Wikipedia talk:Writing better articles/Check your fiction

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I support this rule. I would think it to be so obvious as to be unnecessary, but obviously it's been violated enough times to make an explicit rule worth doing. --Robert Merkel

obvious as to be unnecessary ... seconded! -- Tarquin

I guess this is linked to avoiding ideosyncratic subjects? Example: I once saw a game played which the participants called seven card xxxxstain, which would be unsuitable for wikipedia because its global participation is probably around twenty, so it's hopelessly unverifiable... Martin

Contents

[edit] Policy amendment discussion

From the project page:

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

What does "largely irrelevant" mean? Contribute your views to Wikipedia:Articles about fiction.

[edit] Village pump discussion 1: Fictional characters

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

Not to mention articles on the physics of Star Trek. Sure, there was a book published with that title and we should have a review of it, but that's about it. -- Miguel

I know many classic novels having more than one hundred characters. It is tempting to add all of them in Wikipedia, but I want to wait until we have a clear guideline.-wshun 20:34, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I don't know that it's really a problem, aside from the fact that we tend to prefer articles on real people to be qualified by some measure of "importance" (especially given all the recent discussion over Mr. Boyer), and that fictional characters perhaps should have similar qualifications. But the existence of an article on, say, Bleeding Gums Murphy doesn't harm Wikipedia in any way, or distract anyone who wants to from creating articles on similarly obscure real people. If someone wants to spend their time on articles about fictional characters, it doesn't bother me any. -- Wapcaplet 20:50, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)
This matter has been raised quite a few times, not all of them by me. I say by all means, add articles on Mr Darcy, Heathcliff, Sir Toby Belch, Kate Croy, Sir Lancelot, Bartlebooth, Yossarian, Becky Sharp and any others you can think of! -- Tarquin 21:20, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think it's ok as long as it's made clear they are fictional people in the introduction. Angela
I just fear that there will be too much stubs. Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter are "important" enough, I think. But other minor characters? wshun 21:38, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Our deletion policy allows for us to delete pages that can never be more than stubs. マイカル 21:56, Aug 16, 2003 (UTC)

Why would anyone want to stop people writing articles? The more articles, the better. Having an article on the used ship salesman in Monkey Island does not prevent us from having an article on physics or something. CGS 22:01, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC).

From a practical view point. Everything is unique, but you can't have articles on everything. We don't write about every physicists, so why do we write about every fictional characters? BTW, mentioning the used ship salesman in the article of Monkey Island is, functionally speaking, better then writing a separate article about the character. wshun 22:36, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)

We don't write about every fictional character. If we have more fictional characters than physicists listed it is because that is what people prefer writing about. Whether a character (fictional or otherwise) should be on their own page or page about whatever it is they are related to should probably depend on how much there is to write about them. A page containing info on all the Harry Potter characters, for example, would be way too long. Angela

But if someone wants to quietly document every single character invovled in the Star Trek universe, with a bio, episode references, et cetera, why stop them? CGS 22:46, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC).

