Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film/Categorization/Archive 1

message: I thought this for a start:
This is the WikiProject Films Categorization Department page, mostly famous for not existing yet. Many independent members have done their best to make categorization in films possible until now. The new department welcomes them all to populate it.
We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
... but maybe I should wait until we have more informative text to start the project page. Hoverfish|Talk 23:32, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Procreative thoughts 

message: (Copied here from user talk subpage)
Hi guys! I like the chart. A couple of suggestions, though: The films by actor categories are a sore spot throughout the categorization projects. Most editors prefer lists for works by people who appeared in them (films, plays, etc.), and categories for works where there's one definitive mind, as in director. So I would suggest you don't create a films by actor category. Secondly, I would leave off any category that mentions explicit sex, because it's difficult to define "explicit sex"; we already have a porn film category and a list of mainstream films with unsimulated sex. Just some thoughts. Cheers! Her Pegship  (tis herself) 18:35, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Also, let's keep the films by director categories; it's browsable by a hierarchy, which a template isn't. Her Pegship  (tis herself) 19:37, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestions from past experience 

message: ::Is the main purpose of this project to duplicate the mega-list Lists of films in category form? I'm all for that, since categories are easier to justify and work with than mega-lists of lists. Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 17:49, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Categories and subcats have to be given correctly and comprehensively. Which lists have anything useful to add (by extra content) remains to be decided. It will certaily be high on the agenda. Hoverfish Talk 21:16, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lists of films and categories 

message: To put on the to-do list: remove all references to categories of films by decade
At some point, it'd be nice to have an example of what categories should be on each page; i.e. for the film The Wicker Man, give a list of the categories that would be appropriate.
Also, question: would the "Lists of films about or featuring an issue" category be the same as the "films by topic" category?
We should probably get a list together of all the current categories, and decide which are/aren't necessary; do we want more series categories (or less), more awards categories (or less), etc.?  I think that's all I can think of for now... 
:-Elizabennet 20:49, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Aha, I was just looking at the films by decade sections and lists.  There's a lot of redundency with these.  There's the List of films by year, then there's lists of the films by decade as well as lists of them by year (in addition to the categories!).  I'm not really sure where to start with all this business.  I suggest deleting the 'decade in film' pages entirely, as well as the 'films by decade' category.  We have the films by year categories, which automatically make lists, so the lists of films by year seem unnecessary.  The List of years in film seems OK to me, though.  I suppose I'm just not a fan of the lists in general, since they do the same thing as the category. -Elizabennet 21:01, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Category:Films by year should not have three subcats (19th, 20th ,21st century) but should give a full navigation to all years. The intermediate stages are useless, if not frustrating. Also 19th century has only 2 decades and the 21st only one. Also the further breaking to decades (only for navigating) is not practical. It's named "by year", so the category should lead to all individual years. Hoverfish Talk 21:37, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree that we shouldn't have what is, in effect, films by century. Having all of the years readily available in the Films by year category would aid speedy navigation. There are less than 200 years of film-making so this would all fit onto one page (I'm not a fan of categories so large they go over a page in length). Mallanox 00:21, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I hadn't thought of that; having more than one page in a category can be frustrating, I see where the lists are useful there.  -Elizabennet 17:42, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

text: YAY!  All done!  I think I've given myself carpal tunnel in the process, but, still, done!  I added the 'films by year' category to all the individual year pages, so the decade and century pages can now be deleted.  If someone who knows the code could take a look at the  template and make it stop adding categories to the films by decade categories, that'd be great. :)  -Elizabennet 19:18, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I removed 2 categories from the template. Did it do the trick? Hoverfish Talk 19:59, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, the film years are still showing up as in the (decade)s films.  It looks like it has to do with the greater template , which is what creates the silly groupings of decades.  Would removing the WorksYearHeader part entirely be a good idea?  We should certainly keep the contents box, and the sentence at the beginning, and just create a box that links to the preceding and following years (just the one before and the one after) to replace that whole silly row of decade info.  Thoughts?   -Elizabennet 20:55, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestions for project and/or page  

message: Here's the template I worked up for putting at the top of film year categories; 1 stands for the year.
<<  -  -  >>
This is what the result would look like (for the year 1976):
<< 1975 - 1976 - 1977 >>
-Elizabennet 22:28, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I like that a lot, it looks very useful!  Would it go at the top of the page?  -User:Elizabennet | talk 19:42, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template 

message: I have done some work on the department's page and hope that is to everyone's liking. If not please tell me, and I will try to fix it. If everyone agrees that it is looking good, then I'll go ahead and remove the notice to help create the page as well as the stub template .--Supernumerary 22:37, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Department page 

message: :Category:American films
Mr. Blofeld has proposed we split the American films category by decade, i.e. , etc. I'm all for it. Any comments? Her Pegship  (tis herself) 22:42, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good to me. Wouldn't :Category:1930s American films be less cumbersome? Mallanox 02:00, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Category:1930s American films 
The decade subcategories of American films is only needed because there could potentially be 1 million articles in it!! No I feel it very important that American films comes before decade e.g 1930s such as American films of the 1930s as this is supposed to be a country category. Ernst Stavro Blofeld 18:39, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I just noticed: Cat:American films has only 196 articles!! So it's best to decide before it has ALL articles, which would be several thousands. Hoverfish Talk 07:23, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think subcategorising is desirable for any country with a prolific film industry including America, Britain, Australia, France and India. It wouldn't be appropriate for :Category:Zimbabwean films. Mallanox 09:51, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  American films by... 

message: What does "Lists of films by inclusion of issue" mean, please? Her Pegship  (tis herself) 17:00, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well there are all these lists like List of films with a twist ending, List of films featuring independent body parts, List of films with single syllable titles, List of films featuring automobile racing. What general name could we classify them under? Hoverfish Talk 17:20, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There are always going to be lists that just don't fit in anywhere else. From the trivial (single-syllable titles) to the truly unique (independent body parts!!), there' not really any common denominator among those examples. They're most appropriate under plain old lists of films, imho. Her Pegship  (tis herself) 22:09, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: List of films by content? Girolamo Savonarola 05:21, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This could take part of the mess and is certainly more meaningful. I agree with Pegship, but "Where do the children play?"(Cat Stevens). Hoverfish Talk 09:39, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I just noticed that in the Lists of films, it has been grouped as "by subject matter". Hoverfish Talk 21:05, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, but "content" seems to imply something significant, whereas some of the lists are about features that are completely coincidental, like the one-syllable title. Lists of films with common features or with features in common maybe? Her Pegship  (tis herself) 21:52, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Lists of films with features in common sounds about right. Hoverfish Talk 22:13, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Inclusion of issue? 

message: Added a fair amount of new text adapted from WP Military history's categorization section. I believe that it's mostly uncontroversial, although feel free to discuss. I'm also planning to cleanup the subcategories organization a bit - nothing too radical, mostly just collapsing some categories into subcats and the odd merging. Girolamo Savonarola 06:26, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  More new text 

message: If :Category:American films & :Category:English-language films are applied to all films involved, we are going to have some huge categories. Wouldn't it be better to put in films some subcategories of these? I would suggest subcats by decade/genre so that a user can find relevant films in a category, rather than the a full aplphabetical list of ? thousands of films. Hoverfish Talk 20:20, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: For the rather huge categories, such as American films, this probably is a good place for intersection categories. Doing by year is possibly a way through it, such as :Category:American 1973 films, which could then be a subcat of both :Category:American films (or possibly :Category:American films by year) as well as :Category:1973 films. This should only be encouraged for national cinemas with unwieldy numbers of articles (greater than 1000?). The other thing worth noting is that this intersection categorization can only be done for films solely the product of one country. Otherwise you have the odd situation of putting a film into the categories :Category:American 1973 films, :Category:French films, and :Category:1973 films, for example. Perhaps there can be categories for co-productions, like :Category:American-French coproductions. To minimize naming conflicts, the convention would be naming them in alphabetical order. Girolamo Savonarola 23:47, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe that makes sense as well for it to be something like :Category:American 1973 films as it will help to merge the two most common categories of these films. I have always attempted to add categories to films concerning the year they were released, the country of production, the language, and the genres of the film. Whatever is decided here, we need to make sure there is a consensus first to ensure we don't have to recategorize later and duplicate a lot of unnecessary work. I will be willing to help add the subcategories when it is decided what should be done. --Nehrams2020 00:15, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for your support, Nehrams. Hopefully the splitting off of categorization into this project department should make for a more centralized and efficient process. I've noticed that larger WikiProjects that contain departments like this and are sizeably staffed tend to do rather well at creating logical structures. Hopefully we'll be no different! :) Girolamo Savonarola 03:11, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Hmm, interesting case for several reasons. One, there isn't (to my knowledge) a category for color films. (Whether or not we need one is another story.) Two, I'm not certain how this will efficiently break down. For example, wouldn't virtually all films from, say, 1913, be black and white films? Should the major of Category:1913 films be placed under the subcat Category:Black and white 1913 films? Seems a bit ridiculous. On the other hand, I can't think of many other qualifiers. Country, language, studio, genre...it's all equally unappealing, I must say. I'm certainly open to suggestions, but unless someone has a clear and agreeable idea, perhaps it's best to work with the straight-forward material first. Lay down our foundations before we tackle the exceptional problems, right? :) Girolamo Savonarola 14:07, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Huge Categories 

