Wikipedia:Not every single thing Donald Trump does deserves an article
 | This is an essay on notability. 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: Not every single thing Donald Trump (or, for that matter, anyone) says or does deserves an article. Even if the latest outrage has significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, this coverage is too often routine and the topics do not receive sustained attention, beyond an obligatory week or two of unbridled sensationalism. The latest outrage probably doesn't need to be on here, period, as an article, a subsection, a short paragraph, or otherwise because it just does not matter in the long run. |
It happened again, didn't it? Donald Trump, the 47th and previously 45th president of the United States, did something again. The common reaction happens as follows:
"Oh my gosh, it's on CNN, and Wall Street Journal, and Forbes, and MSNBC! My goodness, it's the #1 trending topic on Twitter! Everybody on Bluesky is flipping out about it! Quick, we have to add it to Wikipedia!"
Well... hold up. Not so fast. This does not necessarily need to be mentioned on Wikipedia, much less require its own article.
Why not?
[edit]As a person with a complex history concerning the office of the president, a lot of things that Donald Trump does are in fact covered on Wikipedia, but only in proportion to what reliable, secondary sources give them. Most chatter on Twitter and other social media is neither reliable nor secondary. If no "real" media source has covered this latest outrage, stop there; Wikipedia can't cover it either. If there are at least some news stories talking about the issue... it depends. Was this an actual policy change, or just everyday celebrity churnalism? Are the sources heavily partisan ones (far-left, far-right, or opinion blogs)? Per Wikipedia is not a newspaper:
Even if there is media coverage, hold on. That doesn't necessarily mean anything. If it's passing insubstantial coverage, consider leaving the topic alone – much of news is vulnerable to WP:RECENTISM. Besides this, remember that much news coverage—even from reputable newspapers of record like WaPo, WSJ, NYT, etc—is only routine coverage. It does not make its mark or matter beyond being a news item; it'll just be clutter in a year's time—or maybe by less than a week later—that nobody cares about. If coverage has not been sustained for a significant period of time, it likely doesn't belong here. (More formally, consider checking recency bias against the 10-year or 20-year test.) In the case where a seemingly random tweet becomes relevant later – then we can fix it later, too.
Typical complaints
[edit]"This topic totally qualifies by all your criteria! Why was my article deleted / redirected?"
- So maybe your topic is relevant, but that doesn't mean it deserves its own separate article. It may well be best served as a short paragraph in an existing article. Check out Presidency of Donald Trump and its many sub-articles – Immigration policy of Donald Trump, Donald Trump judicial appointment controversies, False or misleading statements by Donald Trump, and so forth. If the section gets really long, it can always be split back off to a separate article later.
"But people were pissed about it!"
- Okay. Who? Was it someone whose outrage about Trump has a prospect to lead to a notable event, such as trade restrictions, a land dispute, a war, or generally anything consequential? Or was it just a bunch of social media users making angry posts? So what people were miffed about something Trump did? People simply being angry at something does not indicate notability, nor does a bunch of negative Twitter and Bluesky posts constitute an actual controversy that Wikipedia should cover.
"Look at all of the sources covering this topic, it is too notable!"
- Throwing the RSPLIST at us about the coverage that this latest controversy has received does very little to indicate its notability. Controversies such as these typically receive only routine coverage that does not prove itself to be sustained. Note that much media coverage falls under the "sensationalism" category, which is designed with the main idea to attract website traffic and by nature is not thoughtful coverage of an overall notable topic. This is how newspaper headlines have worked for forever: the most attention-grabbing, recent, shocking content is shown prominently as it will interest prospective readers to engage with it so that the publisher will make a profit. Notable topics continue to receive sustained discussion in reliable sources beyond serving as this week's cover story designed to get people to click, or subscribe, or see syndicated advertising. This idea is also discussed in WP:RSBREAKING and WP:RECENTISM.
"Why are you covering up this horrible crime Trump revealed?" (Or, alternatively...)
"Why was my section on this wild, obviously false accusation that shows Trump is crazy deleted?"
- An additional concern with Donald Trump is the "allegations" problem. Per the biography of living persons policy, if the thing that Donald Trump did lately was "claim negative/criminal things about another living person", that topic needs to be handled very carefully. Sometimes, the allegation is both sufficiently covered in reliable sources as well as unavoidably a notable part of the person's experience (Joe Scarborough § Feud with Donald Trump for an example), but in general, Wikipedia errs on the side of caution – even when the accuser is or was a world leader. Better to say nothing than to say something libelous.
"Well this is censorship!"
- We're sorry you feel that way. We have policies and guidelines that are built off of community consensus and determines how we grow Wikipedia. We apply these as evenly as we can whether it's an article about Donald Trump, Barack Obama, or Sailor Moon.
Not always In the news material
[edit]After creating or updating an article with Trump's latest shenanigans, the next step is usually to propose it at Wikipedia:In the news/Candidates. Which is not always a good idea. The requirements to appear at the {{In the news}} template of the main page are usually way higher than those the creation of an article. Even if it deserves a dedicated article, an event should have a reasonable lasting significance in the US (such as the January 6 United States Capitol attack) or international impact rather than a merely domestic one (such as Tariffs in the second Trump administration).
As Wikipedia is not printed on paper, it can allow itself to have an almost unlimited number of articles. That's not the case for In the news. There are 193 countries in the world (plus states and territories with limited recognition), all of them with their own groundbreaking but otherwise local news events. And that's just politics: In the news is also open to news from science, technology, sports, entertainment, and basically all fields. This means that at any given day there is an almost unlimited number of news stories, all of them fighting with each other for a brief presence at only of the handful of blurbs of the small square at Wikipedia's main page. That's why the requirements are so high to be in it, as it would be impossible to manage otherwise.
Not always about Trump
[edit]This essay was written in reference to Donald Trump, president of the United States, but it can equally apply to any public figure or institution that is influential enough to the point that the press reports his every single movement, knowing that they will have readers ready to know about them. So, for the purposes of this essay and Wikipedia, you can think of "Donald Trump" as a placeholder name rather than a specific reference to a single figure.