Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction)/Archive 6

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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents 1 My problem with this 2 Combined proposals: new wording 3 Fictional subjects 4 Principles 5 Criterion 5.1 Independently notable subjects 5.2 Subjects notable as an aspect of a larger work 5.3 Stylistic reasons 6 Alternatives to in-universe sub-articles 7 Articles not satisfying the notability guidelines 8 See also 9 References 10 Comments on the new wording 10.1 Comments on the new wording (Continued) 10.2 Suggested template for 3rd case sub-articles 10.3 Should be vs. Must 11 Proposal 12 real world users of wikipedia 13 Why does this guideline exist?

My problem with this

The current revision states:
" articles about fictional concepts are notable if they contain substantial real-world content from reliable primary and secondary sources"
1) Why shoul articles on fictional material need to include real-world content. It is just putting information in that may not be relevent to the page, as it is about fictional material.
example:
List of Doctor Who items is a useful page - episode articles sometimes reference these are they are used in the episodes, and people may want to find out more about them. The page is on a fictional work, detailing fictional information from a fictional show. Why does it need real world references?
2) What counts as "substantial" anyway? If debates come down to wheter the real world content is substantial or not, the it comes down to individual points of view.
StuartDD ( t • c ) 17:16, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

At least on your point 1, we are trying to create a class of fictional element articles that can exist without out-of-universe information as long as they are absolutely necessary to understand the plot of the show, furthermore to understand the notability of the show. This is the "utilitarian notability" concept above which basically says that such lists would normally exist as part of the show's page, but due to WP:MOS, would make the page excessively long. Thus, they would be split off into that list, which should still use in-universe references (and any out of universe ones whenever possible).

What this does NOT do is to create fictional elements lists without reasoning each needs to be on it; these lists have to be succinct in their own way any only summarize the necessary elements to understand the plot. For your example, the TARDIS, the sonic screwdriver, and the Key to Time are relatively notably within the universe and to an extent out-of-universe, while several other elements on that list (the "VCR", the Temporal Limiter, to name a couple) are certainly not notably fro the series as a whole , and thus should not be part of the list.

What we're trying to do is define a guideline for what parts of an article about a fictional work are necessary. Every article on WP has to describe the notability of the work in question to the real world. For fictional works, it is nearly always necessary to describe the plot succinctly to make it clear how the notability of the fictional work came about. But furthermore, it is sometimes necessary to go into characters, settings, and other elements of the fictional plot in order to make the plot clear. It is NOT however appropriate to make WP a fan site. What we are doing with the guidelines is to help identify a line people can use to judge the appropriteness of their fictional element articles to WP. There are some articles that lack any fictional description of their work and really should have them, there are many more than go into excess detail on the fictional work without consideration of notability and importance. We are trying to help define a very broad line that allows people to know to what degree they need to write to or to cut back on to make the content more appropriate for WP. We don't expect that each fictional article will have the same degree of succinctness, it is going to be a function of the editors involved and all that, but the more we define the acceptable bounds, the easier job we give to the editors. --Masem 17:46, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

"and thus should not be part of the list."

yes I agree on that - I don't think everything in that example should be there (BANANAS!!!!!), but that is (or should be) common sense as to where to draw the line. The trouble usually comes down to techinacal definitions - e.g, the title is given based on what one person wants to include, then someone adds something silly that shouldn't be there at all, but it can't be removed because it fits the title of the page.

Stuff like that should definately be deleted.

"It is NOT however appropriate to make WP a fan site."

I agree, and am not saying that it should.

The example of deleted articles - List of Star Destroyers - should have been deleted as WP:FAN a long time ago, as it can not be considered useful to an outside reader.

I am just noting that articles to do with fiction may be useful despite not containing real world content. StuartDD ( t • c ) 18:30, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

A lot of things can be seen as useful, but still shouldn't be apart of Wikipedia. From the perspective of a real world encyclopedia, real world information is very useful. For example, the time machine from Back to the Future was a car.. because it needed to go 88MPR, or because the writers wanted the time machine to be portable for plot reasons? What we want is to note both things, but avoid unnecessary details or fan speculation, like why it's 88 MPR, etc. -- Ned Scott 05:00, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Alright, that question 1 answered. Now we nee to deal with 2.

"2) What counts as "substantial" anyway? If debates come down to wheter the real world content is substantial or not, the it comes down to individual points of view."

StuartDD ( t • c ) 20:39, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Note in my example that we would be talking about things like the writer's POV, which is completely appropriate for a work that they made. Basically, NPOV isn't a factor when the fact you are conveying is, why a writer did this or that. The judgement of what is relevant content or not is something that we the community basically decide, and that's partly what we are doing here (but in more general terms, rather than commenting on an individual work's real-world-information). If it's not to much of a bother, actually read WP:NPOV. -- Ned Scott 03:46, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Combined proposals: new wording

I am aware that the rate of growth of this page has slowed significantly recently. In many ways this is good, as it facilitates reasoned discussion without the need for contributors to check the page every five minutes for the latest responses. However, it would be unhelpful for discussion to die down so much that consensus for any changes is not able to be established.

There appears to be considerable support, in principle, for Tjstrf's draft of what he humbly called "a draft of something, maybe this page?", tempered by comments that its tone was not currently suitable for a guideline. I have attempted to somewhat rewrite and restructure his draft with an intention to make it an acceptable potential wording for WP:FICT. In doing this I have included some pertinent sections of my earlier proposal, mainly in the "adminstrative" sections around the core clauses, which are Tjstrf's almost verbatim. I have made no effort to polish the text into a final version: several improvement tags are notably present. Instead, as a method of furthering co-operation and hence consensus, I would like to request that all editors BE BOLD and edit the wording to improve it to a guideline-standard. In the process of doing that, I hope we can agree on what, exactly, we want this wording to say. Happy-melon 16:41, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Comments on the new wording

Please note that, as the wording above is being actively edited, the comments below may not be relevant to the current version.

From WP:N: Within Wikipedia, Notability is an article inclusion criterion based on encyclopedic suitability. The topic of an article should be notable, or "worthy of notice". This concept is distinct from "fame", "importance", or "popularity". A subject is presumed to be sufficiently notable if it meets the general notability guideline below, or if it meets an accepted subject specific standard listed in the table to the right.

These guidelines pertain to the suitability of article topics but do not directly limit the content of articles.

• Due to the above; I have removed "The guidelines set out below should be used to decide the acceptable scale and location of a topic's coverage on Wikipedia. " from the guideline. This should be added to WP:WAF.
• Principles should be moved to WP:WAF
• I have added content from the leads of Wikipedia:Notability (web) (merge and delete) and Wikipedia:Notability (films) (speedy delete) to the lead. This has to be brought under the attention of editors. For this purpose, "delete" include "redirect and transwiki" and "redirect".
• G.A.S 20:11, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

All excellent improvements. Happy-melon 20:33, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

I took a stab at improving the "Alternatives to.." section, adding a lead and an additional consideration, and helping with some of the layperson words you had. I am really itching to put some examples in this section (as well as more than what are presently in there), but I think we should see where this goes before filling those in, because maybe we'll pick an example that we'll later deem as poor. --Masem 21:28, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

This new version does look helpful. The looser interpretation of what is and is not a secondary source makes me especially happy - as has been stated before, some copyright holders hold all reliable material pertinent to the topic in question (their property), ergo finding independent and published material can be nearly impossible at some times. MalikCarr 21:44, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Some general comments:

• A variant of the #Principles are already featured in WP:WAF as #Conclusions.
• With regard to sources, linking to Wikipedia:Verifiability#Sources may be a good idea. Notability guidelines cannot supersede policy, and when in doubt, editors should consult the relevant policy pages and particularly important sections.
• I'd like to hear Deckiller's opinion before agreeing to the rewrite.