Then why do we need Wikipedia:Criteria for Inclusion of Biographies? Of course, on the same page we say that we can ignore it.wshun 23:31, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)
In case you hadn't noticed, the same thing is currently being dicussed on the votes for deletion page - in relation to real people rather than fictional ones. Angela 11:08, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Neither of those artiles say why there is a need to limit the number of articles. CGS 11:23, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC).
I don't see the difference. If you don't support any limit of articles on fictional characters, you are in no position to support any limit of articles on real persons. But we have to set such limit, right? wshun 20:01, 17 Aug 2003 (UTC)
No. Wikipedia is not paper. ··gracefool |☺ 08:35, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
The "Wikipeida is not paper" argument tends to appear when nothing else warrents inclusion. I take that argument as an admission that the proponent of an inclusion cannot come up with anything better and since there's no limit any amount of endless litter is fine. If you find yourself using that argument, then rethink what you are doing.
I don't believe you should put anything into Wikipedia just because there is room. This is an encyclopedia, not a biographical dictionary, for both real people and fictional ones. And it should try to be a quality encyclopedia. There is no point in giving separate articles to thousands of fictional people or places originally each mentioned only in a single work, these persons and places very, very seldom mentioned outside that work in a context where the person or place is not explained. No encyclopedia needs separate articles for persons or places when the article name is almost never going to be used for lookup. Notability is the key. Is the person or place mentioned in other works? How often?
Tiny stub articles about individual people, whether fictional or not, are often of little value, often of negative value. Put the information in a larger article and create a REDIRECT article for the person. It is annoying to click on a link and have nothing but a useless two or three sentence article appear which only repeats information from the larger article. And then an editor will ignorantly stick one of those silly stub templates onto the small article asking readers to expland it even though it is not really expandable.
It is also annoying when article after article contains exactly the same information.
One of the things I have been doing is removing annoying and useless stubs about mythological characters and changing them to redirects. It seems some editors imagine that a mythological encyclopedia and a mythological dictionary are the same thing. They aren't. We have an article on Charles Dickens. We don't have an article on either of his parents. We have an article on Sherlock Holmes. We don't have an article on every person who appears in every one of Doyle's stories about Sherlock Holmes and we should not have. We should not have an article on any fictional character when such an article provides no more information than the story itself and the fictional character is almost never mentioned outside of the story and discussions of the story. Only when the character is a much-discussed character should that character have his or her own article.
A few good articles in depth are almost always far better than article after article giving the minutiae of individual characters. That the former is harder to do is not an excuse for littering Wikipedia with the latter and leaving it to other editors to clean up after you by merging the little bits of material scattered hither and yon into one article where a reader can read it comfortably all in one place.
Jallan 19:12, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)
I'm not using "Wikipedia is not paper" as a reason for inclusion of a particular article, but as an answer to a question about policy.
I agree that tiny stubs about fictional subjects shouldn't be created, especially if they are mostly redundant information - obviously, these should stay in the main article. I also agree that articles about minor fictional characters or places etc. shouldn't have their own articles.
The problem occurs when some people say a character is "minor" and of not enough importance to warrant it's own article, and others disagree. Just because a lot of people at Wikipedia think something is minor, doesn't mean it actually is - for instance, in one recent case, 90% of people on a VfD thought the subject was minor, yet it generated 150,000 hits on Google. Usually the people who think a subject is minor are not interested in the subject - yet the people who would look it up are by definition interested... Usually, articles about factual subjects are deemed okay, even if no more than a thousand people are likely to ever look it up (eg. an article about a small town), but articles about fictional subjects generate a lot of debate, even if fans of the subject number in the millions. We need to clarify the goals of Wikipedia.
I suggest you contribute your views to the proposed clarification of Wikipedia:Check your fiction - Wikipedia:Articles about fiction.
··gracefool |☺ 04:17, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Village pump discussion 2: WikiFiction

Currently, there are many articles about fictional characters. Unluckily, most of which are hopeless stubs. The number of such stubs grows very quickly and every time a suggestion of VfD leads to a lengthy debate, partly because it is never NPOV to say whether or not a character is important.

I hereby offer two possible solutions:

  1. We tolerate all articles on fictional characters. Any suggestion on VfD will be automatically removed. I don't like this solution but at least we can save time and energy on this subject.
  2. With the help of all those fiction fans, we can create a sister project, maybe WikiFiction. In WikiFiction, fans could even create miniproject on star wars, middle earth, Harry Potter, Simpsons, Pokemon, etc.

--wshun 03:55, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I really disagree with either of the above. There are many fictional characters, such as Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, just to name two off the top of my head, that are cultural icons. But to name every charactger in every episode of some TV series that lasted five episodes, and to make them seem somehow of the same weight, is ludicrous. And I definitely don't agree with spinning off all fiction into a separate Wiki. Would this include all television shows and movies? RickK 04:06, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Why do you want to list them on VFD? That's just asking for trouble. You should merge them to a characters page, Atlas Shrugged style. As for WikiFiction: I know there's been a lot of fan wikis going up recently, for example This Might Be A Wiki. Perhaps we could expand your proposal somewhat to encompass that sort of site; to jump on that bandwagon. A fan wiki, with WP:WWIN #8 relaxed. (via edit conflict with RickK) -- Tim Starling 04:22, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

No, I never list them. I just frequently see similar requests and similar arguments over and over again on VfD page. I have done some merging myself, but it is not a good solution, as nowadays the number of characters of a TV series could grow very fast. See Characters from The Simpsons, which is broken down further into subpages. --Wshun
Crappy little pages like Snowball (The Simpsons) must die. They should be merged into larger pages like Major characters from The Simpsons, Minor characters from The Simpsons, Guest stars on The Simpsons, Food eaten by Homer Simpson, Nuclear accidents on The Simpsons etc.—Eloquence 05:17, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)
There are new characters on The Simpsons everyday, so I guess we can never catch up. I give up, but maybe someone can come up with more creative ideas. --wshun 05:28, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The thing is that while The Simpsons has 100 characters. All but 10 are very shallow ("stubs"). On the other hand, some novels has 100 characters, and 60 of then have some real things to be said in an encyclopedia ("articles"). --Menchi 05:35, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

