Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction)/Archive 7

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:Notability (fiction). Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

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Archive 5

inclusion criteria

Notability, in the Wikipedia sense, is a means of inclusion criteria. What is our inclusion criteria for fiction? We've been talking a lot about different ideas, but what are some examples that people have that they think should be included or not? Basically, I'd like to get a better idea of what each of you consider to be content that we should include on Wikipedia.

Here's some delsort pages, maybe we should have a side discussion on this talk page about which AfDs we think point out good or bad examples of what should or should not be included (AfD just being as a way to group articles being discussed, since WP:FICT doesn't recommend deletion off the bat. There's no formal Merging for Discussion pages, or I would have used those as well [but if anyone has any examples of such discussions, feel free to list them]) -- Ned Scott 07:05, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Discussion

Here's one example of my view on a list of fictional products, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Futurama products (2nd nomination). My view on the matter was this: "Delete both or merge/redirect selected information as examples and/or to their respective episode articles. Without real-world information, there is no justification for being this detailed about what happened in the plot. -- Ned Scott 05:57, 16 September 2007 (UTC)"

I could see some of this information existing, but not in this current form. -- Ned Scott 07:25, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

A bit off topic — Wikipedia:Proposed mergers is the nearest thing to a Merge discussion page, but the talk page of one of the articles are usually the best place to discuss mergers. G.A.S 12:08, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a very good idea. We should determine consensus on what is and what is not acceptable content.

Since the question of encyclopedic suitability is by nature a rather contentious one, I strongly recommend reading and sticking to what policy says before skipping right to the ILIKEIT part. Related concepts include the general notability guideline, WP:NOT#PLOT, WP:DUE (but see below), but also WP:NOT#PAPER. One point of particular interest would be spin-off articles, in my opinion.

On a somewhat related note with regard to the rewriting of this guideline and as far as it concerns WP:WAF: I think the MOS subguideline (WAF) wouldn't be as important if we had a very clear idea of what content we want on Wikipedia and if everyone accepted the fact that Wikipedia as an encyclopedia indeed has editorial standards. However, we need to at least try and educate users about what is considered best practice as long as this notablity guideline doesn't explain the rules on what constitutes acceptable content and what doesn't, in such a way that includes suggestions to remove or reduce content, or to merge (or delete, if unavoidable) articles with certain well-defined properties (which shouldn't be too much of a problem, wouldn't you agree).

With regard to WP:DUE, I'd like to advertise a very promising proposal at Wikipedia:Relevance of content, which addresses issues largely disregarded by the unfortunately far too much ideology-centered (pni) WP:NPOV. — [ aldebaer⁠ ] 17:34, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree as well: if this guideline were to discuss a topic's suitability for inclusion (based on notability) we would be two-thirds there -- being the best source for an encyclopedia is a second source; if there are none... nobody took notice of the subject, and neither do we need to.

Maybe then WAF can be expanded to provide better guidance about WAF, such as required sections, structure, the lead, the tense; perspective need only be one section. G.A.S 19:34, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

This rather belongs on WT:WAF, but to clarify this: Once notablity has been established, there is not really such a thing as "required" sections or structure, as long as the respective article is not a mere plot summary — which is then the single most important aspect of writing about fiction, and since it's so commonly neglected, it warrants due emphasis on WP:WAF.

Additional, more general advice can be found in our writing guides, namely Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles, Wikipedia:Guide to layout, Wikipedia:Article development, Wikipedia:The perfect article, and Wikipedia:Manual of Style.

More on topic, I'd also like to make the suggestion (if it hasn't been brought up yet) to check the other notability subguidelines for useful ideas. I find WP:NF, WP:MUSIC, and esp. WP:BK to be of particular interest.

I'd also like to point you to WP:AADD#Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, which contains helpful comment on unhelpful comments and may further help us determine how to best "lay down the rules". — [ aldebaer⁠ ] 22:48, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Sections need not be required, but many editors may find such guidelines useful (Although that is more of a Wikipedia content guideline than a Wikipedia style guideline). There might yet be use in creating a proper content guideline for fiction; rather than trying to put the content into WP:FICT and WP:WAF. Content such as WP:NOT#PLOT would be right at home in such a guideline.

I agree, the other notability guidelines may give useful advice as well as guidance, as would previous AFD's and WP:AADD.

G.A.S 10:14, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

A certain few Bleach character articles

I don't know where else to turn to on this, as the Bleach task force won't listen. They have given articles to Izuru Kira, Shinji Hirako, and Nnoitra, three fictional characters that are basically one arc characters that can (and have) been described nicely in three paragraphs; and Isshin Kurosaki, who has no notability at all besides a big spoiler. The first three articles are stub level, and Isshin's probably will be once the plot is shortened, and none of the characters have any out-of-universe information (either listed in the article or anywhere on the Internet) The Bleach task force won't listen at all to a merge to them, so I've brought the matter here to be discussed. Artist Formerly Known As Whocares 23:06, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Maybe you haven't been listening properly to us. We have reasons to keep those articles for a couple of reasons. Ynhockey stated during our discussion "WP:CON is a policy which overrules guidelines like WP:FICT, which, to add to that, is unstable at the moment and under revision". We clearly did reach a consensus here, not to merge Shinji, Kira or Kariya for that matter. We already merged about 21 articles we defined not notable, and now we are in the process of improving the articles to reach a G standard.

Nnoitra's being kept as he has a large battle with Nell currently, and once his part is over we have decided to merge him.
Izuru is notable, despite what many people think. He has taken part in 4 arcs (Soul Society, Rescue, Bount, Invasion of Bount) and appeared so much more then other characters (Hinamori and Hisagi in particular).
Shinji is as notable as Izuru is. He is the main Vizard, the one who recruited Ichigo, the one who trained Ichigo, and also has prior knowledge about Aizen and the Orb of Distortion. Additionally, Shinji's mask has been revealed, and he has taken part in the 3rd Invasion of the Arrancar.

Also, your plot shortening has made confusion when you first did it, just deleting half the information off. Yes, it is true according to here that characters should not recieve LARGE plot summaries. We have condense most of the summaries into less than 3 paragraphs, excluding the main characters because they are after all, main characters.--Hanaichi 03:09, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

While I agree with the shortening of the plot, though it could be a bit longer than the one-paragraph things, I don't agree with the merging. It's being treated like a solve-it-all solution without regards to the mess it makes in readability. Stuffing and stuffing lists to hell and back doesn't improve the encyclopedia. — Someguy0830 (T | C) 03:25, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Being important in the plot doesn't always mean something should get it's own article. Without real-world information (or the reasonable potential for that info), these characters should never have their own articles. If you need to make more than one list of characters so that it's not too long, that would be better than having individual character articles. -- Ned Scott 06:15, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

And quite often simply being "important to the plot" means the content of the article is a cut, POV-narrative (not WP:POV) version of a plot summary repeated elsewhere (usually the arc summary). That's what bothers me most about character articles, although section padding sometimes ranks up there. Bleach has so goddamn many side characters, but they organize by arc rather nicely, imo. Nifboy 07:26, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

This shortening Plot summaries is way too much. Only one paragraph per character? Its like trying to watch a 90-min film in the period of 5 mins! Some people dont properly understand the characters role and perspective with a shortened plot summary! It's like saying "character did x action for only y minutes". RedEyesMetal 11:18, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

WP is a general knowledge encyclopedia; we are here to provide to any reader (not just those that want more information on Bleach characters) verifiable, accurate, and succinct understanding of the topic at hand. There are limits to how much in-universe description of fictional elements there should be (from WP:NOT#PLOT. The WP Film Project even has its own style guideline that says that no plot description should be longer than 700 words -- just like watching a 90 minute film in less than 5 minutes. --Masem 13:25, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Well! I agreed to the shortening of the plot summaries but it is important for the reader to understand what we are saying in the 1 paragraph plot summary. Reading Orientation is important. The paragraph must flow. Anyway, we are here to discuss whether or not the articles such as Shinji Hirako, Izuru Kira, and Isshin Kurosaki. Nnoitra was agreed to be merged once his battle is over.--Hanaichi 13:34, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Plot summaries include characters and other fictional elements of the series. Now, I'm not saying that Bleach can be summarized in 700 words as it is a long-running anime/manga series. It is appropriate to expect pages on the handful of major characters that appear in most every plot arc, but one-time or even occasionally-reoccurring characters should only be briefly talked about.

Remember, we are looking for out-of-universe notability. I'm looking through various pages in Bleach and I do not see this, with too much undue weight given to in-universe information; even Ichigo's article (the main character) is all in-universe information and far exceeds WP:NOT#PLOT, and has no attempt to demonstrate notability. Only the main Bleach (manga) page shows an attempt to make the notability of the series to the outside world. This should be kept first and foremost for all pages on fictional works: it's the out-of-universe notability verified by secondary sources that the article should be written towards, and not towards fully describing the fictional universe; only enough details of that universe need to be give for reader to appreciate its out of universe notability. From what I can tell of Bleach (aware of the first 1/3 of the main story arc), there is a lot of reducing you can do in the overall project. The minor characters listed above is just the tip of the iceberg that is a problem with most of these pages. (Most of this information is ideal for a transwiki move as to not lose it, but I myself don't know where ; it's too much for Wikibooks...) --Masem 14:24, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

We were already discussing bringing the character articles up to standards (Hitsugaya, for example, has a large amount of out-of-universe information, though the problem is digging it out) and of shortening the plot, only for the latter we chose to do less important characters first because they would be easier. On to why I even brought this discussion up here, the articles I listed. I'll give you Nnoitora, we'll wait and see how the battle goes, but the rest should be discussed. [[1]] I had previously made a merge for Shinji, though it was removed. If there is any information not listed there that's in the current article, please let me know. (Also, seasons 2 and 3 are considered a single arc, along with 4 and 5) Artist Formerly Known As Whocares 14:32, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

As long as you're aware that its not just the minor character articles you've mentioned that are a problem right now, that's cool. I think there's a lot of trimming that can be done across that project (but again, save what you can for use outside of Wiki). As a suggestion, you may want to consider a better "top" page; I'd almost consider "Bleach (franchise)" to be appropriate since it cuts across print, television, video games, and merchandise, and then work down from there. --Masem 15:57, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, we're all aware that all of the Bleach articles need work, but our main concern right now is the characters, partly because that is what most of the fans will read should they come here, so the other parts of the series will have to wait their turn. Simply put it, without plot, a large number of these articles are stubs (basically, I consider a character article stub any article below 7,000 bytes; Start-Class between that and 10,000 bytes; and B-Class above 10,000 bytes. GA and above should generally be at least 15,000 bytes, but there shouldn't be an official number). Shinji, Kira, and several others can be put in three (four for Isshin and anyone else with too many details to make three averaged sized paragraphs) paragraphs with relative ease. We should really try to concentrate with those who really do make B-Class status and/or can be improved greatly (Kon, for example, can have the Radio Kon Baby and other extras info added, along with out-of-universe information). Those that cannot, unless an almost flawless keep reason can be found, should have a merge discussed, and have a merge attempt prepared by the editors before a final decision is made. Right now, though, these controversial cases should be reached. Artist Formerly Known As Whocares 18:21, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Where are we going?

While the discussion on this page seems fairly vibrant, it also seems to have rather lost focus. There's nothing wrong, of course, with picking a new direction to take this guideline, but we should ideally be trying to all go in the same direction! So where, exactly, is this discussion going? Are we still trying to agree on a rewrite of the guideline? If so, we should press on and try to restore our focus. Are we instead trying to agree on a merge with WP:WAF or another policy/guideline? If so, I would recommend a "quick fix" to the wording of the existing policy, perhaps the changes that GAS implemented a week or so ago, which are discussed a way above. Or are we trying to do something else? If so, what?? Happy‑melon 14:10, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Last major activity towards the policy seemed to suggest working with WP:WAF to write a unified policy on fictional works, splitting off the section about notability back into this article only after the unified policy was good with both. I'd almost argue that we could rename this policy to "Notability (fictional elements)" as to provide a better dividing line. --Masem 15:58, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I am not quite sure myself... But we would have to work with the WAF editors in order to get to the best result. I have suggested here that 'the fiction guidelines should be clearly split between notability ("Do we need an article?"), content ("What should we write?") and style ("How do we write about it"/"How do we present it?"...); whether in one guideline, or more than one.'; but we are still trying to work on a few details before making a final presentation. Maybe a bit more time is needed? G.A.S 18:48, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

G.A.S and me are about to hammer out a little preliminary proposal to help create a better flow between FICT and WAF. I don't have a strong opinion wrt to merging, but I think if a seperate notability guideline is kept, it should encompass all issues regarding notability; WAF should then (which is already the idea) pick up the thread for cases where notability has been established and discuss what and how to write — a distinction to which I largely agree, but which may be difficult to formulate. The what part in particular is a cornerstone which is largely ignored up until now, but it's related closer to the how-to guideline WAF than to the notability guideline.

A rather simple (though still somewhat overlapping) dividing line between the two is the hierarchical level: FICT for the question on whether or not an article, WAF for everything concerning the individual article, once notability is cleared. — [ aldebaer⁠ ] 21:51, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Undelete deleted examples in subpage of this page

A simple request. In the examples section, some examples concern deleted articles. The reader of this guideline should be able to read them in their deleted form. Only in this way can the value of the example be employed fully. Show, don't tell. User:Krator (t c) 23:58, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

- Deleted articles are deleted for a reason. I see no reason to resurrect bad articles as "an example". --Phirazo 01:07, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Mass removal of articles related to fiction

This is not a poll, it is a discussion. Please do not vote support/oppose to anything mentioned here.

I have been seeing this some time and I see no discussion on it anywhere so I am initiating it.

There are several people who have started placing "merge" tags on articles related to fiction. After waiting a while, the articles are mass redirectified and are made useless. One example for this can be [2] versus [3]. One is a full-page article other has few useless lines. Most common excuse for such a mass removal is "notability". Hence why this is here.

I am not calling it a "merge" because mass amount of material is removed and not merged. Articles are reduce to something lesser than a stub which isn't in line with Help:Merging and moving pages. I feel this is a compromise in encyclopedia quality. Note that Wikipedia isn't paper and we are not a traditional paper encyclopedia, we never will be one.

I also consider the wikia spam on this page to be unhelpful. We are not an advertising company for wikia and their presence is parallel to the spirit of "WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS". Just because wikia exist shouldn't mean we should seek mass deleting/removing articles.

Someone should explain to me the logic of creating colossal impossible to navigate lists as encouraged on this page. Why can't the information be kept on different SQL columns rather than on the same one. Either way they occupy the same amount of hard drive space. Separate pages are more user friendly. So why do we create large colossal lists?

-- Cat ^chi? 05:22, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Something that aspires to be an encyclopedia should be judged by what it omits, and the weight given to important subjects [...] "An Encyclopedia has a certain character to it that involves not just accuracy but a personal level of eloquence or balance. Subjects are supposed to be covered in proportion to their significance; those values of accuracy don't seem obvious to people, but they sense when it's not there."[4] In other words: Our 100+ Pokemon articles are the most often cited example for why exactly Wikipedia is a laughing stock. I'm aware some wouldn't agree with that because WP:NOT#PAPER. But WP:alsoNOT#an indiscriminate collection of information. — [ aldebaer⁠ ] 06:03, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I am not suggesting that every Pokemon must have an article. What I am asking is, why are people mass removing information and calling it a "merge". If it is going to be merged, fine but mass amount of information shouldn't be removed out of the blue. The process of merging should be done slowly. We are not racing against a clock as this is not wikinews. Our criteria of inclusion is not determined by the "laughing stock"ability of a topic. -- Cat ^chi? 06:58, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

The Register takes digs at Wikipedia every chance it gets. I don't take them as an authority on what we should be doing. Nor do I take Britannica as a model for what articles we should and shouldn't have. They are a model for the kind of quality we should be striving for on each article -- including the supposed "cruft" ones.--Father Goose 10:00, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Here, here, quite so. I've spoken to many professionals who expressed great respect for Wikipedia, and they aren't even aware of the number of Pokemon articles; nor do they care. I no longer buy the "laughing stock" argument. I certainly wouldn't see a problem with the publication of a separate "Encyclopedia of Pokemon", so why is it absurd to add it here? Likewise there is nothing wrong with an episode Encyclopedia of TV shows. There is no need to clear these out; only to make sure they are accurate and focused. — RJH (talk) 17:08, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I presume this started with the fact that a lot of stub type articles came into existence for every episode and imaginable character of every show, a lot of which had no real possibility of ever becoming more than a stub (such as Coco the dog).
Instead of nominating the articles for deletion, some of the editors started redirecting the articles with the notion of notability (since, esp. for episode type articles, AfD results were often keep), see Wikipedia talk:Television article review process.
The idea with merge was that the articles should be reworded not to be a long plot summary and then merge, although in practice, this does not always happen. (A good example of a useful merge is Smallville (season 1) as opposed to different episode articles.)
That is one of the main reasons why we are trying to work out a replacement for this guideline, but it is a somewhat slow process, see the proposal above and the alternative.
Regards, G.A.S 06:30, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

In other words we are overriding consensus by tricking the system and avoiding AfDs all together. I still do not understand what the point of merging individual episode articles to season by season articles. We are not saving hard drive space, and the material becomes harder to follow. Good articles do not have 24-48 sections (an average TV show season has 24-48 episodes) in them. Merging them creates a longer plot summary.
I find short seperate articles easier to follow than long-ass full "list of character" articles. I still cannot see the practical use of mass merging lots of articles into a long impossible-to-follow list.
-- Cat ^chi? 06:58, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

RE: overriding consensus: I still believe so: I had a long discussion about this here. Some of the other editors are still of the opinion that redirect ≠ delete, but in my opinion the only difference is the fact that a non-admin can undo a redirect (although the redirects are enforced). G.A.S 07:08, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I still do not see the point of mass merging them. -- Cat ^chi? 07:30, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:NOT#PLOT. The point is we are not a fan site, and plot details without real-world information isn't relevant to Wikipedia. -- Ned Scott 07:33, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

The idea of the merges was that the content of esp. minor characters could be better presented in a list (See Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Minor characters); but in my opinion the merging got out of hand a long time ago, as it got extended to major characters and episode articles. G.A.S 07:42, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Caution should be taken with major characters, but the vast majority of episode articles have no place here on Wikipedia. -- Ned Scott 07:45, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I guess one of the problems is that the bulk of this guideline was written by a few editors as the answer to the many articles, without really obtaining the greater community's consensus. And changing it is subject to great opposition. G.A.S 07:42, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

The bulk of this guideline was written with over-all experiences and input from the entire community. Those who actually made the edits are active editors for fictional articles, they're fans, and they participate in AfDs, WikiProjects, and a ton of other community discussions. The bulk of our guidelines are only actually edited by a few, but to say that is the view of only a few is simply incorrect. -- Ned Scott 07:48, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

"The bulk of this guideline was written with over-all experiences and input from the entire community" - I don't think the article's history backs this up. There are some editors that are only active in AfDs, merge/redirect discussions, and the like. They are not "fans" no matter how many WikiProjects they sign up for. These editors feel that 90% of WPs coverage of fiction is trivial fancruft and that WP would be better if it were purged of such information. Ursasapien (talk) 07:59, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

You seem to be pulling that completely out of your ass. [5]. For example, User:Deckiller did the bulk of the work on the last major re-write, and I'd call him a fan and an editor of fictional related topics. He's worked hard towards improving articles, and has strongly urged other editors to use deletion as a last resort. -- Ned Scott 08:11, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

No, I am pulling it out of the history. The fiction guidelines have been dominated by policy wonks who have little interest in biulding an encyclopedia, but have a great deal of interest in getting rid of information. For example, TTN who has had multiple complaints about his brash, full-steam-ahead approach to mass redirection. How about, aldebaer, what articles has he been adding to? TKD is another excellent example. Even yourself, you claim to be a fan, but an examination of your contributions shows that you are mainly working on AfDs and changing guidelines to suit your purpose. Ursasapien (talk) 08:49, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

hahaha, major fail, trying to judge if someone is a fan or not based on their Wikipedia contributions. I can tell you the names of any given form of any given Digimon (which is an ok show in it's original form) that appeared in an anime series, from memory. The last two days (my days off, I work full time) I've watched about 10 hours of anime, and talked about it for another few hours on /a/. You dare question my fandom? You, sir, have gone too far.

Removing excessive plot summaries that drown out the good stuff, like why a character was developed a certain way, or what went on during the production process, does improve Wikipedia. I love my shows like Lost, and would love to generate tons of original research and speculation among friends, but like hell I'd let something like that litter Wikipedia. Oh noes, he said "policy wonks". Get a clue, man. -- Ned Scott 09:07, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Calling editors policy wonks isn't productive. Oh, and I do expand articles on fiction, as well as copyedit some of them. — TKD::Talk 10:53, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Ursasapien, apart from wholeheartedly agreeing with Ned Scott wrt not letting Wikipedia get littered, I also do contribute some content (User:AldeBaer#See also). I know it's not my strongest side, but I'm trying to improve it. As an explanation (not an excuse!), it may have to do with my perfectionism in conjunction with not being a native speaker. — [ aldebaer ] (at work) 134.95.233.159 11:07, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I do not see a real consensus. Because of that lack of a consensus we are experiencing these difficulties. The "majority of episode articles have no place here on Wikipedia" comment is not endorsed by any policy or guideline and is merely your opinion. I obviously do not share it.
This guideline is used primarily to massacre fictional articles as I see it. Guidelines are supposed to be guidelines on how to write good articles. For the most part, a number of optional recommendations... This guideline however seems to be more of an instruction manual on how to reduce potential articles into pathetic sub-stub state. I know that was not the intention of it but I feel it needs a rewrite.
Wikiprojects are merely lists of users interested in a topic. Anyone can join them. There are a lot of people who have signed up to the anime wikiproject who only delete material and not add a single byte of info. Such people probably have not watched a single episode of anime.
Being a "fan" of an anime or another TV show is not a crime. Writing about a show you watched isn't banned either.
-- Cat ^chi? 08:02, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

You didn't see a consensus when we deleted a recap episode article you created, or when we redirected a mass of character stubs you created. The last person I'd trust to have good judgement on these matters is you, Cat. You only follow consensus when it works for you, then throw a fit when it doesn't. It is true that some editors go over the line with mass redirecting, but for the most part, the articles being removed, redirected, or whatever, contain no information of value in regards to Wikipedia. Trying to call it a massacre to get sympathy is just childish. Try presenting an actual argument, for once. -- Ned Scott 08:11, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Your personal involvement (as per WP:HA and Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Ned Scott) with me is quite irritating. -- Cat ^chi? 08:16, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

As clearly pointed out to you on said pages, the issue at hand was regarding your changing of talk page archives, and at no point was I stalking you or attempting to harass you. You even call even admins stalkers when they go around fixing your mistakes. Although I do find it painfully funny that you would have the nerve to say I'm harassing you, when I've been a major participant of this talk page for months before you made your comments today. -- Ned Scott 08:27, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

The guideline can and should imo be used to reign in (rather than massacre, which is just another uptown word for the same thing and reflects your opinion which I obviously don't share) the insufferable inflation of fiction-related sub- and sub-sub-articles on episodes, minor character and even fictional devices. — [ aldebaer⁠ ] 08:13, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I do not understand why sub articles are problematic. -- Cat ^chi? 08:18, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

The unsufferable inflation of often unreferenced and in-universe perm-stubs on by themselves non-notable topics is. — [ aldebaer⁠ ] 08:24, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I still do not see how that is problematic. There are plenty of non-fiction related stubs that had stayed as a stub for years. Such articles aren't removed with a name calling of "physics-cruft"... -- Cat ^chi? 08:55, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Here, here! Why is notability not pursued across the board? I say it is because intellectual elitist have a problem with fictional topics. Ursasapien (talk) 08:59, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

(i) I don't have a problem with fictional topics, I have a problem with bad coverage of fictional topics, precisely because I am very fond of fiction. (ii) The problem with excessive articles on non-notable popular culture topics is far worse than in any other area because (iii) too many people contributing to the area don't realise that the very idea of producing an encyclopedia is an intellectual enterprise. (iiii) If you're trying to insult me with "intellectual elitist", then just go ahead and enjoy your anti-intellectual pride. — [ aldebaer ] (at work) 134.95.233.159 11:16, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I still do not see the benefit of mass merging small articles. Don't link me to a policy, guideline or essay. The reason should be jawdroppingly obvious but I am not seeing it. -- Cat ^chi? 07:54, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

"Don't link me to a policy, guideline or essay." Why? Because they show how wrong you are? -- Ned Scott 08:12, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Not at all. They offer no explanation. The inability to give me a straight answer with a single simple sentence proves the lack of logic of this procedure. -- Cat ^chi? 08:18, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

