This page is a proposed Wookieepedia policy, guideline, or process. The proposal may still be in development, under discussion, or in the process of gathering consensus for adoption. References or links to this page should not describe it as "policy".

Wookieepedia strives to be the best and most complete Star Wars encyclopedia in existence and has already surpassed such sources as Databank, Completely Unofficial Star Wars Encyclopedia and even the Holocron continuity database in number and, in many cases, quality of the articles. However, while the overall number of articles on Wookieepedia is important to demonstrate the progress of our efforts, it should not be achieved by having articles on general terms and insignificant items from the Star Wars universe. The rules for article notability are established by the presumption that Wookieepedia exist first and foremost for its readers. Thus, the notability of the article is defined by whether it can provide reader with useful information. Articles on general English terms already familiar to readers should be avoided, as well as articles, all information on which is derived from a single visual depiction.

Articles on general English words and termsEdit

Wookieepedia is not an English dictionary. Readers come to us looking for information about Star Wars universe, not the definitions of real-world things they already know. Any person who is able to read this wiki, should already know the definition of words like boulder, bulkhead or snowball and will not benefit from reading an article stating the obvious facts. While it could be argued that items like hatch, cable or permafrost exits in Star Wars galaxy and thus should be represented on Wookieepedia, the meaning of those terms is exactly the same as in real-world, which means that little could be added to what the reader already knows. Additionally, if Wookieepedia would attempt to describe every single item mentioned in official sources - like every noun from a novel - we would end up having more pages for generic terms than Star Wars-related articles, which is not our goal at all. The rule that sums all of the above reads:

• Articles for real-world terms must only be allowed if Star Wars definition of the word differs from the real-world one (example: bounty hunter), otherwise they should serve as disambiguation pages or redirects.

They are obviously several exceptions to this rule. Some terms in Star Wars tend to have a different meaning from their Earth analogues. For example, bounty hunters from Star Wars galaxy are quite different from the bounty hunters in real world: they have a unique history, operate under completely different laws and possess an impressive set of equipment which is not the trademark of their Earth colleagues. This makes the term notable enough to warrant an article. However, adding history of appearances in Star Wars to an otherwise completely trivial article (such as expanding the article "boulder was a small rock formation" with a history of encounters with boulders) does not stop the article from being trivial and thus does not mean it automatically becomes notable.

Another case when such article may be deemed notable is when the presence of the subject in the galaxy far, far away is not obvious. For example, while existence of tables and chairs in Star Wars is obvious based on the movies, the existence of paper is not, because in most stories either flimsiplast or alternate electronic means of data storage are used instead. Thus, paper is notable enough to have its own article.

Be aware however, that once the article on a general term has been deemed non-notable, its page still could be used as a disambiguation page, providing the above-mentioned brief encyclopedic description followed by the list of links to related Star Wars-unique articles. Pages like stone and fish are good examples of such usage.

Unidentified characters and itemsEdit

Star Wars universe is inhabited by a great multitude of characters. Some of them play a significant part in the storylines, but are never identified in any way by canonical sources, those characters usually receive articles with conjectural titles. However, some other characters are only portrayed on illustrations, and everything that could be said about them comes from a single visual depiction. In this case, an article restating the facts obvious from the image would also be hardly useful to he reader.

For example, while this individual has been only briefly mentioned in the novel, there is information present about him, which allows the reader to learn something about him he might have missed. By the contrary, this individual is only present on a single visual depiction, everything that could be said about him would be already obvious after glancing on the image.

In general articles for unidentified characters should exist only if there's a sufficient amount of canonical information exists to distinguish from other characters. For example, the stormtrooper thrown by Chewbacca on Cloud City is considered notable due to the fact, that he performs unique action in the story, but a random stormtrooper standing the in the third position from the left in the row is not. Also, when the character is known for sure to be one of others, identified characters, creating a separate article for that entity would also be redundant. For example, while Revan's companion who helped the team during the Leviathan break has never been identified, he is known to be one of the establish characters and should be given a separate conjecturally-titled article.

What to do with them?Edit

Unlike other Wookieepedia policies, the notability policy leaves a room for interpretation and discussion whether each individual article is notable enough to be kept. Thus, while recently created articles that obviously do not pass the rules, should be tagged as candidates for speedy deletion, the existing articles should be put in the Trash Compactor instead.