message: I thought it was time to start a new heading...Anyway, I don't know about the future, but right now there is a tool called CatScan that can do a basic kind of Boolean search such as described above, i.e. "search Category:American films for articles that also have Category:1975 films". It's been having some trouble the last few months, but it's working now in a limited fashion (the problem was with the enwiki database copy it uses). See CatScan for more. HTH, Her Pegship  (tis herself) 23:30, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ugh, pegship you beet me! Cbrown1023 23:37, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: My cold medication must be working...<g> Her Pegship  (tis herself) 23:49, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As a reader, a tool that one has to actively use (and to know about it before one can even try to use it (if it is working)) is no substitute for having accurate subcategorization done for us. Cloachland 06:27, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I agree that cat scan is not easily available to anyone. "Accurate subcategorization" is a good thing. The problem we have is inaccurate or unsystematic subcategorization. We should start coming up with a Films subcategorizing scheme soon. Hoverfish Talk 07:21, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I did not mean to imply it was a substitute, only a tool, and it is accessible to everyone, btw. Her Pegship  (tis herself) 15:18, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category intersect 

message: Regarding fallout from Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:CatDiffuse, I invite you all to review and participate in WP:∫, to bring order to your project and Wikipedia itself. Cwolfsheep 06:06, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  An invitation to where you may churn ideas for reorganizing this project... 

message: Here are some "featuring" categories from the Academy Award project. I really hope we can avoid them. See Birdman of Alcatraz (film) for a mild example of their use. I've seen more lengthy uses. :Category:Films featuring a Best Actor Academy Award nominated performance! :Category:Films featuring a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nominated performance! :Category:Films featuring a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award nominated performance! Hoverfish Talk 12:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Surely :Category:Best Actor Oscar nomination is much more concise? Girolamo Savonarola 15:43, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I'd suspect that perhaps some were being used for both people and films, so the new titles make which is which clearer. However, they can do that and be concise if the cats were Best Actor Oscar nomination (for the film articles) and Best Actor Oscar nominee (for the people). Anyway, that's my quick - naive? - approach. Girolamo Savonarola 18:54, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Looks like WP Films is their stated parent project. However, they haven't placed the project page in any cat. Girolamo Savonarola 19:34, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Awards go to films and persons and since actors, etc, are under WP Biographies, they reach beyond Films. Normally they should be under WP Entertainment (currently inactive). Even better if they were part of a "WP Entertainment Awards" (wishful thinking, but worth it even so). As it is, I can suggest that they change these categories to something more concise and drop a question about parentage. Hoverfish Talk 14:33, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Thanks to BetacommandBot, the categories were just removed from all the films. Hoverfish Talk 23:34, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Do we really need these? 

message: Per Hoverfish's suggestion, we now have  and , for your stub sorting pleasure. Cheers, Her Pegship  (tis herself) 04:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New stub type 

message: Here are some recently created categories that if further applied in genre types, we will need a major cleanup. Suggestion speedy delete (IMO we have gone through enough discussion on the issue):
*:Category:American action films
*:Category:Action films by country
*:Category:Action films by year
*:Category:Adventure films by year
*:Category:Adventure films by country
Please, comment here before I submit them for deletion. Hoverfish Talk 15:33, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Just as a point of process, they're not eligible for speedy deletion in the Wikipedia sense, only in the usual sense of "right away". Also, please note that the cats were once again created by Mr. Blofeld, who I thought was busy elsewhere. *sigh* Her Pegship  (tis herself) 00:26, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I did not mean to imply that they were re-created, only that ESB's habits were popping up again. In that case, if they've been empty for four days they can be nominated for speedy. I would go ahead and nominate the Indian cats too; their project seems more likely to create cats based on language rather than year. Her Pegship  (tis herself) 14:55, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe as the parent project we have domain over the film articles at large, inclusive of the Indian cinema project. (In fact, we've discussed transitioning it to a work group in the past.) That being said, it would be common courtesy to notify them just so that it doesn't seem like we're being high-handed. But otherwise, don't be afraid to put your hand in on those categories - Indian films are still films nonetheless. Girolamo Savonarola 16:49, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I posted in Indian Cinema for comments on their deletion. Hoverfish Talk 17:44, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

text: As you can see by the red links, I have deleted them all under C1 with the following edit summary: It is a category that has no items whatsoever in it and has been empty for at least four days.  Cbrown1023 21:44, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  New (Jan.01) undiscussed creations 

message: We should take some decision about how to categorize films that were co-produced by several countries and/or are multilingual. Here is an example of how I categorized one such, but I don't really find this to be the proper way: The Pedestrian (film). Hoverfish Talk 23:25, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: IIRC, my original suggestion was that co-productions should have their own cats (eg American-French co-productions), which would be subcat'd to each of the national cinema cats. Some of these may be small cats, but there are a good number of countries which commonly pair off for co-productions. Does that sound reasonable? Girolamo Savonarola 06:43, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Let's not lose sight of the fact that we need to make things user-friendly. If someone wants to see all German-produced films, chances are they want to have German co-production as well. I think we should add country categories for each country involved and not try to make crossover categories which may make categorising easier but research harder. Mallanox 00:34, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I support the first proposal.  While it is true that you would end up with films in categories in which that country had a very small role, I think that this con is counterweighed with the con in proposal 2, where one would have to go looking through many small categories to find films in which some country had had a major role (and the other countries had minor roles).  As I see it, these two cons cancel each other out.  What we're left with, then, is to weigh the con of having numerous very small categories against the con of having a "lengthy category section in cases of 4-5-6 country co-productions".  I think that since there are often lengthy category sections in articles anyway, it's not so much of a con.  However, an alternate idea would be to have some kind of cut-off point for the creation of co-production articles; for example, go with proposal 2 if there are at least X wikipedia articles about films co-produced between these countries, and with proposal 1 otherwise.  I don't think category 3 is worth considering, because it combines the cons of categories 1 and 2 (long category section in articles - "German co-productions", "French co-productions", etc) AND has its own flaws.  It's by far the worst of the three. Esn 00:55, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would agree that option three is the worst. I still support option 1 as it has the biggest pro of all, simple to find films. Mallanox 22:14, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Option 1 is the best because it's user friendly. How many people are seriously interested in 'German-Swiss-Israeli' films as a special category of their own? Cop 633 13:22, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Multinational co-productions and multilingual films 

message: Hi, I've made a suggestion here  over on WP:CAT that I hope will improve the alphabetical listing in categories. As the inspiration for this came from sorting out film categories I would like to ask for opinions particularly from this project's members. Please make any comments there rather than here, thanks. Mallanox 23:59, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestion to improve category sorting 

message: First, is there a way to force all subcategories to display in the first page? It's a long way to look into all the pages to find all subcategories. Second, I do not find it practical to assign :Category:American films to various American studios. The reason is that (as we shouldn't give parent category) if one is looking for a film he will have to go through all the studios. I suggest all studios have only main parent :Category:Films by studio. Hoverfish Talk 14:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Category American films 

message: I would like to call attention to the fact that :Category:Lists of films with features in common and all 30 articles in that category are being proposed for deletion. --agr 04:13, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wow, that's a lot of important articles! Mermaid from the Baltic Sea 17:49, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Category:Lists of films with features in common

message: :Moved here from the main WPFilms talk page.
I've just had a little chat with Ernst and we came to the conclusion that the current categorization for Russian and Soviet films is very inadequate because of the following reasons:
*Categories "Soviet films" and "Russian films" feature significant overlap, which should really not be happening, I think. The only reason someone would look at one but not the other would be to find the few articles about non-Russian Soviet films or non-Soviet Russian films, which would be pretty hard to find anyway given that most of the articles in both are Soviet Russian films.
*:Category:Russian-language films currently has a requirement that it be for "for films in Russian language created outside Russia".  I know of no other X-language films category that has this requirement, and this has created a lot of confusion.
The proposed solution, which I'd like to put out for discussion here:
Three categories for the three major regimes of Russian history.
*1917 and earlier - :Category:Russian Empire films
*1917-~1991 Soviet Union- :Category:Soviet films
*~1991-present :Category:Russian films, :Category:Armenian films, :Category:Ukrainian films etc etc
*:Category:Russian-language films for every film ever made in Russian language regardless of time.  Perhaps there could also be a subcategory specifically for Russian-language films made outside of Russia/Russian Empire/Russian SSR.
**This also includes :Category:Ukrainian-language films, etc.
The category Russian Empire films was recently deleted (see here).  However!  The situation at the time was different than what I'm proposing now, and I'd like to put forth a few arguments for its inclusion.  We have a Cinema of the Russian Empire article (along with a Cinema of the Soviet Union article... and no Cinema of the Russian Federation article!) and :Category:Imperial Russia.  If you look at the numbers of films released per year over here, you will see that the Russian film industry exploded in the time before the revolution - though there are currently only four or so English-language articles which would fit in the category, the Russian wiki has quite a few articles that could be translated by me (most of the films in the early years over here are Russian).  Last but not least, it is a very different era, not just politically, but because most of the Imperial Russian film industry sided with the White Army and many of them fled to countries like France after the war - after the Russian Revolution, most of the major players in film were newcomers.  It would be no different than :Category:Films of Weimar Germany or :Category:Films of the Third Reich, which were created for some similar reasons.
Anyway, please give your support or opposition to this proposal and discuss your reasons.  I'd like to get this mess straightened out one way or the other. Esn 23:16, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed categorization for Soviet and Russian films