Characters who are minor and are basically one-dimensional, such as the Sea Captain in the Simpsons, shouldn't have articles about them unless there is something else significant about them. --Daniel C. Boyer 18:59, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I hate to sound elitist, but is has to be a sad commentary on the state of education that there is any significant number of people that actually would write on each fictional character that appears on a TV episode. It does show what a bored human mind is lead to. I'm not sure if these people are just killing time and excercising their fingers, or actually think that sort of information will have some lasting interest. I like the idea of a whole separate wiki for that, but clearly there is room here (and interest) for many fictional characters; so where does one draw the line. I think it should just be a rule that a show (like the Simpsons) gets one or two pages and only the important stuff need be expanded upon within that limitation. I love the Simpsons, by the way, but in the not too distant future, the entire phenomenon will rate less than a page (and perhasps only a paragraph) in any real encyclopedia. - Marshman 05:50, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I think it's a bad idea to splice off into different sub-encyclopedias, which is what "wikifiction" would be. But we do have too much on pop culture -- as Marshman says, people find it much easier to ramble about it off the top of their heads than do actual research. I guess we have too many clones of Comic Book Guy about ;) There was talk on the pump about this last week -- might still be up there ^^^. Create more article on important fictional characters to balance it out! -- Tarquin 09:59, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Can someone explain to me exactly what the problem is? Why is it bad to have these pages? They don't stop us having other pages, they don't hurt anyone! CGS 16:54, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC).

Exactly! Of course some kind of stocktaking is necessary from time to time, but mainly to see what it is we don't have enough of. The surplus is irrelevant: It's not perishable stock. --KF 17:52, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
For the longest time we've had discussions like this. Some city articles are so small and boring that they will always be stubs, so why have them? Having 30,000 cities will make the balance of wikipedia get off. It will keep people from joining. Naysayers. Now the next thing is the big bloat of fictional articles. -- Ram-Man 17:02, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)

A spin-off encyclopedia for pop cultures should be welcomed by fans. It doesn't hurt if it include all television shows and movies, if the fans bother to add them. Important characters could still be on Wikipedia. Just like we have Wikiquote but we have the article I have a dream also.

To CGS: Yes, the articles don't hurt anybody. But Wikipedia doesn't welcome stubs.

To Ram-Man: Hey, every city has its amazing story (unlike those dumb characters), just nobody from those cities write something about them yet. :( -wshun 19:52, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I agree with wshun. And true, if space for Wikipedia is infinite, then adding anything hurts nothing. My complaint is more about the sad state of education (and an encyclopedia is an educational tool and not much else) that is clearly evident if one looks at the amount of material about fictional stuff (and not even good fiction). I just found a good example at Kane, one of the more significant of the Polynesian gods and therefore of tremendous importance in the culture of these great seafaring people. But the page is split, with reams of stuff on "Kane" (pronounced Cane?), apparently a made up wrestler in some WWF show. All of it as if Kane had a life and did things significant to anyone, complete with complaints about the lack of consistent story line in the scripts!. I guess I fear for the minds of those obviously intelligent and organized people that would follow a character in the WWF this closely when there is such a big real world out there needing their help. It is like entering a race in a fast car and roaring down a cul-de-sac. - Marshman 21:59, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
That Kane article is hilarious. It really is a shame that people are spending so much time on articles like that and not on something more exalting, but if the authors of the aricle aren't qualified to write about anything else, I don't see that anything's really lost. Well, beyond a loss of face for wikipedia. -- Tlotoxl 00:14, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)
And I might add, if there was ever evidence for the damage TV has done to our (US) culture, Wikipedia has that evidence in spades - Marshman

The sheer bulk of obscure Harry Potter references, for example, are getting out of control. Do we really need articles on Occlumency (which has less cultural relevance than "bling bling") or 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey? The Occlumency article should be moved to a page with several terms used in the series (if it is kept at all), while the information in the 4 Privet Drive article should be in a Harry Potter characters page. However, I do support the idea of Wikifiction if most of the more obscure pop cultural references get moved there and grouped into specific categories such as Science Fiction (TV), Science Fiction (Books), etc. --Kaijan 02:19, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I don't see how people think that splitting this stuff into another wiki helps things any. What is truly accomplished by that? It's not really out of the way... and just makes the interface (the important bit) more clunky. I think people have a very strange attitude about 'room'. Now, this said, there's a lot of small articles that can be combined- Harry Potter Glossary would handle the example above of Occlumency... things like that. But VfD is getting spammed with large numbers of things that don't need to be there, with the utterly meaningless term 'Non-encyclopedic' attached. We should focus on: *adding more content

