Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction)/Archive 16

message: I have added some specific information on determining the notability of television episodes to the newest proposal for WP:FICT.  See what you think and adjust as you feel necessary.  Ursasapien (talk) 08:09, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Could use some tweaking, but I think you have the right idea here. -- Ned Scott 08:10, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Diff please. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 08:14, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Here you go: diff.  I basically cut and pasted sections from WP:EPISODE.  Ursasapien (talk) 08:17, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I expanded this a bit to include any episodic work - comic books would be the next that come to mind but could also include radio dramas possibly and other yet-conceived works. --MASEM 13:01, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Seems like instruction creep to me.  Of course I'm all about streamlining, not expanding our NOTE guidelines. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 02:13, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Am I the only one who thinks this draft is getting way to long. If I wasa newbie I'm not sure I would get anything out of this at all.Ridernyc (talk) 19:04, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  You're not. It takes a long time to get anywhere. The next draft, once content is more or less agreed upon, should focus on condensing and streamlining and removing repetitions. —Quasirandom (speak) 19:35, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I see another problem with it. "Over time, you might find that some episodes or story-arcs have enough real-world information to warrant their own article. Such an episode can be broken out into its own page." Seems to ask for all real-world information to be on the article from the point of its creation. Scarcely a note on how article content and coverage may improve over time. Once more editors get their hand on improving the article. Where is the collaborative effort? What Wikipedia article was ready for featured status on the day of its creation? Dimadick (talk) 08:17, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: First, be aware that that is an older draft and (I'm pretty sure) that language is no longer present, but the concept is, to some extent, the same; as I'm writing this, look for Draft #9 at the bottom of the talk page.  We would be ignorant to not consider that there's thousands of articles on fiction that were written before notability became a significant issue (May 2007-ish).  We know articles that may or may not truely notabilty are being worked on to do something.  However, when we talk about articles that have yet to be written (say, for a sitcom in 2009), such wording suggests that before we go gun-ho and create each individual episode and character page that instead we wait to see what notable information there may be for that work, and as merited, expand appropriate to do so.  Otherwise, unless notability will be very likely forthcoming for a topic (the first 20 of 24 episodes of a TV series have well demonstrated notability, very likely the last 4 will too, so episode articles can be created once those air), we go back to editing wars over lack of notability and AfD and merge requests and the like; there is no point in creating a new article unless you know you have notability information for it.  For new articles (which many now watch and quickly thumbs-up/thumbs-down through Special:Newpages), real world notability demonstration is strongly recommended to be in the article from the start; while lacking notability is not a CSD criteria, it should be readily expected that not showing notability will lead to other editors questioning if the article can ever show it. --MASEM 11:17, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Notability sections from [[WP:EPISODE]] added to [[User:Masem/wp-fict-proposed|Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) proposal #5]]

message: I came to this policy page after seeing that the List of Spelljammer crystal spheres article was cited as being maybe not notable and linked to this disputed policy.
I have to firstly say that I'm a bit puzzled as to why disputed policies are being rolled out and used to justify arguments for sorting out, merging or deleting documents. I think that any disputed policies, like this one, should be put on hold indefinitely until they are sorted out. If this policy is disputed, yet used to tag articles, it spreads an unagreed policy out over the entire encyclopedia and makes it much harder for people to tell if policy is a proper policy or something that isn't ready yet.
I also find it strange that while we have Wikiprojects dedicated to tidying up specific areas of interest, people from outside those areas of interest now seem to be surfing around Wikipedia looking for random articles that need improvement and tagging articles for merger and/or deletion. I'd rather see people spend time fixing articles than cutting information out of Wikipedia. In the page I mention, there was no attempt to talk about the problems on the article's discussion page. I went on to the discussion page back in 2006 to try to solicit some help improving the article, but there seem to be a lot more people on Wikipedia trying to delete things than when I started editing.
I don't agree with the way that "agreement on policy" has apparently moved against fictional articles. I don't know when the changes occured, but wonder if fans of fiction were the people who made this decision to change Wikipedia policy. Fiction may not be a thing that we can touch, but it is a thing that real human beings think about and talk about. In that sense it is a part of our culture and understanding fiction helps us to understand how readers of fiction think. Fiction is as abstract as subject as mythology or religion. I don't think anyone would suggest deleting an article about Jesus, on the grounds that the author of the Bible hadn't done an interview about the character. When it comes to an article like that, you just have to go on the single source and accept that a lot of people have faith in the religion. While I'm not trying to elevate fiction to the same importance as religion I think that it needs to be judged in a similar way.
I think that it is especially unhelpful to make "plot requirements" when talking about role playing games. RPGs by their very nature often don't have a plot (although RPG adventure supplements do have a plot of sorts). They are games set in a fictional universe where the background is provided, but the games master (or dungeon master) and players create the plot for themselves. This makes a role playing game (like Dragonlance or Spelljammer) a much more random thing that a novel set in the same universe. You can apply a similar standard - but you can't apply exactly the same standard.
I do agree that there are a lot of dodgy Wikipedia articles out there, but I think that the solution should be to assign articles to the appropriate Wikiprojects and ask them to sort the articles out.
People that go around tagging articles often seem to make no attempt to fix the articles themselves. I think that all tagging and/or proposals for deletion should come from someone who has some form of understanding in the area of the topic.
Notability outside a role playing game, may have very little to do with the importance of a person, place or race within the game. Greyhawk, for example takes its name from the City of Greyhawk, so an expanded article on that fictional city helps to explain the game world. I would argue that the percentage of material dedicated to elements within a RPG should be part of the equation for working out what is notable to fans of that roleplaying game.
I'm sure these people are acting in good faith, but they don't seem to realise that it is far quicker to say: "this is bad - this is bad - this is bad" than to research things and fix poor quality articles. There is far too much push on Wikipedia to tag things, wait for them to qualify as "not fixed" and then tag them again for deletion.
I don't think that delitionism is helpful. The purpose of Wikipedia is to provide information. If an article is tagged as not properly cited a reader can understand that and can look for secondary sources to confirm or refute what they read on Wikipedia. But if an article is deleted they can't find anything here. Unreliable information, that is specifically marked as unreliable, is better than no information.
I think that recruiting people for Wikiprojects and educating editors within those projects would be a far better use of time that tagging things as "bad" and then running off to tag something else. I'd like to see deletionists throw their effort into improving things. Big Mac (talk) 17:18, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: All true, but figure on reading and commenting on this page every day for several months to have your opinion make any difference. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 21:49, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

