# Canned notability emphasis Part of [The AI Tells Index](https://feedsquad.com/ai-tells). A tell signals low effort. It does not identify an author. Skilled writers produce every shape listed here, some of them daily, and automated detectors misread those writers for it at rates measured above 60 percent on non-native English prose. Nothing in this index proves that a machine wrote anything. Read an entry as one piece of evidence to weigh against the false-positive notes printed beside it. ## Facts - Id: canned-notability-emphasis - Category: Semantic (semantic) - Subcategory: significance - Also known as: WP:OVERATTRIBUTION, covered by national outlets, active social media presence - Status: Active. Currently signals low-effort writing. - Severity: medium - Evidence grade: community-observed (named by practitioners, no formal measurement exists) - Languages: en - Added: 2026-08-15 - Updated: 2026-08-15 - Page: https://feedsquad.com/ai-tells/canned-notability-emphasis ## Description The text lists what kinds of sources covered a subject instead of what those sources said. Trade publications, regional media, independent coverage. The categories arrive; the content does not. ## Why it reads as machine-written Asked to establish that someone matters, a model reaches for the vocabulary of the criteria rather than the evidence behind them, and on Wikipedia it often echoes the wording of the notability guideline back at the reader. Wikipedia records the habit as more common in tools released from 2025 onward, which makes it one of the few entries in this dataset pointing forward rather than back. The social-media variant is the tell in miniature: a claim that a subject is present online, which is true of everyone and describes nothing. ## Detection Type: deterministic (a regular expression, run as written) Scope: sentence ECMAScript regular expression. The build validator compiles it and tests it against this entry's own specimens. ```regex (?:\b(?:maintain|maintains|maintained|has|have)\s+an\s+active\s+(?:social[- ]media|online)\s+presence\b)|(?:\b(?:featured|profiled|covered)\s+in\s+(?:a\s+(?:number|variety)\s+of|several|numerous|various|multiple|many)\s+(?:(?:national|regional|local|international|major|prominent|leading)\s+)?(?:media\s+|news\s+|trade\s+)?(?:outlets|publications|newspapers|magazines)\b)|(?:\breceived\s+(?:widespread\s+|significant\s+|extensive\s+)?independent\s+coverage\b) ``` Flags: gi ## Examples Constructed specimens. Written for this index. Never quoted from anyone's posts. ### Specimen 1 Before, exhibiting the tell: > Aino Verkkola is a designer whose work has been featured in numerous national media outlets and who maintains an active social media presence across several platforms. After, repaired: > Aino Verkkola designed the wayfinding system for a Tampere hospital that opened in 2023, and the hospital's project page names her and shows the drawings. Two of her signs were replaced within a year because staff kept walking past them, which she has written about. Note: The designer is invented for this specimen. The repair drops the categories of coverage and gives one project, one date and one thing that went wrong. ## False positives Who legitimately writes this way. Public-relations biographies, speaker one-sheets, grant applications and award nominations are built from this move, and it is the genre contract in all four. A publicist who writes that a client has been profiled in several trade publications is doing the job as briefed. Media-studies writing describes coverage by outlet type as a matter of method, and so does any piece about how a story spread. Wikipedia editors themselves cite source categories when arguing notability at deletion discussions, which is the guideline working as intended. The pattern here is deliberately narrow, matching only the vaguest forms, because the same words in a sentence that names the outlet are ordinary reporting. ## Model attribution Wikipedia records this as more common in text from tools released in 2025 or later. That is a community observation over article revisions rather than a controlled measurement, and it is the only dating available. ## Platform notes - wikipedia: Filed under the shortcut WP:OVERATTRIBUTION. The page notes that human press releases have cited news clippings for decades, and that what marks the machine version is echoing the wording of the notability guideline itself. ## Sources 1. Wikipedia: Signs of AI writing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing (tier: community; accessed 2026-08-14) ## Status history Ids are permanent. A retired tell keeps its id and its page. - 2026-08-15, Active: Wikipedia names the pattern, quotes examples from 2025 revisions and records that it is more common in later models. Single-source, so the grade stays community-observed, and the pattern is written narrowly because the phrasing overlaps with ordinary publicity writing. ## License CC BY 4.0. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Attribution: The AI Tells Index, feedsquad.com/ai-tells Reuse the data, including commercially. Keep the attribution line. --- Dataset version 1.0.0. Schema version 1. Part of [FeedSquad](https://feedsquad.com). 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