  • fleshing out existing articles
  • organizing articles in a meaningful matter
  • quality-checking existing articles- weed out nonsense people have put in, both the blatant (JoeM) and the not-so-blatant (Reddi)
  • clear up List of people by name and friends... a lot of those have lots of duplication and misspellings... and so on. Deletion should -not- be a significant priority for real articles (even if minor, obscure, or short.) And remember, people, POV means rewrite, NOT deletion, unless it's something like Conservative views on homelessness that is inherently pure POV. -- Jake 01:15, 2003 Aug 22 (UTC)
Would it be appropriate to just slice down and move the Kane article (as an example) to "Characters of the WWF" or sometyhing similar? I know, "Be Bold" - My question is more to make a point: discourage some of the proliferation of trivial trivia by real editing. Sounds like that is what Jake is offering as a solution. - Marshman 18:24, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I still don't see anything wrong with having "Wikifiction" created. Libraries have reference books specifically for fictional characters, yet they're horribly out of date and necessarily limited due to their being made out of paper. Why not create a new Wiki to list and describe all the fictional characters extant, both major and minor? Wikifiction is really a separate issue from the guidelines for fictional characters at Wikipedia, and it should be discussed as such. -- Kaijan 09:46, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)

I like the idea of a separate Wikifiction encyclopedia. Complaints about the emphasis on pop culture remind me of an Australian High Court judge who, in the middle of a trial involving Nike's trade mark, repeatedly referred to Michael Jordan as "Malcolm Jordan". Pop fiction is an essential component of contemporary culture - they have enormous commercial value, let alone cultural value. Having said that, I am against those people who simply list a character without providing some form of critique, background or insight into the character. So, if someone was to write Spider-Man's entry (I haven't checked it), it should make reference to authorship by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the various creative teams who have worked on the title, the reason for the character's initial popularity in the 1960s, and the recent litigation over the character concept. Its not enough to merely write Spidey's literary history ("he beat the X-men in Secret Wars 1" sort of thing). It should be done properly. - David Stewart 09:42, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Fictional Universes?

Is there/should there be either a standard designation for the plethora of articles on the characters, locations, etc. of self consistent fictional universes. Those of science fiction and fantasy seem to be especially prevalent (e.g. Star Trek, Star Wars, Tolkien's Middle-Earth, Harry Potter). A few of these could almost sustain a wiki-encyclopedia of their own... As it's traditionally not customary for encyclopedia to include numerous articles on fictional characters... has this issue been hashed out already? - Seth Ilys 21:22, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Numerous times. There's widespread agreement (although no consensus) that it's best to merge these into super-articles like Characters of Middle Earth, with redirects from the respective pages where appropriate. This avoids context duplication and flooding of the article space with what many consider to be unencyclopedic fringe material.
This advice conflicts somewhat with the standards presented in Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia.
Elde 21:57, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Not anymore.—Eloquence
I tweaked the bit to have more of a rationale based on amount of possible content; a lot of the fictional character articles I see can never muster more than "Doggydoo is the lovable sidekick of Smartypants the Bear, and always says 'arf' when he's hungry." The whole fictional characters thing should probably be more organized, because there are hundreds if not thousands of stubly articles wandering around the namespace now. Stan 23:06, 31 Dec 2003 (UTC)
There is in fact a Tolkien wiki and a MediaWiki-based Star Trek encyclopedia, but that doesn't stop the respective fans from hanging out here. I personally have no problem with that but I do detest small articles about individual fictional characters and places.
Perhaps, for those groups for which wikis exist, a prominent link to the relevant wiki could be placed in the appropriate articles... would that discourage their development here?
We do not tolerate fan fiction or other material that is only relevant to very small fringes even within the respective communities.—Eloquence
To put it in perspective, Odysseus and Achilles have been described in encyclopedias for a long time... :-) In general, I think it's sufficient for the first sentence to say "fiction" or "fictional", and supply author/milieu; disambiguators like "(Middle-earth)" are annoyingly verbose in titles, should only be used if necessary. (If you disagree, move him to Achilles (Iliad).) Wikipedia:WikiProject Fictional Series purports to be a project on this, but says little, also there's Wikipedia:Check your fiction. Stan 21:37, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)
It's important to note that these are mythological figures which appear in different stories and in different imagery. When a character becomes so deeply embedded in our culture or in a past one, it clearly deserves its own article (compare also Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck). Also, when it's a very complex character with a long back story, this may also be preferable. On the other hand, an article about Zipper the Fly makes a lot less sense.—Eloquence

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of encyclopedias. There is therefore nothing wrong with having a great many Middle Earth, Star Trek or Star Wars articles if there is enough to write about each subject. But if all there ever can be is a stub on a subject then it should be merged into a larger article. There certainly is no consensus to do this to the extent the Eloquence suggests. --mav 13:02, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Elements of fictional universes

Is there a formulated policy on items in books, films, television, etc.? For example, I am dealing with Stargate (film) and the TV show Stargate SG-1 and have encount ered many articles on items of the fictional universe, such as Jaffa (Stargate SG-1), George Hammond, and Goa'uld. I think these should be merged with one of the main articles or put in an article like "Stargate (universe)". The advantage of the second option is that many universes have multiple books, films, and shows, like Star Trek or Star Wars. This present on has a film and two TV shows. Another option would be to create a new namespace for fiction and use the same unique names for every item, with the parenthesis of the context, as it is done now. It would also allow for the fiction to be separated for certain releases or archives of the encyclopedia. Comments? Have I missed something obvious? - Centrx 23:48, 26 May 2004 (UTC)

I don't think there's anything to worry about, and we have a countable infinity of Star Trek and Tolkien stuff. I do think that all such articles should begin "In the fictional Stargate SG-1 universe..." just so everyone falling randomly upon the article (ex google) isn't misled into believing that this stuff exists. (I also worry about the "future archaeologist" problem, for much the same reason). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 23:54, 26 May 2004 (UTC)
To clarify my marginally off-topic answer, I don't think merging is necessary or desirable, an amespaces are a rather complicated, overkilly solution, IMHO. It's not a bad idea for all SG-1 articles to have a common msg: (like the Alien universe things have - see Weyland-Yutani for example), which (among other things) serves to tag all the articles you might later want to export/deport. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:00, 27 May 2004 (UTC)
It may not be much of a problem now, but the situation will become untenable and not befitting an encyclopedia. As the encyclopedia becomes more comprehensive, every topic will require a disambiguation page. If separate articles are appropriate for each element of some fiction, then in the interest of completeness and balance it would be appropriate to create articles of all sorts of things which most people aren't looking for. This is a general problem of the encyclopedia, as there are many non-fiction items that should be merged into a single article, but with fiction these elements can be separated with relative ease. When someone is searching for information on a specific topic, they know very well whether it is matter of fiction or not, and adding all manner of elements of fiction will make it more difficult and time-consuming to find a particular piece of information. It's also almost completely self-referential; very few articles of an element of one fiction are going to refer to the elements of another fiction, and non-fiction articles are not going to refer to the elements of a fictional universe, aside from articles on actors and such. - Centrx 01:28, 27 May 2004 (UTC)
The correct solution is catagories, a feature that's "coming soon". With catagories something can be in as many catagories as you want (it can be in "Stargate", "Science Fiction", "American TV shows", and "things that will never get you laid"). Once the software (and the nasty task of figuring out the catagories) one should be able to define a search within a given catagory. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 01:40, 27 May 2004 (UTC)
Centrx: When someone is searching for information on a specific topic, they know very well whether it is matter of fiction or not, and adding all manner of elements of fiction will make it more difficult and time-consuming to find a particular piece of information
But not all information is Searched for a lot of it might be found serendipitously. So, especially given that a lot of links are put in articles without checking - just assuming - they will lead to where we expect I think fiction should be flagged.
I remember having my eyebrows hoisted aloft when I was looking at my usual slew of serious subjects and finding myself reading an account of a computer game world all of a sudden with no definite indication that I was doing so (other than the inclusion of many "facts" that would give us cause for concern if they pertained to the real world) until I got half way through the article.
It would be great if I could point you at the specific instance I'm thinking of, but I forget it now. --bodnotbod 21:07, May 27, 2004 (UTC)
I had some trouble parsing your second paragraph but I think a clarification of what I meant obviates your concern. I was not arguing that the context of articles should not be clearly indicated at the introduction to the article. By asserting that many are looking for specific information with full knowledge of its context, I was pointing out that the many disambiguation pages that will result from having fiction in the same space as non-fiction will impede or elongate that person's direct search for information: he does not need a disambiguation between the thing of fiction and the thing of non-fiction. Thus, it would be beneficial to have fiction in a different space, yet not problematic because someone looking for that information would know that it is fiction. - Centrx 23:50, 27 May 2004 (UTC)
"fictional" should be one of the catagories, for sure. But centrx' idea of using namespaces means things can only be in at most one catagory, which really isn't sufficient. And all entries should clearly state the domain of knowledge they inhabit (regardless of technical stuff like catagories). -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 21:14, 27 May 2004 (UTC)
Having a separate namespace for fiction (opposed to non-fiction) or for each universe of fiction would not be problematic by this reason. A thing in fiction has no reason to be in the non-fiction namespace, and a thing in one universe has no reason to be in another universe's namespace. If the thing has the same name as something in another namespace, by virtue of it being fiction it requires a different article than the same thing would in non-fiction. If a thing is common in fiction in multiple universes: a) it wouldn't be a problem with a simple dichotomy of fiction and non-fiction; b) with multiple universes, it might still be appropriate in an article like "vampires in literature". None of this namespace business would mean that we couldn't also use categories for all things. For the record, I am not arguing for namespaces for each universe in literature; I think that would be problematic to say the least. Simply, a thing in fiction is wholly different from a thing in the real world and in an encyclopedia it does not belong in the same space. My idea for a separate namespace for fiction is a recognition of that fact, and a compromise for people who want to write articles on everything. Personally, I think major items of a fiction belong in the article about the piece of work and minor items do not belong in an encyclopedia at all. We can create articles covering all things, but doing so becomes redundant and impossibly exhaustive. In an ENCYCLOPEDIA, do we really want there to be dozens of articles for each book in the world? One for the information on the publishing and the book and paper itself, one for the history, one for each part of the story, one for each character, one for each item in the book? Accepting that this should be a comprehensive encyclopedia beyond what is normally considered an encyclopedia, that it should be a cyclopedia, the circle or compass of human knowledge, of the arts and sciences, that does not include the unreal, indeed false, narratives of fiction. - Centrx 23:50, 27 May 2004 (UTC)
