Wikipedia:What is and is not routine coverage

Editors and contributors to Wikipedia may have difficulty determining what is and is not routine coverage of people and or events.

The guideline WP:ROUTINE is widely considered to be a very good guideline. Routine coverages such as weddings, funerals, sports scores, and other "and finally..." stories can be used to add to a notable article some interesting and details about a subject. That does not necessarily mean that such articles good sources for establishing notability of a subject in the first place.

Editors should be careful in defining what is referred to as "routine" coverage, especially when determining notability.

Examples

Sports

In the world of sports, it is true that many sporting events are routinely covered, but that does not make all coverage of a sporting event "routine" at all. Modern-day sporting events can appear regularly in blogs or in local news as sports scores (sometimes called "box scores") without details. Such box scores are examples of routine coverage. If an article goes into detail about the event, that is not necessarily "routine" coverage. Not every sporting event earns a feature article.

Politics

Once every four years, the United States holds an election for President. These elections are "routinely" covered by every news outlet and the event is a "pre-planned event" as a part of the United States Constitution. However, that does not mean that this coverage would be excluded from notability discussions because of the WP:ROUTINE guideline.

Conclusion

Be careful not to make WP:ROUTINE mean something that it does not. Just because a news article is written about a pre-planned event does not make it "routine" coverage.

See also

• Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions
• WP:ROUTINE