Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction)/Archive 51

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Inclusion critiera: Moving Forward

Now that we have established that there is a clear distinction between the criteria for article inclusion and those for article deletion, the inclusion criteria need to be amended in order to bring them within the orbit of Wikipedia's existing guidelines and policies. The changes that will achieve this are as follows:

This page in a nutshell: An element of fiction satisfies the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article if it the subject of significant real-world coverage that goes beyond what is revealed in the plot of the fictional work as well as satisfying the General notability guideline.

This is a contraversial proposal, in the sense that a set of inclusion criteria that are more restrictive than WP:N would in the first instance appear to be an unecessary imposition. I readily admit that this propsoal will not go down well with die hard inclusionists, who have always sought to broaden the inclusion criteria, rather than tighten them. The reason is that fictional topics that neither pass the General notability guideline nor are the subject of significant real-world coverage fail WP:NOT#PLOT, which is part of a policy that is one of the five pillars of Wikipedia. And for good reason: an article is only going to be encyclopedic if it contains real-world coverage and demonstrates that its subject matter is notable.

This poposal reflects the dual nature of fictional topics: articles can be written from a real-world perspective (i.e. as elements of fiction) or from a fantasy-world perspective (as elements of plot). Whilst a concise plot summary is appropriate as part of the larger coverage of a fictional work, treating fictional topics from a purely fantasy-world perspective is effectively probited by WP:NOT#PLOT, and the style of purely fantasy-world articles is discouraged by WP:WAF. If this guideline is to provide useful guidance to editors, it needs to be clear that compliance can only be achieved through real-world coverage in additon to citing reliable secondary sources that provide the commentary, context, criticisim and analysis that make up an encyclopedic article.

If we attempt to construct inclusion criteria that don't comply with the Wikipedia's existing policies and guidelines that provide less of a "bright line" (the favourite phrase of Masem and Randomran), then beyond that line is a grey area where articles may be nominated for deletion, merged or redirected because the content fails WP:NOT#PLOT (or if they are videogame characters,WP:NOT#GUIDE). This grey area weill be addressed in the section WP:FICT#Articles that don't meet the inclusion criteria through the three prongs, which I think is why this proposal should now get broad support. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:25, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but I can't support it. An article gets a stand-alone article when there is consensus that it should do so. This is an attempt to run a ring around a very clear Wikipedia policy, and as such I can't countenance it. This seems to stem from the fact that consensus leads to contradictions, and that some people cannot abide contradictions. This is arbitrary for the sake of it, rather than reflecting what we do, and damages the five pillars, the very foundation of the encyclopedia. Wikipedia does not have firm rules. Alos, if this is supposed to do what WP:PLOT does, we don't need it, since we have WP:PLOT. If, on the other hand, this is supposed to document current practise, it fails. I suggest we just tag this page as historical or rejected and fall back to writing articles. Hiding T 11:11, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
I don't think it will get broad support, so I'm opposed to this on a practical basis. Gavin should take some comfort that articles already have to meet WP:NOT#PLOT and the WP:GNG, so there's no reason to write out what the current guidelines say. Randomran (talk) 15:16, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
I am not advocating a repetition of WP:NOT#PLOT in this guideline, what I am saying is that WP:FICT can't be based on inclusion criteria whose purpose is to evade other Wikipedia policies and guidelines, as this approach won't work. I don't see how we can follow any other path, otherwise we are just kidding ourselves. Perhaps the nutshell needs to be rewritten as follows:

This page in a nutshell: A fictional topic has that has received significant real-world coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article

Having set out my stall, I am open to alternative wording, provided we are not going down the path of trying to construct arbitrary exemptions which have no objective rationale. In the meantime, this is what I would expect the inclusion criteria for fiction to read as:

If a fictional topic has received significant real-world coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article.

"Significant real-world coverage" means that sources address the subject directly in detail using the real-world as the primary frame of reference, and no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant real-world coverage is not reliant on trivial detail nor over-reliant on a perspective that is in universe.
"Reliable sources that are independent " means published sources that are independent of the creator, author, publisher or distributor, and have actually considered the topic notable enough that they have written and published significant real-world coverage of their own that focus upon it. Promotion and product placement are not the routes to having an encyclopedia article, and even non-promotional self-published sources, in the rare cases they may exist, are still not evidence of notability as they do not measure the attention a subject has received by the world at large.
"Presumed" means that substantive coverage in reliable sources establishes a presumption, not a guarantee, of notability. For instance, coverage from tertiary sources does not constitute evidence of notability for the purposes of article creation, e.g. directories and databases, are all examples of coverage that may not actually support notability when examined, despite their existence as reliable sources.

