Al von Ruff is the founder and editor of the Internet Speculative Fiction Database.
One of the current reference shortfalls in the SF genre is the lack of a current version of Contemporary Authors. A Contemporary Author reference focuses on biographical information, not bibliographic information, and the last version produced in the field was Reginald's Contemporary Science Fiction Authors II, published in 1979. The ISFDB is a bibliographic resource, and previous attempts to add biographical information via its associated wiki have been sparse and unstructured. Efforts to improve the biographical support in the ISFDB are typically met with the question: "Why are we not using Wikipedia? It is specifically designed for this kind of work." And the answer to this question is a simple one: Wikipedia is a hostile environment for the creation of genre author biographies for all but the most elite authors. Only 8% of ISFDB authors have a Wikipedia article, and attempts to add articles for the most notable of the missing authors is met with fierce resistance. Wikipedia, in its early days, was a relatively nerdy place, and most of those elite 8% authors were introduced during that time, and have been "grandfathered" with respect to adherence to more modern guidelines for notability and references.
If you are interested in the creation of genre-related author articles on Wikipedia, this page documents details on how to determine the relative notability of an SF author, and whether it will be a waste of time to attempt to create an article for a particular author. It also contains advice on dealing with the most common strategies employed by Wikipedia editors to kill your article.
Wikipedia notability has been fairly subjective with respect to SF authors, with numerous authors (and the ISFDB itself) nominated for elimination due to lack of notability. Even though Wikipedia specifically states that notability is subjective, it is desirable to make the initial evaluation process more objective, which allows one to make a notability determination before investing time in writing an article.
Wikipedia's definition of notability has moved significantly since the inception of the concept in mid-2003. Prior to that date, there were no notability requirements, and numerous articles on genre-related authors were introduced prior to that date. The definitions that followed were:
The above shifting criteria has contributed to the precedent of reliance on award nominations, award wins, reviews, reliable encyclopedias, and SFWA membership eligibility, even though that criteria may have been superseded by modern guidelines for notability.
Here are some annotated guidelines for "Authors, editors, journalists, filmmakers, photographers, artists, architects, and other creative professionals":
Wikipedia Guideline | Practical Application of Guideline |
The person is regarded as an important figure or is widely cited by peers or successors; or | Within the SF genre, an entry in one of our genre-specific encyclopedias would fulfill this requirement. |
The person is known for originating a significant new concept, theory, or technique; or | This guideline has limited applicability to SF authors, but could include the invention of a new trope, such as time machines, teleportation, or FTL travel. |
The person has created or played a major role in co-creating a significant or well-known work or collective body of work. In addition, such work must have been the primary subject of an independent and notable work (for example, a book, film, or television series, but usually not a single episode of a television series) or of multiple independent periodical articles or reviews; or |
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The person's work (or works) has: (a) become a significant monument, (b) been a substantial part of a significant exhibition, (c) won significant critical attention, or (d) been represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums. | This guideline has limited applicability to SF authors, but could apply to author collections (notes and original drafts) that have been placed in a museum. |
The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, or has been nominated for such an award several times; | If the author has won a top-tier SF award, or nominated for one "several times", then the author would fulfill this guideline. |
A preliminary look at the statistics generates the following categories of likely notability for the SF field:
Level | Notability | Criteria |
1 | Notable (Success Rate 100%) |
The author satisfies one of the following requirements:
Authors/Editors in this category are considered notable regardless of the length of their bibliography. The Hugos, Nebulas, and World Fantasy awards are arguably the three most-significant awards in the field of speculative fiction. As such, a fiction-related win of one of these awards satisfies the Wikipedia notability clause: "The person's work (or works) has: (a) become a significant monument, (b) been a substantial part of a significant exhibition, (c) won significant critical attention, or (d) been represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries or museums.", as found in Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#Creative_professionals. It also addresses the guideline: "The person has received a well-known and significant award or honor, or has been nominated for such an award several times" as found in Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#Additional_criteria. This is statistically supported by the fact that Wikipedia has previously found 100% of these authors to be notable. |
2 | Notable (Success Rate 99%) |
The author satisfies the following requirements:
The article success rate for authors who have published 20 or more novels, and have an entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is over 99%. Impact on Wikipedia General Notability Guidelines:
In particular, the need for at least twenty published novels in this category satisfies the Wikipedia notability clause: "The person has created or played a major role in co-creating a significant or well-known work or collective body of work", as found in Wikipedia:Notability_(people)#Creative_professionals. While 99% of ISFDB authors in this category (over 1500) have been found notable (through the existence of long-standing Wikipedia articles), attempts to add a subset of authors in the remaining 1% (16 authors) have been resisted by Wikipedia editors. |
3 | Probably Notable (Success Rate 90%-98%) |
SFWA membership requires one sold novel or script, or three short stories. There are explicit rules as to which publishers and magazines are qualifying venues. Publication in these specific venues is more difficult than others, and along with minimum circulation numbers, guarantee a certain level of notability within the SF genre. Current SFWA membership is around 2000 authors, while the total number of authors that would qualify in the ISFDB are about 3000. The success rate for authors with an SFWA qualifying novel is 58%, while the success rate for authors with three qualifying short works is only 38%. As such, SFWA qualification forms a lower level of notability, which alone does not guarantee Wikipedia notability. While the awards listed here contribute to the won significant critical attention guideline, and may contribute to the or has been nominated for such an award several times, these particular awards (predominately nominations without wins) have not carried the same weight as the Level 1 awards above, and are thus not a guarantee of notability in itself. However, in combination with SFWA qualification or an SFE entry, the success rate of this category for Wikipedia Articles ranges from 91.9% to 98.3%. It is therefore expected that some small number of author articles in this class may elicit a notability challenge, but the vast majority of authors in this class should be considered notable. Arguably, an Astounding award win for Best New writer should be Level 1 notability. |
4 | Possibly Notable (Success Rate 80%-88%) |
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5 | Possibly Notable (Success Rate 60%-78%) |
Notability depends upon the length of the SFWA non-qualifying bibliography. |
6 | Possibly Notable (Success Rate 50%-59%) |
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7 | Probably Not Notable (Success Rate 40%-49%) |
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8 | Not Notable (Success Rate 30%-39%) |
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9 | Not Notable (Success Rate 20%-29%) |
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10 | Not Notable (Success Rate 0%-19%) |
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I'll update these as I acquire more data. I'm starting with the Hugo awards, as they are readily accepted as the "Academy Awards" of the SF world, but that doesn't preclude the future inclusion of other awards. In particular, the Hugos provide three of the five tenets for Wikipedia notability: Reliable, Sources, and Independence. It does not provide Significant coverage, and only contributes to Presumed. An award win, combined with an entry in Encyclopedia of Science Fiction & Fantasy would contribute greatly to Significant coverage.
The pages below derive article success rates based on numerous sub-factors within a specific area of possible notability. They also outline a list of outlying target authors who currently do not have a Wikipedia article, and provide an analysis of whether such an article should be pursued or not. An explanation of the column headers:
Detailed notability analysis pages: