Tilcayo Cats:Notability

This page is a Tilcayo Cats policy. The Clowder and all of The Coalition follow it. Shortcut: TC:N

Tilcayo Cats is lean by design. We keep a page only when the world has already taken real notice of its subject. We don't create notice, and we don't give it for a fee. This page sets out the one test every topic must pass.

The test

A topic is notable when all of these are true:

1. At least three sources cover it. Several pieces from one publisher, one author or one news event count as one source.
2. Each source is independent. It has no financial, personal or professional link to the subject, and the subject, its agents, sponsors or employer didn't write, commission, pay for or place it.
3. Each source is reliable. It is a published outlet with editorial oversight, fact-checking and a record of corrections: established newspapers and magazines, books from reputable publishers, peer-reviewed work, and serious trade or specialist press.
4. Each source is secondary. It analyses, explains or evaluates the subject, rather than just reporting what the subject said or did.
5. Each source gives significant coverage. It deals with the subject directly and in detail, so we could write a verified paragraph from it alone. Passing mentions, listings, directory entries, results tables and quotes inside articles about something else don't count.
6. The coverage is lasting. A single burst of news around one event doesn't make a person or organisation notable. Cover the event instead, if it passes this test itself.

Meeting the test makes a topic eligible. It doesn't guarantee a page: we can still merge a thin topic into a broader article, or leave it out.

No shortcuts

We have one test. We don't use subject-specific notability guidelines, and a topic can't qualify on any of these alone:

• Artists and creatives (no equivalent of WP:NARTIST, WP:CREATIVE or WP:AUTHOR): exhibitions, collections, "significant new concepts" or reviews that don't meet the test above.
• Music (no equivalent of WP:NMUSIC or WP:NBAND): chart positions, record labels, tours, airplay, festival slots, streams, plays, downloads, followers, or membership of a notable band.
• Academics (no equivalent of WP:NPROF): posts held, citation counts, h-index, named chairs or society fellowships.
• Sport (no equivalent of WP:NSPORT): appearances, caps, results, rankings or taking part in a competition.
• Companies and organisations (no equivalent of WP:NCORP carve-outs): size, funding, customers, listings or trade-show presence. (Publishers and publications are covered by the narrow source-context rule below; it applies to nothing else.)
• Places, products, media and anything else: existence, official status, sales, ratings, box office or download figures.
• Awards: a nomination never counts. A win counts only through what independent sources write about the subject because of it.

Any of these can go in an article once the topic has passed the test, if it is reliably sourced.

What never counts towards notability

These may sometimes support a plain, uncontroversial fact inside an article, but they never count towards the three sources:

• press releases, and articles that rewrite them (churnalism)
• interviews, Q&As, profiles built from the subject's own words, and "in their own words" pieces
• paid, sponsored, advertorial, affiliate or "partner" content, and pieces placed by PR agencies
• listicles, "top 10" and "ones to watch" round-ups, gift guides and award-shortlist write-ups
• self-published material: the subject's own website, blogs, newsletters, Substack, press kits and books from vanity or pay-to-publish presses
• social media, video platforms, podcasts hosted by the subject, forums, fan wikis and open wikis (including Wikipedia itself)
• streaming, view, follower, like or download counts, and chart or sales-tracker screenshots
• award nominations, longlists and shortlists
• directory, database, registry and marketplace entries (company registers, discographies, ticketing, retailer listings)
• content farms, sites that pay contributors for volume, and anything that looks machine-written

Living people

There are no articles about living people, apart from the founder's exception below and the narrow exception for living disabled extreme sports athletes in TC:BLP. Any mention of a living person in another article follows TC:BLP.

Companies and products

There are no articles about companies that are still trading, or about products that are still in production or commercially available, however good the sources. Apart from the narrow exception for publishers below and the named minimal-account exception for Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the only exception is WikiNative, under the founder's exceptions below. This includes historic companies (founded 50 or more years ago) that still trade. Such pages are redirected to a place, industry or product-type page; they are deleted only as a fallback, when there is no suitable target. Defunct companies and discontinued products can have articles if they pass the test above. Video games that are still on sale count as products under this rule; books, films, TV programmes, free software and heritage railways do not fall under it, though they must still meet TC:N and TC:FAMILY.

Exception for publishers: publishers and publications (book and academic publishers, university presses, imprints, newspapers, magazines, news agencies and news websites) may have articles even while they are still trading, under the source-context rule below. They are allowed only as citation infrastructure, so that readers can judge the sources our articles cite. This does not open the door to any other kind of company or product.

Publishers (source context)

Publishers and publications are allowed here only as citation infrastructure. Tilcayo Cats's articles cite thousands of books, journals, newspapers and websites, and readers can judge a citation better when they can find out who published it. That is the whole reason for this rule. It does not open the door to other companies, and it is not a third founder's exception: it gives no subject a page for its own sake. The founder decided it on 3 October 2026.

This rule covers book and academic publishers, university presses, imprints, newspaper and magazine publishers, newspapers, magazines, news agencies and news websites. It does not cover their owners, their parent groups (unless the group is itself mainly a publisher), their staff, or any products other than publications.

