Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/Episodes and characters

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[edit] Pre-case statements by un- or semi-involved parties

[edit] Comment by Eusebeus

I am a strong supporter of what TTN is doing, so my bias is clear. That disclaimer proffered, I think this arb case is wholly inappropriate and I urge it be rejected. This is really a debate about policy, since it would be hard to argue that TTN has engaged systematically in behaviour that falls outside of long-elaborated, consensus driven policy (noted above variously at WP:FICT, WP:N, WP:NOT, etc...). The real tension here is between franchise fans, who support the family of articles of their favourite TV series, and editors like TTN and others (me) who assert the encyclopedic standards that have developed over the years.

Thus, I see this as a policy issue, not a personal issue. TTN engages in actions backed up by the consensus of our policies and guidelines. He frequently encounters (understandably enough) determined opposition from a small group of interested editors who don't care what policy is and who insist upon a "consensus" derived from a local canvassing; their reaction (linked above on TTN's talk page among other places) is often emotional, especially since they seem unwilling or incapable of reading through Wikipedia policy pages to understand the basis for such actions.

This is the source of the impasse. It is worth noting that precious few of these franchise editors care enough to participate in the ongoing debate at WAF, FICT or the episode subpage at AN/I - sustenance to the view that local fan concern does not redound to any larger encyclopedic ambition. I thus support what sgeureka states above and go further. If there is to be an arb case, let it focus specifically on the suitability of applying the policies we have governing television episodes, fictional characters, and the proscription against plot summaries, not the individual actions of TTN, which smacks of a run-around by editors who have otherwise failed to change the consensus view at the main policy pages. Eusebeus 15:08, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comment by GDonato

I was aware of this issue, or made aware of it if you want to put it that way, a little while ago and I must admit that some of the behaviour by editors in blanking or redirecting episode-related articles concerned me. Pretty much all of the diffs have already been shown above so I will not pull out anymore. I can say that I have seen cases where not even a rough consensus has been present and editors (User:TTN and perhaps others) have proceeded to carry out mass-redirecting anyway. I agree with White Cat's statement that the community has somewhat tried to ignore this issue due to the fact that it is difficult to deal with and I believe that an arbitration case is likely to be the most effective way to solve the problems. GDonato (talk) 17:47, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statement by Jack Merridew

This is most certainly not merely about TTN's actions — which I whole-heartedly support. As I see it, the core issue is that it is too easy for editors to create a non-notable article about the latest episode of their favourite TV show – or blocks of episodes of older shows just released on DVD – and far too difficult for editors with a more critical eye to do something about it. As to the "merge-issue" — merge what? Most of the "content" is unencyclopaedic, unsourced, plot summary, cruft, and the onus is on fans to resurrect what they will in a policy-conforming form.

There are hundreds of TV networks worldwide and they're all cranking out vast numbers of TV show episodes. This has been going on for decades and will only accelerate in the future. Do the math — this 'pedia going to host a million articles on TV show episodes? These are for the most part non-notable. We need a speedier process of dealing with the backlog of dross and a higher bar for new episode articles to clear. --Jack Merridew 13:10, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

a succinct reply to White Cat
  • They are NOT NOTABLE
  • Where did I mention space as a concern? The NUMBER of non-notable articles (extant and potential) IS of concern. Poorly conceived articles require maintenance, occupy category space, and use names that are inappropriate (Command Decision, history and Midsummer Night's Dream, history) all of which are a burden on everyone
  • The issue of too many non-notable articles underfoot needs sorting sooner rather than later because the scope of the problem keeps growing. First thing to do is stop digging the hole deeper.

In White Cat's statement he offers: "ganging up" prior to an AFD which violates WP:CANVASS — oldID

  • That is a link to a comment of mine — diff
  • It in no way concerns an AFD
  • The only AFD that comes to mind is this one (see also)
  • It has nothing to do with canvassing
  • It DID concern the actions of some anon who was systematically removing clean-up tags from images and articles
  • The anon had already been blocked twice (2 IPs)
  • I was alerting another user to the problem

--Jack Merridew 11:47, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] White Cat's reply to Jack Merridew

Some math for you:
In other words for a single 30$ donation we can have 460,175 articles. All this information was as of 17:50, 16 November 2007 (UTC).
  • English Wikipedia only has 1683 featured articles.
  • Total number of articles: 2,092,465
  • 2,092,465 - 1683 = 2,090,782 problem articles that violate a guideline or policy for certain (not being featured)
There are over 2 million problematic articles on wikipedia. I see no sane reason to remove them in bulk for that reason alone. The problem of a lack of quality in vast number of articles is by no means unique to fiction related articles. It is a broad problem of any incomplete encyclopedia such as Wikipedia or Britannica. This report is as of 18:26, 16 November 2007 (UTC).
Some more fun math based on above numbers:
  • Total number of articles on wikipedia: 2,092,465
  • The number of articles you can 'buy' with $30 (they are all exactly 200KB each): 460,175
  • Number of donations to cover hard drive space cost of every article on wikipedia with above assumptions: 2,092,465 / 460,175 = 4.55 donations
  • Total cost for hard drive space of every article on wikipedia: $30 * 4.55 = $136.5
The cost does not even add up to half the cost of a single hard drive. Meaning if you double the total number of articles on wikipedia by adding 2,092,465 featured episode articles you would not even fill a single terabyte drive. Of course there is other costs such as administering and maintaining of hardware but those are equally trivially priced. The most important cost would be the bandwidth costs. If "no one cares about these topics" then there is no bandwidth issue either.
I do want to contradict my own statement here per recent data I acquired. Based on the statistics, a very important portion of our traffic goes to articles on fiction. Are they notable (dictionary definition) or notable (wikipedia guideline)? Should these two items be in contradiction or is the very POINT of our guideline to help compliment the dictionary definition? I copied some examples below anyways: -- Cat chi? 06:07, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
rank article page views/month topic
1. Main Page 30,010,500 (±0%) Our very own main page
3. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 413,400 (±3%) Pop culture: Harry Potter novel
4. Naruto 401,400 (±3%) Pop culture: Anime/Manga
6. United States 329,700 (±3%) Real world
16. Bleach (manga) 227,100 (±4%) Pop culture: Anime/Manga
20. World War II 210,600 (±4%) Real world: History
25. September 11, 2001 attacks 179,400 (±4%) Real world: History
31. The Simpsons 162,900 (±4%) Pop culture: TV series
46. List of Naruto characters 138,000 (±5%) Pop culture: Anime/Manga
54. World War I 129,900 (±5%) Real world: History
48. List of Naruto: Shippūden episodes 136,200 (±5%) Pop culture: Anime/Manga
60. Global warming 126,300 (±5%) Real world
61. List of The Simpsons episodes 126,300 (±5%) Pop culture: TV series
65. Pokémon 121,800 (±5%) Pop culture: Anime/Manga
67. George W. Bush 120,000 (±5%) Real world
87. Scrubs (TV series) 111,000 (±5%) Pop culture: TV series (related articles are seemingly undergoing a mass redirectification initiated by User:TTN)
97. Beowulf 106,200 (±5%) Fiction: Epic poetry (still fiction though). Sudden interest may be per Beowulf (2007 film)
Total visits to en.wikipedia as a whole: 806,756,800 (±0%) statistics source

Even if such a problem did exist, you would still need a community-wide consensus to deal with it. Was this attempted? We do not let people just rampage across the wiki mass removing mass number of articles indiscriminately you know. A bot for example can make a good number of TTN's edits just as easily and much much more efficiently but there is no consensus for this. Even Autowikibrowser can do this. All the math above demonstrates that there is no critical problem requiring urgent action.

“ [...] There are hundreds of TV networks worldwide and they're all cranking out vast numbers of TV show episodes. This has been going on for decades and will only accelerate in the future. Do the math — this 'pedia going to host a million articles on TV show episodes? [...] ”


Any reason why not? Hard drives are cheap. Hear this interview on this blog out at Wikipedia Is Just the Start: An Interview With Jimmy Wales (May 29, 2007). Retrieved on 2007-11-16.
“ [...] Wiki is not paper, meaning there's no reason for us to restrict our range of topics for reasons of space. It's all hypertext stored on the hard drive, and hard drives are cheap. And even some of the physical parameters that would limit us eventually don't seem to be even close to coming into play. [...] So I think that's one of the important parameters is to say, look, you really can't say that space is a constraint, so cutting things down based on space makes no sense. [...] And it seems to me that one of the mistakes that people make when we argue about this is to adopt a too rigid universalism of the who thing, in other words: to imagine that "Well gee, if we settle if we settle on particular principle with respect to this particular article in physics we're going to have to delete all the Pokeman articles, because we can't find any academic sources". And I think that's a mistake. I think it's a mistake to treat different realms of knowledge as if they are some how fundamentally the same. You can look a physics, and say look, a web page on Geocities, of commentary and listing about physics is not a really good source, unless you have some really compelling reason. Say: actually for some unknown strange reason some Nobel prize winner has his home page on Geocities then maybe OK. But in general no. Whereas for other aspects of popular culture, it's really kinda hard to say where else you go. Harvard University has so far failed to publish a Journal of Pokemon so there's not much academic commentary out there. ”


Before you dump this blog as non-reliable source, the author is David Weinberger, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. And the person he is interviewing is our very own Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia.

With that statement of yours, you are not specifying a problem at all aside from the fact that that very argument is the pretense of the mass deletion.

Of course I do not expect the arbitration committee to deal with the philosophical nature of the issue. The issue I want arbitration committee to look into is this near-fanatical behavior some people against fiction related articles under false pretenses such as notability and WP:NOT#PLOT. Indeed articles need to meet such policies and guidelines but this does not mean people should be ganging up against fiction related articles by ignoring any opposition and by "picking off smaller ones".

The issue that needs to be resolve has nothing to do with the content of the individual episodes. The problem is this non-discussion imposed nominal consensus of an elite group of so-called experts. Jack Merridew is absolutely right. This problem isn't just about TTN there are other users such as Jack Merridew himself for example who engage in similar behavior to a lesser extent. This statement is intended to establish that this problem involves more than just TTN's edits. It isn't intended to accuse anyone of anything.

Unless a policy or guideline as immediate legal implications (WP:BLP, WP:C) there is absolutely no reason why WP:CON should be completely ignored both in word and spirit. Even then both WP:BLP and WP:C themselves are based on consensus. If people have no interest in seeking consensus, they have no business being a part of this community.

[edit] Statement by Nydas

Massive, one-person crusades are an open door for bias. For example, TTN opposed the merging of Rinoa Heartilly into Characters of Final Fantasy VIII, even though the character is not any more notable than the thousands he's eliminated. Who knows what else he thinks is 'admissible'? My concern is that Wikipedia's systemic bias will be accentuated by this sort of campaign. We have 144 Scrubs (TV series) episodes, whilst The Golden Girls, a massive hit in the 80s, has no episode articles, thanks to TTN's redirection efforts.--Nydas(Talk) 17:34, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statement by Wizardman

I've only seen a small part of this iceberg; yet only from that little bit I urge arbcom to accept this case. Back in late June I began Wikipedia:Mediation Cabal/Cases/2007-06-26 List of Mario series enemies, where User:TTN wanted to merge all these enemies that had their own articles into one list. After a few weeks of mediation, we compromised; a few articles stayed intact, but most of the enemies were merged. Goomba, Koopa Troopa, and 1 or 2 others survived, the rest I decided to merge since TTN's argument was convincing enough. I thought this was it. Since then, TTN merged the ones that he agreed to keep separate, and even removed a lot of the enemies from the list that there was never a discussion on, appearing to show no desire to accept compromises. To make it easy for the readers:

Now, overall this doesn't look like too big of a deal. However, multiply the situation on this article by at least 30 or 40 (he's hit at lest that many fields, How many exactly he hit I have no way to accurately count. With something of this scale, and probably more stories that parallel mine, this does need to be looked into. Is what TTN is doing good for Wikipedia, disruptive, or something else? One thing I can be certain of is that this has moved well beyond a simple content dispute. Wizardman 21:09, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statement by Rdfox 76

I don't claim to be fully uninvolved in this issue--I've clashed with TTN before over some of the Kim Possible character and episode articles before, and I personally believe he isn't doing Wikipedia a service, but I recently noticed a discussion on his talkpage that I find quite disturbing. Here, TTN is informed that a page he redirected as a "merge" had already been through a past merge discussion that ended as a do-not-close. Out of curiosity on a dull Sunday morning, I went looking through it, and found that the article talkpage shows a nine-month-long merge discussion that was closed in early June as "oppose merge." While the exact wording isn't correct (it should have been "no consensus"), there was a brief revert war over closing the discussion, which ended with someone pointing out that the merge tag had been present for ten months, and that it doesn't take that long to come to consensus.

Less than two months later, TTN redirected the article to the main Dead Rising page. After User:Smile Lee reverted the redirect, pointing out (correctly) that the article had just been through an unsuccessful merge attempt, TTN put the redirect into place again. After a four-month gap that I admittedly don't understand the reason for, Smile Lee re-reverted to the non-redirected version; TTN redirected it again four minutes later; he has since twice reversed reverts of his redirection. This, in my opinion, is a rather POINTy way of operating, since it applied WP:IAR in an attempt to bypass the procedure that was already followed in a recent merge attempt; his returning months later to maintain his preferred edit smacks of bad faith. I also note that TTN made no effort to explain his reasoning to Smile Lee after SL brought it up on TTN's talkpage, either on SL's page (history) or on his own page (history).

Just my thoughts, but with TTN doing this sort of thing even when there's an RFArb pending on his actions, I think SOME sort of action has to be taken. Rdfox 76 (talk) 17:01, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

Added note, not sure if this is appropriate or not (since WP:GAR is nicely unclear on this point), but apparently, TTN delisted four Pokemon that were listed as Good Articles without discussion or warning earlier today. Rdfox 76 (talk) 23:58, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Further added note, in addition to the delisting of the articles, TTN delisted and then immediately redirected Golduck from in that bit. (Just noticed this... I'm slow today.) Rdfox 76 (talk) 04:49, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statement by Fram

If this case is accepted, I would urge the ArbCom to look at the two sides; those people that merge, redirect and/or delete episode articles, and those that create and recreate them. It has become quite clear to me that different editors who oppose TTN's actions (perhaps in some cases with very good reasons) don't see the problem with their own behaviour in creating poor episode articles, or reverting to them. It doesn't only violate a guideline, it violates some core policies, including WP:V. To solve this broad dispute, both sides will have to be looked at, and if it is found that TTN's way if acting is not the correct one, care must be taken that this is not presented as a free pass for episode articles which are almost nothing but huge plot summaries. The Statement by DanTD above is a clear indication of this perspective. And the line by White Cat that "Furthermore people ("blankers" I'll reference them here for the sake of clarity) have been avoiding any serious discussion on the matter." is clearly incorrect, as can be seen from e.g. Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Episodes... Fram (talk) 15:09, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

If anyone wonders why I no longer discuss things with White Cat: shifting the goal posts (from "avoiding any serious discussion" to "not initiating a discussion") is a very annoying habit, and one of the explanations why I indeed avoid all discussions with you since the one referenced above, as they can hardly be called "serious". Fram (talk) 20:32, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] White Cat's reply to Fram

Who created that discussion? (Me) Is there a single discussion attempt the "blankers"/"redirectifiers" have initiated involving the entire community? (None that I can see) Are the actions of "blankers"/"redirectifiers" based on a discussion? (Not that I can see). Have at least some of these "blankers"/"redirectifiers" stated to "make it easy to ignore" people they are disagreeing with? Then how can anyone claim that the actions of the "blankers"/"redirectifiers" are based on a consensus? (Yes, according to the evidence I presented) If it is not based on consensus, what is it based on? (I really wonder this) WP:V does not even begin to come into play. The blanked articles typically contain a plot summary which indeed is sourced. The source is the episode itself. A reliable, verifiable, notable, peer reviewed source.

So far someone is yet to explain why we hate to have a non-discussion speedy mass blanking/redirectification of mass amount of pages.

[edit] Statement by Gwern

I, fortunately, have not been involved with TTN yet - but there's a very good reason for this. That is that TTN and a few other editors like Deckiller have made it pretty clear that they are on a religious war here, that opponents are always wrong, and that they never intend to give up; most particularly, they intend to divide and conquer starting with "the weaklings" (and the series I am involved with, like Neon Genesis Evangelion are usually "the larger ones").
In other words, TTN has rarely if ever discussed or negotiated consensus in good faith; this was confirmed for me beyond a doubt by one particular posting of TTN's:

"...You'll never really get rid of those kind of people, so you just have to make it easy to ignore them. Now they only have any sort of "power" over the big series like Harry Potter due to numbers, but things like that will always go slowly due to numbers anyways. I'm just sticking with picking off smaller ones, and then trying to tackle larger ones every once and a while. Once the weaklings are fully gone, it'll probably get easier to deal with the larger ones."[1]

I didn't see anyone link to that talk page posting which I consider pretty important, so I'm adding this statement. --Gwern (contribs) 16:00 22 November 2007 (GMT)

[edit] Statements by un- or semi-involved parties added after case accepted

[edit] Statement by Judgesurreal777

I am a contributor on many of the topics that TTN also contributes to, and I would like to add some detail to any decision made.

