Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction)

Proposed change to the guideline

This proposed change is to address the problem of many notable fiction articles do not have reliable secondary sources. One example of this is the Naruto Uzumaki article. Clearly notable but have no RELIABLE secondary sources what so ever. In the case of fiction articles, there is only one source of infomation - and that is the creaters and "databooks" released by them and many other secondary sources are derivitive of this(fan sites). This change aims to makes fiction articles that have been rated as high on the notibility scale exempt from deletion for the lack of secondary sources and/or secondary sources themself as obviously content relased as primary sources(ie, the databooks, from the creates) are obviously accurate. For an article to be exempt, it must be rated high on the notability scale by the wikiproject that is part of or have majority consenus(ie, a vote) Af648 02:19, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose The problem is that these ratings would give fans a blanket assurance that their favorite articles won't be deleted, and fans could (would?) tag all their articles with top-importance. It's IMO better to enforce guidelines like before with "if you can't or won't provide reliable third party sources, non-notability has to be assumed and this article will likely not be kept". If annoyed fans can find sources, great, add them to the article, improving it in the process. And I am not worried over mistakenly deleting really notable fiction articles; fans are saving them by what appears to be vote-stacking anyway. – sgeureka ^t•c 03:07, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that there little or non secondary sources for notiable fiction articles. Of course the notability rating would have to just and fair. And vote stacking wont count during afds anyway. What the change is trying to protect as articles that ARE important that lack secondary sources. See the example Naruto Uzumaki article. Af648 03:22, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

If a topic has little or no secondary sources, it is not suitable for a separate wikipedia article. (I just read this comment by User:Shoy, which summarizes the points quiet nicely). What I see in Naruto Uzumaki is a huge violation of Wikipedia is not a plot summary and No original research. A good rule of thumb is to have 50% plot summary (preferably less), and 50% conception/production/reception/merchandise info. Except for the shortish (and hardly sourced) Design section, Naruto Uzumaki is almost only sourced by primary sources, and anybody at WP:GA or WP:FA (what all article should strive for) would advice you to massively trim the plot. And while I do realize that manga/anime/cartoon fans have a hard time to cover their favorite subjects in detail (because there aren't that many sources to begin with), it is not impossible to write awesome articles - have a look at The Simpsons's Troy McClure. – sgeureka ^t•c 04:18, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

What i'm trying to say is not that articales do not need reliable secondary sources but for some there topics are none. In the case of Troy McClure, the is from the Simposons, if you do a google search, half of the results are objective, reliable secondary sources as it has many popular culture references where are there are almost none for the the character Naruto - all fan sites. Af648 05:09, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

"... where are there are almost none for the the character Naruto - all fan sites."...Which means exactly that the topic is not notable for inclusion in Wikipedia, which is exactly what WP's definition of "notability" means. "The Simpsons" has been reviewed, being a prime time American-produced TV show, much more critically in English works than the licensed, sub/dubbed Japanese produced cartoon shown on a cable network. Thus, there is precedence for having more information about The Simpsons in-universe materials than there is for Naruto's in-universe details. WP is not an indiscriminate collection of information, and "notability" is the line that decides what is appropriate for inclusion. Note that this doesn't mean that Naruto the anime/manga is not notable - the series and its real work aspects (DVD releases, sales, etc.) are sufficient for supporting the series within WP, but because the universe within Naruto has not be critically analyzed through reliable sources, the inclusion of excessive in-universe fictional detail makes no sense. Remember, WP's definition of notability does not consider "importance" or "fame" or "popularity", so even though a character may be the favorite of millions through fan sites and forums boards, that's not reliable to include WP which is trying to build a verifiable source of general encyclopedic information.

Also, be aware that there does exist a wiki-type site that can be linked through WP where you can expand on these details without worrying about notability, through Wikia (Naruto specifically at [naruto.wikia.com naruto.wikia.com]. We encourage you to keep all the details at those sites, but the main space of WP must meet the goals of the Foundation. --MASEM 05:25, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Af648, the guideline already has a note to allow what you've proposed. "To a limited extent, sub-articles are sometimes born for technical reasons of length or style. Even these articles need real-world information to prove their notability, but must rely on the parent article to provide some of this background material (due to said technical reasons)."

In a situation like Naruto Uzumaki, the title character in a series that has been going on for about 8 years, having his own article isn't that much of a stretch. I haven't seen the show or read the manga, so I don't know if the same can be said for any of the other characters, but for the main character it would not surprise me. That being said, I think it's actually unlikely that there are no reliable secondary sources for Naruto Uzumaki. There more than likely is such sources, but likely in places people didn't think to look (other than the internet, and other than in English). -- Ned Scott 05:22, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

• Support Any new media, i.e. any work that has been published or broadcast on the past 5 years will be lacking in academic coverage and reliable secondary sources. As an example, our team looked extensively for it, for months, in English, Japanese and even Norwegian for those elusive secondary sources for 10 years old game bestseller Final Fantasy X (and managed to find some[1]) but it was hard as hell. Earned us an FA, but fact remains that a fictional work needs TIME to be featured in "reliable secondary sources" no matter how popular or ground breaking it is. Should that fact keep all new fiction away from Wikipedia ? I believe it would be a darn shame. Were we printed in paper we could justify that newer works just "didn't fit the encyclopedia publishing date", but being the only real time, live update encyclopedia, Wikipedia's power to provide better coverage to new media is so great - and witnessed by us all - that I think it is almost a crime to limit Wikipedia to old moldy media. There are plenty of venues that cover old media. Wikipedia's unique nimble, agile reliable covering of newer works was one of it's powers and I will be sad to see it go just because we saddle ourselves with a self imposed demand for old moldy secondary sources that we already know won't be there for newer material Renmiri 05:55, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

PS: There is a Final Fantasy Wiki at Wikia, very thorough and very successful, so as a FF fan I couldn't care less if Wikipedia covers the games well or not. My games are very well covered elsewhere. My vote here is as Wikipedian, as I believe not having comprehensive material on one of the top selling video game series in the past 20 years or on Naruto, a wildly popular manga, or on Babylon V a groundbreaking TV series, would make Wikipedia a poorer encyclopedia. Renmiri 06:07, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

A damn shame indeed, and this is the fate of many topics that don't have sources. Fiction does not get special treatment when it comes to those kinds of things. But this is besides the point, in that we are looking for sources so that we have real world information. We are comprehensive with our topics in relation to the real world, not in relation to the fiction itself (that is, besides a basic understanding of the plot, etc). -- Ned Scott 06:25, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

PPS: Since when fans - people who care deeply for a topic and want to see it well covered here - have turned into the enemy at Wikipedia ? Amazing -and sad - how this place has changed since 2006! Renmiri 06:07, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

I would be very interested in hearing an answer to this question, or further discussion on the topic. --Kizor 06:20, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Are you suggesting that the people who are behind this guideline are not fans? This has nothing to do with being a fan of fiction or not, or editors vs other editors. -- Ned Scott 06:43, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Just read the comments above, like these ratings would give fans a blanket assurance that their favorite articles won't be deleted, and fans could (would?).... Anti fan bias is blatant in several comments here. And it saddens me, this used to be a place that respected editors who were passionate about their topics. Renmiri 05:53, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

It's unfortunate that as soon as an editor tries to follow and enforce guidelines/policies, he (in this case I) comes across as having an anti-fan bias. I have taken my fourth fiction article to GA/FA yesterday, so I'll hardly have any anti-fan sentiments, as I am a big fiction fan myself. What I can do however is point people to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Episodes where countless people are arguing, "But I added the Nielson rating and a TV.com review to the other 20kB of Plot, so how dare evil user [censored] merge/redirect this episode per WP:NOT#PLOT, WP:FICT, WP:TRIVIA, WP:QUOTE,...? Edit-warrrrr!!!" It's not far off to assume that at least some of these devoted fans would rate their episode articles with top-importance if that can save them from becoming redirects in the absense of other measures. – sgeureka ^t•c 12:53, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Heh, there has always been a worthy effort to keep Wikipedia free of fancruft but the methods and attitude have changed a lot since 2006. In our team we personally took the fancrufty stuff and it's editor to Wikia or Wikbooks and helped the material get a home there. We treated people with respect, something I have not seen much of it lately, not to theres and not to me personally (not this discussion here, a prior incident). In 2006 even the word fancruft was frowned on, nowadays you see blatant stuff like above, where fans are talked about as being fanatic mobs that won't rest until they put their articles, in - gasp - a free wiki that is for billed as for anyone (lol!!!). I'm just lamenting the loss of the Wikipedia I knew and loved. This new Wikipedia saddens me, with every fictional article littered with self righteous "cleanup" tags from people who never wrote or edited.. :( < /end rant > Renmiri 23:43, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Your team? Last I checked I was an active editor in 2006, and last I checked I just spent a few hours today importing more articles to wikia:digimon. We encourage redirection over deletion so we can easily retrieve content for transwiki or article resurrection. This very guideline has a much stronger emphases on finding this content a new home than it did in 2006. I can't speak for every editor you've interacted with, the ones who really helped develop these guidelines that you are here to complain about, are not the people you think they are. You want to talk about lame ass stuff like "the Wikipedia I knew and loved" go somewhere else. Drop the drama act and think about the situation for a moment. Wikipedia has always been a harsh place, we've always had people on both extremes, and the grass was always greener on the other side. -- Ned Scott 01:20, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry about that last comment. I think I might be missing the same thing you're missing from time to time, perspective on the situation. From your perspective things have gotten much "worse", and I don't want to argue with you, I want to show you that things have gotten better. -- Ned Scott 01:30, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Never meant to say all who oppose this proposed guideline are evil. Deckiller, who has proposed a rewrite here, for instance, was a member of the project team I was on. He is a very nice guy and I consider him a friend and a superb editor. He and I opened a wiki at wikia to be a repository of articles for transwiki or article resurrection, for places that don't have a wikia yet. But guys like Deck are leaving in droves, while jerks are staying, at least from my perspective. Which really saddens me. Relax, I'm not accusing you of anything. The very fact that you are going through the trouble of transwiking articles and caring about fangirls like me shows that you are not like the jerks I'm talking about. Renmiri 14:57, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm a comparably new editor, so I have no idea how wikipedia once used to be. But what I can say with absolute certainty is that respect goes both ways. I like to think respect for wikipedia's policies and guidelines is essential to make it the best it can be. But when there are dozens of fans screaming murder at the few editors actually trying to uphold wikipedia's guidelines and policies, I am not in favor of further softening policies/guidelines just so that guideline-ignorant fans can happily run wild. (Maybe my time with the episode article discussion just gives me the wrong impression in this matter, who knows.) – sgeureka ^t•c 02:36, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

...but fact remains that a fictional work needs TIME to be featured in "reliable secondary sources" no matter how popular or ground breaking it is. Should that fact keep all new fiction away from Wikipedia ? I don't have the impression at all that new fiction is kept away from wikipedia, in the temporary absense of secondary sources or not. Creating new articles to cover the plot extensively however should be limited to providing context for information from secondardy sources. It's not important for the general reader what a character did and what happened to him, but why (intention of the writers) he/it did.

I think that if you wish to take an article to GA or FA, you'll realize pretty quickly that the plot is not important at all. For example, I'll be taking my fourth article (Characters of Carnivàle) to GA/FA in a few weeks, and although I had originally planned to take some of the plot weight off of List of Carnivàle episodes by going into more plot detail in the Characters article, I still haven't got around to do that. Several main(!) actors still have only one or two lines of plot summary, and the article already hits 80kB. Furthermore, I'll probably trim the plot (what little there is) in the Characters article before I massively add to that. Why encourage fans even more to write up the plot when it will most likely be deleted anyway when the article gets improved to GA? (Compare the article Brother Justin Crowe with the first paragraph of Characters of Carnivàle#Brother Justin Crowe; that his section may be long enough now to be spun out again is besides the point). – sgeureka ^t•c 16:17, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Strongest possible oppose. There is no need for a relaxing of the guideline. Obviously notable subjects like the Naruto series and Final Fantasy series are incredibly well-covered in numerous independent sources. Very often, reliable sources are difficult to find online. However, there are a vast number of periodicals that deal with anime and video games, for example. It may require a subscription to an online periodical service or a trip to the library to access the magazine stacks. However, there are certainly plenty of sources available. There's no need to weaken the guideline, just a need to use some sense and better research practices. Vassyana 19:52, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

• This isn't a vote, but this is the wrong place to discuss this anyway. That would be at WP:V, which pretty unequivocally states that "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." (emphasis added) That's pretty unequivocal and very true. If you want to write long, primary-sourced plot articles, there are Wikias available for that. They don't go here. Articles here about fictional works should cover them from an out of universe perspective, and that means using out of universe sources. If there is little or no secondary material about a work, it doesn't belong here yet, it belongs on a fansite or Wikia. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:02, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
• My advice to Af648: Learn Japanese. If you want to write about elements of Japanese popular culture, you'll have lots more luck finding useful secondary sources if you search materials written in the language of the element you're researching. — Brian (talk) 02:30, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

We had a fluent Japanese speaker / reader on our team and it was still hard to find the much vaunted reliable, third-party sources for a 10 year old game. With new media works it's like a catch 22, you find reliable sources they get tagged as much too "in universe", if you find 3rd party material it gets tagged as unreliable. People seem to forget that academic material goes through a lot of bureaucracy to get approved as course material. It is simply an unrealistic expectation to demand academic coverage for media works that are not at least 10 years old. Anime and manga periodicals are not exactly treated as "reliable" here. And when you get the Game publisher's own material you get told it's too "in-universe". Renmiri 05:47, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

You're one situation should not be used to open the floodgates to tons and tons of dreck sourced from fan pages. If something is notable and needs its own article, we use secondary sources to establish that that is the case. If there are no secondary sources, the item does not need its own article. I'm glad you are able to draw on a Japanese speaker's talents, but I think a great many of the people who complain about not being able to use fan sites and the like are not even trying to search in other languages. Unfortunately, it may simply be a waiting game with some topics. You just might not be able to get that FA star for your article on the series that came out last week, but that's a price I'm willing to pay for reliability. — Brian (talk) 05:59, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Or to put it more bluntly: If those sources don't exist yet, don't write the article yet. Wait until they do. If they never do, never write. That article doesn't have to happen now, or ever. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 08:29, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I hesitate to weigh-in on this discussion, believing that Deckiller has a point when he says this is an "impossible-to-solve debate." Nevertheless, I feel compelled to object to Seraphim's line of reasoning. IMO, the black and white demand "secondary sources = article/few or no secondary sources = no article" are thoughtless. It has the net effect of a zero-tolerance policy. We don't have to think about whether a subject is notable and come up with a rationale argument, all we have to look at is secondary sources or no secondary sources. I think we apply a higher standard to fiction and fiction-related articles than any other article in WP. Many articles regarding highways have few sources, and most of the sources they do have simply say the highway exist - not comment on the notability of the highway. I think we can afford to look at fictional articles on a case by case basis. Have faith, the chaff will eventually be sifted out. Ursasapien (talk) 09:29, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed 100%. I think though that his position really goes to the core of what I'm saying here: New media, should it be covered by Wikipedia ? I believe that Wikipedia's web nature and it's "anyone can edit" policy makes it the PERFECT match to be a powerful source for information in newer works, fiction or non fiction. Yesterday's episode of CSI or Al Gore's Nobel peace prize - last week's news - can be covered in Wikipedia today, thoroughly, comprehensively and properly. What other encyclopedia or reference work can do this ? Not one. Even on line Britannica can't do it, because of all the red tape. Let's not make Wikipedia into a red tape heaven, let's use it's powerful and innovative policies to be the best source for all topics, be it new or old Renmiri 10:57, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

The problem comes when you define what a best source for all topics actually means. As soon as someone triangulates a better position than WP:AFD from Wikipedia is not paper and Wikipedia is not indiscriminate, we'll be fine. Until then, happy editing. Hiding Talk 11:25, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

The reason we want sources is so we have real-world information. An article about a highway is something already in the real world, so you can't really compare the two. Sourcing the plot itself is never a problem, so that is not what we are looking for. -- Ned Scott 01:35, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying, Ned, in a sense. I fully support fiction being written about using an "out-of-universe" tone and being more than simply a plot summary. I just believe strongly that a work of fiction is a "real-world" thing and notability for a particular fiction-related article should be able to be established by the number of readers/viewers/purchasers. Once notability is established, a decent stub article can be made by including information about the author/producer/etc. along with a plot summary (not a rewrite of the entire fictional work). I think Renmiri has a good point about WP's ability to keep up with this information and document things in an encyclopedia that were never available before. Ursasapien (talk) 07:58, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

We're mixing up issues here. Rarely have I seen an article that covers a fictional work put for deletion ("work" being book, a complete TV series, a movie, a video game, and whatnot) - there are certain clean-up aspects such as merging of individual books into a single series article, but generally it is still acknowledged that the published works are notable. The release of such a work is generally notably by itself, and particularly for modern works, its easy to find and source this information. Mind you there's still a level of notability covered by WP:N that must be met - I'm not going to put up a page about a local cable channel show, for example, unless it has earned some national coverage - but in general, "published" fictional media is notable. The other side which is the issue that we've been discussing, is the fictional elements of that work, and how notable they are to be able to merit their own articles - this is where we've been contesting this issue for several months. This is an area where some newer media may not have as much analysis or criticism or the like to support having subpages for individual fictional elements compared to older works. Notability must be demonstrated for a topic, it cannot be assumed that just because the work is notably popular that the characters or other fictional elements of the work are also notably popular. However, once notability is demonstrated, it never goes away. --MASEM 14:06, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

People are still going on about this? Here's some advice to all of you: edit some non-fiction or blatantly notable topics. Take a break from this impossible-to-solve debate. — Deckiller 05:53, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

• Comment, I would say that this 'proposal' is the situation we have now. Fancruft with weak wikipojects gets deleted, fancruft with strong wikiprojects stays put.--Nydas^(Talk) 20:14, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

• I'm not really sure how to interpret your comment. Are you saying this is a gaming-the-system kind of thing, or a we-let-it-slide-because-there's-evidence-people-are-going-to-deal-with-it-and-make-it-better thing? (don't get me wrong, as I have seen evidence of both examples) -- Ned Scott 20:50, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Gaming the system is closer to what I mean, though ultimately the only 'system' which really matters is winning AfD votes. Fancruft with powerful Wikiprojects, experienced editors and admins behind it can be kept more or less indefinitely. Look at the Spoo AfD; the keep voters are overwhelmingly experienced editors (and quite a few admins too). It's not a conscious process, just an unconscious reflection of our inbuilt bias towards certain topics.--Nydas^(Talk) 21:43, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

And you say there's no bias against fans Ned ? /that is just soo typical. A strong wikiproject with experienced editors tends to produce QUALITY articles, of course those articles stay. As they well should. Weak wikiprojects might be lucky enough to have one dedicate genius but odds are the articles are poorly written, poorly sourced and out of shape. Yet instead of going for the obvious conclusionm Nydas blames fans and tars all fiction articles as "fancruft". By it's nature, the current system already ensures that weak articles that get deleted merited deletion and the articles that stay deserve to be kept. Nydas seems to be looking for a silver bullet to delete all articles he dislikes the topic, be they done by experienced editors or not. How typical of a mindset that treats fans as the enemy! Renmiri 04:45, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

It's NOT quality which matters, but notability. Poorly written, poorly sourced and out of shape articles are not supposed to be deleted just for that. Similarly, articles with good formatting and lots of little blue numbers do not automatically entail a keep. But you seem to be arguing that this is the case.--Nydas^(Talk) 08:45, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a dynamic project - the level of quality for articles can, will, and has changed over the lifetime - this means that some articles that were Featured or Good articles may fail the new standards and are effectively demoted; similarly articles created by large Wikiprojects of experienced editors may need to be merged, trimmed, or deleted because the guidelines and policies of WP change. Mind you, there are review procedures for all of these: not one person can mass remove large swathes of fictional element articles without either being reverted or being put through consensus.

The point I think Ned is making is that when these articles from long-standing wikiprojects are brought to light per new guidelines, there's a majority of votes to keep it because of partial ownership ideas - they've worked hard to get that article to that state prior, and in most cases don't see the need to change it to met new guidelines. However, it is necessary to point out that majority is not the same as consensus if the wider WP consensus is against that majority (eg it violates consented policies and guidelines) (Of course, that said, while a previous version of this guideline was consented, the current one is still up in the air pending several other actions).

Basically, this is not a war against fans, this is attempting to convince those dead-set in certain ways that consensus can change and that new notability guidelines make may some articles less qualified than before - this happens not only in fictional works but real-world and other more practical arts and sciences categories - its just that because of WP's unique nature, the bulk of these seem to be fans of fictional works. --MASEM 05:13, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

That is indeed a very good point Masem. This newly found worshipping of Notabilty above all, for instance, wasn't here last year. I myself lost an editing discussion when (oh the irony!) I proposed to merge a marginal article about an obscure minigame. I was told that even if it wasn't notable it still was important, for completeness. I can understand and respect that, what I can't really swallow is the lack of civility and the zealot stance those disputes are taking shaoe nowadays. But meh... maybe it was just my personal experience Renmiri 14:04, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

In that case there really wasn't a WikiProject behind the article, and Spoo is it's own weird existence. Any editor is going to hesitate on supporting deletion on something that was once an FA, and is really well written. Like I said, Spoo is just a really weird article, and an example of how we try to define notability. I think Spoo exists because we were so focused on getting real world information that when we got it, we didn't expect to have it for such a minor topic.

I do know what you mean, though, and there is always some form of bias in all of us. Surely there are many AfDs that get a lot of supporters for one way or the other based on their own personal taste, but such an issue is not nearly as extreme as the picture you've just painted. -- Ned Scott 01:02, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

Very true. AfD is a rather political, often arbitrary process. It makes me think of "Is This Anything?" from Letterman's show.--Father Goose 03:56, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

This may have been raised previously, but I can see one potential reason to include articles on main characters in fictional works even without readily available secondary sources: elimination of redundancy. Imagine, for instance, that we didn't have any secondary sources to support an article on the fictional character Spider-Man. Without that article on Wikipedia, every article on books, comic books, television series, movies, or any other media featuring that character would have to contain at least some backstory and description of the character to give the article context, whereas now we can just link there. This may be an analogous situation to the Naruto Uzumaki article described above. Imagine The Hound of the Baskervilles, for example, if the first main paragraph of the article had to be devoted to explaining who Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson were. JavaTenor 17:01, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

While eliminating redundance is of course always desirable, this doesn't mean that a separate article needs to exist. For example, Ben Hawkins (main character of Carnivàle) redirects to Characters of Carnivàle#Ben Hawkins, which works great for the article series. (FYI, he has established enough notability for a separate article, but he may not have enough material overall to become a good article, so the decision to merge him was purely editorial.) – sgeureka ^t•c 17:48, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

That's certainly fine (and in many cases the best solution), as long as the relevant "list of characters" article is not also deleted. JavaTenor 17:52, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

• SUPPORT Non-editing users of wikipedia expect it to contain "The sum of all human knowledge" as Jimbo Whales once said. These non-contributing users of wikipedia do not care a tinker's cuss that there is a star trek wiki, and monty python wiki or whatever - they come here because they believe they can find everything they need to know about ANY topic - as it should be. They do not goto Google and search for "Naruto Uzumaki wiki" the come to wikipedia and expect there to be a consider article detailing the character: Naruto Uzumaki. Reliability? Reliable sourcing is used to provide verifiability - who better to check the facts of a fictional universe than the (rabid?) fans of said universe. Notability? Notability is not only established by the presence of reliable sources, it is pretty much accepted that all highschools are notable, because they affect the lives of many people. Fiction does this as well, just look at the star trek conventions, the people dressing up as characters from movies and they go and see them etc. Wikipedia needs to contain articles like this, people deleting apparent "fancruft" just because they personally don't believe that it "deserves" an article page, and then hiding behind bureaucratic policy quote are cowards. This is not meant to offend, but I am yet to see a reason for not including these types of articles that does not involve someone quoting WP:NOTABILITY.. I would like to quote my own, two infact - WP:NOTPAPER and WP:IGNORE. If an article is annoying you, that nice, go and make a nice cup of tea and hit the random article button again - and have a nice day while someone who wants to find out information about that topic you just left is actually able to. - Fosnez (talk) 13:16, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Um, if it contains the "Sum of all human knowledge", then you should really be advocating for a change to What Wikipedia is not, because it's clear there that "the sum of all human knowledge" doesn't actually include everything you can think of. There are restrictions on what can be added. Sorry, but Red #434 in Star Trek does not deserve his own article.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 13:19, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
    • "Sorry, but Red #434 in Star Trek does not deserve his own article" - Why not. Give me one reason why we can't have an article on every character that has ever been. If someone has the time to write them, well who are we to stop them - just because we think it is not "worthy" of an article... Fosnez (talk) 02:46, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
      • Because Wiki is not an indiscriminate collection of information. Also, what would stop you from writing an article about yourself? Who are you? How are you noteworthy? Red #434 is in an episode for 10 minutes before he's killed; then he's never mentioned again. That means it isn't noteworthy. Sure, if his character received significant coverage from reliable sources, he should have an article. But simply existing is not a reason to have an article. Also, I don't believe that Jimbo meant we should have an article on everything, when he said that part about "sum of all human knowledge", I do believe there is a limit to what should be considered "knowledge" and what is down right "trivial".  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 02:56, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
        • Red #434 was nominated for deletion in April, but got kept (quite resoundingly). --Nydas^(Talk) 09:03, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
        • Firstly, as Nydas has pointed out above - Quod erat demonstrandum. Secondly, you cannot decide what is trivial, noone can. Somebody thought that Mzoli's Meats was not trivial, and other people who would have never visited the place thought it was, and there was one almighty shitfight about it. As I have said before, yes there should be limits to can be included, but we are currently FAR short of Jimbo's goal - why do you think there ARE so many "fancruft" articles, could it be, perhaps, that people think that this is knowledge that should be included? A central source of knowledge for the entire planet to refer to? Edited by people who are experts in the field? (I.E. the fans) These articles are actually FAR less likely to contain error because they are attended to by the people who love the subject. Until the recent spate or deletionism that is sweeping wikipedia like a plague, I would come here to read up on the Lore of a tv series or games, but now I have to refer to google and sort through the websites with more ads than content... If I understand Jimbo's dream, it is that if the human race were to disappear tomorrow, and an alien race were to find a complete copy of the wikipedia, they would have a complete understanding of us as a species - this HAS to include our Lore, or it is just a set of sterile bullet points, with no examples of actual culture. Fosnez (talk) 11:56, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
          • Nice try fellas, but "Leslie" appeared in 56 episodes of Star Trek, and not the "single episode" example that I provided. Your rebuttle has not water in this case. Also, you should go to the interview where Jimbo gives that quote, because he also talks about something else, and that's sourcing. He considers it an imperative, and that we should do it more. Guess what, we have a policy here that says if it isn't sourced then it can be removed on the spot. We also have a policy on plots, so you cannot have an article that's just a plot, and nothing else. Since you cannot interpret things for the character you cannot include your own "expert" opinion. Oh, and most importantly, this is "Notability (fiction)". Nothing can be changed on this page that will contradict what is one the general notability page, which is clear that all articles must have significant coverage from reliable third-party sources to establish their notability, and inclusion on Wikipedia. Or, as has been said, what will stop every person in the world from making an article about themselves?  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 12:05, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
            • • • Excuse me but I happen to know Jimbo Wales loves video games and does consider them worthy of coverage. I was there at Wikibooks when the issue got discussed and that is one of the most puzzling things to me, to see Wikipedia deletionists targeting game fans, and IMHO going against his wishes. Renmiri (talk) 03:21, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
• Okay, and since when did Jimbo's opinion actually mean anything other than yours or mine? Jimbo doesn't dictate what goes on Wikipedia. He can pull the plug when he wants, I'm sure, but nothing on this site is on here strictly because Jimbo says "it should be". Regardless, as valued as his opinion is anyway, what you are quoting is Jimbo talking about game walkthroughs on Wikibooks, not about the inclusion criteria as it pertains to fiction on Wikipedia.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 03:45, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Tall words for someone who just disputed a quote by Jimbo Wales on the prior comment. The quote in Wikibooks is very relevant here because it does show his unequivocal support for including video game information on his wikis. His problem at Wikibooks was the charter he had to abide by for Wikibooks to receive public grants, i.e., articles and topics at Wikibooks have to be part of an academic course. This is not the case at Wikipedia yet you guys seem to want to know better than Jimbo. Renmiri (talk) 06:37, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
    • Um, I think you are taking his words out of context. No where in there did he say, "I love video games and I think we should have as much information about what happens in a video game with its characters." He merely stated that he wished they could have walkthrough guides on Wikibooks. In no way did that translate to fictional character histories on Wikipedia. Please re-read his statement before making grossly negligent interpretations over here. Thank you. (P.S. I like video games too, does that mean anything? No. The fact that he likes anything has no bearing on this encyclopedia. Jimbo is not God. Jimbo's opinion on whether a movie should have an article, if it fails notability does not change the fact that it fails and thus does not get an article). To better clarify my point, if Jimbo came here today and said "are fictional topic articles need to no criteria for inclusion; we should have an article on every character no matter how minor," we still would not follow his opinion. Jimbo's opinion does not dictate policy or guidelines, consensus does. On Wikipedia, he is just another editor (granted one that can pull the plug if he so chooses, but still just an editor). He has to abide by all the rules we do. That means that we respect and welcome his opinions, but they are of no more value than yours, mine, or any other editor on Wikipedia. Everyone is treated equally (supposedly, I'm sure some people get treated crappy).  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 12:48, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
      • Hehehe, No where in there did he say, "I love video games and I think we should have as much information about what happens in a video game with its characters." except in the second paragraph where he says I am an advocate of free culture. I love video game books. I think that people should be passionately writing books about video games in a collaborative manner. These can be walkthroughs, these can be textbooks about the sociological phenomena of games, these can be textbooks for game programming, these can be user manuals, these can be joke books, these can be fan fiction, these can be all kinds of cool and interesting things that I have not imagined, and that none of us have yet imagined,... You are welcome for the English Reading 101 lesson you thanked me for. And a piece of advice: You should respect Jimbo and his vision, without him there would be no Wikipedia for you to strut around grandstanding Renmiri (talk) 14:29, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
• Um, let's see. "I love video game books"--that's from Jimbo. Exactly where does that apply to Wikipedia? Nowhere. "I think people should be passtionately writing books about video games"--Jimbo again. Where does that apply to Wikipedia? Nowhere. Please stop confusing his discussion about Wikibooks, with this discussion about Wikipedia. They are two different locations, governed by different sets of rules. If my next statement is too difficult, please ask and I'll explain further, but: He is not talking about fiction on Wikipedia. He is talking about Wikibooks, and fiction in general. Otherwise, if he was referring to Wikipedia then his "opinion" would be in direct contradiction to the What Wikipedia is not policy. Lastly, please show me where I said that I do not respect Jimbo's opinion. I don't believe I ever said that. I have actually, carefully stated that Jimbo could close this place down if he wished, which alludes to the fact that I'm quite aware that it is because of him that we have Wikipedia. That being said, his opinion is no greater than anyone else's that edits this site, when it comes to articles in question. What I wish is that editors find real rebuttles to guidelines and policies, and not misquote or misunderstand what Jimbo says. Hell, I think there should be a rule, simply put, Don't Quote Jimbo period. Find your own arguments, because most of the time people are misusing what he says in an effort to justify what they think. We have notability requirements for a reason, because not everything in the world is worth noting beyond a couple of sentences of information. Plain and simple.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 18:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
  • Yes, please explain why you deliberately omitted the end of the sentence you quoted: passionately writing books about video games in a collaborative manner which is the specific mention to wikimedia venues as Wikisource, wikia and Wikipedia, as Jimbo adds in a further paragraph. He also has a comment that IMHO applies specifically to this newfound Notability fanaticism here at wikipedia: it keeps us from having to fight about whether various things are 'important enough' or 'serious enough' for Wikibooks. (A silly question, I think, because all kinds of things are important, and demeaning someones work as not being serious enough is not kind.) Renmiri (talk) 09:34, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
• Renmiri, I think you are misinterpreting that post on Wikibooks. But I won't engage in this kind of Jimbo exegesis. If you think it's of any relevance, why not post a message on his talk page to find out what he thinks about fiction on Wikipedia? --B. Wolterding (talk) 14:01, 12 December 2007 (UTC)
  • I might just do that ;) If you read that wikibooks page you will see it wouldn't be the first time I engage in discussion with him. Renmiri (talk) 09:34, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
    • • • • • Answer me this then, why do you think there are so many "fancruft" articles. Fosnez (talk) 13:49, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
              • Two reasons: first, the present version of general notability requirements ("significant coverage in secondary sources") is less than a year old; previously, it was just a concept which was very subjective, and thus easily allowed the inclusion of such fancraft articles. Secondly, it is a combination of writing by example and a certain amount of satisfaction and enjoyment for a new editor to come along and help to fill in information missing on his/her favorite show or fandom, certainly when we have a good chunk of The Simpsons information here. People want to write what they know and WP provides them that outlet. Thus, fancruft type works tends to be kudzo-like - it can grow at a much faster rate than it could be managed. Because of both of these, we are trying to help educate editors that there is a standard that pretty much pushes most fancruft to Wikias, though allows for those elements that can be described as notable to remain. --MASEM 14:45, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Current wording

I'm pretty satisfied with the current wording; although it raises the bar by accepting only secondary sources instead of merely "real-world content", it provides a reasonable exception for subarticles. It's about as close to a compromise as we can get without changing other policies as well. — Deckiller 20:52, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, in theory, real world information normally comes from a secondary source. -- Ned Scott (talk) 21:21, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

My recent addition was undone by a user who felt it was an "unnecessary edit". The fact is simple: it's inefficient to clog AfD with dozens of cases of articles that could be cleaned up; there are other steps before AfD. If we decrease AfDs, then we can have greater focus on each case. Making it clear that AfDs for situations that clearly fall in the merge/redirect/transwiki considerations will help this concept.

