Wikipedia:What NOTMEMORIAL is not

WP:NOTMEMORIAL is frequently cited in discussions pertaining to victims of mass casualty events. This essay attempts to address some of the common misconceptions around this policy, explaining what NOTMEMORIAL is not.

What NOTMEMORIAL is

First, let's clear up the intention of NOTMEMORIAL as it is currently written:

4. Memorials. Subjects of encyclopedia articles must satisfy Wikipedia's notability requirements. Wikipedia is not the place to memorialize deceased friends, relatives, acquaintances, or others who do not meet such requirements. (WP:RIP is excluded from this rule.)

The intention is to disallow the creation of entire pages about deceased friends, relatives or acquaintances or other random people (even in user-space) if they do not meet the notability requirements for people. A carve-out for WP:RIP is the only exclusion.

What it is not

Let's take this policy a piece at a time.

• Subjects of encyclopedia articles [...] – this means that, unless an article is being created about victim of a notable event, this policy is automatically inapplicable. One cannot defer to the "spirit" of this policy as if it was meant to apply to the content of notable articles on mass casualty events. Were that the case consensus would have modified this policy to say so.
• [...] must satisfy Wikipedia's notability requirements. – See previous. However, for content within an article on an otherwise notable event, see WP:NOTEWORTHY (The notability guidelines do not apply to contents of articles [...]. Content coverage within a given article [...] (i.e. whether something is noteworthy enough to be mentioned within the article [...]) is governed by the principle of due weight, balance, and other content policies. (emphasis added))
• Wikipedia is not the place to memorialize deceased friends, relatives, acquaintances, or others [...] – With regard to mass casualty events (particularly mass shootings) it's never been alleged that editors adding victims to the event articles are doing so on behalf of friends, relatives, acquaintances or others.
• [...] who do not meet such requirements. – See the 2nd bullet, above.

NOTMEMORIAL is not a reason to exclude victims from an article on an event which covers their deaths. NOTMEMORIAL is not a reason to exclude details of who the victims are in an article on an event that covers their deaths. The relevant policies and guidelines are WP:NPOV (specifically, WP:UNDUE) and WP:NOTEWORTHY.

Title

It seems like many editors just see the shortcut (NOTMEMORIAL) and don't actually read what they're using to support their position. Unfortunately the page (Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not) doesn't really provide a good way to rename these shortcuts without making them ridiculously long. But clearly people aren't reading the instructions, just the title.

Relevant RFC closures

• Oxford High School shooting – examples of NOTMEMORIAL with a lengthy closing statement by a just-elected member of the Arbitration Committee
• 2022 Buffalo shooting – examples of NOTMEMORIAL being misused in the wild and counter-arguments in the moment

See also

• Wikipedia:Casualty lists
• Wikipedia:What BLP1E is not