—AldeBaer 23:26, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

"Stylistic reasons" needs some arbitrary advice or a bunch of examples, or else it will become the loop hole we've been trying to avoid. -- Ned Scott 01:46, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't seem to be any more or less exploitable than the rest of the guideline already is. Remember, we want to avoid making a heavily authoritarian guideline here - in any case, if that clause gives rise to an obviously crap article, it can be dealt with in the normal fashion. MalikCarr 03:53, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Are you kidding? This is exactly what will be abused, and what needs some defining. To what extent do we allow these articles, what types of articles are good examples and what are not, we need to be very clear on this issue. We must be authoritarian in this guideline (to some extent, to be reasonably effective), because this is a massive problem on Wikipedia. We're not going to be taking one step forward and two steps back with this. -- Ned Scott 04:41, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I expanded the wording on the third type adding in the specific example of character lists. I was also tempted to add in "setting" articles (typically which mimic real city articles).

Something that hit me while adding that, I was going to add in something about "Even if articles are split off, a brief summary of the high level details should be covered in the main fictional article"... but then I realized that if one can do this, they've just likely invalided the need for the split off article. I think it's appropriate at times, ("The main characters of 'The Simpsons' the Simpson family, comprised of Bart, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie, who interact with many other Springfield residents", with a see also link right about it), but this could be taken positively, (if you can write such , you may be able to remove said extra page. I don't know if that's a case to concern ourselves with. --Masem 05:47, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Remember, we're really going to need to spell it out for people in this guideline. We all understand what this means, and we get the context, but the ones who need these guidelines most probably won't see it like we do. Even if we have to say something like "small lists are generally acceptable, but individual character articles will require real-world information" much like the wording of the last FICT:

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

   The difference between major and minor characters is intentionally vague; the main distinguishing criterion is how much nontrivial information is available on the character. Some works could plausibly have multiple major characters.

Although, one of Deckiller's improvements over this section was to discourage going to individual article for a main character right away. -- Ned Scott 06:41, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree, we need to spell out both by descriptions and examples of what this guideline is aiming to produce. I've taken the above statements and added them (though I think there's other places for this type), outlining some examples. --Masem 16:34, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) I am actually quite tempted to add those parts as example to the 2nd and 3rd notability criteria. Comment?

I also believe we should integrate the examples into "Criterion" or use a note system to link them as it would be much clearer why each example is listed. (To have the specific criterion and application together.)

Regards, G.A.S 07:15, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

• Comment Just wanted to say "thank you" to Happy-melon for taking the initiative here and pushing "my" draft up for group editing, I just logged on to do the same thing myself but found it already done. This is great, since I'm going to be horribly busy (moving into college) for the next week, and was worried that all the efforts here might end up being futile if the discussion died. As for the newest version, it looks like you're making good progress. I'll try finding (or perhaps making) some time to chip in on it tomorrow as well. --tjstrf talk 08:03, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
• That's good work - well done to all those involved. I think the explication of in- and out- of universe is excellent. However, I feel that the guideline needs to address and counter even more explicitly the fan-driven arguments of inherited notability and the often sheer incomprehension of why character articles are usually inappropriate for Wikipedia (since, from the fan perspective, main character X or Y is always Super Important to a series). I know that this is covered at WAF and even more generically an WP:N (inherited notability), but given the preponderance of such articles that we currently have, the grounds upon which a merge (to the main article/list page) are justified need to be incredibly explicit, easy-to-follow, irresistible in logic and unimpeachable in intent. To that end, I would amplify the opening section to provide an even more basic discussion of what should be considered notable within a fictional world, even at the risk of repetition and statements of the obvious. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eusebeus (talk • contribs) 17:00, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
• Please make sure that whatever is added to back the inherited notability ideal is very, very clear. The above example of major characters and minor characters was one of the largest problems with the older version, as people blew right over the "encyclopedic treatment" part of it. I agree that it needs to be very authoritative or very detailed (though easy to read for skimmers). TTN 17:09, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

• Comment for improvement: Unfortunately I do not have time to do so right now, but the following improvements should be done: These problems were present in earlier versions, and may have been fixed since.
  • References to the reader should be "editors", not "one"/"you" etc.
  • The text should not address the readers directly (e.g. "Please do not..."), rather as "editors should not".
  • Where the word "must" is used, the appropriate policy should be referenced; else "should" should be used.
• Regards, G.A.S 18:48, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
• AldeBaer, in response to your request, I'll just say that I don't like the direction this is going. Some level of authority is needed to keep a good standard on fiction. "Should bes" lead to even more loopholes, not exceptions. But alas, I have too much in the real world to worry about, so like I said above, I'm bowing out. — Deckiller 20:40, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I concur, in a way, with Deckiller, although not about "Should be's". In the process of being neither democratic or bureaucratic, we have agreed to surrender our right to make rules that are absolutely binding. Loopholes are an inevitable consequence of assuming good faith and that people can use common sense. However, I agree with the concerns raised several times above that the section covering "stylistic" notability should be by far the most tightly worded section, with the most 'ifs' and 'buts'. Emphasis should be placed on the facts that

• This is a particularly weak definition of notability
• It is used only on rare occasions
• Articles of this nature will be judged to the harshest possible other criteria, and should ideally be perfect in every other way

All in all, however, I think that this is developing extremely well. It is certainly keeping the discussion flowing and the improvements coming. Happy-melon 21:09, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I really think we need to actually get an example of what qualifies as a stylistic exception before really trying to implement this at all. List of Gunslinger Girl characters is not a good example at all, as there is no valid reason behind its existence. Looking at it in general, there should be no need for it to exist assuming that a very concise characters section is written. That along with the general plot descriptions should be enough to cover it. We something like a split off article from a featured article to really dive into the issue. TTN 21:21, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I fully expect that every example we include will be tripled checked before this version goes "live". Don't want a bad example to throw this all for a loop.

I've edited this to strength the third case per the concerns above (possibly a bit too strong, but is the largest loophole so we want it as descriptive as possible). --Masem 21:54, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

• To step back a bit, but still on topic (hopefully), we really need to ensure language (ecoing TTN's point) that makes it crystal clear that the (much) larger community consensus on notability trumps the expression of individual assertions of notability as they may accrue in the course of a discussion on a particular talk page about a specific family of fictional articles that should be merged or redirected. Eusebeus 23:01, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Now there things go down that draconian road again. "This has to be authoritative" "we need to close loopholes" "this section should only be used rarely" "fans don't understand policy", etc... again, it strikes me that among the relatively small group of editors contributing to this new guideline, there exists some emphasis of using this rewrite as some kind of weapon against existing articles. I would prefer not to see this development, this paradigm, come to pass. Why was the Gunslinger Girl character list cited as being a bad example? The article is sourced, well-written and formatted, and contains some external perspectives on things such as character creation and voice actors for localized dubbing. Not a good article (some of the images are missing rationales, and we all know how the non-free image hysteria works), but there's certainly nothing wrong with it that would warrant a negative connotation based on this new guideline. Come on, people... we're trying to do something constructive here. MalikCarr 07:33, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I can not agree with you more Malik. It seems that some members of our community believe 99% of Wikipedia's coverage of fiction-related topics is unecessary. It has always smacked of elitism and bias. Nobody seems to be concerned about the articles on various rivers, roadways, and parks. What is the notability threshold for a particular road/highway to be included in Wikipedia, anyway? I know I appear to be getting off topic but I passionately believe that we are setting the bar too high for fiction-related articles. If Texas State Highway 6 is important information to have in an encyclopedia, then so are the characters of Gunslinger Girl. Just because it is not my thing or I think it is lowbrow does not mean it fails to be notable in general. The article appears to be sourced and I would oppose any revision of this guideline that would lead to some unnecessarily high standard for its inclusion. An article should be sourced, have "real-world" content (not all in-universe), and establish some minimal notability. It should not be required that all fiction related articles establish some arbitrarily high standard of cultural significance. Wikipedia has room for every species of snail and can still have articles on popular television shows, video games, books, and periodicals. Ursasapien (talk) 09:22, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

(←)The case that we're trying to be as assertive as possible is the case of a fictional sub-article that contains none to very very few out-of-universe references (the third case outlined above). These articles generally are excessively wordy and typically represent problems with WP:NOT#PLOT, WP:NOR, WP:V, and, of course, WP:N. And because these are written typically more by interested fans who are editors as opposed to editors that are interested fans, these articles beget more articles of the same low caliber for WP. There is room for the discussion of these topics, but they need to be done in an encyclopedic manner, and thus if one is going to describe a fictional subject purely from the fictional in-universe standpoint, one has to be extremely overly careful when creating such an article. We are not banning such articles, and we are trying to highly encourage one to find as many OOU references to support the notability of the fictional subject as to place the article in the much looser first or second cases above.

Now, as for the specific case of the Gunslinger Girls character list, it hasn't been removed yet - it's still there. I'm looking at it now and it clearly falls into the third category: it lacks OOU information to describe its notability OOU (voice actors and original Japanese names are not enough to make notable OOU - I think that needs to be stated clearly in the guidelines as well for the third case). I see one line that mentions a character name change for the English manga, that itself is nowhere close to establishing notability. This article is a prime article of the third case. But this is why such articles should really only be pulled out from a main page after editors have looked at any way to keep the content within the article. The main Gunslinger Girl page shows minimal connection between characters and the plot, and it looks like the character article was created separately from the main one. I don't know the anime, but judging by the descriptions, I would think it would be entirely possible, as the main Gunslinger Girl page stands now, to condense that character list to few sentences about each of the main characters, and summarizing the "other members" and the PRF sections to a one or two prose paragraphs each, and then further have a table to list out English vs Japanese voice actors and names. This is not to say that the List of GG characters couldn't be a good example, but because of the state of the parent and how both articles came about, it's hard to use it and only remains in the description now as a placeholder until we can find a better one. Basically, if we state the GG characters as a "good" example, people are just going to copy it and assume every fictional work can have a list of characters like that. --Masem 13:33, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

• Well put; that is the kind of unimpeachable and detailed explanation of the standard that we need in the guideline. WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is irrelevant here. Eusebeus 14:48, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

• Part of the problem with finding good examples is that the examples have to actually exist. At present there probably aren't many that do conform to what this draft suggests, except by accident. I used that article as the example because it was the best one that I could recall having seen in recent memory. Remember, while we're trying to make the guideline reflect the principles that have consensus, the reason a new version is necessary to begin with is that those principles significantly differ from what's being done in practice, which is a mass of people writing fancruft and other people (often over-)correcting to fight it. --tjstrf talk 19:46, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

• I believe this new guideline is coming together nicely. I do not have a lot of time now, unfortunately, so I will return to copy-edit the guideline over the weekend. G.A.S 21:06, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I've added a few more concepts to the article:

• I've pointed to WP:CRUFT even though it's just an essay, it explains why editors need to be careful about fiction
• I think List of Pokemon (at least now that its revised) fits as a good example of the third case
• I added mention of using external, well-established and non-WP:EL-violating fansites as replacements for in-universe information (eg SNPP or Memory Alpha). This is likely where word of other Wikia that would be good for transwiki as well.
• Probably a few other wording changes I can't remember right now

--Masem 17:54, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I can't really see the green section above replacing what we currently have. Again, while I understand where we're going, and just about everyone on this talk page understands where we're going, it just kind of... yeah.. for everyone else. Personally, I see us simply making a small note saying (something to the extent of) "a limited scope of 'style' sub-articles may be expectable" to the current guideline, almost as it is now. -- Ned Scott 04:01, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

On the contrary, while you might not see it as an acceptable alternative, the majority of discussion on this page appears to be approving of the general style of the "green section" above and, where disagreement exists, is confined to specific words or phrases. It would appear that a certain degree of consensus has been reached over the general concepts. Could you sum up in one or two sentences your concerns with the proposal? Happy-melon 09:05, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

The current version of WP:FICT has far greater support than what's been recently discussed, as shown in the talk archives of this page. The green area is a horribly unhelpful mess that does little to actually aid in the proper creation of fictional articles, or dealing with those which do not belong on Wikipedia. It's bloated, poorly written, and encourages editors to game the system, finding reasons for articles after creation, simply for the sake of saving the article.

A bit of a double standard to say that the previous version didn't represent consensus, and then to make a declaration of consensus when you have weaker arguments and weaker support. For the last rewrite of FICT, messages were left on tons of WikiProject talk pages, the village pump, and had months of discussion. -- Ned Scott 20:56, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

And yet WP:IAR is still invoked against it by reasonable, moderate editors in AfDs up and down Wikipedia. No one is claiming that the "green area" does not require careful editing to form a presentable guideline. It is an attempt to gather group consensus as to the ideal future wording in as proactive a manner as possible. As far as I'm aware, the previous wording was assembled by a small group of editors and attained the support, or at least apathy, of enough editors to be considered an acceptable rewrite. Given the status of the guideline before that rewrite I'm not surprised that moderate editors were happy to see a replacement. However, it is not acceptable to discount the comments of dozens of editors above and below pointing out perfectly valid concerns with the current wording on the basis of previous consensus, however extensive that consensus might have been. I will be happy to advertise this rewrite of FICT as widely as the last if it will reassure you. I believe that "months of discussion" is something of an exaggeration. Happy-melon 21:13, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

(not really the point, but..: The first mention of Deck's rewrite popped up in early June, with Deckiller showing off a copyedited version by June 24th on WT:FICT. August 9th, the new version goes into effect.) In no way am I discounting the concerns of everyone (which wouldn't make sense since, for the most part, we don't disagree on those issues). We all want these things to be cleared up and to be stated in a guideline, I just don't see what's in the green area as anywhere near ready, and I think completely rejecting the current guideline's wording is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. WP:FICT isn't even very big, and it would only take a little bit of wording to address these issues. I'll try to have a draft up in my userspace sometime tonight or tomorrow, and I think you might be pleasantly surprised. -- Ned Scott 02:47, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Comments on the new wording (Continued)

Ned:

• "The current version of WP:FICT has far greater support than what's been recently discussed, as shown in the talk archives of this page". I never even knew about the current rewrite until it was implimented. I believe the same goes for a lot of other editors.
• "The green area is a horribly unhelpful mess that does little to actually aid in the proper creation of fictional articles" that is the work of WP:WAF. As for the guideline as to when something is considered notable: that is sound and in line with WP:N.
• "or dealing with those which do not belong on Wikipedia." Did you read the proposed guideline recently?
• " It's bloated, poorly written," Make some recommendations for improvement then.
• " and encourages editors to game the system," Not true. And even if that was the case, at least a major part of the rewrite is to prevent such problems.
• "finding reasons for articles after creation, simply for the sake of saving the article." Where? How should it be improved.

Have a look in the archives, and WP:AFD. The current "guideline" does not have broad support, and is in need of a major rewrite. G.A.S 23:13, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I never even knew about the current rewrite until it was implemented. I believe the same goes for a lot of other editors.

• How many do you think know about this rewrite?

that is the work of WP:WAF. As for the guideline as to when something is considered notable: that is sound and in line with WP:N.

• No, that is where we over-lap with WAF. When we talk about notability we're talking about what detailed facts about works of fiction should be justified, especially in the sense of article creation. Fictional topics become notable with real-world information (generally speaking).

Did you read the proposed guideline recently?

• The current FICT's sections on how to deal with non-notable fiction information is a lot better.
• Regarding your questions on how to improve the guideline, I'll throw up something in my sandbox that will hopefully put a lot of this into context.
• Having a look in the archives and AFDs actually show this guideline does have widespread support. We just want to tone it down a bit (or add a section) for a limited scope of sub-articles that are generally acceptable as separate documents, but don't have independent notability. -- Ned Scott 02:56, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

1. The new proposal is an early draft, but input have been requested at the village pump some time ago.
2. Correct, but we should not place undue weight on styling here, or vica versa.
3. (No comment at this time.)
4. Please make use of descriptive wording.
5. Personally I would have settled for the current guideline per my rewrite, with minor additions. (You never did comment on it; would you please?)

Regards, G.A.S 08:03, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Suggested template for 3rd case sub-articles

Thinking about the above ("is the Gunslinger Girls characters article a good example of the 3rd case?") I realized that there's a possibility of the following happening: Say main article X has by stylistic reasons a sub-article "List of Y in X" pulled out, all valid within our guidelines. If I were a casual editor and came through the "List of Y in X" page via the way of the "X" page, I would certainly understand why that page was like that, but if I came though via any different means, and saw this list of in-universe only information, I would be tempted to flag it with tags or edit it away.

I think it may make sense to provide a talk page template to help identify such pages. I'm thinking language like this:

(Article Name) contains a description of one or more fictional subjects primarily written in a fictional universe context. While this article may fail to meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines on its own, it contains information that has been moved from (main fictional work page) for stylistic reasons by (link to talk discussion|consensus of its editors) on (date). Editors are strongly encouraged to maintain this article in high quality and provide such in-universe information accurately and succinctly, and are recommended to find appropriate secondary sources to establish real-world notability of these subjects.

(The parens indicate what would be replaced on template processing). This as written does 3 things: Identified such sub-articles to prevent people from throwing "non-notable" at them at first glance, establishes when and why the article was split off so that after some time passes newer editors can understand when and why this was done after those original editors may have moved on (and implicitly, for those list articles that lack this, we know they haven't gone through this procedure yet), and also reminds editors to try to continue to improve the article to get it out of that third case and into either the first or second. Making such a template isn't hard, the question is, is this needed? --Masem 15:18, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

This makes eminent sense. However, on account of the increased maintenance required, it must not be a requirement. Instead, the appropriate WikiProjects should be advised and requested to add these templates to the articles under their jurisdiction. Perhaps WPP:SERIES could be resurrected for long enough to establish a taskforce to push for template addition as appropriate. However, as determination of the details of the justification will likely be time-consuming and require knowledge of the article series, it should be left to the purview of individual WikiProjects. Happy-melon 15:47, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Agreed that its not a requirement. Again, the idea is that if editors that split off a page of in-universe information, they'd likely want to add this to give their page justification for existance. (I'm also not saying that such pages that lack this template should be quickly put up for CSD, just that this should help prevent uninvolved editors from hitting the page with notability and calls for deletion or merging simply because its in-universe only). For new articles, the information required is "easy" to find, but for existing articles that still qualify after these guidelines are polished, probably need a lot of research to judge when that occurred; however, I would suspect (and hope for) that a discussion on such articles will take place, and that could be used to qualify when the proverbial split was made. --Masem 16:45, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm thinking that for this to work out, we're going to have to create some sort of fiction management project that'll work with other projects and editors to figure out if an article is necessary. It could work like the Wikipedia:Television episodes/Review, but apply to all fiction. TTN 17:30, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

We've already got one: the inactive WikiProject Fictional series. If we decide it'd be helpful, all the infrastructure is (in principle) already in place; just fire it back up, change its mandate to what you've described and set it loose to oversee fictional articles across Wikipedia. It'll become pretty bureaucratic given its enormous scope, but at least everything'll be centralised. Happy-melon 18:04, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Just as long as this would go beyond "series" and consider any fictional work and where there exists the stylistic split (3rd case) sub-articles. While fictional series will likely have many such articles, we can't discount a singular work would potentially have one as well. --Masem 18:56, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Good idea with the template, something that gives a brief explanation + requests out of universe expansion from knowledgeable readers could be quite useful. As for the Wikiproject, I'm not sure it's exactly a good idea due to all the potential bureaucracy, but it might be a necessary one. I'd suggest only setting it up if the other probable venues (i.e. this page) are getting flooded with discussions about it. --tjstrf talk 19:36, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Concur, and with Masem above. Happy-melon 19:40, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Low priority, but I've gone and made Template:in-universe rationale: {{In-universe rationale|date=2007-09-10|talk=Talk:Final Fantasy VIII|main=Final Fantasy VIII}}

The page name is based on where the template is placed (picks it up from SUBJECTPAGENAME), so example this would be on "Characters of Final Fantasy VIII" page. Wording can be corrected, all that jazz. --Masem 20:02, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

But the FFVIII page is fine as is. Wasn't the point of the template that it be used on things like the Gunslinger Girl character article? --tjstrf talk 20:12, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

This was just meant for example. I grabbed a page name just for example of demonstrating the template. Yes, the FFVIII page does not need this, but the question of the GG page is also in question. --Masem 22:10, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Normally I oppose templates as a solution to deeper problems, but in this case, it seems like it's exactly what we need to avoid articles being deleted that form a greater whole with their parent article. Ideally, a sub-article should be able to stand on its own, but given the rather convoluted nature of writing about fiction within Wikipedia policies, if we were to make an allowance for a succinct and well-written article to survive on the notability of its parent article for the purposes of WP:N, then I think we've done something productive for the project as a whole.

Obviously, crap articles (unsourced or what have you) should still be nuked using the relevant policies, but this will give us a chance to keep the decent ones without having notability used as a weapon by deletion-minded editors. Nothing is more depressing than a perfectly functional article going the way of the dodo because "AfD NN", you know? MalikCarr 00:02, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Yea, I don't think is necessary, in of itself a solution, but it will help with the solution that we are suggesting to allow for such articles to exist. I think calling this a "rationale" comparable to how one needs a fair-use rationale for images and other non-free works helps to emphasis that anything editors can do to help justify why such in-universe pages can exist. (Though again, lacking such rationale here does not mean you CSD the article as you'd do with images). --Masem 04:18, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not liking this template. It seems to encourage the idea that we can split off "style" articles based on micro-consensus (popularity), which basically means nothing changes, and we get fancruft articles up the ass. People shouldn't be looking to debate the need for plot summary, and splits for style reasons need to be minimal. -- Ned Scott 03:44, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh quit being such a stick in the mud. Consensus among editors is still consensus, even if we don't like them. Furthermore, "fancruft" has been such an abused term among deletion-minded editors it's practically a buzzword for "IDONTLIKEIT-ism" nowadays. This template only protects articles that have difficulty establishing independent notability - crap articles can be deleted using other, less controversial policies. In any case, if WP:N is the only criteria for deletion of an article, we shouldn't be rushing to that outcome anyway. MalikCarr 04:00, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia-wide consensus trumps micro-conesnous. If we say Joe Blow is not notable, and 5 of his friends are the most active editors on the talk page and say he is, we still nuke the article. The template will just encourage wikilawering, as little clusters of editors are looking for a way to say "we think it should stay, and no one else gets a say in the matter". Hell no, not for fictional notability. -- Ned Scott 04:06, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

The burden of proof is on you to provide the Wikipedia-wide consensus. Furthermore, "Wikilawyering" is just a term for using guidelines in a less-mainstream fashion by people who think they're more rigid than they really are. It's not helping your argument. Furthermore, what do you mean, "no one else gets a say in the matter"? That's not consensus, that's obstructionism - we shouldn't be getting them confused based on our opinions of the editors in question. MalikCarr 04:12, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Alright, wtf? No really, wtf? Do you even know what I'm talking about at this point, or are you just desperately looking for any tool to fight of deletionists? You don't even know what the term Wikilawyering means. I'm sorry some guys are assholes and want to delete EVERYTHING, but I'm not one of them, and I'm not willing to accept a bad template just because others are desperate. I sympathize, I really do, but this template is just stupid. It makes it sound like you only need a consensus on one little talk page, and get to reject the consensus over-all. -- Ned Scott 04:19, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

If the overall consensus exists, it will migrate to that talk page and trump the so-called "micro-consensus". We don't need one editor who believes he's following overall consensus to haphazardly AfD, redirect, and remove encyclopedic content when the actual consensus says he's being a vandal. You might think I'm on some kind of a crusade against deletionists, but the truth of the matter is I'm simply looking to preserve articles whose only crime is being wholly owned of content by the copyright holders. MalikCarr 04:26, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

If the overall consensus exists, it will migrate to that talk page and trump the so-called "micro-consensus". This happens way too often for us to be running around to the thousands and thousands of discussions that happen. If it actually worked that way, we wouldn't need guidelines. The very reason we make guidelines is so we don't have to have the same discussion over and over again, so we don't have to fight the same battle all the time. We're volunteers, and we don't have the resources to put out all of those small fires. -- Ned Scott 04:30, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

And no, you never get to call someone a vandal who is acting in good faith. We've banned people for being disruptive before, but that doesn't make them vandals. -- Ned Scott 04:31, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

That's the way consensus is supposed to work, and in practice, the way it does. Guidelines proposed, drafted and implemented by a few editors will never replace the consensus of editors. This is why guidelines should follow consensus, not consensus follow guidelines. It's counterintuitive, a form of circular logic, and wholly ineffective. In any case, you're the only person who seems to think this is a problem, so hey, there's the consensus for you, eh? MalikCarr 04:43, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Here, here! I am putting this on my userpage. Ursasapien (talk) 04:50, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Whoa, what bullshit is this? Sorry, but don't put words in my mouth. What we do on Wikipedia is develop a consensus, when it's helpful we make that consensus into a guideline, so we don't have to re-invent the wheel every week. What you are describing is not what I am talking about, at all. Trying to spin it around and make it sound like what you've described is what I'm endorsing is insulting. -- Ned Scott 04:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

And I find your tone and supposition, as well as perception of ineptitude on my part with regards to knowledge of policy, insulting, but I don't bring it up like it's some kind of debate point or supporting evidence for my argument. I mean, why are you accusing me of personal attacks a few lines up from throwing the same logic at me? I haven't done anything wrong, and I'm certainly not "spinning" anything in a given direction. AGF, please.

In any case, Wikipedia is famous for re-inventing the wheel - it's just part of an open encyclopedia where everyone gets to contribute. You've been around for quite a while, why is this coming as a surprise to you? It's really pretty much SOP from my perspective. Furthermore, we're not developing a consensus here, or at least, we shouldn't be. If we're trying to make a better guideline, we should be looking at existing consensus in the relevant area and building off of that, which you -seem- to be in opposition of. It's not our job to assume bad faith on the part of editors and that they will misuse our good-natured efforts to create a better encyclopedia. Wikipedia is a reactionary body, at least in practice, and I see nothing wrong with that. MalikCarr 05:07, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Except the part where that's not at all what I'm talking about. Finding the consensus is what we are doing right now, and it will always be changing and rediscussed and evolving. My point is that we shouldn't have to do it every single week or day, on every single article. You might want to read up on Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Naming Conventions to understand the kinds of situations I desire to avoid. -- Ned Scott 05:13, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

<de-indent>First of all, exactly what relevance does the request for arbitration page have to do with this discourse? The use of disambiguation pages doesn't really seem very pertinent. Anyway, consensus exists right now - it's our job as editors working on a guideline to utilize what exists and build off it. To say the eight or ten of us actively working on this are the consensus for what should and should not be written on articles within the scope of this guideline is just daft. MalikCarr 05:17, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

*facepalm* The use of disambiguation pages wasn't the issue at all.... the main point of the dispute was that a few editors felt they should be allowed to develop their own micro-consensus, and not have to follow a larger (and community accepted) guideline. It's also a case where I was an involved party to the dispute, and I've had to make these points way back then, as well. *secondfacepalm* I didn't say we are the consensus, I said we are trying to find the consensus. You keep arguing with me about stuff we don't disagree about. -- Ned Scott 05:30, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Should be vs. Must

Regarding "should bes": The use of the word "should"[1][2][3] as opposed to "must"[4][5][6] is not intended to be used as a loophole: I rather "should" be used as it recognises WP:IAR (a policy) and "WP:WIARM". G.A.S 16:58, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

That doesn't make any sense. We don't go writing guidelines to encourage people to ignore them. IAR stands on it's own, and doesn't need permission from other pages. -- Ned Scott 03:46, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

It makes perfect sense to me... MalikCarr 04:07, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I can just repeat myself over and over if that's what it takes to get the point through: "We don't go writing guidelines to encourage people to ignore them." -- Ned Scott 04:13, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

They say doing the same thing over and over and expecting something different to happen is a condition of psychosis. In any case, why are you being such a pessimist about this? Assuming bad faith on the part of editors, before they even make the edit, isn't just conflicting with AGF, it's downright cynical and unproductive. MalikCarr 04:19, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok.. what? He already made the edits, so I understand the context he is presenting. But hey, I like how you still avoid commenting on my point, that we don't write guidelines to encourage people to ignore them. And it's not being pessimistic to say "I don't agree". If you would, please actually comment on the points being presented, instead of trying to second guess everyone. -- Ned Scott 04:26, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

What do you think WP:IAR does? It encourages editors to ignore it and all other rules, if the rules get in the way of building or perfecting the encyclopedia. Of course, the rub is finding the best way to improve the encyclopedia. Ursasapien (talk) 04:28, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't mean we don't write other guidelines to ignore the rules, I mean we don't write the guideline in question to encourage people to ignore itself. -- Ned Scott 04:34, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Ned, I think you are looking for an iron-clad guideline that you can club other editors over the head with. A guideline is a suggestion. The purpose is to show other editors what we have discovered, through experience, as the best way to improve the encyclopedia. I think, when volunteer editors add articles that you feel are "fancruft," you should have a guideline that clearly shows them the best way to improve the encyclopedia. Not some "wiki-law" that you can point to as you delete/merge it, saying, "Thus sayeth consensus!" Does this take time and sustained effort? Absolutely! But I believe you have the stamina to go to hundreds of articles and dialogue/encourage until the articles are improved. Ursasapien (talk) 04:46, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Err.. what? I'm not saying we can't soften the wording, my comments were about the logic of inviting editors to ignore the guideline (especially without context of why someone would ignore them). -- Ned Scott 05:04, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I thought this was exactly what you were saying. We can not change "must" to "should" because that will soften the guideline and prevent us from clamping down on fancruft. Apparently, I am kinda slow. Please explain your position to me again. (and BTW, stay WP:COOL. There is no need for you to use the language that you have been using. If MalikCarr is getting under your skin, take a break. Ursasapien (talk) 05:10, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I'm not sure if "should" or "must" will make any difference for anything, and really don't have a strong stance on the exact wording. On the other hand I understand Deckiller's rationale for using more authoritative language, given the state that most of our fictional articles are in. So basically, whatever wording we use, we shouldn't just think authoritative or strong persuasive writing is bad. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's overkill, sometimes it doesn't really matter. The idea that we should arbitrarily avoid such wording is a bad mindset. -- Ned Scott 05:23, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

<unindent>The idea that we should arbitrarily avoid such wording is a bad mindset. - Agreed. That being said, I think there is a mindset in some on WP that if we produce a guideline of sufficient authority and clarity we will be able to always have a "black and white" answer to every editing question. No need for discussion and debate, no need for arguments presented and consensus gained. We will have it set in stone for all time. That is not my understanding of how WP works. Ursasapien (talk) 05:40, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

And you've yet to demonstrate how we're even communicating that intent in the first place. In any case, the act of disagreeing isn't inherently pessimistic. Automatically assuming the worst of editors is. But, it seems you've gotten the inferior language you wanted to be utilized, so this point's kind of moot now, isn't it? MalikCarr 04:29, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Still waiting for you to comment on the points being presented, instead of making this personal. -- Ned Scott 04:34, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

You're making this personal, not me. Incidentally I've already commented on your points. You should peruse them. MalikCarr 04:41, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Never once in this thread have you commented on the point that we don't write guidelines to encourage people to ignore them. On the other hand, you've insulted me, you've accused me of assuming bad faith, you've been flat wrong about a few things ("Assuming bad faith on the part of editors, before they even make the edit [7]"), and continue to assume I have some deletionist motive. God damn man, I'm a member of fucking WP:DIGI. I'm as far from a deletionist as you can get. All night you seem to be thinking I'm every person you've ever had to fight with over an article. The first thing you said to me tonight was that I was a stick in the mud. You've been on the war path all night, and it completely shows. -- Ned Scott 05:04, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

1. I have never accused you of being a deletionist.

2. The line of logic that has resulted in the "stick in the mud" comment has been existent in this discussion for longer than just today.

3. I've refuted your point about "encourage [editors] to ignore [the guideline]" repeatedly, and you've interpreted this as a personal attack and assumption of bad faith.

4. I am not on the warpath.

5. Your citation of article history seems to imply some kind of malicious or deceitful intent on my part. Who's not assuming good faith now? MalikCarr 05:10, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

<de-indent>FYI, Ursasapien, the should/must debate is simply a matter of a prescriptive vs. descriptive methodology to writing guidelines, and has already been established by consensus that descriptive is the way to go. Harsh and authoritarian language is reserved for policy, not guidelines. MalikCarr 05:13, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Guidelines, by the very definition of guideline, will be prescriptive in nature. It's also been well established that we can't use descriptive, because what normally happens with fictional articles is what we are trying to avoid. -- Ned Scott 05:32, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

BTW Ned, I think you have quite a warped view of the "normal" article on a fictional subject. By far and away, the majority are well written, not just plot summaries or in-universe descriptions, and contain a number of citations. Just look at how many fictional FA articles we have. Out of the hundred thousand or more maybe 10% to 15% are really bad. That is still a lot of articles but over all I think we are doing well. Ursasapien (talk) 05:50, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

.... Some very simple math shows how wrong that is. For example, A, FA, and GA combined for WP:ANIME is 52. 52 out of 6496 (less than 1%), and that's not counting many episode articles that lack the project tag. -- Ned Scott 06:05, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

WP:ANIME does not reflect the totality of WP's coverage of fictional topics. What about other types of comics/cartoons/animation? What about all the television projects? What about all the books, plays, radio programs, and other fictional topics? I believe that the situation is not nearly as bad as you perceive it to be. Ursasapien (talk) 06:54, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

BTW, if you include everything above the stub level (and I am showing my bias, but I think most of them are fairly good) you come up with 67% of the assessed articles. Ursasapien (talk) 07:27, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

"By far and away, the majority are well written, not just plot summaries or in-universe descriptions, and contain a number of citations." By your own criteria, that is far from the majority of articles. Even including B-class and excluding unassessed articles leaves us at 28%. If you want, we can get some more bot stats and see how many of these articles have cleanup tags, seeing how many lack any sources, etc. My point is, you do not have a realistic view on the current status of our fictional articles. That being said, I do think we are making great progress, and are producing better articles all the time, but if you are going to make statements like that, then you yourself are writing fiction. -- Ned Scott 08:12, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I beg to differ. Guidelines are meant to be treated as just that: they have an intent but leave wiggle room for specific instances and differences. They are flexible, subject to interpretation, and not written in stone. Now, we just had this debate about prescriptive vs. descriptive wording, and last time I checked, we've agreed that "guideline = descriptive" owing to the very nature of it.

The reason why I keep bringing up the point about assuming bad faith on the part of editors who interpret our guideline is because we should not, and indeed, cannot, attempt to create a rigid doctrine that preempts any form of schenanigans by editors as a guideline. That might be fine logic for the powdered wig-wearing editors who personally know Jimbo that make policies, but us proles should not be prescribing the nature of articles. Is this making more sense now? MalikCarr 05:47, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

No one is saying guidelines are not flexible, and no one is saying it should be written in stone. "That might be fine logic for the powdered wig-wearing editors who personally know Jimbo that make policies" Jesus Christ, is that what you actually think? And no, descriptive does not always make for a good guideline, as it's been pointed out time and time again (if it was, then we wouldn't have guidelines). We don't allow articles that are only plot, and are not needed for the understanding of the parent article, simply because a lot of other people tend to do it. -- Ned Scott 06:02, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I refer everybody to WP:WIARM#What "Ignore all rules" does not mean — points 1, 3, 4, and 5. As such "should" is not to be interpreted as the wish of the guideline but rather as the dictionary defines "should" — "... an auxiliary verb to indicate that an action is considered by the speaker to be obligatory..." as opposed to must ("to express obligation"). G.A.S 05:58, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

Of course it makes for a good guideline. We've been over this before, you know... the simple fact that we allow room for interpretation without threatening deletion of relevant articles ought to go leagues for proving this point. Unless, of course, you'd like to see things that way? Not to make any accusations - you're the only person who's made allegations relevant to deletionist tendencies - but it's rather plain to see how the stricter wording would favor the deletionist philosophy.

Furthermore, anyone can cite statistics to say their point is correct, but as any good student of debate and communications can tell you, statistics are never an argument in and of themselves. I'd challenge that those figures are not representative of the project's overall success. How many of those 6500 articles were created by declared project members, and how many were simply stuck in by a random editor and later acquired a WP:ANIME tag by a trawling project member? Furthermore, putting the cutoff at GA-status, which is not easy to achieve by any stretch of the imagination, seems rather slanted. Why not include B-rated articles? There's a lot of those that are swell. MalikCarr 07:00, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

..As a long term participant in not only WP:ANIME, but the development of WikiProjects across Wikipedia, I can tell you the concept of "membership" is a thing of the past. As defined by most projects, anyone working on, discussing, or simply interested in a scope of articles is considered to be a participant in that project. I'm not sure what point you are trying to make, as my point is that the status of articles, regardless of who wrote them, is pretty damn low. WP:ANIME is an excellent and highly effective project, and I'm very proud to be apart of that effort, and it is not a reflection of the project's effectiveness at all.

So here it is, I made a statement using real information, and you interpret that as an attack on WP:ANIME or a comment on it's effectiveness, when that had absolutely nothing to do with what I was commenting about. WTF? The majority, the vast majority of our fictional articles are not up to basic standards, and I say that in response to Ursasapien's uninformed guess that most articles are doing great.

And do not act stupid and make statements like "you're the only one" when you damn well know there's other editors who share my same view. When we write these guidelines we do not just represent our own views, but also that which is found in community discussion and so on. We respect known views, even if someone isn't able to check the talk pages every single night. -- Ned Scott 20:47, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I would appreciate it if you would stop questioning my intellect or drawing totally unrelated conclusions from things I say as if that was somehow my intention in writing. It's not very nice.