Ah, I think I understand where you're coming from now. I suppose what (quite rightly, don't get me wrong) concerns you might more generally be called "unencyclopedic minutiae", and while fiction has the lion's share thereof, I don't think it has the monopoly. One could say just the same thing about every character mentioned in the bible - certainly there's hundreds of important ones, but there's also lots who don't really have any spiritual, narrative, or allegorical function, and are mostly there just to be someone important's great-great-grandfather (at this point our contingent of bible-scholars bristled some, as the contention that anything in the bible is unimportant will find disfavour with some). Equally it's quite reasonable to have biographies of, say, chess players, but should we have one for every international grand master? Every regular grand master? It's clear that Capablanca is encyclopedic, and it's clear that little Tommy who won his highschool's chess trophy isn't, but where to draw the line? Ditto for, say, molecules - we have H2O, we have MDMA, we have DNA, and I think they're all clearly encylopedic. There's billions of molecules, and most are as dull as ditchwater, but where to draw the line? A case in point is high schools. It's clear that Columbine Highschool is encyclopedic. It's clear (to me) that my own high school isn't encyclopedic. We've included Fettes College, but not the high school in Sunnyvale, California where Teri Hatcher was a cheerleader. But where to draw the line? There's a considerable contingent of people who think highschools, regardless of fame or alumni, are acceptable. College professors, linux kernel contributors, paintings by Tintoretto, bridges over the Po, verb declensions in Inuktitut, uninhabited islands in the Inner Hebrides, paraguian swimming coaches, the scope for factual minutiae (one might say trivia) is endless, but the line between the in and the out is blurry and sometimes astonishingly subjective. It's at this point someone will inevitable cite m:Wiki is not paper, which many take to mean "let's err on the side of keeping stuff that might be useful". Your concerns about the appropriateness of each individual fictional item are, I fear, but a salient in the great western front of inclusion vs exclusion. I see no end in sight to that conflict. -- Finlay McWalter | Talk 00:47, 28 May 2004 (UTC)
Yes, but the matter isn't so much what should be included, but where it should be included and under what subordination. I don't think it's quite so clear with fiction though. With items of non-fiction, one can make a fairly good case that if there is sufficient information about something in the public domain to make an article about it, then it's appropriate. The same is not necessarily true of fiction.
First of all, proper names don't have quite the same problem as many generically named items of fiction, especially when listed as full names. I'm not going to go into the Bible example so much because if an item in the Bible does not have significant cultural or popular influence, I think it does properly fall under fiction, but if it is just there to be someone's great-grandparent and not much else, then it would properly fit in one of the many Lists we have here. For other things though, I think a good case can be made about uniqueness and length of article. If something isn't unique and a long, non-template article cannot be made of it, then it doesn't belong. If something is not unique, then it can fall under a superordinate article. If not much unique can be said about Tommy the chess player, then he should instead be in a list. Generic phenol molecules without much to say about them would fit under a large article about phenols.
Anyway, I'm not concerned about inclusion so much as proper placement. This is especially true with elements of fiction where the only way you can effectively define such an element is by relation to other elements of that fiction. It's all self-referential because it's a confined fiction. Everything in the real world is truly connected to other things in the real world, whether scientifically or historically. Interpretively also, but interpretations of fiction are not the same problem, because the articles I'm talking about are, in fact, confined to a particular fiction with parentheses after the name, and are actual definitions in the context of the fiction, not literary interpretations and syntheses. Once it becomes such an interpretation, it becomes "real world" and an analysis across fictional universes.
The fact is, fiction is peculiar. It is wholly different, and the matter of inclusion vs. exclusion merely illustrates the problem that results from articles on all things fiction. - Centrx 02:51, 28 May 2004 (UTC)
I agree with Centrix that there is a bubbling under problem here. If there gets to be too many articles on fictional items, Wikipedia could get unbalanced and its value degraded. To some extent its a question of where you draw the line as to what should be in and what should be out, but Wikipedia is likely to become much more inclusive than any prior encyclopedia. That leads to the problem of needing more and more disambiguation against real/fictional items. A (imperfect) concrete example here is Frodo. Arguably the only Frodo that is encyclopedic is the King of Denmark, except we don't have an article on him yet and I'm guessing it would be quite a while before anyone would actually want it. In fifty years time, I can't see anyone caring much about the C64 emulator even though it is a real item. And of course anyone searching for Frodo, was probably looking for Frodo Baggins. Perhaps a better example could be Speed of light (discworld). The unusually slow speed of light in the Discworld novels could get an article of its own, which would then suggest the need for an inappropriate disambig link on the real Speed of light page (the Big Bang page does actually have a see-also link to the Discworld page). An example of a problem article which doesn't make it clear that it is fictional, is Yig. I knew that the Cthulu mythos was fiction, but in reading the Yig article I started to wonder whether it was based also based on a 'real' American mythology. One solution might be to move the fictional milieu articles to a separate but related Wiki project (or perhaps category tagging gives the same effect). However there would still be fictional characters that are so significant that they are encyclopedic and should be in the main Wiki, for example Mickey Mouse and Peter Pan - and they you are back to drawing in/out boundaries. -- Solipsist 07:41, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Fictional Characters vs. Living, Breathing People

