Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Shared universe/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 13:35, August 2, 2007.

[edit] Shared universe

Self-nomination. While articles about literary techniques and concepts are not as flashy as hurricanes and dinosaurs, I've helped to bring this a long way from its previous state to its current GA status, and think it is at or approaching the FA standard. Perhaps because of the nature of the topic, its peer review did not provide much insight. I'm more than happy to work with commentors regarding any shortcomings or issues. Serpent's Choice 17:01, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment I believe the article is not wordly enough. It is very strongly anglo-centric, with shared universes from Japanese animation, or even other European literatures (e.g. the German Perry Rhodan multiverse) ignored entirely. Also, are TV series involving several writers and producers to be considered shared universes? Circeus 17:43, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Changes pending. Working now at widening the scope of examples. As a matter of some personal embarassment, I was totally unaware of Perry Rhodan. The issues with TV series is complex, see also my response to Mike, below. I'll try to clarify in the restructuring. Serpent's Choice 18:18, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
    • No embarrassment to be had there. It's never been widely published in English (actually, there is relatively little foreign SF/F translated to English, I think). Circeus 18:34, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

• Comment. Interesting article. Here are some miscellaneous thoughts.

• The development of shared universes as a publishing phenomenon in science fiction would be worth covering -- when it began, what fraction of publishing is now in this category (e.g. there is now a separate section under sf in many bookstores just for shared world fiction such as Dragonlance).
• Shared universes have also spawned vocabulary such as "-verse", seen in words like "Buffyverse", for Buffy the Vampire Slayer; and there are words such as "share-cropper" which refer to the economics of this form of book publishing. You can find citations for these in Jeff Prucher's Brave New Words; and most of the cites are also online at the OED sf citation project; the words I'm talking about are on the criticism pages.
• More generally, I'm not sure you have the organization of the article right yet. You have a definitional section up front, which seems right. But then you have a long paragraph covering such things as retcons; this seems out of place as the reader hasn't yet seen an example. The "Expansion" section is really a historical view, and I think it might come before the retcon paragraph (and perhaps be titled "History" or "Origins" or something similar). Retconning and so forth seem to belong in a section about techniques and problems. The historical coverage in the first two sentences of the "Expansion" paragraph is a bit thin, though; I'm not actually clear from this whether the universe became a shared universe in 1941, 1961, or somewhere in between; and I'd also like to know just when the first publication from separate writers came out that qualifies as a shared universe. Am I right in thinking that comics are not invariably written, inked and lettered by the same team? If so, what is the definition of shared universe for comics? When a different character has a comic in the same universe -- essentially a spinoff? If so that should be precisely dateable, and I think it should be given in the article. I also would like to see a more specifically historical approach to the TV and book development of the use of shared universes. I mentioned books above, but I think you could also look at the history of spinoffs in TV to good effect. Or are spinoffs out of scope, do you feel?

-- Mike Christie (talk) 17:46, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

• • Changes pending. There are some excellent points made here. I'm going to hit the online refs and my friendly local library to try to get some firm dates on publications and the origination of terms, where available. With that in hand (hopefully tonight), I'll aim to restructure the prose with a clearly defined "History" section, allowing the technique discussion to be moved, well, to a discussion on techniques. This should also allow for a better discussion of the dividing line between the concept of a shared universe and other forms of collaboration. Serpent's Choice 18:18, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Just saw AnonEMouse's note below. It's true that reliable sources are going to be difficult to find, but I think there are some. One example is the Peter Nicholls/John Clute Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, which has a couple of pages that might be useful, written by Clute. It quotes Mugby Junction, an 1866 anthology by Dickens as the first significant shared-world anthology; apparently the form was invented in about 1860. (Online refs seem to think it was by Dickens alone, but I'd trust Clute here; he knows his stuff.) I do think this means that you've got a lot of research to do. Mike Christie (talk) 19:29, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose, I'm afraid. There's a big underlying problem that causes lots and lots of smaller ones. The general problem is that no one has really written a scholarly work on this topic before. People have written about specific shared universes, but I can't see much on your reference list about shared universes in general. Just look at the references section - there are a lot of them there, but only two even use the words "shared universe", and that's a single page from a FAQ, and a collaboration page. So you're blazing new ground here, which is great for a PhD dissertation, but a big problem for an encyclopedia article, which is supposed to repeat others research. Now what specific problems that causes:
  • The article references are just not respected, reliable sources. Most of your references are fan pages without editorial review and promotional material with a stated bias. They don't meet Wikipedia:Verifiability. And this isn't a case where there just aren't reliable sources writing about these subjects, there are: Lovecraft, Asimov, Niven, Baum, Marvel, DC, etc. have real scholars writing about them, people with PhDs, but you don't have anything like that in your references.
  • Article emphasis is all over the place: Star Wars, incredibly popular, gets 1 sentence. The Cthulhu Mythos, 70 years old, gets 1 sentence (and just mentioning Derleth is a disservice to just how shared that universe is). Dr. Who, not as old as Cthulhu Mythos, and not as popular as Star Wars, gets a huge quote.
  • There is a lot of stuff that just isn't covered. Where is Phillip Jose Farmer, a guy who made a career out of making non-shared universes into shared universes? Where are the TV series that aren't incidental crossovers: Mary Tyler Moore to Rhoda to Lou Grant? The relationship between The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew is not just incidental either, but isn't mentioned. Without authoritative reliable sources, we don't know what is being left out, but a lot is.
  • Was Thieves' World the first intentionally shared published series? If not, what was? Surely this article should address that.
  • Your images are fixable problems, but they are problems:
    1. Only 2? With so many rich universes to cover, I expect you'd be able to get many more, and most of them would be completely free, not fair use.
    2. The All Star Comics cover fair use - OK, first ever comic shared universe. But Crossgen poster - no chance. Only one sentence in the article mentions it, and no reason why this particular comic shared universe is so important, when you've gone on so long explaining how important Marvel and DC shared universes were.
  • Anglocentric was mentioned by others above. --AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 19:08, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
• Comment No external links section. I will not oppose because I'm not sure whether the article needs external links, and what external links would be useful. --Kaypoh 05:16, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm almost positive this practice is also referred to as "sharecropping" [1] ("the practice of writing fiction set in a universe created by... another" - [2]). If it is the same, then it should be mentioned. If it's different (and I'm pretty sure that it is not) then the differences need to be established. Raul654 15:22, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Withdrawing nomination for now. I'll admit, I grossly underestimated just how "comprehensive" this article's comprehensive scope could -- and should -- be. I'm working to remedy the problems raised here. AnonEMouse had concerns that "no one has really written a scholarly work on this [general] topic", but happily, that turns out not to have been the case. I am also building a more comprehensive history with specific dates, broadening the cultural basis of the material, shifting citations almost exclusively to university-press publications and scholarly journals (where possible), and addressing the economic value of the concept. And so I will be back here again in reasonably short order with a very different, very much better article. Serpent's Choice 18:15, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.