message: I want to add more elements to the :Template:Infobox Film, like "style" and "time making". For example: 
* Style: 2D animation
* Time-making: 2 years 
Is it possible? Appleworm 16:23, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Those don't really seem necessary for the infobox. Instead, they would go under "Production," "Post-production," or the lead paragraph of the article. Volatile 23:54, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The infobox should have only a minimal amount of important data so it doesn't get too big.  The first one has little variation across films which would mean a lot of redundancy in infoboxes.  The second one would be very difficult to find and even if it were as useful as budget would probably go widely unused. gren グレン 05:37, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[:Template:Infobox Film]] 

message: The February 2007 issue of the Films WikiProject newsletter has been published.  You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link.  Thank you. Cbrown1023 talk 00:06, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: WikiProject Films February Newsletter

message: I was looking at the :Category:French films, and I noticed that some film titles are in French and some are in English. It's inconsistent. Shouldn't we come to a consensus here? I suggest English titles since this is an English Wikipedia. --Crzycheetah 05:06, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The lack of replies is probably because this has been discussed several times in several different talk pages. Besides using English, there are other factors that need to be looked into, such as what is the most common title, if the English title is official or unofficial and/or if there are several well-known English titles. I suggest we continue case by case. Prolog 21:24, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Understood, thanks for the reply. --Crzycheetah 22:44, 2 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Also see the foreign film bit at WP:NC(F), which basically just repeats the information at the two links already provided by Prolog. Doctor Sunshine talk 11:05, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  French films 

message: I see that screenwriters have their own project. Where do directors go ? If part of this project, shouldn't there be something on their talk pages that indicates that ? -- Beardo 15:21, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Film directors 

message: Note: Discussion has been moved here. Esn 23:16, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've partially translated a fourth article for the category.  Creating a total of 10 articles should be doable, but it'll take some time. Anyway, good point, I'll move the discussion there. Esn 00:35, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed categorization for Soviet and Russian films

message: Due to our large influx of new infobox requests, I was wondering if there would be any objections to creating a new infobox request template just for Indian films and Persian films which WP:Indian and WP:Persian cinema could use, while WP:Films retains the . By doing this, each project could better focus on their individual infobox requests instead of having them all clustered into a large collection of requests. We have so far done a good job on fulfilling many infobox requests and I commend the efforts of the editors who have added so many requests to many of the films that do not have infoboxes. Perhaps we can add a programmable distinction in the  template stating something like "project=Films", "project="Indian", "project=Persia", for example. This could then be divided into new categories for people to better edit articles pertaining to each project. I would prefer consensus on this first before we do anything that we may have to redo later. I'll post a message on both of the other projects to join in on the discussion here. --Nehrams2020 04:55, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't see a problem with this. Really, even after tagging all of the country films categories I suspect there are still thousands of uncategorized, unbannered film articles out there. If someone's willing to do this, it could be done for all of this project's descendants, which would make it easier to enlist their help. Doctor Sunshine talk 00:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Doing it by hand would be crazy but bots, and I have no experience in using them, but it should be possible to have a bot do all the sorting. It's hard to say how much good it would do but if it's easily accomplished it's worth a shot. And it might come in handy if we attempt to tackle needed pictures and synopsis's at some point... Doctor Sunshine talk 19:50, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, to be honest, I'm so busy doing infoboxes that I could wait and see how it all develops, before doing anything about it. It's just that every day I have to scan several columns to see if any non-India film was added to a cleared letter and it's not always as clear as you say. Often it's Cantonese, Albanian, or other titles that might or might not belong to WP India. But you are right (Gren): even this daily searching is faster than going into all Indian films and adding a field. As for bots, I don't run one, but I don't think they can tell by themselves if the film is Albanian or Indian. They improve speed but someone has to be there and do considerable semi-manual work using them. Hoverfish Talk 22:12, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: WP:Films and WP:Indian cinema infobox divide?

message: I am currently putting The Devil Wears Prada through peer review with the hope of eventually reaching featured status. The main problem has been how to shorten up an article that at one point reached 91K and is probably still (at 80K after the "differences between film and book" section was prosified) the longest article on a single film.
It grew because, as I said introducing the article at peer review, there is just an unusual amount of information available about this film. I found a great deal of it to be relevant to the article, the sort of thing the project guidelines say we should include (i.e., actors and crew explaining the creative decisions they made, often in their own words) and much of it is in the production section, currently accounting for a third of the whole article.
When I was working on this, I realized how big it was getting and considered splitting off that section as a separate article, perhaps to be entitled Production history of The Devil Wears Prada. Essentially this would be a "making of" article and I could see how other films might benefit from having this possibility available (the Star Wars series, for instance).
Reading through the feedback I've gotten from two reviewers, both of whom seem to have read the article thoroughly, with one small exception no one seems to have found anything in that section to be unencylopedic. So I'm even more strongly in favor of doing so now. I've had the proposal on peer review and the talk page for a couple of days with no comment. If someone here has any reasons why they don't want to see this set as a precedent, or why this is a lousy idea, this is the place to say so. Daniel Case 17:42, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Very nice article.  It was bound to happen that a production history of some film would become this large.  Making a seperate page is a good idea.  I would leave a condensed version of the prod hist in the page, with a link to the larger article. - Peregrine Fisher 19:59, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for the compliment (this article dominated my editing in December and January). Of course there'll be a link and summary, per standard practice. Daniel Case 01:56, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

text: I don't think production history articles are that useful. Wikipedia shouldn't be a guide to this type of content. If people want to learn the history of how the movie is made: they can go elsewhere. I would think there is some kind of guideline against this. RobJ1981 20:12, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You don't think these are useful? I don't know a single film where there isn't something from the production history that knowing doesn't enhance your appreciation of the finished film — that the screenwriters for Casablanca were a couple of scenes ahead of the actual filming for most of the shoot, that Dustin Hoffman ad-libbed that "Hey! I'm walking here!" line in Midnight Cowboy when that cab unexpectedly came into the shot, that The Blues Brothers cost as much as it did to make not only because of the car chases but because they lost whole shooting days waiting for Belushi to either come down or get coked up enough to shoot (actually, I just learned from the article that they really dropped a Ford Pinto from a plane at the end, and had to get a special certificate from the FAA to do it).I think also of how, in the vein of productions shutting down because actors get sick, how Kubrick stopped Full Metal Jacket cold for a couple of months so Lee Ermey could recover from his car accident. We all know the story of what Lawrence Olivier said about Hoffman's staying up all night before a scene in Marathon Man The article on Heaven's Gate would be greatly enhanced if edited by someone who's read Final Cut (like how only midway through production, the studio learned Cimino was making money on the side off them by leasing land he owned to the studio for the production.Film critics and historians spend lots of time trying to talk to actors and filmmakers and research this stuff for a reason. If it wasn't important we wouldn't have production sections at all. Since it is, if one gets too long, we split it off. Daniel Case 05:16, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Isn't a whole new article going into unnecesary detail? It seems to be the excuse on Wikipedia (sometimes at least): if the article gets too long, then it's split into seperate articles. While this is helpful sometimes, other times it just makes crufty articles. At times, condensing should be the key. Long sections can be condensed in correct ways, without ruining the section and/or article. RobJ1981 20:27, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Not really.  Many articles on main subjects often have subsidiary articles.  For example, a country would have a "history of", "people of", etc articles.  Film articles shouldn't be any different as long as the information is encyclopedic and not just an indiscriminate collection of information. —Erik (talk • contrib • review) - 20:35, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

text: I'd be willing to cut once it was in a separate article, perhaps, to trim that down. Right now my priority is just to get this article to manageable length. It seems to me there's a consensus in favor here. I doubt the separate article would get much longer, other than discussing why a few scenes were cut (something helpfully cut from the main article by someone here.I'll let this go a day or so longer before I split and condense, as long as the discussion continues its current path. Daniel Case 01:47, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Splitting off an article on production history 

message: I have attempted a rewrite of the naming conventions guidelines for foreign films in order to make them less vague. I would appreciate feedback; please offer opinions on the talk page here. Thanks. Cop 633 23:25, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you meant to give this link - yours doesn't work. Esn 00:20, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Foreign language film title guidelines

message: Use of posters or DVD covers to illustrate the article on the film is legit, right? elvenscout742 13:24, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: As far as I'm aware, yes.--NeilEvans 16:26, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Just make sure to include a descriptive fair use rationale, a proper movie poster or DVD cover license, and the source where you got it on the image's page. Otherwise, it may be deleted or removed from the article. --Nehrams2020 19:30, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fair use images... 

message: I believe I posted something about this a while ago (and didn't get many replies). So I'll try again. Is it necessary for all major (and some minor) film characters to get articles? I can understand for long running series such as Star Wars, Nightmare on Elm Street, James Bond, etc... but what about animation? Example: :Category:Cars characters. Cars was popular, but it's still a one time movie. It might get a sequel (one could be even confirmed now?), but either way: articles for each character seem like a bit much to me. A list page for the characters would work better. Cars was 116 minutes (and even counting extra things that weren't part of the movie and so on), it's not much material. I'll use the Lightning McQueen article as example. 3 paragraphs about the movie, a little over a paragraph about the game (which wasn't that notable: many movie games come out all the time and flop.} Then there is an international names section, and a huge trivia section. When you remove alot of the cruft: the article would be a couple of paragraphs at best. This doesn't just apply to one time films, it applies to things such as Ice Age as well. Ice Age had 2 films: and it has crufty articles that would be suited for a list better. What does everyone else think on this matter about character articles?  RobJ1981 06:28, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: See WP:FICT. Characters should only have articles if they are recognized and notable outside of the fictional context. Most times, characters taken from a single fictional source have articles that regurgitate information already found in the main article, so they have little reason to exist. -- Dhartung | Talk 06:55, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well from the looks of the Cars character articles: they do regurgitate information from the movie. This will need to be looked into more, before a list page is made I believe. RobJ1981 07:01, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There already is a list of the Cars characters, found at List of Cars characters. I think in the past, the list was even longer than it is now (don't know how that's possible), and some people suggested splitting these characters off. Then later they had merge tags on them to bring it back. So either they merged and split again or never merged. --Nehrams2020 07:06, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