What is enough to start a page

Instead of the three-source test, a publisher or publication may have a short article (a stub) if it has at least one of these:

1. one or two independent, reliable, secondary sources, plus primary sources for plain facts;
2. one tertiary source (an encyclopaedia or a reference work with editorial control), plus primary sources;
3. primary sources only (the publisher's own website, its imprint pages, official company or charity registers), for plain, uncontroversial facts: name, founding date, location, ownership, imprints and subjects published.

For these articles only, this overrides the secondary-only rule for first drafts in TC:RS, and the publisher's own pages may be cited for plain facts about itself. A page with no verifiable facts is not created.

Developing upward

Every publisher article is developed upward. Editors add better independent, reliable, secondary sources whenever they exist and expand the page from a stub towards a full article. Primary sources never support evaluative claims ("leading", "respected"), and a page that rests only on primary sources stays a short, factual stub.

Neutral and not promotional

Articles describe; they do not advertise (TC:NPOV). No catalogues, prices, buying or submission links, author-recruitment text or marketing award lists. Living owners, editors and staff are named only as plain, sourced facts in a sentence. There are no biography sections about living staff (TC:BLP).

Reliability and criticism

If reliable secondary sources, or official regulator or court records, document significant criticism of a publisher's or publication's reporting or reliability, the article must have:

• a neutral, sourced summary of it in the lead; and
• a section titled "Reliability and criticism", placed high in the body.

Examples are regulator rulings, significant retractions, fact-check findings, listings on predatory-publishing lists, and English Wikipedia's deprecation of the source. This material is dated and attributed ("Ofcom found in 2019 that…"; "was included on Beall's list in 2014"; "English Wikipedia editors deprecated the site as a source in 2017"). Tilcayo Cats does not give its own verdict and does not mock, and the article contains no allegations about living individuals. The purpose is to help editors make healthy sourcing decisions; see TC:RS and TC:UNRELIABLE.

What this rule does not change

• Having a page is not the same as being reliable. A publisher's article says nothing about whether its works are good sources; see TC:RS.
• Books from vanity or pay-to-publish presses, self-published works and directory entries still never count towards the notability of other subjects (see What never counts).
• Sources that English Wikipedia editors rate as deprecated or generally unreliable get, at most, a title-only redirect to TC:UNRELIABLE, not an article.
• All other companies and products stay under Companies and products above, subject only to the separately recorded named Kew structural-need exception.

Named structural-need exception: Kew

James Lawrie authorised a minimal account of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew on 9 October 2026 for botanical source context and internal navigation. The exact limits permit two short sentences on identity, location and plant-cataloguing role, supported by its scientific documentation. This is a named exception, not a class of eligible organisations or an invitation to expand the article. It confers no exception on other institutions. The two personal founder's exceptions remain separate.

Gaming, farms and AI slop

The Clowder has sharp eyes and a short memory. We reject the following on sight, and repeat offenders are blocked:

• Churnalism. The same story rewritten across several outlets from one press release or PR push counts as one source at most, and usually none.
• Manufactured coverage. This includes pieces bought, swapped or placed to meet this test, "earned media" packages, and outlets that publish anything for a fee.
• Sock and meat farms. This means several accounts run by one person, or people recruited to support a page, !vote or edit on request. Consensus is weighed by argument, not headcount, and farmed accounts are blocked.
• Promotional drafts. Brochure language, peacock and puffery words, calls to action, lists of clients and "visionary"-style biographies get declined. We don't rewrite adverts into articles.
• Undisclosed paid editing. All paid work must be disclosed; see Tilcayo Cats:Voles and paid services.
• AI-generated text without verified sources. Machine-written drafts, or drafts with references that don't exist, don't say what is claimed or weren't checked by a human or gattito reading the source, get rejected in full. One fabricated citation is enough to decline a whole submission. Our own AI editors follow the same rule: no source read, no claim made.
• Citation stuffing. Long lists of weak references don't add up to a strong one. Reviewers judge the three best sources, and you should name them.

Founder's exceptions

Shortcut: TC:FOUNDER

There are exactly two founder's exceptions to the three-source test, and there will not be a third. (The source-context rule for publishers is not a founder's exception: it covers a type of subject, only as citation infrastructure, and gives no subject a page for its own sake.) They are:

1. James Lawrie, the founder of Tilcayo Cats (a person).
2. WikiNative, his company (an organisation).

They are separate subjects. Each is judged on its own, and neither passes its exception on to the other, or to staff, clients, products, relatives or anyone else. The exceptions cover notability only: every claim still needs a quoted, reliable source (TC:V), the wording must be neutral (TC:NPOV), the rules on living people apply (TC:BLP), and connected editors must disclose (TC:COI). Pages on these two subjects are not nominated for deletion or tagged for notability.

These two subjects are also exempt from the creation pause in Tilcayo Cats:Topic gate.

How to show a topic is notable

When you create a page, or ask for one, list your three best sources on the talk page. Give the publisher, date, author and a link or page number for each, and say in one line why each is independent, reliable, secondary and in depth. If you can't find three, the topic isn't ready. Wait until the world writes about it.

See also

• Tilcayo Cats:Voles and paid services
• Tilcayo Cats:About