How about: Articles about fictional subjects that fail to establish their notability and are written in an in-universe format and are mostly mere plot summary are unencyclopaedic and have no place here. --Jack Merridew 10:43, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia anyone can edit. If an article is fully fictional there is a cleanup template for it. Eventually it will be improved. Blanking it is not what I call improvement. -- Cat ^chi? 11:19, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Redirecting articles about fictional subjects that fail to establish their notability and are written in an in-universe format and are mostly mere plot summary is improvement. --Jack Merridew 16:48, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Asking not to be directed to policy is just asking for someone to come along and do exactly that. It might as well be me. Decisions on Wikipedia are not made by individuals. They are formed by consensus. No-one can present a legitimate argument for merging articles on minor fictional topics without quoting policy, because then it represents only that user's point of view. Instead, a satisfactory answer to your question must quote policy, because it then represents the consensus of editors. So here we go. Wikipedia is not a paper enyclopaedia. Contraty to common belief, this does not mean Wikipedia should include information on everything. If you pick up the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, you will not find an article on Bulbasaur (I'll use the traditional Pokemon example, but the same is doubtless true of the articles you refer to). Wikipedia already contains more information on most fictional topics than a paper encyclopaedia. Incidentally, performance and hard-drive concerns are not relevant to discussion. The size of an article or topic is governed only by stylistic and content guidelines. So now the crux of the matter. The Wikipedia Notability guideline governs what may or may not be included as Wikipedia articles, in the interests of ensuring that we do not collect indiscriminate information. The notability guideline, which represents the consensus of literally tens or hundreds of thousands of editors, establishes a very simple criterion which, if you are to understand the rationale behind this process, you should read very carefully. "A subject is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject". I won't repeat the very specific explanations of each term in that phrase, but just try thinking about that phrase. Has Sandshrew ever been critically analysed by reliable external sources? Note the fact that "external" means that the primary literature - the Pokemon books, games, films, and shows - do not count towards establishing notability. The answer is an unconditional "no", which precludes Sandshrew having its own article (although it did at one point, before this guideline was rigorously enforced). Fortunately, WP:N has an exception in that it does not limit article content - an article such as List of Pokemon, therefore, can establish its own notability through reference to multiple secondary sources, and the content of that article (brief descriptions of each Pokemon) are not bound by WP:N. Due to size concerns, however, such article must be keps succint. The manual of style also dictates that the minimum of "in-universe" information should be used, and the information must not be an extended plot summary. Given these conerns, the correct process for dealing with an evidently non-notable fictional topic is to condense the article in situ to remove as much in-universe content as possible, then merge it into a relevant larger topic (usually a "List of X" article). Editors performing this process in a single operation leads to the phenomenon you have described. I hope this clears things up for you. Happy‑melon 08:52, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I am well aware of the notability needs. We certainly do not want an article on uderwear habits of random star trek characters. That was not what I asked though. My argument on "list of foo" is primarily over interface concerns. If something is notable enough to have coverage on wikipedia in a list, why can't we present that on individual pages so that it is more easily readable. My argument is lists are hard to follow. They get too large. Naruto for example has far too many minor characters. When you stuff them up, the list becomes hard to follow. Now I am not suggesting that we must create one article per every Pokemon or Naruto character. What I am arguing is interface wise creating seperate pages seems more logical.
I consider the statement "remove as much in-universe content as possible" to be problematic. If MOS demands such a thing, it needs to be changed. Wikipedia isn't Britannica. Granted in-universe information should be complimented with out-universe information. But a lack of out-universe information should not be a reason to mass remove content on the contrary it should be a reason to add out of universe material.
I am not a policy/guideline happy person. Wikipedia foremost is not a bureaucracy. All I want is a simple non-policy specific reason why articles are mass merged. I feel good sense should be simple and easy to explain. Jimbos quote comes to my mind: "There are people who have good sense. There are idiots. A consensus of idiots does not override good sense. Wikipedia is not a democracy." Now I am not trying to call anyone stupid however I do feel a simple non-policy specific logical explanation is warranted at this earlier stage of the discussion.
-- Cat ^chi? 09:19, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Basically, (as I see it) fancruft begets fancruft: whether its just the need to write about something they know a lot about in a highly-public location or because they see a similar type of article in a different subject but of the same nature, newer editors that are fans of fictional works are more likely going to write an extensive amount of in-universe information without considering out-of-universe approaches. This will cause other editors to do the same, and the problem only escalates from there to the point where we will have pages, solely written around in-universe information for characters that show up once in a show, or a fictional element made in passing basically because writing to that end is easy if you are a fan. By enforcing notability, suggesting the merge of fictional elements into lists, moving of information to other accessible sites, and all that, is meant to prevent the kudzu-like spread of such in-universe articles that make no attempt to establish why they should exist on WP. It is not that there is no place for in-universe information on WP, but it must be balanced well with out-of-universe notability. --Masem 13:08, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

The content of the list can be expanded in a kudzu-like manner as well. This is like saying vandalism breeds vandalism. If someone vandalizes a page, you revert - no big deal. If someone adds useless fancruft can be removed just like original research. You can enforce notability on seperate articles just as well on a list. In the end the objective is the reader not the writer. If the article is hard for reader to read, they should be broken apart.
Using the fan motivation also seems like a good idea. People should be encouraged to add out-of-universe material rather than mass removal of their "hard work". Rather than scaring people away from the project, they should be encouraged why we need out-of-universe material on articles. James T. Kirk (now as of this post -> change since then) for example does not contain a whole lot of out-of-universe material at the moment. You can encourage people writing it to add out of universe material in a polite manner rather than nominate the article for deletion or blank it.
I completely agree with your assessment that in-universe information must be balanced well with out-of-universe material. But to do that there needs to be an article to work on. There are ways to cure the patient without killing him/her/it. See WP:DEADLINE.
-- Cat ^chi? 19:16, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

It's much much much easier to track the addition of excessive fancruft in a single list article than it is when they are split into separate articles, particularly since any editor can create an article and its existence may not be known until it is linked in, and even then, catching the point of being linked in may be tricky. Additionally, everyone's time on WP is voluntary; tracking changes on one list is a much more reasonable task than trying to track changes on 20 sub-articles.

If the lists are hard to navigate, then there's probably something wrong with the order, or there is possibly a need to consider what the Pokeman editors did: a straight-forward, excel-like list with no descriptive information to index the lists, and then sublists that extend from that.

To the last point, and this is where it is big, to meet the tenets of what WP wants to be and make it less a laughable resource, we need to avoid giving treatment the same treatment to fictional characters as we do (if not more so) to real world. In 100 years, what will be more notable: Bill Gates or Homer Simpson? If we use what was in the 1900s, the answer's pretty obvious. What about in 500 years? 1000 years? We have to take a very holistic view of what information is absolutely important to present, and that means the real world notability is the driving factor. "The Simpsons" has made a huge impact on the world, but very few characters are notable. Even moreso, there may only be one or two really notable Pokemon from all 400+ through the anime, manga, and video games. Yes, WP is not a paper encyclopedia, there is no deadline to make it perfect, and so forth, but the problem of fancruft is one that grows every single day, with only a small number of editors able to help educate the increasingly larger number of newer and fan-type editors about why fictional notability is a very important policy to be considered. Yes, we want to encourage people to write to the out-of-universe notability and balance articles, but our voices are generally very small to the din that determined fan-editors can make when push comes to shove. (One can argue there is consensus then to keep such articles, but if we went that far to be democratic about what stays and what goes in WP, there would be a lot more cruft throughout the site.). And we're not saying this is useful information, its just not useful information to 100% of the population. --Masem 20:21, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

It is incredibly obvious that, in 100 years, Homer Simpson will still be more well-known than Bill Gates. Who is more notable from 100 years ago, - Eli Whitney or Uncle Tom? I would argue that both are very notable, but Uncle Tom is more well known. This is an encyclopedia. It should cover a host of notable subjects, but let's not take ourselves too seriously. An encyclopedia will never be a serious or definative resource. An encyclopedia gives general coverage on a number of subjects. As long as notable fictional subjects are treated in a accurate way, I simply can not see the problem with having vast amounts of articles. Ursasapien (talk) 10:09, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Be careful about strawmen. Homer Simpson has incredibly broad cultural impact, is a lead character on a groundbreaking network series that has run for 20+ years, and even had his catchword (d'oh) added to many dictionaries. The same is unlikely to be true of most Pokemon characters, or even (with respect to White Cat), a pet dog on the second-shortest running Star Trek series. Thatcher131 12:34, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Porthos (Star Trek) is up for deletion. I think it might be relevant to this discussion. -- Ned Scott 07:05, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Edit point

Below is out of sync due to an edit conflict.

