In search of the least viewed article on Wikipedia (2022)
&gt; On the other hand, no-one has yet come up with a way to monetize a topic like Pseudoneuroterus mazandarani or use it to push a contentious point of view. Hence articles about species and populated places are generally not deleted, even if the topic is only weakly sourced<p>This is not why this happens on Wikipedia; sourcing is a factor, but notability derived from the nature and quality of the cited sources is the most commonly used criteria to delete articles.<p>For example, Wikipedia once had a notability guideline that a person who completed in a sport at the international level was probably notable, so a weakly sourced article on, say, a footballer with a single international cap could be notable enough to avoid deletion.<p>But then editors removed this guideline and fell back onto the general notability guideline (GNG), which is much stricter for people: substantial biographical coverage from reliable mainstream sources at the national level. Match reports don&#x27;t count (too routine), no local interviews (too primary), no enthusiast publications (not reliable enough), etc.<p>Of course, this meant that hundreds of stubs and dozens of full articles about women&#x27;s international footballers would never meet GNG due to a relative lack of mainstream media coverage, even if they won a World Cup. So all it took was one editor to decide to do almost nothing but flag hundreds such articles since the opening of the Women&#x27;s World Cup this summer, almost all of which were deleted.<p>So it&#x27;s not this reason that keeps moths and places:<p>&gt; On the other hand, no-one has yet come up with a way to monetize a topic like Pseudoneuroterus mazandarani or use it to push a contentious point of view.<p>But rather, very different standards of notability are why there are more low-traffic articles on items and places that can&#x27;t sue Wikipedia editors for libel.