Moving right along. If project "membership is a thing of the past" then don't you think we should be revising project guidelines, not fiction guidelines? If things are as you say, then the example of WP:ANIME's contributions being lackluster is indicative of a problem with the project system, not our fiction guidelines. I stand firm in my belief of the use of descriptive language. It makes a better guideline, and assuming the worst in editors is not helpful for drafting new ones. MalikCarr 23:02, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

What the hell are you talking about? I meant that membership in the sense of an "exclusive group" was an idea we discourage now, for the sake of making the projects appear more open. WP:ANIME's contributions are not in question, it's simply that there are a ton of a lot of articles out there. Why are you bringing these things up when they have nothing to do with what I was talking about?

I'm also not sure why you are even trying to argue with me when I agree with the general ideas presented here, that some articles are split for style or semi-notability. The reason I say that descriptive doesn't always the best way to think about what we are doing is because "by-default" actions of new editors (or editors not aware of our general guidelines and policies) are not always an indication of how things should be done. If they were, then we would be recommending that people go hog wild and be as detailed as they wanted to be with pure plot. -- Ned Scott 02:30, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Ned, you are forgetting one thing in this descriptive vs prescriptive debate: We are writing this guideline for editors that follow guidelines. The ones that do not will always create problem articles, but if we do not describe what we want, we are not going to get it. G.A.S 07:26, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Are we describing what normally happens with most fictional articles, or are we describing what should happen with most fictional articles? My comments refer to the former. -- Ned Scott 08:00, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Also, there is a major difference between editors who are unaware of guidelines and ones that simply choose not to follow them. -- Ned Scott 08:02, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

As you said yourself: describing what should happen.

Re: Major difference: I disagree. No amount of begging/prescribing/banning/blocking/... will stop someone that does not want to follow the guideline, and no amount of prescribing will deter someone that does not know about guidelines. Regards, G.A.S 09:32, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Then there seems to simply be some confusion then as to how I've been using the word describing. On that matter, I don't disagree with you at all. -- Ned Scott 23:56, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it is very much important to describe both what happens normally and what should happen normally with this guideline change. We need to let people know what has happened in the past, why this is a concern now, and how to improve upon it. If we simple stated "here's how it should go", with no description of what happened before, you'll confuse editors just as much.

Everything in the new guideline is aimed to encourage (not require) as much notability as possible for a fictional subject article, and to discourage (but not disallow) pure in-universe articles when they meet specific requirements. I'll note the current guidelines don't even allow for such a case, but then the "solution" to correct them is barely there; there's a huge gap that is not covered which has allowed for the number of in-universe articles to come about. The new green-box guidelines, which may not be wordily perfect, at least give an intent that in-universe articles are allowable, but either should be justified to stand alone, or should have notability to allow them to stand alone. Showing how these guidelines help to make up for the large gap between notability and in-universe cases in the present guidelines will help smooth the transition of these new guidelines as they get implimented. --Masem 13:29, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

I think it would only take a few changes to make the current guideline acceptable given the discussion we've been having, but that aside.. I do agree with you that it is very important to explain the past and why things are how they are. -- Ned Scott 23:56, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh good, this isn't just the two of us butting heads anymore. In any case, G.A.S. makes a valid point about the bad apple editors. Why I didn't think of that I'll never know. MalikCarr 02:56, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Proposal

I have proposed that the notability subguidelines be deprecated with the salient points being merged into the main notability guideline and the remaining subguidelines merged & deprecated to essay status. Please join the centralized discussion at Wikipedia talk:Notability#Merge proposal. Vassyana 01:04, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

real world users of wikipedia

I just came across a mention of wikipedia in an article in the The Times magazine. The writer made a comment which I think illustrates what people in the real world actually use an encyclopedia for. Loved the brothers, surely the best early evening road haulage based TV ever produced. I can still name all three siblings: Edward, Brian and David. And the surname? Hammond. I can't remember where it was set. Dudley, at a guess. Wikipedia doen't say.

Clearly the article has failed the journalist who wanted in-universe information about the plot. Now, this may have nothing to do with any existing policy, simply that the series is too old for anyone to remember enough details to have included this information. However it illustrates a point which no-one seems much interested in. One of the most important aspects of any fiction is the storyline. Not for purposes of illustrating a point being made in the article, but as an intrinsically noteable piece of information worth including. Sandpiper 08:18, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Including the last name of a character really doesn't seem to be an issue.. It's basic and doesn't eat up much space, so we usually do make those of those things. You might see us focus a lot on the need for real world information, and the cutting back on massive plot sections, but we all agree that there is fundamental plot information that is needed. -- Ned Scott 08:46, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

If, by evidenced over in the discussion for WP:SPOILER, it is almost a failure of WP:NPOV to not describe enough of the plot to establish characters, setting, and major story elements to appreciate the work. I'd argue that is also a problem, albeit not one directly related to notability (this information, if such, should be in WP:WAF to describe the bare minimum details). However, one could also say said journalist has fallen into the assumption that Wikipedia is the sum of human knowledge; it isn't, it's meant to be a general use encyclopedia. There's other places that are better suited for pop culture details. --Masem 13:22, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

It might be considered a general use encyclopedia, but what exactly does that mean when the encyclopedia in question has a million articles all potentially the length of several printed pages? Some people seem to have a very narrow notion of what writing on that scale means. However, a number of people here and elsewhere seem to be arguing that no plot information should be included unless specifically relevant to some real world point being made. The example above clearly shows that an article which simply consisted of a modest plot summary rightly ought to be entitled to exist. The issue should not be whether or not there is any other info tacked on, a plot summary in itself is useful content. The rules suggested in the guideline page here banning such pages are inappropriate. Sandpiper 20:51, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

The purpose of this page, and the proposed rewrite, is to define notability for articles about fictional subjects; not to define content (Which is mainly done by WP:WAF and to a degree by WP:NOT#PLOT). The problem is that multiple pages exist for individual characters/episodes etc; but the only source for those articles is the show itself. Please feel free to comment on the proposed rewrite. G.A.S 21:12, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually, notability on Wikipedia just means an inclusion-criteria, which is directly related to what content we include. We have inclusion criteria to prevent us from becoming over-balanced with fictional detail that isn't justified by relevant real-world information. All pages, even sub-pages for style, need to strive to include real-world information. If they can't then we need to evaluate the need for those articles in relation to the parent article. -- Ned Scott 01:06, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

While we pundits or policy wonks see this work as very important, the vast majority of "real-world" users look at Wikipedia to get just the information that we are talking about leaving out. For better or for worse, a vast group of users want to find out the plot summary of some obscure movie or character descriptions from their favorite television show. I am not saying this is what we want to be, I am saying this is how Wikipedia is being used (in my experience). Very few people use Wikipedia to find out the mating habits of the titmouse. They want to try to remember what was the name of the villian in that 60's cartoon. I find it interesting that editors interested in fiction agonize about whether a particular subject is notable enough for an article, meanwhile, other editors relish writing articles about every road, park, school, or prison in the entire English speaking world. Ursasapien (talk) 05:40, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

How our readers want to use Wikipedia doesn't dictate how Wikipedia itself will be used. This is one of the reasons we have so many sister projects in the Wikimedia family. I mean, why else would we have WikiQuote, if not to take the huge burden off of Wikipedia and prevent quotes from taking over articles. Same with Wikiversity, a place for all our how-tos to live. We don't have an official Wikimedia wiki for fiction (although that in itself could be a very good idea), and right now the best we have is Wikia (unofficial, but undeniably connected).