A topic for which this criterion is deemed to have been met by consensus, is usually worthy of notice, and satisfies one of the criteria for a stand-alone article in the encyclopedia. Verifiable facts and content not supported by multiple independent sources or written purely from an inuniverse perspective may be appropriate for inclusion within another article or list that does meet these criteria.

This three pronged test provides useful step by step guidance on the inclusion criteria for fictional topics as standalone articles, but it does not end there. "Articles that don't meet the inclusion criteria" is where the strength of the two prong test lays: to provide guidance in terms of the consensus reached at WP:AFD after peer review as to the minimum requirements that an article would need to meet in order to avoid immediate deletion if it has any potential for future improvement. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 15:12, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I may be being dense, but how does this differ from WP:N? Hiding T 18:48, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

You might not have read my early comments: This poposal reflects the dual nature of fictional topics: articles can be written from a real-world perspective (i.e. as elements of fiction) or from a fantasy-world perspective (as elements of plot). Whilst a concise plot summary is appropriate as part of the larger coverage of a fictional work, treating fictional topics from a purely fantasy-world perspective is effectively probited by WP:NOT#PLOT, and the style of purely fantasy-world articles is discouraged by WP:WAF. If this guideline is to provide useful guidance to editors, it needs to be clear that compliance can only be achieved through real-world coverage in additon to citing reliable secondary sources that provide the commentary, context, criticisim and analysis that make up an encyclopedic article. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 19:59, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

I cannot support that wording, because of use of the word "significant", which is too easily open to subjective interpretation. Sincerely, --A Nobody^{My talk} 20:13, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Your objection seems cosmetic when you see that this wording is already used as part of WP:GNG, but I guess every objector has to have some sort of hook to hang their complaint. I think the term significant is indeed subjective, but it is defined quite clearly in respect to what it is not; it is not insiginificant coverage, i.e. it is not trivial in nature. If you can think of a better definition, then I am open to suggestion. If you don't have an alternative, then I suspect this proposal is on the right track. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 23:19, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Proposal to gain more support from the community

Examining the RFC, there is a lot of opposition from both hard-line inclusionists and hard-line deletionists. These polar opposites roughly cancel each other out: if we move the goal posts to satisfy one side, we lose roughly as much support from the other side. Moving the goal posts won't help us that much.

However, the RFC attracted a lot of opposition from what I call anti-bureaucrats. This group doesn't have radical views on inclusion/deletion, but they despise instruction creep and wikilawyering. Their philosophy is, basically, "the more factors that people have to weigh, the more technicalities people will be able to manipulate to their advantage". A simpler guideline leads to less bullshit. They want fewer factors, meaning fewer prongs. So with that, let me lay out the overall goal:

Goal: If we remove one factor (or prong) from this test while maintaining the current inclusion/deletion balance, we will gain support from some anti-bureaucrats. (And maybe an overall consensus.)

The best way to achieve that goal is to drop the first prong, and replace it with a re-statement of the current "independence" section:

An element of fiction should be included in Wikipedia if (1) reliable sources can verify that the element is an important part of a notable work of fiction, and (2) reliable sources (such as self-published creator commentary) can provide significant real-world coverage about the element's development or reception.

An element that meets the above test should, at a minimum, be preserved by summarizing and merging it into another article or list. If an element meets the above test and is also the subject of independent sources, then it warrants its own stand-alone article. (Recall that Wikipedia's policy on verifiability calls for articles to "rely on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.")

What anti-bureaucrats gain: Obviously, they gain because less is more. We've reduced this to two prongs. We've also made the independence requirement from WP:V more clear.

What deletionists gain: Although this is not the high standard that some hoped for, this makes it more clear that some independent sourcing is necessary to avoid a merge/redirect. That's what we discussed before, but we currently "hide" the independence requirement later in the guideline. By making the independent sourcing requirement a clear part of the test, we will prevent every obscure webcomic or manga from having an article for each major character.

