Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction)

"Biography" of fictional characters

Well there seem to me to be 3 main elements where we could go next. First is to start figuring out a way to include lists which was planned eventually. The second is to find a way to incorpeate works of fiction themselves. Both of these seem to be assumed by a small, but signfigant number of people who commented on the RFC or this page. Because it specifically doesn't deal with those elements I believe we may be losing members there. We can also try and remove any information on how to write an article except to note that it shouldn't just be plot info and punt that over to WAF.じんない 21:50, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

WP:WAF is an interesting guideline, but it is a "style" rather than an inclusion or content guideline, which offers a real-world perspective as a "nice to have", when in fact it is rather important when considering whether a topic is suitable for inclusion as its own standalone article. For instance, it would be possible to create an article that is entirely comprised on in universe plot summary which passes WP:N, but the result would be an article which did not contain any encyclopedic content that would still fail WP:NOT. A major breakthrough in this draft is to add to the article inclusion criteria the requirement to include sources that view fictional topics from a real-world perspective. I think eliminating this requirement (if that is what you are proposing) would therefore be a mistake. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 23:49, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps then WAF needs to be redone at the same time as it seems to violate core polices from that perspective. My point was though we could note that it needs independant reliable sources to demonstrate real-world perspective, but then leave it at that. We can also define what sources could be used to meet the second prong, such as director commentary for characters and episodes. The difference comes with phrases like "Although part of coverage of a fictional subject is a concise plot summary, an article written entirely from primary sources is a warning sign that the subject might not meet the three-pronged test above." That seems to be crossing the line and telling people how to write the article, not what constitutes notability of fictional elements. Removing phrases like that, redirecting to WAF and cleaning up WAF to conform with core policies and guidelines is likely to garner more consensus as some reasons given why the proposal was too beurocractic was it had too much of a load-bearing nature.じんない 00:34, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

This version removes talk about how to write the article without actually removing the impact of notability and the importance of sourcing.じんない 00:48, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Since we now seem to agree to the time being to put this as an essay, should we start seeing where we could gain most consensus? Perhaps we should start seeing how to incorporate lists since we weren't doing it before because of the pressure to become guideline. Right now that pressure is off.じんない 17:27, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I think the best step forward is to address how deep we should be covering fiction more under WP:WAF than here, with a notability standard possibly falling out of that. Are character lists and episode lists (standalone or not) always required? How do we write the "biography" of a fiction character? When we define what the shape of a fictional work coverage should be, we can then maybe define better notability standards for both articles and lists. --MASEM (t) 17:47, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Should I create a section there to discuss that or continue here?じんない 17:52, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

You can't write the "biography" of fictional character, that would be synethesis and in any case would be probably be over reliant on an in universe perspective to offer any tangible encyclopedic coverage. On the other hand, you could cite a broad range of real-world commentary from reliable secondary sources that would provide the context, criticism or analysis that can't be found on sites like Wookieepedia. Now that would be good. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 21:29, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Sure you can, just as you write a biography of a real person, by summarizing available sources, which for some characters may be across several different works of fiction. That said, a biography of a fictional character alone is not enough to justify an article (that's why we ask for real-world information), and nor do we want a fine level of detail. --MASEM (t) 21:41, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

You can't write a biography from summarising available sources: they have to be reliable and independent from the primary source, which is something Masem knows, but seems reluctant to state for some reason. Don't forget also, Masem, that you can't write a biography of a fictional character as they don't exist. It is all too easy to fall into the trap of writing about fictional elements as if they existed, which is what this proposed guideline is focused on; the inclusion of topics for which there is sufficient real-world coverage from reliable secondary sources to write an encyclopedic article from. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 22:01, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

You are mixing up our requirements for verification, for notability, and for avoiding original research. Information in articles needs to be from reliable sources, this does include the primary source. However, we need more than just the primary source for articles, that's what notability tells us. And we can't analysis the primary source beyond summation without the aid of secondary and independent sources. However, there is absolutely no restriction otherwise that primary sources can be summarized to create, for example, a fictional character history as part of a more complete article that has further in-depth analysis of the character; the only cautionary flag that needs to be raised here is WP:SYN. Of course, the summarizing of primary sources can be augmented by independent sources, but this is not always possible. The primary sources are verifiable. Just as plot summaries are accepted parts of complete articles on fiction works, a brief character history is acceptable in a article on a clearly notable character. --MASEM (t) 22:19, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

As Masem said, you can use primary sources to state facts such as age, occupation, etc. of a character if it's mentioned in the actual story. That is verifiable. Saying that because they are a doctor they have a PHD could be considered synthesis though as a fictional world may have fictional rules.

However just using primary or non-indenpendant sources is not enough for an article. Reliable third-party sources are still needed.じんない 22:25, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Apologies to Masem, I must have forgotten to mention synthesis as a potential pitfall. I am glad that he agrees with me that reliable secondary sources that are independent of the primary source could be allowed, at the very least, to augment a plot summary. But surely if an article were to be comprised of plot summary only, surely if would fail WP:NOT#PLOT, and if all of the sources cited were not independent, the the article would fail WP:NPOV? How would you avoid this "double bind"? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 22:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not. An article that consists of a character biography written with all other considers of WAF, V, RS, and NOR but lacks anything outside the bio is likely to be deleted as per NOT#PLOT. But if I have a reception or development or analysis section, I can still write a character history that itself only relies on primary sources and not violate any other policy. That's what I meant when suggesting the WAF approach - how best to compose a character "bio" as part of a larger article on the character or what else would need exist in addition to the primary-sourced "bio" to make the character article appropriate for WP. --MASEM (t) 22:46, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

What if that fictional character, say, appeared to support an objectionable political viewpoint, like anti-Semitism. How would you write a character history that itself only relies on primary sources? Does that mean you can't have articles about such characters if citing reliabe secondary sources that are independent "is not always possible"? Or would you allow such articles? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 23:05, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure Masem and Jinnai have their own views... but secondary sources are always helpful for a character bio section, they're just not necessary. You can write it from primary sources. But while you could have a section written entirely from primary sources, there are many guidelines and policies that come out against entire articles based on primary sources. So yes, some independent sourcing is a must... but an article need not be 100% independently sourced. Randomran (talk) 23:15, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

If the fiction character or other aspects of the fiction do not explicitly state the character is anti-Semitic, despite all the asides and other states that fall in line with that, we cannot summarize and make that last leap of faith without a secondary source. Recent example: Persona 4 has a character that pretty much is gay, but that word nor any equivalent is used in the game. He's stated to be scared of girls but that's it; going from that to "being gay" is synthesis. From a summary perspective, we could only say his social identity is confused. However, there are secondary sources that assert that he is gay, and that's been used to assert the character is gay or appears to be so (the company that made the game stated they left it open). But if that source did not exist, I would not be able to say that. That's why its always good to keep plot sections short - the longer they run, the more likelihood something like this could slip in there. --MASEM (t) 23:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Even given Masem's point though, you couldn't directly go out an say he's gay. That would be saying that someone knew better than the creator what he was creating, which is impossible. You could say he appears to be gay or has gay-ish tendencies (i think there is a word for that...), but if the neither the primary source nor the creator (in this case the company or the writer/producer) do not say anything then you cannot. Fictional items are a bit different from real-life and therefore to use secondary sources as sythesis can only be done as a qualified nature, even by experts, because they cannot know what the creator was thinking. The exception is if they interviewed the creator. Pyschology studies can and have been done on characters, but if you read them they never really outside state anything as abosulute unless it was observable.じんない 23:56, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

In other words, what you and Masem are saying that without reliable secondary sources that are independent of the primary source, you cannot create a stand alone article that discusses controversial characters based on primary sources alone. On this point, I must agree with you, as I think there may be an underlying misconception that probably has not been stated explictly up to now; since most fictional elements are relatively harmless and uncontraversial in nature, there is no need to apply rigorous inclusion criteria in all cases, a misconception I do not support myself. Of course this premise breaks down when fictional characters are based closely on real-world persons. For instance, most people would recognise Amon Goeth as being an evil anti-Semite, but how could you describe a fictional adaptation based on him from primary sources? In order to disucss any historical novel with a contraversial charcter such as Schindler's Ark, or any work of fiction for that matter, surely it is clear that only coverage from reliable secondary sources independent of the primary source offer the only possibility of balanced article? It seems to me that there may be an underlying misconception that fiction is unbiased, and that the requirements for balance, independent sourcing and real-world perspective can be obtained from "verifiable plot" summary, when in fact they can't. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:53, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

There's two issues here, that need to be separated. The first is the assignment of any controversial description to a fictional character or aspect from primary sources. Whether anti-Semitic, gay, racist, whatever, either the primary source needs to explicitly state that, or a secondary source affirms that; it is OR otherwise to assume that because, for example, a character is shown to have an intense dislike of a former friendly character after learning that he is Jewish that first character is anti-Semitic. This is where, more importantly, secondary sources that evaluate and analyze works can help, but they aren't needed. If no secondary sources are there to establish the connection, the connection cannot be made.

The second aspect is balanced coverage per NPOV. If the story in the work of fiction is already politically charged (say Song of the South), then just like our policy on spoilers, we cannot change that POV in describing the plot itself; it is what it is and it is not our place to rewrite it to be politically correct or balance the POV that the work itself gives. Now, if that work itself gains controversy (from independent sources), then our NPOV policy steps in and says that we need to cover both sides of it through third-party sources. This would be the same for an individual character or other fictional aspect should that also occur.

It is still possible to write a plot summary with the consideration of the above but without using secondary or third-party sources. The plot summary just has to avoid making any synthesis or OR, and needs to stay with the same POV that the original work had. --MASEM (t) 13:26, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with your only part of your first point, that only secondary sources can be used evaluate and analyze controversial fictional elements, e.g. to identify Amon Göth's character (played by Ralph Fiennes in the film) as a rabid anti-Semite. However, I part company when you say that secondary sources "can help", i.e. that they are optional; I would say that they are a necessity in these circumstances, and really are a mandatory requirement. To simply sumamrise the plot from the perspective of Göth's character as he appears in the primary source can't provide balanced coverage, compared with the real-world person - there is just no context to make any judgement about him. It is far better to not have an article about fictional element if no real-world context from relaible secondary sources can be found.

With regard to your second point, I agree that we cannot change the POV of the book or film itself, but simply to write a plot summary from the perspective of character without providing any context from reliable secondary sources is asking for trouble, particularly for contraversial characters. As stated on the talk page for the article Uncle Remus from Song of the South, "While the Uncle Remus stories are amusing, it doesn't take into account that race relations cast into a comedic form were easier to believe and accept as the real thing". I can't vouch for validity of this statement, but I would say this would be a one of many important question that you would expect to be addressed in an encyclopedic article about a contraversial character. Again I would argue that it is far better to not have an article about fictional character if no real-world coverage from relaible secondary sources can be found, because without such sources, the topic's coverage is encyclopedic without them.

Overall I would conclude the for these reasons, reliabable secondary sources that are independent from the primary source are a necessity, not just niece to have:

In conclusion, I don't think you can have balanced encyclopedic coveage of ficitional topics unless WP:FICT follows this approach. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 14:32, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

I think you're using a narrow exception to invalidate the whole rule. "Halo begins when Master Chief awakens from his cryogenic sleep... he goes on to fight the Covenant." That can entirely be verified in primary sources. See WP:PRIMARY for more information, which says that we can use primary sources to verify all kinds of facts. However, it also says we can't use primary sources to make interpretations. WP:V and WP:OR also say that we use more reliable sources for material that is likely to be challenged, including controversial claims. Or synthesis, for that matter, which is clarified in WP:SYN: making original links between a fictional character and a real one is original research to push a point of view. If you're the first person to say "so and so is based on such and such, who was an anti-Semite in real life", then you probably shouldn't add it. But this isn't a reason to require secondary sources for every single verifiable claim. If you disagree, go ahead and change WP:PRIMARY, but I doubt you'll get consensus for it. Randomran (talk) 16:13, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Randoman has what I was trying to get at; if the primary source does not state that Amon was anti-semitic despite a list of actions and statements that the character states that fall right in line with that, we cannot make that leap of logic to call him that. Only a secondary source can be used to establish that. There are some more descriptive elements that can be summarized without inference, but anything that is potentially charged or challenged, typically dealing with character motivations and intentions, needs to either be stated with support from secondary sources, or can't be stated at all if only using the primary source to summarize the plot. --MASEM (t) 16:58, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you on along a broad front: only those reliable sources that are independent of the primary source that address the subject directly in detail using the real-world as the primary frame of reference, and no original research is needed to extract the content, should be used to label characters as having certain subjective characteristics. However, where I differ from Masem is that these sources are a necessity in themselves and are more than just helpful. Plot summary on its only simply regurgitates the primary source without providing any context, and hoping that it will result in balanced coverage is simply naive, and from an intellectual standpoint is defective and deficient, which is one of the reasons why WP:N requires more than just primary sources to provide objective evidence of notablility. Going back to the earlier example of Song of the South invoked by Masem, you just can't give characters like Uncle Remus the encylopedic coverage they deserve using only primary sources, since primary sources don't provide any real-world context about the circumstances in which the author (Joel Chandler Harris) created the characters, or provide any commentary about the society which the author sought to portray. WP:FICT has to move away from the idea that we can justify a standalone article using primary sources as a point of reference as part of the three prongs, since a work of fiction is written from the in universe perspective of the author, and the only way to write an encylopedic article about fiction is to start from real-perspective in which author's point of view is subject to comentary, criticism and analysis. Plot summary is a good servant but a poor master, since it is is useful if it augements coverage from reliable sources that are independent of the primary source, but it result in failing WP:NOT#PLOT is used on its own. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 21:57, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not saying that an article about a fictional character can be sourced only to the primary; we've already agreed that some real world aspect is necessary. What I'm trying to assert is that given that all other parts of the character's article help it to meet notability requirements, the sourcing the character's bio can be only sourced to the primary, but cannot engage in original research or POV-skewing and requires secondary or third-party sources to make claims that aren't explicitly stated in the work. Most likely if such sources are needed, they will help meet notability guidelines, but not always. Basically, these are two separate but often overlapping issues. Which comes back to my original point, when I say we should explore WAF as to how to write character bio's this is meant to be assuming that either the character bio is part of an article on larger coverage of the work of fiction, or that hte bio is supporting a single article about the character that has more information about the character's notability. --MASEM (t) 22:29, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Again I disagree, because you can't write a biography about a fictional person - they just don't exist, and think you are falling into the trap of relying on an in universe perspective as a point of reference. Fictional characters form part of a work's narrative and it requires original research to extract only those parts of the primary work relating to a particular character. For instance, the article about Uncle Remus only makes if it contains real-world commentary, crtiticism or analysis from reliable secondary sources that are independent of primary source as his role has already been summarised in the article about the work from which he is derived. On the one hand a concise plot summary is appropriate as part of the larger coverage of a fictional work, but to then use original research to extract a "bio" of a character from that summary seems to me to an example of be spliting a work of fiction again into ever more minutiae of detail treatment, with each split normally lowering the level of significant real-world coverage contained in an article. With each split there is a loss of context, so I can't support your views on this issue. It is clear that the only those characters that are subject of real-world coverage from reliable secondary source that are independent of the primary source can be presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article. Those that don't are merger candidates, since there is more encyclopedic coverage in the article about the fictional work if it provides more context than the standalone article about a character that provides none. To paraphrase Jinnai's earlier statement, Although part of coverage of a fictional work is a concise plot summary, an article about a fictional element written entirely from primary sources is a clear indicator that the topic does not satisfy the inclusion criteria for a standalone article. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 07:54, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Broadly you are both right. In some instances it is possible to provide a "biography" of a character, where primary or secondary sources already have. But for a stand-alone article, generally the article should rely on independent sourcing and be written from an out of universe perspective. But that's already enunciated in WP:PLOT, WP:N and WP:WAF. That's why I feel this page is redundant. We already have what tools we need, we just need to coach editors on how to use it. We shouldn't be arguing amongst ourselves here, we should be improving articles by finding and adding sources wherever possible. Hiding T 12:53, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

• Again I disagree. Biography is about living persons (hence "bio"), not fictional ones ( "fictography"). It is possible to write a fictive biography, but that is a seperate literary genre which is why I think why Masem's viewpoint is at least suggesting that original research, which it not allowable elsewhere in Wikipedia, could be acceptable for fictional characters. Although these issues are enunciated elsewhere, they need to be brought into this guideline. If I amend Jinnai's earlier statement again, I think this will become clearer when it is added to WP:FICT:

Although part of coverage of a fictional work is a concise plot summary, an article about a fictional element written wholly from an in universe perspective is a clear indicator that the topic does not satisfy the inclusion criteria for a standalone article.

Because of the dual nature of fiction which is covered from both a real-world and an in universe perspective, we clearly need a guideline, as there appears to be a lot of misunderstandings about this issue, even amoungst seasoned contributors to these discussions :p --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 14:48, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Again, let's start from the point that we assume we have an article about a fictional character because notability is met; the focus here is on the "biography" section of that article - not the greatest term, but reflects a summary of the character's history throughout the fictional works that they've appeared in. Constructing such a summary/bio from the primary works in of itself is not original research much in the same way summarizing a real person's life from first and third-party sources is. There is the potential to introduce OR and POV to this (again, if Amon is never explicitly stated to be anti-semitic despite numerous actions towards that, we cannot explicitly call him that if we only rely on the primary source), and that is often done when summary/bios are written purely from a fan perspective or in-universe approach. But this can happen in any article outside of fiction as well, it's a matter of which WP editor and what their ultimate goals are that might cause this to happen. Now, a summary/bio of a character can be enhanced by the addition of secondary sources to affirm inferences that could not be made due to OR/POV, and to third party sources to affirm more contentious facts about a character, but as long as the OR/POV line is not crossed, a summary/bio that accurately condenses the primary sources is completely appropriate in this case.

The point here is that the general act of summarizing sources (fictional character or otherwise) in itself not a violation of original research - that's how this entire encyclopedia is built. What is the problem is when certain edits step over the line and inject OR and POV into the summary. For fiction, directing people towards out-of-universe writing and focusing less on in-universe aspects of fiction is what helps prevent and/or catch OR/POV violations in the summation of the primary source. --MASEM (t) 15:13, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Gavin's not totally wrong, though. It is nearly impossible to summarize a character without committing some original research. One reader's "pious minister" is another reader's "deluded religious fanatic" or "manipulative con artist". I was surprised to discover in high school that my teacher and I had read two entirely different books named The Scarlet Letter, and that came about primarily because of our worldviews: she saw Dimmesdale as a good man tortured by his sin, and I saw him as an inherently evil man that was mildly insane. We could never agree on an interpretation of the book, primarily because we held diametrically opposing views on the value of religion in society. That's why I prefer to see even plot summaries and character descriptions that are rooted in reliable secondary sources ... I note, for example, that the Wikipedia article follows my teacher's perspective, and it does so by quoting a reliable literary critic.—Kww(talk) 15:33, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Same problem can happen real articles too. Adjectives and adverbs should be used very sparingly when writing articles for exactly this reason unless it's clearly given by sources. And yes, there's been a recent trend to at least assist plot sections with secondary sources whenever they can be used, but I would say we're a long way from requiring them (namely that but for a few types of fictional work, the full plot is rarely discussed to any length). --MASEM (t) 15:40, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why you'd write anything other than "priest who undergoes some physical or mental anguish". That's what's verifiable in primary sources. And this is a problem that occurs for secondary sources as well, by the way, as people are trying to find the most neutral and descriptive way to summarize what someone actually said, rather than trying to push a point of view. Interpreting sources (or, to put it better, un-interpreting sources) is just part of what we do. The best way to do it is by WP:CONSENSUS. Randomran (talk) 15:50, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I think Masem and Randomran are trying to paper over the cracks in their arguments. Of course there is a difference between summarising the primary work (to provide context) and engaging in original source to describe a character, but the divide is very clear, not blurry as they suggest. For a start, you can't write a biography about a fictional character (I think you should acknowledge this guys!) since they are not nor never were alive (nor even human in scifi adventures), so constructing a biography from a fictional work is clearly original research, because it is a contradiction in terms!.
Think of it this way - constructing a "biography" about a fictional character is orginal research, since it involves cherry-picking scenes and events from the primary source which only affect that character, and stacking them up in a way that makes it appear that the character has a seperate existence. From the perspective of the primary work, fictional characters are an inseperable part of the narrative, they can't standalone because they are part of larger work. Sure, you can summarise the work as whole, but once you focus on a specific character, you move from plot summary which provides context about the the fictional work to a form of original research that provides none. The only context in which you can discuss or describe a fictional character as being seperate is in terms of the real-world commentary received from reliable secondary sources that are independent of the primary work, i.e. if a character is the subject of real-world commentary then it does existence but only as a ficitonal topic. I admit this is a very subtle distinction, but you have to realise that the way we think of fictional characters is itself a type of literary trope can be misleading; although we are used to describing them as existing, they only exist as having human characteristics in our minds, but in a enclcyclopedia, they can only exist as topics that are discussed fictional constructs. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 16:18, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I acknowledge calling them "bio"s is misleading, but we can't ignore the fact that such "bio"s are part of character articles with otherwise established character notability. See both Homer Simpson and Superman, two FAs. The former has a very brief but summary description of Homer that pulls from episodes; the latter has a bit more depth (both "character" and "powers" sections) but it is also supported more by secondary sources. In both cases, we are pulling highly summarized details from a vast number of sources (more than 200 in both cases) to present the basics to establish the rest of the article in context. Not every character article may have the wealth of secondary information about that, but we know that needs to be there for the article to be there, but the "bio" aspect - whether we call it "biography", "role within the work" or whatever, is also part of these articles and needs to be exactly a brief summary of the character. The counter to this, which I completely agree is inappropriate in its depth, is something like Hiro Nakamura (the character from Heroes); the character passes the notability guidelines (there's creation infomration, and I'm pretty more secondary can be found) but here's where the "bio" approach is bad; it's not that any of this is original research, but it doesn't summarize, it lists out each action. That's why these sections should be more summary of the role. --MASEM (t) 16:40, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I am glad that you acknowledge calling them "bio"s is misleading, but it is the intent to constuct a biography about a fictional character that is the problem, not how "biography" is labeled. I say again, you can't construct such biography without using synethesis; such a biography does not exist in the primary source, so creating one is original research. The same principle applies to secondary sources as well - unless the source itself contains a "fictography", then the construction of one is still original reasearch, because the plot is distorted when it is used to create little "sub-universes" in which only the character inhabits. In the example of Homer Simpson, it is clear that what is happening is that coverage from more notable topics such The Simpsons series itself, or notable episodes therefrom, are being "recycled" to create this form of synthesis. This form of synthesis is most clear from the article Characters of Kingdom Hearts, where the primary sources are cited so you can see how the synthesis is formed: narrative and events are used to construct identities for the characters that are seperate from the game, but the game does not provide this information directly. What this article does is to construct a series of literary tropes that create the illusion that the characters do exist seperately by using synthesis, when in reality the narrative and events cited were created as part of the overall game. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 17:18, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

That kind of strict interpretation of WP:OR is completely inconsistent with the actual policy on WP:PRIMARY sources, and does not apply to numerous featured articles that make liberal use of primary sources. Of course, these are featured articles because they also have reliable third-party sources, but these kinds of sources are most important for information about development and reception. Randomran (talk) 17:37, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

To put the record straight, WP:PRIMARY supports the use of primary sources to describe the plot about a work of fiction. Just to remind you plot is the primary sequence of events, summarizing it it is used to provide context. Nowhere in WP:PRIMARY does it say that plot can be selectively sliced and diced to provide coverage a about an element of fiction; this type of synthesis can at best described as "fictography", which is a literary genre, not legitimate form of encyclopedic coverage. Whilst I acknowledge your point that summarizing or rephrasing source material without changing its meaning is not synthesis, selectively slicing and dicing the plot so that the primary sequence of events is, the effect of which is primary function of summarizing the plot - to provide context - is lost. This is an important point, because allowing prohibiting synthesis in the form of fictography is what seperates Wikipedia from Wookieepedia. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:28, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Wookieepedia was created upon the suggestion of the WMF Board of Trustees. At the time, Angela and Jimbo Wales were both on the board, and both founded Wikicities (which was later renamed Wikia), which hosts Wookieepedia. Much Wikipedia content was moved to Wookieepedia because of a user (who was later banned) nominating scores of Star Wars related articles for deletion.

