Talk:Herbie (franchise)

Reviewer Discussion

Notifying User:DisneyMetalhead, User:Vmanjr, User:Polyamorph, User:Rodw - Are there any reasons why this draft should not be accepted? Robert McClenon (talk) 05:07, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Seeing as there are numerous reliable sources that I painstakingly researched for months - I think it's a notable and noteworthy franchise. What will need to happen is for the history to be merged as you stated in your comment on the draft article, @Robert McClenon:.--DisneyMetalhead (talk) 06:17, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

I personally do not see the reason for this to be a separate article from the main Herbie page. There is a lot of duplicate information here, along with a few things that I would consider to be irrelevant details. For example, the relationship with the Absent-Minded Professor movies does not warrant the movies being listed here, and is really more universe trivia than anything else. Worth a mention perhaps, but there shouldn't be a table of barely-related movies. There are also a couple of potentially WP:OR-related issues (e.g., the Clown College skit from the Mickey Mouse Club). I can see some other issues to resolve as well (e.g., the all-time box office rank will rapidly go out of date, and isn't worth maintaining; the main cast and characters table takes up a lot of space only to show nearly no commonality of characters across the movies). Don't get me wrong - DisneyMetalhead has done some good work with this article, but I do not see why this needs to be its own article. I believe we should take elements from this draft and add them to the main Herbie article instead of creating a new article under Herbie (franchise) that would have a lot of overlap/duplication with the Herbie page (to the point where it invokes WP:CFORK). If this draft is approved, I highly suspect that down the road there would be a discussion to merge the two pages anyways, so I'd rather avoid the duplication from the beginning. Vmanjr (talk) 07:28, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, User:DisneyMetalhead, User:Vmanjr. I will try to identify multiple questions to ask:

• • 1. Is there additional information in this draft that is not currently in an article, and which should be included in the encyclopedia?
  • 2. If so, should we have one article, or two?
  • 3. If one article, should it be entitled Herbie or Herbie (franchise)?

I think that the answer to the first question is yes. I recognize that Vm has raised questions about some of the material, but I think that we are in agreement that at least some of this material should be added. The real question that I think there is disagreement about is whether one article is needed, or two. I think that there can be reasonable discussion on that point. I agree that there is considerable duplication. If there is to be one expanded article, it does not really matter what it is called, as long as it is about both the fictional character and the franchise. What would be the wrong answer would be to decline the draft and drop the information into a dustbin. Robert McClenon (talk) 02:31, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

@Vmanjr: The repetition of some details comes from the fact that a franchise article covers all the details of a franchise. As stated earlier, an article about a fictional character is so miniscule and overly specific, not to mention fan-page territory. As the character is but a small part of the franchise, the article needs to be about "the larger pictures". As for the related films having a completed table here, it is due to the fact that various early-Disney film series are all "set within the same continuity" and therefor is noteworthy when looking at the franchise as a whole. @Robert McClenon: as stated before, I believe a franchise article including details about its main character would be included in an encyclopedia. --DisneyMetalhead (talk) 05:15, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Oh, and as for the 'Main characters' table, it is not a "recurring characters" table. It is merely to show the primary characters and their actors, as they appear in the respective films.--DisneyMetalhead (talk) 05:16, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Except the article at Herbie is not just a character history page, and isn't in fan-page territory. For a long time, and through the work of multiple editors, the page has included information about the franchise as well as the character. The franchise part can and should be expanded, using content from your draft, but I do not see a good reason for the franchise to have its own page. If there was no character page, then maybe a franchise page would be the next best thing, but there is one, whose scope encompasses (hopefully) all of the things that someone would want to find when searching for Herbie. Having an encyclopedia article for a character makes sense given the notability that Herbie has had over the years, and an ideal balance for the article would be one similar to the Goofy article. I believe that rewriting the character history to be encyclopedic and not in-universe, by combining/expanding elements of your film-based history with referenced development history, would address the problems that I believe you have with the article. Vmanjr (talk) 12:45, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Here are my answers to the questions that Robert McClenon posed:

• • • 1. Yes, there is additional information in the draft that should be included in the encyclopedia.
    • 2. I believe that we should have one article, with a balance of encyclopedic character development history and franchise information.
    • 3. The article should be entitled Herbie. I can pull up the page views again, but the page gets significantly more page views than others with the Herbie title (12K a month vs. a few dozen each for the other pages), so the current disambiguation works fine.