Wikipedia isn't raw-information-hut, it's an encyclopedia, and one from the perspective of the real world. Becoming an include-all site would make things very unmanageable, and drown out any articles that were about fiction, but did have real-world information about them. Sure, finding out what happened last week on some show, or what character did what, might be a popular use of Wikipedia, but it doesn't stand the test of time, and isn't what we're here to do. The best thing we can do is direct people to the appropriate place for those things, so we can keep our focus on reality. -- Ned Scott 06:21, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

<unindented response>You know, it would be great to have Wiki-indiscriminate_collection_of_information so people would have a place to put all those roads/parks/schools/prisons I keep complaining about. I agree with you, Ned, we are NOT simply what others intend us to be. We are an online encyclopedia. What is or is not notable is debatable, but our purpose is not. Ursasapien (talk) 07:01, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, "Wikilist" would be a good idea: a repository for trivia, Fancruft, character lists, [[10 things Joe Bloggs did during the 501st episode of Yet Another Sitcom]],[[Actors who appeared for less than 30 seconds in Latest short-lived low-ranking Drama]], The 24 small parks near my house, 500 interesting things about tree bark etc etc. People love compiling lists (and reading them). Better there than here; let us get on with creating an encyclopedia. Gwinva 21:30, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Why does this guideline exist?

"Articles about fictional concepts are notable if they contain substantial real-world content from reliable primary and secondary sources" -- WP:FICT.

"A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." -- WP:N

• Based on the above, content of the work itself is not an indication of notability.
• The only difference is that we require real world content.
• WP:WAF goes to great trouble of explaining why real world content is required.

"These guidelines pertain to the suitability of article topics but do not directly limit the content of articles." -- WP:N

• As such it is not the purpose of notability guidelines to tell editors what content should be provided in articles.
• WP:NOT#PLOT does this, and this is reflected in WP:WAF.

Based on the above reasoning, why does this guideline exist as a seperate guideline and not as a section of WP:WAF; considering that these two guidelines are so closely related?

Should we not work towards merging these two guidelines?

G.A.S 11:17, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

Technically, you are correct; at least, the notability guideline needs to to work hand in hand with WAF, though WAF's range is more than just fictional elements. Could these be merged? Possibly, but the length would be excessive; I think it's reasonable to have WAF talk about writing about fictional works describing everything but plot, and then defering here.

What you do point out is that right now the apparent crossover between those helping with this rewrite, and those active in WAF's discussion is almost nil (I just see you and NedScott). I think we need to get our two groups working better togetehr as there is similar, though not as intense, discussion on fictional elements in their talk page. --Masem 12:37, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

This guideline was born, before WP:WAF, as the results of the discussion on Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Minor characters, so it may be time to take a look at all our fictional guidelines and how they fit together (as noted higher up on this talk page, or in an archive by now). Before discussion on that started, I requested that we hammer out the details of the sub-articles, so that when we did start moving stuff around we wouldn't have to pause for debate. I'm not sure if everything should be just dumped into WAF, but I'm open to many options. -- Ned Scott 20:36, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I am currently looking at having some of the better content merged into WP:N, such as the transwiki option. If such changes are accepted, we can move probably shorten the notability guideline considerably, and move it into WP:WAF#Notability and undue weight. Even currently the readable prose of the two guidelines are short enough to exist in a single guideline. (~28K). If redundant content are removed, this will be much shorter, and it will allow us to synchronize the two guidelines easier. The current layout (being split) has the bad habit of sending one into a loop. Furthermore, the content is so closely related, I am of the opinion that such a merge may make sense. Comment? G.A.S 21:10, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I would have no fundamental objection to a merge between WP:WAF and WP:FICT. However, that is only on the condition that the concepts we are developing above are not lost in translation. Happy‑melon 21:29, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I second Happy-melon's take on things. We've made a lot of progress in this proposed rewrite so far, and if that were to not carry through, I'd be quite miffed. Merging WP:FICT and WAF as they are now and calling it a day would just be brushing dust under a rug. MalikCarr 02:59, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

The purpose is not to sweep anything under the rug, I assure you. But for the purpose of the rewrite, we should see the two guidelines as one: This will help to synchronize the two and help reduce redundancy (As the case is currently, we have proposals that are more applicable to WP:WAF; but we cannot see the results. If the result is too long, we can always split off the notability part per WP:SS and WP:LENGTH. G.A.S 06:32, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

• Merging the guideline would be fine if the intent can be maintained. The problem here is the sheer quantity of wholly unencyclopedic content that persists due almost entirely to fan-driven bias, which adduces its own standard of notability within the context of the fictional universe in question. Thus, the typical reaction to a merge of unencyclopedic content is usually along the lines of "OMG you can't merge (Insert Fictional Character) s/he's like super important to (Fictional World)" To reform such content, it is important to have a guideline that lays out clearly what the encyclopedic standards are for notability and verifiability and how these apply, in specific and concrete terms, to fictional content. Many fan-editors prefer to ignore the guidelines completely when considering the suitability of fictional content and it is therefore of the utmost importance that there exist a guideline that makes clear reference to what should and should not be considered suitable for inclusion. Eusebeus 06:56, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Oh God, not this again. "WE MUST DESTROY MILLIONS OF CRAP FANCRUFT ARTICLES!!!" should not be a driving motive behind rewriting this guideline! MalikCarr 07:03, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Malikcarr please be civil & avoid adolescent shouting. If you do not believe that reworking this guideline is fundamentally about asserting a consistent standard for determining encyclopedic content which seeks to provide in clear and candid terms an effective benchmark for judging the merits of individual articles, then what, exactly do you think you are doing & what are you hoping to achieve? Eusebeus 07:52, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Merging into WP:WAF is a bad idea. If anything, there are parts of WAF that should go here. -- Ned Scott 07:11, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

And I say this meaning we should avoid a dump-all page for everything fiction. We have style issues and we have inclusion issues, and they'll always overlap, but it's not always a good idea to lump them all together. -- Ned Scott 07:56, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Ned, while what you say makes sense, such content already fails WP:N; so a separate guideline seems redundant. I really believe that, depending on the length thereoff, a separate section in WP:WAF is sufficient.

Given, yes, some of the content may be more appropriate in WP:FICT (such as the list of Wikis for fiction). G.A.S 11:27, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I reiterate: such a change need not be permanent but that this will help to synchronize the two and help reduce redundancy, as well as help to better organize content. G.A.S 11:04, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Redundancy is not, on it's own, a bad thing. In some cases we are giving specific context to this information. If I want to explain notability to someone who wants to write about cars, I'm going to choose wording that will be the most applicable to cars, even if the general principals are the same for writing about airplanes. Giving this same information, in a specific context, is one of the reasons we have sub-guidelines. If we write a guideline that requires people to read five other pages, and expect them to always understand the context those other pages have in relation to fiction, then we are not writing a very good guideline. -- Ned Scott 01:02, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

And you are 100% correct. However; for the purpose of the rewrite, we cannot look at WP:WAF and WP:FICT isolated.

For instance WP:WAF#Alternative outlets for fictional universe articles which is a full list of in-universe Wikis. WP:FICT#Relocating non-notable fictional material also have this content, but not in so much detail. If these two guidelines were to be merged for the purpose of the rewrite; we would see this clearly, and move the two sections into a single section, without having to worry about the whole merge/move process to move the section, only having to rewrite it anyway.

G.A.S 06:16, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I find the separation of concept between Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction) to be very useful in discussions because so many people don't seem to understand what it says at the top of WP:N: "These guidelines pertain to the suitability of article topics but do not directly limit the content of articles." Too often, I see someone bring up WP:N in a discussion over whether some piece if information is relevant enough to the topic and encyclopedic enough to be included in the topic's article, and I fear a merged guideline would just add to this confusion in discussions about fictional topics. Looking at the two existing guidelines, I don't actually see that much overlap. WP:WAF mentions notability only in passing to refer to WP:FICT, and the list of alternative outlets sections could be merged somehow; I would move the list to Wikipedia:Alternative outlets/Fiction and refer to that from both guidelines. WP:FICT similarly mentions content only to point out that subjects not notable enough for a separate article may be appropriate as content within a broader article; if anything, it could use an extra reference or two to WP:WAF in those sections. Anomie 23:02, 22 September 2007 (UTC)