S/he also felt my "trigger boys" comment was uncivil—perhaps it was a frank statement, but deletion should always be a last resort. Besides, when have I not been civil? — Deckiller 22:31, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

In a perfect wiki-world, going the AfD route would indeed be inefficient. But when it comes to fiction-related articles, it is not uncommon that good-faith merge discussions (for notability, OR, extensive plot etc.) end after several weeks with local fan consensus outvoting guidelines. And while the necessary secondary information will still not be added, the plot summaries for popular topics grow bigger and bigger. I may sound a little non-AGF-y here, but it seems to me that a wiki-wide and 5-day-long deletion discussion sometimes brings results much faster with more appropriate results, making the necessary merge/cleanup process more efficient than the traditionally recommended let's-discuss-it-first way (unfortunately). Openly encouraging people to only go to AfD when there is really no chance is like saying that fiction articles should never be AfDed. Spoo has already demonstrated that the tiniest piece of bare notability has a chance to grow into a fully fleshed article with the right devotion, but devotion is exactly what lacks to bring the other 99.5% of barely notable topics to something encyclopedic. – sgeureka ^t•c 23:10, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

That attitude will inevitably accelerate Wikipedia's bias. Not all fiction has 'fans' to be cajoled into improving the article. I bet if someone nominated Isola, the fictional city district in Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels, it'd get deleted, just because it's in a genre that Wikipedians aren't interested in.--Nydas^(Talk) 09:46, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I hope it will inevitably accelerate Wikipedia's bias to be a well-written and -sourced encyclopedia instead of a poorly conceived and speculative fansite, and that's good. And Isola would likely be merged or deleted for being non-notable, not because it lacks fans; other non-notable fiction articles just have the advantage of mass fan-backing inspite of violating existing guidelines and policies, but should, rationally speaking, be merged/deleted just the same. (There is currently an AfD sweep of location lists of notable games/TV shows that often ends in deletion on the ground of missing real-world notability. A stubby article about a fictional location would have even less of a survival chance in AfD, and if you can merge it somewhere to avoid an AfD, the better. I am doing the same with fictional things I care about.) – sgeureka ^t•c 10:50, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

You can hope all you want, but AfD 'sweeps' will inevitably lead to a worsened bias against fiction that doesn't involve spaceships and dragons. You consider Spoo to be of borderline notability whilst writing off Isola. If the setting of a long-running and influential series of crime novels is less notable than a fictional food mentioned seven times in a half-forgotten 90s sci-fi TV show, what hope is there that we can even point in the right direction when it comes to fiction?--Nydas^(Talk) 21:23, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I have never watched Babylon 5, and I have never heard of these crime novels (forget fictional settings in these novel), so I don't know what their respective popularity is (which many people often mistakenly interpret as notability). But wouldn't you agree that Spoo is better written and better sourced than Isola, and that Spoo at least attempts to establish some notability? (For what it's worth, I recommended merge in the Spoo AfD for lack of notability). If topics of vague notability don't want to encourage an AfD against them, they should simply not be stand-alone articles. If some of them have too much fan-backing despite opposing policies and guidelines, then that's too bad for both wikipedia and the article (which often stays in a poor state after the AfD). I believe that it is much better to have fewer articles that are all well written and with great sources, than having dozens of unmanageable articles that are flooded with guideline/policy breaches. Unfortunately, many fans prefer quantity over quality, but I don't know why. All I can do is try to let my arguments and contributions speak for themselves. – sgeureka ^t•c 00:39, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Spoo violates just about every policy or guideline you could care to mention. It's sourced from usenet, it's packed with original research and it's written from a fan's point of view. Isola is just a stub, there's a limit to how bad it can be.

Your hand-wringing over the fans is not encouraging. Oh well, we can't get Adam Mitchell deleted, let's go and delete something we've never heard of instead, it's probably not notable.--Nydas^(Talk) 09:21, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Enough people at FAC once thought that Spoo was inline with existing guidelines and policies (and FAC can be torture). Recent attempts to degrade its article status were unsuccessful (unfortunately) because significent amounts of people still believe it meets all guidelines. I am not saying that Spoo deserves its own article (I think it doesn't), but I say its better written and better sourced than Isola (which has no sources or other secondary information), and that more people (not necessarily me) are willing to look the other way in this light. And it is not my intention to "hand-wring[] over the fans", as I as a big fan of fiction won't battle with myself. But this is an encyclopedia, so all there is is "hand-wringing over encyclopedic content". If an article doesn't have encyclopedic content (read: real-world content) at all after a sufficient time of AGF has passed (and just plot is not considered encyclopedic per WP:NOT#PLOT), the article probably shouldn't exist and may be taken to AfD for community review, as simple as that. – sgeureka ^t•c 11:57, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Spoo doesn't meet any guidelines, the keep votes were just along the lines of 'keep - notable' and 'important within the fandom'. Wikipedia's usefulness is not served by an outcome which will see all fancruft except admin-sanctioned fancruft deleted, along with genuinely notable stubs like Isola. If we can't get our fan admins to see sense, then should we really be targetting 'weak' fiction articles at all? It'll be creating an institutionalised violation of neutral point of view.--Nydas^(Talk) 09:09, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Ah, now I see where you're coming from, and actually agree with what your premise, just not with your conclusion. There have been some recent AfDs of extremely popular games which (surprisingly but justly) resulted in a delete (e.g. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dwarves (Warcraft), followed by Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Playable races in the Warcraft series), and this hopefully sets some kind of accepted precedent. There is also an arbitration case (Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Episodes and characters) that hopefully sheds some light into whether guideline/policy-based cleanup efforts in articles can be reverted back to their guideline/policy-ignoring state. In the worst case, these procedures at least increase awareness of the issue at hand. In the long run, I anticipate en.wiki to grow closer (but never go as far) to de.wiki, which deal with fiction articles this. Anything else prevents wikipedia from maintaining at least some encyclopedic standard. – sgeureka ^t•c 10:16, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

That's the standard line, but I do not see any reason for the fan admins to relent. Warcraft is not a good example, it's not an admin favourite like, say, Doctor Who or Babylon 5 are. I have nominated Adam Mitchell for deletion, let's see what happens.--Nydas^(Talk) 12:21, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

The arbcom case is only about how editors acted when applying these guidelines, and won't be a debate about the guidelines themselves. -- Ned Scott 01:48, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I can't tell if this was a general comment for interested readers, or a reply to me to "set me straight". :-) If it's the former: true. If it's the latter: I know, and I hopefully didn't imply anything else. – sgeureka ^t•c 02:48, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

It was in general :) -- Ned Scott 06:49, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

(indent)

Sgeureka, your attitude towards AfD is actually counter to policy. AfD is NOT supposed to be used just to get people to clean up an article. Jtrainor (talk) 17:41, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know exactly to which of my statements you refer, or where I gave the impression that this is what I believe, sorry. Dozens of articles (of any kind, also fiction) are AfD'ed every day for failing notability guidelines, and if they still don't abide by it at teh end of the AfD, merging and/or redirecting is a very possible outcome (intro of WP:AFD). If editors want the article to become a separate article again, then they have to give it a proper encyclopedic treatment/expansion. The assumed "cleanup" you speak of is therefore only "true" if you believe that a sub-topic deserves its own article to begin with. (And I think it only does if notability and/or other substantial secondary coverage have been explicitly demonstrated, which is exactly what this guideline already says.) If discussions fail due to too differing opinions, AfD is currently the only other convenient option to determine a consensus to which everybody has to abide. – sgeureka ^t•c 18:33, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Wait a minute, when did we decide that secondary sources were the only criterion for notability? The sub-article provision is dandy, but this seems a bit extreme to me... I mean, fiction tends to be produced by firms that own copyright to the fiction in question, and all contents therein - if the copyright holder possesses all content of the fiction from a legal stance, won't this make usage of reliable secondary sources nearly impossible? I'm all for broadening coverage of fiction from as wide a spectrum as possible, but sometimes that just isn't possible. If our notability criterion no longer includes "real world impact", this is going to get very ugly... MalikCarr (talk) 00:05, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Secondary sources for notability is in WP:N. And as you mentioned, this is exactly why the bulk of fictional content on WP is not notable by this stance - if the only information about the works are what the fictional work creators/producers provide and fan content, the work is likely not notable in real world. This already is causing a huge impact, which is why we are trying to carefully word the changes to this guideline to direct how fiction articles should be approach and does go against unstated long-standing WP policy --MASEM 01:24, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

Hang on now, that doesn't exactly make sense. If you can't find "sales figures" "critical commentary" "cultural significance" and "merchandising" in a published, third party, peer-reviewed source, but said items obviously exist and have been documented, it's not notable? Hogwash. MalikCarr (talk) 22:43, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

To put it bluntly, yes. This is why the bulk of the fictional elements articles on characters, locations, items, etc, as well as individual episodes or volumes of a work are not WP-notable and thus being merged, trimmed, transwikied, or deleted, and why we're trying to carefully allow for subarticles for very rare cases. --MASEM 01:04, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I would say that this is where the "guideline" part comes into play here. There likely are articles that don't have secondary sources, but good quality real world information from primary sources (DVD commentary, "official" guides [do official guides count as primary?], etc) that we will generally tolerate, depending on the content. However, for general situations, we should be aiming for secondary sources to mine our real-world content. -- Ned Scott 04:52, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Well that's not so much of an issue - I could demonstrate real world impact of fiction <X> by citing merchandising <A>, < B> and <C>, article in magazine <D>, video games by other publishers <E> and <F>, and appearances in unrelated fiction (as tribute or homage, whatever) <G>, but if this information isn't available in a reliable third-party publication, a strict interpretation of guideline would suggest the topic isn't notable regardless. Forgive me for being a pessimist, but while your statements do seem to be perfectly reasonable, I can't help but see this wording being used to slash the perfectly well-sourced articles you speak of (primary and maybe secondary as well, just not published or peer-reviewed) as though they were no better than the wads of unsourced and OR-ridden rubbish that honestly deserve to go just because they're atrocities against grammar and sentence structure (I think you know the ones I'm talking about). It seems like a dangerous precedent to set. MalikCarr (talk) 09:41, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Secondary sources don't have to be print-published or peer-reviewed, but they do have to meet reliability requirements - personal blogs or self-published forums cannot satisfy secondary sources. That said, in your example, it really depends on how all those sources support the fictional element X. Generally it is the exception that the sources do provide enough to establish notability, and unfortunately I would say most articles on fictional elements on WP are lacking demonstrated notability. However remember that lack of notability alone is not grounds for speedy deletion: if an article is found non-notable, it should be brought to AfD, content merged into larger articles likely about the work of fiction itself, or as we're trying to suggest, list-of articles that are appropriate for summary style writing. --MASEM 15:25, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

WP:V says that reliable sources should appear "in reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". Again, the rational editor shouldn't interpret this in the most literal sense (e.g. a reference to a Newtype magazine article as being inadequate because it's a "fan magazine" and thus unreliable), but I can't help but feel that draconian editors, especially the "deletion first" crowd who view the PROD and AfD as their first, best, and only tool to improve articles, are going to use this to their advantage. It just seems like we're making demonstrating the notability of fiction <X> excessively difficult. Maybe this is a backlash for all the garbage fiction articles out there (and let me be the first to say there are quite a few), but this strikes me as being kind of excessive... MalikCarr 03:27, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

That is absurd! A fan magazine is a perfectly acceptable source of reliable information for a game. Outside of The Onion and tabloids that proclaim Bush twins are aliens there are very little widely circulated publications that are purposely deceitful. Reliability on publications should be assumed, just as we assume good faith on our editors here, we should assume they used good faith when looking for sources. This treating of game fans as the enemy is against Wikipedia's guidelines and even further, against what I see as Wikipedia's "spirit", the wish to be a place anyone can contribute. Renmiri (talk) 03:52, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

BTW, if anyone wants to join my peaceful protest against deletionists, add Template:User fedup to your user page. Renmiri (talk) 03:52, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Please see the policy about self published sources. If it's an official magazine, then you have nothing to worry about. If it's a self published fan magazine, then it doesn't meet criteria for sourcing. This is why we don't cite fan websites as well.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 03:59, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Altered WP:PLOT to cover fiction in general

Yesterday I rewrote WP:NOT#PLOT to cover limitations on fiction writing in general, emphasizing the fair use issues that underscore it. Surprisingly, the changes have received little response so far, so I'd like to solicit feedback from those who patrol this page, as the issues addressed here are largely the same. Maybe I'm opening a can of worms, but by the time I mentioned the fair use issues, I figured I might as well point out that they apply to all aspects of our fiction coverage. I hope the paragraph as rewritten summarizes the issue correctly, but let me know at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#Delete "plot summaries".

Separately, if the changes there are adopted, we'll have to alter the opening of this guideline to reflect the changed text.--Father Goose (talk) 05:19, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

I have changed the quote at the begining of the page to match the new wording. [[Guest9999 22:44, 2 December 2007 (UTC)]]

I see your version there has not been accepted. I think that was the right decision, for it takes an outrageously long plot summary to really exceed fair use; it's usually a minor consideration compared to other factors. DGG (talk) 03:01, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it's under discussion on the talk page, and last time I checked it wasn't being rejected. Hiding T 13:48, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

This deletionism mentality is getting really, well, stupid.

I thought I'd beat a dead horse further by putting this out there. I can see deletionism being used for merging subjects that don't require their own articles and deleting incredibly unnotable things, but the outright purging of tons information is asinine, especially information that is greatly contributed to and well maintained. As I recall, a few of the Naruto "List of jutsu" articles were consistently in the top 100 articles viewed on the entire project and have existed for quite some time, yet they were deleted. The existence of these articles wasn't harming Wikipedia at all and obviously lots of people found them helpful as opposed to generally awful fansites, so why were they deleted? According to logic they shouldn't have been, but due to a mixture of "flexible" Wikipolicies they were deleted anyway. This is only one notable example of many cases where the "Laws of Wikipedia" trample over logic and the userbase for the shared views of a few people. This needs to cease. - 4.154.232.12 (talk) 00:29, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

"Notability" is not the same as "popularity". Mind you, such popular content should be moved to Wikias before being deleted, but if the topic is non-notable by WP's standards, it should not have an article here. --MASEM 00:38, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Why not ? Notability means importance to people. So does popularity. The poster above is quite right, this deletionism is ruining Wikipedia as a source for new media, which BTW consists the bulk of Wikipedia hits. You guys are trying to make a new media vehicle into a dusty moldy book. Renmiri (talk) 03:35, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

If we used "popularity" or "importance" as a guideline for article inclusion, it would be very difficult to apply appropriate reliable secondary sources needed by verification. Requiring demonstration via reliable sources sets a bar for inclusion that is better than "Well, I think this should be in WP". --MASEM 04:08, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Ironically, the verifiability issue is exactly what's wrong with all these new Wikias being created. WP standards and passionate, elitist fan ediors is what kept all this "non-notable information" reliable and well kept, without them the information is nothing but typos, useless junk and fan bias. Have you been to the Naruto Wikia? Honestly it's godawful and useless for looking indepth into anything, and now that these aforementioned "List of Jutsu" articles are deleted a lot of other Wikipedia sections and articles on the subject make no sense. Someone (in)advertantly ruined any hopes of well written internet content on this series for no reason.

Admittedly, the aforementioned Jutsu articles were quite long and didn't require a list of every single attack in the series, but they could have been trimmed dramatically and kept for the betterment of the rest of the Naruto articles. Another similar issue is the deletion of the "Tales of the Abyss terms"(Or something similar to that) article. It was a small article that defined a lot of the convoluted, in-universe terms in the game so the other related articles could be understood better, it was deleted for being "game guide" content despite not having anything to do with progressing through the game. I fear for the day when other "glossary of terms" articles for more complicated subjects are deleted . - The Norse (talk) 23:59, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

History of this guideline

I'm always amazed when I see people citing 'WP:FICT' as a reason for deletion of articles on characters or railing against efforts to 'change' it to support keeping articles on major fictional characters and/or lists of minor ones. This guideline was created based on the consensus at Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Minor characters that major characters should be covered in the article on the story they appear in or their own article, and minor characters should be covered in a list article. Indeed, a summary was copied from that discussion to form the starting point for this guideline. There have been efforts to redefine and adjust things back and forth ever since, but nobody is trying to 'change' this guideline to allow lists of minor characters and the like... it was created specifically to validate the existence of such in Wikipedia. --CBD 15:49, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

For the record, the longstanding consensus above remained active on this page until it was re-written in August. The page has been continuously disputed and edit-warred over ever since. --CBD 15:58, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

That deletion policy discussion was held back in 2005; since then, around May of 2007, the general notability guidelines (which this must be a subset of) have since changed to require significant coverage in secondary sources as the measure of notability (see about this edit for when that langauge was introduced) The edits on this page have been to try to allow for the concept of major character lists that likely will never meet that notability guideline on their own (though editors are encouraged to still do so) as being sub-articles of the work of fiction itself. However, this cannot extend to single character pages that are only discussed in in-universe style, or lists of minor characters. This is a further extension of WP is not to be used for excessive plot details which many of the latter two articles qualify as. --MASEM 16:08, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Sure, there have been efforts to change the notability standards... but I think you are wrong to treat those as 'settled decisions which this guideline must conform to'. We've seen plenty of AfDs where people disagree with the new standards... that demonstrates a lack of consensus support for them. The consensus that lists of minor characters from fiction are notable enough for inclusion may not be the 100% it was in that 2005 discussion, but it is still a strongly held view by a significant portion of the community. There has been no demonstrated consensus to the contrary, and indeed several instances where this consensus has been re-affirmed. --CBD 16:24, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

The consensus on the new notability guidelines can be found starting around here in the archived discussion for WP:N. Yes, I know that not *this* guidelines page, but we cannot supercede what was determined over there. Once that guideline was established, that basically meant that any character of list of character page without demonstratable sources for notability should be merged, moved, or deleted. Not WP:FICT's decision. The edits here since that point have been to first make this guideline in line with WP:N (that is not by consensus, that's a requirement), and then to try to help migrate as much of the existing fictional pages into where they appropriate: either give them notability, move them to a transwiki, or in the very careful case, allow them to exist as a sub-article per summary style guidelines (and which is where we have appeared to reach a consensus though other factors are still in play). In general, this means that single character pages or list of character pages are generally non-notable. Remember, when people cite WP:FICT they are indirectly citing WP:N, and that's the guideline that is behind non-notable pages. If you feel that WP:N is too restrictive, you should really take it up there.

(I should point out that a new fair-use issue is also being bubbled up through some pages, in that published works that cite, solely, in-universe details without critical commentary or analysis have been subject to, and lost, lawsuits on copyvios. This issue is still in question, but it gives much more weight to fictional character pages that include appropriate details to satisfy WP:N instead of those that are strictly in-universe.) --MASEM 16:55, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

It's been done before, and although I know there are many reasons not to, is there perhaps an option here to poll the community one way or the pother as to whether WP:N and sub-pages have consensus? Just to get the matter settled one way or the other for the here and now? Would all sides agree that it may be best to get some sort of idea as to the strength of the consensus through a widely advertised poll? Hiding T 17:35, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Note the prior precedence with the polls at Wikipedia:Poképrosal/Poll and Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal. Hiding T 17:38, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Again, I can't agree with your claim that a perceived consensus that "list of character pages are generally non-notable" at WP:N trumps the longstanding consensus here that they generally are notable enough for inclusion. 'Geography' of where a consensus discussion takes place is irrelevant. All that matters is what the community as a whole agrees upon. Either there IS consensus for something or there isn't... and this looks very much like the latter. Ultimately, trying to push through something for which there isn't consensus based on claims of 'more important consensus over there' is always going to be pointless. People disagree... and they 'vote down' Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Spoo anyway, no matter how loudly you proclaim that there is 'consensus' that they shouldn't. Because there isn't any such consensus. Hiding's suggestion of a widespread vote / discussion might be worthwhile, but in general I'd hope that we could see that 'things alot of people strongly disagree with' do not have 'consensus' without need of any such poll. --CBD 18:39, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

It should be clear that there has never been a consensus/vote on "list of characters"; the consensus I pointed to was for notability being defined as by coverage in secondary sources. Now, it would seem to me that by common sense that a list of characters that lack any references or real-world discussion and not written in the approach of being a sub-article thus lacks significant coverage in secondary sources, and therefore is non-notable; to say otherwise trumps WP:N which is not appropriate. I'm certainly not saying that one can't take a consensus on this specific issue of character lists being notable, but remember, majority is not the same as consensus - I would be in denial to say that a straight-up vote would not favor character lists, but the results are based on the admins closing it and their evaluation of the arguments presented. --MASEM 20:20, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

You know, I'll have more respect for this line of thinking when List of Shakespearean characters: A-K is nominated for deletion because of lack of notability. Note the lack of secondary sources? Notability guidance tells us an article is worthy of note if a consensus of Wikipedians feels it is, but closing admins often skip that part. It's also funny how majority is never the same as consensus except when we think it is? I mean, if it is a minority view that WP:N is a guideline, and further, if it's a minority view that WP:N holds sway in a deletion debate over actual policy, at what point has corruption set in if an admin closes in favour of a minority position held by a minority of editors. We already have templates which allow stacking of a debate. It has really just become a farce. At some point someone has to see the flaw in asserting that even though more people disagree with WP:N as representing a consensus, their opinions are discounted as not knowing what they are talking about. Sorry if this comes across overly strong, it is just starting to become really frustrating. As someone who helped craft a lot of notability guidance, it appears I had a whole different idea of what the goal was to everyone else. Hoist by my own petard. Hiding T 20:37, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh come on, that list you cited has vast potential of being a very well written article with scholarly citations from the vast works of people who have written about Shakespeare, so you may want to avoid an example that so clearly vindicates current policy while trying to criticize it. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 19:01, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

And here's the nub. It really is a we like it decision. Either this guidance is flawed because it states that List of Shakespearean characters: A-K should be deleted, or both myself and Judgesurreal are wrong in believing a consensus of wikipedians would close any deletion debate on the list as speedy keep. This guidance has become too prescriptive, because people want to use it to bash articles they don't like. Instead of doing that, trust the wiki process. I've argued for a long time that we should set up a fiction noticeboard to allow editors from both sides a chance to work together and reach a consensus. Consensus isn't about one side shouting louder than the other, or trimming away at a guideline until it has altered beyond use, meaning and repair.[2] Hiding T 22:30, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

List of Shakespearean characters: A-K has obvious potential to pass WP:FICT, so that really is a bad example. -- Ned Scott 23:00, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hiding, I think you didn't get the point. There must be shelves of secondary (and out-of-universe) literature about Skakespeare's plays, written throughout the centuries. So many secondary sources in fact that an AfD would be closed immediately. Still we manage to treat these characters in only two lists! On the other hand, I've come across quite a lot of articles on characters in comics, novels, video games, without even the slightest hint to any secondary sources existing. All those articles did was re-telling the plot of the fictional works. They fail WP:N, therefore. Now is this a "we like it" argument, as you state? For me, it's at least an attempt to get somehere near a neutral standard. --B. Wolterding (talk) 23:05, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

No, I get the point. It's my point. The point is that a consensus of Wikipedians decide what gets kept and what gets deleted at afd, not this page. What is all this talk of failing a page? When did consensus get determined by referring to a page that has been edited away from common practise rather than the consensus of Wikipedians? When did one group of editors get to enforce their view over others in complete disregard of a policy, WP:CONSENSUS? When did guidance trump policy? Who decided it was secondary sources? Yes it's an I lik it argument. Just because you've built a page which lists your favoured conditions, it doesn't mean you've moved the debate away from I like it. All you're saying is "I like my articles to contain references to secondary sources. Oh, but not those secondary sources, more reliable ones. No really reliable, and there have to be lots of them, and other encyclopedias have to have subjects of this sort and...". It's I LIKE IT. Chicken with gravy on top is still chicken. Hiding T 23:16, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

totally disputed?

I see no consensus at all for the recent changes here. i propose one of four courses:

1. . Mark it as rejected
2. . Add a totally disputed tag to the guideline
3. . Restore it to the earlier state
4. .Quickly improve it to reflect consensus.