text: In my experience, the kind of person on Wikipedia who tags / deletes fictional articles on Wikipedia usually don't have a solid understanding of whatever fiction they are tagging/deleting. The inherent disconnect is that those who love Wikipedia polcies don't usually give a rat's ass about the article's topic, and those that love the article's topic don't give a rat's ass about Wikipedia's constantly-disputed, constantly-ignored policies. So you've got the few who can cite policies, but a swarm of those that can just restore whatever damage was done. Scumbag (talk) 20:36, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Funny... I can't really disagree with that classification, but my idea of the strength of those groups is inverted. --Kizor 21:26, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

text: Thanks for writing concisely what I have been saying for months Big Mac. And yeah, the amjority of those who tag for deletion have never answered calls for content improvement, have no FA or GA articles on their belt yet take perverse pleasure in erasing other people's work. Renmiri (talk) 15:55, 1 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: "perverse pleasure in erasing other people's work." If editors on this page continue with such comments, they will be removed on sight. Assuming bad faith, making unfounded conclusions, and trying to tarnish the image of other editors simply because you disagree with them will not be tolerated on this talk page. We're having enough issues as it is without people making these childish remarks. -- Ned Scott 02:53, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Ned, you may not delete my comments, nor anyone else's. Report me for violating a Wiki policy if you can think you can make a case for it, but don't deleting comments in a discussion is against Wikipedia policy. Deleting comments you don't like amounts to falsifying the contents of a discussion. Please don't make threats like those, it is not WP:CIV for starters, very unbecoming, and very biased. This page has been receiving offensive comments about game fans, from people comparing them to vandals and hooligans without a peep from you, even though game fans are some of the best editors around. Guess trying to tarnish the image of other editors simply because you disagree with them can be ok if the editors write fiction articles, heh ? Renmiri (talk) 03:11, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Being a game fan and a downright anime nerd myself (and a fanboy of Scrubs, Lost, and other non-animated shows), you're way off on that. I'm sorry for being over-dramatic with my comment, and making it a threat. I just don't think it's very helpful for you to paint other Wikipedians as stereotypical evil villains. -- Ned Scott 05:53, 4 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: They might not be villains but I have to admit some of the points "User:David Shepheard" made about deletionists may be based on their edit histories. For example "User:Guest9999" has gained some deletionist momentum within the last three months for articles dealing with aspects of Kim Possible, Top Gear (current format), Spelljammer, Harry Potter and Firefly (TV series). At the same time the User has created only one article with original content, a list on the surname Francies, and his/her last major effort to improve a series of articles seems to have been a reorganization of Publishers Weekly lists of bestselling novels in the United States back in late October. Why does deletion seem to be so popular a solution instead of actively trying to improve an article first? Dimadick (talk) 10:30, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia cannot nor does not want to restrict or require an editor to perform certain tasks: any editor is free to contribute in any non-disruptive manner, whether editing, improving, or cleaning up.  Mind you, when mass changes to articles are being suggested, as per TTN's actions and a recent Arbcom case, discussion and agreement with the editors of affected pages are strongly strongly recommended instead of doing so without that step in order to reduce the disruptions. --MASEM 11:02, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fiction guidelines are not up to the task of dealing with roleplaying games