There's a (humorous, in my opinion) dispute with the Harry Kim article that I think should seriously spin-off a Wikipedia policy. At issue is that there are two Harry Kims: the Star Trek character and an actual elected mayor of Hawai'i County. One person objected to creating a disambiguation page out of the main Harry Kim space and redirect to two separate articles, as others like myself would like to do. One for Harry Kim (fictional) and Harry Kim (politician). Another person suggested that the living, breathing Harry Kim take precedence over a fictional character and therefore should have the main space while redirecting to Harry Kim (fictional). On the otherhand, some have argued that the fictional character takes precedence over the actual person because the fictional Harry Kim is more widely known and therefore deserves the main space while the actual person gets a mere redirect.

There are basically two camps. One camp believes an actual person gets precedence over a fictional character anytime, despite the current Wikipedia policy of giving the main space to the more widely known subject. The other camp stands by that current policy. I think we need clarification on this issue. --Gerald Farinas 16:44, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Well I'll just jump in with both feet as usual and express my opinion that Wikipedia should reflect the real world. If therefore there is more than one "Harry Kim", then Wikipedia should reflect this and the "main" Harry Kim article should say so. In other words it should be a disambiguation page pointing to Harry Kim (Star Trek) (note the subtle difference in approach) and Harry Kim (politician). I believe that this is not an uncommon name (Googling for "Harry Kim" seems to show a couple of candidates), and there might well prove to be further entries required. HTH HAND --Phil | Talk 17:12, Jul 6, 2004 (UTC)
Phil Boswell's approach is the same I used at Jack Ryan (Senate Candidate) and Jack Ryan (fictional character) (he's from Tom Clancy, in case you were wondering). I think this approach is fine. Certainly, a relatively obscure politician should not bump out the Star Trek usage; but then, the Star Trek character was no Spock or Captain Kirk, either. Disambig works well here. [[User:Meelar|Meelar (talk)]] 17:16, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)
The more well known one should obviously get the main article, regardless of whether they actually exist or not, otherwise we'll end up with Sherlock Holmes (fictional) just because a real-world Sherlock Holmes has done something minor that someone feels merits a stub in Wikipedia. Proteus (Talk) 19:24, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)
The judgement should be based on both criteria: renown and existence. In other words, we should use common sense. In the case of "Harry Kim", the real guy should get the main article. In the case of Sherlock Holmes, the fictional character should get the main article, despite any minor real people, unless the next President of the USA (e.g.) is called Sherlock Holmes, in which case the made-up one should be relegated. — Chameleon My page/My talk 18:20, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I think that unless one of the two is iconic to the point of being culture shattering (like Sherlock Holmes), then if there is any dispute, neither one gets the main page, and we make the main page a disambiguation page. --ssd 06:02, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Changes to format of page, addition of "encyclopedic" requirement