Normally, I'd say 4 is the best course, if we could do it. I am about to make minimum changes that I think necessary. Perhaps they can be accepted as a starting point. and others can fix up the remaining disputed details.If not, I will look for an earlier version that did have some sort of consensus. If I can't find one, I will go to 2. If we cant settle the dispute, it will have to be #1, for a guideline must have consensus. . DGG (talk) 21:02, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I hope you're not claiming that because you have witnessed a very small part of Wikipedia (fans of fiction uninterested in encyclopedic improvement) complain about this that there is somehow a lack of consensus. A comparable number of people also complain about the general notability guideline; should we mark that as rejected also? TTN (talk) 21:07, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

But that's the root of the problem. Trying to decide what sort of encyclopedia Wikipedia is. Is it a more up to date Brittannica, or is it something else. For most people, it's somewhere between not paper and not an indiscriminate collection of information'. We need to consensually agree on a definition, not stamp a definition onto people who disagree. I think that's in spirit with both m:Foundation issues and User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles. What is encyclopedic improvement? Who gets to decide. Why can't the opinions of fans be considered? Is it better to present as much information as we can in an encyclopedic manner, or to limit the information which can be presented to within certain constraints? Are we here to inform and educate, or are we here to declare what can and can't be learnt? Those are the underlying issues facing us, and I think we should all be honest and accept that. This isn't about enforcing our personal view of Wikipedia, it is about learning to accept other people's views and find a compromise we can agree on. Wikipedia belongs to everyone. This isn't about only x is of value, this is about people might like to know x, what#s the best way of telling them. Hiding T 21:22, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

This is a tertiary source that mainly relies on secondary information. This is reflected in most other polices and guidelines. Most fans are not interested in that, so their opinions are irrelevant. That is the reason that Wikia and other sites exist. TTN (talk) 21:28, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with your first two sentences, but find your second two objectionable. I can't quite agree that we get to dismiss the opinions of people with whom we disagree. Most fans are interested in using secondary sources. They also believe that we can be broad in using primary source to expand our coverage for greater clarity. Hiding T 21:42, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

We're talking about the people that dispute this guideline, not anyone that is a fan of fiction, which would include myself and many other people here. If they are only interested in having ungodly amounts of plot information, then what do they have to contribute to a discussion? That kind of information belongs on Wikia. TTN (talk) 21:46, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd rather allow people who dispute this guideline to speak for themselves and engage with them than accept your characterisation of their opinions, with all due respect. I dispute this guideline, and I also dispute your characterisation of me. I have no interest in ungodly amounts of plot, I have argued strongly against it to the point of adding a section to WP:NOT specifically relating to plot. However, I am also of the opinion that this guidance is deeply flawed when it is used to justify the deletion of articles split from larger ones, or enforce the merge of an article back to a parent from which it was split for space considerations, or to drive people away from Wikipedia. Hiding T 22:03, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

If they want to actually discuss like this instead of "yelling" and crap, then they are free to do so. I said "most fans", so there are obviously exceptions. If articles are removed, then they have no reliable sources and there is no strong assertion for them existing. If they do not exist, the articles are only plot and OR, so of course they're going to be merged or deleted. If you're saying that plot only articles are fine, you're going to need to change WP:N before this one. TTN (talk) 22:33, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not sure you read me correctly. I stated above that I have no interest in ungodly amounts of plot, I have argued strongly against it to the point of adding a section to WP:NOT specifically relating to plot. I disagree that articles on subtopics of fictional works have to be plot regurgitations, and I disagree that articles are removed for having no reliable sources. Typically these articles are removed based on I don't like it or I'm not sure it should exist. I'd rather not characterise the opinions of people I disagree with in such a manner. I'd just rather look to build a consensus, based upon all sides conceding ground. Hiding T 22:39, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

As I said, there are exceptions to my description. If there are no reliable sources, everything has to do with the plot. Personality sections, descriptions of the characters, and all that come directly from the plot, so they are no better than it (and also, they are mostly original research). Anyways, I cannot speak for others, but the reason that I have redirected upwards of five thousand articles is because they do not meet our standards, not because I do not like them. Though, I would say that is the same kind of bad generalization that you're accusing me of. TTN (talk) 22:46, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

You see, where you state you have redirected because articles do not meet our standards, I would say that that is doing it because you are not sure they should exist. But you are right, I should avoid generalisations. I am sorry, I had not meant to caricature you in such a way, and I did not want to drag your own conduct into it. That's being dealt with elsewhere and is not my concern. I believe you did what you did because you thought it was the right thing to do. I simply also believe that Wikipedia is a collaboration, and that means we have to listen to other people even when we disagree with them and we have to agree a way forwards together. I think we need to respect as many opinions as is possible in building our guidance, this one included. As long as we maintain a NPOV, the rest we can work out a consensus on. Hiding T 22:52, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by "you are not sure they should exist"? Most articles on fiction are purely plot info and trivia. They do not assert notability, and they do not show any sort of promise for the future. As they are only redirected, they can be brought back when sources become available. That is the best way to deal with them. It's not because I'm weary about their necessity. Anyways, you forget that a good chunk of these people have no interest in discussing. They want everything covered here and that is it. That is another reason for them to be ignored. TTN (talk) 23:00, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

The definition of notability (WP's inclusion policy for topics) is based on making sure that WP meets its goals of being a verified, reliable source of information. To do that, topics must have coverage in secondary topics. This is what determines what should be included and what should not be. This is why notability in WP's sense is not the same as importance, popularity, or the like; it is a much more defined measuring stick and thus reduces questionable inclusions.

Remember, at the same time, we are encouraging people to transwiki their materials to Wikia, where there's none of these issues on what can be included or not. We provide those includes in the relevant works so they can still go and learn more about that topic beyond what an encyclopedic treatment can provide. --MASEM 21:31, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

You don't need to tell me what our notability guidance is supposed to do. However, it is anything but objective, as detailed at WP:NOPE. The definition of notability was drafted so that new editors would have some guidance as to what to consider when creating an article. It was for fresh concepts, for new articles. It was not intended to limit the splitting of articles, to stem the natural branching of knowledge. It was never intended to state that only sections of an article with huge tracts of coverage in secondary sources should be split off; it was intended to state that we are an encyclopedia. As to what decides inclusion in Wikipedia, that is a consensus of Wikipedians, nothing more and nothing less. That's a foundation principle. Closing against a consensus based on a particular intepretation of policy or guidance is gaming the system. Wikipedia was founded on doing the right thing. It wasn't founded on operating a closed shop. Hiding T 21:48, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I had to revert this change:

For articles about fictional concepts, reliable secondary sources can be discussions of the work, plot, setting, or and characters in an academic or popular context-- this discussion, occurring in the real world, is "real-world context." It can also include secondary works that cover information such as sales figures, critical and popular reception, development, cultural impact, and merchandise; this information describes the real-world aspects of the concept, so it is real-world content. such reliable sources for these are those appropriate for the material being discussed. They will always include books, magazines, video programs, and other published media. They can also include appropriate internet discussion media, to the extent that they are accepted for the subject. The actual plot and characters and background of the fiction can be described from the fiction itself, documented to the extent necessary for clarity.

This statement supersedes both verification and original research by changing the definition of secondary sources which does not allow for most of those aspects.

If you really believe this guideline is disputed, place a disputed guideline on it. There has been concensus of the past editors of this page to the current version, but yes, that not necessarily is Wiki-wide. However, I strongly recommend not rewriting the guidelines until more discussion has taken place. --MASEM 21:18, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

• Can you explain how it violates WP:V and WP:OR please. It's long been held that internet discussion media is a suitable source for certain things, with a very narrow definition of certain things. Hiding T 21:24, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

• Internet forums are self-published, and therefore neither reliable (how do we know who is posting what?) and non-verifiable. They can be used as primary sources on top of secondary sources, but cannot be used for the sole support of a fact. --MASEM 21:31, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

• That's not established policy. Have a read of WP:V, both the section on Self-published sources (online and paper) and the section on Self-published and questionable sources in articles about themselves. I was involved in a lot of the discussion regarding drafting those sections, and what you state does not represent the consensus that emerged. We can use a self-published source to support a fact. We have a featured article which does so. Hiding T 21:39, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Hiding is right here--the current guideline certainly accepts primary sourcs. and certainly in some cases accepts internet forums. There was consensus there. They are widely used for appropriate articles, and accepted at AfD--when appropriate. If you wish to challenge this consensus , do so, and we can mark those guidelines also as disputed. DGG (talk) 21:45, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

• The second section you mention can never apply to fictional works (fictional characters cannot write about themselves). On the other hand, while it is true that the first section you mention allows for some self-published sources:

Self-published material may, in some circumstances, be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. However, caution should be exercised when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else is likely to have done so.

(bold mine) means that all those USENET posts by JMS about Babylon 5 can be used to support fictional elements of Babylon 5, but a regular fan's post that describes an element cannot be used, as a fan (except in very rare extreme cases) cannot be considered an established expert on the topic. --MASEM 21:47, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

If you wish to assert that the author of a fictional work is not in some sense the work itself, then I respectfully disagree and state that of course the second section applies to fictional topics. As to your regular fan's posts, you already indicate that there are cases where they can be used, so I see no value in arguing any further since we both agree. Hiding T 21:56, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

JMS is the creator of Babylon 5. He is not a fan. --MASEM 21:58, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Could you explain the relevance of this comment. Hiding T 22:04, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I may have misinterpreted what you stated (I thought you had referred to the example I gave as being a fan, my mistake). However, I do not agree that we agree that a fan's post can be used arbitrarily; I agree they can be used but the case is extremely rare. If a fan's post is to be used, it has to be readily acknowledged and very obvious to people outside of that community that what that fan says is as good as coming from a creator or equivalent (I know there's such as person for Doctor Who, but that's the only example I've ever heard of). The vast majority of fans are not at this level of reliability, and thus the bulk of fan-created materials, even if its accurate and broad in coverage, cannot be used because the source is not reliable. --MASEM 22:12, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Like I said, we already agree that the opinion of fans can be used, so I can't see any value in arguing the toss that they can't. Seems redundant. Hiding T 22:17, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I doubt that informal jokey forum posts from, say, the creators of Avatar: The Last Airbender would be 'allowed' as canonical sources. Babylon 5 gets special treatment because we have a lot of B5 fans (including quite a few admins).--Nydas^(Talk) 22:37, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd rather save discussions on specific sources to deletion debates on the specific articles. That's their proper context and rightful place of examination, not here. Here is supposed to be a guide on rough areas of what to do and what to look for, not attempts to wiki-lawyer a tight and rigid straight-jacket of a policy which allows no room for people to think and engage and discuss and reach a consensus. AFD is a forum for debating an articles inclusion. This talk page and the guidance it discusses is for something different. As I have said before, it is redundant to argue over minor clauses relating to points on which we already agree. Hiding T 22:44, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

The B5 thing is indicative of a larger systemic bias. I'd prefer a guideline which either has little wiggle room or lots of it, otherwise the end result will be unbalanced coverage of things important to Wikipedians.--Nydas^(Talk) 10:15, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I am glad for the agreement that at least we must consider sources on their own merits. (But it doesnt have to come from a creator--just from a responsible critic accepted as such by the community, whose views could be published more conventionally if the field were one discussed in conventional publication.--I think that's the sort of "fan" you have in mind. ) Nobody is proposing accepting the contents of everything in every open forum as reliable .DGG (talk) 22:19, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with DGG here. What disappoints me most is the fact that article content and scope and potential is tossed aside in relation to this guidance. It is treated by some on Wikipedia as being an inviolate policy, when it is at best a loose guide. Articles should be evaluated on their own terms. A deletion debate should examine the article, not the guidance, and it should determine what the article is discussing, how it is presenting its information and where it is getting its information from. Our own opinion of whether Wikipedia should cover a topic should not influence the debate, which is what WP:N and sub-pages allows. Hiding T 22:26, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Hiding, you're right--it should be presented as a guideline giving alternatives, not as a guide to AfD debates. I should have done it that way, too. That's the way other guidelines are done. then the AfDs consider the applicability. But we still need to agree on the alternatives. DGG (talk) 22:30, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Alternatives

Here's how the guidance read in early August[3]:

Articles that do not show notability can be kept for a short time, merged, moved elsewhere, or deleted.

• The article can be kept if an obvious potential for notability (i.e. an availability of real-world content from reliable sources) is shown, or such information is added to the article. If this obviousness is challenged, the sources should be shown or included.
• Parts can be merged to a notable article to provide better context. If material is merged, the article is not deleted per the GFDL. In-universe information should be condensed and removed as necessary, and meaningful real-world content should not be deleted. If the article becomes too long and a split would create a sub-article that does not establish its own notability, then the content should be trimmed.
• The article is transwikied to a suitable Wiki (such as Wikia or its Wikipedia Annex) if the above options are unavailable. The article is then redirected to the most relevant article to preserve edit history for the transwiki.
• The article can be deleted only if the above options are either redundant or unavailable.

Articles that have potential to show notability should be given reasonable time to develop. To avoid this problem, do not split or create content unless the new article includes substantial real-world content (and ideally an out-of-universe perspective) from the onset. Editors must prove that there is an availability of sources covering real-world information by: providing hyperlinks to sources detailing real-world information about the topic; outlining a rewrite, expansion, or merge plan; and/or gaining the consensus of established editors. Otherwise, the article will be subject to the options mentioned above. Place appropriate clean-up tags to stimulate activity and mark the articles as sub-par (but with potential).

Articles that are too small or narrow in scope — even if they are notable — should be merged into a larger article to avoid disorganization and a potential overload of plot summary.

• How does that grab people? Hiding T 22:47, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

• How is that any different than the current wording? TTN (talk) 22:49, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

• Compare the first sentence in each version:

Articles that do not show notability can be kept for a short time, merged, moved elsewhere, or deleted. against Deletion discussions for articles that do not provide evidence of the notability of their subject should be guided by the following principles. Can you not see the difference in approach, tone and paths being offered? Why is it a foregone conclusion an article will end up at AFD? Hiding T 22:55, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

• If that's your main issue, how about we change it to "Merge and deletion discussions for articles..." and update the rest accordingly? Any that would be kept for a short time would fall under ones with an asserted potential for sources, so those would fit in the above section. TTN (talk) 23:13, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I really like the wording, and the guide aspect of it, as it directs people in plain english on what to do with notability issues, such as finding out of universe references and things. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 18:12, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I support any rewording that makes it clearer that deletion is not the only option. In the proposed old/new rewordings, it also becomes clear that the guideline/recommendation for "Non-notable topics" applies to merge discussions also, in the hope that AfD can be avoided after all. – sgeureka ^t•c 22:00, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

• Hiding, are you saying that my original July rewrite was a better approach? If so, I agree. — Deckiller 04:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Core of the argument

Based on what is above and thinking about it for a time, I think we're on a somewhat common page on what we're trying to achieve, it seems to me that it's more the issue that this page is cited chapter and verse in AfD discussions without considering other options, or that people immediately jump to move an article to AfD without giving the editors time to try to improve notability via discussion/template addition. The old version that is currently up, I'd argue, says pretty much what we were trying to say, but less prescriptively ("you should do this" instead of "you must do this"). By both versions, a list of minor characters that lack demonstrated notability still must be "dealt with" (merge, transwiki, or deleted), so there's no change in the requirements. --MASEM 23:33, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

• I disagree with the assertion that a list of minor characters that lack demonstrated notability still must be "dealt with" (merge, transwiki, or deleted). Until List of Shakespearean characters: A-K, sourced entirely from primary sources is deleted, I think we all have to agree that it is not the case that a list of minor characters that lack demonstrated notability still must be "dealt with" (merge, transwiki, or deleted). Hiding T 23:40, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

• How about List of Rookie Digimon (Part 1) (AfD)? Or the other 18 Digimon lists? (if anyone is wondering, they all now have a new home on Digimon Wiki). -- Ned Scott 23:44, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
• I may not agree with how the Shakespeare article is grouping characters, but I'm pretty sure that one can find plenty of secondary sources to describe a large number of the characters from Shakespeare works. There's a resumable presumption of notability with that simply from the scholarship level of Shakespeare works. The same can't be said of many modern anime works, but I do agree this doesn't mean you slap an AfD on it without persuing other approaches first. --MASEM 23:49, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

The current version highly discourages using AfD, and encourages alternative outlets... -- Ned Scott 23:39, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Disagree entirely. It is quite heavily slanted towards deletion as shown in the section preceding this one. Hiding T 23:40, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I got my wires crossed and was thinking of WP:EPISODE, which does say to avoid AfD. My bad. -- Ned Scott 05:33, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Had my wires crossed again. As Deckiller points out in another part of this discussion, it does specifically discourage article deletion. However, I would not mind emphasizing on that. -- Ned Scott 23:10, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

tagged as "proposed"

As "disputed" refers only to mainspace, i have used the tag "proposed" following the suggestion of MASEM. I know he;d rather that his view on what it should be would be the accepted one, but it isnt, any more than it seems mine its.

I will develop mine further on a subpage.

And I invite anyone who thinks possible to prepare a minimal guideline that we can all agree on temporarily, to try and do so. It will have to omit the disputed points, of course. The proposed one as desired by MASEM and supporters can then become a subpage. DGG (talk) 22:27, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

WP:FICT is our inclusion criteria for when sub-topics of a work of fiction should be split into a sub-article. If people want to argue about how other people abuse it in AfD, that's one thing, but I'm getting a little tired of people going after the guideline for things it does not promote. -- Ned Scott 23:40, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm tired of people stating this page does not advocate deletion for articles that do not provide evidence of notability' when it quite specifically does. Deletion discussions for articles that do not provide evidence of the notability of their subject should be guided by the following principles. There are no alternatives to nominating for deletion listed. This page guides that an article which does not provide evidence of significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject should be listed for deletion automatically. Hiding T 23:46, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

If you want to change some wording, go ahead, but the point of it all is to encourage real-world information. Real world information is not normally found in the fiction itself. -- Ned Scott 23:51, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

I thought that was what the manual of style at WP:WAF was for. Do we need two pages doing the same thing? Hiding T 23:54, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

This is the inclusion criteria for articles themselves, rather than the recommended writing style. Yes, it overlaps in many areas, but the point is that the existence, or even just the potential of real world information is needed before making another article. -- Ned Scott 23:56, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

That being said, a single page might be feasible, or some other kind of reorganization, an idea that has been tossed around here from time to time. -- Ned Scott 05:34, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Um..."The article is deleted if the above options are either redundant, unavailable, or inappropriate. To avoid inefficiency, editors should only nominate articles that clearly fall into this category.[7]". That's actually nicer than the other notability criteria. Also, most of this page deals with "alternatives to nominating for deletion"—take a look at the "dealing with fiction" and "relocating..." sections. — Deckiller 19:53, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Take a look at how the section on non-notable topics begins. Don't read any further because you've already been told to go to afd and list it. The whole section is slanted towards deletion or listing of the article. Note how prescriptive this guidance is, dictating the only reason why an article can be kept at afd, something which conflicts with WP:CONSENSUS and WP:DP. That's far too aggressive a description of when articles are kept, too. this coverage is explicitly referenced in the deletion discussion. That's just nonsense. It's long standing practise that if a consensus of Wikipedians believe that the sources exist, that is enough. There doesn't have to be explicit referencing, there just has to be enough people stating their belief that sources can be found. That's because Wikipedia has no deadline, and the idea is that we grow articles from small seeds. We don't always expect them to be planted as mighty oaks. This guidance conflicts with common practise and policy and needs rewriting to better fit both. Hiding T 20:08, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

And it seems people are still forgetting the wording that does allow for those extra character articles, when they are necessary: "Sub-articles are sometimes born for technical reasons of length or style. Even these articles need real-world information to prove their notability, but must rely on the parent article to provide some of this background material (due to said technical reasons).[3] In these situations, the sub-article should be viewed as an extension of the parent article, and judged as if it were still a section of that article. Such sub-articles should clearly identify themselves as fictional elements of the parent work within the lead section, and editors should provide as much real-world content as possible." -- Ned Scott 23:56, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

that's the wording with which I started. Let's now think of a way to say that they are a preferable way of dealing with groups of minor characters--one page for all of them, as paragraphs. Then we can go on to say its the preferable way of dealing with plot elements. Not just acceptable for technical reason, but preferable if the article is at all complicated or the work of fiction important. If we get that far, we can keep going on the other mary disputed points. I think some of them are even more critical, but lets start somewhere. DGG (talk) 02:19, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

It's still a technical or style reason, though. In theory, we could make just one large article, but we don't prefer one massive article, and there are cases when a character or element is shared by more than one work, etc. As TTN said, it sounds like you want improved wording, rather than disputing the guideline itself, which I am all for. -- Ned Scott 05:30, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

This "dispute" has been concocted by users who do not wish Wikipedia to have encyclopedic standards and want article kept no matter how bad they are, and the fact that several users disputing the policy on this page have recently fought "tooth and nail" to keep articles in blatant violation of both WP:FICTION and WP:WAF indicates that the efforts to dilute the standards should be strongly discouraged. This is not a fan encyclopedia or a gameguide, and fictional things need to have actual roots in real life, otherwise there is zero quality control, and Wikipedia will be as bad as people already contend it is. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 18:40, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand you. Could you clarify as to whether you are including me in that statement. As an editor who has created and helped draft a number of notability guides, the WP:PLOT section of WP:NOT and relevant sections of WP:V, but who also disputes this guidance as it stands, I completely reject your baseless attempt to colour the debate in this manner and your false accusations and attempts to impugn my character. Rather than attempt to derail this debate with such dismissive tones towards your fellow editors, would it not be better to actually follow WP:CONSENSUS and engage with the issues at hand. Note that consensus can only work among reasonable editors who make a good faith effort to work together to accurately and appropriately describe the different views on the subject. At the minute I would ask all editors engaged in reaching a consensus to disregard your statement, which obviously isn't in keeping with our policy. Hiding T 19:38, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Woah woah, very sorry if I wasn't clear, I was referring to DGG, since I feel that as he could not prevent the deletion of many Elder Scrolls related articles, he instead came here and tagged the whole fiction policy as disputed, which angered me. I simply am here to put in my thoughts, which are that the policy should not be loosened to include articles with no coverage other than plot recitation, because it reduces our encyclopedias quality. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 14:33, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Is that what this is all about? -- Ned Scott 04:23, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Nope. Not on my part, and I resent the implication. Although a trawl through User:Judgesurreal777's contribs suggest he also has a position to protect. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Hiding T 15:48, 11 December 2007 (UTC) Stricken, that came out snide and is irrelevant. Apologies. Hiding T 15:50, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Ahem

It would seem that the problems here (once again) stem from people who try to write guidelines that don't reflect how Wikipedia works, but reflect how they would LIKE Wikipedia to work. You'll find that the former approach leads to stable guidelines (like this one used to be) and the latter leads to repetitive arguments. >Radiant< 20:01, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

With that logic we wouldn't need any guidelines for notability, or anything, for that matter. It is because these articles have become such a problem that such guidelines have come to exist.

The other flaw in your logic is that you are assuming people here really are disputing the guideline itself. Again and again, I only see people nitpicking at a few words, and no one disputing the spirit of the guideline. The guideline itself has a section made to protect lists of characters and other such typical sub-articles that don't always include real-world information, but are a key part to understanding other articles on the topic. -- Ned Scott 23:06, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I have no idea what you are so angry about, but what you accuse me of has nothing at all to do with what I just wrote. >Radiant< 11:08, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I wasn't angry.. From your "once again" comment I assumed you were referring to the last time you wanted us to re-evaluate the consensus here. -- Ned Scott 04:21, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Excuse a little irony here, but with the same arguments we could reject e.g. WP:NOT#PLOT: As a matter of fact, Wikipedia is a collection of plot summaries - just that it shouldn't be. So, drop that section from the policy? --B. Wolterding (talk) 23:16, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

That depends on whether those are the exception or the rule, and what happens to such summaries once regular editors notice them. >Radiant< 11:08, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Exceptions of the rule - well, I don't have precise statistics, but when I find one of these plot summary articles, I can usually spot a dozen or a even a hundred of similar articles within less than a minute, so they can't be so exceptional... and my suspicion is that, once a regular editor sees them, he usually ignores them since cleanup seems rather hopeless, both for the sheer volume and for expected resistance by "fans". (E.g. there are some very sad examples of attempts to clean up TV episodes.) What we need, in my opinion, is a clear description of the target - not of the current state (which is rather poor when it comes to articles about fiction). --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:12, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Tag wars don't help

What's the point of warring over the tag. Either there is a dispute or there isn't. Trying to define what a dispute is is just beyond belief. Can people please have a look at WP:CONSENSUS and edit within that context, rather than simply disrupting. Solve the issues with the page rather than fight over a tag. Hiding T 22:22, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Rewrite

Okay, I pulled huge tracts of text from WP:SS, WP:DP and WP:N to better establish what I think is common practise on Wikipedia at the present. The truth of the matter from where I'm standing is that we don't really have hard rules on what we keep and what we don't. It's all down to the vagaries of afd on any given day, in all honesty, and really that's the way it should be. Consensus can change, and it should be allowed to change, and we shouldn't seek to straitjacket it. Please edit the text, please amend it and hammer it and adjust it and tweak it and work out what to whittle and what to keep. Please don't revert it away though. Let's get to a consensus through respectfully editing our way there in small steps, not giant leaps. If we can. Nobody wants articles which simply regurgitate plot, but to the left of that is a huge field in which we don't have to plant a flag so much as mark out rough boundaries in which to respectfully agree to disagree and let consensus emerge the best way it can. Through discussion and editing. Hiding T 00:03, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Moved to Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)/proposed-12-9-07. -- Ned Scott 00:14, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Excellent, though perhaps a little bit too much of "sources are the holy grail of Wikipedia" shouting and too little "there's some editorial judgement" for my taste. Can you include a reference to consensus or exceptions to the rule somewhere, preferably in the first section? Something like "Note that lack of sources does not exclude any notability at all, just as the availability of sources is not 100% conclusive evidence of its notability" - but then better written. User:Krator (t c) 20:37, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The point isn't as much about sources as much as it is about the existence of real-world information. If you have real-world information, you have a source for it. -- Ned Scott 05:24, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the current proposal drowns out the main issues of why we have WP:FICT in the first place. It's not that I disagree, but the focus is lost, and even text unrelated to this dispute has been removed.

From what I understand there are two parts that are "in dispute". One is about the secondary sources having to be independent. I can see softening this point as long as we still emphasize real-world information. We're so desperate for real world information that we're often forgiving when the bulk of it comes from DVD commentary and production notes. It's also not as much of an issue considering most of these articles are not actually independent from their parent in the first place. It will make little difference for the really problematic articles.

The other part is to further advocate other alternatives over deletion. I totally agree with this, but we must be careful to not encourage people to simply game the system, and such advice might need it's own page altogether since there's so much of it. (I've been wanting to write one for transwiking, since the current information we have really isn't useful.) This seems more of an organizational issue, rather than if it's something we agree on or not. -- Ned Scott 04:14, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, well.. maybe .. *reads proposed rewrite again, thinks about it*.. maybe it's not really an issue for having the alternatives on WP:FICT itself. It's the end of the day, forgive me if I'm not making sense, but hopefully my evaluation of what is disputed is somewhat relevant. :) -- Ned Scott 05:33, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

• For me what needs to be recognised is WP:SS and the nature of lists. I'm a lurker on a list used by academics writing about comics, and many times one academic will ask, hey, which superheroes use magic, or which superheroes have broken the fourth wall? These seem to me to be perfectly useful lists which we could entertain creating, but which many people feel have no place in an encyclopedia because they are not notable. My opinion is that when not notable and useful for research conflict, useful for research wins. I also think we need to rethink how notability applies to articles split in keeping with summary style. You talk about not wanting to open a back door, but there is no back door to be opened. AFD is the only place to settle the issue. At the moment people have bolted the front door through this guidance, they have effectively gamed the system because they can just turn up at a deletion debate and say delete per WP:FICT. That's not on, pure and simple. Deletion debate is supposed to debate the article, not the guidance. If people can just state that WP:FICT declares that this article, viewed in isolation, having no sources must be deleted, then they've won. Because they edited a guideline to fit their thinking, not to reflect community practise. Community practise is that we split articles when they get big, and at some point there's a middle ground. We don't want articles on Superman's toe nail clippers, but Superman and the Presidency is a possible article listing story-lines where Superman has considered a run at the Presidency. I'm not saying it should exist, I'm saying that if it did exist, the deletion debate should focus on the merits of the article rather than the lack of sourcing. We get into a grey area of policy and guidance when discussing fictional works, and I think guidance should recognise that. Deletion debates should consider the article. Articles are not deleted because they fail notability guidance, they are deleted because after debate a consensus of Wikipedians agree they should be. We need to make that a lot clearer. Notability is subjective, after all, regardless of what guidance says. And it has moved. Every time on article got kept that someone didn't like, they tweaked the guidance. It's moved from an article needing coverage in a third party source to needing six mentions in works authored by these five critics and published by these two universities in American English, which also appear on this list at the bottom of my filing cabinet. Well, almost, but you take the point. Most people agree there is a grey area. If there is a grey area, we need to admit it. To not do so allows the side that denies it exists to have the upper hand, something which is not only unfair, but is against policy. Wikipedia should do the right thing and admit there are areas which we all agree to disagree on, and that we all agree to disagree at WP:AFD and make our best arguments there and respect whatever consensus follows. For examples of breath-taking closes at afd recently, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of planets in Futurama which completely disregards WP:CONSENSUS and WP:SS, and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/D.O.O.P., which again does the same. This is about maintaining a level playing field. There is a reason why WP:N and the like are not policies, and it is because they do not have the authority of being foundation issues. They do not guide us to our WP:PURPOSE, they rather guide us when we debate. They do not have the primacy of being able to trump WP:CONSENSUS. If consensus forms that guidance can be ignored, it can be. The onus then falls on those who wish to see guidance followed to build a new consensus. That's how Wikipedia works. That's per policy. This guidance does not at present reflect that. I'm not interested in seeing this article deleted or that article deleted, I'm quite happy chipping in to a deletion debate and I respect whatever the consensus is. I want everyone to do the same, to respect WP:CONSENSUS and m:Foundation issues. The "wiki process" is the decision mechanism on content, not this guideline. Our goal with Wikipedia is to create a free encyclopedia--indeed, the largest encyclopedia in history, both in terms of breadth and in terms of depth. We also want Wikipedia to become a reliable resource. At the minute we are deleting articles not because they are unreliable, but because we do not like them. Just because some have tailored guidance to meet their definition of I Do NOT LIKE, it does not mean we can gloss over the fact that they DO NOT LIKE IT. If the article reliably records facts, increase the breadth and depth, then it deserves to be treated with respect at an AFD and have its debated and deliberated for 5 days. All anyone wants is a fair hearing. Hiding T 11:37, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Notability has only been moved once around this last May due to restating the requirements for notability as being significant coverage in reliable secondary sources - it is a much stronger objective requirement; there is still subjectiveness to "significant" and "reliable secondary sources" but that's sets a bar for any article on WP to make. It does impact fictional elements much more, since the bulk of these articles are written on primary sources only, but we cannot loosen the requirement for one area only. The only reason it may seem like the goallines keep moving for notability is that some of the visible articles are being pointed out as lacking notability. Adjusting all of WP for notability issues is going to be a slow process with a lot of resistance.

Also remember this new notability guideline is based on consensus. The list of Futurama planets deletion shows how consensus is supposed to work: it is not based on majority, but based on discussion and the strength of arguments, including other guidelines and policies that have consensus already. Few of the "keep" votes for that AfD referred to any existing policy and were mainly variations on WP:ILIKEIT. And while we are trying to allow for summary-style split of lists to exist without strong notability demonstration, it must be obvious that it's not just a list for list-sake, but instead should be a list that was broken out of the main article due to size and summary style concerns. Lists of minor characters, various settings, etc. generally are not written in a concise overview of a work of fiction unless they have received additional attention elsewhere.