TTN is a very good contributor, who follows Wikipedia guidelines to a T. He, like many of us who try to follow through with the policy on notability in fiction, are very often reverted by fanboys (even after consensus is reached) and others with no regard to policy, and every single redirect becomes a very nasty battle. TTN has been very bold to remove unencyclopedic content in a rapid manner, and this is the price he pays for that. People who don't like fiction policy very actively obstruct its implementation and slow the process of pruning gameguide style articles to a crawl. I believe wikipedia would greatly benefit from an "Articles for Redirection" nomination process like AFD, because the current redirecting process is dominated by people who have no regard for our rules or polices and they simply shout down mainstream contributors. If he has been overzealous, as a good wikipedian, I am sure he will be reasonable and follow your guidance, but please do not restrict his very productive activity; and if he has been short with people, please keep in mind that he is trying, like many of us, to follow guidelines in the face of heavy opposition at times. Thank you. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 01:58, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Comment: What do you mean by "very good contributor"? As far as I can tell, both your and TTN's contributions consist of nominating articles for deletion and redirecting articles. I always consider the term "contributor" as one who adds. I also think your "fanboys" characterization is needlessly perjorative. Ursasapien (talk) 11:21, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Why would you take offense if you are not one? And besides, you clearly have zero knowledge of our contributions, so do not presume to accuse me or him of not contributing in terms of article building. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 23:12, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statement by Wikipedical

Policy is policy. I don't think anyone denies the fact that policy on Wikipedia should be enforced- any policy that isn't is useless. Nonetheless, what I think is being disputed in this case is TTN's authority. The existence of this case shows that a system, a process is needed on Wikipedia to deem that these character and episode pages meet our notability guidelines. What is disputed is the rash and aggressive ways in which TTN has enforced our policies. TTN should not be our judge of notability, consensus should, and thus, the Arbitration Committee should respect Wikipedia's processes. I endorse a ruling that allows for the development of a better group consensus-seeking method for dealing with notability here. One suggestion above that I found interesting was a Request for Redirects system. While TTN's intentions, to maintain the quality of Wikipedia's articles and that our policies are being enforced, are good, we should not let him be the conclusive judge. -- Wikipedical (talk) 05:59, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statement by OhanaUnited

I usually don't go to arbitration page to express my views, but this editor got my attention when he bold delisted Pikachu from Good articles list stating that it "Lacks real world information".[2] Furthermore, his removal of contents made an editor, HanzoHattori leaving Wikipedia in protest of his actions.[3] I feel that this kind of action is disruptive despite good intentions. OhanaUnitedTalk page 08:30, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

TTN didn't make him do anything—he left on his own accord, even if it was followed by a large speech citing TTN as the reason. Ashnard Talk Contribs 10:31, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statement by MissingNOOO

I intended to remain uninvolved in this discussion, but after reading the statement by Wikipedical, I felt the need to comment.

I don't particularly mind if TTN is following the rules to a T (and I emphatically assert my opinion that TTN most certainly is not adhering to many rules and spirits of rules as far as consensus, cooperation, and contributing goes, as has been demonstrated in the statements of many others). In fact, if it should so be demonstrated that TTN's view on de-facto deletionism and merging is in the correct, I will give my best regards to this endeavor and pack up and leave Wikipedia for some other free encyclopedia, as I could not bear to participate in a free encyclopedia that tolerates such tomfoolery, but would not protest the policy one bit. The main point of the arbitration, of course, is not to discuss policy or the following thereof.

It's really about the civility. If TTN could ever possibly get a clear-cut Wikipedia policy (informal or otherwise) tailor-made to give the thumbs-up to this rampant deletion of material, I'm sure a lot of people would shut up the minute it was linked to (except maybe to say, "screw this, I leave"). However, as it is, TTN has stated in many instances his disregard of the opinions of other editors, his intention to participate in edit wars of attrition, etc. ad infinitum. This modus operandi is, in my humble opinings, dubious. It's not that, either, though; at the end of the day, I think what most of the other editors here would like to see is some sort of respect for WP:CIVIL, being arguably more in the spirit of Wikipedia than any other policy bar none. If it pleases the committee, I would like to submit my own conversation with TTN as a case where more decorum on TTN's part would have made for a more (if not pleasant) civil encounter. TTN practically started out on a bad foot by saying that my word was "no where near reliable. Do you know exactly how many times the same false promise is made all over the place? It's probably been fulfilled less than five percent of the time." (perception: My word is not "reliable", the promise to improve is "false", and that my exact reliability is "less than five percent".). TTN continued with more passive-aggressive maneuvers, such as "We're not in a rush, but there is no reason to waste time if the page just becomes a redirect again." (perception: fatalism) "You have brought back an article that was redirected for months because of a lack of sources," (fact check: untrue; various editors have attempted to contribute, only to be shut down and sometimes even shot down by TTN) "and you have absolutely nothing to start off of with at all. That is the real issue." (untrue) "You have not provided a thing to assert notability," (untrue) "and you seem to have absolutely no intent in doing so," (untrue) "especially if you're willing to lie about it." (calling me a liar) "If this was a new article that you just created, I could probably give a little slack," (new or not has nothing to do with it) "but you seemed to know what you were doing." (unforgivably untrue, I'm still a WP neophyte, and I had no idea that TTN would go so far as to be that uncivil).

I admit that I may not have done my best to be civil in this situation, but all this did get me indignant. This entire situation would have been made much more pleasant at many points (which includes but is not limited to the following):

  • If TTN had simply shown a willingness to be patient in asserting notability, or accepted reasonably notable sources as just that.
  • If TTN had shown that a consensus supported a merge, even if it meant a disappearance of important articles (if you look at the talk page for the article in question, this is not the case).
  • If TTN could get some sort of community consensus supporting this large-scale immediatism (it would score bad points for WP in the popularity game, but it would most certainly help enforce quality)
  • If TTN had looked at my edit count and go, "oh, newbie, shouldn't bite."
  • If TTN had looked at my track record of cleaning articles and enforcing notability (short but effective, if I do say so myself).

TTN neither did any of these things, nor showed a willingness to compromise, and I will refrain from contributing from Wikipedia until I am sure that users like TTN will not be there to mess up my work and my day. This is my statement, and my complaint. I apologize if anything I have said here is inappropriate, irrelevant, or disingenuous/dishonest, but this is the case as best I can make it with my limited experience.

[edit] Statement by TheDJ

Just saw this arbcase fly by on one of the pages that I watch. All in all, I'm not surprised. There was no way that this was avoidable. The opinions are just too varied and there just had to come a time where a "deletionist vs. inclusionist" all out war on the Fiction related articles was going to develop. As a former active WP:TV project member and a participant in the discussion of many of the relevant guidelines that are fiction specific, I wanna voice some of the things that I think about this. It is here for those that want to read it, and I am not gonna have huge discussions about it that are probably going nowhere.

Observations:

  1. Its a battle of deletionism vs. inclusionism
  2. The tools in this war that are used are low quality articles.
  3. Many episode articles are indeed of very low quality (but so are so many other articles, however episode articles are easy to identify trough List of episodes and generally good categorization, as well of having the benefit of us having plenty of them)
  4. Quality requires time to grow
  5. Growth is being suppressed by TTNs actions
  6. Not all episodes need articles
  7. Wikipedia is no paper
  8. TTN's process of dealing with it is effective and annoying

Things that have been tried before:

  1. Setting up guidelines with advice both at the Wikipedia and the project level.
  2. Asking people to favor an approach of expanding within more general articles before creating separate articles.

The causes:

  1. fandom passion (both wikipediafans and fictionfans)
  2. WP:PAPER (we have incomplete limits on the knowledge that we want to collect, but infinite space to collect it)
  3. a for wikipedia relatively high average of inexperienced editors among the editors of especially the TV-topics. I'm talking about inexperience with writing in general, writing wikipedia articles, and in life. For a large part this is age related, for the other part, the problem lies with the fact that these groups are used to dealing with forums, tv.com and fanwiki's for discussing their topic.
  4. Many non-TV editors (including myself these days) avoid the topic all-together because they don't care about it or simply don't want to be involved. That means it has basically become somewhat like the sandbox of our garden. (history that we cannot change retroactively)
  5. a lot of activity (conflict quickly explodes because so many people are editing at the same time)
  6. a lot of recentism

The solution:

  1. Good Wikiprojects... I have never really been a big fan of the "show-specific" wikiprojects, but I have to say that several of them have really surprised me over the past year. The simpsons, Smallville, Carnivale, Firefly and several other projects have shown to have "grown" several experienced editors that understand that good prose, sources and real-life events matter when writing these articles. These editors also closely watch (and have a lot of work because of that) the new articles and newest additions of these projects. Even Lost, which was a problem-child from the start, has improved considerably. It has the risk of WP:OWN, but it certainly has improved the quality of many articles.
  2. Time... I really think that semi-speedy deleting articles as TTN has been doing is no solution. It only aggravates people and doesn't help create better articles at all. I and others argued this same point in WP:EPISODE as well, resulting in the "dont simply delete episodes"-clause (which unfortunately some people then took as a blanket rule to apply to all episodes of any series alla WP:PAPER. Besides this however, no longer running series create a more stable base to work from (more books, less fans, more hardcore and knowledgeable fans). This has already shown to have benefitted several sets of articles. Why are we being so upfront about the stuff that's still running its (usually 6 years or so) course? We have plenty of time to fix them after the fandom-fans left and true wikipedia editors that are also fans of the series remain?
  3. I'm not against semi-deleting (redirecting) all together. I especially like the idea of the WP:TV-REVIEW that was attempted. It has two advantages, the most important one, is that it tackles a large group of episodes in one go (usually an entire series), the other being that it (ideally) has multiple people participating in discussion, in a proces much like Good Article/FA/AfD proces.
  4. Good rules on what is simply NOT acceptable. In my opinion: plot-only articles with only an infobox and trivia should be forbidden, to be redirected after significant time of informing relevant editors/projects and only to be redirected to a "proper" target page. (the most basic information should still be available in some way there, to prevent "loss of a topic")
  5. A broader group of people doing these "redirect-nominations", supported by a review group, whom within reasonability should be supported by a well informed AfD team.
  6. Don't hurry people and try to remain sensitive to their feelings at all times while you discuss. If you don't, you easily offend people and then its harder to get them to listen to you.
  7. A "new episode" watchlist/recentchanges list. Having something like that will help us curtail the problem at the root, namely the new articles with some of the young and inexperienced editors. The only way to deal with this in the long term.

All in all, i don't think any of the above is something new. Most people know this at some level or another. It's just that we need to find the proper way to deal with it. TTN's methods although effective, and possibly even proper, are simply not working in building and educating. Yes we created a lot of litter in our house in the past, but why are we throwing away the house all together? I'd rather see us clean up at a slow pace and closely watch our newly built expansion wings. I ask teh Arb to carefully consider how many potential editors we might be alienating and where we wanna draw that line in the sand. And above all.. CIVILITY folks... --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:17, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statement by Superlex

I've been observing this issue for the last two months, though this is the first time I've stuck my nose in to participate. It's sad that it has come to an ArbCom case, but it seems like the parties are unwilling to work things out.

I really don't care about the content dispute. To me, TTN is in the right as far as it comes to policy (though I wouldn't mind seeing the policies he uses worked on a bit). I enjoy TV-related articles as a reader, but it doesn't matter to me if they get redirected. Heck, one of my first experiences on WP last year was helping an Afd merge some character articles back into the parent article. So I generally don't mind the spirit of TTN's actions.

But this ArbCom case isn't about the content. It's about the actions of the editors involved. As I've been following this case, TTN's actions have concerned me. I've noticed some questionable tactics, rude behavior and edit warring.

  • TTN seems dismisive of the editors on the other side of the content dispute. He seems to have labeled them all as people who want to keep "fancruft" on Wikipedia. That seems to result in an unwillingness to work with those editors to come to a consensus. In most of the merge discussions I've seen, TTN just waits until the discussion dies down and then edits the way he wants no matter how many editors have argued against it. TTN needs to realize that we're all in this together and we're all trying to make this project the best it can be. If he's unwilling to work with other editors, then he misses the point of the project. A lot of the problems in this case seem to boil down to both sides not working together.
  • I question whether or not TTN actually researches each of the pages he redirects to see if they could be improved with sources instead of redirected. He redirects so many pages at a time that it's hard to me to image he as researched each and every one. From what I've seen, he has the assumption that all TV episode and characters articles are always non-notable. I've seen other editors discuss how TV-related characters might be notable (with awards and other stuff), but has TTN? I saw an Afd debate about a bunch of episode articles. Several people said they could be redirected except the two that won awards and that was what the closing admin said as well. But then all the episode articles (including those two) were redirected. I don't know what we can do about this, but I find it troubling.
  • We, as editors, should never ever ever edit war. Even when we're correct. TTN's good faith edits don't give him the right to edit war. In some cases, TTN will wait a little bit for the discussion to die down before reverting to a redirect. In other cases, I've seen him break 3RR by edit warring with several other editors to keep the page as a redirect. These tactics seem to work for him because he eventually wears down his opposition, but it's in violation of Wikipedia policy and, in my opinion, bully tactics. I think he needs to stop edit warring and work with the editors involved in these projects. Otherwise this issue will just go on forever. - Superlex (talk) 16:13, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statement by Bryan Derksen

