Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction)/Archive 5

message: Raoh is a character article on the primary antagonist of the 1980s Fist of the North Star manga series. If you look at the article, it reads like just another random badly written cleanup-tagged character page that should probably be merged back into the series's main character list. But wait, Raoh is actually an independently notable subject in his own right! Don't believe me? Read the news story: .
So now we have an amusing conundrum, an independently notable fictional element that has next to no available out of universe sources. While we can prove that he's significant, except for the few snippets of analysis present in the news story, we can't really talk about why or how without it being OR. We can, of course, write a character biography that describes all the things he did in the series. But would this be justified? I can see an argument that since the character himself is the notable subject (rather than just the work he's attached to), a large amount of in universe content is necessary to help people understand him. If not, would it be justified if we had more available OOU sources? I don't personally know. As a further puzzle, consider how Raoh's probably been notable for two decades, but we only got an English language source to prove it this year. --tjstrf talk 07:38, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That article also shows us english centric our notability policy is.  It says that in Japan, "for many, manga comics perform the entertainment functions of comedians, soap stars and film actors."  When we can't find any sources for the characters in Naruto, it's probably like the Japanese wikipedians having trouble finding sources for articles like Eric Bana  or Padmé Amidala , which we've gotten up to FA status. - Peregrine Fisher 07:58, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Truth. There are quite a few magazines in Japan that do nothing but publish articles analyzing every minute detail of the latest anime series. Unfortunately, the only sight we see of them over here in ye olde anglophonia are scans of the pin-up girl pages. ja.wiki doesn't seem to push for sources the same way we do either though, so it's not like we can just make an inter-wiki hop over and grab them. (Even if we could we'd need them translated.) --tjstrf talk 08:31, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: An interesting case regarding notability and foreign fiction

message: In case you haven't noticed, I'm bowing out of this debate (at least for the next several days) due to busyness. There's plenty of other people with similar viewpoints, so the debate will obviously continue easily. — Deckiller 12:43, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bowing out 

message: I think we've been tossing "lists of characters" and "lists of episodes" around together in the above discussions but something hit me reading newer comments; we probably should treat "lists of episodes" and equivalent for serialized fictional works separately though in the same notability manner.
For any serialized fictional work (books, tv shows, comics, etc.) one could argue that a "List of (serialized elements)" is actually a non-fictional list, since each is a out-of-universe division of the in-universe story.  However, this does not automatically make every such list notable.   I would not want to have a "List of Sesame Street episodes", "List of X-Men comics" or "List of Calvin and Hobbes strips", as they would be super excessive.  There should be some examples of where episode lists are relevant and appropriate, generally based on if the fictional work has overarching plots, reset buttons, frequency of publishing and so forth.  These are not hard set, unfortunately; DragonBall Z (though still excessive) has it right in that it breaks the overall plot into the various Sagas (roughly by season) and doesn't go into episodes, but I would argue that a show like Buffy or Babylon 5 needs to have episode lists despite their being overarcing plots to the entire show (this is also likely because individual episodes are more notably than individual episodes of DBZ). 
Again, I'm trying to avoid having a newer editor come along and create "list of X" just because the fictional work lacked that page; such pages should only be written when its within reason per the guidelines above. --Masem 15:42, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Another point for consideration: more on lists 

message: (Not related to the other discussions) Currently a major problem with fiction type articles are that there are no suitable home should they not be notable (enough) for Wikipedia. As such, would it be possible to create a single Wikia for them (e.g. fiction.wikia.. ), instead of one for each series, and move non notable content there?  Or are there already such a Wikia? G.A.S  18:26, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Very good point. The few times I've gone to a wikia link and it's not something that was just imported from Wikipedia a couple revisions ago, it's usually either dead from neglect (which means nobody's reading it) or dead from vandalism. If wikia is going to be used as the semi-official Free Encyclopedia of Fictional Universes That Anyone Can Edit, we really need to get it set up to encourage good writing quality and traffic. --tjstrf talk 19:26, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: While I agree that it needs more quality writing and more activity, I do not believe that it should be disregarded for that reason. The same principle is applied to articles linked in a FA article. We cannot control the sub-par quality of an article that is linked in one that is featured, just like we cannot control sub-par quality (or just inactivity) on Wikia.   BIGNOLE   (Contact me) 20:24, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe tjstrf's view is if we set such a wikia up, the editing will come by itself. (As opposed to many wikias with a more norrow scope.) G.A.S  20:35, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Set it up and routinely link to it, yes. This would be another advantage of having one location, since then everyone just has to remember wikia:fiction:ARTICLENAME, rather than wikia:randomcleverwikipunontheseriestitle:ARTICLENAME. Also, if such a system was set up with the same sort of rules as Wikipedia follows, only modified where irrelevant or nonsensical, the editors here would probably be much more likely to accept it as a (pseudo) sister project. (The reasoning behind this being that pointing people to another equally convenient location is probably the only realistic way of kicking our reputation as the internet's leading source on in universe information.) --tjstrf talk 20:58, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, the "rules" would have to be a bit more liberal, otherwise we'd just be creating a second Wikipedia. Obviously we would have to link more frequently, but that goes with dealing with articles that need to be merged with larger topics (like TV episodes or characters). Where we would normally link to a Wikipedia page, we can link to a Wikia page. But again, we cannot make people edit the pages.   BIGNOLE   (Contact me) 21:14, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In the long run a single Wikia for these articles is the most viable option. I also believe that a lot of "In Universe Only" editors will follow the content. G.A.S  21:27, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

text: I am aware of the annex, but it is marked as a temporary home. I meant, as said above by tjstrf, a "(pseudo) sister project." G.A.S  21:24, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Wikia