I've changed the page a bit. First, I've sectioned it by certain general guidelines that should be followed when writing about fiction, I didn't alter the content much in this case. There are 4 guidelines at the moment, and they all help make sure articles about fiction are

I also expanded a section about making sure that the article is encyclopedic (one of the aforementioned 4 requirements), which I think will ensure that articles won't be simple "fancruft", rather true articles about topics within fiction.

—siroχo 23:52, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal to consolidate advice on writing better articles

At present there are many articles in the Wikipedia namespace that seek to give guidance on how to write better articles. I propose consolidating these into a much smaller number. On User:Jongarrettuk/Better writing guide I propose how these could be consolidated. The proposal is not to change advice, just to consolidate it. If I have inadvertently moved what you consider to be good advice that is currently in the Wikipedia namespace, please re-add it. I'm hope that the proposal to merge all these articles, in principle, will be welcomed. Of course, it may be preferred to have 2, 3 or 4 inter-connected articles than just one and would welcome advice on how this could be done. (In particular, perhaps all the guidance on layout should be spun off into one consolidated article on layout.) I'm also aware that putting lots of different bits of advice together may throw up anomalies or bits that people now disagree with (including bits that I myself disagree with:) ). I ask for support for the consolidation. Once the consolidation has happened, the advice can be changed in the normal way. Please feel free to improve on the current draft consolidation, but don't remove or add advice that is not currently on the Wikipedia namespace. If all goes well, I'll add a new Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles page on the 19th, though maybe some bits of the new article will need to be phased in over a longer period. I'll also take care to preserve all the archived discussion in one place. jguk 20:00, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] CSD Proposal

There is currently a proposal to make articles about fanfiction, or characters from fan fiction or RPGs subject to speedy deletion. Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal#7. I susgest that peopel intersted in this subject commetn on this proposal, and consider voting on iot when it is up for vote. DES 28 June 2005 19:56 (UTC)

  • This proposal is now open for voting. The specific wordings are (these are separate proposals),
    • "Any article that states that it describes a character or story from fiction, that was never published except on the internet or in a fan magazine, nor written by a published author" should be added to the criteria for speedy deletion.
    • "Any article that states that it describes a character (but not a race, or type of creature) from any roleplaying game (including MUDs and MMORPGs), that is not also a real or fictional person outside that roleplaying game" should be added to the criteria for speedy deletion.
  • Radiant_>|< July 5, 2005 13:53 (UTC)

[edit] Which template?

I've asked this at template talk:fiction, but since that namespace doesn't get much visitation, I'll ask it here, too. I've encountered a lot of articles where the first sentence may identify the subject as a fictional character, but then the entire article is nothing but references to the work of fiction: fictional places, fictional events, other fictional characters, without once 1)idenfitying this millieu as fictional, or 2)citing the work of fiction in which these fictional events occured (akin to if the article Luke Skywalker were to say he destroyed the Death Star without including that it happens in Star Wars Episode IV:A New Hope). Everytime I've added the template:fiction tag to it, it's been removed with no change or very little change (typically a clarification at the start that the character is fictional). Am I using the wrong tag? Should that be a template:context tag instead? template:unreferenced? Or should I just go ahead and write a new template?

[edit] Perpetual present tense for video-game articles

Time and again, I run across video-game articles that do not use present tense to describe the plots of the games. I'm trying to correct these as I find them, but there are so many that it's a losing battle. Would it be out of line if I added a note to the "Check your fiction" section that the perpetual present tense applies to video games as well? And on a related topic -- this present tense should extend to explanations of gameplay, as well (if I put in Super Mario Bros. today, it plays the same as it did in 1985). Is this the appropriate place to mention this, or can anyone point me elsewhere? Thanks . . . . Amcaja 20:04, 2 September 2005 (UTC)