Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Notability and fiction

I am generally skeptical of the merit of a 32 question survey that includes a request for citations and evidence - it does not seem to me likely to be answered. Furthermore, it suggests that the policy will be built according to user whim. Our policy on fiction should extend logically from our core policies and our existing practices on the subject. Phil Sandifer (talk) 21:59, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I have to agree - this idea is also along the lines of what Smokey Joe stated in his view.

The last FICT RFC failed because when we started getting into the details, we could not establish any consensus at all. There was a suggestion to make episodes "special" (not necessarily all unique) and this was fought against. Same with main characters. And then there's people that point to works of today compared to works pre-1990 when the internet did not exist. And the biggest strike against FICT was it's length - it was too much text for too little words.

If we come to a decision on FICT as a guideline, it needs to either be written short and sweet with general advice across all of fiction, or it has to be structured like other SNGs, like WP:BIO - outlining specific cases when fictional elements can be presumed to be notable - however, knowing past arguments on this latter aspect, this itself will never gain consensus (eg, some insist that any show with X viewership should have a standalone article, but that's always negated when it is brought up) It also doesn't follow from AFDs. --MASEM (t) 22:07, 6 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Masem, I suggested a survey to you over a year ago, after the RFC began for your failed FICT proposal. And I asked Phil about a survey right before he wrote his failed FICT proposal from November. Is WP:DR wrong to suggest surveys? And SmokeyJoe said "My best idea for a way forward is to divide the problem into smaller well defined problems (eg recurring characters in a TV series)." The first draft of my survey from 8 months ago asked about that: "An article for a fictional television character is acceptable if _____, A list entry for a fictional television character is more appropriate than an article when _____, A redirect for a fictional television character is more appropriate than an article when _____." And those questions are similar to ones I brought up to you last June.

Who talked about making episodes "special"? As of May 3, 2009, Wikipedia had over 10,000 episode articles[1] (and even more before Wikipedia's disgruntled Naruto fan redirected many of them), and they have over 7 years of precedent behind them.

I don't even remember when the last FICT RFC was. It's all a blur of failure to me. You've got the same people, the same arguments, no new outside input, no new participants. It's like talking to cult members. A sitewide survey opens it up to wider input. And I almost always disagree with you as to why one thing or another failed. I agree that length is a problem when it comes to guidelines. I think all Wikipedia policies and guidelines should be simple. And my survey was inspired by WP:BIO, which I mentioned in the first draft from October. This draft from January did ask about evidence of notability for a variety of fictional topics. If there is or is not consensus regarding fiction on Wikipedia, I think a survey would reveal that. A policy or guideline does not necessarily have to come about after the survey. It would be a starting point, to measure the community's opinion. --Pixelface (talk) 20:28, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If the survey is focused solely on trying to define how fiction should be treated on WP, and not necessarily for spelling out certain cases of when fiction elements have articles or not, then that would be more useful as an intermediate step. The present way you have it User:Pixelface/Fiction Survey 2009 is not suitable for this discussion because it's not addressing the "big picture" about fiction. There are some significant big picture questions that do need to be asked that affect other policy and guidelines - WP:V, WP:NOT for two - and we'd need to find a way to write the questions to gain large volumes of input without having 10,000 different opinions of how it should be done. --MASEM (t) 22:58, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I never said that the survey questions had to be the ones in User:Pixelface/Fiction Survey 2009, and you can edit that page as much as you want. Want a "big picture" question? A survey about fiction can have a total of one question: "Is there a problem with Wikipedia's articles about fictional things?" Don't like that one? How about "How should Wikipedia treat fiction?" Do you think 10,000 answers on such a vague question would be more useful than 10,000 answers about specific areas of fiction? Maybe, maybe not. Have you ever considered that past FICT proposals may have failed because they were trying to do too much? Address too many subjects at once? Fiction is a very wide topic area. Wikipedia has over 2 1/2 times more articles under Category:Fiction than Category:Living people, and yet WP:BIO breaks it down into specifics. Drilnoth mentioned a need for differentiation and SmokeyJoe talked about dividing the problem into smaller well defined problems.

I don't see how V and NOT factor into a survey about fiction (or notability and fiction) at all. Consensus can change, so there's no reason to take every line those policies say as a given. And I don't see how conducting a survey about fiction (or notability and fiction) would affect V or NOT. Someone doesn't have to edit a policy page to answer a survey. I think we'd be able to find a way to write the questions. This is a wiki. If you think there are some significant big picture questions that need to be asked, say what they are.

Perhaps the issue with fiction on Wikipedia is that there are 10,000 different opinions on how it should be done. Or maybe even 1,000,000 ways it should be done. That's why we have article talkpages. A survey could show if a true consensus exists, or if the community is split. A survey could show if a subject-specific notability guideline for fictional subjects could be created or not. And a survey could show differing views that an essay writer could document. --Pixelface (talk) 00:06, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Settling questions such as "When should there be an article on a character?" is a short-term gain for little long-term benefit because at the core we still don't know how fiction and WP should mix. And yes, there are probably 10,000 answers out there. Maybe what we do is a proposal/support approach as done actually on this page as well as elsewhere, asking users to either write their view on the question "What role should WP take in covering fictional works and their elements to the general reader, to the casual viewer/reader of such works, and to the dedicated fan?", with the understanding that serving the general reader is our first and foremost goal. This will probably give us close to 20 or more statements, from which we can pull together a better starting point for a true survey/poll to try to come to consensus on what major points have to be considered. The reason I bring up WP:N and WP:NOT is that these inputs may require us to get changes made there. For example, completely hypothetically, maybe the consensus of the two-step poll is that primary sources are good enough to be used to source articles and we need nothing else. This affects WP:V for sure, and thus we'd have to work on getting that changed. The point is to start not by asking how to shoehorning fiction into WP, but to see, if we had the ideal world only limited by the Foundation's mission for the work, how should WP move to better cover fiction. It's a better start for brainstorming, and may bring to light some ideas that we haven't considered before because we've restricted ourselves to established practice. We're still going to have to recognize how solutions will need to avoid drastically changing core policy - we may be able to modify WP:V, but not get rid of it completely. We also have to recognize fiction does not operate in a vacuum here, and while a forward solution may be found by those that edit a lot of time in those topics, there may be strong resistance to such changes by editors of other areas of WP, so obviously we need wide community input for at least the second step of the proposed approach. But regardless of these cavaets, we are addressing the core issue: how should WP cover fiction, from which a FICT (if needed) should seemlessly drop out. That's the holistic approach that, if we are going to spend energy to do such a wide poll, we need to take instead of just dealing with smaller issues of the problem. --MASEM (t) 13:51, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If a survey takes place it doesn't have to have these questions. In my proposal I said the final questions can be decided upon elsewhere. Those questions are just what I and some other editors have come up with so far. You're free to edit that page yourself, just like it says at the top. If you don't like a question, remove it. The whole idea of this website is collaboration. Feel free to come up with your own survey if you want. Do you think the section on surveys doesn't belong in the dispute resolution policy? A survey doesn't have to have 32 questions, it can be as simple as one question: "Do you think there's a problem with how Wikipedia treats fiction?" Besides, Wikipedia:Survey 2008 had over 32 questions and over 130,000 people completed it.

Wikipedia policies must have wide acceptance among editors. But Wikipedia has over 50 policies, and they currently are edited according to user whim. Just because someone edits a policy page doesn't mean what they wrote has wide acceptance. I really don't know how you can even tell if an existing policy has wide acceptance without a survey. Writing a policy based on existing practices is fine, but Wikipedia:Fiction has nothing to do with existing practices. And V, NOR, and NPOV don't mention "impact." If you want to know what existing practice is regarding fiction on Wikipedia, look at a random article under Category:Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes or Category:Buffy the Vampire Slayer characters. This request for comment is about notability anyway, and Wikipedia has no notability policy.

Personally, I'm skeptical of just about anything written by someone who thinks they can "beat the stupid" out of an encyclopedia (or anything else for that matter). I can picture it now: you walking into a library and throwing encyclopedias off the shelf and hitting them with a baseball bat. --Pixelface (talk) 19:56, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you can't extrapolate from "significant" to "impact", I don't think any policy is capable of helping you. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:08, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that you're the only person that's done so. And I see no compelling reason to. Why should any editor accept some new "impact" rule? I certainly see no reason why "impact" should be required of fiction-related topics — yet not of other topics on Wikipedia.

I can, however, extrapolate on the fact that your FICT proposal from October failed, and the fact that you immaturely deleted that page, into a prediction that Wikipedia:Fiction will be met with similar success. I realize I am talking to someone who failed to anticipate the impact of editing under their real name, Philip. Evidently this policy didn't help you. Oh, and this is a policy by the way. No "extrapolation" needed. --Pixelface (talk) 17:25, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Pixelface - please remember to be civil and don't start personal attacks.陣内_Jinnai 22:13, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to conduct a survey, be my guest. Your proposed survey, however, is not a useful one. *shrug* As for impact, look, if you really don't see this one, there's no help for you. The idea that topics in an encyclopedia must in some way have some impact, importance, significance, etc is as settled an issue as we have on Wikipedia. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:28, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

So show me what a useful survey would look like. And if that issue was "settled", Wikipedia:Fiction (or Wikipedia:Impact or Wikipedia:Importance or Wikipedia:Significance) would be a policy right now, no? --Pixelface (talk) 23:55, 15 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Are those sections going under every proposal (and view) now? Should they? --Pixelface (talk) 20:45, 8 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I put it under mine because I was of the opinion some editors would be firmly opposed (rather than merely indifferent) and I wanted to clearly gauge the extent of that feeling. One way to establish consensus is to put forward an idea that everybody rejects: in the last RfC a number of editors skirted around exempting lists, extending the inheritance of notability and arguing that only the topic as a whole (head article and spinouts) needed to be notable, but there were no proposals which directly stated this, so one could not tell whether anyone would actually support it.--Elen of the Roads (talk) 15:53, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I was wondering about the format of this page with the "Users who endorse this view" sub-sections but not oppose or comment sub-sections. Is this a WP thing I'd not seen before? I'm used to the linear list with Support, Oppose, etc. much like an AfD. One benefit of the current format is that it tends to shut down discussion which could make this page even more unwieldy. --Marc Kupper|talk 05:06, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That's how a "Request for Comments" page is typically formatted. See Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Advisory Council on Project Development for example. Hiding T 09:57, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]