text: YIKES! That list page is a mess. Does it include all characters or what? In my opinion: list pages like that should be major characters and supporting characters only: NOT a massive guide to everyone/almost everyone. To reply to Nehrams: my guess is the merges didn't happen once the tags went on. I've seen plenty of times where people don't discuss merges, and then the tags just vanish due to lack of interest. The list page has had tags on it since July and November 2006...that's not a good sign either. RobJ1981 08:14, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: In a Cars related note: Cars Diecast Line is a listcruft of another matter. Is it that notable to list each car in the series?  I somehow doubt collectors are using Wikipedia as a source to find out that information. As I looked at the talk page: it was in AFD (and basically got kept by default: everyone said keep except for one, if you don't count the person that nominated it). AFD isn't about votes: but in this case I think it was. RobJ1981 08:18, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Film characters comment and question

message: I cannot find an archive of Gene Siskel's reviews (been to his dot com, and chicago times where Ebert is), and I'm working on a film that was significantly panned by him, and it's subsequent sequels. I have two official books that discuss his review and quotes him on several things, but I don't have a source to the literal review. I was wondering if I can use the books as the source, or if I have to scrap him altogether because there doesn't seem to be an archive of his film reviews (at least not that I could find) since his death.   BIGNOLE    (Question?)  (What I do)  16:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There's nothing wrong with citing the books rather than the original review, as long as the books are reliable sources.Cop 633 17:06, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I just wasn't sure if that was going to be a problem. I'm still looking for Siskel's reviews, but it's good to know that I can fall back on the books.   BIGNOLE    (Question?)  (What I do)  17:12, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reviews 

message: Hello.  I recently self-nominated the article on the recent Academy Award winner for Best Adapted Screenplay, William Monahan at WP:FAC.  Please read the article and comment, as well as copyedit if you wish.  It's a fascinating read.-BillDeanCarter 20:15, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[William Monahan]] article under review at FAC

message: In the process of adding infoboxes, I came across When Lincoln Paid and When Lincoln Was President,  both marked as 1913 films.  I merged them and redirected the latter.  Now I've just found The Reprieve: An Episode in the Life of Abraham Lincoln, which is another almost identical article - with two changes, different year and imdb number.  Now there's a fourth article Abraham Lincoln's Clemency with a different year and imdb article!  I left requests there for clarification on which is the "real" date... any information from here on which is the right one?  
:*When Lincoln Paid
:*When Lincoln Was President
:*The Reprieve: An Episode in the Life of Abraham Lincoln
:*Abraham Lincoln's Clemency
:*The Sleeping Sentinel
SkierRMH 03:27, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've also gone through the IMDb search when I came across Whem Linkoln Was President. They have also different directors. My impression is they are different short films shot at various times. The info we could give in various infoboxes would be minimal and I doubt the articles would ever grow beyond a few lines. Maybe it would be best to forget the infobox and merge them all in an article (Abraham Lincoln in film?) Hoverfish Talk 08:47, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

text: It seems they're all listed in the Cultural depictions of Abraham Lincoln article. Perhaps that could just be expanded upon to include what little information there is? Chickenmonkey 12:08, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

text: My first inclination was to do a merge, but looking at  Cultural depictions of Abraham Lincoln, it appears that this already does this, albeit in a more generic manner.  As they seem to have minor differences (although the 1914 doesn't have an imdb listing), I'm just marking them as such and doing redirects if there's identical articles for the same year. SkierRMH 23:05, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: One movie, ''five'' articles

message: Can an senior-type editor or admin mosey on over to the film article? Seems a couple groups of editors are bickering about the inclusion of a statement that one wants included in the article, while the other doesn't think it belongs in the article at all. The two editors are faced off against each other, and little else is getting done. Maybe some impartial help could step in and lend a judging hand? (although, not a hanging judge, coz' that would be a bit on the severe side).Arcayne 04:31, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would like to add that the need is somewhat urgent, as an editor who is not really impartial is weighing in on the matter. Please come and lend a hand.Arcayne 01:24, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Arcayne has gotten his impartial admin and is unhappy with the result. I invite review. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 01:33, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Children of Men

message: My recollection is that somewhere we have a guideline saying that a film's 'year of release' refers to its first screening, not to its first wide release, so that a film screened at festivals in 1996 but not widely released until 1997 would still be called a 1996 film  (following IMDB's policy). Am I right? and if so, where is this guideline and can we make it easier to find?! Cop 633 17:30, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The guidelines for release year slightly differ between Wikipedia:Naming conventions (films), , and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Films/Style_guidelines#Release_dates. --PhantomS 17:46, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