A stupid play from several hundreds of years ago which the author named "Hamlet" is quite famous today. No one remembers who the second head of the country was back then though. Or how about the 3rd president of the United States? His cabinate members? We do not write articles from the perspective of 1000 years. Many of our articles including non-fiction related ones will need to be deleted if that'd be the case. If something becomes non-notable in a thousand years from now to the point of prompting deletion, people can discuss it then.
"Traceability of fancruft" is not of critical importance. Even more serious concerns with legal implications such as WP:BLP, WP:COPYVIO or WP:VANDAL is given less weight when the structure of articles is in consideration. You can create a toolserv tool to track all the fiction-related-articles if you like, but reviewer convenience has no weight whatsoever on the structure of articles.
I could care less about the colonial wars or Argentinian politics or Argentina all together. This does not mean those articles should be deleted just because they aren't aimed at 100% of the human population. Each of our article is not aimed at 100% of the people. Our entire encyclopedia is aimed at 100% of the people with a variety of topics with varying importance.
How is mass blanking articles an encouragement? With the current process James T. Kirk should be blanked for not being notable. I am pulling that as an obvious example why mass blanking articles is a bad practice. I find the pokemon lists hard to follow and unhelpful since information on the actual articles were not merged and mass amount of it was removed. Encyclopedia quality was compromised.
Please do not use "notability" as a convenient excuse to attempt to turn wikipedia into a traditional encyclopedia. We (the humans of Earth) already have such a source: Britannica.
-- Cat ^chi? 13:52, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Not seeing how James Kirk would be deleted? Notability doesn't diminish over time. If you were notable once, you're notable always. Wikipedia may not be the Britannica, but it isn't a fansite either. It wasn't created to cater to people that just want to write about their favorite television show character, and detail how this character goes about their daily lives. We have other outlets for that, like Wikia. If you want to know what flavor bubble gum Pikachoo likes, write an article about on Wikia. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 14:18, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

James T. Kirk would end up getting redirectified with the current practices. I am unaware of a bubble gum Pikachu ever chewed. Wikipedia was most certainly created for people to write about their favorite topics which may well include TV shows. This is what an anybody can edit encyclopedia is. I find this spammy advertisement of Wikia disruptive. Stop it. Pikachu's article can mention this bubble gum habit of its if it has some significance just like how Homer Simpson is into Donuts. You made the claim so I assume you have a source for this - not that it matters. I am unaware of a single instance of Pikachu chewing a gum though. Do not show the door to people who only want to write a comprehensive encyclopedia. -- Cat ^chi? 16:08, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

The wikipedia we edit is the Beta version and will always stay that way so long as time doesnt stop, things continue to happen, books continue to be written, and shows continue to air. We already have a system that checks for "good" and "bad" articles known as Wikipedia 1.0. Articles that contain no sources will unlikely make it to the stable version. Please stop treating wikipedia like a finished product.

Articles can be notable strictly for their relation to a notable topic. John F. Kennedy is a notable person and hence has an article on him. Lee Harvey Oswald is only notable because of his act of assassinating Kennedy. The assassination would have been non-notable like any random murder and Oswald like any murder had Kennedy not been notable himself. Let me demonstrate something. I will use a real world person to avoid the rhetorical "cruft" argument. From 12 April 2001 to 20 April 2005 (500 edits - 4 years) the article had a great amount of improvement however it did not have any out-of0universe sources. By 10 October 2005 (500 edits - 6 months) article had a great amount of improvement but still had no references. By 4 March 2006 (500 edits - 6 months) more improvement still no referances. By 22 August 2006 (500 edits - 6 months) finally an infobox and referances were included in the article. The article never achieved featured status to this date. Or another example, Herostratus who has committed an act of arson on the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The article is around since 21 October 2002. Had Herostratus burn any random house, it would have been a non-notable event not worth a mention. The article contains no sources.

Of course not every Pokemon has the stand alone notability Homer Simpson has. But the show Pokemon is notable prompting a comprehensive coverage on every movie, video game, TV episode, and character on the show. Comprehensive coverage on fictional works should not be banned.

The point of this guideline is to seek writing better articles on fictional works. It should not be a license for deletion.

The people I am complaining about with my original post have detached from our project goal of the writing of a comprehensive encyclopedia that they want to change the Featured Article guidelines seemingly just to be able to better massacre fiction-related articles. There is no rule that says you can't nominate a featured article for an improvement drive. We do not protect featured articles for a reason. Even the featured star is a symbol of progressive editing.

-- Cat ^chi? 16:08, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I think saying that we're calling for deletion of many fictional articles is a bit aggressive. Particularly in the newer proposed version of the WP:FICT guidelines, we specifically say that non-notability is not a reason for CSD. Neither is the lack of references or the like. WP:CSD has very specific and very calculable ends to determine if an article can be speedily-deleted, and notability would never be one of these.

What we are asking editors to do is to look at their fictional articles and consider what Wikipedia is not. Part of that is notability - specifically defined as evidenced through secondary sources. If articles lack notability defined this way, they should work at establishing it, or otherwise finding a way to combine it with other articles to remove undue weight on the notability via primary sources. Yes, this generally means merging and resulting deletion of larger articles on fictional topics into shorter articles, but this improves the quality of all combined topics to meet the standards set for Wikipedia. However, there is no timeline to make non-notable articles notable or to merge/delete them, just that it is very necessary to make sure the concept of notability is constantly brought to the forefront so that all editors are aware what is needed to be done. In the case of the Pokemon lists, the editors reached a consensus to do the merge/delete, and thus this is a prime example of helping to demonstrate how notability for fiction should be applied. --Masem 16:38, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

My complaint is the practice by some people who use this guideline only to mass ~~merge~~redirectify articles massacre articles by overwhelming the editors who work on the actual articles. Blanket statements such as "most/all episode articles must go" is the root of my complaint. The problem is not the guideline, it is how it is being interpreted. -- Cat ^chi? 17:59, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Please show me where it says Wikipedia was created for us to write about our favorite television shows. I must have missed that memo. I'm not seeing how James Kirk would be redirected by current guidelines either. As for the episode thing, frankly, most episodes are not notable. They have no significance outside of the actual show. Please show me why you feel that every episode of a show needs to be stand alone when one can easily write an article that encompasses all of them. As for Wikia, please do not raise that tone of cyber-voice with me. Pikachu's bubble gum fetish was an analogy, I don't know that character and have no knowledge of whether he likes bubble gum or not. You mentioned Pokemon. Wikipedia may be able to be edited by everyone, but it isn't your personal playground. You want to write a fictional biography on a character, start a fansite. If you want an encyclopedic account of a fictional character, then you're at the right place. Pokemon itself is notable. Pikachu is notable. But there is no such thing as inherited notability when it comes to fictional topics. An article can become too large, and need to be split, and you could say that the sub-article has "inherited" notability because it was split. But, that isn't an argument if the parent article is already small. You cannot go, "oh, we need to create a fictional article on Star Trek red shirt #117, because he had a memoriable death--at least I liked it--and he's part of Star Trek which is notable, thus he is notable." Doesn't work that way. If you have an issue with the practice of this guideline, or any other guideline, then I suggest meeting the criteria that was established by consensus for those guideline. Saves a lot of heartache. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 19:45, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

A point for White Cat to consider: perhaps Hamlet is judged significant because it is still performed hundreds of years after it was written, and has given numerous phrases to the language, including "neither a borrower nor a lender be" and "a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance" - there are many famous phrases in that play. I suppose one could argue that "it's worse than that, his brain has gone!" might qualify... Cruftbane 10:18, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

I am a fan of fiction, and I will admit that some articles have got out of hand. In this comment, I shall use the Tv shows Scrubs and House as examples, since they're ones I'm most familiar with.