Vmanjr (talk) 12:45, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

The Herbie page is in fan-page territory. Just because something has been a certain way for 'x' amount of time, does not mean that it cannot/should not change. The character is one aspect of a franchise, while the article should detail all aspects of the film franchise. The focus should be on the "bigger pictures", as opposed to one character within it. I would argue that one article detailing the franchise, with sections detailing the character is a better form all-around. Perhaps we need to ping more editors, for additional input.--DisneyMetalhead (talk) 05:32, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

I agree that simply being around for a long time does not mean that it should not change. However, the existing page definitely includes information about the franchise, including movies, the TV series, the video games, and other appearances. It may not have all the information that your franchise draft has, but I'd argue that your draft is too detailed, with details that really belong on the individual movie pages and not in a summary page. Like I said, my vote is what I see as a compromise, where we rewrite the too fan-page-like content to be objective (and get rid of unnecessary and unencyclopedic details), and add in well-sourced and relevant information from your draft. I think we're actually closer on this than it might appear at first glance, and the biggest outstanding issue is our starting point before merging. There are plenty of character-oriented pages that provide details on the character's media franchise, and I don't see why Herbie is any different and should be replaced wholesale with a franchise-oriented page that is light on prose. In any case, I agree that having more editors weigh in could be helpful. A good editor to ask might be @Moe1810: they have contributed to some cleanup of the existing article over the years, and seem to be active in the film space. Any other suggestions? Vmanjr (talk) 09:39, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

Once again @Vmanjr: an article solely about a character, with secondary information about the franchise is focusing on the character. The franchise as a whole should be the focus. As an analogy - the franchise is a painting. A character is one aspect within that painting. To be complete, and noteworthy - we need to recognize the entire picture. Having an entire article about a character, I have always seen as fan-page territory. Yes there are articles about fictional characters, however I have yet to see a character page replace a franchise article. Please provide some situations where this was the case. I would also ask which parts of the franchise article are "too detailed"? Please be specific, m8. Meanwhile, lets ping some other editors.--DisneyMetalhead (talk) 17:09, 27 September 2020 (UTC)

User:Vmanjr, User:DisneyMetalhead - I will be requesting the history merge and accepting the draft. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:35, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Seeing as the draft is being accepted, I think it's a moot point for the time being to discuss too much more. I do not think that Herbie should redirect to Herbie (franchise) for now, and I do wish that we had more time to sort that out before the draft was accepted... @DisneyMetalhead: I see the point you're making, and in general you're right about the franchise having more encyclopedic value than a titular character. If we're not going to do that with a merged page, then I think we should iterate on the franchise page to make it more encompassing. I would be happy to make the franchise page the main page after it's more encompassing. Right now, it reads mainly as a bunch of (sometimes random) facts about the movies. For example, the TV series episodes don't need to be listed - they're already on the series page (FYI, the series name is still wrong on the franchise draft, as we discussed on the series page and through edit logs several months ago). Aside from the unnecessary characters table (which could be much more effective instead as a prose-based section highlighting only the most important characters in the franchise, such as Jim Douglas and Grandma Steinmetz) and the related films table, the additional crew details feel unnecessary, and the critical reception can be replaced/augmented by some of the prose you have in the lede. Since this is discussing the franchise, I also imagine that unofficial appearances don't belong here, since the franchise should refer to only official Disney appearances. There's also a bit of WP:OR that still needs to be addressed (mainly the Clown Car skit and the unofficial Forza livery). I'm happy to work together to address these if it would help.Vmanjr (talk) 22:05, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the continued efforts, @Robert McClenon:. @Vmanjr: thank you for being collaborative. There should be a section added detailing the character's appearance/characteristics (basically summing up what the current character page states). My responses to your points follow: 1. The 'unofficial appearances' I agree should go, though I tried to include elements from the character page. 2. As for the television series' name - I have uploaded the official promotional poster for the series. I think a resolution to this for this franchise page would be to include in prose: "(referred to simply as Herbie the Love Bug on screen)" following the official full-length title. 3. Summarizing the episodes as a whole would be constructive for the article, if you feel like the episode table is redundant. 4. The character table is not meant to be a 'recurring cast/characters' table, but instead a more detailed franchise 'primary characters' table. This has been done on other similar articles. Perhaps prose at the top of the section describing the recurring characters and what their part in the franchise has been, would be helpful and remedy what you are referring to(?). 5. The additional crew and production details gives note to the production and creatives involved in it. This too is done on various other franchise articles. I feel like it is absolutely necessary for a franchise page. As for the "original research" that you are referring to, I read various sources stating that this was/is a Love Bug car that was repurposed/disguised as a clown. Perhaps we simply need to find additional sources stating this. Cheer, m8s!--DisneyMetalhead (talk) 02:53, 1 October 2020 (UTC)