At the end of the day, while we want WP to be an academic tool, it is not meant to be the end-all, be-all resource for academics. I won't ask how comics and academics work together in your case, but I do know that if I were to do a report only founded on an encyclopedia, I would not get a good grade/result/performance for that report. An encyclopedia should not be the only source you consult for research, but can be the first one that you hit, and a properly written one would give you enough guidance as to where to turn to next for more details. Our notability guideline promises you that: an article build on coverage in secondary sources is going to give you a handle of secondary sources that you can use to research further beyond what an encyclopedia treatment of the topic can provide. We may not list explicitly what superheroes use magic or who have broken the fourth wall, but if written appropriately, WP's coverage of comic book hereos should give you links you can follow up on that. Same with technical topics, same with philosophical topcis, same with historical topics. People mistake much of what WP founding guidelines to mean we are a end-all be-all of human knowledge, which is both impractical and impossible to maintain; instead, we are meant to be the best tertiary source out there. --MASEM 14:31, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

The notability guidance has moved more than just last May, but perhaps I have a longer memory. I can remember putting the guideline tag on it. As to notability being based on consensus, no it isn't. It's based on shouting down opponents. Every time someone tries to change it, they are pointed off. Every time people disagree with it, they are told it has consensus, regardless of the fact that a vast number of people disagree with it. It's just that those people's opinions aren't considered of merit. And the List of Futurama deletion close is not how it is supposed to work. Please re-read WP:CONSENSUS. A small group of editors can reach a consensual decision, but when the article gains wider attention, others may then disagree. The original group should not block further change on grounds that they already have made a decision. A small group of editors rewrote WP:FICT, I know I was one of them, and a larger pool rejected it. The smaller group were allowed to triumph. That's wrong. Consensus can change. That's the policy for determining consensus, not WP:FICT or I agree with this guidance, so poo to that policy. I'm not going to bother responding to your assertions on doing a report founded only on an encyclopedia since at no stage did I suggest anything of the sort. And I would like to see where it states in policy that we cannot explicitly list what superheroes use magic or who have broken the fourth wall. Such lists are discriminate and can be sourced. No issues with WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:NOR or WP:NOT. As to whether we can loosen the guidance in one area, of course we can. Why else do we have sub-pages listing criteria for individual topics?

All that said, you have missed the main thrust of my argument, which is that we all agree grey areas exist. Why are we not therefore honest enough to admit it. Why is this page so strict, and why is any attempt to rewrite it resisted or shunted off to one side? Who is trying to protect what position, and for what? I am well aware of the positions on Wikipedia, and I am well aware that this page as it currently reads does not represent consensus, but that there appears to be a concerted effort to prevent amendments to it or to tag it as disputed. I think some users have to examine their actions here and work out whether their best interests are Wikipedia's. Thanks for listening. Hiding T 15:04, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't disagree that the consensus guideline states that, but that is aimed for when a significant change to an article, guideline, or other non-process page is suggested. For AfD, admins are to look at rough consensus to determine what the discussion of the AfD brings up. Again, from that : "Consensus is not determined by counting heads, but by looking at strength of argument, and underlying policy (if any). Arguments that contradict policy, are based on opinion rather than fact, or are logically fallacious, are frequently discounted." That is what occurred at the futurama planet list. The closing admin followed the process correctly.

A list of superheroes by power type approaches being indiscriminate info as well as being a directory. Making a list just because you can make a list is not always a good choice of action.

Again, I point that what WP:FICT now says is logically what must follow from the change in WP:N. We had (via consensus a few months ago) had a balance of allowing sub-articles written in summary style to exist on their own, as a strict reading of WP:N would not allow such to exist. Sure, there's a gray area, but its very narrow gray area and we have provided a route to make sure all other avenues were explored before that point. I agree that it did strongly suggest "delete any non notable article before trying other routes" and rewriting the guideline to have editors attempt any other route first is the right direction so that namedropping WP:FICT at an AfD should not be status quo. But if you're more concerned that WP:FICT sets the bar too high for fictional articles, then the proper place to be discussing this at is at WP:N, because the core of WP:FICT (WP:N + WP:PLOT) does not change from WP:N just because the work is fictional. --MASEM 15:22, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Rough consensus tells us this, to use the whole quote, Wikipedia policy, which requires that articles and information be verifiable, avoid being original research, not violate copyright, and be written from a neutral point of view is not negotiable, and cannot be superseded by any other guidelines. I would state that that was disregarded in that afd, when a guideline was placed above policies. Guidelines do not come into play, and the closing admin placed a few above policies. Also, to my eye the article had sources and was written more out of universe than in. But this isn't WP:DRV.

A list which discriminates on what it includes cannot by definition be indiscriminate, and I will resist any attempt to state otherwise. Not being a directory directs us to Wikipedia:Lists_(stand-alone_lists)#Appropriate_topics_for_lists which to me states that list of uperheroes is bad, but list of superheroes who break the fourth wall is allowable.

As to where I should be discussing this, please don't pass me back to WP:N, because WP:N states Substantial coverage in reliable sources constitutes such objective evidence, as do published peer recognition and the other factors listed in the subject specific guidelines. My emphasis. This is the right place for the discussion, per WP:N. At the moment this guidance is flawed. Everyone here seems to agree on that. Maybe we should stop arguing about that and start attempting to fix the problem. I've tried and been reverted, so I'm not sure how next to go forwards. This guidance needs to address summary style articles, which can draw from the parent article more detailed topics and expand the coverage. Superman is notable. Superman's powers are notable. Superman's allies are notable. Superman's enemies are notable. How deep do we go. It can't be enough to say we need outside sources on every single sub-article. No-one wants articles on characters which have appeared a handful of times in seventy years, but seventy years is a lot of time. There's a lot there to discuss which may not have significant coverage in a number of sources, but may have some coverage in one source. I know why our guidance was amended to ask for significant coverage in a number of whatever it is, it was as much to do with people appearing in one news story which gets written about in all the papers. But that doesn't mean we have to close all the doors to stop the horse escaping, just the ones the horse will fit through. We're allowed to tighten guidance for one area only, but we're never allowed to loosen it for one area only. Where's the much vaunted level playing field, the "do the right thing", the community spirit? Hiding T 15:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I would strongly advocate if you feel incorrectly about the list of futurama planets being deleted that you add it to WP:DRV. My gut feeling is that it will be denied, but consider it at least 1 or more additional opinions of what notability should be defined as.

For other factors beyond WP:N we can certainly add others (WP:BIO is a good example for additional notability for persons), as long as they don't reduce the requirement of WP:N. What you are suggesting, that allowing fictional elements to go with only primary sources, is violating that. I will point out that we have this section in the present guideline (which we came to after a good deal of discussion):

Sub-articles are sometimes born for technical reasons of length or style. Even these articles need real-world information to prove their notability, but must rely on the parent article to provide some of this background material (due to said technical reasons).[3] In these situations, the sub-article should be viewed as an extension of the parent article, and judged as if it were still a section of that article. Such sub-articles should clearly identify themselves as fictional elements of the parent work within the lead section, and editors should provide as much real-world content as possible.

This allows for some cases of articles with only primary sourcing, but when it naturally falls out from larger articles - this is comparable as to why episode lists exist as separate pages - because it makes the main page too large. However, this is a practical limit of how much sub-articles can go, and that's why this is somewhat strong language - otherwise people wikilawyer around it. --MASEM 16:25, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't want to go to WP:DRV, that's not my style or my point. And I'm fed up of people talking about wiki-lawyering, it always seems to be wiki-lawyering when you don't agree with it, but consensus when you do agree with it. The section you quote has already been used at afd to state the opposite of what you state it means, so something is wrong somewhere. Rather than attempt to close cat flaps to stop horses bolting, why can't we just let afd set our limits instead of tweaking this guidance to fit our preferred version of I don't like it. Do people not trust Wikipedians and admins to do the right thing? Hiding T 17:05, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Can you point to an AfD where the quote from the current phrase was used in the way you suggest it was? Understand how it is being used "improperly" from the intent can help us make it better. Also, AfD is not where consensus or policy/guidelines are built , that's where they are to be applied though application or discussion may lead to the formation of new guidelines or improvements on others. As previously suggested, if the concern is that this policy is being misused in AfDs, then lets look through the various AfDs, or ones in progress (where we can see the article) and thus work on improving the language.

But again, I'm going to point out that by the AfD process, the list of Futurama planets was closed out and deleted correctly (IMHO). I'm mentioning this one because this is a two-pronged aspect: one, it has to do with this guideline, so there's questions to try to fix it, but the other is that as you suggest, the process was not followed correctly. If similar AfD's are also two-pronged, it is going to be difficult to improve this one without understanding what mistakes, if any, were present in the other AfDs. I'm not saying to take all AfDs to to DRV, but the futurama planet one is a good one that shows where an obvious minority outweighted the majority (though again, I believe this to be correct process for AfD). If it is shown to be a mistake, then there may be good reason to loosen this guideline some more. --MASEM 17:41, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I've already pointed out how that close was incorrect per WP:CONSENSUS and [[Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators. If you think they are wrong, I suggest you discuss changing those on their respective talk pages. Sadly I have only recently started sorting afd debates so I don't have the one I referred to above to hand, but it does exist. As to afd not being where consensus is built, I think you are so wrong on that score and that prior precedence, policy and practise disagrees with you too that either I am misreading you or I am not, and there is little value in arguing the point. I will return instead to my main point. This guidance is currently drafted to advocate deletion, and is drafted tighter even than WP:N and I would like to return to an earlier version which is not and better reflects community consensus and practise. Hiding T 18:04, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

(←) I agree that we need to make sure that if an editor sees an article that lacks notability, the first step is not AfD it. Going back to Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)/proposed-12-9-07, I see no major problems in this, it sticks deletion as the last effort that should be done to an article failing merging and transwiking. (I've made a few edits to make sure deletion is the last subject on the table, and that non-notability is not criteria for CSD). --MASEM 18:30, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Can someone answer this for me?

Why do we even need this guideline. If a fictional article passes all the core polices it will automatically pass notability. This guideline just confuses the issues and there will never be consensus on it. A bunch of articles get deleted so people run in here and change it, then it starts causing problems in AFD and people come in here and change it back. It is an issue that is way to large to ever be handled by this guideline.

Anyway back to the main point, if an article can pass the test of WP:V, WP:OR, WP:RS, and other policies it will automatically be notable. If people want to deal with the issues raised by WP:PLOT and other policies that restrict fictional content then they need to deal with the policies themselves and not write a guideline. Ridernyc (talk) 14:46, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Referring more to the general WP:N, the keep language added that differs from WP:V, WP:OR, and WP:RS is "significant coverage". I can certainly make an article that is comprised of non-significant aspects of a work that meets V, OR, and RS (say, adding whom the voice actors are for a list of characters in an animated work), but this is not significant coverage of the topic in secondary sources. Adding that language is what sets WP:N apart from those. In the specific case of WP:FICT, we also add in WP:PLOT as an corroborating guideline to WP:N that basically says that nitty-gritty details of a fictional work are not notable nor appropriate for WP and should not be included. --MASEM 15:04, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Why does this guideline exist? When I first read it around June/July 2007, several months after I had set foot on wikipedia and wanted to expand the extremely poor wiki coverage of an unpopular TV show, I was looking for guidance on how an article should look and when to break out a subarticle etc. Even before its major rewrite, this guideline summarized consensus on key policies and guidelines (and pointed me there for more detail) to get me started so that I wouldn't need to be afraid of AfD. Unfortunately, the fewest editors actually read this guideline before starting fiction-related articles, which results in this guideline being used more in AfD than in article creation. – sgeureka ^t•c 15:19, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

The guideline is basically unreadable to someone who's not familar with Wikipedia. At the very least, it should contain common deletion outcomes like fanfic, fictional objects and minor characters getting deleted.--Nydas^(Talk) 15:39, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Isn't that already happening with WP:FICT#Notes? Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes doesn't mention any fiction outcomes, although an old version of WP:FICT linked to Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Minor characters and Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Middle-earth items. Maybe an essay can be written as a rough summary, and linked from here. – sgeureka ^t•c 15:53, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

There were examples of what was good and what was bad, but there were removed/condensed, or the like because the old examples (pre May 07 rewrite of WP:N) were no long good examples. We were talking about adding examples back in, and certainly this is not a bad suggestion.

The problem mentioned above about editors editing before reading guidelines is why, for fiction, there is a strong goal of trying to make this policy known. If I'm a new editor, wanting to write about my favorite show, I'm likely going to see the depth that certain shows (The Simpsons) have gotten and think, "Oh, WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS, and my show needs that too!". Unfortunately, there's no requirement for an editor to read relevant policy, so the better way to approach this is to make sure that while other stuff may exist, the way its written meets policy/guidelines, so that new stuff, when written, will likely be the same. --MASEM 16:09, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that editors exist who created that other stuff before this guidance was written and adopted and in some instances refuse to accept this guidance has consensus since it was never common practise and still isn't. So there's a huge fault line running through Wikipedia, and nobody seems willing to try and find some common ground. My personal opinion is that this guidance is too tight and you won't get editors following it until it is loosened. We've got a lot of editors at the comic project who have been here a long time and don't agree with this guidance as it stands/gets interpreted. It's hard enough getting WP:WAF adhered to, although that's new too it builds off of Check your fiction at guide to writing better articles or where ever it is. Hiding T 17:17, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Of course, it could be that the plan is to drive off those other editors and then it doesn't matter. That has been suggested to me, semi-seriously. Hiding T 17:18, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Examples

There's some sorting going on at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting which might prove useful for sourcing examples. Have a look at:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Anime and manga/Deletion Archive
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Comics and animation/archive
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Science fiction/archive
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Literature/archive
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Film/archive
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Fictional characters/archive

Those should offer some indication of where Wikipedia is at. Hiding T 22:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Notability and special effects

Imagine two TV shows. One is a sci-fi show with a devoted fanbase, the other is a romantic sitcom with a non-devoted fanbase. Both have similar ratings, win similar numbers of awards and get similar amounts of mainstream media coverage. Both shows have a character of medium importance. In the sci-fi show, the character is an alien who is created with prosthetics and computer effects. In the sitcom, the character a regular human. The sci-fi show's fanbase creates a fertile market for supplementary material (including out-of-universe stuff about the alien), whilst the sitcom may get one or two guidebooks if it's lucky.

Does the alien character deserve an article more than the human?--Nydas^(Talk) 16:05, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, assuming that the alien character has coverage of that character in secondary sources; particularly information about how the actor has to be prepped for the role, that's all secondary sources directly relating to that character. --MASEM 16:09, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Even though it's arguably a violation of neutral point of view? Would you support deleting obscure Indian politicians because we can't get them to the same standard as obscure US politicians? --Nydas^(Talk) 16:15, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

WP can only report on what's out there. If an editor purposely ignored one aspect of a topic despite information in secondary sources, that can be considered a bias, but if there's nothing out there to pull information from, there's not much WP can do. Mind you, there is a language issue here, as this is the english version of WP. I would suspect that if you ask the same question if we were on the Hindi WP, the info for the US politician would be the one for deletion. An ultimate goal is to translate all pages of all WP to all other languages, so at some point, a Hindi/English literate person could help translate sources from Indian papers and the like and make that Indian politician sufficiently notable. However, without either the translation help to identify sources or english-based sources, that article would likely be deleted or merged. --MASEM 16:34, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

English is widely spoken in India. Sources are hard to come by for socio-economic reasons.--Nydas^(Talk) 16:43, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

While it is a bias, it is not one under Wikipedia's control. --MASEM 16:59, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes it is. We just say that every elected official can be covered, since we can establish that they exist. Our policies, which rough consensus should be declared using, state that our articles can report what they can source. Guidance, which does not trump policy, declares that there has to be independent sources in loads of different sources of substantial length, but that can be ignored. We have it within our power to do whatever we want as long as we do it in a neutral manner and all loosely agree. If it improves Wikipedia and doesn't breach WP:NPOV, we are allowed to do it. Hiding T 17:23, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

• To address the example here, I would suggest you write comprehensive articles about both to the best of your abilities in keeping with WP:V, WP:NPOV and WP:NOR and run them through GA and onto FA. If they are well written and inform readers, you can generally build a case that WP:IAR applies in an AFD. People want to see encyclopedic articles, and usually won't delete them when they see them. We had a famous hoax that lasted ages because it was written so well. Hiding T 17:26, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Another stab

Okay, I've had another stab, merging the current version with the original rewrite Of July and with WP:N. I hope this is more acceptable to all than the last rewrite. Again, have at it as you will. Hiding T 18:48, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

This is my concern (I think we're on the same page, just language/presentation): "contain substantial real-world content from reliable primary and secondary sources." in the first section can be read (if one blindly ignores the bolding) that primary sources are sufficient; there's also cases that one may not be able to have primary sources that describe real-world content. Basically, we know:

• Secondary sources are necessary and required
• Primary sources are neither, but can be used as well.

I'm thinking to make the language clearer is "contain substantial real-world content from reliable secondary sources with additional support from appropriate primary sources.", which gets both points above across. --MASEM 18:59, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

My fear is the idea that editors will see "primary" and automatically assume that means you can write the article based soley on what happens in the fictional element (which creates original research in most cases), instead of sourcing from things that are considered "primary" -- like interviews with the director, writers, artists, actor, etc etc...and all the other primary sources there are.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 19:02, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that that contradicts WP:V, which makes no mention of primary and secondary sources, and supercedes this guidance. I would hate to see this guidance move away and further from established policy, that violates other policies as above. Hiding T 19:52, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the problem is covered in the section of WP:V on "self-published and questionable sources": Material from self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources in articles about themselves, so long as ... the article is not based primarily on such sources. Then only thing that needs to be made clear is that an artist talking about his own creation is, depending on the circumstances, either self-published or questionable.Kww (talk) 20:02, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

(ec)That's not true. An artist being interviewed in a reputable source is still primary source but is not questionable nor self-published as defined at WP:V. Hiding T 20:18, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

You don't think such cases are "promotional in nature"?Kww (talk) 20:25, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

(ec) No. Why, do you? An interview is as good as the interviewer, and if it is published in a reliable, third-party source with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, then it's going to be fair game even thought it is primary source. Interviews are often useful for revealing things that may otherwise have remained unknown. For example, see Tony Blair#Blair's religious faith. Hiding T 20:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Depends on context. An interview by, say, Billboard Magazine talking to Bono after a Grammy win is certainly not promotional; on the other hand, if a record label "published" an interview with a band under their label about an upcoming CD release, there's certainly question of promotion. In generally, a good interview is actually a secondary source as the interviewer is the one synthesizing/analyzing/etc the questions and answers; as long as the interviewer is sufficiently reliable and independent of the work, it should qualify. --MASEM 20:33, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I would be extremely suspicious of an article about Bono that was primarily derived from interviews with Bono. Certainly, an article about the average Disney channel show that was derived from interviews with Disney's tightly controlled stable of stars wouldn't pass the sniff test. Questionable may be a bit strong, but I think the concept needs to be applied in this context.Kww (talk) 20:40, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't. You're looking to stop horses by locking cat flaps. If it will fail the sniff test, take it to afd and let afd do its job. Let this guidance support policy rather than extend it. Hiding T 20:55, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

(ec) There may be some disagreement what a "primary" source is. If it's the work of fiction, then no, it does not establish notability and would just work against either WP:NOT#PLOT or WP:OR. If it's the authors/creators of the fiction in sufficient coverage, then yes, notability is established. Reliable secondary sources already establish notability per WP:N. Personally, I don't care what sources are used as long as its real-world information from reliable sources. – sgeureka ^t•c 20:16, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

(ec) Even though I have not really contributed in the above discussions, I must say that I think the rewrite was very good and has my support. But since the guideline moved away from immediate deletion, then this should also be reflected in the notability tags. {{notability|fiction}} (and {{notability|episode}}) suggest that the ultimate end for non-notable fiction elements is deletion. If someone can figure out these intricate templates, they should definately rewrite them because the templates' high visibility and orange warning color just shouts AfD. – sgeureka ^t•c 20:16, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Good point - you're right that that template does not suggest other courses of action. --MASEM 20:35, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I've started a discussion on that point at Template talk:Notability#Tweak suggesting it actually record what Guide to deletion states if it is going to "per" it. Hiding T 20:45, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Again, please make large scale changes to a proposal subpage, especially when you've come here to complain about how changes are being made without a consensus. -- Ned Scott 22:53, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

• Can you please stop reverting the page. There's discussion on the talk page documenting what we are doing here and four editors have been involved in the rewrite. Please don't tell me what I've come here to complain about, you've obviously misread me somewhere along the line if that's what you think my issue is. It's a wiki, we're following the wiki process. If you have issues with the additions, please make your case. Half of it is drafted in from WP:N and makes the page better meet Wikipedia:Guide to deletion so shouldn't be objectionable. Hiding T 23:01, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

• Four editors.. and you have the nerve to say that the dozens of other editors who worked on the current version don't have a consensus. Wikipedia uses a consensus process, and you don't get to blatantly toss that out the window just because it's something you don't like, and because you're being impatient. -- Ned Scott 23:05, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

(ec) Gee, I thought consensus could change. Since I was one of the dozens of editors involved before, I'm at a loss to understand why I was right then and wrong now. And make it five editors, I note the main author of the rewrite agreed up above. The page is basically a restoration of the July rewrite with additional material from WP:N. You have yet to state any areas of the rewrite you wish to discuss, so I can't see a way forward until you do so. Let us know when we can edit the page or you are willing to discuss the rewrite. Hiding T 23:11, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

• I'm completely with Ned on this. It is premature to introduce the changes you have made, since it raises some core concerns about making the definition of notable material rather more lithe. That is problematic. Any changes need to be brought here and systematically subjected to review before passing to the main page. Eusebeus (talk) 23:09, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

  • In what sense does it make the definition more lithe? Hiding T 23:12, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Core issues

Since this was drowned out by rantings, I'll put it in its own section:

From what I understand there are two parts that are "in dispute". One is about the secondary sources having to be independent. I can see softening this point as long as we still emphasize real-world information. We're so desperate for real world information that we're often forgiving when the bulk of it comes from DVD commentary and production notes. It's also not as much of an issue considering most of these articles are not actually independent from their parent in the first place. It will make little difference for the really problematic articles.

The other part is to further advocate other alternatives over deletion. I totally agree with this, as do a lot of us here, but we must be careful to not encourage people to simply game the system. Such advice might need it's own page altogether since there's so much of it, but we'll see. -- Ned Scott 22:58, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Deletion at the bottom

Masem, can you confirm that you were happy for deletion to be put to the bottom, and all other options be detailed first. That's in keeping with WP:N, which is the language I pretty much copied in. Hiding T 23:19, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree that taking it to AfD for deletion due to lack of notability should be taken as the last resort if the article cannot be dealt with in one of the other ways describes, and should be as clear as possible to that degree in the guideline. --MASEM 23:46, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Okay, so if we look at mirroring WP:N with something like the following:

“ If an article fails to cite sufficient sources to demonstrate the notability of its subject, look for sources yourself, or:

• Ask the article's creator for advice on where to look for sources.
• Put the {{notability}} tag on the article to alert other editors. To place a dated tag, put a {{subst:dated|notability}} tag.
• If the article is about a specialized field, use the {{expert-subject}} tag with a specific WikiProject to attract editors knowledgeable about that field, who may have access to reliable sources not available online.

If appropriate sources cannot be found, consider merging the article's content into a broader article providing context. Otherwise, if deleting:

• If the article meets our criteria for speedy deletion, one can use a criterion-specific deletion tag listed on that page.
• Use the {{prod}} tag, for articles which do not meet the criteria for speedy deletion, but are uncontroversial deletion candidates. This allows the article to be deleted after five days if nobody objects. For more information, see Wikipedia:Proposed deletion.
• For cases where you are unsure about deletion or believe others might object, nominate the article for the articles for deletion process, where the merits will be debated and deliberated for 5 days.

”

Would that work? We could add in stuff about transwiki. Hiding T 23:53, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Something like that. Reasonable steps should be:

1. Tag with notability and discuss on article talk page (particularly if the concern is non-obvious). If the concern can be more detailed, add the appropriate tag (I don't believe "expert-subject" applies here.
2. Wait some time (2 weeks to a month) for any replies. If there is good faith effort by editors to demonstrate notability but not completed at the end of this, allow them more time. (there is no deadline).
3. If there is no response to the notability tag or notability cannot be demonstrated, consider two options which should be determined by consensus:
   1. If there is a broader topic that the article can be merged into, or a series of similar articles that can be merged into a list with higher probability of being notable, do that. Follow proper merge procedures for this
   2. If a merge is not likely possible, then consider transwiki the material to an appropriate wikia or the holding area for unsorted wikia material.
4. If none of the following are possible, or there is no consensus for merging or transwiking, only consider bringing the article to AfD as a last resort.

Something like that. --MASEM 00:11, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Non-notable topics

Articles that have potential to show notability should be given reasonable time to develop. To avoid this problem, do not split or create content unless the new article includes substantial real-world content (and ideally an out-of-universe perspective) from the onset. Editors should be prepared to demonstrate that there is an availability of sources covering real-world information by: providing hyperlinks to sources detailing real-world information about the topic; outlining a rewrite, expansion, or merge plan; and/or gaining the consensus of established editors. Otherwise, the article will be subject to the options mentioned below. Place appropriate clean-up tags to stimulate activity and mark the articles as sub-par (but with potential).

Articles that do not show notability can therefore be kept for a short time, merged, moved elsewhere, redirected or listed for deletion. If an article fails to cite sufficient sources to demonstrate the notability of its subject, look for sources yourself, or:

• Ask the article's creator for advice on where to look for sources.
• Put the {{notability|fiction}} tag on the article to alert other editors.
• If the article is about a specialized branch of fiction, use the {{expert-subject|PROJECT-NAME}} tag with a specific WikiProject to attract editors knowledgeable about that field, who may have access to reliable sources not available online.

If appropriate sources cannot be found, consider merging the article's content into a broader article providing context. For instance, articles on minor characters in a work of fiction may be merged into a "list of minor characters in ...". If there is a suitable project other than Wikipedia which may cover the topic in question, consider a transwiki. An article can be transwikied to a suitable Wiki such as Wikia or its Wikipedia Annex. The article is then redirected to the most relevant article to preserve edit history for the transwiki. Otherwise, if deleting:

• If the article meets our criteria for speedy deletion, one can use a criterion-specific deletion tag listed on that page.
• Use the {{prod}} tag, for articles which do not meet the criteria for speedy deletion, but are uncontroversial deletion candidates. This allows the article to be deleted after five days if nobody objects. For more information, see Wikipedia:Proposed deletion.
• For cases where you are unsure about deletion or believe others might object, nominate the article for the articles for deletion process, where the merits will be debated and deliberated for 5 days.

How about that? I know you don't think expert specific applies, but I'm thinking of instances where the article is new, it may not have shown up on the radar of other interested parties as yet. But that's a quibbl we can go one way or the other on. Anything else there that needs to be tweaked? It's mostly a merge of what we've got now woth what we had in the rewrite and what we have at WP:N and WP:GTD. Hiding T 10:22, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Many points disputed

There are more than two points at issue.

first, with respect to significance:

1. . The meaning of the term 'real-world significance" Does it mean primarily the authorship, sales, reception, or does it includes discussion in the real world about the plot, characters and setting?
2. . The meaning of "in-universe" Does the mean anything talking about the universe of the fiction, or does it mean only the prohibition about writing in a fan-fiction fashion as if the universe of the fiction were actual reality\?
3. . The extent of plot information. is this to be minimal, or detailed, or somewhere in the middle.? Should the rule be that it should not predominate mean that it should not be more than 50%, or that it should not be 95%?
4. . The source for information about the plot and characters and setting. Must this come from secondary sources, or should it come , alternatively or even preferable, directly from he work of fiction? If so, is this an exception to the basic rule about primary sources, or does the current meaning of the rule in general permit primary sources in such situations?
5. . The source for secondary information. Must it come only from conventionally published sources, or may it includes information from accepted informal sources appropriate to the type of material? If so, is this an exception to the rule, or the interpretation to which the practice is heading over material in general?
6. . Do we treat all material the same, ir do we recognize the differences between different types of fiction? Do we ignore academic sources talking about popular culture, or take account of where the actual critical literature is? do we ignore the significance of a work in formal or informal culture, or pay special attention to the iconic works of film and literature--and computer gaming?

Then, with respect to structure:"

1. . The basic principle that each work of fiction should have a single article. Or should we instead have the number of articles appropriate to its importance and the extent of material available?
2. . should major characters only have a separate article in special cases, or should all individual major characters in major works have a separate article? Should this depend upon formal sourcing, or should we assume that major characters in such works will always have a substantial critical discussion?
3. . Should we just mention the names of the less important characters in important works, or a listing, or should we write combination articles with a substantial section to each of them, length according to how much there is to say? Does this apply to all minor character, or in some exceptional works, such as Shakespeare, is there sufficient critical discussion that essentially every named character can justifiably have an article?
4. . Is setting and background relatively unimportant, as compared to plot and character, or does this represent at least as important aspects of works, and to be discussed on the same principles as character? Does the geography of major imaginary worlds merit only a general discussion, or should major settings be presented in appropriate detail? Do the minor settings just get listed or ignored, or do they merit sections of a combination article for the more important works fof fiction?
5. . Are the details of setting and cultural cross references unimportant, or are they part of the essence of at least some forms of fiction such as film? Do we treat all such works equally , or emphasize strongly the settings used in major works of fiction, and the major settings used in multiple works? Do we need secondary sources explicitly treating each such element, or can we use the same primary sources we would use for plot and character?
6. . Do we deal with excessive size by compressing the treatment, or dividing the article? If there are too many minor characters to devote a paragraph to each, do we shorten the paragraphs, or find some way of separating them into two or more articles?
7. . Do we rely on specialist wikis for all specific details, or do we try to make WP self contained, using specialist wikis only for the true minutia that only specialized fans discuss (e.g. , the speculative detailed genealogy of Frodo's relatives)?

further, with respect to procedure"

1. . Do we just let AfDs settle everything including article structure, or do we keep editing questions to article or project talk pages?
2. . Do we follow the majority of whomever is present at a particular discussion, or do we attempt to form a stable and generally acceptable consensus?
3. . Do we renominate for deletion articles that have already obtained consensus to keep , or do we spend our time writing and improving articles?
4. . If we cannot obtain consensus on details, do we argue till we have them, or do we attempt to get consensus on more general points?
5. . Do we attempt to write policy so our favorit works get the treatment we want them to have, or do we look more generally at all media and genres?
6. . Do we depend only upon formal sourcing, or also upon importance?
7. . Do we delete on the basis of no response to tagging after a time, or do we accept that growth is slow and irregular? Do we thing of deletion as a trivial concern, or do we recognize that it is much easier to build upon existing stub articles?
8. . Do we accept failure of routine attempts at sourcing though tools like Google Scholar, or do we accept that sourcing in this area is sometimes difficult, and that nothing should be considered unsourcable until the popular and academic materials have been thoroughly examined?

