Wikipedia:Popularity does not guarantee notability
 | This is an essay. 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: While popularity alone does not guarantee notability, popularity may suggest the likelihood that someone will try to create a Wikipedia article about the subject matter. |
Wikipedia contains many topics that are or were seen as "popular", such as "The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny" and The Amazing Digital Circus. Contrary to popular beliefs, however, a topic ends up on Wikipedia not merely because of its popularity but because of significant coverage from several reliable, independent, and secondary sources (i.e., notability).
In other words, raw popularity does not guarantee notability; likewise, obscurity does not guarantee the lack of notability. However, a topic's popularity indicates the likelihood that somebody will create an article on the topic, whether or not it is notable.
An article about a seemingly popular topic can be deleted simply because the topic has little to no reliable, independent, and secondary sources. In certain cases where a topic is really popular, some users have made attempts to recreate the said article without any improvements, ignoring the red message box telling users that such an article was already deleted. What often follows is a cycle of deletions and recreations, eventually leading to restrictions on page creation being imposed.
Can a topic be too popular to exclude?
[edit]There might come a point when a topic becomes so popular that it is the subject of headlines from several reputable media outlets. At this point, there is a chance that the said topic becomes notable enough to have a permanent Wikipedia article.