My first and overriding thought is this - just because there exists a wiki for a topic, doesn't mean wikipedia can't cover that topic in detail. Now, I'm not suggesting that wikipedia lists every detail about an episode of a show or every joke a character ever made, but we shouldn't just reduce everything down to lists. As Cat said, lists can be annoying when you're trying to find out a specific piece of information. Whether that's bad list design or not, our aim should be to educate and sometimes entertain the reader. We should make sure the information is provided all the time - this means we do not delete (and frankly, what Eusebus and others are advocating is not merging, it's mass deletion of information) information until we have recreated that information in our new, improved form. Only then should we consider article deletion.

A lot of people are concerned about notability. I consider that the main cast and major supporting roles (eg in Scrubs, The Todd would be a major supporting role) of a popular TV show are notable, simply because of that TV show. Whether they enter the public consciousness in such as way as Homer Simpson's d'oh is irrelevant. We should also not consider whether someone will be notable in the future - in the future, we can edit the articles. In the present, let us display the relevant information. Even if right now this means we want to know about what Gregory House did when detoxing, so be it.

As for out of universe information - I don't consider this particularly relevant. Sure, it would be nice to have some outside information, but just because an article does not contain any does not mean that it is necessarily a useless article. To the people who want to know about their favourite TV show, it's a very useful article. And that's something we shouldn't lose sight of - the encyclopaedia is written for the casual reader. It's not written for the editors, it's not designed to make it easy to track changes introducing random snippets of information to a myriad of articles. It's written to tell people what they want to know. I've seen talk of WP:BIAS, and I agree that wikipedia does have a bias, but as long as other subjects are not neglected, there is nothing wrong with providing our readers with what they want to know. To summarise and analogise, we are arguing over whether we give a popular article a burger with or without cheese while thousands of articles are malnourished. But the people causing the malnourishment are not the people who happen to like the popular articles, it's those who force us to spend time arguing to keep those, rather than letting us do maintenance, disambiguation and the like.

We have present notability, we cannot second guess what will be notable in the future. mattbuck 15:43, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I respect mattbuck's argument above, but fundamentally disagree. As I see it, it is simply not credible to justify an individual article about a fictional character that cannot be anchored in real-world significance. Arguments that articles about fictional characters are too long to be successfully integrated into a list indicate simply that too much fan-driven detail has accrued to the subject. Wikias are a better place for that kind of detail; it does not belong here. Eusebeus 19:08, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
Remember that "Notability" as defined by wikipedia is very different from the general knowledge concept of "notability". Additionally, WP's notability extends from it's five pillars, specifically, that it is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Yes, the line between what is and isn't an "indiscriminate collection" is very fuzzy, and thus at some point, we have to draw a line. Several iterations have recently produced a less-fuzzy line: significant coverage in secondary sources.
And I would argue, at least based on what passes as GAs and FAs, that right now Wikipedia is way too pop culture heavy. Yes, people are working on historical, scientific, social sciences, and other more academic subjects, but by far these are outweighed by recent films, tv shows, and video games. This will likely never change given the open nature, and I doubt anyone is saying this is a problem, but if we let non-(by WP)-notable fictional elements continue to expand without bounds, the project will be significantly outweighed by that. There is a limit, and notability is that line for that limit. --MASEM 19:24, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

A cynical view

How can we tell 'fan-type' editors to lay off the fancruft while there are articles like Spoo or UNIT dating controversy? They've both come through AfD debates with hefty support from admins, yet their notability is pretty questionable. I'm concerned that this guideline may perpetuate Wikipedia's bias by targeting fiction which doesn't have experienced editors to defend it.--Nydas^(Talk) 22:08, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

It is going to be about as bad as pulling teeth. The smartest thing to do is to find a project with experienced editors that are willing to work with us once we've set guidelines to improve their pages. Then we can demonstrate how one established project was transformed, and at that point use it excessively as an example when we come across those for Spoo and somesuch articles. --Masem 22:24, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

How does that survive? Is it because the admins in question are Babylon 5 fans? WAVY 10 22:54, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Never mind. WAVY 10 22:54, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Not even that far. The WP:Featured article criteria does not include any concept of notability. Spoo fairly meets every other requirement; including those under WP:LOP that all articles are supposed to meet, and the only place notability comes up there is buried in WP:NOT.

Maybe that's what's needed here: the injection of notability into the FAC (and also I'd suggest GAC too) process explicitly instead of relying on the loose interpretation that WP:NOT#IINFO leaves. You have to click-thru several links to get from the FAC criteria to WP:N. --Masem 23:15, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Or maybe FA is a fine demonstration that if an article is well-written and compliant with our core policies, we shouldn't delete it. We're the world's largest encyclopedia, not the world's largest clique.--Father Goose 03:52, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Being the world's largest encyclopedia doesn't mean we are the world's largest conservation of useless topics either. I'm not calling "Spoo" or any other specific topic "useless" or "irrelevant" to the real world, but the fact remains that "Not an indiscriminate collection of information" is basically defined by this guideline (well...the general notability guideline would be more precise). I could write a well written article on my toe nail, even provide medical histories for everything going on with it. Does that make it notable enough for Wikipedia (excluding any hypotheticals that my toe nail's medical history is itself notable for being some rare, never before seen thing)? BIGNOLE (Contact me) 03:59, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I sincerely doubt that any FAC article is useless, no matter how non-notable it is. I agree with Father Goose in that a FA shouldn't be concerned with notability. If a topic can get that far (and stay there) it deserves a break. Happy‑melon 07:20, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

If your toenail was on television and in other media several times and as a result became something of a cultural phenomenon, then yes, it'd be notable and yes, we should welcome a well-written article on it. It's a no-brainer to delete articles on subjects that have zero academic or cultural visibility... why doesn't it follow that we retain well-written articles on subjects that do have visibility?--Father Goose 08:05, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

The problem with notability and FA's is that there has never been (until relatively recently) a strong, less-human-error measuring stick to be used to qualify an article as there is with concepts such as being "well written", being "factually accurate" or other metrics on WP:FACR. Discussions in 2006 were aimed at including in, but the current overall WP:N at that time appeared to lack a strong metric and because of that, it wouldn't have been an appropriate metric to add, so it was dropped, allowing the deletion process to handle non-notable articles.

However, the notability guideline was recently rewritten to include a good less-biased metric: "A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject." But as far as I can tell , with this new wording, the addition of notability to FA criteria hasn't yet been done. (And I'm trying to make out the history looking through 4 different pages of guideline and talk histories to get a better picture, so I may have made a timing error, but from a gross viewpoint, I think this is close)

The WP project is not a static beast, it has strong dynamic nature. Not only can content change from day to day, the guidelines that drive the quality of the project change. Small changes are usually accepted, but ones that significantly alter the landscape are discussed at great depth and generally reviewed at large before they even are made in guidelines. The change to WP:N was heated but accepted, and most of the rest of this page is discussing how to update WP:FICT (short of the below-mentioned Notability merging possibility) to talk about fictional works, and with what I'm pretty sure most editors understand is a very sweeping change: the bulk of the articles on fictional elements currently on WP will fail to meet WP:N. Note that no one is going out to delete these without question (failure to meet WP:N should not be a CSD), but it is something that people are trying to educate other editors on so they can try to improve articles. But even the general change of WP:N is sufficient to call for that (a point taken when WP:N was rewritten from what I can tell).

So just like guidelines can change, what makes a good or featured article will also have to change. Again, its not like notability isn't part of the FAC criteria, the current problem is that it is only mentioned in name three-clicks away via WP:NOT#IINFO. However, changes to the FAC guidelines should not be drastic to cause all existing FA to fail. Adding WP:N criteria will affect a number of articles in FA, so it just can't be added, and should only be added once the impact of WP:N across the projects affected the most (WP:FICT) is understood and appropriate guided to other editors. And even then, the significance of its impact to FA articles has to be taken into account too. Given that it will affect at least one article (Spoo), it is a non-trivial addition to the criteria, but it should be reconsidered very shortly.