I have tried to write it so the alternative in each clause is my preferred position, but at the least, each point i have raised here is a point where i think we do not yet have agreement. i strong dislike any attempt to pretend we have agreement on one particular person's position otherwise. Ned does not recognize the degree to which his views do not have general acceptance--not just about details, but about general principles. However, i do very strongly agree with him on the practical advisability of trying to get at least some general rules on which we might have agreement, and reserve the details for another place, possibly in the format of examples presented explicitly as an essay. DGG (talk) 00:24, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Real world information

1. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia grounded in the real world. Sales, reception, reviews and interviews (and other ways we discuss the fiction in the real world) all seem to apply.

2. in-univierse- originally meaning a perspective of writing, we've also used the word to simply describe the plot itself, and the importance of things as seen if the plot were real.

3. Hard rules about the exact amount of plot information are likely to be too stiff for a general guideline on fiction. I like to think of it like this: we give the fundamental understanding of what the story is about, and what goes on. Our job is not to retell the work of fiction, but to use summaries to give the fundamental information and to give context for other examples. The longer a work is, the more I can see fundamental information being justified. When you start adding real world information, you can justify even more summary. There are some guidelines used by some WikiProjects about a number of words per minute (for shows and movies). Maybe some of those examples can help guide, without hard rules.

4. I'm not sure I follow you here. The first source is normally seen as the fictional story itself. We don't have sourcing problems for plot summary, and citing the work of fiction itself is more than acceptable. Since we want real-world information, we obviously look to other sources, since the story itself is fictional.

5. I would stay away from fan-sites and keep closer to WP:RS. There are some exceptions from time to time, but this is an issue of verifiability.

6. I'm not sure what you're trying to say in this section. This seems like a repeat of question 5.

Structure

1. The number of articles can't be decided arbitrarily like that. Like with anything else, the number of articles is more likely dependent on the amount of appropriate information, and how to present that information, which can and does change for many different works of fiction.

2. same as 1

3. same as 1

..... ok this is all just asking for things we can't decide arbitrarily. No matter how badly you want it, you don't get a generic green light to make a set number of articles for fiction.

It's simple, yet not simple, because it's a guideline and not a bible. When you want to make additional sub articles for a work of fiction, you need real-world information to justify it. In some cases we bend a little for unique plots, or ones that have great cultural and historical impact, or that have simply been around for a long time, but the same idea applies. -- Ned Scott 01:42, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I'll respond to some points in particular below, but I will respond to the procedural issues in general. We need to recognize that some classes of article will probably never be acceptable. An article summarizing a single issue of a manga or a single episode of a TV show will only be an acceptable article in an extremely small percentage of cases. It's reasonable to treat these as essentially "shoot on sight" ... if they don't assert some reason that the episode or issue has some extraordinary outside impact, redirect them the moment they appear. Articles summarizing series, seasons, genres, etc. can be given a lot more latitude. On to your points.

• The meaning of the term real-world significance Does it mean primarily the authorship, sales, reception, or does it includes discussion in the real world about the plot, characters and setting? Primarily reception, but I would generally prefer the plot summary and character descriptions to come from secondary sources.
• The meaning of "in-universe" Does the mean anything talking about the universe of the fiction, or does it mean only the prohibition about writing in a fan-fiction fashion as if the universe of the fiction were actual reality\? Writing in a fan-fiction fashion as if the universe of the fiction were actual reality,
• The extent of plot information. is this to be minimal. Absolutely minimal. Needs to be sufficient to understand the response and criticism, but no more.
• The source for information about the plot and characters and setting. Secondary sources only. It should never come directly from the editor watching the show or reading the book. That violatesIt is extremely easy for such things to violate WP:OR.
• The source for secondary information. Must it come only from conventionally published sources Yes. Verifiable, conventionally published sources.
• The basic principle that each work of fiction should have a single article. Or should we instead have the number of articles appropriate to its importance and the extent of material available? I think that most TV series should have a series article and another article per season. Novels generally get an article, and manga series generally get an article. So I guess, yes, appropriate to its importance.
• should major characters only have a separate article in special cases If the character gets written up in secondary sources as the primary topic of articles, then fine, give him an article. If it's only in the context of articles about the movie or series as a whole, then no. Hawkeye Pierce had articles written directly about him, with the show as a backdrop, and Alan Alda would talk about him individually. The same can't be said for most characters on most TV shows.
• Do we rely on specialist wikis for all specific details, or do we try to make WP self contained WP should not try to be self-contained in this aspect at all. Specialist wikis are where detailed descriptions of Pokemon monsters, every student in South Park, and every boyfriend in Sex and the City belong.

Kww (talk) 01:47, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

• The source for information about the plot and characters and setting. Using primary source doesn't violate WP:NOR which states as follow: We can make descriptive claims about the information found in the primary source, the accuracy and applicability of which is easily verifiable by any reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge, but we are not allowed to make analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about the information found in the primary source, unless such claims are verifiable from another source. We can use primary source to describe a fictional character or setting. To interpret, analyse or assert anything other than the description is what you need secondary source for, the reliability of that source judged in line with the level of the assertion per WP:V. So you can sat Bilbo Baggins was a hobbit who lived in a hole in the ground and found a ring. If you want to assert Baggins was gay you'd need to source an academic paper or essay in a large national paper. If you wanted to assert that Bilbo coveted the ring, you can use the work itself. Whether these things belong in an article is up to editorial judgement, not guidance or policy. Such things are content disputes and dispute resolution should be followed. Hiding T 10:33, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Edited my statement to correspond to reality. I still believe that directly summarizing a plot easily drifts into original research with just a few poorly chosen adjective. One man's "god-fearing minister" is another's "deluded religious fanatic."Kww (talk) 17:20, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I can summarize all my answers by comparing a fiction-related subarticle to any similar Featured Article and argue from there. In fact, I approach any article as in how far its content would currently contribute to making the whole multi-article topic a Featured Topic. That may make me a valuable contributor or an illusionary fool. Now, if you look at the video game Kingdom Hearts (Featured Topic for the whole series), you'll notice that it can cover its whole in-universe elements in 4 articles (plus 6 for the individual games). Compare that to any popular TV show that literally has 10+ articles for characters (almost all consisting of fictional biographies), 50+ episode articles with almost nothing but plot, and a variety of other articles like fictional machineries, Lists of planets, Lists of fictional brands, List of relationships, or fictional organizations. If I were to project how much material there was to turn the existing information into a Featured Topic, I'd get maybe 8-10 articles like with KH. And one may now compare that to 70++ poor articles and say why this guideline would/should encourage the latter and not the former approach. The only thing that I think can/could/should be improved in this guideline is in respect to procedure, where, objectionable as it may be, AfDs bring results faster and more clearly than endless discussions among fans that accomplish little to nothing (unfortunately). So, about the Procedure:

• 1. First tag and raise discussions, then go to AfD if nothing happens after a few weeks (to avoid gaming the system, which unfortunately happens too often to be ignored).
• 2. The majority only counts if they can provide reasonable proof that the issues of an article are and/or can be actively worked upon.
• 3. If some time has passed without improvement (my estimation: three months), then the old AfD consensus is void. Remember that a trim&merge is often preferable to another AfD, but this only works if local consensus collaborates.
• 4. Discuss the main points first (notability), then proceed with minor points (plot depth, sourcing) if notability has been established. If notability has not been established, then plot and sourcing deficiencies are even worse.
• 5. Neither. Try to think if the article can achieve at least GA (updated rules). If it can't, it shouldn't exist. If it can't any time soon except for crystal-ballery, merge.
• 6. The sourcing decides how much we can write. The sourcing doesn't need to be traditional; it can also be podcasts or forum posts and blogs by the producers, to name a few. Obviously, main characters are allowed to have more plot coverage than minor characters etc.
• 7. Depends. If there is no hope in making the article encyclopedic, deletion is alright (this often happens with lists). If it's just uncertain if sources exist for an in-universe-notable element, I prefer to merge/redirect anyway until individual notability can be established.
• 8. My experience says anything can be sourced with enough determination, but it's the job of the people in favor of keeping to provide these obscure sources, not the other editors. Again, tagging/discussion first, then proposing merging/redirecting/userfying, then AfD'ing in such a case unless it's a hopeless case (e.g. when even the "mother" article cannot establish notability as a merge target, as happened with the individual Warcraft(?) races).

– sgeureka ^t•c 03:30, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with basically everything you have written. However I still question whether or not these are notability issues or policy issues relating with fiction. I really do not think this is the place to be dealing with these issues. Ridernyc (talk) 03:52, 12 December 2007 (UTC)#

It's terrifying that certain Japanese RPGs (at best, a genre of medium importance) are taken as the 'standard'. The Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy articles are not that great. They rarely use offline sources, they inflate their references with dialogue fragments, criticism is usually muted, cool-looking promotional artwork is always preferred and large in-universe sections are commonplace.--Nydas^(Talk) 09:30, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

What's really terrifying is that this RPG is the only fiction-related Featured Topic for a whole series, and that therefore no other other standard exists. Still, I've been actively working on making Carnivàle, an obscure and convoluted 24-episode TV show, a Featured Topic also, and if everything works out, we'll have another standard example with 4 articles covering everything by the middle of January. I don't think that it will have a major impact on the fiction-related wiki scene, but I hope it inspires at least some editors. Because, as I said, 70+ articles can only be worse when there simply aren't that many sources (and fans, including me, often completely overrate the number of usable sources). – sgeureka ^t•c 10:27, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

7 out of 26 featured topics are fiction-related. That's pretty high, probably underscoring how little interest there is in featured topics generally.--Nydas^(Talk) 18:07, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Most featured topics cover lists of something, and, as I said, there is only one FT that comprises the whole multi-article topic. And I believe many fans would like to showcase their favorite TV show/movie franchise/video game as a FT, but showing that you have 250 articles instead only 200 is so much easier than actually working on the problem, which is getting rid of extensive in-universe information and finding and adding real-world information. But we're getting further away from the point of this discussion. – sgeureka ^t•c 18:25, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Interesting to see the different points of view. I agree that many of these are not strictly notability issues, but they are all points that have been raised in the present discussion or in some of the proposed policies. Each of these would appropriately take a separate discussion at some length, here or elsewhere. sop, even that essentially everything needs discussion, how shall we proceed? Are there any issues where we can agree? Then we can write a page containing only those, and say that everything else is not yet arrived at consensus. And then continue. Frankly I am not sure we haver anything agreed except that we should have articles on notable fiction, and they should be sourced in some manner , and not written from a perspective pretending them to be reality. DGG (talk) 04:37, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I think fictional notability is not a valid sub-catagory for general notability. Everything I would write for Notability fiction would just be a rehash of notability. Lets face you can sum in up in one sentence. "A fictional subject is considered notable if it has been discussed in a real world context by multiple secondary sources." That's it right there. all the rest of the debates have nothing to do with notability. Ridernyc (talk) 05:01, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

That works fine until you start splitting articles in line with WP:SS, at which point you have to consider finer balancing. How detailed do we want to get. Do we only want to detail aspects which have received coverage in "multiple secondary sources", or would we be happy with a sub-article based on a combination of primary and secondary sourcing? Our policies aren't this tight, so I'm not sure our guidance needs to be. Topics tend to get included if they survive an afd. Topics tend to be worthy of note where they receive coverage outside of Wikipedia and themselves. But exceptions exist, and the main thing to be considered at deletion debates is whether the article improves Wikipedia or not. It is far better to reason that an article should be deleted because you're not sure it's within our remit than to reason it should be deleted because if we allow this, we allow that. Articles are to be considered on their merits. That's always been a principle of Wikipedia. We allow exceptions to our guidance and policies when we collectively decide that Wikipedia is improved by ignoring those guidelines and policies. People need to learn to trust afd and Wikipedia and other editors rather than attempting to rig guidance so it suits their view. Some of us can't see a harm in well written encyclopedic treatments on topics like Spoo, and we have to reflect that. Hiding T 10:08, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

again policy issue and not a notability issue and should not be handled by this guideline. You will never be able to quantify these situations. Things are going to be handled through AFD no mater what this guideline says. Ridernyc (talk) 14:55, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Again, prior to all the changes, the guideline had that - a subarticle could be broken out per WP:SS as long as it was determined by consensus of the main article editors to be the best option, and that the article is written in guidance with SS, with good faith effort to maintain the page to all of WP's other policies/guidelines and effort to demonstrate stand-alone notability of the topic. Basically, this means that if you're writing about a TV show and including a list of characters is too large for the main article, then when agreed upon a new article is created. This clause does not mean that if a new work of fiction come along you want to write about that you don't go and create the sub-articles for characters before or concurrent to the main page, since the amount of fictional detail you will go into between the main and sub-articles should not unbalance the amount of real-world notability. This is also a function of the length of the work of fiction - a single movie or video game should not dedicate more than 700-1000 words to the plot (in line with how Films and TV projects do things) and should not have sub-articles at all unless the sub-topics have notable coverage, while a long running TV show will likely benefit from a sub-article about characters, unique terms to the series that come in various plot descriptions, and the show's setting; again, while notability in these may be not be available, there's a more probably chance of establishing notability for longer series. A single character or fictional element never get their own page unless the character/element has demonstrable notability.

But the key point again is that any sub-article should either be able to demonstrate its own notability as a separate topic of the main article (that is, secondary sources that may talk how well a film was received may make no mention of characters; this would NOT be a valid source for character notability), or otherwise must be carefully agreed to and written in a way to be broken out as a sub-article per SS. (I even offered a template that could be used to tag such articles on the talk page,similar in concept to a fair-use rationale, as to discourage aggressive editors from AfD'ing such articles away immediately.)

I agree that what we try to rewrite here has to consider articles like these, but I would surmise that Spoo's status is not commonly agreed-to aspect among editors (I disagree it satisfying notability or the guidelines I propose above), and should be treated as a special case; instead, we should look to efforts elsewhere for guidance (such as the reduction of each pokemon into short list instead of a page for each) --MASEM 15:17, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree Spoo is an exception, but I think at some point we have to come out and say Spoo is an exception, because otherwise people will just keep saying, what about Spoo. Before Ned reverted everything the second time I was about to add a reference to Spoo being an exception made by a number of Wikipedians based on its encyclopedic treatment of the topic. I also agree with everything you've written. The original WP:FICT was written mainly to deal with Pokemon. We had a huge poll on the issue. Hiding T 16:10, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

A number of people disagree about Spoo being an example of an article we except, so it would not have been wise to add it to the guideline as an exception. This is another example of why you shouldn't be making widespread changes without a consensus. -- Ned Scott 17:56, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Meh, I just add it and see if it files. If it doesn't then it gets discussed and we all know where it stands. What I always find interestoing is that because some people don't agree with Spoo being an exception, even though it is, we aren;t allowed to mention it, but when some people disagree that this page is a guideline, they aren't allowed to change it. It's almost like there are different standards in operation. Either Spoo is an exception or it is not an exception. If it is not an exception, then we should base the guideline on it. Almost everyone agrees Spoo is an exception, it's just the people who wish ot was deleted don't want to mention it in case it encourages people. What they seem to miss is that by not telling people that it is an exception, people think it is the norm and thus they seek to emulate it. Still, it's a no win situation. I wish you all the best with it. Hiding T 00:35, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Spoo's defenders have never claimed it was an exception.--Nydas^(Talk) 10:55, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I know they haven't said it, but when you compare Spoo's FAR and AfD reviews to say several other AfDs on characters/elements lacking notability, the general consensus seems to be the same (the topic is non-notable for lack of secondary sources), yet Spoo has passed both for some reason (neither closing admin states what this is beyond passing). I have not seen any other article of that nature that has received an equivalent analysis of its notability-ness and yet stay (compare with the delisting of Bulbasaur which was done, which I believe is tied with the general change in the notability requirements because of the heavy reliance the article had on primary sources).

Basically, when I consider what everything else is being proposed or various concerns with fictional notability and set up a framework in my mind, Spoo always fails to follow that frameowrk. Mind you, the system is allowed to have exceptions per WP:IAR, so basically I'm saying that we should not try to write the framework around Spoo but instead around the general process for most articles. --MASEM 14:13, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

--MASEM 14:13, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

• I have updated the proposal to address some of DGG's points, where they refer to notability. It's my personal view of course. Feel free to edit where you disagree. --B. Wolterding (talk) 20:59, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Rejected?

Since it seems very clear that there is no consensus on multiple issues with this guideline shouldn't we change this to rejected? At this point I'm not even sure if we have a consensus on what we disagree on. The only thing there seems to be agreed upon is no one is happy with this guideline, no mater what changes are made. This discussion has taken place here, at the village pump, and at WP:N on various occasions over the past few months and the only thing I have seen is that no one can agree on anything. Ridernyc (talk) 15:11, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think anyone involved thinks that the core of the guideline is incorrect - it's either that it needs more guidance as for its application or it needs more discussion on a rationale procedure to handle non-notable works that doesn't promote AfD as the first step. WP:N + WP:PLOT gives the core of the guideline - that cannot be changed.

I would say that those involved in trying to support articles from going to AfD to make sure to get an idea of the history of the article and bring it to light if the article was AfD'd without any warning or with minimal time to make changes, pointing out that WP:FICT does not advocate deletion unless other routes have been taken (which the present page states, and what we're trying to make crystal clear in a rewrite.

(I'd also be worried that if this was marked rejected, and other editors started noticing that, we'd have a flood of fancruft. Again, the core, being WP:N + WP:PLOT, is a logical continuation - its the details of implimentation). --MASEM 15:24, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

If this guideline is rejected, then people will just go to AfD directly, citing WP:NOT#PLOT and WP:N, possibly also WP:OR and WP:V/WP:RS, making the goals of those who opposite its current state much harder to achieve. Finding a middleground that encourages discussion before going to AfD is wanted here, although you can never punish those who take a more direct approach to prevent gaming-the-system discussions. – sgeureka ^t•c 15:59, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I think some sort of guidance has support, even if I don't think this page as it stands does, and I think disputed is the right tag. Most of us want to see a push towards the middleground sgeureka identifies. However, if we can't find that middleground, then an historical tag might make more sense. Hiding T 16:15, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I think we have tried to reach the middle ground and it never works. The main problem I have is with this guideline being changed constantly. If we want conversations to take place instead of AFD the guideline needs to be stable and stay the same for months. You can't have a guideline that changes 3-4 times a month. If anything this is forcing things to AFD. I personally have stopped citing this guideline due to the edit warring. Any middle ground will always be fought over. And as I have pointed out before most of this is and should be covered other places such as WP:WAF the sub-article argument is not a notability issue. Ridernyc (talk) 16:24, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

The sub-article is made a notability issue by those people who nominate and delete such sub articles based on lacking notability. Hiding T 16:43, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I understand and agree that technically, there is nothing in WP:FICT that changes from WP:N. However, I strongly believe that fictional notability is an area that needs a large amount of guidance for both new articles and existing articles, above and beyond the guidance that WP:N outlines or the scope of WP:WAF (which is a MOS). We just need to start a rewrite, propose it to the community at large, and get it in place ASAP. --MASEM 17:09, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't agree that the sub-article problem is not a notability issue. While subarticles are in principle covered by WP:SUMMARY, the summary style approach is often so much overstressed for fictional topics (dozens of plot-only subarticles for one work of fiction) that we need additional guidance here. --B. Wolterding (talk) 19:52, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

You say it's a notability issue but then talk about real world context of articles, notability and real world context of sub-articles have nothing to do with each other and should not be dealt with in the notability guideline. Ridernyc (talk) 20:45, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I hate to break it to you, but WP:FICT is basically broken down to "notability of a sub-topic can be justified by real-world information". For non-fictional topics, this isn't an issue, because all of the information is in the real world, so we then define notability by reliable sources, but don't bother mentioning real-world context since it's already there. -- Ned Scott 23:32, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

It is laughable to think that WP:FICT is rejected just because of the recent ranting on this talk page. Stop. and. think. A great many of you have become down right impatient, expecting instant and completely satisfactory results. Also, many of you seem to forget that a consensus does not mean getting everything your way. Most of these issues we don't have disagreement on, but we don't agree right away on how to word them. Stop freaking out and getting all over-dramatic. -- Ned Scott 17:51, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Also, when we do come across stuff that a lot of people can't agree on, we often counter that by giving more vague advice and letting editors sort out the details on a more case-by-case basis. Personally, this is why I think WP:FICT does look the way it does, because the more exact you try to make it the more people start to disagree with things. We don't have a rule saying what exactly you can or cannot write about, but instead we try to guide the thinking of the editors and get them to view the articles from the perspective of the real world.

I'm sorry for being a bit harsh in these discussions, but everyone needs to stop panicking and/or being so pessimistic about all of this. We all pretty much agree on is finding more alternatives to AfD for these articles, even the ones that don't really have a home here. We don't necessarily agree on arbitrary guidelines like how many articles should be made for each subject, but we can give examples and at least get people thinking of different situations. A few different times I proposed a "gray area table" example that was similar to what is seen on WP:CANVAS#Types of canvassing and WP:BADLINKS#Link assessment table (maybe with more than one table for more than one type of article).

This also goes back to some discussion a while ago when the "sub-article for style/technical reasons" part was added. There was a lot of talk about re-evaluating all of our fictional guidelines, WP:FICT, WP:WAF, WP:EPISODE, and seeing how they relate to each other. Not to mention the current arbcom case (that I'm a party of) that talks about the community's need to find ways to deal with these articles. These are on-going issues that we are trying to figure out, and they are not disputed issues simply because we haven't figured out all the answers yet. Thinking about these things as disputes only builds up the non-existence dispute in our minds. -- Ned Scott 18:32, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the core of this guideline is good, but it has a major deficiency in its wide-open treatment of sub-articles.

As per a previous discussion in October, the sub-article issue is a problem because it provides a big loophole in the basic principles of WP:N. Para 2 of Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)#Notable_topics should simply be deleted. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:21, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

You've got it wrong. Para 2 draws directly from deletion policy, and since policy supercedes guidance, WP:N must be the page which is in error and needs to be deleted. Hiding T 00:38, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Show me where a policy states you can ignore all polices if an article is a sub-article. That's basically what has been implied to varying degrees depending on which edit we look at. Also keep in mind we are talking about fiction which has it's own set of rules, where is the policy that lets people ignore WP:Plot? Ridernyc (talk) 23:53, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Wow that's easy. Ignore all rules. If the sub-article "improves or maintains Wikipedia", then we should ignore guidelines and policies that say we shouldn't have it. Especially as WP:PLOT is not a core "non-negotiable" policy like no original research or neutral point-of-view. DHowell (talk) 07:58, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

How to proceed

I'm a bit puzzled by the above discussion. A number of detailed points have been brought up, at least partially referring to notability. But actually on the core questions, I do not see so much disagreeement that we could not find consensus - apart that some have expressed that they want to abandon the WP:FICT guideline altogether.

What we can do

If somebody's honestly interested in a substantial rewrite of the guideline, I don't see why not to start now. We might set out from Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)/proposed-12-9-07 or from a fresh copy of the current guideline, as you prefer.

I intend to help with this rewrite, but I have a more general essay that talks about the way forward here. In a nutshell, the general way forward is:

• Good Wikiprojects
• Time... Don't hurry people and try to remain sensitive to their feelings at all times while you discuss. If you don't, you easily offend people and then its harder to get them to listen to you.
• Revival of the TV Review process
• Good rules on what is simply NOT acceptable. This is where the rewrite of this guideline comes in.
• A "new episode" watchlist/recent changes list

Ursasapien (talk) 10:13, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Good points in general - in particular, I agree with the third one, some kind of formal process is needed, only that I would see it a bit more broadly based, as mentioned below. However that will be a rather large chunk of rock to move... --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

What we probably cannot do at this time

I see a few issues around the guideline, related to process questions, that are maybe too heavyweight to be dealt with at this time. Let me name them nevertheless (and please tell me what you think of them).

• Transwiki: The current guideline emphasizes the transwiki option, but we don't have a proper process for it, neither on the technical nor on the organizational side. Additionally, the process is not really under Wikipedia's control (which wiki will accept content? in which form?). Perhaps we should emphasize the transwiki option less, for the time being.

• AfD: Whatever we do with articles about fiction, there will be controversies. That applies in particular when reducing content, which often seems to be necesary. Currently the only reasonable procedural option we then have is AfD. But the AfD process has many shortcomings (as you all know). I honestly think that we need an "article series for discussion" process. But that's far out of scope for a simple guideline change, of course. --B. Wolterding (talk) 21:21, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

While it's true that those two things will unlikely be fixed with a simple rewrite, perhaps the guideline should actually just say "the community is looking for ways to deal with these situations" so people at least know it's something we're working on fixing? Just a thought. -- Ned Scott 00:08, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

agreed on this one, if only to show we didnt accidentally forget about it. But we do have a article series for discussion process, as WikiProject workgroups. DGG (talk) 01:10, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Additionally, the transwiki option is being considered at the Village pump in regards to the ethical issues surrounding linking from the free site to the for-profit site. Ursasapien (talk) 06:15, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

There's no ethical issue about it. Any site meeting WP:EL can receive such a link, and by our own nature, even more so to other GFDL projects. Anyone can transwiki our content at any time, not just Wikia. Take a look at Meta:Interwiki map, where we support a very large number of external sites that meet the relevant criteria. -- Ned Scott 06:22, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

However, (as you know from participating in the discussion) the ethical issue surrounds whether Jimbo Wales free, charitable site should direct increased traffic to his ad-supported sites, directly increasing revenue to him. There is also the issue of giving a PageRank boost to Wikia, again greatly increasing revenue directly to Jimbo. You can not just lightly dismiss this issue (nor is it a hugely dramatic conflict of interest). Ursasapien (talk) 07:51, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I can when the issue has been beaten to death already. Jimbo didn't make any of these templates and he didn't add any of these links. The PageRank thing seems nothing more than an oversight, and a bugfix report will take care of that. Google is for profit, IMDb is for profit, heck, we are probably helping the people who write and sell fictional works make more money by providing articles for those works. Wikipedia barely gets enough money as it is with donations, and we're a lot larger than Wikia, and better known. It would pretty much be impossible for Wikia to exist based on donations like we are.

And like I said before, Wikia is not given any special treatment for being Wikia. There are a lot of other wikis out there that we support, as seen on Meta:interwiki map. -- Ned Scott 08:05, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, I truly do not want to sidetrack this discussion. Nevertheless, I stand by my statement that there is an inherent, though inadvertant, conflict of interest. The issue is not that Wikia makes money, but that Jimbo heads up both projects. The PageRank oversite (which is special treatment by the way) needs to be fixed and Jimbo probably needs to be made aware of the perceived COI and he can deal with it how he sees fit. I just think this needs to enter the equation as we consider how much to promote transwiking.

As a side note, your nonchalant response to this issue suprises me, considering your austere interpretation of some of the other guidelines. Ursasapien (talk) 08:27, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

It can't be a conflict of interest if Jimbo doesn't have control over who is linking what and where. That simply falls outside of the definition of conflict of interest. Third parties (being us as editors) make these decisions without any incentive to support or oppose Wikia or any other site. -- Ned Scott 09:08, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I see where you are coming from. I guess I work in a field where conflict of interest can occur whether intentional or not. As a professional, I am supposed to declare any thing that even has the potential of being percieved as a conflict of interest. Again, I do not thing this is a major issue but one that must be entered into our consideration. Ursasapien (talk) 09:37, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

If it means anything, both Jimbo and Wikia specifically point out that Wikia is not Wikipedia, and that the two have no official relationship. This can be seen on User:Jimbo Wales as well as on centralwikia:What Wikia is not. -- Ned Scott 23:22, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

The discussion about how to transwiki material is important, I agree, but it is far from clear that we can create a specific process. It is necessary to inform editors what wikia is, but in many cases the information here already exists at wikia to one degree or another. It would be hard to create a one-size fits all solution that editors could reference. Anyone who has the time to figure out how to add material to WP can add it to Wikia after a few minutes browsing around, so I don't think we need to be overly concerned with spoonfeeding. A description of how to carry material over may be useful. The issue about conflict of interest is, in my view, a canard. It has been much rehashed at the pump and mostly what I see are a small number of editors who cannot let the issue go; consensus view currently has no interdiction on linking to wikia and arm-waving about COI is misplaced. Eusebeus (talk) 15:44, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

• Yes, that's more or less my point - it would be rather difficult to make transwiki a proper process, for several reasons. The utterly complicated description at Meta just underlines that. And as said, it's not only our decision what to transwiki, it also depends on the target wiki's decisions. On my part, I therefore count the transwiki option as "unavailable" by default and skip that step in the "Non-notable topics" section. I just feel that we should perhaps remove it from the standard workflow, handling it in the "Relocating non-notable fictional material" section only, separate from the rest. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:31, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

• So the propose that we're proposing now is:

1. If you see an article lacking notability, contact the editors by talk page or tagging
2. If no reasonable good faith effort to correct in a reasonable time frame, then either:
   1. Suggest a merge with existing article that either already demonstrates notability, or with other articles into a list of similar topics that can be treated in sub-article context, following appropriate merge processes
   2. If no reasonable merge target is possible, present the article for AfD, with the possible suggest to transwiki the material (if transwiki is mentioned here in AfD, someone who knows the process may be able to step forward to help move things).
3. If reasonable good faith to correct notability is shown, do nothing, check back after a reasonable amount of time.

Thoughts? --MASEM 17:55, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

With the exception that any article dealing with a single issue of a manga or comic, or a single episode of a television series be redirected as the first step. These can be presumed as being non-notable, and the onus is on the creating editor to prove otherwise.Kww (talk) 19:47, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd be careful with stating redirection as a first step - this is equivalent to deleting (save that the content can be retrieved w/o admin assistance), and is partially why people are screaming "deletionists" due to this guideline. Finding an article on one episode of an episodic work that does not have demonstrated notability should follow the same route - let the editors know there's a problem, wait for good faith to improve, and in this case, merge with redirection to a (presumably existing) list of episodes for that work.