What separates Wikipedia from Wookieepedia is that Wookieepedia exists to generate a profit and Wikipedia (supposedly) does not. Wookieepedia also does not have any policies or guidelines that advise users to move content to Wikipedia, as far as I know. Yet Wikipedia, strangely enough, has a policy and a a guideline which advises users to move content to a for-profit wiki founded by Jimbo Wales. It's rotten. --Pixelface (talk) 04:06, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

As best as I can tell, no WP policy page says material not suitable on WP should be transwiki'd to Wikia - if any policy/guideline does say this, it is always to a GFDL-compatible wiki (which, btw, if that wiki is GFDL, the information can be moved back to WP if it meets our standards - transwiki works both ways). There are some examples of possible wikis that include Wikia sites, and some projects may point specifically to a Wikia site for that added information, but no policy/guideline page says "transwiki to Wikia" for exactly the reason of making sure that it doesn't give the appearence that our policies are aiding in filling Wales' wallet. If you do know of one that says this specifically (again, not as an example), that needs to be found out and fixed. --MASEM (t) 04:43, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Masem, I already told you this at WT:NOT, in December, in this thread. Search for "05:33, 7 December 2008." And you yourself mentioned me removing mentions of Wikia from policy pages in the user RFC on me you wrote. Look for "or references to Wikia" in User:Masem/RFC (oldid). The policy WP:NOT and the guideline WP:WAF both plug wikis hosted on Wikia. WP:WAF has plugged Wookieepedia since the day it was created — March 27, 2006 — which just happens to be the same day that a press release came out saying Wikicities was renamed Wikia.

WP:NOT and WP:WAF may not use the exact words "transwiki to Wikia" but they don't have to. By mentioning Wikia as an alternative outlet, the effect is the same. Content being removed from a non-profit site and placed on a for-profit site. Content that was not generating a profit for Jimbo Wales begins to generate a profit for Jimbo Wales — because a Wikipedia policy and a Wikipedia guideline is directing people to do so, and yet somehow Wikipedia purports to be a non-profit site. Wikia content is licensed under the GFDL, which is why I cannot understand when you've said fiction content "can harm the free content mission" of Wikipedia or why people get so upset about fair use pictures in Wikipedia articles, and not upset about fair use pictures in Wikia articles. Where are all your objections about fiction content hurting the "free content mission" of Wikia? --Pixelface (talk) 10:40, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

They mention the Wikia sites only as examples of external wikis, but not as a list of choices to transwiki information to. I again note that the possible collusion between Wales and Wikia has been discussed at length and been determined to not be an issue with the way our policies are written. If you feel that a reevaluation is necessary, then you should open up a new discussion at one of the pumps (WP:VPP likely, since it should be consistent throughout all policy/guideline) Note that the GFDL only covers the text portion of articles, not non-free images and not even those from commons. And yes, people get upset over excessive non-free image use on en.wiki, and that's because the Foundation has charged us with keeping that to a minimum. --MASEM (t) 12:46, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Failed or essay

This is no longer a proposal. There is no consensus, despite it being on the burner for longer than any other proposal in the history of Wikipedia. The wording of the {{Failed}} template spells it out:

I'll repeat the text: A failed proposal is one for which a consensus to accept is not present after a reasonable amount of time, regardless of continuing discussion.

That neatly sums up the situation here. There is no consensus. The amount of time given has been more than reasonable. The continuing discussion is going nowhere, and has to stop at some point. Regroup, rethink, and come back with a NEW proposal. Meantime, give this one a rest, and stop calling for RfCs and Central Discussions.

There is the option of going for {{Historical}}

Or {{essay-project-note}}

Or {{essay}}

My feeling for some time is that this should be tagged as {{essay-project-note}}, as the good work will remain, and people can still consult it for guidance. I'll be bold and tag it as such, as we have reached a point where discussion is not making progress, and some action needs to be taken to end this. SilkTork *^YES! 22:08, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Reasonable also is also flexible. Per the scope of the proposed guideline and it's previous history, that it hasn't reached consensus yet I doubt this is failed. If after another 6 months it still hasn't I might be more inclined. Reasonable also holds that when we have exhausted all known avenues to gain consensus. We haven't. We srill have some I listed right above at a minimum.じんない 22:25, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

As I've said above (e.g. [1]) reverting back to an earlier version and using that as a basis to build more of an essay about notability in fiction seems the best approach. If we did that then {{essay-project-note}} seems the ideal approach. (Emperor (talk) 23:11, 26 March 2009 (UTC))

I think the essay is something that people will be able to live with, since there is a wide amount of support for this guideline, and a lot of the opposition isn't based on disagreement but based on hostility to rule creep. That said, I'd also support continuing on with this proposal, since I still don't think anyone has shown a worthy alternative. And likely, if no one offers a worthy alternative after a couple of months, I think we'll ultimately end up with some kind of improved version of the current proposal. Randomran (talk) 23:15, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I second that. This is an important proposal if the length and depth of the discussion is anything to go by, and is likely to continue to be so. However, this is more than just a talking shop, as I think the contributors to this proposal want to provide useful guidance to other editors, not just express their own personal opinions. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 23:35, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I suspect a lot of us have been meeting such issues and are developing ways to deal with these issues within the respective projects. I see this as drawing the general principles together into one place where they might help others deal with them when they run into them (so we don't go reinventing the wheel). Personally I'd like to see ways of improving or preserving things that are not a complete notability failure, as it is this grey area, especially in fiction that seems to be the sticking point. (Emperor (talk) 23:43, 26 March 2009 (UTC))

Failed is my first choice, but I know enough editors support this effort, and I respect that, so I think essay, in whatever form is a good comprimise. Ikip (talk) 02:06, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Ikip on this. {{Failed}} is my first choice since this allows falling back to WP:V and WP:NOTE. I question keeping this version of WP:Notability (fiction) as an {{Essay}} because it would be a conspicuous contradiction of policy, ignoring the requirement for third-party sources under some circumstances. However, if it is felt that progress can be made toward a more broadly acceptable compromise under a different header template, then okay whatever. Next discussion please. / edg ☺ ☭ 12:49, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

An essay tag would still mean that the fallback position is NOTE and V, but it does state that there's some truth that these (or at least NOTE) is not held absolute at AFD. It gives honest, but unenforceable, advice about how to write a fiction element article to avoid the swath of AFD. --MASEM (t) 13:19, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

{{essay-project-note}} is for notability essays created by WikiProjects. It doesn't apply here. --Pixelface (talk) 07:55, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

And it all started back in mid-2007 with my initial draft... I basically stopped participating in the discussion by September of that same year, and I guess none of the variations since have been able to strike a compromise. A real pity, and something we should be ashamed of. — Deckiller 02:51, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Failed is my first choice as well, but out of respect for all the hard work that's been put into it (even though personally this proposed guideline has been the bane of my existence for some time), I think it should be tagged as an essay. Steve Crossin ^Talk/₂₄ 03:25, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Failed or essay are both fine by me. Fram (talk) 07:43, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I think this is a guideline that eventually needs to be established. However, if taking it off the "proposed" burner would take the pressure off and allow some creative work to be done, then by all means keep it as an essay til we have something better to propose. I agree, I don't think all avenues have been exhausted. Have we considered appointing a committee or small group to work on this, perhaps we would have more success if there weren't a hundred voices talking at once and pages of conversations to read every day. --Kraftlos (Talk | Contrib) 10:00, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

• I can't see a committee working. That was tried before with a a few participants working up a proposal to present to the community. My impression is that it failed because of one comma. That should demonstrate to everyone the ridiculousness of the situation and the need to move on. The page was fine until people saw a need to bring it in line with WP:N. To my mind that rather missed the point that WP:N already existed, so we didn't need to make a second one. WP:V, WP:PLOT, WP:WAF and WP:N are already in existence. From memory, we started from WP:NPOV, and that wasn't enough, so we added WP:NOR and WP:NOT, and then that wasn't enough, so we added WP:V, and then that wasn't enough, so we added WP:FICT, and then that wasn't enough, so we added WP:PLOT and that wasn't enough, so we added WP:N, and that wasn't enough, so we added WP:WAF, but that wasn't enough, so we rewrote WP:FICT, and then that didn't work, so we added WP:PLOTSUM, but that didn't solve everything so we... We're just arguing over the same line in the sand. We just keep moving further down the beach. It's pointless. There's no guidance that is going to work beyond telling people to debate the issue civilly on any given article and reach a consensus. All the guidance in the world and more is already there. One more page will solve nothing. Deckiller's proposal was fine in theory, but failed in practise per two arbitration cases. The problem's started when everyone insisted their way was the best way forwards. The best way forwards is different for every single article. Give it up. Go work on articles, work out what to merge, what to delete and what to keep, and see if people agree with you, and accept it both when they do and when they don't and don't be a dick about it either way. That would go a long way to solving all the issues. Hiding T 11:33, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I think I've found a good compromise. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 20:39, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Time to get started on Wikipedia:Notability (llamas) then. --MASEM (t) 21:47, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I see it as failed myself, llamas, aside. However, the work of many pro-fict and con-fict editors in this discussion is to be praised and appreciated, as it shows the processes of Wikipedia have not been petrified with age. It lives! Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 23:29, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

• It is hard to tell just what part of it haas fairled, in which version, or what which reason. Some of what is said here is generally accepted, some is disputed. Marking it as failed might be incorrectly taken to indicate the entire line of thought was rejected as an approach, which is not the case. Thus an essay tag is best -- probably the one for essay--notability DGG (talk) 22:31, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

8 out of 10 llamas which expressed a preference.... Discussion has been up for over 5 days, and consensus is for an essay tag, and people have either suggested "any essay tag" or the notability essay tag. I'm removing from the cent template and marking the page with the notability essay tag. SilkTork *^YES! 07:21, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

An essay that "contains the advice...on how notability may be interpreted" is a proposed guideline in all but name. We can always run an RFC to formalise its status if need be.

--Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 07:32, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I have changed the tag to the simple "essay". The previous tag suggested that different projects actually endorsed the page, but it is not clear to me which projects this would be. Fram (talk) 07:42, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

is there interest in keeping the old proposal as an essay? or moving to something different?

Recently, User:Gavin.collins made pretty substantial changes to the essay. They resembled proposed changes from this discussion, which had no real support let alone consensus, back when this was still a proposed guideline. Now that the proposal is more essay than guideline -- it's the advice of one or more Wikipedians -- to what extent should it continue to reflect the old proposal? Would others rather take a kick at the can with something different?

I do think that there is some value to keeping the essay, because it's "the closest thing to a consensus guideline besides WP:N". But if enough other people want to move on and have this essay advocate for something noticeably different, I don't want to be the only editor holding this essay back. (Personally, we may as well just re-state WP:N with some qualifiers if we don't see much value to keeping the non-consensus proposal as an essay.) Randomran (talk) 13:30, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this page — whatever specific version is on top at the moment — represents any consensus; the pushmi-pullyu comment sums things up. This page will move on and this version will be in the history; that's the nature of a wiki. Recall Hiding's suggestion;

• When working out which fictional concepts to cover in Wikipedia, please bear in mind that if no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it.

How about we copypasta that to the page and give it a reasonable nutshell? I'd be fine with reasonable bits based on WP:N, too (not checked that talk-war, lately, but mean the long-standing 'N'). G'day, Jack Merridew 13:46, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I think that simplifies it too much. There are a lot of points in the failed proposal that approached a consensus but there's too much fine print to have gotten it there; as such they should be leave as an essay to provide that type of guidance. --MASEM (t) 13:59, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I can certainly see building it up a bit from there, or somewhere near there. I don't think locking this down with essay-status is appropriate long term; someday there will be a consensus guideline (or policy) on this issue and it will be on yon page. If anyone wants to fork this as an essay elsewhere, fine. I believe starting over with something small and based on long-held consensus is the best route forward. Build from there as discussions proceed. G'day, Jack Merridew 14:18, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

(EC) I didn't read anything about those changes that weren't in line with this essay's general values. I say let the essay evolve rather than stay the same, that's why we have a page history. I still think this page could be significantly shorter tho. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 13:49, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Man, you guys are chatty Cathies. The old Deckiller/Phil Sandifer proposal is here. I started something rudimentary. Feel free to shape it into any hooved ruminant you choose. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 14:25, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea of a fresh start. Chapter 2. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 14:53, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll defer to the consensus. If folks want to just move passed it and develop the essay, let alone a new proposal, go ahead and do your thing. Randomran (talk) 15:57, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Eventually it is going to be a proposed guideline - like earthquakes in Italy, the next RFC is only a matter of time. We have covered a lot of ground in our discussions over the last months and many new lessons have been learned. I feel agreement is due soon. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 16:34, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree 100%. The last thing I'd say is some cool-off time would probably help. I think virtually any proposal would be rejected now, just because people are a little exhausted. I've got nothing but patience though. Randomran (talk) 16:36, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

As it stands, this proposal - which amounts to a restatement of WP:N - has clearly failed to win consensus, and does not seem to me to be offerable as a good faith, serious proposal. I have replaced it with a simple description of the current situation. Phil Sandifer (talk) 19:01, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, although people have tried scrapping the GNG entirely, one proposal that hasn't been tried is just going straight for WP:N. It's not like pursuing the middle has resulted in a significant gain in support (maybe 10%) from the previous proposal, with 20% of editors still treating the proposed compromise as too exclusive. On the other hand, a solid 20-30% of editors felt the compromise was too inclusive, and too complex. WP:N might have more support than the compromise. Not that I'm holding my breath that it will work. But if people want to try it out, the worst thing that can happen is we rule it out, and people are forced to admit that we need a middle ground. Randomran (talk) 19:12, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

This has been tried - it explicitly failed to find consensus in the RFC. Phil Sandifer (talk) 19:15, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Do you have a link? I'm not saying I'm optimistic, but just that it hasn't been tried. If only for the sake of a reality check, it might be healthy to let them try and fall flat on their face. There's a good faith chance it could pass with support, unless you have an RFC where applying WP:N to fiction was rejected. Randomran (talk) 19:23, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

It was your RFC - Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:compromise. The idea that every spin-out article of a work of fiction needed to satisfy the GNG had less consensus than this proposal did. Phil Sandifer (talk) 05:18, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

You know, I would have loved to have closed that RFC properly if people could look passed their own narrow points of view. It seems that even so much as interpreting what other people meant with their !votes allows people to inject the same tired points of view into the debate, refusing to acknowledge that the numbers mean what they appear to mean. I agree with your interpretation of that RFC: there's not much chance that the GNG applies strictly to WP:FICT. But despite what you and I think, there's always the power of denial. I'm sure there are people who look at the RFC and *maybe* recognize that notability doesn't apply to all spinouts, but then turn around and say say "yeah, but you can't tell me that this exception to notability applies by and large to fiction". That's why there really would be value to closing that RFC properly: hidden between the numerical reaction to individual proposals reveals a few principles that have consensus, and a few approaches that are simply non-starters. But unfortunately, any independent party I've contacted to read through the RFC has fallen through. I'd like to think that what you said was a principle that became obvious from the RFC though: that it's evident that notability neither applies to no or all spinouts, but rather applies to a discrete class of "some", especially when it comes to lists. Randomran (talk) 05:45, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

@ Phil: You're too focused on TV. This page is supposed to be about all fiction. As I said a while ago, this is not about fiction, it is about TV episodes & characters; it is about pop-culture cruft — stuff that has been aggressively marketed at a target audience that shows up here, in all good faith, and serves as unwitting pawns of the marketing types. To properly sort this guideline, I still believe that a distinction needs to be made between fiction such as The Bard's, and the Buffyverse. These are merely two examples drawn for the prior discussion, but we all know the blocks of 'fiction' these refer too. There is certainly a lot of divergence of opinion on where to draw the line. I am tempted to boldly move your note to Wikipedia:Notability (TV episodes & characters), but will hold-off. In order to progress, this discussion needs to address the real subject that is at issue; it's not about universally-accepted-as-notable-fiction. Let's deal with the issues separately.

• Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction)/Archive 42#Non-Independent Sources
• Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction)/Archive 48#This isn't about fiction

G'day, Jack Merridew 08:52, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

In answer to Phil, I would agee with that WP:N is not a set of inclusion criteria that attracts support when applied to fictional topics, but neither have the altenatives to WP:N have obtained widespread support. In my view all the alternative proposals have failed through having the same achilles heal - they were based on subjective inclusion criteria, at the heart of which was an editor's personal opinion as to why a particular topic should get its own standalone article. The alternative proposals that have been discussed on this talk page (Spinoffs/outs, FEAPOLT, Consensus) have been based on inclusion criteria that tried to get around the requirement for objective evidence. I agree with Randomran we have to write a draft that does not try to evade WP:N, and agree with Jack that we have to look at fiction as a whole, not just elements or works. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 12:41, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I think the "look at the whole of fiction" is a bit of a red herring. We don't have significant disputes over the inclusion of details of Pride and Prejudice, so notability criteria in that area seem like instruction creep. The point is to solve the problem we have - disputes over popular culture articles. Phil Sandifer (talk) 14:49, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this is necessarily what is meant; I think the idea that once a work of fiction's notability is established, what are the steps and to the degree that fiction elements from that work are to be discussed and when should they be broken out to a separate article, such that the coverage of work of fiction is appropriately complete with not only a description of what happens in the work but also the reception/creation/etc. aspects --MASEM (t) 14:52, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

IMO, a reading of the RFC on this proposal is that the balance isn't going to get much better. Maybe a little more inclusive, but not much more if we want to keep most of the people who basically like notability. I think our best bet is to simplify. Accomplish roughly the same balance with fewer rules. But at this point, I'm willing to try anything, even if we're going to rule out everyone's pet proposal by trial and error until folks realize that only the center remains (wherever it is). Randomran (talk) 14:59, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

So Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) should say that for much of fiction, WP:N is the applicable bit; however, for fiction (pop-culture) we may need something else, something that would need to be hashed out. Now, right-off, that raises the question of why might we need something else? Why should there be any sort of lowering of the bar here? Frankly, that's the core of this dispute and I feel it amount to an WP:ILIKEIT argument. Second question is why should elements of fiction get a special case write-up? If the SigCov in IndRS in there, folks are on solid ground. If not, it is fancruft. G'day, Jack Merridew 15:24, 10 April 2009 (UTC) (ec w/rand (distracted by an email))

Because there isn't a consensus to treat fiction the same as everything else. It's pretty much as simple as that. But if you want to propose that WP:FICT = WP:N, I think you should. It would be a learning experience, at the very least. Randomran (talk) 15:41, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I think the real prerequisite is to gain a clear consensus on the proper role of an SNG. That was not apparent during that RFC, and really shapes what can be said in WP:FICT. If viewed as additions and extensions, pretty much anything goes. If viewed as a list of exclusions, the content is extremely restricted. If viewed as "source clarification", it's restricted again, but in a different way, because it's hard to truly contradict WP:N in the name of "clarifying sources". I think it's going to be hard to ever gain a real consensus on content unless you can gain a real consensus on the role the guideline plays.—Kww(talk) 15:50, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

It's late here, so brief and then I'm off. In a nutshell, why do the fiction/pop-culture fans assert that that material warrants an exemption? It seems to me that much of it boils down to an acknowledgment that the sources et al just aren't there, that they want whatever included anyway, and so the rules need a special case because that's the only way to get what they like immunity from Da Button. G'Night, Jack Merridew 15:56, 10 April 2009 (UTC) ec w/kww

I certainly agree that fictional topics don't need special treatment, such as an exemption from the WP:N. There is just no point in constructing an exemption from good quality sourcing - fictional topics benefit from being the subject of high quality coverage from a greater number and a wider range of reliable independent secondary sources than any other subject area. There is a lot of high quality sources just waiting to be harvested, and more is becoming available on the internet all the time. So you might ask, what is the point of having WP:FICT at all? The reason is as follows:

It is general consensus on Wikipedia that fictional topics should not be split and split again into ever more minutiae of detailed treatment, with each split lowering the level of significant real-world coverage contained in an article. This means that while a book or television series may be the subject of significant real-world coverage, it is not normally advisable to have a separate article on every fictional character, episode, scene or chapter that appears in a work of fiction, such that it contains only trivial information, plot summary on its own or coverage that is over reliant on an in universe perspective.

I won't go into the many reasons why many editors have an intense desire to split fictional articles in this way, but perhaps the desire to split fictional topics is associated with the imersive characteristic of fiction which provides the imputeus to act out or re-live fictional works - one of the reasons why fiction is the most popular form of narrative. However, the issue which WP:FICT needs to address is when that spliting is of benefit, in the sense that it provides encyclopedic coverage, or when the spliting is not beneficial, when it gives rise to WP:FANCRUFT. The difference is real-world coverage vs. fantasy-world coverage, which is why I have been proposing for some time time now that this guideline follow this approach:

The other issue why this approach is important is to provide a defence against WP:NOT at WP:AFD. Even well sourced topics can fail WP:NOT#PLOT if they are merely plot summary; it is important to understand that WP:N is not sufficient as a set of inclusion criteria on its own. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 17:09, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

What if we admit that it is the case that there's really no special lower bar for FICT, that WP:N satisfies, but at the same time realizing WP:N is only as strong as a guideline, and consensus at AFDs will override it? In this way, we can focus on WAF and help people style articles that will likely not be targets of AFD, including when and how to split articles, figuring out how to deal with lists, and so forth? --MASEM (t) 20:03, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

This seems a sensible approach; there really is no grounds to lower the bar for the pop-stuff. And while I realize that N is only a guideline at the moment and that AfD-consensus sometimes runs off the rails, I hope that some form of WP:N makes it to policy status at some point; see my view on that form bellow. If they wrote fewer 'articles' that were not in-universe, fewer of them would be taken to the block. G'day, Jack Merridew 07:17, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

In response to the age-old "why does popular culture warrant an exemption" question, I can only ask my own - given that we have shown over several years that we can accurately and thoroughly cover these aspects of fiction, and given that they provide actual utility and value, why should we delete them? Because Jack Merridew thinks they're useless cruft? Is that really the core of the argument?