Also do note that the FA status of an article is not equivalent to a form tenure. When I was helping to clean up articles, tagging them for how they were classified as GAs, I saw a lot of articles that were former featured articles, some which basically hadn't been touched for a couple of years, and because the FAC criteria changed, these articles lost their FA status. I understand that with Spoo, it had two FARs, both passing the article as an FA still, and it then was challenged by an AfD for notability, but only because that is really presently the only other outlet (outside of working with the editors outside of any WP process) to question why an article is included in WP on notability concerns. I see why it was done that way, but why it was done like this is exactly the reason why we need to consider that WP:N is a consensus agreed upon guideline, and that it seems completely farcical to not have this strongly stated as a guideline now that a strong metric is there. Yes, it will cause some FAs to fail, but given how bad the cruft is getting around in just fictional topics alone, I think its a acceptable tradeoff to show that notability is really necessary criteria. --Masem 13:29, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I do believe, as you seem to, that WP:N will be more consistently applied in the future, but I also believe what is considered "notable" will grow, not shrink, as time goes on. Wikipedia started out with a very inclusionist ethic, and I see an exclusionist backlash going on now. In the end, it's my feeling Wikipedia will settle in for the long term somewhere between those positions. We'll never abandon the core principles, god willing, and "notability" is not one of them. On its good days, it's a practicality; on its bad, an errant compromise.--Father Goose 01:27, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Should I propose a guideline Wikipedia:Notability (Schools, Roadways, Parks, and Correctional Institutions or do we need seperate guidelines for each of these? Can someone think of a shorter title? Does anyone else see this as a problem on Wikipedia? Ursasapien (talk) 09:03, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

No: I believe the general notability guideline is quite sufficient for those. (I also believe it is sufficient for fiction, see above) Also refer to this discussion. G.A.S 09:42, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

To be honest, my proposal was a little tongue-in-cheek. However, I would appreciate an answer to my other questions. BTW, I have noted that we have several "Notability" guidelines on specific subjects. Do you feel that these should all be merged? Ursasapien (talk) 09:55, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

FA criteria clearly state: "In addition to meeting the requirements for all Wikipedia articles..." Well, every Wikipedia article must meet the general notability guideline. Also, another criteria is "comprehensive". You cannot be considered "comprehensive" if you don't have any real world content. Real world content establishes notability. One other criteria is "It follows style guidelines." The summary style guidelines keeps the overly zealous edits that add every detail for a show, film, fictional event onto a page. WP:SUMMARY (not to mention WP:PLOT and WP:AVTRIV) are the tools necessary to handle the "fancruft" the "fan-type" editors add to articles. To answer your question Father Goose, "visibility" is measured by "significant coverage in reliable sources" (per the notability guideline). My toe nail could have been on the local news for a half a minute, that's visibility, but it isn't significant enough to warrant an article about it. With television shows, they're the means to provide commercials for products vendors are trying to sell, hence the reason why low rated shows are canceled, because vendors don't want to pay for advertising space where people are not watching as much as another show. We don't have an article on every commercial that appears on television. If that commercial had significant coverage of its own, as in other organizations talking about it, then sure it could have its own article. That generally doesn't happen unless there is some controversy involving the commercial. FA's criteria for reaching that status is always a subjective call, because of the simple fact of who is judging the article--the editors. Say a topic went into FAC and theonly people to review it were the six people that worked on it. Raul, the director who closes the FAC, doesn't review the articles, he looks for consensus. I mean, he could if he wanted to, but I'm sure he doesn't have time to review every single article that goes through an FAC. So, if those six editors supported the article, it could be featured and not actually meet the criteria. That being said, you could have an article on Wikipedia that has so much fan support, no matter how much it fails every guideline in existence, that it pass through every checkpoint simply because of the mounds of people supporting it. It could be the worst article written in the history of Wikipedia, and still become FA. It could go through repeated AfDs, FARCs (featured article reviews, featured article removal candidacy) and surivive simply because of the amount of people that may support it, or the lack of people actually caring enough to review it. As much as it shouldn't be about "voting" in those types of processes, it usually comes down to just counting votes. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 13:05, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

In reply to Masem, above, the problem is that there was a clear precedent for deleting or redirecting Spoo; Butterbeer, Blood wine and Spice (Star Wars) are all probably more notable, but the chances of getting those articles restored is remote. Perhaps if there was a List of fictional food and drink in Babylon 5, but even then, Spoo would probably get its own article due to being 'famous' in its own right.

The point is that fancruft is not always made by ignorant, 'new' editors, but by experienced editors as well. Possibly this is the more damaging variety, since they'll give it the trappings of importance such as references, pictures and important-sounding prose.--Nydas^(Talk) 02:32, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

You're raising several good points in this thread. I wish I had any satisfying answers for these problems, but I'm afraid that like most problems on Wikipedia, they are caused by the (basic, and most of the time very good) fact that the community itself is an indiscriminate collection of individuals. Most people IRL have no idea about encyclopedic standards, and the more time passes, the more this is reflected by the community. I consider myself a third or fourth generation Wikipedian (like most of us in this debate btw), and from what I gather the percentage of intelligent users with a good measure of prefessional enthusiasm (as opposed to the more commonplace fan enthusiasm) is not exactly skyrocketing, if you know what I mean. That's why I see no universal remedy to these problems, other than to try and work with individuals who are willing to adopt the standards of encyclopedic writing and ignore the others as far as possible, in the hope that some of them will yet come around to join the effort of raising WP's standards as an encyclopedia with whichever useful contributions they prefer to be doing. — aldebaer⁠ 06:22, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I mean this with all seriousness: perhaps what is truly damaging is calling good and verifiable articles on subjects that appeal to a subset of readers "damaging". "Wikipedia is worthless! They have an article on 'spoo'!"--Father Goose 06:23, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

It's just one of many many examples. Here's another: I'm a huge fan of Malcolm in the Middle, but I consider several of these a disgrace to mainspace. I also think Nydas is raising a very valid point: How can we ever hope to effectively educate users towards professional enthusiasm when they're backed up by more experienced users who do essentially the same thing? — aldebaer⁠ 06:43, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Which are a disgrace, and why?--Father Goose 07:58, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

The ones that have not been independently covered in reliable sources. Particularly the ones that are in addition to that totally unwikified. — aldebaer⁠ 17:12, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I find this hostility toward primary sourcing so wrong-headed. Primary source analysis is bogus, but if multiple editors can review a primary source and describe it in exactly the same way, that is acceptable sourcing, per WP:PSTS. Think about why we insist on sources: verifiability. When the description of a primary source can (and especially has been) verified, it should be permitted. Secondary sources are preferable, but not always available -- we usually have to use primary sourcing for "plot summaries", even in a number of featured movie articles, and they're total sticklers for sourcing.

I can partly understand not wanting articles based on fictional characters that contain nothing but in-universe information. But the only reason I can see for not allowing articles on individual episodes of TV shows is hostility toward primary sourcing. In the real world (not on Wikipedia), every episode of a major TV show is notable: millions of people have seen it, often multiple times, and it exists in the real world as a discrete creative work, just like any movie or book.

I'm hoping flagged revisions (in particular, the "Quality versions") will allow primary sourcing to reclaim its due. Primary sourcing isn't an evil, but bad writing is.--Father Goose 19:41, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree that primary sources isn't a bad thing, and we don't forbid it, just we try to seek stronger verification when we can (and depending on the claim being made). But when we say something doesn't have sources, that usually also means there's no real-world information. In other words, if you have a source you likely have something more than plot to say in that article. When it comes to sourcing something that happens in fiction, there's generally not a problem with citing the work itself. -- Ned Scott 19:54, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Lack of secondary sources is the reason we have to delete articles in the first place. Asserting and verifying notability is the first and foremost important criterion for each and every article. A stub on a sufficiently notable subject will not be deleted, but even the most well-written piece of prose is out of place here if it features no reliable secondary sources to show for the subject's notability. You may want to read e.g. this to brush up on your knowledge of what an encyclopedia is and is not. — aldebaer⁠ 19:58, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I'm familiar with those policies, but I ignore rules when they're wrong, and anything that prohibits Wikipedia from containing a moderate amount of verifiable information on individual television episodes is wrong. Calling them "non-notable" is even more a case of substituting Wikipedia bureacracy for real-world sense. Willfully excluding verifiable content about high-visibility creative works serves no encyclopedic goal. To my eyes, these measures are dirty little compromises we come up with that grossly overcompensate for the variability of writing quality on Wikipedia. To beat back the "fanboys" we pretend that various objects of substantial real-world interest simply don't exist. I hope we can move past this panic response at some point.--Father Goose 22:41, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Let me expand on that a little. Because of the terms of WP:NOTABILITY, we often claim that something that has entertained millions of people is non-notable, even when we could write about it in a 100% encyclopedic manner. This is because, for whatever reason, there's no economic incentive to write reviews of individual television episodes, so no independent "professional" coverage of them exists. Such TV episodes are still far more notable than something like, say, The Beaver Trilogy -- but on Wikipedia, due to this cultural-economic quirk, they might as well exist in a black hole.

