Notability is a bit of a misnomer. It's really a way to gauge one extremely important factor: Is it possible to verify the content of this article as correct?

Notability is a bit of a misnomer. It's really a way to gauge one extremely important factor: Is it possible to verify the content of this article as correct? Let's look at the general notability guideline (WP:GNG): > If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article or stand-alone list. That's it. Simple. Wikipedia wants sources to back up whatever's in the article, it wants significant coverage so it can actually write a decent article using this information, and it wants them to be independent to avoid bias in the source material. Why it ended up being called "Notability", I don't know. It probably should be renamed - but anything that's sufficiently notable tends to fit this general notability criterion, and vice versa, so I guess it's a decent proxy for notability as well.