I would consider a case where WP:PROD can be invoked for patently obvious non-notable fictional elements that would even not make a merge (say "Superman's toenail"). I say PROD and not CSD because someone may be able to say why this is notable beyond what you, the PRODing editor, may be aware of, and thus step in with a hold-it to prevent its auto-deletion. But again, this needs to be patently obvious, and appropriate action would be taken against editors abusing that aspect. --MASEM 20:32, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Problem is that as fast as TTN has been shoveling, the episode articles keep piling up. An individually notable television episode is as scarce as hen's teeth, and there is no reason to bother with even a prod cycle for the overwhelming majority of them. Nothing prevents people from making an episode article without notability concerns in the rare instances that it is possible, and causing a little burden there is preferable to creating a burden on the majority case.Kww (talk) 20:47, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

I completely understand, but if we're trying to write this policy to be fair and avoid cries of "deletionism" (what prompted this whole rewrite), we need to use the same procedure for any fictional element, whether it be characters or episodes. I agree the onus is on the editors that make a new article shows notability very early in the writing process, so maybe we can include that for articles created after some date (when this goes live?) such fictional articles that fail to demonstrate notability can be PROD'd immediately (pointing back to this guideline in the PROD reasoning). --MASEM 21:28, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

"Fairness" is a desirable goal, and objectivity goes a long way towards getting there. Series (television, comics, manga, anime, whatever) stand a very high probability of being fixable. If someone writes an article that reads "Such And Such airs on BBC One at 9pm Friday", the odds are extremely good that someone will be able to write a sourced article. Novels (excluding vanity press) stand a very high probability of being fixable. Movies stand a very high probability of being fixable. Characters are all over the map, and range from instantly recognisable (Superman) to pretty obscure, so you can't make a presumption one way or the other, and a discussion path is appropriate. Articles on single issues and episodes stand a slight chance of being fixable. If they aren't originally written with decent sourcing, they probably never will be. It's perfectly fair and rational to treat them differently.Kww (talk) 22:48, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

What are the odds that the 'scarce' notable episodes will be overwhelmingly for Wikipedians' favourite shows?--Nydas^(Talk) 21:23, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Masem's point above deserves attention: an effective PROD strategy would be useful for containing the inflow of non-notable fiction articles that make no claims to real-world significance; having this guideline make deletion based on that point clear would be beneficial. Eusebeus (talk) 23:21, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

There actually are a lot of things we can do about transwiking even without considering who the target wiki is. Mainly exporting articles, and how to make some very basic changes so that those XML files can be imported to a wiki. At that point, any wiki running MediaWiki software can import the file and have a copy of that article, complete with full page history, regardless of what wiki it is. -- Ned Scott 23:25, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

For example, these are things that Help:Transwiki don't even properly explain yet. -- Ned Scott 23:28, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Quality (and Potential) of Wikias and Episode Pages

I would like to question whether Wikias can ever be an effective solution for information moved from Wikipedia. The mere fact people have had to give me links on talk pages (in response to my complaints about the reduction of information to about three lines of text) to a Wikia (and that there were no obvious links on Wikipedia itself) proves in my mind that the Wikia system doesn't work, added to which is the fact that the Wikias are unlikely to be as updated or have such a large userbase (or quality of articles), that Wikias (in general) lack any support by Firefox search bars or similar useful apps, that the page formats are awful, and collapse completely when the page is beyond about three printer pages in length (in both Firefox and IE, the former of which is practically unusable), and the unlikelyhood of them appearing in a decent position in search engine rankings.

I find it amusing that pages such as episode pages are considered poor quality when they are far more readable than many other pages, in particular those on scientific subjects that seem to assume that (apart from the summary, in most cases, which is normally easier to read but more limited than the article) the reader has a full knowledge of every subject mentioned, which simply defies belief in terms of research. Wikipedia is a fantastic resource, but this continual deletion of information seems to be taking away its primary benefit over other encyclopedias, that being that you can type in a topic you are looking for and in 99.9% of cases there will be an article for it that at least acts as a reasonably up-to-date NPOV (which is particularly useful on subjects otherwise plagued with bias if they were to be searched for on Google) starting point for further learning.

Due to the amount of effort required (and the impossibility for those who aren't admin) to return a page from deletion, and the ease with which pages are deleted without consideration, Wikipedia is losing that usefulness. Even a single seperate (but listed at the bottom of the main page alongside Wikinews, Wikiquote etc.) wiki for TV, Games and etc. culture would've been a better move. It seems very strange that episode pages (always a useful resource for myself) are reduced to a summary, completely useless in practically all cases. I understand that articles should be merged if they do not justify their own page, but why on earth is most of the content on the merged page taken away in the process, including (ironically) real world info which is always used as an argument by those who justify the process. The Wikia argument, as I've mentioned above, holds no water in my mind. Websites such as IMDB, and TV.com have distracting adverts, or require a subscription for detailed information, or simply lack any decent information on a subject. Wikipedia, by the way it works, excels at this sort of information. Splitting people into 'fans' and 'non-fans' and labelling them will get us nowhere at all.

I suggest that either linking is improved for inter-wikia problems (which still causes problems regarding quality), or (as I suggested) a single wiki for all TV and modern media info made, or that Wikipedia should reincorporate this information and it should once again be possible for people to use Wikipedia as an encyclopaedia for finding out unopinionated and unbiased information, rather than to find three lines of text that any website on the web could write and that may as well not exist at all. Thoughts?

(I created this new section because I couldn't for the life of me figure out where this should fit in on the page itself, if there is somewhere else on this page it should be, move it.) --Riche (talk) 20:26, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

For starters: "that Wikias (in general) lack any support by Firefox search bars or similar useful apps, that the page formats are awful, and collapse completely when the page is beyond about three printer pages in length (in both Firefox and IE, the former of which is practically unusable)," That is a simple CSS issue. When I took up the task of revamping Digimon Wiki I did a simple copypaste of Wikipedia's CSS, with a few minor alterations, and now Digimon Wiki gets to enjoy all the formatting perks and bug fixes that Wikipedia has. Adding search bar support for Firefox is very easy, and lot of addons simply let you add a custom search entry that is no different from the rest. I even did this on my cell phone. It's as simple as entering a url like http://somesite.wikia.com/wiki/$1 and giving it a name. Auto Wiki Browser is works on Wikia hosted wikis, as well as Pywikipediabot, software that runs a lot of our bots on Wikipedia (including my own User:NedBot).

As for the other issues you brought up, well most of these wikis are, as we are, a work in progress. You can't really make a blanket statement that "the Wikia system doesn't work". Wikia doesn't micromanage wikis, instead editing communities for each wiki pretty much run the show (with a few basic guidelines). If there are wikis that are not working, that's pretty much the fault of that wiki, and shouldn't be used to judge other wikis. I've been very surprised at the quality of some of the wikis out there, who not only produce in-depth information about a work of fiction, but also carry over values such as NPOV and verifiability.

That being said, your concern about inactivity is something I completely agree with, and I also think it would be far more efficient to just use a general "TV" or whatever wiki rather than splitting them by show. Being split and causing inactivity is an issue we even face here within the Wikimedia family, as we have eight other sister projects, but don't get nearly as much attention as Wikipedia. (One exciting thing I found out last night is that wikis on Wikia can request additional MediaWiki extensions be installed, such as the one being discussed for the English Wikipedia at Wikipedia:Flagged revisions. I hope to explore that to help handle some of the issues caused by inactivity, such as vandalism reverting, or maintaining a quality version of the page by default).

There's also a lot of people who don't even know about Wikia yet, meaning we have a whole pool of potential editors for these sites that have yet to discover them (just as we have potential editors who haven't discovered Wikipedia yet).

And we should remember, these are issues facing all independent wikis, not just Wikia hosted wikis. Many of these issues are evolving, as works in progress. Not only in content, but in how the wikis themselves are managed. One of the ideas I want to explore is to not just take Wikipedia's article content for other wikis, but to take what we've learned in how we manage things. It's something not really documented outside of our own site, and simply sharing these experiences means that other people don't have to re-invent the wheel for each new wiki.

There is no doubt that we are leading the way having a successful wiki here on the English WIkipedia, but we're still far from perfect. These are new grounds we are breaking, and new lessons that we are learning. Wikipedia's co-existence with external wikis will be very important the more we grow, and like with Wikipedia itself, these things not going to be born over-night. -- Ned Scott 23:12, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

A solution to make Wikia's content better and more well known is simple in my mind. Rather than going through the hassle of trying to convince stoic "Policy Soldiers" to revise their views or create an entirely new sister encyclopedia, a template or something similar could be made and attached to articles that link to Wikia. Here, I drafted a prototype in MS Paint. An obvious yet unobtrusive template at the top of the page would catch the attention and attract people seeking in-universe and plot information and editors alike. Bam, the fascists are happy and so are the fans. Someone forward this idea to the appropriate discussion page. - The Norse (talk) 23:53, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Not sure how people would feel about it being presented at the top of the page (style reasons and all), but Template:FreeContentMeta seems to be what you're thinking of :) -- Ned Scott 00:00, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Hm, yes. I see... Well the obvious problem with such a template is that no uses it and no one ever sees them when they are used because their natural place is at the very bottom of rather long articles. These issues should probably addressed if subject-specific Wikias are ever to become as successful as they should be. I don't think them being fit snugly into infoboxes would be that obtrusive, say, compared to the (multiple) tags that are located at the tops of many articles. - The Norse (talk) 00:12, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

It is being used, just not directly. Most templates just copy/paste the template and make it their own, instead of transcluding it. Here are some of its offspring:

• {{JoeWiki}}
• {{MSWWiki}}
• {{Wiki24}}
• {{BabylonProject}}
• {{TardisIndexFile}}
• {{HarryPotterWiki}}
• {{Digimon Wiki}}
• {{Memory Alpha}}
• {{Wookieepedia box}}

But even with that, a lot of people don't know it's an option. I personally think the idea of a top area link would be fine for a lot of situations, but not sure how others might feel about it. -- Ned Scott 00:55, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

On a side note, I've been trying to figure out what font they used for the Wikia "W", or at least looks like it, for use in such templates. The exact w seems to be under copyright. Although, it might technically be ineligible for copyright simply because it's a simple w, but I don't know that much about copyright law. -- Ned Scott 03:11, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Nice fair bit to reply to, so here goes. I would like to ask why most episode pages haven't been simply transwikied? When [4] was on Wikipedia, it had a similar quantity of information to My Musical. Where has all the info gone? I know that some pages have been transwikied, but others have been straight-away deleted (last night pretty much all of the Scrubs episode articles, representing hours of work, were deleted) without any transwikification.

As for the formating problems, the main pages I seem to have the problem on are long pages on the Digimon Wikia such as [5] which just keep refreshing when they first load before finally stablising about 20 to 30 seconds later. This is in Firefox using Digimon Wikia's default template (although the problem also seems to occur in IE). Any ideas, and is this page length problem common to all Wikias?

Considering the search engine problems, could this be better explained somewhere? As far as I know, many people use search boxes such as those in Firefox for doing this, and there doesn't seem to be any really simple guides for it (beyond effectively becoming a developer and editing lines of code, which is what the particular website implies to me).

As for the more general Wikia points, it does seem odd that so many wikis were made when one single one would not only generally be simpler to manage, but also easier to incorporate and likely to have a higher quality of copychecking, alongside the info itself.

Finally, about the infoboxes, they are currently well beyond the normal reading distance of the average reader, who may not go beyond the External Links section. A box at the top of the page, or, possibly and probably better as well, a tab next to the 'History', 'Watch' etc. button at the top, would be far more ideal and far more user friendly.

Thoughts? --Riche (talk) 14:01, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

The default skin of all Wikias seems to be some "quartz" thing, and I've been trying to configure it to just use monobook by default. The loading times are a technical problem, I've been told [6]. In the meantime, editors have already started to chop up those lists back into individual articles, which will also help with that problem.

The transwiki process is largely undocumented. Special:Export, for example, contains outdated instructions. It also says that a user can't export the entire copy of an article, which isn't true. (it can be done using http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Export&pages=NAME_OF_ARTICLE&history=1&action=submit). After that people need to run a find/replace on the resulting xml file (find all "</username>" and replace with "@en.wikipedia.org</username>"). Many admins have been very nice about undeleting old articles so that they can be exported, for those times when they've already been deleted. Ideally, we'd eventually have some of bot that could do this in mass. It could even become a built-in feature on Wikipedia (or at least a custom added one via javascript) to make it even easier.

If articles are not actually deleted on Wikipedia, then anyone can simply cut and paste the article text and use a {{Wikipedia}} template on Wikia, which will properly attribute the article's history.

I managed to find a listing of pre-made wikia search extensions for Firefox. I'll keep looking for some simple advice on how to add custom ones (I've only added custom searches to my cell phone and to Safari, and haven't really tried it in firefox yet.)

I did find a page at centralwikia:Closed Wikia that somewhat explains the process of closing or merging wikis on Wikia. I think it will be an inevitable process in the near future, as Wikia grows. I'll try to find out more. -- Ned Scott 02:47, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Interestingly enough, the Firefox search plugin on that page I listed, the one simply labeled "Wikia" will use a Wikia search that searches all of the Wikia wikis at once. -- Ned Scott 02:52, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Question

Now that there has been such a huge discussion of the proposal to change WP FICTION, and there is no consensus, does that mean that the proposal is rejected and WP FICTION remains as it was? I am just wondering at what point do we decide we have a resolution as to what is going to happen to this page, as, I believe I can say this without bias, there is clearly not a consensus for most of the proposed changes, if any. I am just curious. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 21:56, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

The question is, what is the version that was consensus agreed before there was a large number of edits in the past week? Is it the one from a week ago, is the one from May? I agree that the changes in the last week are disputed, though many of them are aimed at short-term alleviation of "delete first" approaches. --MASEM 22:18, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

It means we're not done discussing these things yet. -- Ned Scott 23:17, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Dude, you're going much too fast. --Kizor (talk) 00:32, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I know dude, asking questions makes me a Speed Demon! Judgesurreal777 (talk) 20:00, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

One thing alot of editors are also not doing is trying to look at the article and see if there are ways are shortening it and then merging it to a character list. I mean taking out unnecessary material or merging material from several paragraphs into fewer paragraphs wouldn't hurt either and with Tv or game characters when it comes to episodes or storyline plot it would be wise to try to compress it down to make it simplier since we don't need to detail every little thing, just the vital facts are needed. Lastly another issue with these AFDs is that since many people involved with these pages are unaware of whats happening pages are being unfairly deleted since those people are unable to help express their opinions. -71.59.237.110 (talk) 21:11, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Does merchandise indicate notability?

Is the passage "For articles about fictional concepts, reliable secondary sources cover information such as sales figures, critical and popular reception, development, cultural impact, and merchandise; this information describes the real-world aspects of the concept, so it is real-world content." intended to indicate that the very existance of merchandise confers some measure of real-world notability on the subject of the merchandise? -Malkinann (talk) 01:23, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

It can, though in many cases it's pretty standard to have merchandise for any given work. It depends on the context. For example, Star Wars toys becoming valuable collector items. It probably would be good to clarify this in some way. -- Ned Scott 01:27, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

It's mostly supplemental information. It's good for it to be talked about on some level (though entire sections are a bit too much), but it cannot really assert or establish notability in most cases. TTN (talk) 01:30, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the notability of the merchandise itself needs to be considered. Nearly every anime character has some cosplay item or custom model to go along with them ... it doesn't convey much extra notability to the show. Something like Hello Kitty or Tickle Me Elmo does create notability ... probably more people recognize those two characters than have ever watched a show with either character in it.Kww (talk) 01:39, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Reason why I'm asking is that WT:MOS-ANIME is attempting to establish style guidelines for anime character articles including a "Reception" section (to help establish the notability of the character), and sales figures for character merchandise are being recommended, which will be difficult to come across. -Malkinann (talk) 01:54, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

It would be foolish to try to make such information mandatory, but if it's available, it could go a long way to establishing notability. Whatever the yen value of Doraemon merchandise sales is, it must be astronomical, and could probably establish notability all on its own.Kww (talk) 02:01, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes, though, information about merchandising for a series is conflated together - so while grand totals may be available, it's impossible to say the sales figures for items of an individual character. What would be an acceptable alternative to sales figures of character merchandise? -Malkinann (talk) 02:10, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I would be veeeery careful here. A toy line across numerous characters demonstrates notability of the characters, but not necessarily individual characters. A specific, unique, toy (aka Tickle-Me-Elmo) may help to demonstrate individual character notability. And I have to agree that just the existence of the toy line alone is not enough (see toyetic where toys can precede the fictional medium), info on the sales/popularity have to be taken into account. --MASEM 02:12, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "A toy line across numerous characters demonstrates notability of the characters, but not necessarily individual characters." Sales and popularity of the merchandise may not be available for any given character, except, possibly, for mascot characters like Doraemon. Hopefully any character "Reception" section would not solely be comprised of a list of toys, but would have other information too. If merchandise exists, whether in toy line or individual form, does it help give a character notability? -Malkinann (talk) 02:48, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

You have the gist of what I'm saying - mechandising is generally across the whole cast of characters and not just one (save for like Doraemon or Pikachu). Saying that "such and such a line of toys sold well" is good to support a list of characters for notability, but it is not specific enough to support one single character, unless the info included "character X outsold the others in the line by more than double". But again, this is not alone enough to demonstrate notability. --MASEM 02:55, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Say that you initially only have the information that there were toys of these characters - you might have information about that the character was represented in key rings, capsule toys, plush toys, fashion dolls, T-shirts etc. Say that the franchise is outmoded, or that the toy manufacturers were being cagey about sales figures, or both. Is this a start on helping to provide notability? -Malkinann (talk) 00:10, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

My opinion is that that's not enough to demonstrate alone but is supporting for notability. Again, the example of toyetic franchises where they make the toys and then the fictional work around it is technically all primary sources. --MASEM 00:16, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The problems with this guideline and the current proposed rewrite

Part of the wording of the original guideline, which had consensus for over two years, was thus:

1. Major characters and major treatments of such matters as places and concepts in a work of fiction are covered in the article on that work. If an encyclopedic treatment (a real world perspective backed by sources independent of the work) of a character causes the article on the work itself to become long, that character is given a main article.
2. Minor characters and minor treatments of such matters as places and concepts in a work of fiction are merged with short descriptions into a "List of characters." This list resides in the article relating to the work itself, unless it becomes long, in which case a separate article for the list is created.

For some reason, a group of editors decided, a few months ago, to change this long standing consensus, to the present guideline. To me it appears to be based on an overly strict interpretation of the "Wikipedia articles are not plot summaries" policy and the general notability guideline, and is now being edit warred because that overly strict interpretation does not have consensus.

If this current guideline were a Wikipedia article, it would have to be rejected as original research that synthesizes sources (in this case the plot policy and the general notability guideline) to "advance a position" (that articles about fiction must contain significant "real-world information" sourced to "secondary sources").

The fact is, however, that nothing in the plot policy or notability guideline prohibits "in-universe information" sourced to "secondary sources", or "real-world information" sourced to "primary sources". Even "in-universe information" sourced to "primary sources" should be OK, as long as it is presented from an out-of-universe perspective in a real-world context.

If there are multiple reliable sources which do nothing but describe and analyze the plot of a work of fiction, this constitutes significant coverage in reliable sources even if there is not a lick of "real-world information" about it. An encyclopedic article can be written based on these sources without being "solely a plot summary" because an analysis of the plot and a desciption of significant plot elements is not a "plot summary". A plot summary is a narrative description of what happens. A description of plot elements, such as characters or geographical settings, presented in a real-world context (regardless of whether it has significant "real-world information") is not a "plot summary". The proposed guideline is even worse than the current guideline as it codifies the idea that any description of plot elements are "plot summary" and are thus not allowed without sufficient "real-world content". This interpretation suggests that List of Shakespearean characters: A-K, for example, is unacceptable unless we were to add a sourced description of the "historical origins", "critical reception", "information about derived works", and/or "sales figures, release dates, and other commercial data" about each and every character.

Finally, the general notability guideline "presumes" notability based on significant coverage in reliable sources independent of the subject, but it does not "require" such coverage; in fact, it also allows for "an accepted subject specific standard". The general notability guideline is therefore not a straitjacket to which this specific guideline must conform. We are free to decide by consensus that certain things are "notable" even if "significant coverage in reliable sources" is difficult or even impossible to find. For two years, lists containing short descriptions of minor characters in major works of fiction were presumed notable by consensus regardless of the existence of secondary sources. I see no evidence that this long-standing consensus should have been overruled in August and even less evidence that it should be overruled now. DHowell (talk) 08:21, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

(In no particular order) There already were a couple of proposals to rename the notability guidelines on wikipedia because not real-life popularity or fame establish notability ("real-world notability"), but significant secondary sources establish article inclusion ("wiki-notability"). Wikipedia only cares about the latter.

Most editors are not as strict with lists of fictional elements as with articles about single fictional elements when it comes to establishing wiki-notability. Additionally, lists are often considered a convenient trade-off between what driveby fans think should definately be mentioned in the fiction coverage, and what longtime editors believe has a fair chance to be expanded for truly encyclopedic^{(see WP:FA)} in-depth coverage down the line.

You're right, basic descriptions ("Tommy has a blue shirt") are not plot. But the longer the descriptions, the more it is likely that WP:NOT#PLOT ("Then he wore a yellow shirt and finally a red shirt") and WP:OR ("Tommy is a brave kid^{[He stood up to the bullies once.]}) creeps in.

Even the "old" summer version of WP:FICT mentioned "encyclopedic treatment". Per WP:NOT#PLOT, plot alone is not considered encyclopedic treatment, and even main characters should not be given a separate article unless/until sections for character creation and reception etc. is included. So, whether we keep the current guideline, go for a rewrite, or go back to the summer version, doesn't change that a significant portion of fiction-related wiki articles are up for review and possible merging/redirection/deletion. Now we have to decide what the best way for review is. If we don't (soon), then editors will start taking matters into their own hand to make progress (AFD, proposing mass merges, etc.).– sgeureka ^t•c 11:10, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

• Writing "in-universe" has always been guided against, per Wikipedia:Check your fiction, which was established in 2003 and included the following paragraph:

“ Do not unnecessarily create small articles about largely irrelevant fictional characters, locations, objects and so on that can be better integrated into larger articles. For example, if you have to write about some fan fiction, it is better to write a larger article about this variant of a fictional universe than to create all sorts of stubs about its characters that nobody can fix. Try to write encyclopedia-type material, even when writing about fringe subjects. ”

• By 2004 it was looking like this, [7], and that's pretty much still what the consensus community wide is still following. The crux of the dispute is this whole idea that every single topic has to be written about in multiple secondary sources, and if it hasn't been, then it must be deleted. This guidance conflicts with WP:N, WP:GTD, WP:DP, WP:CONSENSUS, WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:PLOT, and yet attempts to edit it are resisted. I can't work out a way forwards if we can't edit the page. I think there are at least three rewrites doing the rounds, as well as the three versions of the page that currently exist. I'm starting to think that maybe we should put up the six versions for some sort FICT-IDOL poll competition.

sgeureka wrote There already were a couple of proposals to rename the notability guidelines on wikipedia because not real-life popularity or fame establish notability ("real-world notability"), but significant secondary sources establish article inclusion ("wiki-notability"). Wikipedia only cares about the latter. That's not true. Wikipedia does not only care about the latter. Have a read of m:deletionists and m:inclusionists. Wikipedia cares about writing an encyclopedia. Certain editors believe that topics have to be notable, but not everyone does, and certainly the consensus is hard to judge. And if most editors are not as strict with "lists of" articles, why are we saying the opposite in this guideline. Oh, and as to original research and "Tommy is a brave kid^{[He stood up to the bullies once.]}, up until recently, we used to guide that people rewrote rather than removed or deleted. So you would edit to say that Tommy is shown within the novel confronting bullies on page 54, the writer revealing that Tommy "felt braver than ever before, because of his lucky blue shirt".^{This author "That book"}. What's got to be decided is where the middle ground is. Is the middle ground to encourage people to write encyclopedically, source, avoid in-universe, keep plot summary to being a summary within an article, try and build lists and sub-articles in summary style from a main article and debate notability at AFD, or is it somewhere else, in telling people to go edit at a wikia, we only want to be Britannica? Hiding T 11:34, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

The intro and the nutshell of WP:N make clear what that "fame", "importance", or "popularity" don't really matter, but significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject. There is only a difference because the term "notability" grew with wikipedia. I have read the meta essays a couple of times before, but they are old, and it seems that they are now replaced with WP:N's "find reliable secondary sources, and it doesn't matter whether your're a deletionist or an inclusionist." WP:FICT has a special place because covering fiction all in one article, especially when the work of fiction is popular, is near impossible, and deletionist/inclusionist/mergist editors have to agree on a consensus about subarticles, which is obviously hard with all the wiki philosophies. I agree with your middle ground, but if we allow for the addition of material, we should also allow for the removal of "unencyclopedic" material (whatever that is) that got superceded by better, preferably secondary sources. All articles should satisfy other wiki policies and guidelines in the end. – sgeureka ^t•c 12:52, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

• The secondary sources phrase did not appear in this guidance until the 4th of August, introduced in a change that doesn't mention adding it and which notes people are ignoring it. Up until that point it is unclear whether the secondary sources applied to fiction, per WP:N and WP:FICT. Since WP:N allowed separate subjects to have extra criteria as well as the secondary sourcing, and WP:FICT made no mention of it, it is unclear whether there was consensus for the change. That edit roughly marks the midpoint of the edit history of the page. What that means is that about 250 edits were made between September 2003 and August 2007, and 250 edits since. Half the edits to this page have been made in the last four months. It took four years to make a similar amount. Makes you think about where consensus lies. The removal of unencyclopedic content is already catered for in WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:NPOV, WP:NOT, WP:EP and many more besides. We don't need even more guidance on how to edit or improve. Unencyclopedic material is stuff that does not fit WP:NOT, to be debated at WP:AFD. That's the point, that the place for debating what stays and goes is at afd, not on guidance pages. Hiding T 17:22, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

"editors will start taking matters into their own hand to make progress." This has already occured and the impatience and resultant edit-warring is what has led to the RfAr. Ursasapien (talk) 11:19, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

This is what I was actually referring to, showing that this guideline is both ignored and taken too literally. Now it's up to us to decide what the proper measures are, even if some think it is too weak, and others think it is too strong (i.e. there will always be editors on opposing ends clashing). Remember that people reading this guideline are new to it and just want an overview of current consensus, even if that consensus is established by averaging out the opinions. – sgeureka ^t•c 12:52, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I am in agreement with sgeureka in this discussion, which I note for the purpose of gauging consensus. Eusebeus (talk) 14:02, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree here too -- there is a middle ground, which I think we all accept that character list articles (and equivalents) are usually acceptable, as long as they are written in a style that strongly suggests they are written as summary style, and that good faith effort is made to try to include notability information. This is a two way street: people that write the material must be aware of what such lists should strive to look like (Characters of Final Fantasy VIII), but at the same time, concerned notability editors need to understand that there is no deadline to demonstrate notability (though good faith effort needs to be done), and that such character list articles are appropriate (again, I note the suggestion of this {{In-universe rationale}} template I created that can be included to show that a character list didn't magically appear, it was determined by discussion to be appropriate. I know we're trying to deal with editors seeking to remove articles due to notability, but I think at the same time, this guideline needs to provide the guidance for writing about fictional articles, how it should be a top-down process instead of bottoms-up (which, admitted is much easier but leads to poor quality articles). --MASEM 14:57, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Masem's position here as well. I should be clearer though: a very legitimate concern has been expressed that this guideline is the product of a small group of editors. Since this discussion is long and convoluted already, rather than simply repeat the same points already well-expressed (although good for my edit count), I mean to "proxy" my support and indicate that I am firmly behind the positions outlined above by sgeureka, Masem and Ned Scott. Eusebeus (talk) 15:16, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Ned's already said elsewhere he agrees with me, and since I agree with DHowell and DGG, I think we all agree. If that is so, why is it so hard to write guidance? Is there any real issue with simply reverting back to the page as it stood in July. [8] We know that had broad consensus, and everything that seems to be causing a dispute was introduced after. Thoughts on that? Hiding T 17:29, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the problem with that one is that the main body does not obviously include WP:N (it's in the header, but not the lead) - that needs to be stated (which the present version does). Again, remember that WP:N added "significant coverage in secondary sources" in May 07, so what happened after this July revision was to include that language in WP:FICT. However, when that is added to the text present in the July revision, the rest of the guidance given doesn't seem to support that issue: there's little about secondary sources or demonstrating notability - it simply allows for more fictional content to be created but no guidance where a line should be drawn. Additionally, going off something Hiding said above, in that WP:FICT is nothing special as it merely reiterates obvious policies/GLs like PLOT and N, when those two are spelled out as they are, they suggest a strong line for what fictional notability is, one that is not apparent if you read the two aspects separately, and because of that stronger line, this is what likely led to this entire "deletionists" thing in that people used it to be bold about putting up non-notable articles for AfD.

I think we can take that guideline, what we have now, and various intermediates and come up with a guideline that does the following:

1. Explain what policies are being considered as to create "fictional notability" (PLOT and N)
2. Additional rationale why this guideline exists
3. Methods of writing and handling articles as to demonstrate notability, and creating sub-articles (char lists) that fit with summary style
4. Examples of both good and bad articles wrt to notability.
5. Methods for handling of articles that lack demonstration of notability (notify, AGF, merge, transwiki, deletion last resort)

Again, its not so much that we're creating new policy or guidelines, I think a rewrite needs to provide the guidance for fiction and notability, both to those writing and to those copy-editing; this is above and beyond WP:WAF, which is more how to organize an article, or at least can be considered a larger discussion of specific aspects of article organization. --MASEM 17:45, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I like the July version for it's focus on WP:Plot, but it fails as far as a notability guideline. If we can make something that emphasizes WP:Plot and notability I would be happy with it. It just needs to be made clear that there are rules about fiction that supersede notability. You can have 10,000 sources but if none of them add real world context then you may pass notability, but you fail WP:Plot. Ridernyc (talk) 18:49, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

tl;dr, but will read later. I just have to say this first: List of Shakespearean characters: A-K is the most absurd example I've seen used on this talk page. To think that WP:FICT calls for its deletion is a bit much. When a work of fiction is this old, and has an impact that this has (tons of additional adaptations, tons more of indirect adaptations and inspirations, and more), then yeah, you get to have these kinds of lists. This is the kind of list that part two of WP:FICT#Notable topics deals with. The parent topic covers the notability and justifies the list, but for style reasons it exists as a simple list. -- Ned Scott 20:50, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Going a little deeper into this thread: I'm not really sure if you can say that the major/minor point of the original WP:FICT is different from what we have now, it's just no longer explicitly said. There are pros and cons to that. The old wording as simple, straight forward, and did help us easily deal with many plotty articles. But we also want to deal with main characters who might not need their own article, and we want to deal with minor character/element lists that are very excessive (listing very minor characters and very minor details about them). I can see the wording being used again, or not being used. Examples would likely be key, helping people understand what some of the limits of lists there are, and evaluating what is a main character, or if that information really is better organized as an individual article or also in a list.