For all the trumpeting of compromise, it seems worth laying down something of a line in the sand. The following seems to me inarguable:

1. Since its inception, Wikipedia has allowed articles on details of popular culture to be developed.
2. These articles are oft-used and amount to some of our most-read articles.
3. These articles are generally accurate, or at least no more inaccurate than any other subject area.

A proposal that increases their accuracy, increases their depth, and increases their usefulness is a good proposal. I am perfectly willing to accept that the threat of deletion is a useful motivator in improving the articles.

However, the fact remains - the articles we have are accurate, informative, and useful. Any solution that does not aim to preserve and improve that is not a compromise, and is not acceptable. Phil Sandifer (talk) 20:05, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I've no problem with the concepts of "accurate, informative, and useful", but I will point out that most articles on fiction, these are only "accurate, informative, and useful" for someone that has some passing knowledge of the work. To make these encyclopedia-friendly, they need to be "accurate, informative, and useful" to any reader, and that means we have to take a far-off, out-of-universe view of the works, and that where most fiction articles fail. That's not to say any in-universe details are bad and need to removed, and not that we can't expand more once we've satisfied "accurate, informative, and useful" to the general reader. It's just that there is a lot of pre-existing articles on WP in a poor state and new editors continue to want to add more that retain that state. --MASEM (t) 20:15, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Usefulness is specifically not a criterion for keeping articles.—Kww(talk) 20:33, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest that when you have stopped considering utility to your users as a criterion in decisions, you have successfully crawled beyond the point where two hands and a flashlight can possibly recover you.

I would also suggest that specialization is not a problem in and of itself, and that if we are going to purge articles because they require a minimum of a passing knowledge of the work, there are a ton of math and science articles that are far, far more serious offenders than fiction. Phil Sandifer (talk) 21:09, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I must agree with Kww - Masem's argument has used before, but carries no weight in the absence of objective evidence. In answer to Phil, you too should re-evaluate your arguments for the same reason. What you are really saying is:

1. Since its inception, Wikipedia has allowed articles on details of popular culture to be developed, i.e.WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS;
2. These articles are oft-used and amount to some of our most-read articles, i.e. WP:INTERESTING;
3. These articles are generally accurate, or at least no more inaccurate than any other subject area, i.e. WP:NOHARM.

All of these arguments follow well trodden paths which have used time and time again, plus, of course, their closing point: if you don't believe what Phil/Masem are saying, then thousands of articles will be deleted - and it will be your fault! I just don't subscribe to this line of thinking and with good reason: WP:FICT is primarily a set of inclusion criteria, not deletion criteria. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 21:18, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Er, you misconstrued what I said - I don't agree with Phil's point about usefulness being a basis to keeping articles; or at least, in terms of "usefulness" we're talking about them being as a useful research article for any general reader, not for someone to figure out it was Episode 34 when Major Character A was killed. However, you also need to realize that it's not objective evidence that retains articles, it's consensus. Having objective evidence helps a great deal, but at the end of the day, if consensus says to keep an article that violates a number of guidelines (such as lacking evidence of notability) but otherwise true to remaining policy, then it stays. --MASEM (t) 21:40, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Niether is WP:INTERESTING a criterion for keeping articles. See if you can come up with an original argument for dumping WP:NOBJ. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 21:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Guidelines are always secondary to consensus. That was the entire point of Phil's last draft of FICT - sometimes AFD produces results that are complete against guidelines but are kept. --MASEM (t) 21:46, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, Masem. Putting the phrase "I think it is the consensus view that..." in front of the arguments to be avoided in deletion debates does not make your arguments original nor valid. Claims that a topic is "notable/useful/popular/interesting/accurate/should be kept by consensus" must adhere to Wikipedia's policy on verifiability. In the case of notability, it is not enough to simply assert that a topic meets a criterion without substantiating that claim with objective evidence. These other criteria which you and Phil have pulled out of a hat are not supported by any objective evidence, and if they were, they would effectively be a restatement of WP:N in all but name. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 21:54, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I know that's a very ideal situation, that we require objective evidence every time for notability, but the fact that many AFDs close without it and that the last RFC on notability established that it is not standardized enough to be policy means that notability is as flexible as consensus allows it to be. It would be great if we could define more concrete rules of fiction elements that include objective evidence of notability that may be different than the GNG but still establish sourcing, but as the RFC here on FICT showed, to do that would require a lot of minute details being spelled out and otherwise creating a long useless document. We tried a more holistic approach with Phil's version and it fails when people wanted more details and then those details became points of arguments. Based on this, the best we can say on fiction is that consensus at AFD is the only determination with what is kept, but with the reminder that WP:N is considers a strong guideline that is followed and articles that fail to meet WP:N will likely but not always be deleted. And why a claim that there are no objective sources per WP:N at an AFD is likely going to weight more than a claim that "it's interesting and useful" -- but not always. WP:N is a baseline but it is fuzzy and appropriately so. That's why consensus leads policy and guidelines and not the other way around. Again, I stress that the last RFC on WP:N where it was suggested to make WP:N policy failed strongly - that's why we cannot be so focused on objective evidence but instead what is the best resulting articles that we want to get out from fiction elements to have included in WP. --MASEM (t) 22:10, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Congratulations, Gavin. You can cite essays in support for your points. Do you have an actual reason why we would want to change course and start removing accurate content that is actually used by our readers?

My point is not that the articles are interesting. Lord knows I don't find most of them the slightest bit interesting. My point is that they are informative. That people actually do *use* them. To learn information. If we discard that as a reason for doing something, we've discarded 'being an encyclopedia" as a reason. The fact that some idiot added "interesting" to a bullshit essay on arguments to avoid during deletion debates (and that is, incidentally, the single worst essay in the Wikipedia space) does not actually remove the fact that, as an encyclopedia, we are supposed to provide people with information. The statement "we should really stop providing people with this information" is an extremely weighty one for an encyclopedia. It generally needs an exceedingly good reason such as "the information is wrong," "the information is biased," etc.

Reference to "notability" for something that is known by millions of people does not pass the sniff test.

To this day, the advocates of heavy deletion of fiction have provided nothing resembling a shred of argument as to why we would want to stop providing accurate, useful information. They have cited essays, they have stamped their feet, and they have insulted people, but they have yet to give a single solitary reason that does not boil down to their own preference for mindless following of rules over actually providing a service to people.

So when we speak of compromise, please understand that my not demanding you (and I speak here of the deletionist side in general, and not Gavin who has shown himself to be far more reasonable than this) be banned from the project as the toxic cancer that you are is my first and largest concession. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:39, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Sheesh, 20Kb since last night. Was that all of the Evil Deletionist^® Cabal that you're so graciously deigning to allow to not be banned? ;) Seems you just called an entire block of editors a toxic cancer.

So, re Phil's three points:

1. You are arguing for a grandfather clause; i.e. we've been getting away with non-notable cruft for too long to be held to the rules; Bollocks to the rules!.
2. WP:POPULAR && WP:USEFUL; just because the proles like it is not grounds to consider something worthy of inclusion — the notion of notability is intended as an objective means of determining worthiness for inclusion.
3. {{totally disputed}} (someone know where that went?) — A core problem with the plot summary that is so common in many of the pop-culture/fiction 'articles' is that in the process of summarising the plot, many are engaged in a form of original research. They get to decide just what bits are important and how to interpret what a plot arc means. This is not their job; it's the job of the writers of the reliable independent sources — when they exist. <opinion>Many writing plot summary are doing so as a form fan fiction</opinion>

They call it TV programming for a reason; it's manipulative. They seek to influence behaviour and ways of looking at things, to make things seem more important than they are. There is no such thing as Must See TV^®. We do not have the issue of vast quantities of minutiae with most genres of fiction, only with a subset.

Millions of couch potatoes drooling slack-jawed as they gobble down their Poppycock^® does not make some element of fiction, say the Naugahyde^® covering on the back of the smaller Phaser^® models in Star Trek^®, worthy of inclusion here.

As to the argument that “Jack Merridew″ doesn't like it — sure, there's lots I don't like, but much of it is inarguably notable and reasonably sourced; such things are appropriate for inclusion, irrespective of my opinion. It's the highly questionably notable and bogusly sourced stuff that should meet a higher bar.

Strict adherence to WP:N is the center-ground; the other direction is raising the N-bar to define Independent as independent of the genre entirely, defining Reliable sources as those that are, you know, really reliable, Significant coverage as actually in-depth. WP:FANCRUFT is a pox on this project.

G'day, Jack Merridew 07:00, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

In answer to Phil and Masem, the guideline is not about article deletion, it is about article inclusion. The accusation that thousands of articles will be deleted as a result of amending this guideline is nonsense. Deletion is a matter of peer review at WP:AFD; we can't proscribe what editors should or should not do with articles that don't meet policies and guidelines.--Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:30, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

How does deleting so-called "fancruft" improve Wikipedia?

Having stayed away from this discussion for a while, I'd like to inject my two cents once more. I reject the idea that we should not keep articles that are useful, interesting, harmless, and supported by precedent and consensus, simply because there is an essay which says those arguments by themselves don't work very well in deletion debates. The converse position of this is that Wikipedia should ignore precedent and consensus and be useless, boring, and harmful. The absurdity of the converse position I hope is self-evident. You can cite all the policies and guidelines you want, but Wikipedia is not paper is still policy, consensus is still policy, preserve information is still policy, and ignore all rules is still policy. So given that, my question is: How does deleting and removing accurate, descriptive, informative, useful, interesting, and widely-read and widely-edited "fancruft" improve Wikipedia, or help us to maintain Wikipedia? Answer this question without quoting or referencing the Wikipedia namespace, and use objective evidence please. DHowell (talk) 01:19, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Conversely, Wikipedia is not plot is still policy, no original research is still policy, and verifiability is still policy. We don't—or shouldn't—make exemptions for fictional articles. If information is verifiable and not original research, I'd try to preserve it. For example, look at Seth Cohen. As I've never watched the O.C., I don't know what that article is talking about. I, as a reader, would be totally confused. Sceptre ^(talk) 02:12, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

If you don't watch the show, you wouldn't be looking for that article to begin with, and thus not confused at all. You normally don't stumble upon an article you aren't searching for, unless you were just looking for something to delete. There has been so much pointless destruction of long standing and well read articles in recent times, its absolutely sickening. Some people took it upon themselves to do everything they could to wipe out things they didn't like, without most people even realizing what was going on. We need a proper vote for all wikipedia users, to decide what should be and what shouldn't be allowed. Otherwise, whatever small number of deletionists keep guideline articles on their watchlists, and keep any reasonable changes from being made, will keep having their way. Remember, the policies and guidelines were determined by a very small percentage of wikipedia user. And consensus does protect some articles, usually those with a large enough fan base to defend them, from getting deleted even while identical article for less popular series are deleted. And see this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Dragons_of_Summer_Flame Even though being on the bestsellers list doesn't count for notability, and its suppose to meet all other guidelines, most people still say the article should be kept, even without third party media coverage. So there are some times when reason prevails, over wikilawyering. But too often the only people around at the time to participate in the deletion discussions, are those who want to delete everything they can get away with. Thus the reason we need to change policy itself, to demand a general election, so that we can find out just what the majority of wikipedia users really want, and then go with it. Dream Focus 03:28, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Whoa!! Assume good faith! I normally stumble upon many, many articles I'm not looking for, and to assume an editor does so for the explicit purpose of finding an article to delete is very poor faith! Several random (stumbled upon), low-quality articles I've found not meeting standards/policies I've reconstituted to do so, and some I've nominated for proposed deletion or AfD.

For what it's worth, I find the Seth Cohen article to consist wholly of culled snippets of plot lacking any relevance or connection to me the reader, when it should. Further, the article has no cited sources, although as I feel the editors involved meant to be citing primary sources, I've additionally tagged the article with {{primary sources}}. — pd_THOR ^{| =/\=} | 04:04, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't watch the show either, but I am not confused by the Seth Cohen article. If someone made a reference to Seth Cohen, and I had no idea who he was, this article gives me enough background and information to get a general idea of who the character is, and gives me enough information to find out more if I so desire. What is not understandable about this article? It could use improvement, sure, but that is true about most of our articles. What exactly would Wikipedia gain by the deletion of this article? By the way, minus points for both of you for failing to answer the question without referring to Wikipedia policy. DHowell (talk) 05:43, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Excessive coverage of fiction threatens the free content mission for Wikipedia; the more indepth we cover fiction, the more likely it will be considered as a derivative work, and thus burdened by IP that invalidates the free content mission. We admit we use some (WP:NFC) non-free content, but that's rationalized that's part of WP's educational goals. And while it's not an issue until Mike Godwin says so, there is also the issue that too much in depth coverage can lead to true copyright problems and potential lawsuits - but again, this is a far-displaced effect and only occurs if we break the free content mission to start with. And speaking of the educational goals: Knowing what a character did in every appearance of a show is not helpful - but at the same a brief description of the character is not unwarranted, and if that character is a significant figure from the work, then we can talk about that more. I don't believe more are fighting to wipe plot summaries and character descriptions from WP, but give them the appropriate weight for an educational text. --MASEM (t) 04:10, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but Mike Godwin has already said something on this, and what he said does not agree with you. See here. And I do think that at least some editors are fighting to wipe plot summaries and character descriptions from WP, or at least anything beyond a few sentences per work or character. DHowell (talk) 05:43, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

That's why I said that the actual copyright/legal aspects are not an issue until Mike says so. But philosophically, free content is still harmed by excess coverage (that's something Mike's not going to be able to provide legal advice on). Of course, people have subjective opinions by how deep coverage needs to go before the coverage becomes non-free content, but there's limit that is unstated but acceptable. No one is going to sue WP for breaking our free content mission, but the project should be considered a failure if we break it too much. --MASEM (t) 05:48, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Though it is repeatedly asserted, I've never been convinced by the argument that fair use "harms" or "breaks" the free content mission. Free content with fair use is still free content, and here's the kicker: because it is free content, you are free to remove the fair use content in your own copy and redistribute the "pure" free content to your hearts content. Fair use doesn't make free content "less free". It can, however make copyrighted content more free, by being fairly used in a free content context. Isn't this in line with the mission to "collect and develop educational content under a free license"?

Nevertheless, few have been arguing to remove plot summaries or reduce fictional coverage because of the free content mission. Look at the above arguments, they find an article about a fictional character "confusing" and "lacking relevance to me, the reader". But why their lack of ability to understand such an article should translate to not allowing anyone else to read or edit such articles here is incomprehensible to me. I wonder if they feel articles like supergravity or conjugate prior should be deleted for being largely incomprehensible to the average Wikipedia reader? DHowell (talk) 08:44, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

That's why free content is mostly philosophical - unless the Foundation comes down and issues an edict on how we approach content (such as they have with BLP and images/audio file NFC), it's where the consensus determines things to be a problem in terms of the mission. I see too deep a coverage being an issue, others don't.

But let's get to the other aspect I talk about and that's the "educational" aspect. I completely agree there are some hard math/science articles that are out there and presume deep knowledge of the topic before starting. In this fashion, there is just as much a problem with math/science articles as there are for a large number of fiction articles - they are not written for the layreader. And in the same fashion, cleaning up these articles to a point where we agree they meet the educational goal of the mission such that they are understood by all without getting too far into the weeds, and more importantly establishing context for the reader, may result in a good article - or it may result in the article being reduced from a 64k text that is mostly details to one or two usable paragraphs and thus difficult to assert the need for a full article. The only reason there's not a rash of math deletions is that they only represent on the order of 1,000 articles, while fiction is closer to 100,000 articles, a much larger scale.

Which brings around to the key point - there are deletionists that want almost no fiction covered, and then there are people like myself that want to see fiction covered as broadly as possible but in a way that meets the goals of WP. A fiction topic that fails notability does not mean we don't cover that topic but instead figure out where to include discussion of that topic on WP that helps the reader the most. WP should include coverage of every major and minor character and every episode and the like from fiction (starting on the premise that the work is notable of itself) - but at the same time, that doesn't mean each one of these needs an article. And that's a point that's difficult to get across to those that want more fiction coverage and sometimes assert that merging content or creating redirects is equivalent to deletion. --MASEM (t) 13:06, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

When a multi-paragraph plot summary, sometimes along with several other "real-world" details (often dismissed as "trivia" by some), is reduced to a sentence or two in a list article, it's easy to see why people might think of this as "equivalent to deletion." We tend to have a binary decision-making process here regarding fictional components, either a component is notable, and we can describe and cover it in great detail, or it's not, and it is reduced to a small mention with at most a few sentences, if it's covered at all. We need to change this binary notable/not-notable mentality if we are to ever hope to have any consensus regarding fictional coverage. Then there is the problem that list articles often get deleted because of the argument that no reliable source covered "the list" and therefore it "fails WP:N." DHowell (talk) 03:07, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Those sections of what you're calling "real-world" details often are trivia or worse, unsourced. (eg, these are often references to the topic from other works, or references to other works by the topic. These aren't bad but they need to be sourced or otherwise they are original research (this was a recent point of discussion at either WP:V or WP:OR, can't remember which). I'd be more convinced there was a problem if such articles with these lists that are truly legitimate per sourcing and not-original research if there were examples where they ended up merged. But still, it is not deletion; as long as the redirect is made, the edit history is still there and future research may allow recreation. --MASEM (t) 03:20, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Our original research policy does a poor job of distinguishing between true original research and things which are obvious to any reasonable person familiar with the sources and without specialist knowledge. If a fictional character says "to be, or not to be", I don't need a secondary source to tell me that is a reference to Hamlet. If pointing this out is considered "original research", then the original research policy is fundamentally flawed. But removing unsourced observations is not the only problem, often truly independently verifiable information is removed for being "too trivial". Also, I agree that merging and redirection is infinitely preferable to outright deletion; it infuriates me that the episodes and characters ArbCom cases are used as an excuse to bring things to AfD rather than boldly merging and redirecting, or starting merge discussions. TTN's problem was not boldly merging or redirecting, it was doing so repeatedly over other editors objections and proceeding at a pace which editors could not reasonably challenge. DHowell (talk) 04:26, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

But that's how original research works - the problem is that the patently obvious to those that are aware of the references is not the same to the lay reader that is not familiar with the work itself. Mind you, there is some relaxation that some unequivocal cases can be stated, but there is also a slippery slope that if you allow too much unsourced references to other works, you start getting lists that grow without end because of a very loose and tenuous connection.. But on your second point if there is significant sourcing information that is being removed as to call for deletion, it would be good to have an example; that shouldn't be happening. --MASEM (t) 04:38, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

If you're not familiar with the sources, you have no business judging something as "original research". Too much information in an article is a problem solved by better organization, not necessarily by deletion. There is a reason References to Hamlet is a separate article from Hamlet, and Phrases from Hamlet in common English is also separated. As for an example of sourced information being up for deletion, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Buffyverse objects. DHowell (talk) 05:13, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, yes you do right to judge original research - our policy on verifability puts the burden of proof of evidence on those that want to keep it if a fact, even if it is obvious someone familiar with the work, is put into question. Yes, it would be completely asshole-ish to hit a list of points like that References to Hamlet and demand sources for each and every thing on there (that's likely fait accompli, however, at the same time, we need some - that article is significantly lacking sources to show that. --MASEM (t) 05:30, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

The verifiability burden is to cite a source; once the source is cited, the burden is on the challenger to actually read the source and demonstrate why the source is inadequate, or does not support the claim. And that "asshole-ish" behavior happens all the time, and we have no policies or guidelines which adequately discourage or curtail it. DHowell (talk) 05:44, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

But it's also still the case that, say for a factoid "The scene in work A is similar to one in work B", that even if I know about A and B, that I can call into question of what the source is for that statement. Again, there's a degree of looseness for patently obvious cases but I've seen these sections filled with tenuous connections to unrelated works to try to justify them. When this is not checked by requiring sources to justify these, you get sections that look like [2] (under Cultural references). Fortunately sourcing of references can come from two places: the developer or creator, and from third-party reliable sources who believe that connection to be there (even if that wasn't the original intent of the creator). And if you're able to pull those, you likely can pull more from either type of source to qualify for a better article on fiction. --MASEM (t) 12:39, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

You can call such a statement into question, but if reasonable people who have actually looked at the sources agree that the claim is justified by those sources alone, it should stay, even without an independent source making the exact claim. Otherwise we open up the burden of proof policy to abuse by trolls demanding unreasonable evidence that sources support every fact stated in an article. They could challenge just about anything that isn't a direct quote of a unquestionably reliable source. DHowell (talk) 17:38, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

I am not convinced either and agree with you that Masem’s agreement about free content and copyright is something of Curate's egg, othewise there would be many legal proceedings regarding ficitonal topics being instigated against Wikipedia, but there aren't. In answer to your last question, I think am in agreement with you about these science based topics: my own suspicion is that if you don’t find an article like supergravity or conjugate prior comprehensible, it is probably an indicator that they may be fringe theories, on the basis that if the topic has not been written about in terms that are understandable to a layperson, then the threory behind it probably has not emerged fully into the mainstream. Such theories can be considered notable when it has been referenced extensively from sources that are independent of the theory, and in my view, that only happens when the theory is more widely accepted as evidence by sources that are easier to understand (this is a ver personal view, so don't quote me). The need for independent sources is just as important for fiction, for the same reason - coverage can be manufactured by sources who are close a particular subject, but outside of this narrow circle, there would be no evidence to suggest that a topic would be worth having its own standalone article.
However, whether they or any articles on a ficitonal topic should be deleted is beyond the scope of these discussion, as this proposed guideline is not about article deletion per se. There is a detailed discussion in the archive (Notability & Deletability) that covers this ground. The bottom line is that the deletion debates conducted at WP:AFD are an entirely seperate process, and there is no direct link between them and these inclusion criteria being proposed here.
To back to your opening question, I think the Wikipedia existing policies and guidelines do allow topics are useful, interesting, harmless, provided that they are notable as well.--Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:53, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Gavin Collins, while most of what you say is sensible, your "if you don’t find an article like supergravity or conjugate prior comprehensible, it is probably an indicator that they may be fringe theories" is a mistake:

• Many WP:RS are written in terms and styles that are difficult for non-specialists. Nevertheless their topics are notable and not fringe theories.
• Maths and theoretical physics are particulary difficult in this respect, as there are virtually no plain-language terms that adequately express the meanings of ideas in these fields, and they are also very much "progression through the levels" subjects, where one needs a good understanding of the less advanced topics in order to understand the more advanced ones. --Philcha (talk) 12:08, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I can't disagree with you. This is why fiction is such a well sourced subject area; even books and journals about fictional from academic sources are reasonably accessible to a person without specialist knowledge. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 14:05, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

But another aspect of fiction, which makes primary sources in fiction different from primary sources in many other subject areas, is that most ficional works themselves are reasonably accessible to a person without specialist knowledge. Unlike specialist mathematics and science topics, which might take years of study to fully understand, most fictional topics are understandable with a few hours of reading or watching the subject. If you truly don't understand the Seth Cohen article, that is remedied by watching a few episodes of The O.C.. Which is probably one reason academic coverage of fiction, other than classic fiction, is lacking: Why need to study things that are relatively obvious to the average person with access to the primary sources? That lack of coverage doesn't make them not notable.

To address your earlier point, you are ignoring reality if you think this guideline can be written without considering deletion and AfD at all. An inclusion guideline, unless it says we can include everything, can not help but also be an exclusion guideline. Regardless of what this guideline says, "Delete, fails WP:FICT" will be a common argument in AfD, and so this guideline needs to address that. Each of our policies and guidelines work in the context of all of the others, a point made clear in a recent discussion at Wikipedia talk:Editing policy regarding the policy to preserve information. DHowell (talk) 03:07, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

(To Masem) What makes summarizing a work of fiction any different from summarizing a work of non-fiction (like a biography, or a newspaper article, etc)? Zagalejo^^^ 19:18, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

There is no difference. An article about a notable non-fiction work should not simply be a recounting of what the work says, but instead the context for why the non-fiction was created, its reception and legacy. The non-fiction work is a primary source for itself and doesn't establish its own notability. --MASEM (t) 20:09, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, sorry, I didn't phrase that question clearly. I wasn't actually concerned with articles about non-fiction works. I was really asking about articles that make substantial use of the non-fiction works. Like, say, an article about a historical figure that use a single biography to source several paragraphs (perhaps because that biography is the only source for much of the information). Or an article about a current event that paraphrases the bulk of a newspaper article. Would those be a problem, from a free content standpoint? (Let's just assume that the sources are impeccable, and present no problems with regards to WP:RS or WP:NPOV.) Zagalejo^^^ 20:20, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

IANAL but I know you can't copyright facts - so the writer of an article that reports on a factual event cannot claim IP on the event, only on their version of the text (and of course, copyvios are disallowed to start), so a summary of the facts from a non-fiction work cannot be derivative. Of course, author embellish and add their opinion and analysis, and in the same manner with fiction, if we detail these aspects too much, we start impeding on derivative works and problems with free content, which is why we typically limit such to short but exact quotes from the source to justifying things. It is more murky than fiction, where the entirety of what's written is IP protected, but still possible. --MASEM (t) 20:55, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Rationale for deletionism

m:Deletionism#Rationale for deletionism ( which is not in the Wikipedia namespace ;)

Deletionism may argue that too many unnoteworthy or obscure articles impede finding the relevant subject, like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

• Some articles complicate indexing. For example, having articles on the many unnoteworthy individuals named John Anderson makes it difficult for readers to find the article about the relatively famous US presidential candidate with that name.
• Similarly, the presence of obscure subjects in lists and timelines makes it more difficult for readers to find key people and events.
• Some articles cover topics too obscure for the wiki process to work. For example, a topic where only a few dozen people have firsthand knowledge (or any knowledge at all) is unlikely to see expansion or error correction by anyone but the original author.
• Deletionists may believe that the presence of uninformative articles damage the project's usefulness and credibility, particularly when casual visitors encounter them through internet search engines or Wikipedia's "random page" or "recent changes."
• Some deletionists argue that allowing small, uninformative articles to remain promotes poorly-written "drive-by" articles, and that by deleting them writers will be more likely to make informative, well-written articles for their first edit.
• Articles on obscure topics, even if they are in principle verifiable, tend to be very difficult to verify. Usually, the more obscure, the harder to verify. Actually verifying such articles, or sorting out verifiable facts from exaggeration and fiction, takes a great deal of time. Not verifying them opens the door to fiction and advertising. This also leads to a de facto collapse of the "no original research policy", which is one of the fundamental Wikipedia policies.

copypasted by Jack Merridew 09:12, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I note the smile in the first line of Jack Merridew's post. In that spirit I recommend humorous responses, hoping to laugh these arguments out of court. --Philcha (talk) 10:59, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree as they have been reproduced here as sort of a wind-up. There is no point discussing their validity, as they fall beyond the scope of WP:FICT, which is intended to provide gudiance on topic inclusion, not to provide mandatory instruction on article deletion. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:57, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

• If you are looking for a president, then why not add the word "president" to your search? Finding a person is rather simply. And how many people have exact names? If its an actor, add in the word "actor" to the search, or write in what they are known for, and you can easily find them.
• You can make your own list and timelines to show what information you believe is valid. How many people use timelines anyway? And can you ever agree on which things are notable enough to be included, and which are not? Even just listing every notable thing that happened one year, would make a list too long, I'd imagine.
• Sometimes stubs grow, sometimes they do not. No need to go deleting all of them.
• If they were searching for anything educational, then they'd find something credibility by any standards usually. But most of the hits are for popular culture, and sex(they have a pie chart somewhere showing what gets the most hits). And when you are looking for information about a series, most people want more than just a brief boring one paragraph description you could find anywhere. Wikipedia became popular because it was a casual(that's what wiki means) encyclopedia, not some strict boring standard one. And can we find out how many people have ever clicked the "find random article" option? You could easily set it to only find a random article which has been given a good rating, or is about a certain topic of interest to them.
• Deleting the smaller articles prevents growth of those articles, and drives away new editors. Many articles started off small, and grew to greatness in time. The overwhelming majority of people aren't going to write out an entire article in a sandbox somewhere, before starting it.
• No original research, is used as an excuse to try to delete a lot of articles on fiction topics. You can't have all articles just have quotes from notable third party reviewers, and nothing more. You need information, and you can only get that by reading the book or watching the series. That makes almost every fact mentioned in any article, to be original research, doesn't it?

Dream Focus 13:22, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

On the "WP has become a casual encyclopedia", that's a chicken-egg problem. When WP first started, and notability wasn't an issue, people created articles on every character and episode they could (most still exist). This, of course, would drive search results and lead people to think they could find information on WP about any episode or character. Of last (last two-three years) editors have been swinging the pendulum back the other ways, insisting on more rigid standards for fiction that would invalidate the need for most of these articles, as despite what it is being used for, the goal of WP is not be a "causal" encyclopedia, it's to be an educational one. Now that pendulum may have swung too far in favor of excessive deletion, but it is starting to swing back in favor of trying to keep as many fiction articles but rationalizing that while we can address the in-universe aspects and satisfy those looking for "causal" information, the parts that make the articles appropriate on WP - the development, reception, legacy, and influence - are what maintain the educational encyclopedia approach - which doesn't have to be boring (I don't consider either Homer Simpson or Superman to be such). The balance is not yet fixed, and that pendulum still moves, but its clear that consensus is not going to allow for large numbers of fiction topic articles sourced only from the primary that ramble on on in-universe details as there might have been ok back before 2006. --MASEM (t) 13:39, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

RE: Excessive coverage of fiction threatens the free content mission for Wikipedia; the more indepth we cover fiction, the more likely it will be considered as a derivative work, and thus burdened by IP that invalidates the free content mission.

This is a slippery slope argument. Editors who bury and delete other editors comments ignore the very real benefits of having fictional characters and episodes: more editors, and more readers, which contributes to a better encyclopedia, and more money for the project. Slippery slope distant probabilities from laymen (non-copyright attorneys), who attempt to dictate their view on all of wikipedia based on vague threats, and alienate thousands of potentially beneficial editors in the process, pale in comparison to the real, everday benefits that Wikipedia derives from these articles today. Ikip (talk) 14:29, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

The bottom line is that while Wikipedia has been criticized by some for having too much "popular culture" coverage, others have praised it for this coverage. The fact is, Wikipedia is both a "casual" encyclopedia and an educational one. These aspects do not need to conflict. And popular culture draws readers, which draws editors, editors which may graduate from covering "popular culture" to covering topics in other fields of interest, and editors which may be useful in other areas such as cleaning up articles, doing research, or fighting vandalism. Removing or reducing the bulk of this popular culture coverage drives away editors, thus harming our coverage in other areas which these editors might have special knowledge, and reducing the total number of active editors makes Wikipedia harder to maintain. This is one big reason why I find deletionism against popular topics harmful. DHowell (talk) 03:58, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

WP's goal is not to be "casual", it is to be educational - this doesn't prevent pop culture topics, but it does state they should be written in a manner for educational uses. WP's goal is to be an encyclopedia that any one can edit, but it is not a goal to draw as many editors as possible; we already have enough problems with vandals and the like - there is a matter of "too many cooks" here.

Basically, while you're right that pop culture topics can sit alongside articles on history, science, and so forth, they have to be consistent with how the rest of WP is written. Fiction articles cannot have special exemption because a lot of people like the way it is covered in that fashion as that biases fiction. We know that some fiction can be covered in a consistent manner with other topics, so it's not that its impossible - but it's just not the way that most editors that write fiction-related articles tend to write as. --MASEM (t) 04:29, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

We should however draw as many editors as possible who are willing to make positive contributions in good faith, and that means not deriding and deleting their initial contributions as "fancruft" and "unworthy". The "too many cooks" problem happens because some cooks aren't willing to collaborate with other cooks, and are constantaly deriding and criticizing, instead of helping and educating. And while you see us as trying to create an "exemption" for fictional content, I see fiction already being treated differently, in that topics and articles in many non-fictional subject areas are allowed to remain and grow with far less sourcing that what is continually demanded for fictional content. DHowell (talk) 05:40, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

The point at the end of the day is that any article (fiction or not) should be helping to establish context for the casual reader to understand why the topic of the article is relevant. If that wasn't part of our goal, then we'd just be a giant web directory or catalog, glorifying off the "WP is not paper" aspect, and there would be no bounds of what could and could not be included. But we're trying to be an encyclopedia, and that's not just to say "oh, here's something that exists and I can validate it", it's to help summarize that topic for the user. When you talk about real-world topics, such as places, historical figures, scientific aspects, etc., there is a pretty strong chance that we can construct an article that summarizes the topic from a number of reliable sources that are independent of those topics. In most cases, fiction can't. Also consider the fact that it is much much easier to create articles than to delete them. It is unfortunately bitey when we have to delete a user's first new article, but there are plenty of warnings and text about establishing the content of the article and the like before the user can actually create it. (Mind you, I'm from pre-Endless September days and I really wish more editors took time to lurk before getting involved, but that's not going to happen). But as a note, our CSD prevent any speedy-deletion of any fiction-related topic (as there's no special criteria for it), so a newer editor's article, assuming they don't hit and run, they will be able to see and ask questions. The editor that may feel upset over their first article being deleted but learns from that is the type we want to retain as opposed to the ones that get pissed off at that and leave, as the former is more likely going to be better for maintaining a healthy editing atmosphere and williness to help improve than the latter. --MASEM (t) 12:39, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

An editor whose first contribution is nominated for deletion for being "non-notable fancruft" is going to feel unwelcome regardless of their desire and ability to work collaboratively, and regardless of whether they may even have access to independent sources which may completely justify their "fancruft". And we should cover topics to whatever appropriate detail would be relevant to a significant number of readers, and that includes topics which would be familiar to large numbers of readers even if not "significantly covered" in independent reliable sources. We can still have boundaries, we shouldn't cover things that only a handful of people would have any familiarity with, or that a handful of people are trying to promote; but the vast majority of disputes are not regarding articles about things from random fanfiction or obscure youtube videos, we're talking about concepts that are known to millions of people. One reason we often don't find a lot of "independent reliable" coverage of fictional topics is that the creators, developers, and publishers do an adqueate job of documenting it to the public, and are considered reliable. DHowell (talk) 17:58, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

To address the "Rationale for deletionism" arguments:

• I admit I was a bit surprised to find John B. Anderson so far down the list of John Andersons in the disambiguation page, but if deletionism is the solution, does that imply we should delete every article about a person who happens to share the name of someone more famous? Do we delete Howard K. Stern because of the existence of Howard Stern? Delete Paul Simon the politician because of Paul Simon the singer? And who is more famous, Vanessa A. Williams or Vanessa L. Williams? George H. W. Bush or George W. Bush?
• Wouldn't that be better solved by having overview timelines listing key events, and more detailed timelines listing more events, or perhaps having specialist timelines listing key events in certain fields? (e.g. 1999 in film, 2006 in television)
• We have many articles about subjects which no one has firsthand knowledge, which is of course why we rely on secondary sources for most of our topics. I understand not wanting to cover subjects which are only known to a few people, and which no one has covered in reliable sources. However, we also have subjects for which millions of people have first-hand knowledge, but they get deleted because no-one considered "reliable" enough or "independent" enough has covered the subject. This makes no sense to me.
• If you're clicking "random page" or "recent changes" and expect to always see great things, I'd say that is a problem with your expectations. It is the opinion of many that excessive deletionism is also damaging the project's usefulness and credibility, and this opinion is documented in serious, reliable sources. On the other hand, criticisms of excessive coverage often come in the form of comic strips and humor articles.
• Many useful, educational articles started out as "small, uninformative articles". And the vast majority of edits to Wikipedia are "drive-by" edits. Very few editors are willing to write a fully fleshed out article from scratch, and discouraging "drive-by" edits which are nonetheless incrementally useful will make Wikipedia much harder to maintain, because few editors will actually be writing and editing the encyclopedia.
• Articles which are "difficult to verify", but nonetheless verifiable, are actually in my opinion one of the most useful aspects of Wikipedia. Anyone can do a Google search on well-known topics and find information, but the editors who go beyond this and actually make some real effort to find obscure information from obscure sources should be encouraged, not discouraged from doing so. Of course we need to do a better job of encouraging people to cite their sources, but I don't see how deletionism helps this. DHowell (talk) 03:58, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Because Wikipedia is an Encyclopedia about things in the real world. When we cover works of fiction and elements of those fictions, it is in the context of the real world. -- Ned Scott 04:03, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Should we delete our articles on ghosts, unicorns, and fairies, then? Fictional things known to millions often have more significance to the "real world" than many ancient kings and tiny villages in third-world countries. DHowell (talk) 04:46, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

You didn't mean to say that the Third World is not very significant in the Real World; right? I mean, it is, to us…

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias

Sheesh, Jack Merridew 05:42, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Nowhere have I argued to delete articles on villages in the Third World, which are obviously significant to a significant number of people. But how is covering every village in the Third World fundamentally different from covering every episode of Stargate Atlantis, which is also significant to a significant number of people in the real world? DHowell (talk) 05:57, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Every village in every country in the world is notable; they're real, are documented in reliable sources; most TV episodes et al are shite some hack writer pulled out of his ass on a deadline. The difference is that the former is significant to reliable, independent sources; the latter are typically only significant to fans and brand marketing managers. G'day, Jack Merridew 06:43, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Now I think Jack Merridew has gone too far. If an article about a fictional character meets WP:V & WP:NPOV and does not excessively duplicate other content, it should probably be accepted. The real uniqueness of Wikpedia is that it allows users to decide what's important, rather than have some authority figure's idea of what's important, desirable, morally uplifting, etc., etc, stuffed down their throats - which is what the word "educational" suggests to me. If new editors learn to write decent English (or whatever), check their facts, structure their content sensibly, and generally use their brains, then that is truly educational, irrespective of whether the topic is Homer or Homer Simpson. --Philcha (talk) 07:15, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

PS The claim "Every village in every country in the world is notable" is nonsense - apart from the residents, the only people who care are polticians and officials, and then only because they can extract taxes from it. --Philcha (talk) 07:15, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, please; users are allowed to decide what's important? That way madness lies. G'day, Jack Merridew 07:36, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Jack Merridew, "check their facts" in my previous post implies WP:V, which implies WP:RS, which implies WP:Notability. If some decent sources think a topic is worthy of comment, so should WP - any other attitude is a violation of WP:NPOV.

Besides, a process to decide which editors should adjudicate on "what's important" would make the typical RfA look like a love-in. --Philcha (talk) 07:49, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

WP:V does not necessarily bring WP:N along with it. Articles about fictional characters and things, that are sourced only from the work of fiction in question, for instance do not pass WP:N. Primary sources can be used to verify facts, but do nothing to establish notability. Reyk _YO! 07:57, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Fair point, I tried too hard to be concise.

If an independent good source comments in reasonable detail about something, that something is notable - even if the independent good source says e.g. "X is useless, meaningless drivel", since that imples that the source's author think too many people (may) pay attention to it. --Philcha (talk) 08:19, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Your comment seemed to be a statement that inclusion of content was up to individual editors' discretion — i.e. what they feel is important — which you seem to not now be saying. If you've seen many of my posts, you have seen many about Indy/RS/InDepth yada, yada, yada being required.

As to WP:NPOV, it is an article content policy, not a user-cranium content policy.

G'day, Jack Merridew 13:04, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

• And that's the point of notability in general: editors aren't supposed to judge what is or isn't important enough to be included, or else Wikipedia becomes a dumping ground for anything and everything that a few editors find useful. To remain neutrality and verifiability, reliable sources are supposed to judge what's important. And the source that actually created the product/theory/company/speech/novel/car can't be trusted to judge their own work's importance. Again, that's the rationale for measuring everything up against WP:N/third-party sourcesg in general. The SNGs exist because, in theory, there are other reliable ways to judge importance for specific subject areas. For example, in the previous WP:FICT proposal many of us felt that author commentary (DVD commentary, developer blogs) could offer a partial indicator of importance (combined with two other factors). Sometimes an author can say "this is the most important episode in the series", which helps. But that proposal was rejected. Randomran (talk) 15:41, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

I call bollocks on the claim that "editors aren't supposed to judge what is or isn't important enough to be included". It is editors who came up with the notability guideline, and it is editors who judge whether sources are reliable enough, are independent enough, or have significant enough coverage, and it is editors' judgement of importance (or a consensus thereof) that will ultimately determine WP content. Relying on independent sources is useful for resolving disputes, but the bottom line is that editors will write about what they feel is important, and will not write about what they feel is not important. You can't change this without changing the fundamental nature of Wikipedia as a volunteer effort. DHowell (talk) 19:07, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

We're not robots. Yeah, maybe we have to argue about what's a reliable source. But that's about 1000 times better than just arguing between personal opinions. Randomran (talk) 21:57, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

The fact that we have guidelines that can help us form and change opinions in order to foster agreement and consensus and reduce conflict, does not change the fact that these guidelines and the judgements based on them are ultimately still based on opinions. And every good-faith dispute is based on a difference of opinion. DHowell (talk) 05:35, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

But we don't write articles from opinions. Randomran (talk) 07:58, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

The above is true to a certain extent in two types of cases.

1. true spam and advertising detracts from the apparent objectivity of the encyclopedia. When someone introduced an article about the author of self-published novels, it detracts from the trust that one can place in any fiction article here. this is not distinctive to fiction: if people write glowing articles about their accomplishment of the grad student who's their lab instructor, it detracts from the perceived reliability of every academic here.
2. Disproportional coverage shows amateurism and low standards. True, we are all of us amateurs, at least in respect to our work here. But we should be amateurs aspiring to the standards oft he best professional encyclopedias. Such encyclopedias devote very considerable care to having articles proportional to importance. (At least perceived importance--look at the old Catholic encyclopedia or the old EB to see what they thought important then). Wikipedia, in 100 years, should be reliable in showing what was importance to us in 2001-2020. (my guess of the time until it the paradigm will be obsolete.)

But whether something gets an individual article is an editing decision. to take an example: we should have an article on every one of Balzac's novels. But some of them will appropriately be discussed in much greater detail than others. We should have some information even on every novel of Zane Grey. The amount we have should be proportional to their importance. Whether or not they are separate articles is a matter of style--in practice maintaining them as separate had had a good effect, in preventing information from being destroyed in destructive merges, and a bad effect, in permitting the excessive keeping of inappropriate detail. But as we have no central authority able to enforce some degree of proportion, I do not at the moment see a way to accomplish this, -- except through the workgroups. DGG (talk) 08:12, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

• I'm glad there's some fundamental agreement here. We want a certain amount of objectivity in the encyclopedia, to keep out self promotion and conflicts of interest. But also to keep Wikipedia from becoming an indiscriminate collection of unimportant information. Where I disagree with you, though, is that we have no choice but to rely upon editor opinion for what's important. Any content debate we have is settled by looking at reliable sources, period. That's why WP:V requires reliable third-party sources, so that way someone independent and reliable can offer some kind of criticism or evaluation of the topic, or even just show implicitly that the topic is worth talking about. The fact that we have a general notability guideline based on third-party sources -- not on editor opinion -- is an extension of WP:V. That's not to say that this is the only way to qualify for inclusion: that's what the SNGs are meant to describe. But there's no way we can come up with a reliable measure of importance if we're going on what a group of editors say in a workgroup. There's a way forward for WP:FICT to be something less than WP:N and still guarantee some reliable measure of importance. But we end up back at WP:N whenever people try to lower the bar to mere existence, or verifiability in sources that are inherently biased. Randomran (talk) 16:40, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

when the availability of sources is erratic, their quality variable, and the willingness of contributors actually to look for them rare, but the subject can be seen to be analogous in probable importance to other works that are clearly notable, or generally recognized as such, we do better to rely on the intrinsic notability of the work itself. The alternative in practice, is to argue endless for every individual episode or character, whether such sources as there are are significant, independent, etc.... which, as i see it, is really such a backhand way of evaluating intrinsic notability. DGG (talk) 04:42, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

I just don't think that every character of a notable work is somehow intrinsically notable. Certainly not every character in a show. And for some shows, no characters at all. If the notability of *some* of these characters is truly intrinsic, then there should be a way to formalize it in terms of a reliable and objective test. I think that's what the purpose of the WP:FICT is. It's also what the GNG does, but I'm one of those people who thinks that the GNG is not the only path. Randomran (talk) 05:09, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

I could almost be cool with the GNG, if everyone had access to everything ever written, and could understand foreign languages, and whatnot. Plus, if we had a userbase large enough to support all our articles with research. I don't know who followed the Sout Park episode merge attempt, but a user came in who has acess to lexisnexis, and it looks like they might all be notable. That's all I need to say "let them all be seperate articles", but when that user burns out, if someone similar doesn't follow, we'll have to argue it again. I think people have, or could have with some practice, a very good gut estimate of what's notable, but sometimes that's derided without immediate proof. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 05:22, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

In answer to DGG, intrinsic notablity does not work in the situation where one or more editors hold opposing but equally valid viewpoints about a topic's sutability for inclusion where a similar topic exists. In this situation objective evidence is needed to distinguish legitimate articles from content forks. For example, it is very hard to work out which of the articles that feature The Terminator is a content fork and which is not; The Terminator (character), Terminator (character concept) and the Terminator (franchise) all cover the same topic. Using the idea that some characters are intrinically notable does not work in these circumstances - what is needed is proof. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:42, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

Poll: autoformatting and date linking

This is to let people know that there is only a day or so left on a poll. The poll is an attempt to end years of argument about autoformatting which has also led to a dispute about date linking. Your votes are welcome at: Wikipedia:Date formatting and linking poll. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 09:42, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Bring back the history

I realise that the original WP:FICT has been moved. Could it be restored again so that the history remains intact? At the moment, the archived discussions are pointing to the wrong project page. The move is making it very painful for navigation, as all the archived discussions currenltly link to Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)/Deckiller-Sandifer. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:54, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree. We need the history. I suggest strongly that A Man in Black reverts his bold edits immediatly. Ikip (talk) 14:40, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

That is odd that the history wouldn't be moved also. Makes it look like you are hiding something. Dream Focus 20:29, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Could I have a more concrete example of what you mean? Whether or not the old page is moved to a subpage, all of the archive links are going to obsolete anyway if a new proposal is started here. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 00:08, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

This makes it very confusing on where the page history has gone. Can someone please preform a hist-merge? -- Ned Scott 03:39, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Histmerge done. Please let me know on my talk page if there's anything else I can do--I don't watchlist this page. Jclemens (talk) 04:13, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you kindly. -- Ned Scott 04:37, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you Ikip (talk) 15:36, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

See also -> Previous versions

I expanded the "previous versions" section to better illustrate the history of this guideline; it should come in handy for those who want to see such evolution without navigating the talkpage archives. — Deckiller 18:51, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Looking back, there appears to be a tendancy to use WP:FICT as a platform for providing fictional topics with an exemption from Wikipedia's existing policies and guidelines, on the grounds that articles that don't demonstrate evidence of notability need to be protected from merger or deletion. Whilst I can understand why some editors would want to provide some protection to these articles, I see no evidence that ficitonal topics are given unfair treatment in deletion discussions at WP:AFD. In fact, it seems to me that the opposite is true; fictional topics are very often given the benefit of the doubt in accordance with WP:IMPROVE. With more and more secondary coverage becoming accessible via the internet, I don't understand why fiction deserves any sort of exemption. When Phil Sanderifer or Masem say that they fear rampant deletionism, I don't believe this fear has anything to do with moving WP:FICT into the well established framework of Wikipedia's existing policies and guidelines, and I find it hard to believe that is harmful or will result in a systematic cull or mass deletionism. Therefore I think the most direct route to restoring WP:FICT is not only appropriate, but will also provide editors with some useful guidance:

Where will this lead us? It seems to me that the consensus from discussions regarding WP:NOT#PLOT is that balanced coverage of fictional topics is desirable, and that this means that every article should contain at least some real-world coverage from reliable sources in order to avoid duplicating in universe coverage from the primary source. We also know that those sources have to be independent to be compliant with WP:V. Put these requirements together, and I think they meet the inclusion criteria for a standalone article. It is hard to imagine how there could be alternative inclusion criteria that don't fall foul of WP:NOT or give rise to content forks --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 14:40, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

LET'S PLAY MONEY MAKING GAME: WP:FICT, mk. whatever

Let's try this again, with some ground rules.

• This is going to be about fictional subjects, not fiction subject. The whole episodes mess was a huge quagmire that derailed the old guideline badly. Episodes and seasons, chapters, comic book issues and arcs...these are a separate issue entirely, with separate concerns.
• Articles may need to be disposed of. This does not necessarily mean article titles will have to be redlinked. The establishment of standards means that some articles will not meet those standards, and will need to be merged, rewritten, split among several other articles, or simply deleted.
• The general notability criterion may need to be suspended for subtopics which are necessary to the understanding of notable topics. This will require a rigorous definition of "subtopics which are necessary to the understanding of notable topics".

Fiction articles are not well organized. Projects that deal primarily or even partially with fictional topics or fictional worlds are all blazing their own paths for organization, and often arriving at very different places. Whether you feel that a Buffyverse-style article for everything and everything in an article scheme or a spartan Final Fantasy-style large overview article scheme is better, organization is inconsistent and sloppy and far from perfect. A unified proposal for organization will need to be adaptable to franchises like Buffy and Star Wars (many licensed works, avidly studied in detail by fans) or a trilogy of novels with a small and quiet fanbase. This scheme will necessarily deal with inclusion and exclusion, but should not primarily focus on it.

Once we have that organization scheme, we will then need some sort of proposal on how to implement it. (I see this as a chief failing of the Deckiller/Sandifer FICT; nobody knew what impact it would have.) Such a proposal will need to bear in mind WP:PRESERVE, but will also need to be imperative, so that it is implemented.

With that in mind, I'm not sure what to propose for a scheme. I just know that without covering these bases (or at least everyone agreeing to these bases), then no proposal will ever go anywhere. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 01:37, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Leaving episodes / storylines out of it is a good idea. That said, I think current practices have to guide us to some extent. Just as we're not going to get a consensus for a guideline that opens the floodgates to every weapon in every first-person shooter, we're also not going to get a consensus to start deleting well-written articles about relatively important characters that just so happen to fail WP:N. If we can't agree to stay relatively close to our current (reasonably good) practices, we're pretty much going to end up back at WP:ILIKEIT versus WP:IHATEIT. Randomran (talk) 01:54, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Current practice should inform any proposal, but merely mirroring current practice when current practice is so schizophrenic and inconsistent will get us nowhere. WP:N isn't an absolute, but instead a guide, and once upon time it was a proposal too. If it's too exclusive or too inclusive, we should look at the desirable articles it excludes or the undesirable articles it includes and examine how we can draw a better line.

I'd also like to head off this "throwing open the floodgates" and "deleting perfectly good articles" nonsense at the pass. If the "floodgates are thrown open", then AFD will simply draw a new line and this proposal will have failed. If an article is perfectly good but doesn't fit within the lines, then either the perfectly good article should be restructured (maybe it'd be better to cover the important-but-non-notable subtopic with the rest of the notable topic instead of in a subarticle?) or the lines should be reconsidered. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 02:05, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not thrilled about removing episodes from the approach but it was true that the details of episodes lit off several arguments. That said, if you talking about what holistic approach we should be using for fiction, then that's why I've said we should step over to WAF and work from there, and then maybe better notability guidelines that are better than just WP:N for fictional elements can be made. --MASEM (t) 02:16, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

In answer to A Man In Black, trying to construct an exemption from Wikipedia's existing policies and guidelines for subtopics has been tried before and not found consensus - check out A.1 of Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:compromise. The achilles heal of this proposal has always that a blanket exemption for subtopics does not provide any mechanism for dealing with content forks. If subtopic were to be exempt from any form of inclusion criteria, it would be possible to use the same coverage of a particular topic over and over again by just tweaking the article name, e.g. the Terminator series of content forks.--Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:02, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Nobody has yet suggested a good exception. People tried many, many times to make a "notability" guideline before WP:N stuck. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 09:28, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

And I never suggested that fiction articles should be exempt from all inclusion criteria, simply that WP:N may not ideally apply to them. I can foresee a fiction article that is necessary to the understanding of a parent article, but isn't independently notable, simply discussed in the context of the parent subject. The Final Fantasy project is running into a bit of this, and just bypasses it by sort of IAR-ing around this because the articles are meticulously sourced to this glancing coverage and really well-written. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 15:13, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

If you could refer to a few great articles from the FF project, that might help us figure out what stuff is notable enough to get away with failing WP:N and still have its own article. The issue isn't coming up with an exception to WP:N, but coming up with a lower standard than WP:N in a few cases. There will still be *some* standard. Randomran (talk) 17:53, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Even if you could suggest a few great articles that are not notable, it is likely that the topic is a content fork if it is discussed in the context of the parent subject. Plus there is always the the risk that its content is prohibited by WP:NOT or one of the other content policies. Basically, articles that fail WP:N tend not to be encylopedic, and it is just not possible to get aroud this using exemptions. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 21:25, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Do you at least accept that there's the possibility for a reasonable standard of inclusion for fiction that is not WP:N? Do you accept that this standard of inclusion may be in some ways less restrictive than WP:N? I'm not here to sell you such a standard; smarter folks than I have tried to come up with one. I'm just here to clear the ground for one. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 06:42, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Why would fiction articles have lower inclusion standards than other articles? The more logical way seems to me to have a general minimal standard, and stricter standards where needed in SNGs: if you revert this, then you make the GNG meaningless, as every project can create their own less strict guidelines, going against the one inclusion guideline that has broad support, i.e. WP:N. Fram (talk) 08:58, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

In answer to Man in Black, I would like to think that there is an alternative, but the possibility is remote. If a topic is not notable, then it risks falling foul of one or more content policies, such as creating content forks described above, so there is very little or no wriggle room available. Whilst I can understand why might want to search for a set of less restrictive inclusion criteria, the reality is that notability is the minimum requirement.
You also have to remember that you can't write an encyclopedic article from an in universe perspective. Put this together with WP:GNG and you will see that real-world coverage from reliable secondary sources is the only route by which a topic can be presumed to meet Wikipedia's inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article.
Fram makes the point that if SNGs construct exemptions from WP:N, then what is the point of notability in the first place? I would go further: what is the point of having a framework of policies and guidelines at all if some subject areas are exempt? The reason is that Wikipedia is sucessful because it has such a rigourous framework of policies and guidelines (more so that say, Wookiepedia), and I think you would agree thatWP:FICT should to be part of this framework, not exempt from it. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 09:36, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't mean to sound confrontational. But if you have very little faith that we can find something better than the GNG, then why are you even here? What do you expect to accomplish that hasn't already been accomplished? Randomran (talk) 16:02, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• WP:FICT has to require more than GNG - there has to be some real world coverage as well, otherwise a topic can still be notable and fail WP:NOT#PLOT. Anything less will fall foul of one or more Wikipedia policies and guidelines. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 23:43, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• But you already have WP:N and WP:NOT#PLOT. That's already done. Randomran (talk) 01:49, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

That is why we have to have inclusion criteria for fictional topics that will ensure that standalone article meets these requirements. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 12:10, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Let's just say the proposal actually had the chance to make it out of the gate, and it went down in flames as no consensus. What then? Randomran (talk) 17:21, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree that this proposal has not attracted the support of editors who have the guts to stand up for encyclopedic coverage of fiction at the moment, but in all honesty, it is the only proposal that is a viable runnner that can finish the course, because it is underpinned by consensus at policy level. Every other alternative/exemption in the race has fallen or will fall at one or more of the following hurdles which make up Wikipedia's content policies:

1. Wikipedia:Verifiability - If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it;
2. Wikipedia:Neutral point of view - A content fork is usually an unintentional creation of several separate articles all treating the same subject;
3. WP:NOT#PLOT - The coverage of a fictional work should not be a mere plot summary. A summary should facilitate substantial coverage of the work's real-world development, reception, and significance;
4. Wikipedia:No original research - Citing sources and avoiding original research are inextricably linked. To demonstrate that you are not presenting original research, you must cite reliable sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and that directly support the information as it is presented.

There are other guidelines, such as WP:N and WP:WAF which support this approach. These policies and guidelines were not constructed to prevent coverage of fictional topics, they were created to define what makes coverage of a particular topic encyclopedic. If we can't cover fiction in an encyclopdic fashion, are you saying WP:FICT should take another path, such as become the inclusion criteria for a standalone article on Wikia or Wookiepedia?--Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 23:06, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm saying you should try it if you honestly believe in good faith that it could attract a consensus. But don't be surprised if you're reverted by about 20 different people. You may need to put together your own proposal at another page and try an RFC on it. Either way, at a certain point you need to either try it as a proposal, or admit that it's not going to work. Randomran (talk) 00:21, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this approach can get consensus support unless other editors buy in to it. But I have seen so many other proposals come and go, perhaps it is time to invest in a proposal that works, rather than one that hobbles around on three legs until it falls over? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 22:21, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

A proposal with no chance

Here's a basic proposal. We find a way to rank "general importance/notability" of the parent topic. For sake of argument, let's assume we can do this rather than getting bogged down. We then assign a number of articles that can exist on the wiki about this parent topic. Things like Star Wars, Star Trek, and Dr. Who (can you tell I like SiFi) and the like would have (let's say) no more than 300 articles (whatever is close to what we have now). Other things (minor book) might have 1. Something like the Honor Harrington series might get 20. Then the editors in that area need to figure out how to use those articles. Again, assuming we can find a fair way to deal with the "ranking" issue, would this work? I suspect it has no chance, but I thought I'd throw it out there. Hobit (talk) 02:30, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

What's the point of an arbitrary number? - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 02:33, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

[EC] My sense is that one side has a concern that fiction articles will grow unchecked, harming the encyclopedia. The other side wants a "reasonable" coverage of the material. Trying to externally control the articles in each area is doomed to be a "wack-a-mole" problem. So rather than trying, we have a centralized way to "allocate" articles to high-level topics and let each project figure out how to use them. By keeping the article count fixed (and if needed adding some guidelines for size) we should create a situation where people are encouraged to improve articles rather than create them and the project (the people who should be most knowledgeable about the topic) figures out how to allocate them. Hobit (talk) 02:57, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

It seems like better than a quota would be forcing potential article authors to justify their articles before creating them to some sort of expert or panel of experts. That seems to be a good idea for a completely different project, though. I see what you're getting at, though. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 06:55, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Makes no sense. We don't force any other topic area to X number of articles. Expansion should be as necessary to cover things within constraints of WP:SS without too much splitting to create non-notable topics. --MASEM (t) 02:48, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

True, but we also restrict other topics in different ways. Either sourcing requirements (most) or existence (geographic features), or having played in a fully-professional league. There must be some type of limit. Sure, maybe WP:N is one, but I think there is general agreement that's not gonna work here. So we should think outside of the box. Hobit (talk) 03:00, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

But not by article count. And actually I think there's general agreement that WP:N does work for a major of fiction elements as a deciding line but there is along a large number of exceptional cases that we should try to account for but very difficult to set bounds for. Which is why one consideration is to do nothing, letting WP:N work in as much as it is a guideline at AFD. --MASEM (t) 03:14, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why not by article count. I guess it goes back to the "what do we hope to get out of WP:FICT?". I don't think there is anything close to agreement on WP:N wrt fiction. The WP:FICT that was oh-so-close to getting agreement certainly was all about exceptions to WP:N. Masem, what would be the "nutshell" of your WP:FICT?

"Topics on fiction elements should follow WP:N with limited exceptions determined through consensus." In other words, no FICT. --MASEM (t) 03:30, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Really? Then why on earth were you so heavily involved in trying to work out a compromise? I walked away for quite a while, but that's an unusual viewpoint for someone to have who seemed to be driving the creation of WP:FICT. Hobit (talk) 03:35, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Because based on what's basically happening after the E&C cases and the fact that no one is forcing any issues (namely, TTN hasn't edited for months), what seems to result in fiction seems to be working with the understanding that WP:N is not always followed to the letter at AFD (as it should be the case, being only a guideline). If anything, the piece of advice that has made FICT unnecessary is the fait accompli ruling from E&C2 which has prevent any major mass action without consensus. I'd rather see WAF improved to help people determine how to build out fiction within the loose bounds of WP:N instead of trying to now force something that doesn't seem needed. That's not to say if there's an imbalance that arises later (either direction) that we need to revisit FICT but nothing is pressing now. --MASEM (t) 03:40, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I suppose a follow-up question is "what do the 'deletionists' want out of a WP:FICT?" What are the goals associated with that faction? Limited coverage? Always meeting WP:N? No plot articles? Something else? I've seen lots of arguments like "keep Wikipedia from being a joke" and "if they grow unchecked this will be Fictionapedia", but it would be useful if each of those in favor of more limited coverage than we currently have could explain what they want out of the final result. Hobit (talk) 02:57, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

The goal is to have a set of inclusion criteria that result in article that meet Wikipeida's content policies. I don't think you want coverage of fiction that is unverifable, nor biased, nor comprised of original research, nor devoid of real-world infomation. I think we all want the same thing - encyclopedic articles. For these reasons, WP:FICT has to have inclusion criteria based on objective evidence, not a random number generator that plucks a set of numbers out of the air. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:09, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't understand the "real world information" part. We don't require this of (say) theoretical math, or Haskell or many other topics. Why is fiction special and what the purpose of limiting coverage to "real world information". Surely the plot of Hamlet (for example) is notable but has no real application to the real world in any way at all. Hobit (talk) 18:13, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

It's not so much "real-world" as it is putting the topic in context for the layperson. For fiction, that's describing the real-world aspects. For math topics, that's the necessity of explaining the importance of the concept . Now, yes, there's probably lots of math articles that don't do that, but it's known that some of our science articles are too science-y, and that's an aspect that has to be fixed as well. --MASEM (t) 19:17, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I suggest that you try that to get some perspective. What you will find is that the science/math buffs will bury you and no-one else will lift a finger to help you because they are intimidated. For example, there was an article about a solar eclipse at AFD the other day. A solar eclipse in 2016 or thereabouts! This clearly failed all kinds of policies IMO but I didn't bother voting because it was a waste of time - it would be kept regardless. You seem the same sort of bias with those interminable lists of asteroids and every type of mathematical wrinkle. The thing about fiction is that everyone understands it, or thinks they do, and so it's a soft target for griefers who want something to beat on. The intellectual snobs who sniff at Pokemon join in too and the anal types who obsess over rules then make for a perfect storm. You see that same sort of combination for BLP articles but there is some reasonable cause for concern there. With fiction, the only concern is copyright but we're not even close to trouble, so far as I can tell. If there were going to be problems of that sort, then all those Wikia sites like Wookiepedia would get it in the neck long before us. Colonel Warden (talk) 20:48, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm well aware there's the same type of math and physics "fanatics" that are stubborn to change, just as there are those for various types of fiction. Breaking the math/science types of these types of habits is as difficult if not moreso, because they also tend to be learned people and probably are more convincing than those that want fiction. I'm not giving them a pass, they have to be improved, but at the same time, the number of articles they have relative to how many fiction articles we have is much smaller and less visible a problem.

But it is still at the end of the day about establishing context for the general reader, something that cannot be done by primary sources alone, whether these are astrophysics papers or tv shows. Director's commentaries and interviews, yes (and of course any third-party sources), but not the actual work. --MASEM (t) 21:11, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

You will find a remarkable amount of opposition to that, much of it from the people responsible for the success of Wikipedia. if you really want to make sure no informed person ever comes near the place, just do that. I for example started editing on the basis of the accurate highly technical information on programming, which I would not have understood had I not known the particular programming language. You're proposing to base the rule on a disputed issue on another rule which is not followed, but which you hope to persuade people to adopt some day? We already have Simple Wikipedia. DGG (talk) 23:14, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

What we each want

I want wikipedia to be a place a person can come to to learn about any given topic that interests them. I use it in my work for engineering (I gave a talk based on a certain page and and a student group in another class give a talk based on that same page without my prompting them to use it) but I also use it to figure out things in fiction books I read (Dresdin files at the moment) and TV shows I watch Battlestar recently). I see no problem with using primary sources to write those articles as long as they are simple summaries or definitions. I don't want to have editors write about how book X is really a redo of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" unless there are sources that support that (even primary ones like DVD notes or interviews with the author). I also want the articles to be well written and well organized. I find (for example) the redirected "scrubs" episodes to be "good enough" to justify their existence as articles. I've certainly seen lists and even character articles that really weren't useful and had lots of OR and opinions mixed in. Like everyone else I'd like to see a WP:FICT that encourages the good (as I see it) and discourages or removes the bad. Hobit (talk) 02:57, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• In answer to Hobit, the most direct route to achieving this is as follows:

If there is anything objectional about this proposed set of inclusion criteria, do say. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:17, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

• • Speaking for myself, I really like reliable third-party sources. If there were another way to give us what reliable third-party sources give us, then I'd support it. I'd like articles where everything can be verified. I'd like the stuff that gets detailed coverage to be important. Not because a group of fans says it is. But because someone reliable can explain why it's important. And no, not every character in a notable work is important. For some works, there are no characters that are important.
  • I'm also a realist, which means I know that *we* have to all be flexible. I know there's a consensus that a fictional SNG doesn't require third-party sources in every case, but then there's also a consensus that we don't just write articles on primary sources based on what people like or don't like. There's a wide gap between those two. I recognize that. I embrace that. I'm not sure others have yet. I think people are still clinging to the polar extremes, here. Randomran (talk) 08:39, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I really don't like the word "cruft"; I find it to be a poorly defined and highly subjective word that should be avoided within policies and guidelines and even most essays at all costs.

I also think Hobit's recommendation sounds to me as though his criteria for aritcle inclusion is "if a good article is written on it" (though I hope my interpretation is mistaken). I also oppose this concept because without the presence or absense of 3rd party sources, it becomes very difficult to gauge whether a "good" article may exist. It feels to much like an "ilikeit"/"ihateit" argument.

I agree with hobit in the opposition of original research, or other bits of synthesis and conclusions pieced together through interpretation of the fictional work...but I think most everyone who weighs in on policy feels that way. I don't recall any well supported arguments to the contrary, anyway. Regardless, that's more of a WritingAboutFiction issue.

Anything else I want, I'll keep to myself for now, as I don't wish to sidetrack this thread. -Verdatum (talk) 14:59, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

for the first template: not "casual", but "general", on the principle we are a general encyclopedia. Second, not Wikipedia articles, but Wikipedia coverage. and of course the word cruft should never be used in a policy or guideline, except to point out what one should not say in an argument. I suggest the rewording:

Wikipedia's coverage on fictional topics should be detailed enough to cover the interests of those with a general interest in the topic without the extremely detailed coverage suitable only for fan sites..

As for the second template, that simply assumes what we are in fact and disputing over. I don't think its either necessary or sufficient. If there is only very little enough to say, it should not be a separate article. Similarly, if there is a great deal of sourced material from acceptable sources, (primary or secondary), and the topic is the major character in a major fiction, or similar, then it should be presumed that such sources will be findable, and a separate article justified. DGG (talk) 23:07, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I think this is a good statement of principle: general interest, not extreme detail for fans. But for one, does this mean that all works of fiction are created equal, and are worthy of equally detailed coverage? And for two, what's the difference in coverage between general interest and a fansite, and how do we get there without having a subjective debate 99 times out of 100? I guess that's where I'm coming from as a precisionist. I neither want to remove all fictional material or preserve all of it. I really just want to be able to figure out what to do in a consistent way that isn't governed by WP:ILIKEIT versus WP:IHATEIT, and in a way that will achieve reasonably well-written articles on topics that meet some measure of general importance. Randomran (talk) 23:58, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I support what Hobit said above.

There's nothing wrong with using primary sources to indicate where the information shown came from, as long as only the information in the primary source is noted (nothing extraneous, guessed, synthesized, etc.)

Synthesis, etc. is for the "experts", in (hopefully) verifiable, reliable, secondary sources. (With ternary/tertiary sources as supportive sources.)

As for what should be included, why are we drawing an arbitrary line? The answer should presumably be "everything". (Though presumably as a summary, and not as a complete duplication of the work.)

Besides IDONTLIKEIT arguments (which we've heard often enough, with words like "trivia" and "cruft"), which should have no place in discussions of criteria for content inclusion (Wikipedia is not Censored!), I guess I'm not sure I understand what the complaint is.

As far as i can tell, information culled (noted/summarised/listed) from primary sources is (and should be) just fine. - jc37 01:39, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, information culled (noted/summarized/observed) from my cat Fluffikins is (and should be) just fine for cat.

Pure plot summary or pure analysis of plot summary isn't enough to create a new topic or subtopic from whole cloth. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 09:30, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd say that "fiction articles can be written entirely from primary sources" would go down in flames at least 10 times as bad as "fiction articles should meet WP:N". It doesn't represent a compromise in the least. I'd invite someone with that good faith belief to propose it, if only to prove once and for all that it's a completely untenable position. Randomran (talk) 17:51, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, it had a majority in the last poll, and the closer of the poll said it was very near consensus... - jc37 18:20, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

What poll is this? Randomran (talk) 19:38, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Fiction and fact. Fact is "Luke Skywalker is the protagonist of the Star Wars films." Fiction is "Luke Skywalker is a farmboy-turned-Jedi, who destroys the Death Star and redeems his father, Darth Vader." The fiction should not be allowed to be divorced from or overwhelm the fact. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 06:52, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

As far as I can see from these discussions, there is a desire for inclusion criteria based on the view that there are some topics that ought to be covered based on rational arguments that they are important topics, or that the coverage of those topics is worthwhile. My view is that I think we are all agreed.
My view is that WP:N ticks most of these boxes, but not everyone agrees with this approach, nor with the requirement for real-world coverage to form part of the inclusion criteria for fiction. But is there an alternative?
What I am not seeing in these discussions are explicit proposals for alternatives to WP:N, and what would be the stengths and weakness of such an approach. If these discussions are to make any headway, then I think we need to honest with each other, and set out our objectives clearly in terms of which parts of WP:GNG we want to keep or discard, why we want to make these changes, and make clear both the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:09, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

If I were going to write a proposal, it would probably not be an explicit alternative to WP:N, but instead clarifications of what significant coverage and independent sources mean in this context, and how we can go about getting fictional articles in line with this standard. It doesn't really matter how totally awesome and revolutionary your standard is at this point without some sort of cleanup plan, because fiction articles are deeply entrenched and hopelessly disorganized. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 19:46, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• I think from my perspective one of the areas that is up for debate is the nature of sourcing. I'm in favor of allowing dependent sourcing to achieve an article which approaches from a factual perspective, and to demonstrate noteworthiness. My logic is this: dvd commentary is commisioned and published on a dvd. Interviews are sought and published by people other than the interviewee. I don't see anything that really precludes us utilising dependent sourcing to build an article in core content policy, and I think the aggregate of reliable souces regarding the central work will allow spin out articles providing the article is well-written. An article on Luke Skywalker should first describe the setting, that of Star Wars, which is a notable setting. If there's enough material sourced from dependent sources, excluding the work itself, then I think that's the line for inclusion. So for me, you're looking at:

• That would be my pitch. Or close to it. Hiding T 11:57, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
  • I think the DVD/blog commentary thing was a good idea too. I think that a director or author can often be a judge of what's important. But not always. At least when it comes to video games, there will be times when a developer spends a lot of time talking about a trivial aspect of the game that they spent a lot of time on, like texture mapping the truck, or balancing the firepower of the AK-47 and sniper rifle. I'd really like to have an additional check or balance on that, so we include somewhat less than every topic that a developer talks about in an interview/comment/blog/diary. Randomran (talk) 16:06, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
    • The usual check on that is consensus. I mean, I can find reliable secondary sources of first person accounts of World War II, but do you think I'll get them into World War II? That's why I think at some level a lot of our guidance has failed as we've pushed the scope of it into tighter and tighter language. This stuff works better when we judge each article on its merits. I think that's probably why the old WP:FICT worked and everything since Deckiller's proposal has failed, because we've tried to pin everything down and examine what every possible interpretation means and find a reason for it not to work. I really think if we fall back to the idea that it is a consensus of Wikipedians which determine what we keep and what we delete on a case by case basis, we might get somewhere. I've detailed this a little at User:Hiding/What notability is not, as well as Wikipedia:Does deletion help, but it's not something that ever gains traction, because obviously at some level each side wants their view enshrined in policy as a leg-up. That's why, in retrospect, WP:N as a guideline is a bad thing. It's probably why WP:PLOT is bad too, because WP:PLOT was never meant to be a deletion tool but an educational tool, a way of sayin we don't want this, but we do want it if you do this. I'll pretty much support anything now though, if it looks like it's got a fair wind behind it, just to get some sort of consensus. Hiding T 16:29, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
      • Honestly, if we're just going to go with whatever a group of editors thinks at a certain time, I'd rather just stick with WP:N and let AFD be occasionally stonewalled by a few editors like we have now. I only see value in this guideline if it actually makes future discussions a little easier and shorter, by saying "well, a large consensus of wikipedians agreed that we delete stuff like this, and keep stuff like that." If WP:FICT just forces us to settle it by arguing back and forth, then we don't need it, because we're already there. Randomran (talk) 17:03, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
        • Not clear on your exact meaning here. You seem to be saying that WP:CONSENSUS should not exist. We've always gone with whatever a group of editors thinks at a certain time, that's how Wikipedia is built, that's the whole point of Wikipedia. No matter what we decide today, tomorrow it might get over-turned. Thinking that we can implement something to overturn that is flawed, because consensus is enshrined as part of the foundation of Wikipedia. See [3]. You seem to be indicating that your version of Wikipedia is the desired outcome; I think fundamentally that's why Wikipedia will fail, because everyone now is pursuing competing visions rather than collaborating on shared goals. Personally, I'd rather stick with WP:NPOV and WP:NOT. It worked just as well when that was all there was. Hiding T 18:28, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
          • Of course we use a consensus, but WP:CONSENSUS states that a small group of editors cannot steamroll over the broader consensus among the community. A small group of editors may form a consensus that they like having what amounts to a blog on their user page, but it wouldn't change the broader consensus that WP:NOT#MYSPACE. I'd be okay with sticking with policies and guidelines we already have such as WP:V and WP:N, but there's evidence that they need to be revised to reflect the real consensus. That's the goal here at WP:FICT. But if people don't want a guideline and just want to play WP:IAR against WP:V at AFD, we literally don't have to do anything. We could just as well redirect this guideline to an existing one. Randomran (talk) 18:50, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
            • Doesn't the problem then become determining which is the community wide consensus and which is the small group? As to the real consensus, what do you believe is the real consensus? My take is that we kind of muddle through, and some articles are okay and some aren't. Ideally we'd like articles to be written to the standards at WP:WAF, but we aren't sure how long an article can take to meet those standards. We're also not sure to what extent WP:N applies to articles about fictional topics. Is that somewhere near consensus? But even if you achieve something at WP:FICT, how do you think that will stop people playing WP:IAR against WP:FICT? Hiding T 19:43, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
              • I think the real consensus is close to what you said: not that we outright ignore WP:N, but we permit some articles a bit more time to improve, and several well-written well-verified articles without the most reliable/independent of sources will still survive deletion. If we were to say what you or I just said, but in more specific terms, I think it would be valuable. First, it would save a lot of breath on the part of people who try to strictly apply WP:N, and a lot of people on the deletionist side would probably cool down. Second, I think there's some value to showing there is a mandate for some sort of standard on fiction, so that people can stop insisting "your guideline has no consensus". I think it would bring a lot of inclusionists in line, too. Would people still be belligerent on both sides? Yeah. But less so, and having a guideline with the broad consensus of the middle would help separate the reasonable folks from the extremists. Randomran (talk) 19:50, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
                • • I think the problem continues to be finding language that expresses this. It either gets too specific and no one can agree or too vague and buys you almost nothing. Hobit (talk) 20:01, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
                    • I think that's a fair point. I'm ready to admit that we won't be able to pin it down, but what guideline does? Even with uncontroversial standards like WP:V, we have some wiggle room to discuss what's a reliable source, and how to interpret and summarize what a source actually said. But WP:V still offers us a starting point for that discussion, rather than just leaving articles entirely to "my word against yours" (or "my blog against yours", or "my faction against yours"). I don't mean that to even say that we'll get WP:FICT to anything as precise as WP:V, but that I'd be satisfied if WP:FICT gives us a reasonable starting point. Randomran (talk) 20:07, 17 April 2009

Notability (fiction)/Original

So what does Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)/Original buy for starters? Hiding T 21:07, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• I remain okay with that (certainly not thrilled). It's the "least worst" I've seen that's had consensus. Hobit (talk) 21:19, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

(outdent)One possible way would be to allow production commentary from blogs, DVDs, books (such as some manga have comments by the author throughout), character polls published by such sources, etc. We then would have to say what can't be used from them and possibly why. Dissucsion of video-game mechanics by a producer could be used to verify, but not show notability. Why? Because for a general reader wanting to know more about the subject, the fine point of how a game limited polygon count by stategic placement on character models probably won't interest people. Possibly as well we might require at least 1 completely independant source on real-world impact or reception as well to make certain we aren't getting a source that clearly was very interesting to 10 people out there willing to spend a lot of energy on it and completely irrelivant to everyone else.じんない 21:26, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• Hiding ... the original guideline you pointed to isn't so bad. I'm surprised that it had consensus. I guess I haven't been around that long. I was under the impression we never had anything for WP:FICT, or anything meaningful anyway. I'm just a little confused about it though. It looks like the standard is actually *lower* for minor characters than for major characters. And overall, the guideline could be better written and more organized, including a clear statement that the general guideline is WP:N. But I think it's a decent starting point. If you wanted to restore that and begin cleaning it up for a new proposal, you'd have my support and my assistance. Randomran (talk) 21:35, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• • I have to concur that it isn't horrible, but I would like to emphasise this quote from it: 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. That puts us nearly back at WP:N, and I suspect that would be a stumbling block.—Kww(talk) 21:53, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
    • Speaking for myself, I'd consider the stand-alone lists of minor characters to be a stumbling block. These lists typically don't last. I know I'd be willing to accept major characters with a real-world perspective from even DVD commentary or blogs, so I could go softer there. But entire lists of minor concepts seem like a total erosion of good practices, and nothing close to what we do now. Randomran (talk) 22:01, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
      • I think it's actually very common in practice. Maybe not "minor characters" but some form of "recurring characters" or "other characters" is really common and I think still generally accepted as they way to organize the material. Hobit (talk) 23:30, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
        • I'm not sure. My experience is with the video games WikiProject, and those kinds of minor character lists don't last. For major games, you see lists of recurring characters. Only for the most notable games do you see individualized character articles. Randomran (talk) 01:54, 18 April 2009 (UTC)
  • WP:FICT was guidance before WP:N ever was. Now, I haven't been here forever, but perhaps my perspective is skewed by the fact that WP:V wasn't even a policy when I started. As to the guidance itself, I merely offered it as a start. It sure is ugly, yes, but is there anything we can salvage? Hiding T 22:30, 17 April 2009 (UTC)
    • Yeah, I definitely have a newcomer bias. I'm used to WP:V. See it as highly important, even. We don't need much from that old guideline: we don't need the examples (yet), and we don't need the details (although we may eventually need some stuff about "what to do with stuff that fails this guideline). We really just need the main four bullets. And even then, I'd probably ditch the one about minor characters. But we'd probably need to debate / discuss some of the details. Randomran (talk) 22:57, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

• I continue not to like it, both directions: it's too inclusionist and fragmentist even for me, because it will permit separate articles about even the most minor characters in the most trivial works if there happens to be a little easy-to-find criticism. On the other hand, for major characters in important works where the secondary criticism is not all that easy to find, it prevents what would otherwise be separate articles. Seeing the results of some of the fragments, and the dispersion of material from related topics, I seem to be turning into a mergist. Basically, I don't really give a damn about separate articles as long as we have full content. An encyclopedia covers in detail what is important enough to cover in detail, and in brief the things that are not. I continue to disagree about real world perspective being of much importance. Fiction is important because it is fiction, and we want balanced treatment of the internal and external aspects. Theres no principle nor should there be that an encyclopedia covers only the physical world, and not the intellectual and artistic content of the objects within it. I don't want to specify which should get the emphasis--it depends on what's worth saying. DGG (talk) 21:06, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Anything that is vague provides no guidance. Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)/Original says that "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". Bascially this fails WP:V as independent sourcing is not required. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 23:24, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Say What? You said "Bascially this fails WP:V as independent sourcing is not required." Right after quoting "...backed by sources independent of the work..." soooo. WTH? ThuranX (talk) 04:28, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I am not familiar with the term "soooo. WTH". Could you clarify what you mean? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 07:59, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

FYI, WTH = "What the hell". He probably wants you to expand on what he views as a contradiction in your post. — sephiroth bcr ^(converse) 08:17, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

It is not clear whether the independent sources are about the character directly, or just mention the character. In my view, this wording skirts around the requirement of WP:V which says if no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:46, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

• Forget I mentioned it. The idea in asking if there was anything we could use in the old guidance was to ask people to pick stuff they thought would be acceptable. Given most respondents have managed to misinterpret and picked out everything they hate, it's quite clear this discussion won't go far. Cheers, Hiding T 10:08, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

The problem with third party sources

I do not think a requirement for reliable third party sources is acceptable or workable for fiction, period. Why? Because the entire reliable third-party source rule was created for WP:N as an acceptable baseline to deal with items of minor and trivial interest. Let's be perfectly clear on this fact - multiple independent sources is a requirement because it is an adequate and acceptable simulation for a requirement of importance. Which is why notability arguments fail so often when made against, say, major characters of television shows. Because on the face of it, the statement "this character who is known by millions of people is non-notable" is absurd.

It continues to appear to me, looking at articles on fiction, that the major line between a good article on fiction and a crap one is real-world perspective. And that, from a reader's perspective, is the important thing.

Let's imagine a hypothetical. Let us imagine an enormously popular television series. Let us imagine that the DVD releases for this series are drenched with commentary - featurettes, interviews, commentary tracks, tons and tons of real-world perspective. Let us imagine an article on the main character of this series. What we have here, then, is an article that is full of real-world perspective, on a subject that is known to millions.

Some questions:

1. Is a reader (as opposed to someone steeped in Wikipedia policy jargon) reasonable in expecting an article on such a character, given the relative importance and fame of other topics on Wikipedia?
2. From a reader's perspective (again, as opposed to policy literalism), what would be gained by reliance on third party sources for an article like the hypothetical?

My concern here is that the demand for independent sources is based on a sort of logical syllogism of policy instead of on actual thought about the readers and the social good of Wikipedia - that it reduces Wikiopedia to a sort of algorithmic game instead of as an actual thing that, you know, exists in the world for a reason and a purpose. And I want to make sure that any decision we come to is based as much in the good of the readers as in the literalism of policy. Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:38, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

• First off, I agree third-party sources make sense in the most general of cases. Most of the time, people are trying to add something of questionable importance, and thus you have to debate and discuss. How do we settle an argument over what's true/false on Wikipedia? By verifying it. You verify importance. And because you can't rely on someone's autobiography or advertisement as a fair way to evaluate their importance, you go to a reliable third-party -- if there is one. I think we agree on that much.
• Turning to fiction ... I still think that's a good standard for a lot of stuff of questionable importance, like weapons. A lightsaber is clearly notable. The shotgun from Unreal Tournament II is not. I wouldn't dare say "all fictional weapons are notable". But neither do I want to have a subjective debate about what I personally think is notable. Let's find a third party. And for a lightsaber, there's literally tons of sources. Whether you're an inclusionist or a deletionist, it would literally take you 5 minutes to find the sources for that one, and the debate would be over.
• So, to get to your point ... If there's one class of fictional elements that I could safely say are usually important, at least within the context of the work itself, it would be major characters. You might need a third-party source to settle a debate about whether a weapon is important. But for a character who has appeared in 80-90% of all the episodes for a substantial part, just the episodes themselves could arguably verify their importance to the series -- they'd prove they're vital to tell the story at multiple points in the plot. Meaning that you'd at least have a section on them within the main series article. Beyond that, for a well-written article, you'd just need some context, which could come from DVD and blog commentary, IMO. Randomran (talk) 17:07, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

• • Sure. And part of the problem here is that "notability is not inherited," as a blanket statement, does not always hold. Indeed, WP:INHERIT notes that music and books both do allow inherited notability in some cases. So the problem we run into is that there is a class of things whose importance can be adequately inherited down. Which is, I think, one of the big problems people have run into - it is transparently obvious to anyone who has not spent excessive time on Wikipedia that the main character of a TV series watched by millions of people is notable. Phil Sandifer (talk) 17:15, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
    • Which is back at the problem that the word "notable" is used in a very different manner on WP than it is outside of it. And why I think if we switched to a view that we looking for a "threshold of notability", its easier to explain when we have issues. Viewership is a form of notability, yes, but for WP, alone it doesn't pass a threshold. (This is not to say that potentially that with X million viewers, we can assume that there's got to be more reliable sources to describe the fiction more; only just as a standalone data point it's not sufficient). I'm willing to assert that major characters from network prime time series with at least 13 episodes and/or one season will ultimately meet our level of threshold since there's likely sources if the show is kept that long. That's what those statement in music and book notability boil down to, the fact that it's not really that notability is inherited, but that the parent topic will be producing works that will be observed and reviewed, and thus will likely make them notable here on WP. Same with the idea for major characters. --MASEM (t) 17:42, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
      • I think this is based on a real inversion of how notability works. The independent sources notability guideline was always a decent way of estimating notability in the conventional sense. We never redefined notability, and to suggest that all notability is is sourcing is foolish - the lack of full correspondence between sourcing and notability is a large part of why WP:N remains a guideline. For the most part, when "notable" is used on Wikipedia, it is not used as a term of art. Phil Sandifer (talk) 19:31, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
    • There's a consensus against notability being always inherited for every spinout. But is there a consensus that it's sometimes inherited? The consensus will vary depending on which "times" are "some". I also think we're not just talking about notability in the sense of "important enough to be covered", but the Wikipedia-standard that gives us the kinds of sources we need to be able to write something of decent quality. I think we're talking less about total inherited notability in the absence of any evidence, and more about being able to assert notability with less than reliable third-party sources for a few things. Major characters would be the easiest thing to focus on, and even that would take some discussion. As much as I'd say that major characters are almost always notable, I wouldn't want to see articles without a decent section of real-world coverage. And I wouldn't say it's a pass for the hero of every fictional series, to the point that we have articles for characters from barely notable webcomics. But I think the way forward is to discuss a single class of elements: like major characters. Randomran (talk) 17:51, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
      • Sure. What I'd like to see, ideally, is a lower bar for notability and a higher bar for quality. I'd much rather zap articles for failing WP:WAF than for a notability guideline. Clearly not all spin-outs inherit notability - but nobody has ever seriously proposed that they do. On the other hand, there are clearly cases where notability is inherited - it's an accepted practice in other areas. So if we can figure out what those cases are, we can delineate them. But on the other hand, "reliable third party sources" is a non-starter - it ignores the issue of inheritance, which, sloganism aside, is a real one, and it ignores the issue of actual service to the reader, which is the entire point of the enterprise. Phil Sandifer (talk) 19:31, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
        • You're right that it's easy to get caught up in philosophical debates and slogans (I think even the situations of "inherited notability" are really just a lower standard of verified importance). Let's be practical. Notability does two things. One is that it keeps out stuff that's only important on an "i like it" basis, by asking people to verify that it's actually important. Two is that it guarantees we have adequate sources in order to write a pretty good article. I'm confident that if we focus on characters exclusively, we can come up with a measure that prevents every character that ever appeared in fiction from getting an article, and still use sources that are good enough to make a decent article possible (let alone featured article). Let's not get caught up in philosophy, and let's start focusing on a standard that will get us both those things. Randomran (talk) 20:17, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
          • That would certainly be my preference. But I think one part of that is recognizing that notability is not the correct tool to deal with these. I would suggest, on the face of it, that major characters and episodes of television series watched by millions of people inherit notability at least as well as a band that "contains at least one member who was once a part of or later joined a band that is otherwise notable." (to quote WP:MUSIC). Now I am perfectly willing to grant that there are numerous reasons why major characters and episodes might be better treated with approaches other than individual articles. But notability is not the main problem with these articles. And I think it would be helpful if we were to move the discussion of what to do with them on to the policies that are better suited to the task, instead of engaging in the farce of pretending that "non-notable" is a useful adjective to describe something known by millions of people. Phil Sandifer (talk) 22:24, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
            • Frankly, I've kind of gotten tired of the word notability because it's too loaded. When I'm talking about notability, I mean some level of minimum sourcing that keeps truly unimportant garbage out, and ensures we can write a decent article from it. If we have to stop using that word to make progress, I can do that. We need *some* kind of minimum sourcing requirement for fiction for the two reasons I mentioned. Randomran (talk) 22:50, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

"Let's be perfectly clear on this fact - multiple independent sources is a requirement because it is an adequate and acceptable simulation for a requirement of importance." This says it all. Third Party sources are needed. Your hypothetical would have to exist in a vacuum for there to be no substantial third party sources. Further, your Hypothetical is just that. your perfect made up argument for it, one that ignores all sorts of REALITY. You would not get a DVD full of the real world commentary unless there was third party commentary to substantiate 'real-world'ness. Otherwise, any jackass could make a DVD of their own home animation, fill it with hours of their own yammering about it, and it would pass your version of a standard. Anything that gets as big as your hypothetical would have real world coverage, and I challenge you to provide three concrete examples of your hypothetical; three series with DVDs and tons of creator commentary, which is NOT third party, and about whose characters nothings has been written. ThuranX (talk) 19:50, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

In answer to Randomran, when a fictional character who is known by millions of people is non-notable, it is would be because the fictional work is notable, not the character. You can't assume that a character inherits notability from the primary work - there needs to be verifiable evidence. For example, the author J.G. Ballard recently died. He wrote a book, Empire of the Sun, from which the film of the same name was based, directed by Steven Spielberg, with a screenplay by J.G. Ballard, and Tom Stoppard. Its a long time since I have seen the film, but I do remember the pilot of a P-51 Mustang waving to the central character, Jamie Graham, played by Christian Bale (although I did not know that at the time). If no one has written about the character from a memorable film, directed by a notable director, acted by a notable actor and written by notable authors, why has Jamie Graham not inherited any notabilty? To answer Randomran's questions, you need reliable secondary sources to write an article about a notable character - you can't write an encyclopedic based on assumptions of notability. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 20:23, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I think you should legitimately try out a "greater than WP:N standard" and propose it for RFC. Either we'll get a consensus, or we'll move on. But I wouldn't be surprised if the proposal gets shut down by a revert before it even makes it out of the gate. You might need to propose it strictly in the talk page, and do an RFC to the talk page. Randomran (talk) 20:27, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Randomran, you are far too clever to believe in the statement that "I do not think a requirement for reliable third party sources is acceptable or workable for fiction". Why would anyone think that coverage from unreliable sources is acceptable at all, let alone superior to reliable ones? You mentioned the readers of such articles? How would they choose: relaible or unreliable? As ThuranX has explained, anyone can manufacture unreliable coverage in vast quantities, and they do - its called spam. I would have thought it was a no brainer - readers and editors alike want reliable secondary sources, why settle for less? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 21:26, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

There are lots of other ways forward. Reliability isn't a question of yes or no, but of degree. A source that might not be reliable for the purposes of evaluating a controversial claim may still be reliable in other senses. Even self-published sources are always reliable when verifying informationa bout themselves. Independence too: we may require a high degree of independence to evaluate the merit of something, but filling in the details might require something less independent. I think reliable third-party sources are means to an end, literally the best thing we've come up with thus far. But it's not the only way forward, should you propose it as the standard for fiction and it fails. I think you should propose it. There's nothing to lose. If nothing else it will be learning experience. Randomran (talk) 22:29, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

The issue, to my mind, is that novels are, by their nature, much smaller works than long-form serialized fiction, which is why we don't have this issue for movies and books to nearly the same degree as for television. I think Jamie Graham has a perfectly fine claim to inherited notability. What he lacks is a claim to "enough that can be said about him to make a separate article more useful than a merged section of the parent article." I mean, let's be honest here - we're basically dealing with television and to a lesser extent comics and film series here as the controversial areas. Which makes sense - a single season of television clocks in at about 16.5 hours runtime. Few novels take that long to read. When you get to a multi-season work it gets even vaster - Babylon 5 clocks in at over 82.5 hours, and over six years of active production work. There simply aren't many novels or films that have that many aspects about them.

My argument is not that the main character of a notable work should always have an independent article. It is that notability is not the right tool for the job when dealing with main characters of notable works. WP:WAF and basic sanity about organization of information are more than sufficient for dealing with a proposed Jamie Graham article. The much more significant issue, to my mind, is what to do with an article like Rory Gilmore, which was merged about a year ago. The article as it stood was a piece of shit. But its problems were not primarily notability - it was that the article was a plot summary with little to no context. But by reducing the problem to notability, since notability is fundamentally intertwined with deletion, the options became delete/merge/leave. When in fact the option of "fix the piece of shit article" was the correct route. This is common, and unfortunate.

I'll be the first to admit that our fiction editors are, as a rule, poor writers who have a myopic lack of focus when it comes to adequately crafting encyclopedic coverage of a subject. And I'll be the first to admit that we get plenty of articles on ridiculous minutiae of fiction. The problem is that in a rush to clean out the worst of the worst, a huge middle ground of significant material is getting wiped out with little to no thought about alternatives or improvement. And all of this is being done without any consideration of serving the reader - a reader who, I think understandably, is often puzzled by why we maintain an article on Lebanon, South Dakota, a town of 86, but are so averse to an article on one of the main characters of a critically acclaimed television show watched by millions of people.

Now I am open to discussing whether the encyclopedic information about any given character is best dealt with in an independent article or as a subsection of a parent article. That's fine. But can we please stop making asinine straw man arguments about people self-publishing "a DVD of their own home animation" and pretending the point is even remotely comparable to the articles we're actually talking about?

My point remains this - notability is not the reason to delete an article on a major character known by millions of people. That does not mean that the article must therefore exist, period. It simply means that notability is not an appropriate reason for its removal.Phil Sandifer (talk) 22:15, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

A better way to approach your statement is start with the fact which I agree with that our coverage of a notable fictional work should include its major and recurring/minor characters and, if its a TV episode, its individual episodes as that's just of an encyclopedic summary of the work. Once there, its then determining to what level we cover them. This should be guided by WAF and WP:SS, with the realization that we have to consider the potential of the characters of episodes before breaking out a new article.

I do content that "major characters from notable works should have their own article" is going to cause a lot of problems with people less willing to give the benefit of the doubt. Take, for example, a failed network series like Viva Laughlin technically is notable (more for FAIL than being a show) and there's no reason to discuss the major characters beyond what can be contained on the main page. On the other hand, there's shows that pretty much as soon as a new major character or episode is established, we're pretty sure it can have a page (Simspons for one). It's too much hit or miss. Basically, characters and episodes are equivalent to individual songs from albums; we assume albums by notable bands are notable (the equivalent: shows by notable creators/directors/producers are notable), but the individual aspects of that need stronger evidence. Any attempt to pass off the claim of characters and episodes being notable without sources or the potential for sourcing is going to be nigh impossible to pull off. --MASEM (t) 22:53, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Thuran, either you can't read or you're just making strawmen. Since you seem capable of stringing words together to form a sentence, I'm assuming it's the latter, in which case, please stop wasting my time with it. Phil Sandifer (talk) 21:52, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Phil, you might have missed some of the valid points that Thranx is making - we can't formulate a guideline about fiction in a bubble that protects it from reality. Just because you or I think a character, or some other element of fiction is notable, it ain't necessarily so. I might think the scene where the pilot of a P-51 Mustang waves to the central character, Jamie Graham, who then shouts "Horsepower" to be notable. I might think the scene where Sherif Ali emerges from the desert in Lawrence of Arabia is notable. However, I think that notability of these characters has to be established through verifiable evidence, not hearsay from me or you, or any other source that is not reliable and independent. As you say, the way to save articles from deletion is to fix them, but it is not to construct an exemption from WP:V for them in these guidelines. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 22:44, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

I think there's a way to verify the importance of fictional elements without relying upon third-party sources. Or, at least, less than significant coverage. We may have to do it, if there's no consensus that reliable third-party sources are the only standard. But we could try it your way, if you honestly believe in good faith it would get consensus. Randomran (talk) 23:03, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

• Jamie Graham is JG Ballard. Empire of the Sun is a memoir written using artistic license. Everyone does know that, yes? Hiding T 10:16, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Two points on this discussion:

• First, comparing length in hours of movies and TV series to reading time of books isn't a fair comparison at all: there's a reason that huge amounts of plot and dialogue are typically stripped from film adaptations of books. A two hour movie isn't even the same size as a typical novella, much less a novel.
• It bothers me that the whole third-party sourcing issue is being drug out again ... most editors, even me, the evil bogeyman supporter of WP:N, showed that they were willing to compromise on that topic. What scuttled the last effort was an effort to identify each and every episode of every television show ever made as being notable enough to warrant an article. I don't see compromise as possible until that demand can be dropped. An individual television episode comes as close to inherently non-notable as a thing can come, and needs information and importance above and beyond what can be found in television guides to support.—Kww(talk) 23:23, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
  • Nobody said that--or if they did, I hope it was rhetorical. The question is about content , not article organization. I (and I think essentially everyone who supports these articles) am perfectly willing to accept third party sourcing as necessary for individual episode articles, provided that it is accepted that other episodes or major shows can have substantial parts in combination articles. If people challenge or reduce such content, then I consider them as unwilling to accept compromise, and I think it is those people who have prevented action on this. As Phil said above, the real question is how to improve content over the present deplorable situation. DGG (talk) 23:44, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
    • Which is why I think we'll have more success describing what should be in the encyclopedic coverage of a notable work of fiction through WAF, and then realize that we need to have support for combination articles to justify that, notable or not. Notability on fiction elements should fall out on how we want to try fiction, not lead it. --MASEM (t) 23:48, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
    • I think you need to review the history of prong two, DGG. The argument between these two versions was arguably the final death of that proposal. Maybe not quite "inherent notability", but indistinguishably close in actual practice.—Kww(talk) 23:54, 19 April 2009 (UTC)
      • I think we should just dodge the episodes issue anyway. They're just too drastically different from the actual elements of fiction, like characters and locations and objects. The fact that they're hard to deal with is another good reason. But really, Wikipedia is easier to deal with when people are incremental. Biting off too much is never successful. Let's talk about characters. Randomran (talk) 00:44, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
      • And if you look, I'm open to what I think is a fair compromise on this. I don't think every episode and character should have an article. However, I think that the operative test ought not be the muddy "importance," nor really "notability" at all. I would rather allow deletion for persistent and stubborn failure to pass WAF (a far stricter standard than has been proposed here for notability) than to move the notability bar so far from any reality-based standard. Phil Sandifer (talk) 02:35, 20 April 2009 (UTC)
        • Despite how your old proposal turned out, Phil, I wanna just say that you've been one of the most fair minded people in this whole dispute. I know you feel passionately about including a lot of stuff, but the fact that you've been willing to reach out passed your own viewpoint and even upset some inclusionist sympathizers in the process... that shows a lot of integrity. So if nothing else, I know that if it were up to you and me we'd get to some middle ground. Anyway, I think you're right about preserving some level of quality should be the goal of this guideline, as well as to delete or redirect those articles that can't ever meet this quality quality. But then, to some extent it should be about importance too. Even if I could write a decent quality article on the plasma rifle from Halo, with a summary of its stats and its "fictional origins" as an alien artefact verified in the instruction manual, and some real-world information from a developer blog about how they had to balance it and texture map it to give it an outer-space style, I don't think it's worthy of more than a sentence (unless some reliable third-parties could prove me wrong). Randomran (talk) 03:59, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

The only reason I care about third party sources, as I indicated in the previous FICT debate, was that you can't write an item of quality content without adequate third party coverage. Simple as that. That's the general minimum bar I have for articles. Without enough coverage, you can expand the article to its fullest that is allotted by WP:WEIGHT and you'll fail to cover the topic comprehensively; for instance, in the case of a fictional character, you may lack sufficient critical coverage or some other field. At that point, the editorial decision is to merge. If there is nothing to merge (probably not the case as something in this gray area probably has some decent, verifiable information worth preserving), then the article should be brought to AfD and deleted. At the end of the day, our goal is to produce items of quality content (more or less GA), and if something can't be improved to meet that standard, then we shouldn't cover it. Really as simple as that.

Now, I'm not totally inflexible on this. I've recognized that character lists in particular when the cast is large enough to demand such a list such that comprehension of the series would be damaged without having a list (thus pulling it within the parameters of WP:NOT#PLOT and WP:WEIGHT), but in 99% of other cases (such as a list of fictional locations or objects), it's not so completely essential to the plot that it warrants inclusion. All this said, lists are an area we agreed not to cover (or is the field now open?) and my above points concerning quality content are largely focused on articles. — sephiroth bcr ^(converse) 08:14, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Sephiroth BCR - some sort of line must now be drawn under these discussions about whether we can get around using third party sources. WP:FICT can't contain an exemption from WP:V for any class of fictional subject matter, otherwise the guideline will fall outside Wikipedia's existing framework of policies and guidelines. The arguement that we should allow such exemptions to protect articles from deletion won't work in the long term; allowing unreliable or manufactured content will only make matters worse, and force someother guideline or policy to be amended to compensate. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 13:01, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not arguing that third-party sourcing is completely unnecessary. We compromised at a level of roughly "some third-party mention necessary, detailed third-party coverage not required if there's good third-party coverage of the surrounding topic, and we can fill in the gaps on this detail with reliable, but not independent, sourcing" before, and I think that's about as good of a compromise as we can come up with. Shifting from that tends to alienate one side faster than it gains converts from the other.—Kww(talk) 13:17, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree that we can't provide an exemption for WP:V, but let's not use the fact that we have redundancy in our policies to create a Catch-22. The relevant section of WP:V - "If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." - was added as a mirror of WP:N. It is not an independent policy to WP:N, but a restatement of it. If we are deciding that the concerns of WP:N is satisfiable via another route, the concerns of policies that simply restate WP:N are satisfied along with it. This is not building in an exception. Phil Sandifer (talk) 16:17, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Put a proposal forward, but all the proposal so far have only sought to exempt ficitional topics from WP:N or replace it something more subjective that has no bearing on writing an encyclopedic article. We need reliable secondary sources that are independent of the primary work to provide such coverage, so it is common sense to select only those topics that have coverage from these sources for Wikipedia. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 21:53, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

It wasn't added to mirror WP:N, language to that effect has been in WP:V much longer than WP:N has been in existence. The point everyone seems to miss regarding that language in WP:V is that it doesn't mirror WP:N. WP:V calls for one reliable, third-party source. Not loads, just the one. Hiding T 09:22, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

To mention, or not to mention

This just raises my initial question again, though - from a reader's perspective, as opposed to a Wikipedia policy perspective, what does "mention" gain us? Phil Sandifer (talk) 13:50, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I buy into an "as opposed to policy" argument. It's important that our editors not decide on their own that something is important, and it's important that the creators of a work not be able to decide what parts of it are important and which are not. In all areas, we rely on the availability of third-party sourcing to make that determination for us. There's a strong feeling among many editors that the "detailed examination in multiple sources" standard is too stringent for fiction, so it's worth exploring loosening the restriction. As for eliminating it, you need to provide a viable alternative, and you haven't done so yet. As it stands, the logic of "if no one independent of the creator has deemed an element of a fictional work worth mentioning, it isn't worth devoting an article to" seems pretty reasonable.—Kww(talk) 14:10, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I think you may have stumbled on to the major point of disagreement in this debate. In order to discuss any work of fiction, it is normal to mention the plot, characters and other in universe details to provide some sort of context. This applies not just to Wikipedia articles, but to reliable secondary sources as well. The point of disagreement in all the debates I have been in about a fictional character relates to just this: if a reliable source "mentions" a character, is that evidence of notability?
I would argue that for a character to be notable, it would have to be the subject of 'significant coverage', i.e. coverage in which the sources address the subject directly in detail, and no original research is needed to extract the content. However, many editors, desperate to provide evidence of notability, take the same line as Kww by arguing along the lines that a topic is notable if it gets a mention.
In a way, I am sympathetic to Kww stance, because it is very hard to find 'significant coverage' about all but the most well-known characters. However, having seen some articles that are based on coverage that is less than significant (e.g. Mimic (Dungeons & Dragons)), quality of coverage is definetly an issue, and I don't see how Kww's stance could benefit the coverage of fictional topics at all. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 14:57, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Bear in mind that I'm not advocating this based on personal preference. My personal preference is that we apply WP:N rigidly to all articles, including fiction. I'm still trying to find a spot where people will stop arguing all the time, and proceed to create articles that won't wind up at AFD, and delete those articles that don't fit. That elusive "happy medium", as it were.—Kww(talk) 15:37, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, my point is that policy is a means to an end, and the end is the reader's benefit. They are not simply rules to be manipulated within their own internal logic. So from a reader's perspective, what does, to take a random episode article, Black Market (Battlestar Galactica) gain from independent sourcing? Why would independent sourcing improve the article more than, for instance, expanding the creator commentary to give a better picture of where Moore thinks the episode went wrong? From the perspective of a reader, I mean - that is, one who is interested in accurate, verifiable information about a subject. Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:28, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I think the article would benefit by not existing at all. It's a plot summary, with no discernible encyclopedic value. It belongs in IMDB, not in Wikipedia. The lack of third-party sourcing is a definite indicator of that. WP:NOT#PLOT is pretty much the guiding principle here.—Kww(talk) 15:37, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

"Fuck serving the readers" is not a useful answer. Please try again. Phil Sandifer (talk) 16:10, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and when you try again, please do look at the last section of the article - a section which, as I said, can readily be expanded through further use of the podcast. I picked the episode precisely because it has the interesting distinction of being more or less wholly disclaimed by the show's creators, providing an interesting trove of non-independent real world information. I'm not saying the article in its current form is good - the summary is over-long, and there's lack of even cursory attention to several available sources. My question is why mention in a third-party source would improve it even more than actually using the first-party sources we have thoroughly. Phil Sandifer (talk) 16:13, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I never said "Fuck serving the readers", and using such statements and accusations isn't going to move this discussion anywhere. I have a library of books: it includes encylopedias, cookbooks, and car repair manuals. I don't look in my encyclopedia for recipes: I use my cookbooks for that. I don't look in my encyclopedia for information on how to adjust the clutch arm on my Suzuki: I use my Haynes manuals for that. I don't look in an encyclopedia for plot summaries of television episodes, either, and there's no reason to have them in an encyclopedia. The article needs justification for its existence, and that may be provided in a third-party source. If you can find one that shows that the episode is in some way pivotal or crucial to understanding the remake of "Battlestar Galactica", that can be the basis for an article. As it stands, the article lacks a reason to live: address that issue, and then the balance of the material inside it can be discussed.—Kww(talk) 16:24, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

You don't look in your encyclopedia for 99% of what we include in Wikipedia, so it's kind of a worthless comparison. I wouldn't look in Encyclopedia Britanica for anything at all about Battlestar Galactica, because it's not in there to begin with. We've redefined what an encyclopedia is.

Here's it's reason to live - we've been around for six years, and over those six years, have consistently offered articles on episodes of television series. To readers. Who, you know. Read them. [4] Hundreds of them per day, in fact. So given that it is something we have historically provided, and something readers actually use, the "reason to live" bit is fairly straightforward. The harder question, which you've dodged mightily, is "what is the reason to stop providing this service?" Phil Sandifer (talk) 16:36, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I think you know already that nonone wants to stop covering fiction, so your argument is over the top, nor will anyone here allow themselves to be blackmailed by the argument that trillions of articles will be deleted just because they can't comply with WP:V. In answer to your question, there is the readership that want to be informed and entertained, and there is no reason why balanced coverage of fiction should not provide that. On the other hand is the framework of policies and guidelines that support an open source encyclopedia that enable us to deliver balanced coverage to the readers. WP:V is one of those policies, without which we could not run an open source encyclopedia to which everyone can contribute. In that sense, verifiability is a bit like a driving licence which every article needs in order to have its own standalone article. In order to provide balanced coverage on Wikipedia, every topic has to pass a verifiability test, otherwise the balance of coverage will be lost to fancruft, plot summary only articles without encyclopedic content, spam and content forks. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 17:09, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

If you are seriously suggesting that Black Market (Battlestar Galactica) is unverifiable, you are off the reservation. By all means, do tell me what, exactly, is unverifiable in that article, or what crucial aspect of the topic is being left uncovered. Because unless this amounts to an actual problem, as opposed to a sort of rules mysticism, it's an objection without substance. Phil Sandifer (talk) 18:09, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't dodge the issue at all. I've said it point-blank numerous times. I'll repeat the points:

• This isn't a television guide.
• Articles that serve to summarize the plot elements of television episodes belong in television guides, not in encyclopedias.
• Articles that serve to summarize the plot elements of television episodes violate WP:NOT#PLOT.
• An encyclopedia should focus on fiction at the series level, and tunnel to the episode level only when necessary to explain the series. The detail level necessary to explain the series rarely justifies an individual article for the episode.
• Articles on television episodes are equivalent to articles on individual chapters in books: it's generally a completely inappropriate focus for an article, but can, in exceptional cases, be justified.
• Our editorial guidance in WP:EPISODE indicates that most episodes should not have individual articles, and there's no reason for WP:FICT to attempt to contradict that.

This is where my problems in trying to understand you lie: you always say that you don't believe that television episodes are inherently notable, but yet, in all cases, you argue that every television episode that you can find DVD or podcast commentary on is notable. Can you provide an example of a single television episode of a dramatic series that you would not consider notable enough to have an article (aside from your earlier concession that episodes of Doctor Who should be bundled into story arcs)?—Kww(talk) 17:13, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you have dodged the issue, because it amounts to saying "the rules say so, so I don't have to consider the readers." Which is the attitude I summarized previously, and stand by the summary of, as "fuck the readers." You've not once considered them in favor of a masturbatory rules fetishism. It's pathetic and sickening. Phil Sandifer (talk) 18:04, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Your comments have crossed the border into WP:NPA land, Phil, and I hope that you won't continue in that direction. I have answered your question in terms of what Wikipedia is and should be, and made a fair effort to do so. Could you answer my direct question: "Can you provide an example of a single television episode of a dramatic series that you would not consider notable enough to have an article (aside from your earlier concession that episodes of Doctor Who should be bundled into story arcs)?"—Kww(talk) 19:02, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

As long as you focus myopically on the language of rules without the slightest consideration of the readers, no, I can't answer your questions, because they are drivel far worse than the shittiest fiction article on Wikipedia. You've created a house of cards - because you've defined, a priori and with no basis in anything, that articles on episodes are un-encyclopedic, you come to the conclusion - with great fanfare - that episode articles are un-encyclopedic. Which is an impressive feat given that you baldly assert it as your basic premise. Until you actually engage with the reading practices of our users, the history of Wikipedia, and the question of what our purpose is (as opposed to simply asserting something that our purpose supposedly is not, despite the fact that we've been doing it for six years now), your arguments are, frankly, unworthy of debate. Your attitude here is worse than the toxic lies you spewed to derail the last proposal. Phil Sandifer (talk) 19:12, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

"Toxic lies"? Point to them, please, or apologize. If you cannot, you've gone way past the edge of WP:NPA into blockable NPA land with that one.—Kww(talk) 19:23, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh stop being a hypocrite. You turned a blind eye to far worse on the part of ThuranX. You don't get to be pissy about the speck in my eye when you've got an entire lumber mill hanging out of yours. But if you insist, I'll apologize and retract the comment. It seems preferable to the wave of nausea that would come from subjecting myself to rereading your appalling antics in the previous debate. Phil Sandifer (talk) 19:32, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

If you had chosen to go after ThuranX, I wouldn't have stopped you. I have no lumber mill hanging from my eyes ... I don't engage in personal attacks. The only edit that people try to wave at me and call one was from 18 months ago. I repeat: if you are going to accuse me of spewing toxic lies, point at them, or apologize.—Kww(talk) 19:39, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

You came nowhere close to a condemnation of ThuranX. If I recall correctly (I may not), you noted great sympathy for his statements. But in any case, the operative toxic lie was that the second prong had not always contained an exemption for episodes and major characters - a statement that was easily confirmable, especially as you had participated in numerous threads in which the whitelist was expressly mentioned. Either you knew full well that there was a whitelist, and acted surprised in order to derail the proposal, or your engagement with the debate was so shockingly superficial that it calls into question the value of everything you've contributed based on how poorly engaged you've been. So the options are toxic lies, or toxic negligence. I'll let you pick between them.

In the mean time, since I've let you be far too successful in derailing the discussion, let's move back a few sentences. In terms that actually deal with the real utility of articles to readers, and the long-standing tradition of what Wikipedia contains. Since Wikipedia is such a radical departure from past encyclopedias, it seems to me that its own history is a more useful marker for what is... let's call it Wikipedic instead of Encyclopedic... than any book either of us has on our shelf. Do you have any basis in either the history of the sorts of articles Wikipedia includes or the utility to the numerous readers who come to that page *daily* for the assertion that Black Market (Battlestar Galactica), if expanded to include more information from the 45 minute long commentary track released for it, is a valueless article? Phil Sandifer (talk) 19:48, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

First, I haven't derailed the discussion at all. Second, being able to parse the English language does not render me a "toxic liar". I've always proceeded on the assumption that you honestly did not write what you intended to, and that the last minute change was inadvertent, rather than intentional. All I ask in exchange is that you respect the fact that I did believe that you had backed off on the insistence that every episode was important, and would never have supported the proposal had I known that you still believed that it said that. Third, I never expressed sympathy for ThuranX's language or techniques, although I did express sympathy with the idea that your debate tactics are infuriating (to which you responded by attacking me as a "troll"). As for your question, yes, I have stopped beating my wife. I would consider such an article to be a valuable component of any television guide. Would you please answer my question from above:"Can you provide an example of a single television episode of a dramatic series that you would not consider notable enough to have an article (aside from your earlier concession that episodes of Doctor Who should be bundled into story arcs)?"—Kww(talk) 20:36, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I can think of no episodes of a dramatic series that are not notable enough for their own articles - including individual episodes of Doctor Who. However, notability is necessary, not sufficient. That is, I can think of many that simply should not have individual articles. But the reasons for that have little to do with notability. I mean, if you wanted to propose that, as of April 21, 2009, any new article that consists purely of plot summary is a speedy deletion candidate, and that, as of April 21, 2010, any article whatsoever that consists purely of plot summary is a speedy deletion candidate, I would back you on that. But that has nothing to do with notability. Phil Sandifer (talk) 20:43, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Which brings us back to my initial statement upon reentering this discussion: that one of the key disagreements was over whether episodes were inherently notable. From an actual application basis, declaring that notability is irrelevant to episodes yields the exact same effect as saying they are inherently notable: their inclusion, or lack thereof, is decided completely by other factors. This is, and remains, our core disagreement: I start from the stance that an individual episode is essentially never worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia. Left to myself, I would only make exceptions for things that had impacts well beyond their role in the series: the seizure episodes of Pokemon, the "Trapped in the Closet" episode of South Park, things like that. I've compromised substantially, to the point of supporting episode articles based only on a well-reasoned argument that the particular episode was important to understanding the series, and allowing that argument to be made solely on the basis of primary sources. That's a hell of a shift in position. What shift in your position have you made in seeking compromise?—Kww(talk) 21:01, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

And I maintain that a position that is based on the a priori notion that we've been doing it wrong for six years is so far off base that a mere softening in it is not a significant concession. As I've said, what Wikipedia does is already so far removed from an existing encyclopedia that there is no road map here. While it is certainly true that Encyclopedia Britannica would have no article on Black Market, it also has no article on Trapped in the Closet, or, for that matter, South Park and Battlestar Galactica themselves. So we're already so far off the map that your line in the sand is, indeed, a house of sand. There is no external standard of encyclopedicness that Wikipedia relies on, because we've redefined what the term means. Hence my preference for the term Wikipedic - it seems more honest. And episode articles have been Wikipedic for six years. So something more significant than a personal opinion is needed to unseat them. And budging from your preferred personal opinion to some compromise position does not change the essential problem with your arguments - they are based on the manipulation of rules for their own sake and personal convictions as opposed to the question of what Wikipedia does as an actual, you know, existing object in the world.

Hence my insistence on bringing this to the level of readers - we've had the article on Black Market for over three years. 100 people a day read it. We've changed the definition of what an encyclopedia is - in part by maintaining that article for three years without any challenge to its existence. Readers have come, quite reasonably, to view these articles as par of our mission. They have done so because we have consistently provided them. If we are going to change that policy, we need a far better reason than "I don't think an encyclopedia has articles like this." An encyclopedia doesn't have nearly three million articles. An encyclopedia doesn't have user-edibility. An encyclopedia doesn't immediately and continually update to keep the information current. We changed what the game is. And part of that change was episode and character articles. If we're changing the game again, we can't point to the old game as precedent.

As for my concession, did you miss the bit where I was willing to outright speedy pure plot summary articles, with a one year grace on existing articles for them to be improved? Phil Sandifer (talk) 21:13, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

We can't create a set of inclusion criteria on what you want Phil. We have to use some sort of verifiable evidence that demonstrates a topic is suitable for inclusion. We can't have a situation where article inclusion is a matter of a handful of experts; you have to come up with inclusion criteria that are more objective than what you think the readers want. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 21:57, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

That's fine, but nor can we simply change course abruptly, justifying it with an absurd statement like "things known by millions of people are non-notable." Phil Sandifer (talk) 22:22, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Let's see ... you'll support me in a CSD effort based on a policy whose existence you are lukewarm about, at best, when the CSD effort would fly in the face of WP:POTENTIAL and the very effort would allow the inclusionist side of Wikepedia to demonize and revile me further? Sorry ... haven't seen a turnip truck in years, much less just fallen off one.—Kww(talk) 00:30, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I am in no way lukewarm about it. I want nothing more than to scour plot-only articles off of Wikipedia. I do not think that WP:NOT is the correct place for that policy - I would rather see it as part of WAF, or, ideally, part of a consolidated fiction policy. But plot-only articles are not, as it stands, articles. They should go. Absolutely. No question. Phil Sandifer (talk) 02:52, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

"Real-world coverage" in the current proposal

(Note: This section deals with this proposal.) To explain my recent removal of the requirement for "real-world" coverage (as requested by Gavin on my talk page) I will unfortunately have to take a much larger swing than I'd like. I will try to keep it short. Here goes:

What does it mean to be "notable"? WP:N states that "notability refers to whether or not a topic merits its own article." That is only a wording on which the community has agreed. How to interpret those words is up to the individual editors. It can be interpreted inclusively ("what is notable should have an article"), exclusively ("what is not notable should not have an article"), or any other way, even against the literal meaning of the words. The point is, we don't agree. If we did, the wording would be more precise. We need to acknowledge that as it stands, notability is some sort crossover between inclusion criteria and exclusion criteria or something yet different, because it is what we agree that it is and right now we don't agree. (Gavin and I even disagree on whether WP:N is consensus or only documents consensus.)

The next thing are SNGs. There is a fairly strong consensus that we need them. What we do not agree upon is what they are supposed to do. Some think they should give alternatives to the GNG. Some think they should interpret the GNG. Some think they should be stronger. Some think they should be weaker.

There is a whole lot more disagreements than these. But let us assume for a second that Gavin and Phil spend a hundred years on this page trying to convince each other of the error of their ways. Even if they eventually agree (be it on either of their current positions or somewhere in between), it would not change anything. The rest of the community would still be where the two are now, in disagreement. The issue is by far too big to be settled by a discussion among a handful of editors followed by an RfC.

We need to make due with what little consensus we have to write a guideline with the help of which a Wikipedia newcomer can actually predict (even if only in the more extreme cases) the fate of an article they have written, consider writing, or consider editing. Once we have such a basic guideline, we can go from there, step by step, instead of building a sky scraper in the open field and then attempting to transport it down town. (In case anyone didn't follow the last RfC, the building broke in half on the way.)

Real-world coverage is an additional ball on the field, an unnecessary ball that nobody really disagrees with. Right now as I'm writing this and as this text is read by others, that ball is sucking up consensus building resources. I do not deny that an article needs more than plot to meet the inclusion criteria. So why do I think the requirement should not be listed? Let us bring up an example where it even makes a difference: Character X from series Y has no real-world coverage what-so-ever but multiple, reliable sources that are independent of the subject have published significant and in-depth in-universe coverage about it. (Right now I can't come up with an example of such coverage... If it even exists.) Let us assume that editor A wrote an article based on these theoretical sources and editor B nominates it at AfD. What would B ground his nomination upon? The article satisfies the GNG but in its entirety fails NOTPLOT, which is why it will be deleted or merged.

So, what do we gain from adding the term "real-world" to FICT in it's current version? Editors would be able to say that the article on character X should be deleted because it fails FICT as opposed to saying that it fails NOTPLOT. (In the previous two sentences, substitute FICT with WP:N and you'll have a description of the current situation.) The addition of that term does not solve a problem. It only alienates potential supporters by making the "upper threshold" stricter than the GNG while the actual (unwritten) inclusion criteria remain the same.

"Real-world coverage" is an intellectual construct that was created to incorporate NOTPLOT into FICT and used as a tool by previous proposals to create a set of criteria which were lower than the GNG by subdividing the coverage of non-third-party and non-independent sources. The current proposal does not attempt to do that and therefor does not need the term to function. And whether this proposal becomes a guideline or not, NOTPLOT would still be policy and would not be overridden.

If you read the text carefully, you will find that (opposed to the last proposal) it does not make an exception for elements of fiction from any current guideline or policy. It only avoids turning away the inclusionists by gathering every single exclusion criteria that can be applied to elements of fiction in a single place. The text is not a set of inclusion or exclusion criteria and if you don't read it as such, I'm sure that even extreme cases such as Gavin and Phil will agree that it both documents (even if not very closely) what is currently happening at AfD and related forums and that it is in line with the currently active guidelines or policies (meaning that it does not attempt to give a free pass from any of them). At the very least, all sides should be able to agree that the text is at worst no improvement over the current situation and that its promotion to guideline status would not hurt the project.

Please note that I will not reply to comments which sum up to statement of and reasoning for a personal opinion on what should be in- or excluded by or from Wikipedia, because these arguments are pointless and doomed to lead nowhere for reasons I described above. Regards, -- Goodraise (talk) 18:18, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

In my opinion, because WP:NOTPLOT is policy and cannot/should not be ignored, then we need to make sure that any guideline also reflects that reality. Furthermore, there has been significant disagreement on this talk page on what constitutes "independent" sources - I am sure that there will continue to be such disagreements in the future. That makes it even more necessary that we continue to remind editors that "real-world" information is important. Karanacs (talk) 18:24, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

"In my opinion" - This is exactly the point. It is your opinion on what an SNG should do. This line of thinking adds an additional variable (what is an SNG?) to the equation (WP:FICT). Not to mention that it doesn't change anything. ( 5 times 6 times 1 equals 5 times 6 ) And as for the "independent" issue: The disagreement on that line stemmed from the last proposal's attempt at redefining the meaning of "independence" in regard to fiction. An attempt which I found distasteful to say the least. The "upper threshold" as I wrote it was intended to mirror WP:N in meaning, wording, as well as in its usage of words. (BTW, I wouldn't mind if the footnote of WP:N would be linked or copied if that would make it more acceptable.) -- Goodraise (talk) 18:41, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

If it doesn't change anything, and we are required to abide by it anyway, why are you arguing in your edit summaries that there is not significant support for the sentiment? This document is supposed to be aimed very narrowly at fiction. In that respect, then, we should include policy that is also geared toward fiction. If this document's only purpose is to regurgitate the GNG, it isn't necessary. Karanacs (talk) 19:43, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

The sentiment that I argue has no consensus is that elements of fiction should be held to a higher standard of notability than other content. You see? This is a matter of one's definition of "notability", not of whether real-world content is required. As for the rest of your post: You're missing the point that the proposal in my last revision is intentionally redundant. I'm not saying that the term "real-world" should never be included nor that it should. I'm just saying, "not now". If we could only get to have a text that stays tagged as guideline for a month (even if that text's status as guideline has no effect on a single article) that would be an improvement over the current situation, because then we would have a guideline that is supported by consensus to which we can slowly make incremental changes instead of trying for the Nth time to go from demoted guideline/essay/proposed guideline/llama/whatever to a document that is supposed to turn the war-zone that is currently the fictional AfDs into tele-tubby land. Because that is what is going on, a wide scale war. You can't turn two warring parties into allies without first making a peace treaty. That is what I'm trying. Direct question: Is it not better to have a guideline that says nothing of consequence but has the chance to grow into one that does, than having a pile of words tagged as nothing with a talk page attached to it that only serves as a forum for two preachers of opposite religions? -- Goodraise (talk) 21:46, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I honestly see no point in having a guideline that completely mimics WP:N (or that is not intended to affect any article). It seems a waste of time to have the community vote on such a thing because a) several RfCs have already affirmed that WP:N has support and b) any incremental changes could make the support die away. We'll still be arguing over the incremental changes, which will make the guideline disputed in extremely short order. And, again, since WP:NOTPlot is policy, what is the point of keeping it out? If adding that is enough to make the text not be supported, then people need to be reminded that policies exist for a reason. Karanacs (talk) 21:53, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

You're assuming that I intend to do a Request for Comment. I do not. Quite the opposite, I think we should avoid that sledge hammer method of promotion. But whatever, with the statement that "If adding that is enough to make the text not be supported, then people need to be reminded that policies exist for a reason." you've made your position quite clear. What you want is not to write a guideline that provides guideance, it's convincing others of your way of looking at things. You people should write essays instead of spamming (yes, that's what you guys do) this talk page. BTW, I would appreciate it if you would stop bolding the word "policy" as that implies that I, who have always supported it as such and quoted it countless times in favor of merging or deleting articles, am not aware of its status, which I find quite offensive. -- Goodraise (talk) 23:45, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

More than NOTPLOT (which I see as an odd duck in WP:NOT, and much better understood as a subsection of WP:WAF), it seems to me that the requirement for real-world coverage amounts to a minimum quality issue - we don't keep articles that suck that badly. But on the other hand, deletion for shittiness is a different process from deletion for notability. Phil Sandifer (talk) 18:32, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I disagree, as WP:NOT#PLOT and WP:INUNIVERSE not only compliment each other, but they make common sense: you can't write an article about fiction purely from an in universe perspective, anymore than you can provide balanced coverage about astronomy from a persective that purely reliant on Greek myth. The minimum requirement to defend a topic against deletion for failing WP:NOT#PLOT is real-world coverage from reliable secondary sources, because it is still possible to construct an article on about a notable topic that is purely in universe. If WP:FICT does not include this as part of the inclusion criteria, then it is failing to provide guidance on how to write an encyclopedic topic about fiction, as well as failing to how to prevent fictional topics being deleted at WP:AFD. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 19:16, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you that articles that violate WP:PLOT need to be fixed or removed. But I increasingly do not see this as a notability issue, as making it into one deranges notability into a strange beast that asserts that things known to millions of people are non-notable, and that an article on a much-watched episode of a critically acclaimed television series is non-notable, when an article on a town like Lebanon, South Dakota, which has fewer residents than read Black Market (Battlestar Galactica) in a day, and has days where nobody reads it at all, is fine. That claim is such a bizarre one that it seems to me worth avoiding in favor of other means of handling the root issue, which is the low quality of many of our fiction articles. Phil Sandifer (talk) 19:26, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

If a topic fails WP:NOT#PLOT, then it is not suitable for inclusion. This is my a real-world perpective is important for WP:FICT, as topics that pass a set of inclusion criteria that avoid plot only articles makes them suitable for inclusion for a standalone article. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 22:02, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

A topic doesn't fail WP:NOT#PLOT. An article does. WP:NOT#PLOT does not, in fact, say anything whatsoever about topics. Phil Sandifer (talk) 02:51, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I think you have it backwards. NOT PLOT says nothing at all about articles. it only has to do with topics. Look at the wording: The coverage of a fictional work ... Not "each individual article dealing with the fictional work". Even the introduction talks about "articles", that is, the sum of the Wikipedia articles on a work. The only reason it has even the very limited consensus it does is under that interpretation. DGG (talk) 05:32, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

More basically, I ask both or you: why do you even care about the division into articles, rather than content? DGG (talk) 05:35, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

When I refer to topics, I mean potential articles. Either way, significant real-world coverage is an important inclusion criteria. I hope Goodraise understands where I am coming from. Its not that I want to make it more difficult to write about fictional topics, rather this requirement is needed because of the dual perpectives from which fiction can be viewed: real-world and/or fantasy-world. You can write an article about a fictional topic from a purely real-world perspective (although it would be very dry), but you can't write it from a purely fantasy-world perspective, as such an article would not impart any encyclopedic infomation about the subject matter. Ideally an article would contain balanced coverage that includes both. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 07:39, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

"Its not that I want to make it more difficult to write about fictional topics, rather this requirement is needed because of the dual perpectives from which fiction can be viewed". - In that case, you're on the wrong page. I went on above about how this was partially a matter of one's opinion on what an SNG should do, but your's is apparently way out of sight from the realms of reason. Notability's job is to determine if a good article can be written, not how to do that. If that is really all you want, go to WP:WAF. BTW, the perspective from which an article is written does not depend on real-world coverage. Even if for a given topic exists not a shred of real-world coverage, I can still write it from an out-of-universe perspective. The article will then look like a giant plot summary with lead, but it will be written from the right perspective. I'll repeat that central statement: Even a plot summary can be written from a real-world perspective.
Taking a step back. If the two of us would get to dictate this guideline, if we could agree on its wording, it would not take us long, because our opinions on what should be included in Wikipedia are virtually the same. The reason we find ourselves on different sides of the table is that I realize that our views and our strict interpretations of relevant guidelines and policies have not sufficient support to write FICT in that way. And, most importantly, because I think that not having a FICT that is tagged as guideline hurts Wikipedia. The deletion of a few hundred crufty articles? Who cares! The inclusionist mob protecting their plot summaries like cavemen their fire? I couldn't care less. Opposing sides turning AfD into a battlefield that draggs out to numerous talk pages in heated merge debates and on a regular basis is brought up at ArbCom? I could even overlook that. What I think really hurts Wikipedia is every time a new editor is turned away, because there was no page in the jungle of Wikipedia's guidelines and policies that would explain to them what things they can write and expect to stay on Wikipedia. (I know my current proposal doesn't do that either. It's meant as a first step, not as an ending point.) I don't know if you ever look past these philosophical discussions you're having with Phil and co. but I'm a mainspace editor and I can tell you, people are pissed. And its your fault, your's, Phil's, and all of you who try to turn this page into a dictate on how Wikipedia should look like instead of making it into a place where new editors can find guidance through said jungle with all the countless interpretations of every single tree in it. -- Goodraise (talk) 12:46, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

In comparison

I've been pointing to the, to my mind, contrasting examples of Black Market (Battlestar Galactica) and Lebanon, South Dakota. I like this example because it hits a central absurdity of the notability debate - the former is an episode of a TV show seen by millions of people. The latter is a town of under 100 people. More people read the article on the former in any given day than live in the latter. The latter is of such little utility that entire days go by where *nobody* reads the article.

The former is an article that people seem to want to delete. The latter is part of a long-standing consensus to include the Rambot articles. We seem to have come to terms that census-defined towns get to have articles. The logic for this, so far as I can tell, is that there exist numerous sources for these articles - census data, government databases, atlases, etc.

Of course, similar sources exist for any episode of a TV series - TV Guide listings, DVD sets, copyright notices, Nielsen figures, sales figures for DVD sets, etc all provide information at least as good as the atlas data.

Would someone be so kind as to explain the value of Lebanon, South Dakota in a way that does not also imply the value of the equally well-sourced Black Market (Battlestar Galactica)? Or, alternatively, explain why they are so obsessed with fiction articles when the presumably far more egregious small town articles exist? Phil Sandifer (talk) 19:43, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

There is none. I've long argued that most of the geographic location stubs should be consolidated into meaningful articles about the areas in which they reside, and that a speck on a map and a line in a census should not be considered sufficient material to create an article from.—Kww(talk) 19:46, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Then why on Earth are you more worried about the notability of something known to millions of people than you are in fighting that fight? Phil Sandifer (talk) 19:49, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

That fight is totally separate from this one. Just because WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS doesn't mean completely in-universe articles on fictional topics where no independent reliable sources can be found should exist. There is nothing stopping anyone (even you, Phil) from beginning an effort to wipe out the teeny stubs of city articles. The absence of that effort doesn't justify any actions here. Karanacs (talk) 19:53, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

(e/c; response to PS:) Kww's and other editors' focus and priorities are a red herring for this discussion. Wikipedia is a voluntary hobby; what we decide to devote our individual energies on is a personal choice. The discussion about notability is a good one, but we're better served by discussing topics, article content, sourcing potential, etc. than the editors creating/digging around behind them. --EEMIV (talk) 19:55, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, you should review my contributions to Wikipedia:Notability (Geographic locations) (edit | [[Talk:Wikipedia:Notability (Geographic locations)|talk]] | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), and I tend to get involved in the discussions every time someone proposes yet another bot to create a million geographic place names.—Kww(talk) 20:06, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Other stuff exists is a poor argument when used as an article-for-article issue. However, the fact that someone wrote a few paragraphs in an essay does not remove the fact that we do try not to vary our policies wildly from area to area. Given that we seem to accept teeny tiny town articles as a general case, the arguments for why we do that ought to port to other areas. Phil Sandifer (talk) 20:13, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

In answer to your question, not every topic is notable, even if you might think so. In this instance WP:LOCALFAME says it all: there needs to be verifiable evidence that a topic is suitable for inclusion, not just the opinions of one or two editors. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 22:06, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think Lebanon, South Dakota has a strong claim even to local fame. Phil Sandifer (talk) 22:21, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

←There is no general policy for what is worth an article. It depends on what we want to do about that particular type of subject, and varies from subject to subject. There is no reason why WP:N's General notability guideline need apply to anything we think it ought not to. If it was originally proposed as a way of settling all questions on all subjects whatsoever, it has proven remarkably unable to do that: most of WP:NOT, and most of WP:BLP, are devoted to limiting its scope. Many more disputes fall under these exceptions than the policy, as will always be the case when we try to state something which we neither understand nor agree about in an over-simplistic manner. There is however a general policy about content--it must be verifiable. But this has nothing at all to do with whether or not we want to make the subject of that content into a separate article (except for the very nonrestrictive rule that we need something verifiable to say, which is very rarely an actual limitation on whether or not to have an article. The idea that an episode must be independently proven notable to have a separate article is a requirement of our own imagination, and is not supported by either policy, or by anything fundamental about an encyclopedia. It's just a question of arrangement. We could have multiple independent sources discussing an episode, and still decide it is better not to cover it in a separate article. We could have verifiable content from the primary source about the plot of an episode, and nothing more, and still decide to make a separate article out of it. I would gladly give up any particular scheme of division into articles if it could be accepted we would add full verifiable content about subjects. We could combine all the articles for the episodes of a show into a single one, multiple independent secondary sources and all, as long as we could include a good full summary for each of them, including a full description of the external elements of production and distribution. If all we can write about is plot, why shouldn't we, so long as it is sourced reliably? But if we cut down the material to a sentence, or just treat the plot as background, it's just as unencyclopedic to do that in separate articles. We should be discussing content, and how to get sensibly written summaries. the only reason ever advanced for using the GNG is to avoid detailed disputes. Whatever it does elsewhere, it doesn't do that here. So I altogether reject Gavin's view as being , in the end, not helpful. If we adopt it, we will always be seeking ways around it--just as we did for biographies--when we found the results unacceptable, we modified it with NOT NEWS and BLP until it became essentially meaningless. Just so here. theoretical merits or demerits, it just does not work for tis purpose. DGG (talk) 05:28, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Proposal

The Wikipedia coverage of a fictional work will be divided into articles depending upon what is appropriate for the individual situation, considering the importance of the work, the importance of the various matters to be discussed, and the sourced material available. Not that this says it all. But at least, then we can start talking about content. We have wasted months over this relatively unimportant preliminary question. DGG (talk) 05:39, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but that is a completely empty statement, where everyone will have a different interpretation anyway. I don't think it helps the discussion in any way. Replace "fictional work" and "work" with "topic" and you have a probably generally accepted but equally nebulous statement, and it makes no sense to repeat that specifically for fictional works. As long as it is not shown what is so special about fiction that it requires an exception or a specific guideline, there is no basis to start this discussion. Fram (talk) 08:13, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Not bad. Be nice if we could throw in a few examples of what constitutes best practise. I've always thought it would be easier to say, look, we want to get from a to b, rather than, this isn't b so it goes in the bin. Hiding T 09:33, 21 April 2009 (UTC)