When a rule turns into a ritual and we say "oh, you didn't fill out this part of the form, we'll have to reject it" without paying attention to why we have the rule, then we've lost sight of what we're doing here. Any time something is wikt:notable by any reasonable estimation but not WP:Notable, WP:Notable is in error, and we act wrongly to enforce it.--Father Goose 23:22, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

You can verify the most irrelevant, unconsequential, unencyclopedic information, does that mean we should keep it simply because you can verify it? BIGNOLE (Contact me) 22:45, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Father Goose, how can you write about an episode in an encyclopedic way without sources? You can write a plot, but we know what that means. There is no economic incentive to write reviews for every single episode, but they do write them for some (namely those that are usually important to the series, though I'm sure some get left out and some get reception when they shouldn't). If something is--and I'm pulling this from the dictionary page you listed--"Worthy of notice; remarkable; memorable; noted or distinguished." then the point begins that we have to define what constitues all that. Someone saying "I think it is" does not constitute notable. How we constitute "wrothy of notice, memorable, etc etc" is by finding reliable secondary sources that talk about said subject. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 23:29, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Father Goose, notability, in the Wikipedia sense, is nothing more than an inclusion criteria. The word pretty much has taken on a slightly different meaning here. When it comes to fiction we have the bar set pretty low for "notability", because the real goal is to focus on fiction in how it relates to the real world. To cover every episode of a show, simply because X number of people watched it, and for no other reason, would mean nothing more than a summary of the plot. That's not content. Episodes are like art, and we don't have articles that have nothing but a picture alone, nor do we have articles for every work of art. Simply put, we are not here to summarize what happened in fiction, except for a general understanding of what the work is about. -- Ned Scott 02:37, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

A plot summary is content (Jurassic Park (film)#Plot, Pilot (House)#Plot, Abyssinia, Henry#Plot, Through the Looking Glass (Lost)#Plot, etc.), and we couldn't properly cover any of those works without including a plot summary. But for some reason we've decreed plot summaries are utter shite when they don't appear directly alongside other content. In exactly the same way that I can gain a greater understanding of a movie or book by reading its plot summary (in concert with other material), I can gain a greater understanding of a TV series as a whole by reading basic plot summaries of the series' episodes (along with other material about the series as a whole). It's great if we can provide additional verifiable information about individual episodes, but the absence of that material shouldn't invalidate our ability to provide extremely basic information about a series.

However, by the terms of our current rules, if plot summaries for a TV series appear anywhere but in the main article on that series (where of course they couldn't possibly fit), we delete them. And god forbid that they should be compiled into an orderly list.

By having the criteria of WP:NOTABILITY apply to individual articles instead of to an article series covering a single topic comprehensively, we're ignoring the very structure of Wikipedia and sabotaging our ability to offer good depth of coverage. And I'm not talking about an obsessive level of detail here, or any kind of original research. A plot summary is basic information for any creative work. The plots of individual television episodes are basic information about the series as a whole. For long-running series, this will end up being a dozen or more pages. For a series that contains hundreds of horus of content, this does not seem out of place.

How did we end up in a situation where we're saying "Aaaagh! Plot summary! Get it off, get it off!" Has anyone ever stopped and actually thought through the rules we have against plot summaries? They're starting to seem irrational to me.--Father Goose 08:57, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't think anyone said that providing an episode list and within in (as per alloted by the ep list template) a brief plot summary of the episode is non-notable nor problematic; in fact, I think most of us agree that's a perfectly logically way to tie in-universe discussions with out-of-universe notable information (assuming the episode list is more than just a title and plot: it should include air dates, season deliniations, and more).

Nor should an extremely notable (defined by WP) episode of a series be not given its own article, but this requires the secondary sources. A specific episode is notable if there's enough secondary sources to help back it up; several Simpsons episodes (Last Exit to Springfield) are done well, there's some reversioned Doctor Who eps that are trying to meet that (Rose (Doctor Who)), but most individual episode pages fail notability via WP despite "fame" notability by others (The Finale (Seinfeld episode)).

The content for in-universe information should not be dictated by show length; it should be dictated by how much notable information by secondary sources there are. I think there are very few people involved in Dragon Ball Z suggesting that all 276 List of Dragon Ball Z dubbed episodes be made into individual articles, even though shows that have much shorted runs like "Lost" have such, primarily because no single episode is notable, and compared to other TV shows, DBZ lacks a lot of secondary coverage. Mind you, this still lets them have an episode list with brief plot information, which may not be perfectly written presently, but fits the appropriateness for WP. Of course, a good counterexample is the 200+ episodes of The Simpsons, where there is individual episode pages, but that's because they have used secondary sources appropriately for many episodes. Note that specifically, the secondary sources generally help to suggest what elements of the plot are necessary to include: Cape Feare's plot includes mention of an utterly pointless "rake scene", but only because this was a noted element from the shows production.

That's how fictional article have to deal with the undue weight typically given to in-universe information with little concern for verifiability and notability and sourcing. We're not chasing any plot descriptions away, but if the Films Wikiproject can manage to keep film plots to under 700 words for movies, other articles in fictional venues should be able to adopt the same "accurate but concise" approroach to writing about in-universe fictional elements. --Masem 12:38, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

You're all missing a rather obvious point on why those articles were kept when you wanted them gone:

You may be wrong about whether they should be kept or not. Jtrainor 01:15, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Could that point be that we have a lot of editors who are unaware of what guidelines and policies are, and when they find out they choose to ignore them because they like their articles the way they are, regardless of the quality and unrespectful eye they create for Wikipedia? That, unless the entire Wikipedia Community actually weighs in their opinion, a small group of fanatical editors of a given fictional topic can sway an AfD or merge proposal simply because people disregard the fact that AfDs, merge proposals, and just about everything on Wikipedia is supposed to be built on true consensus--which has nothing to do with voting and how many people "vote" one way or the other, yet things get closed based on the voting stand? Yep, I think we did miss the point. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 01:31, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

The same thing could be said for deletion-minded AfDs and merges as well, you know. I've yet to participate in an AfD discussion that wasn't resolved by a head count (eight "Delete per nom" trumps five different "Keep"). It's really a problem with the system more than anything else, but we can't exactly facilitate that kind of change from where we are now. MalikCarr 04:36, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Several people have pointed out the fundamental problem with most episode articles: they are almost without exception drawn directly from the episode itself, by people who watched the episode and then edited the article, and often from a wholly in-universe perspective and with little or no content other than a plot summary. Very few episodes of any fiction series have any non-trivial independent coverage beyond the programmers' plot summary for listings purposes. I particularly liked M*A*S*H back in the day, and thought it a great and significant piece of fiction; I consider Radar O'Reilly one of my favourite fictional characters and I am really glad we have an article. But I would say that Edwina (M*A*S*H) has no independent significance. It's a plot summary plus one factoid and one bit of fan speculation. There is nothing significant about that particular episode over and above the significance of the series itself, and it is adequately covered in the list article. So with most episode articles: what coverage there is beyond the plot summary, is usually chatter on fan boards. If you want to document every tiny facet of Lost, then Lostpedia is the project for you. Several other fictional series have their own wikis or other user-editable sites. This is good - the content policies allow you to watcht he episode and then write about it and sometimes even speculate about it (although there have been instances of people trying to get content in Wikipedia because it was rejected by Wookiepedia or Memory Alpha). But watching an episode and writing about it is not allowed on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a tertiary source, a distillation of what is said by the reliable secondary sources. For most episode articles, no reliable secondary sources are cited. For a good number, none exist. The encyclopaedic purpose of documenting the development of the series and its culturally significant themes is arguably better served by list-style articles, as they offer something akin to a narrative flow. Remember, too, that notability is not inherited; being part of a notable franchise does not confer notability on its every constituent. This principle has always existed on Wikipedia, for example there is vast coverage of Pokemon, but many minor characters are treated in lists not in separate articles. But some people think that the existence of articles on minor characters in a fictional franchise that are longer than the article on Isaac Newton makes us look a bit silly, and undermines the core purposes of the project, namely to write an encyclopaedia. Not a gazeteer or directory, an encyclopaedia, rooted in the cultural and historical significance of its subjects. Incidentally, merging is not deletion - merge and delete is not allowed under the GFDL. Cruftbane 10:13, 6 October 2007 (UTC)