During the last big dispute, there were ideas about having multi-level "notability" for fiction. I can't remember all the details right now (I'll reread the archives in a bit) but from what I can remember, mixed with my own personal advice, I can see three levels being defined:

• Notable by multi-source- independently notable. Even as a sub-topic, it passes WP:N and can stand on it's own.

• Notable by real-world information- Same as above, but without multiple and/or independent sources. Since it's still a sub-topic, I can see a reasonable argument for not requiring multi-sources as much, and being in it's own article because the main topic contains a so much information (style reasons). The only time I've really seen this somewhat backfire on us is with articles like Spoo (a very minor element having a large amount of real-world information), but those are pretty rare situations, and there isn't even much agreement on the extent of what should be done for them. Normally, real-world information normally helps self-regulate this kind thing. Takes care of the only-plot concern, and more often than not, does result in relevant information that we desire.

• Style/technical reasons- Similar to part two of WP:FICT#Notable topics, in that the sub-article might lack any real-world information. Born for reasons of style or technical whatever, but limited by asking that such content be seen as part of the main article, and cut back as needed. Basically, this would consist of lists/groupings, with examples to help people understand what limits should be used. A tricky level to define.

-- Ned Scott 21:21, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposed change version 2 - One proposition to rule them all

Looking through the arguments people put on this page, all of them can be summarised into one

"Many notable fictional concepts/people do not have reliable secondary sources as the only source of infomation is from the writers of the anime/cartoon/film(and that is primary)" it is the same as problem as the proposed change version 1(the one on top of the page)

the difference is solution

Now, secondary sources are used to assert the notability and because they are used ONLY to assert notability, unreliable secondary sources would still count and make the articale notable. In addition to that, popularity = notability(as discussed above) so if the articale is popular, we know its notable.

So notable fiction articales would get written from primary sources as long as they have secondary sources(reguardless notable or not) or a good popularity ranking.

This is just to discuss this change as I want to see what the community thinks of this and hopefully we will get some response from people and fix anything that isnt good and get this policy changed. Af648 09:06, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

• Weird. This proposal contradicts about every other policy and guideline we have on the topic (WP:NOT#PLOT, WP:V, WP:NOR, WP:N). --B. Wolterding (talk) 14:11, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

And that is supposed to mean? In what way does it contridict? *Cough* WP:VAGUEWAVE Af648 08:15, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

We also have WP:IAR, WP:CONSENSUS, WP:NOT#BURO, (and the related essays WP:CREEP, WP:DOSPAGWYA, and WP:WTF? OMG! TMD TLA. ARG!, and yes, the irony is intentional). "Contradicting policy" is not in itself a sufficient argument, especially when you haven't demonstrated such contradiction, but only asserted it. DHowell (talk) 12:30, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

It's pretty obvious how such a statement directly conflicts with our core policies, which we don't ignore, nor can a consensus over ride those policies. However, I'm not sure if we have the same things in mind. Like I asked Af a little bit below, what examples do you have in mind? I'm not sure if we are on the same page here. -- Ned Scott 21:44, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

• Sorry for being so cryptic - Af proposes to take unreliable sources into account, while an encyclopedia needs reliable ones for verification. Af proposes to write from primary sources, which is considered original research. (Unless, of course, you restrict to "descriptive claims" and "make no analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims", which is then very likely a mere plot summary.) Better? --B. Wolterding (talk) 16:46, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

• Again, it has been my impression that the primary source is the work of fiction itself, and the reason we ask for other sources is to find real-world information. So I cannot support such a proposal. -- Ned Scott 20:43, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not saying that we dont use reliable secondary sources if we can find them, we will use unreliable secondary sources to assert notability if there are no reliable ones Af648 08:17, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

"we will use unreliable secondary sources to assert notability" uh, yeah, that's not going to happen. We're not going to use forum posts or rumors to assert notability. I don't think that is what you are suggesting, though, so I must ask, what are some examples of "unreliable secondary sources" that you had in mind? -- Ned Scott 21:44, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

And why are we trying to demand the same standards for "reliability" for fiction that we use for subjects such as science, history, and biography? Unlike those subjects, primary sources for fictional topics are widely available, accessible, and easily understood without specialized knowledge or training. Unlike experimental results, historical artifacts, or eyewitness accounts, which typically require specialized analysis to determine their reliability and applicability to their subjects (which is why we require secondary sources in those cases), fictional works are the most reliable and authoritative sources for information about the fictional topics and elements contained therein. Also, if there are independent sources which deal with fictional topics from an in-universe perspective (including published derivative works and published plot descriptions and analysis), why are these any less valid as "reliable sources" than sources written from an out-of-universe perspective describing "real-world information"? If there a many novels written by multiple authors about a particular fictional topic, that ought to be evidence of notability without requiring secondary sources giving "real-world information". If there are published encyclopedias or companion guides to a work of fiction which significantly cover various fictional topics in an "in-universe" manner, those still ought to be allowed to establish notability. The fact that there are many novels or guides written by several authors about a topic is real-world information which we can cite to the existence of those sources, and we shouldn't require a secondary source to say that the topic is the subject of many novels or guides in order to prove it. DHowell (talk) 12:30, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

You are correct in that we are not (or we shouldn't be) treating notability in the same way as those other examples. We've never really had a problem with sourcing the plot itself with primary sources, and that isn't the intention. That's not really the point, though, rather it's that "other sources" go hand in hand with "real-world information". We want real-world information to justify additional articles beyond what is needed for a basic understanding. -- Ned Scott 21:48, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking using things such as fansites(that are not too off) to assert notability, not to use them as a source.Af648 03:11, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that's going to fly. -- Ned Scott 07:23, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

RFC

If there is a worry that there is a lack of participants in this debate, is it worth making an RFC? I've added a pointer at WP:VPP, but I don't know how widely read rfc and the pump is these days. Is it an idea to put pointers on relevant project pages, or even into project banners, to get the word out? Hiding T 17:34, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I would make if an RFC. If you read some of the comments in the current ARBCom case one thing that they are pointing out is these guidelines are being written by small groups of editors and do not represent consensus of the community as a whole. Ridernyc (talk) 18:18, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree, but after we get a good replacement draft that we (the small group here) agree on, and then pose as an RFC to get more eyes on the subject. --MASEM 18:40, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Read it again, Ridernyc. Only WP:EPISODE was commented on. -- Ned Scott 23:35, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Read it again Ned. "The dispute centers on the existence of articles regarding individual episodes or characters from television series, and is part of a broader disagreement regarding the interpretation of notability guidelines with reference to fictional and popular culture topics." (my emphasis) Hiding T 00:16, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

The arbcom have not made any comment on the consensus status of this guideline. From the same quote you've shown, the rest is interpretation of such guidelines, not the consensus status of it. -- Ned Scott 07:23, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

Be Bold. Ask for input at the Wikipedia:Community Portal. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 18:54, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I was bold. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 19:52, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

My draft

User:Masem/wp-fict-proposed It's not perfect, but I think this incorporates a lot of the language that has come up over the last few days. I'm sure the language itself can be improved, I'm just trying to get the concepts down for further discussion points. --MASEM 18:40, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I came here as a result of the note at the Village pump. I like Masem's draft better than the other one -- it is more concise and seems to emphazise the key points better. However, I'm against any text that tells other editors what steps they have to follow before they can list an article at AfD. To me, this is saying you shouldn't ever send a fiction article to AfD unless you've left a note on the talk page and tagged the article and then waited 1 month, and that is not something the fiction notability guideline should be concerned with. Karanacs (talk) 19:22, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I am unaware exactly how tagging show be dealt with (it seems like there's different standards for each tag type), but if it is outside the concerns of fictional notability, I would definitely want to point to its preferred/consensus-agreed usage. Do note that the reason deletion and other methods are spelled out in details is the relative recent amount of articles going to AfD due to lack of notability, and the result issues with people asserting this is the wrong way to do it - the previous draft left it too open that deletion was a possible first option and the attempt here is to outline it as the absolute last option. --MASEM 20:13, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

This proposed rewrite is much better than the others, as it finally acknowledges some of the points that we have been raising (though I would still like a concession that sources for "real-world information" should not be a necessary requirement for notability; that independently-written in-universe and fictional sources should be allowed to establish notability as well, and that we can describe sources from a real-world and out-of-universe perspective without the sources themselves needing to be out-of-universe perspectives of real-world information). And we should be discouraging AfD until other methods of dealing with the problem have been attempted. AfD is one of the poorest approximations of consensus we have, it has all the problems described in WP:POLLS regardless of how much we call it a "discussion" and talk about "!votes". In my ideal vision of Wikipedia, all deletion would be handled through speedy deletion and proposed deletion (actually my ideal vision of Wikipedia would have pure wiki deletion but that is apparently never going to happen here); all other material would be edited, trimmed, merged, redirected, or improved as appropriately decided by the consensus of those truly interested in the topic. DHowell (talk) 13:24, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I think that there is some precedent that "once removed" primary sources are ok - these would be commentary by the creative artists of the work typically post-release of the work, interviews with such, and third-party books that summarize the fictional work - as evidenced by how many Simpsons episodes are of Good Article quality or better by primarily rely on the DVD commentary and a third-party guide. But again, this has to be real world information from those sources - how the work was influenced, possible feedback, etc, and not about details of the fictional universe. Right now at WP:NOR there is a big issue on discussing exactly what primary, secondary and tertiary sources are (as WP's definition tends to differ from literary science definitions), but once that seems to be settles, I would think it wise to get their input on that. The key here is that we're guided by WP:N's requirement of secondary sources, and as we want to provided real-world information, can the example sources be considered secondary for that purpose (since they are not directly tied to the body of fictional work). It seems obvious they should, but we need to be careful here. --MASEM 15:59, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

• • If you don't point to the alternatives, you shouldn't point to deletion. Our guide to deletion makes the same points. WP:N makes the same points. If we have to synch with WP:N on the common notability clause, we should synch with it on what to do if an article may not appear to meet the common clause. I'm not keen on the new draft as it asserts interview is a primary source and not suited for judging notability. I think that's too tight. There are times an interview is primary and times it is a secondary, depending on usage. The coverage itself is indicative of being worthy of note; not every author gets interviewed. Also, can we get better examples than Hamlet and Superman. They are kind of no-brainers. Anyone think of any? I think Anarky is still a good article, are there any featureds? Hiding T 21:24, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Instead of making the deletion process longer, why not simply reduce the harshness of the guideline, and have fewer deletions? The problem people have is the strictness of the guideline. I would suggest encouraging exceptions for very popular or very highly regarded fiction.--Nydas^(Talk) 21:52, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree somewhat. I'd rather say that sub-articles can rely on their parent article for notability, if the parent article can demonstrate sufficient sourcing and if a consensus of Wikipedians agree. That way you just let everyone know that afd is the place to determine it, and arguing at afd that it fails WP:FICT is not on. You have to say why. Say in afd that Wikipedia can't cover the folds on Superman's cape in a single article, but on the other hand, also say that yes, we can cover his supporting cast in an article. It's a see it when we know it thing, and we need to acknowledge that. Articles should be deleted based on the arguments at AFD, not because this page exists. Hiding T 22:14, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

(to Nydas) By notability guideline standards, WP:FICT is hardly harsh, and is far more forgiving in what it asks when you compare it to other topics on Wikipedia. The bar has been set very low for these articles.

(to Hiding) The point of having a guideline, or most any project page on Wikipedia, is so we don't have to repeat ourselves for things that most of us agree on, so saying an article should not be deleted by this page isn't right. Even if it was an essay without a consensus, it's still an argument that holds weight on its own merit, and should be judged as such. We certainly should not allow individual article series to decide their own inclusion criteria on their own (not to say that no per-case-evaluation should take place, but we need criteria in addition to that). Articles lacking in real-world information, and are excessive for basic information, should be removed. That has always been the aim for WP:FICT. -- Ned Scott 23:33, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

You and I will have to agree to disagree then Ned, because I don't agree that it is enough to say delete, fails WP:WHATEVER in a deletion debate. It's lazy, sloppy, elevates guidance over core policies, fails to judge the article on its merits and is basically I DON'T LIKE IT. It may be I don't like it because it doesn't meet WP:WHATEVER, but when you have been instrumental in creating WP:WAHTEVER, you're basically saying it doesn't meet what I like. We don't have guidance to avoid repeating ourselves, we have guidance to describe how things are done. At the minute we don't have that here. An article is deleted because a consensus emerges at AFD to delete. An admin closes in accordance with the rough consensus taking into account policy. Not guidelines, policy. This guideline has no bearing on a close for an afd, and any participant in an afd acting in good faith to build a consensus should give a better reason to delete than per WP:WHATEVER. Even if all they do is state that the article has no sources that denote third party coverage. Whether you believe we should not allow each debate to set its own standards is beside the point. That's what deletion policy and guidance for admins on closing deletion debates states happens. Each debate is closed according to the strength of arguments advanced. Hiding T 00:10, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

As to what you believe to have always been the aim for WP:FICT, you are mistaken. The aim was never that "articles lacking in real-world information, and are excessive for basic information, should be removed." I think you need to re-read Wikipedia:Editing policy again, for starters. The original aim Of WP:FICT was that articles lacking in real-world information, and are excessive for basic information, should be improved. I think now we begin to understand what has happened to the guidance, and why deletion has moved up the ladder. Hiding T 00:13, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Well said, Hiding. The confusion over this issue has lead to issues such as TTN's current rampage-- a focus on improvement over deletion should always be followed. Jtrainor (talk) 00:44, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

It would be foolish to believe that every article on fiction even has the potential to be improved simply because some editor took a few seconds and clicked on a red link. -- Ned Scott 02:18, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

It would be equivalently foolish to believe that every article on fiction does not have the potential to be improved simply because some editor took a few seconds to slap a tag on an article and people weren't able improve the article within a certain timeframe. DHowell (talk) 13:24, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

You and I completely agree on that. -- Ned Scott 21:50, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Hiding, are you still just mad that I reverted you on WP:FICT? Why are you acting like this? If you want to nitpick at my wording then go ahead, but removed/improved, I only meant that: "what currently is there should not be there", nothing more, nothing less. You also completely missed the point about my comment of AFD discussions. I'm sorry there are people who blindly say "delete per" whatever, but there's a lot of us who are not doing so in a blind way. I myself try to make an effort to explain why I believe something doesn't pass a guideline, not just "PER WHATEVER", and I believe all people should actually give more than just a per whatever. But to say that a notability guideline has no place an an AfD discussion? What? -- Ned Scott 02:18, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

At no point have I implied that you do any such thing Ned. I'm also not sure where I have led you to believe I am in some way mad at you. I was unaware I was acting in any way other than attempting to discuss the issues with this guidance. As I have never argued that notability guidance has no place in an afd, I'm not going to defend that point. If you want to take the other issues to talk, that might be better. Hiding T 15:22, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, ok. Sorry about that, then :) -- Ned Scott 21:50, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Question then (to much of the above): Is what is in the proposed rewrite too strict or too lax? I did try to write the process such that deletion should be always considered as the last option when there is no option left available.

I have seen how some of TTN's cycles have gone for AfDs, though since he's been warned on AN/I at least once, he's been better. The problem is that this often leads to the following process: TTN tags an article non-notable. TTN comes back a month later, nothing's been changed to address non-notability. TTN proposes merging followed by deletion. Numerous "keep" votes are given, most following WP:ILIKEIT reasoning, or otherwise a rehash of WP:N/WP:FICT/WP:RS. Either the issue is dropped or the AfD/Merge is closed as being "keep", notability is not demonstrated. Yes, there is no timeline to demonstrate, but I also believe that leaving articles that lack notability demonstrations and do not reflect appropriate summary style too long will encourage the creation of more articles without those aspects by WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. To that end, I think it needs to be stated clearly that if an editor suggests a merge & trim of information on your article, you should not take that personally (hopefully) nor a slight on one's writing: merging will keep the key details of the information and if new information relating to notability does arise, great, recreate the article. --MASEM 02:07, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Compared to the de facto standard of other areas of Wikipedia, WP:FICT is very harsh. Train stations, major roads, hamlets, national level elected officials, tiny islands, species of beetle, London bus routes, horse racing events and asteroids are presumed to be notable, regardless of sources beyond evidence they exist. Fictional characters, on the other hand, are treated as little better than Internet memes (with some glaring exceptions).--Nydas^(Talk) 10:13, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

While I continue to lack the stability to actively participate in this discussion, I thank you for bringing that up. --Kizor (talk) 12:34, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely. We allow tiny African villages, small-market radio stations, and numbered highways to be presumed notable often with no more evidence than a map, a government record or a newspaper blurb, and yet that same type of evidence is routinely rejected for fictional topics as being "too trivial". We've set the bar for fictional topics way higher than for other topics. I understand the need to keep Wikipedia from becoming a fan-wiki, but we can trim most of the true "fancruft" by simply not allowing non-notable self-published fan-fiction or fan speculation to be used as sources. DHowell (talk) 13:24, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Agreed 100%!!! And the irony is, were it not for a dynamic, web based collaborative environment like wikipedia, those things like obscure roads or brand new media could never get coverage. It is almost a crime to kill the coverage of it here, the only place that can do it well. Renmiri (talk) 15:16, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I take some issue with the above comments. 1) Even a tiny radio station exists in the real world. The comparison reminds us (Masem) that we have to be very clear in underlining the need to assert real-world significance in fictional articles. (2) A tiny radio station or hamlet is unlikely to spawn sub page after subpage after subpage. The equivalent would be if every single radio show on my local station had its own article. By encouraging articles to focus on real world significance we avoid becoming a repository for fancruft, we apply an encyclopedic standard and we prevent myriads of subpages from being created which can almost never satisfy the criteria for a standalone. (3) Finally, even if one accepts that the standard here is perhaps more stringent than elsewhere, that is highly desirable in my view and could be sued as a case for improving standards elsewhere. I am no fan of roadcruft, for example. Eusebeus (talk) 15:35, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

The other problem specifically with fiction is that there are two policies that can be easily broken when writing about detailed fictional elements that cannot be done by the real-world "minutiae" that Nydas and DHowell points out. One with original research - whenever you summarize a plot, you are partaking a bit into this aspect since you are writing about the fictional work's events in your own manner. Of course, as long as you don't attempt to analysis or synthesize on what is presented, its generally not considered OR. However, the amount of true WP:NOR violations that can come in when writing about a work a fiction is proportion to how much is written - it is bound to happen particularly with newer editors. It may be easy to correct, but by provide some bound by stating some inclusion threshhold for fictional details, it is much easier to maintain. Similarly, neutral points of view can also be difficult to maintain as the body of work grows, particularly if these are written by highly interested fans of the work. It can lead to undue weight on one character or aspect. Now there is also the issue of non-free fair-use of plot summaries. There is yet any requirement/ArbCom/policy on this but plot summaries are a non-free, fair use of the fictional work as it is a derivative work of the work of fiction. If we were only to provide plot details, characters, settings, etc. without additional commentary, as set by US fair use laws, for a fictional work, there may be cause for Wikipedia to be sued by the owner of the fictional work (there are two known cases where publishers of a book that strictly summarized the details of a fictional work (one being Twin Peaks, I forget the other) without permission of the copyright own were sued and lost in court). This at least points out the importance of a balanced coverage of a fictional work between in-universe and real-world information particularly for educational purposes. As Wikipedia both encourages the minimal use of non-free fair use materials and that has set standards for their use that may exceed what is generally accepted for US, as to avoid any such lawsuits, we should consider this as well for fictional works. This is not to say we can't go into any element of a fictional work in depth, but this does tie in very well with notability guidelines - by satisfying notability, you are very likely at the same time satisfying appropriate fair use requirements. Again, there is yet no direct policy on fair use and plot summaries, but this becoming a cautionary tale in other parts of WP's policy. --MASEM 16:17, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

Tiny radio stations have spawned sub page after sub page. Broadcasting schedules per year, articles on shows, they've been branched out, and they've been successfully dealt with. By encouraging editors to write encyclopedically and to source their information and to allow others to edit and to make them aware Wikipedia is a collaboration, we can avoid becoming a repository for fancruft. I tend to ignore stuff I don't like, as long as it is written per WP:V, WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. Hiding T 16:53, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I should point out that regarding radio stations, not everyone agrees that they have some kind of inherent notability. There's actually been a bit of a dispute about that lately. As far as physical places go, they do tend to have more leniency since they are a physical place that have existed for years upon years (sometimes in the hundreds). Even a town or a village with a small population has a much larger impact when you consider that population over the span of its existence. The thing here is that these towns and villages are the topic itself, rather than being stub-topics of a work of fiction, which is what we deal with. You can make an article about a tiny village, yes, but you can also make an article about a book that has been published, but that most people have never heard of. Where we come in is if there should be articles for every element of that book. Depending on your perspective those examples can be considered comparing apples with oranges. And like with radio stations, even physical places get questioned from time to time, and get updated notability requirements.

Some of those other examples are a bit odd. Living people have a pretty good criteria for inclusion, but anyone who has WP:BLP on their watchlists will tell you that there are constantly disagreements about the exact details of it. Species of beetle is another odd example, since that's fundamental information on a form of life. If you want to compare an article on a fictional character to a living species, then you're nuts. -- Ned Scott 21:59, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

My point is that beetle species articles are not subjected to this 'good/featured-or-annihilation' mentality. They're given the benefit of the doubt in the event of poor or non-existent sources. Fictional things don't get anything like that. Other controversial things, like bus routes, don't seem to attract time-bomb declarations like 'clean up or else' to the same extent that fiction does.--Nydas^(Talk) 22:38, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

What you are saying it true. People have a subjective opinion of what is notable that they then use the guidelines to remove. I think it's the word "encyclopedia" that makes people think fiction articles need to be held to a higher standard. It also seems like the hard core pedians are more likely to be into strict application of notability with regards to fiction. They hang out here and argue their case, while most of the people who have their content removed don't. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 00:51, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think people target fiction over other topics for any reason other than what they choose to work on. I don't edit articles about beetles because I'm not interested in articles about beetles. The reason there is such a focus on fiction-related articles is simply that a lot of people are interested in working on those articles. It makes sense, if you think about it, since it's easier for the general public to dive into such articles. Same for "hard core" Wikipedians, they're just as much fans of these shows as the people who are on the "other side" of the debate. It's a very common misconception that people who want to be tighter on article on fiction are not fans.

So in short, fiction is a high traffic area for Wikipedia, simply because that's what a lot of people choose to focus on. It's not because of double standards, or because people hate fiction, or anything like that. (at least not for the bulk of it, in my opinion.)

And beetle species self-regulate by their own existence. We can only write articles of beetle species that exist or have once existed. Fiction, on the other hand, has no physical limit for article creation. -- Ned Scott 07:16, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

That fiction articles attract a lot of interest is all the more reason to beware of fads and movements, especially when the hardcore Wikipedians are also 'fans'. That doesn't help. Most fiction does not have fans, yet the presumption here is that fans exist for everything.--Nydas^(Talk) 13:23, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're saying in this last response. If I understood your original comments correctly, my response was that people don't "go after" fiction more than another topic because it's fiction, but rather because they're simply interested in working on that area of Wikipedia. Wether or not people are fans was just a side comment, since it's often a misconception that people who "cut" or "delete" a lot of fiction articles are not fans and/or are "anti-fan". -- Ned Scott 04:30, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

That people who are deleting fiction are fans is not a factor that invites fairness or balance. In my experience people are rarely willing to tackle fiction they're fans of. In addition, I've already noted how the requirement for real-world info militates against fiction without special effects (in other words, fiction less likely to have a 'fanbase').--Nydas^(Talk) 09:02, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I guess I haven't observed the same trends you speak of for articles with special effects, since my focus is mostly on anime topics. I do understand what you mean when you say that some articles are kinda screwed for not having as large of a fanbase, and hopefully we can find ways to counter that. -- Ned Scott 05:09, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

The way to counter it is to move beyond thinking of fans as naturally connected to fiction. How many Nobel Prize in Literature winners have 'fans'? Crime, romance, historical, literary and general fiction rarely have 'fans'.--Nydas^(Talk) 22:01, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Re beetle species self-regulation: But is it not said in policy that merely existing does not make something noteable? Jtrainor (talk) 02:54, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Draft #2

I've edited my draft to include some of the issues discussed above, to wit:

• There's almost a class of sources between primary and secondary, while I will call "1.5 sources" - these are interviews, commentaries, and other materials generally by the creators, but typically made at some point after the release of the work, and generally not self-published. There is precedent in past consensus on AfD and other projects that these are acceptable to show real-world information and thus notability. I've worded parts of this to allow such aspects to be included.
• I've tried to word more about deletion, being that you do NOT want to go there if you can take any other route as deletion means its gone forever. Discuss, merge, transwiki, all good options, but deletion has to be the last resort.
• Strengthen that sub articles still need to meet V, OR, NPOV
• Added FF8 characters as example, but we still need more (both good and bad ones).

I think we're getting closer to something that will help satisfy both sides and the middle ground. --MASEM 19:33, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

• I think the lead needs to be clearer: Something like Individual articles dealing with fictional works or topics need to demonstrate real-world notability, backed up by reliable secondary sources. The real world context of fictional topics should be the principle focus of the article. Articles written from an in-universe perspective, such as plot-summaries or character biographies & development are typically discouraged. Writing about such works is more fully defined in the Writing about Fiction manual of style. While fictional topics should provide readers with an appropriate context of their fictional setting, it is important to ensure that the main focus of the article remain its real-world impact. I know that's a bit repetitive, but I think we need the emphasis on real-world impact/notability. Eusebeus (talk) 20:42, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

• I haven't read the latest draft in detail yet, but before I go to work, I wanted to point out that I very much agree with the "1.5 sources" that Masem mentions. This is similar to the "dependent notability" that I mentioned a ways up in the discussion. -- Ned Scott 22:05, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

• • Eusebius, as comment on your suggested lede, I am going to basically disagree that "Articles written from an in-universe perspective, such as plot-summaries or character biographies & development are typically discouraged. " They are to be 'encouraged, and written properly and proportionately. they are describing the nature of the artifact being discussed. It is as appropriate to describe the plot of fiction as the workings of a machine. The problems come when they are written over-long and incompetently, as is usually the case here, which has given them a deserved bad reputation. If we paid them proper attention , we would be able to do them better. I am also going to disagree with the focus on "article" the focus is on the article or articles on a work of fiction, seen together. The draft has it better. DGG (talk) 02:40, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
    • Agreed, plot information gives a description of what the character, episode, whatever is. We need to define what we're speaking about before launching into secondary data of rewards, popularity and marketting campaigns. Too much focus has been on trivial, secondary matters to the expense of the reader not having an understanding of what the article is about. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 00:13, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
• But in the draft, why in the second paragraph should plot take precedence over characters? Plot, characters, setting, theme--these are all relevant aspects and the article or relevant article must describe each of them. Whether it takes separate articles on the aspects depends on the importance of the work, which affects how much there is to say. DGG (talk) 02:38, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

By WP:WAF, it is a given that a good article on a fictional work will describe the plot. This plot, of course, will discuss characters, settings, and necessary aspects, as the plot is the overall embodiment of these elements. However, it is not always the case that it is necessary to describe the characters, setting, or the like in any depth outside of the plot - it can happen (and often does, and a case that we still want allowable by rewriting this), but not every piece of fiction (particularly one shot works like books or movies, or short lived TV shows) need to have a separate, called out character/setting/etc. section. Also, while characters, settings, etc can all be broken out from the article, it is never acceptable to remove the plot as describing what events take place during the work from the article about the work (that is, there is no allowable plot sub-article), thus it has to be treated more importantly than the other facets of the fictional universe, which all help to support it. --MASEM 08:12, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

• Would such things as mentions in "episode guides" count as establishing notability and verifiably under this? My position is that they should absolutely not, and only fictional topics with applicable real-world impact should have it. For instance, Leopold Bloom is notable, as is Doctor Who, but perhaps not Gowron or Elayne Trakand, as they have not had a real world impact. I think this is what you are trying to get at, but it could maybe be a little clearer. Lankiveil (talk) 06:51, 16 December 2007 (UTC).

An episode guide that does not point out anything else besides what happened in the episode is, IMO, not my "1.5" source but a pure primary source, even if written by a third party. If the guide did include additional details that help with real-world impact, it falls into my suggested "1.5" category and would be suitable for the notability demonstration (assuming it also reliable). --MASEM 08:12, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

• Per DGG's point above, his suggestion, as I understand it is: Articles written from an in-universe perspective, such as plot-summaries or character biographies & development, are typically encouraged, and [should be] written properly and proportionately. Are you asking, therefore, that the guideline be rewritten to promote coverage of in-universe topics and to diminish the importance of real-world significance? We would also need to rewrite WP:N#PLOT per your suggestion. That seems a bold proposal but one that I think we can certainly discuss. But you are in disagreement, therefore, with more than just my rewrite of the lead. Eusebeus (talk) 20:16, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

• I'm not sure if his suggestion is that extreme, but I was also a bit unclear about it. I think what he means is that we don't discourage writing the proper amount of plot-summary information, which is true, but also kind of a given. -- Ned Scott 04:25, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I would definitely not include the word "encouraged". We don't want to make in-universe taboo, but we don't want these to flourish without rationale discussion and consensus by editors to make sure such articles are appropriate for the core material. --MASEM 04:30, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, DGG can answer for himself, but the statement: It is as appropriate to describe the plot of fiction as [it is] the workings of a machine. The problems come when they are written over-long and incompetently, as is usually the case here, which has given them a deserved bad reputation suggests that DGG believes the real-world significance of fictional topics is not important; hence his disagreement with my rewrite & apparent willingness to accept articles written from in-universe. I think that is a defensible position (one I disagree with of course), but it would change substantially the intent of the guideline, both as it exists now and as Masem has re-crafted it. Eusebeus (talk) 14:32, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

• As for "It is as appropriate to describe the plot of fiction as the workings of a machine": In a way I agree; and I would definitely not want to read a technical manual or operating guide of a Nokia 8265i here. Of course, it is encouraged to write how a mobile phone works - there are plenty of independent sources about that -, but the same does not hold for a single model. Similarly, an encyclopedia should not retell the plot of a particular TV series or episode (while it should explain the characteristics of a soap opera).
  I also think that the draft might make that even more clear - define what real-world content is (with examples), define what in-universe content is (with examples), state that real-world content is the goal for an encyclopedia, and in-universe information is supportive. --B. Wolterding (talk) 17:17, 17 December 2007 (UTC)
• Well, let's be clear about the choices being considered in the rewrite (and I salute Masem's efforts here). I think there is a legitimate concern that drive-by references to real world context (DVD commentary or a Nielsen rating, eg) can in turn justify extensive in-universe details. That invites gaming the system if consensus remains that Wikipedia is not a repository for fan-driven, in-universe content. Either we encourage the creation of individual articles on fictional topics that offer a wealth of in-universe content as encyclopedic (per DGG) or else we do not. And that needs to be made clear in the opening paragraph of the guideline. The rest is details. Eusebeus (talk) 17:46, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

depth of coverage?

Just to put it out there, since it crossed my mind today: what about instead of calling this "notability" we call it something like "fictional depth" or "depth of fiction coverage"? It's not really about what is notable or not, but rather how we organize it, and how much detail we place on it. It might help give some perspective on what we're trying to do. Just a thought. -- Ned Scott 07:31, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 15:17, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I think this still is a specific application of notability (and thus is still "Notability (fiction)"). And while I agree that, to some extent, we are talking about depth of coverage, we're not guidance directly related to that: we're not telling people exactly how deep in details they can go, but more that the depth of coverage they can provide is affected by a number of factors, with notability being one of the more critical ones. I do not want to say, explicitly, that a work of fiction can have an article about elements X, Y, and Z.

But it is still a good term to include, a section on it can't hurt. I think a lot of its discuss starts to fall out from WP:UNDUE in addition to other elements. --MASEM 15:27, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking that as well. How different factors determine the depth, etc. Even if the guideline itself stays at it's current title, giving some perspective as "depth" will help people understand that many of these characters/ elements are not black and white, totally include or totally exclude. -- Ned Scott 04:20, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Lack of participation

I read this on the Community Portal page today: "A proposal and discussion at Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) regarding where consensus lies is worried that there is a lack of participants in the debate. All participants in Wikipedia are welcome to engage in the debate and outline their position in the hope that broad community consensus will be found."

I am glad this topic is being considered here. I find entirely too many articles about minor characters in (to my mind) non-notable TV shows, computer games and faddish fantasy fiction fooferaw.

And I applaud those taking part in this conversation and wish you well. It is, however, very difficult to read through all the verbiage although some of you have made valiant effort over the past few weeks or so to boil it down. Good luck, and I really mean that!

Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 19:52, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

I came here for the same reason, but this discussion is far too long and complicated for anyone to parachute in suddenly. All I can do is offer my general philosophy: it is clear from Wikipedia fancruft, the evening news, and world history, that people have a hard time distinguishing reality from fantasy. (E.g. pick whichever religious book or sect you hate most and look at how many people believe in it...) Bluring the line between fact and fiction in Wikipedia damages the educational mission of the project, and attempts to dilute the fiction notability guideline is the wrong way to go. If something wasn't notable enough to receive significant coverage in independent sources then it doesn't belong here regardless of how popular it was, and promotional material is not a good substitute for analysis. I'll vote for a proposal to that effect, even though we say we don't do votes, because we always wind up voting anyway. And I think that most people from outside the fiction community would vote the same way.--Yannick (talk) 04:27, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Ideally we'll take the proposals from Hiding and Masem and others, and come up with something that most of us on the talk page can agree with. Then we'll present the ideas to the greater community in a cleaner format, so that users new to this discussion can get a good feel for things without having to hunt through all the past discussion. -- Ned Scott 04:16, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Where people can help

While we're still editing the text, I think we're getting the spirit that (as I'm reading the room) seems agreeable to the present group of editors reading it. However, we really need both good and counter-examples to support this. Examples we'll need to agree on but examples nonetheless. I'm more concerned with good counter-examples - pages that are not written to this standard that are either being merged or AfD - specifically we want to "rescue" the text of those articles as subpages here so that we can point to them in the guideline. And it would be nice to have coverages of examples from movies, TV shows, and other literature in addition to what we presently cite, just so there's enough broadness to demonstrate how the guideline can apply. --MASEM 14:53, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't understand. Would you like to see more examples for a bad article that was turned into a GA with some effort (Boone Carlyle from old), many poor subarticles that, in a merged state, can establish notability (Races in Farscape, although the article still needs major trimming/cleanup, then major expansion), or poor subarticles that were merged and then improved to a state where they could be broken out again (Ben Hawkins and Brother Justin Crowe merged into Characters of Carnivàle, now)? Many merge discussions and AfDs, which I try to keep track of, have significantly improved the presentation of fiction-related material, so I may help here if I knew what you were looking for. – sgeureka ^t•c 15:18, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Those would work too, where we have the before "unacceptable" versions and the final "acceptable" ones. We just need to make sure there's consensus on the examples that the "after" articles are meeting what we're trying to scope out. --MASEM 15:24, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The notion that lists of fictional characters are a Good Idea should be de-emphasised. No-one seems to know whether they're notable or not, leaving us open to Final Fantasy good, Warcraft bad situations. The false sense of equality created by lists is also a problem, the guideline should mention this.--Nydas^(Talk) 15:57, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

I may be misinterpreting what you're saying but this seems to go against what we've previously gotten as a good middle ground. Or are you saying that outright stating that "character lists without notability are acceptable" is a bad direction since it can bring on cruft, and that the language should be more about carefully considering the need for a character list that lacks notability before creating one? --MASEM 16:21, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

The ambiguous notability of character lists invites a biased approach, hence my comment about Final Fantasy good, Warcraft bad. There's no real difference in notability between List of Warcraft characters and Characters of Final Fantasy VIII, but one is deleted, the other is featured and (wrongly) used as a benchmark. The only difference is our bias.--Nydas^(Talk) 17:27, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately the Warcraft article has been deleted, but based on its 2nd AFD, there is a major difference between what is purported in Warcraft (all in-universe, no notability demonstration) and the FF8 one (which includes creation, reception, and other real world factors). But these still fall into different "classes" of fictional element articles and thus aren't comparable. Again, as the Warcraft article is gone, its impossible to judge if it would be the type of article that nicely fits as an acceptable list article in the new guideline we're trying to propose or not. It sounds like it was excessively plot heavy from the AfD, which would be problematic. --MASEM 20:30, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

If you look at the FFVIII characters article, the bulk of the out-of-universe stuff comes from a girl gamer site. If the FF franchise was lower on the pecking order, it'd be called a fansite. Similarly, the reception info would be declared 'redundant'.

The Warcraft characters could conceivably be sourced to the same level as List of Halo characters: i.e. from spinoff novels and art books. That may not be very good, but it certainly exceeds the low standard set by the Pokemon lists and the Digimon articles.--Nydas^(Talk) 23:06, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Part of your complaint sounds like it points back to TTN and others that take the approach of AfD first, improve later, which as I think we agree, is the wrong approach to deleting with non-notable fictional articles. I will argue that while the most oft-cited ref on the FF8 page is that FLARE site, there's enough from other reliable sources to truly demonstrate notability of the characters. Can the Warcraft characters get this way? Maybe, I don't know enough of that game to be able to tell. I understand the concerns that there's an implicit hierarchy of information based on the size/makeup of the fanbase, but each article needs to be judged on its own, and if the notability information just wasn't there for the Warcraft article, I can understand why it was deleted.

However, and this goes to the larger debate (not just to Nydas): here is a case of an article where the editors were "notified" (via AfD) that notability wasn't demonstrated, and assuming good faith of the requesting editor, that no significant efforts were made within a month prior to the second AfD to correct the lack of notability. Now, I completely agree that this process (AfD, wait, AfD again) is not what we want to promote. However, assuming the first step a month before the second AfD was instead a message on the talk page and a notability tag, do people consider this a fair warning that something needs to be done about the notability of the article before other editors attempt to do something about it? Not sure AfD was the right (transwiki to delete would have been better), but certainly, in how I read the 2nd AfD arguments, it seems completely fair. --MASEM 23:31, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Articles 'standing on their own' invites special treatment for Wikipedians' favourite franchises. WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS should be ignored (and ideally, deleted), since it encourages and sustains violations of WP:NPOV, a core policy. The idea that 'a month went by with no improvement, therefore deletion' is another idea that applies only to fiction. Like OTHERSTUFF, it is an attitude that should be dispensed with for reasons of neutrality. Look at the J.R. Ewing article. It's terrible, and it won't be cleaned up in a month no matter how much it gets tarred and feathered, yet the character is indisputably important and iconic.--Nydas^(Talk) 21:45, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

3rd Draft

diff from 2nd

Not much in terms of approach, just many language, trying to be more guiding, less prescriptive. --MASEM 18:27, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

More about notability of fictional concepts in general

moved to Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction)/More about notability of fictional concepts in general 04:52, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

The bad thing, Ned, is that editors now have to go to a seperate page and add it to their watchlist if they want to keep up with this discussion. This section was in no way a "long rant" but, rather, a productive discussion about a facet of the guideline. I do believe we are making progress and both sides need to stop giving up on the process. Yes, there are parts that are repetitive, but that is always the case in a large debate. Ursasapien (talk) 07:16, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Please do not censor this page. Replace what I found to be a well formed argument and you found to be a "rant." - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 07:21, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

What's done is done. At this point, I think it would be more disruptive to move the discussion back to this page. However, I would encourage Ned to avoid moving discussions like this one in the future. Additionally, I would encourage all interested parties to watch the sub-page. Ursasapien (talk) 07:28, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

no what's done can be undone and I"m doing it now. Sorry Ned but stop trying to control the debate. Restored text below. Ridernyc (talk) 10:29, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

More about notability of fictional concepts in general

I wnat to address some of the points made earlier. Fictional characters and elements do exist in the real world. Sure, they exist as fictional concepts, but they exist just as surely as love, the Coriolis effect, and the number 593. Radio stations can and do spawn articles about individual shows and DJ's, but for those sub-topics which have little or no coverage in reliable independent sources, they are generally merged to their parent topics. Major radio stations and networks have spawned many notable shows and DJ's: e.g. The Howard Stern Show, Rick Dees, Wolfman Jack, Dr. Demento, and American Top 40. And the more notable shows have sub-topics of their own, e.g. see Template:Howard Stern Show. In the same way, while minor works of fiction might not need articles detailing every character and every element, major works (e.g. Star Trek, Star Wars, The Simpsons, South Park) do warrant extensive coverage. "Real world significance" is of course important for all articles, not just those on ficitional topics, but we seem to trying to set the bar higher for fictional topics by attempting to limit the type of coverage that is allowed to establish notability. Books, films, and television episodes exist in the real world, real people read and watch them, and various elements of them have various effects on varying numbers of people. Published books, films, television shows, articles, and papers which significantly cover those elements, created by people independent of the initial creators of those elements, establish a real world significance and notability, regardless of whether the coverage itself is from a "real-world" or "in-universe" perspective. We presume things are notable if they have been "noticed" (significantly) in published sources independent of the subject. We don't require sources to say they are notable, or important, or famous, or iconic, or outstanding, we simply require them to cover the subject non-trivially (i.e. more than a directory entry or a passing mention). We shouldn't require the sources to say that they had a certain "real-world" effect in order to document the real-world effect. The existence of hundreds of independently-written and published Star Trek novels, Star Wars novels, and Simpsons comics, establish, or ought to establish, the notability of their respective universes and major characters without even having to consult a single "real-world" source.

On the subject of original research, I see no reason why fictional topics would be more likely to attract original research than "real-world" topics. Surely primary sources such as the fossil record or the global temperature record are not less likely to attract original research than episodes of Star Trek or Star Wars films and novels, simply because one is a source for factual infomation and one is a source for fictional information. In my opinion it is actually the real-world primary sources which are more subject to original research, because primary sources for real-world information usually can only hope to be approximations and incomplete records of the actual real-world subjects, while the body of primary sources about fictional topics are the most accurate and reliable information about their subjects that could possibly exist. We often have to analyze and synthesize real-world data in order to extract the real-world information, and when that analysis requires special skill or training we need secondary sources to do that in order to avoid original research. On the other hand, elements of fictional works can usually be described and information extracted without needing any special skills or training, making the information exceedingly verifiable to anyone with access to those sources.

Now the copyright aspect might be the most convincing of any of the arguments for avoiding detailed plot summaries. However, I question that if copyright infringement is truly a concern, then how is shuffling off the more detailed articles to other sites going to help the problem? We might be saving the Wikimedia foundation from a lawsuit, but not we're not helping the authors of those detailed articles. And if Wookieepedia and Memory Alpha aren't getting sued, why do we expect Wikipedia to get sued? Really, if you're a copyright owner and you have a choice between going after the non-profit educational Wikimedia Foundation, or the for-profit commercial enterprise Wikia, which are you going to go after first, from a both a financial perspective and a public relations perspective?

Nevertheless, let's look at the copyright issue. The two copyright cases which were alluded to above were Twin Peaks v. Publications Int'l, Ltd. 996 F.2d 1366 (2d Cir. 1993), and Castle Rock Entertainment, Inc. v. Carol Publ. Group, 150 F.3d 132 (2d Cir. 1998). The first case was about a book which contained extensive quotes and paraphrases from Twin Peaks as well as detailed descriptions of plot, character, and setting. The second case was a book containing trivia questions about Seinfeld. These cases are well summarized at Stanford University's website. In the Twin Peaks case, the summary notes that the book was not a fair use because "the amount of the material taken was substantial and the publication adversely affected the potential market for authorized books about the program." In the Seinfeld case, "the book affected the owner's right to make derivative 'Seinfeld' works such as trivia books." In both cases the concern was the amount of content copied or derived from the original work (it was "substantial") and the effect on the market of derivative works. (Note that also both cases involved commercial works; non-profit educational uses are typically given more leeway in fair use case law.) In essence, then, any policy based on copyright should ensure that we don't go into so much detail that we essentially replace the market for the work or authorized derivatives.

But for topics where the body of work is so substantial, such as the Star Trek or Star Wars universes, or even lesser known fictional settings which still have a large body of published fiction, it is easy to go into much detail without "substantially" replacing the copyrighted works. We shouldn't try to replace in-universe reference works such as The Star Trek Encyclopedia but we ought to be able to use it as a source, as long as we don't "substantially" repeat all the fictional content, and we put what we do extract in a real-world context. We can do that by describing the fictional concepts in relation to the works which contain and describe them, rather than describing them in-universe as elements of larger fictional topics. Of course none of this is an issue for works out of copyright. We really should have no qualms about writing extensively about the characters of Shakespeare and Homer (the Greek writer, not the Simpson!) even from an entirely in-universe perspective. Though it would still probably be better encyclopedically to use real-world context, and document whatever real-world information is available; we shouldn't make it an absolute requirement and subject such articles to deletion simply because they lack "real-world" information.

The idea that fiction has no physical limit for article creation is not realistic. Our coverage fiction is limited by that which exists just as much as coverage of living species; "that which exists" meaning being documented in reliable published material. Wikipedia is not for things made up in school one day, so we don't expand our coverage to made-up Star Trek characters just because someone can imagine one (or even has written a self-published fan fiction article on the web about one). And our coverage of beetle species doesn't expand to coverage of the beetle scurrying across the sidewalk in front of my residence, even if it certainly exists. "Physical existence" is not a necessary nor sufficent condition for Wikipedia coverage. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, but there is no guy who dresses up as Santa Claus in the local mall. There is a Kwik-E-Mart, but there is no Slurpee machine in the 7-Eleven at the corner of Main Street and First Street. I am becoming less and less convinced that the notability standards for fictional concepts need to be stricter than those for real-world objects. I can see a need to limit excessive plot detail for copyright reasons, but that should be covered by WP:NOT#PLOT alone, not a separate notability guideline. It seems that in all other cases, the subject-specific cases usually expand the notability criteria to cover topics where reliable sources might be difficult to find or have minimal coverage, because of systemic bias or FUTON bias, but fiction seems to be the only area where we try to restrict the general notabilty criteria.

Not to say that a notability guideline for fiction should not exist, but it should be a place which explains the general notability guideline and plot summary policy and gives general guidance when someone wants to understand what should be done when someone says that something is a "non-notable fictional <whatever>". What it should definitely not do is encourage more AfD nominations and arguments of the "Delete, per WP:FICT, WP:N, and WP:FANCRUFT" type. I think the present draft is going a long way towards this, but I still want to be careful that it doesn't encourage eliminating significant information simply because of lack of "real-world information" found in "reliable secondary sources", in cases where notability might be reasonably be established by a plethora of independent primary sources, which exist in the real-world, which cover "in-universe" information. (I'm defining "primary sources" here as it seems to be defined in the context of this discussion; in-universe sources. Some might consider Star Trek novels or The Star Trek Encyclopedia to be "secondary sources" for information on the Star Trek universe, as they are independent of the original creators of the fictional setting). DHowell (talk) 01:16, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

You pretty much missed the point. It's not that you're wrong, and you are right about some of that stuff, but that you don't seem to understand the reality of the situation. We're not speculating about fiction being magnets for OR; it actually happens. I'm also wondering if you even bothered to read the article Santa Claus. There's also a difference in "existing in the real world" (about perspective) and writing things relevant and connected to the real world.

Notability for works of fiction is not what we are discussing here, but instead we are talking about elements of fiction. So while something as a work of fiction might be obviously notable, that doesn't mean there's any real value to an encyclopedia (grounded in the real world) to go into depth on everything about it, and there are several reasons why it can be a problem. But at this point, we're just repeating ourselves. -- Ned Scott 01:36, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Ned, you are probably right--we are repeating ourselves and we will not solve it. the only rational procedure is to mark the guideline as rejected. DGG (talk) 01:55, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

No, we don't bend to the extremists and the pessimists. Considering the positive direction things have been taking, I'm surprised that even you would still make such a statement. -- Ned Scott 01:59, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

FICT should be a guideline that reasonably lessens NOTE like other subject specific notability guidelines (as a guick view of actual editing practices backs this up), not one that is more exclusionary. Barring that, it should be marked as rejected. Thousands of editors and their edits have rejected it so far. Because one editor can redirect and then keep redirected the work of thousands shows that the way we make/use guidelines isn't working. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 02:19, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

so you had some tv episode articles deleted and/or redirected? Let me ask you this The X-man have had 1000's of comic books published using them, should every one of those issues be notable and have an article that is nothing more then a plot summary and random trivia?Ridernyc (talk) 02:27, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Have each of the thousands of comic books been viewed by millions of people, as is the case of each and every episode of many prime-time TV shows, for example? Have each of the thousands of comics, or even a significant percentage of them, been the subject of reviews in national magazines? If so, then perhaps they are all notable and should have an article. The content of those articles should be decided by those who have an interest in maintaining them; plot summaries can be trimmed to avoid copyright infringement and real-world context and information can be added where available to bolster fair-use claims. Now whether each of the thousands of X-men comics are notable themselves is a different question as to whether the existence of those comics prove the notability of the fictional characters, settings, and other elements which transcend any of the individual comic books; I say that it does. DHowell (talk)

Even if WP:FICT didn't exist, those articles would be cited as AfD by WP:N. We are trying to stress that more in the case of fictional articles, there are better routes than straight AfD. We are trying to correct the deletionist trend. --MASEM 02:35, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I work on comics related articles, and a large number of editors have decided not to create articles on individual comics, even when they can have their notability established. A small group of people working on FICT arent' needed to tell us what is reasonable. If you want to include a description of that practice here, that would be fine.

As mentioned, other nobaility sub guidelines expand what is considered notable to bring it in line with what a majority of editors feel is reasonable. FICT is the exact opposite: a small group of editors saying the much larger group is wrong. Describe vs. prescribe and all that. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 02:42, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

There's no problem with stating what you did for comics: not every notable topic needs an article; we're trying to say through WP:N that every article needs to be about at least one notable topic (excluding what is written for summary style). We want a guideline that is a starting point for separate projects that may not more specific rules to start, and ones that be expanded upon more to meet the project's consensus, as long as they don't supercede/undermind WP:N/WP:FICT. --MASEM 02:54, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

As has been stated before Fiction has it's own set of rules unique to it. WP:Plot outweighs notability and is the reason real reason 99% of fictional articles get deleted. When some says notability in an AFD debate they are really saying "Fails WP:Plot, WP:RS, WP:OR, and WP:V." you can claim this guideline is exclusionary but really if it was not here you would have a much harder time trying to keep articles. Ridernyc (talk) 03:24, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Except that deletion arguments like that are usually based on interpretations of those policies which are not supported by the consensus which put them into place, and are also "just a policy" arguments. And none of these policies or guidelines say that the only or best way to deal with articles that "fail" them is to delete them. DHowell (talk) 04:02, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Ned, I think you are missing the point, and it's perhaps because you have been so focused on articles about fiction that you don't see that the same problems you describe exist in every other area of Wikipedia. Articles about schools, small towns, local broadcast stations, and sports teams can attract just as much original research and "fancruft" as articles on fictional characters and settings. But we don't (or we shouldn't) solve the problem by simply deleting or redirecting large numbers of subtopic articles; we get rid of the original research and make sure the facts are verifiable to published sources, and merge and redirect if the content makes sense in a larger context. Also the content of the Santa Claus article is not the issue, the issue is that we shouldn't give special treatment to fictional topics just because they "don't physically exist". Things can be proven to be relevant and connected to the real world if real people write and publish material about them, and it shouldn't matter whether they do it creatively, in a documentary fashion, or analytically, as long as we recognize the real-world perspective appropriate for each type of coverage.

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Atlanta in fiction is a good example of an unfortunate casualty of this bias towards requiring "real-world" coverage from sources. I made the argument that an encyclopedic article could have been written (and if I had enough spare time, I probably could do it) about the concept of Atlanta as it is portrayed in various works of fiction. I even gave one academic source which could have been used in such an article. While the list may not have been that article, it would have served as a starting point for people willing to contribute towards writing that article. As it has been deleted, however, it is unlikely that a good article on this topic will ever form, unless I or someone else is willing to take the extensive effort to write an article which will pass the "recreation of deleted material" barrier. The wiki process is supposed to take imperfect articles and turn them, eventually, into quality content, but this process is hindered by inappropriate deletion of useful content. The closer's offer to userfy the content doesn't really help, as the wiki process just doesn't produce the kind of content in userspace that it would in mainspace articles.

No one is arguing that we go into depth on everything about every notable work of fiction. But we don't go into depth on everything about real-world items such as cities, towns, schools, companies, broadcast stations, and sports teams, either; we go into as much depth as would be appropriate based on the amount of published material there is available on the topic, with appropriate attempts to correct for systemic and FUTON biases. But we should not be restrictive the "types" of published material we can use, other than to say that material which is self-published or promotional is only appropriate in very limited contexts. DHowell (talk) 03:35, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Again fiction has it's own set of rules that don't apply to other articles. See WP:Plot. Ridernyc (talk) 03:50, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Living people have a set of rules that don't apply to other articles. I'm not sure the point of noting topic-specific guidelines and policies. -- Ned Scott 04:05, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I tend to get myself into hot water living persons articles lately.

"But we should not be restrictive the "types" of published material we can use," You are at the wrong talk page. You want WP:V or WP:RS. It sucks, I know, there's a lot of stuff I want to write about, but without sources it would be either original research or unverifiable by our standards. -- Ned Scott 04:05, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

If this article is just parroting PLOT and RS, then it's unecessary as a stop on the way to RS and PLOT and we should deprecate it. This page is a pet for people who don't like the way the larger community deals with fictional works. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 04:41, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Great idea in theory, but leaves a huge hole to be filled. And this certainly is not a "pet" for one side of a dispute or another. -- Ned Scott 04:50, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you think that I'm suggesting a change in V and RS, Ned. I acknowledged that self-published sources get special treatment, and that is grounded in the existing verifiability policy and reliable sources guideline. An example of a "questionable source" as it relates to fictional topics, in my mind, might be a homoerotic story about James T. Kirk and Spock, even if it was published in a notable magazine or by a notable publishing house. Such a source could not be used to claim that Kirk and Spock are gay, but they still could be used as a source for the claim that Kirk and Spock have been the subject of homoerotic fiction, if there are many such published stories and they have been read by a significant audience. When talking about fictional topics, I believe that fictional sources are "reliable sources", especially if they are authorized by the creators of the fictional elements. Fictional topics are defined by the fictional sources which write about them, making them the most reliable sources available. And mainstream published companion guides, articles, and papers which analyze or criticize plots (even without without noting any "real-world" information or context) should also be considered reliable sources for Wikipedia articles. The essay describing examples of reliable sources, which I think has far more consensus then any of the recent versions of the fiction notability guideline, even suggests a looser, not stricter, application of WP:RS for fictional topics: it acknowleges that articles related to popular culture and fiction may be backed up by sources that in other contexts would be considered "unreliable sources" and, "When a substantial body of material is available the best material available is acceptable, especially when comments on its reliability are included." DHowell (talk) 04:57, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you're getting at. Though many would still consider that "real-world" information, because we're talking about how someone made those works because of their experience with the original work of fiction. Adaptations and inspiration into other works do rightly help indicate notability. I have no problem with such sources (provided it's more than a passing reference to pop-culture). -- Ned Scott 05:02, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I do feel we can allow "1.5 sources" that are primary sources but that give insight into development and reception and other real-world topics. But even if such "1.5 sources" go into extensive plot details, WP is not a place for detailed plot information. We can summarize enough to understand the real-world notability (which as we are writing, includes discussion at a low depth of coverage the characters, settings and other aspects), and we can use such materials as additional references or external links, but we cannot build extensive plot sections based off that information without violating WP:PLOT (which is policy, not guideline). But as Ned states above, we can talk about influences, we can talk about notable critical commentary, and the like, for fictional elements. --MASEM 05:09, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Currently, the guideline suggests that sources must specifically discuss "information such as sales figures, critical and popular reception, development, cultural impact, and merchandise", and that sources which demonstrate critical and popular reception and cultural impact without discussing it are forbidden. I think one of the problems we are having (demonstrated by your "1.5" designation) is confusing the distinction between "primary" and "secondary" sources with the distinction between "in-universe" and "out-of-universe" sources. What you call "1.5 sources" I would simply call "primary sources covering out-of-universe information". What many are calling "primary souces" (e.g. derivative fiction, companion guides), I might call "secondary sources covering in-universe information". With these definitions, the general notability guideline can be satisified by in-universe secondary sources, and the plot policy can be satisfied by real-world out-of-universe primary sources. The absolute demand for secondary real-world sources is what I am generally objecting to, even though I agree that they should certainly be used if available. DHowell (talk) 05:32, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree (and as you see in my present rewrite) that secondary and primary sources that discuss real-world aspects are appropriate to demonstrate notability (reading the current mess going on at WP:NOR and WP:PSTS and considering WP:N as guideline, there's certainly leaway for this aspect in there). And while I certainly recommend sourcing the secondary guides to help support the plot, if these only covered the plot, they do not help to demonstrate real-world notability. (Mind you, it is very likely that if a work of fiction has a non-self-published guide, it is likely a notable work of fiction). --MASEM 05:49, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I concur, and i think other perspectives are much too narrow. Such things as sales figures and publication history are to my mind interesting bibliographic trivia. The important things about fiction are what is in the fiction. that's why people want to read or view it in the first place--otherwise the whole general topic would be of no interest, encyclopedic or otherwise. But I disagree with even the use of the primary-secondary distinction, and I think the discussion about it in WP generally is that there is not all that much for which the traditional WP distinction is applicable. What we want is the best source to provide the information that belongs in WP. the real question which we can not settle by verbal distinctions is what belongs in WP.

The only consistent meaning of in-=universe is that it represents the way in which fan fiction discusses the work as if the fictional universe were real--the way Tolkien presents his languages in the appendixes to the Ring. If we had to describe it in the categories used above, it would be secondary in-universe discussion--from an unquestionably reliable source. When Rowlands discusses what alternative plots there could have been, it's not in-universe, nor is it when we discuss what the plot is. When someone writes a biography of one of the characters as if it were a part of the series, that's in-universe. Quidditch Through the Ages is in-universe. A discussion of Quiddich treating it as a fictional game is not in-universe. The distinction is merely a guide to how to write the articles.

What matters is that we treat the major fictional concepts fully, depending on the importance of the work, and the importance of the concepts in the work. the main ones are plot, characters, theme, and setting. The subsidiary ones are authorship, publication, derivatives, and influence. that's what I propose as the basic guideline. DGG (talk) 05:56, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

I am pretty confident that that statement will not fly - given both PLOT and NOT, and that this is meant to be a general encyclopedia written for all readers, and not those that may have an interest in the work, plot details must always be secondary to the real-world aspects and influence of the work. You may consider those trivial bibliographic details, but in reality, that is what cements the work or fictional concept to the real world. Articles should first and foremost be based on these elements, and appropriate plot details can follow, but once again, there's issues of undue weight that means we need to stick to enough plot details to allow comprehension of the article otherwise. --MASEM 06:12, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

and yet again, If you want to change WP:Plot change the policy, don't write a guideline that tries to weaken the policy. Again this is the problem with this guideline. People keep talking about notability and that's not the issue at all. We all agree what is notable. What people don't like is WP:Plot. This guideline is just clouding the larger issue. I also think it is becoming clear there will never be consensus on this guideline. Even if we all manage to agree to something now, someone will just come along and change it in a week. At this point we can't even agree on what we disagree on. Ridernyc (talk) 10:39, 19 December 2007 (UTC)