I've only just discovered what's been going on here in the past few days since I'm not generally interested in television episode articles and have been busy in other areas for the past few months, but having started going through TTN's contribs history and read through some of the evidence here I must say I'm utterly appalled. This is the Webcomics Purge writ large, a massive removal of content from Wikipedia by a small dedicated group of individuals who have decided for themselves what's "encyclopedic" and what isn't and is apparently intent on enforcing their view through sheer volume of editing. This kind of consensus-by-force is bound to lead to strife and burnout, especially among editors who are here because they love editing and happen to be interested in subject areas that have been marked for death.

Yes, many of the various articles that are being nuked by this campaign are currently of poor quality, often having sketchy contents or overly detailed plot summaries. But getting rid of the articles does not improve them, and the fact that TTN reverts subsequent attempts to restore the articles suggests to me that perhaps he's more interested in just getting rid of the stuff than in having it improved. Wikipedia is an eternal work in progress; we are always going to have incomplete and poorly-written articles present, that's the entire point of the project. We're creating the raw materials for an encyclopedia here, it's up to others to polish it as they see fit.

I know that ArbCom isn't supposed to make content decisions, but this is IMO clearly a serious conduct issue as well. The definition word "consensus" has taken quite a few strange twists as it has become subsumed into Wikipedia jargon but I don't see how any reasonable case can be made that these activities have consensus behind them. "When in doubt, don't delete" is a philosophy that should apply more generally than just nitpicking over AfD results. Bryan Derksen (talk) 07:07, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statement by Jackaranga

Since this is for discussing TTN's actions and not policy, I would just like to say that in my opinion, TTN has done more than any other editor to uphold the policy on episode articles, the statement by FangzofBlood, that everyone supporting him is a sockpuppet of his is laughable. Perhaps TTN is not perfect but it's hardly surprising when people show such disregard for the notability and episode guidelines, and refuse to take them into consideration. I hope the committee will understand that many of the users who complain about TTN, just don't care at all about the notability policy and the fiction guideline. They simply are not interested in them, they just continue to bash TTN over and over with the same nonsense arguments such as: "he is harassing me", "he is trolling", "the article does no harm", "other similar articles exist", it just goes on and on. People constantly report him, they don't even look once at the previous reports or the policy. It always the same here the people who enforce policy the most fall under the most flak, by users who probably haven't even read a single policy, or choose to ignore them. Anyone reading WP:NOTE and WP:OR can see that nearly all these article pages should be deleted. Is this supposed to be an encyclopedia or a global fanbase ? Jackaranga (talk) 14:13, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Statement by Jeandré du Toit

Re "Principles" "Editorial process: consensus can change", surely you can't have fan concensus on episode and character talk pages, and deletion pages override community concensus on verifiability, no orginal research, and notability? If fans want to get rid of V, NOR, and NN; musn't they get concensus on the policy pages instead? -- Jeandré, 2007-12-29t10:22z

[edit] Comment by uninvolved user after end of case

What a vague decision. You might as well have just announced a result of no consensus and have done with it. Jtrainor (talk) 17:36, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Episodes and characters#Parties urged

How does the arbitration committee recommend users not working collaboratively and constructively? The very complaint of the rfar was a lack of users working collaboratively and constructively. Users instead employed brute forcing their interpretations on guidelines (or alleged guidelines since the validity of the actual guideline is in dispute).

I am somewhat skeptical on how much this rfar resolved the dispute put before the arbitration committee.

-- Cat chi? 17:05, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

It seems that nothing was resolved. –thedemonhog talk • edits 01:12, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
This might be a bit cynical, but I would argue that Wikipedia (as a collective entity) can't resolve this type of dispute on a comprehensive scale. They can't really side with those who complained, because doing that would be admitting that their 'core policies' can be ignored if enough people complain (and the incongruity between Wikinterpretation and real-world interpretation of things). They can't really side with people being complained about, because it would inspire more people like them to do the same merging / deleting on other articles that have very large fanbases, on and off Wikipedia. So instead of making a stand, they made a generalized recommendation that allows both sides to continue on as they do. A few will drastically change articles to fit their opinion of Wikipedia's policies, and the majority will correct them. Scumbag (talk) 22:08, 9 January 2008 (UTC)