What inclusionists gain: Although this is not the end of notability that some hoped for, it drops the first prong that the fictional work needs to be "super-notable". It's one big step forward. The guideline guarantees that an important element with real-world coverage will be covered somewhere, even if not in a stand-alone article. It will be WP:PRESERVEd.

Reality check for everyone: You may look at this proposal and say "I don't care, I still wouldn't support it". But if this proposal is at least marginally better than what we have now, we should make the change. If this proposal does nothing for you personally, we should make the change just for the sake of shortening and simplifying what we have now. Even if this doesn't get us all the way to a consensus, this softens some of the opposition to the guideline. We can get there one step at a time.

Randomran (talk) 16:38, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

Do you agree that the stated goal will increase support for this proposal?
Does the proposal achieve its stated goal, of reducing bureaucracy while maintaining the overall balance?
Do you think this proposal is a step forwards, a step backwards, or a step to the side (no improvement)?

Don't get hung up on exact wording. We can refine the wording by importing small phrases from the current three-prong test as needed. Randomran (talk) 16:38, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, make it simpler and I'll support. Kaldari (talk) 19:06, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I'd support this idea if it is added that, if a work is notable, having a separate "list of" for things such as episodes or characters is OK to use as a "merge target", even if the list doesn't independently establish its own notability, so that the article that 20 pages are merged into doesn't get AFD'd simply due to a lack of notability. E.g., a List of Dark Tower characters should get some amount of a "free-pass" so that less-notable articles on the topic can be merged there without bloating the main article... basically, the list is part of the main article separated solely due to technical reasons. –Drilnoth (T • C) 19:58, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

EDIT: This would seem to be the intent of the proposal, with Randomran's link to WP:PRESERVE, but should probably be added to the text itself to avoid future conflicts over it as there inevitably would be. –Drilnoth (T • C) 20:00, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Drilnoth, I don't have strong feelings on the notability of a list one way or the other. But you don't think it would be easy enough to establish the notability of the list as a whole, such as "characters of The Sopranos" or "characters of Gears of War"? It's really not too hard to find one or two reliable third-party sources that say "the characters of Gears of War have been praised for their depth, as well as their sense of humor." Just being devil's advocate. Randomran (talk) 21:44, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

You have a point... my only concern is that lists could still be deleted due to non-notability if they were simply created as a target for mergers and haven't yet been properly cleaned up and sourced... List of Greyhawk characters is obviously a good article to have, in my opinion, although right now it consists entirely of primary sources, simply because nobody has gotten around to really putting some time into it. WP:PRESEVE should indicate that the information is kept, and WP:BEFORE should call for a good search for sources before any AFD or PROD of the list, but in practice it seems that that essay and policy are oftentimes ignored. –Drilnoth (T • C) 02:15, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I think we want to be cautious about allowing truly non-notable lists, with no reliable independent perspective. This would represent a huge shift from the current proposal, which is ultimately trying to keep obscure webcomics and manga from having a bunch of spinoffs for characters and episodes. I think it's reasonable to insist on *some* independent coverage to establish the notability of the overall list, because most major series will have a review or two who offers some kind of praise. Otherwise, you're right that we should make it clear that the whole test is based on WP:BEFORE and WP:PRESERVE and WP:IMPERFECT -- and we don't delete stuff based on its current state, but on its realistic potential. I think it would be a little ridiculous to delete a list of episodes of, say, an HBO series without sources, because they so obviously exist somewhere. Randomran (talk) 16:03, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

That's essentially what I mean. Besides, if an obscure webcomic establishes the comic's notability but not that of the characters as much, the list could be merged into the main article unless it would cause excessive bloating. As long as the three policies/essays/guidelines you mentioned are followed-and actually followed, not just in the way that they are now-I'd be perfectly fine with the above proposal. –Drilnoth (T • C) 16:12, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

It looks to me like that proposal would remove any ability to use creator commentary as to show real-world coverage.じんない 23:06, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

That wasn't my intention. Just to be clear, I've added a reference to that in brackets. I want that part to be 100% the same as what we have now. Randomran (talk) 23:26, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

Overall this is a good step forward. But if an article meets your first two points, but does not have independent coverage, then a merge should be the preferred option instead of merely the minimum option. