Wikipedia:Historical archive/Policy/Notability/Importance

This policy is under development and part of the Wikipedia:Policy thinktank.

Originated by ··gracefool |☺ 22:55, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Introduction

There is widespread debate on what kinds of fictional articles should exist at Wikipedia:

"The articles on fictional characters are going out of control. Simpson, Star War, Star Trek, Harry Potter. A strict guideline is definitely a priority." Anon

"[We should] avoid context duplication and flooding of the article space with what many consider to be unencyclopedic fringe material." Anon

"We don't write about every fictional character. If we have more fictional characters than physicists listed it is because that is what people prefer writing about. Whether a character (fictional or otherwise) should be on their own page or page about whatever it is they are related to should probably depend on how much there is to write about them." Angela

"Why shouldn't there be a page for every Simpsons character, and even a table listing every episode, all neatly crosslinked and introduced by a shorter central page like the above? Why shouldn't every episode name in the list link to a separate page for each of those episodes, with links to reviews and trivia? Why shouldn't each of the 100+ poker games I describe have its own page with rules, strategy, and opinions? Hard disks are cheap.

I agree with this one completely. --Jimbo Wales"

The above conflicting viewpoints (the first three from Wikipedia:Check your fiction) represent a large number of discussions over what should be included in Wikipedia. These arguments arise because official policy on this is not well defined:

Do not unnecessarily create small articles about largely irrelevant fictional characters, locations, objects and so on that can be better integrated into larger articles.

(from Wikipedia:Check your fiction)

What exactly does "largely irrelevant" mean? This policy attempts to reach a consensus on this, so Wikipedia:Check your fiction can be amended, reducing confusion and debate.

Current relevant policies

Before participating here, you should be familiar with the following policies:

1. Wikipedia:Check your fiction
2. Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not
   1. Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia (not official policy?)
3. Wikipedia:No original research
4. Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia
5. Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Precedents (not official policy, but worthwhile reading)

Proposed policies

All policies assume that fictional articles are irrelevant if they are original research.

The policies are listed in order of least fiction allowable to most. Note the difference between policies 1 & 3: 1 assumes fictional articles are irrelevant, 3 assumes they are relevant. Policy 2 requires the Wikipedia community to decide on relevancy separately for each subject or type of fiction. Policy 4 is the one Jimbo agreed to in m:Wiki is not paper.

Feel free to propose a policy that isn't covered here.

1. Fictional articles are always irrelevant, unless:
   1. the fiction is of a certain age (eg. over fifty years old), or
   2. they article is of significant size (eg. 1000 words), or
   3. the fiction generates a large number of hits (eg. 100,000) on Google,

   in which case they are judged to be relevant on a case-by-case basis (via Wikipedia:Votes for deletion).

2. Kinds of fictional articles are judged to be relevant on a case-by-case basis.
3. Fictional articles are always relevant if:
   1. the fiction is of a certain age, or
   2. the article is of significant size, or
   3. the fiction generates a large number of hits on Google.

   If they don't meet these criteria, they are judged relevant on a case-by-case basis.

4. Fictional articles are always relevant, unless they are small stubs, or they will never be more than stubs. Then they should be merged into a larger article (possibly after discussion on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion).

Views

	Policy 1	Policy 2	Policy 3	Policy 4
Users considering some variation of the policy acceptable:				··gracefool |☺
Users considering all variations of the policy unacceptable:		··gracefool |☺

Discussion

Give reasons for your views here.

I currently agree with Jimbo on Wikipedia not having size limits. But if the community decides we need to limit fictional articles, I'm happy to move articles to Wikibooks or a separate wiki or whatever. I just want some clear guidelines so time isn't wasted creating or debating fictional articles. In other words, I find policy 4 acceptable, and policy 2 unacceptable. ··gracefool |☺ 22:55, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)