text: I would go along with Hoverfish, but would lean more toward first public screening, rather than say at a film festival, as sometimes there is a long period between screening at a film festival and a film going on general release.--NeilEvans 21:41, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Well yes a film festival is a public screening, but what I meant was general release, as I said sometimes the time between film festival screening and general release can be few years, so I would go for the date when it was distributed on general release.--NeilEvans 21:53, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's better to stick with earliest screening, as per Hoverfish. It's a bad idea to get out of sync with IMDB and All Movie Guide on this, it would cause endless confusion. Also, as far as I can tell, there aren't any film articles using the 'general release' year, so if we settled on that we'd have to go and fix them all. Nightmare. Cop 633 01:46, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

text: OK never mind, it turns out the infobox styleguide is protected ... hopefully it can get updated soon.Cop 633 19:57, 13 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: A film's 'year'

message: Does anybody else think that Sandy Olsson should be deleted? Kris Classic 21:27, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure Danny Zuko redirects to the Grease musucal article. But Betty Rizzo has the start of what could be a good article with a bit more expansion. If someone was interested enough one could discuss the different interpretation between the musical and the film versions of characters. So really it could go either way.--NeilEvans 21:33, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Sandy Olsson

message: You voted for the Cinema Collaboration of the week, and it has been chosen as Un chien andalou.Please help improve it to match the quality of an ideal Wikipedia film article.</small>
 --PhantomS 02:23, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: CineVoter (March 10, 2007)

message: Someone asked about this at Wikipedia:Requested templates.  I looked through the talk archives here and all I could find was a consensus against linking to community-created reviews like IMDB and RottenTomatoes, but nothing about professional reviews.  These are often linked in .  I will relay the proposal and let you guys comment. —dgiestc 06:00, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds like a great idea to me.  It's actually one of the most important out-of-universe types of information that we could include in a film article.  Make it optional, of course, so that we can slowly add it as we feel like.  Imdb numbers will still be a no-no. - Peregrine Fisher 06:04, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

text: As I understand it, the proposal is to add a new variable to the template for the purpose of listing only those reviews which satisfy WP:RS. —dgiestc 07:54, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good, but the infobox may become overly tall.  See below. - Peregrine Fisher 08:03, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

text: Ebert was just an example.  Most newspaper or TV film critics meet WP:RS. This would be an optional variable to be used when a professional film review is available online. —dgiestc 09:40, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Add professional reviews to {{tl|Infobox film}}? 

message: I've seen a number of infoboxes that are longer than the accompanying article, which doesn't look right.  Alice in Wonderland (1903 film) is one example.  Have we had a discussion about how to deal with this?  Template talk:Infobox actor has a bit about it, but I think we should really start thinking outside the box.  Off the top of my head, maybe a template that goes at the bottom of the page?  I know we can just add this stuff in prose, but I'd like to hear ideas other than that.  You can say "just add a reviews section" but I don't see it happening that often, or being done that well.  Another idea; a template that would go into a reviews section.  How about a cast template that would go under a "Cast" section header.  Something that would look like { {cast|actor1|actor2|...}} and expand into something that doesn't look like a table, but looks like prose.  I think templates that people can just fill out, without having to think about complete sentences, would be good. - Peregrine Fisher 08:03, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It has been firmly established that an infobox should not replace the article. What is given in the infobox, should be in the article. In the case of Alice the article should normally grow to include all the info. As soon as a cast section is created, the cast should be moved there, and only 2-3-max.4 top actors should remain in the infobox. A review section would have to be created too, if we add the field in the infobox. Much better if we add a separate template for it (IMO), as the infobox template is obviously getting to be quite lengthy. As for this template for cast, don't forget the format should be *Actor as Role and this seems easier done without a template. Cast given in prose is also acceptable, but it happens mostly in more developed articles. Hoverfish Talk 09:38, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Infobox can get really tall

message: There is an important updated regrading this template. Please read the talk page and comment on it. Thank you. Shane (talk/contrib) 18:41, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Template:Film]] 

message: Under Trivia, the user adds in a useful fact along with his opinion. Should this be edited or kept? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Daboss94 (talk • contribs) 04:32, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I fixed it. --Nehrams2020 07:37, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dukes Of Hazzard The Beginning 

message: After consensus I closed the case on the long awaited stub categories and set them up :Category:Screenwriter stubs and :Category:Film editor stubs now exists. Sceen-writer-stub and film-editor-stub is the mode. If you could spread the word I would be grateful. I'll categorize the American-screenwriter tubs in the main cat above now  ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ "I've been expecting you" 11:09, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Screenwriter/editor stubs