"
- An additional concern with Donald Trump is the "allegations" problem. Per the biography of living persons policy, if the thing that Donald Trump did lately was "claim negative/criminal things about another living person", that topic needs to be handled very carefully. Sometimes, the allegation is both sufficiently covered in reliable sources as well as unavoidably a notable part of the person's experience (Joe Scarborough § Media career for an example), but in general, Wikipedia errs on the side of caution – even when the accuser is or was a world leader. Better to say nothing than to say something libelous.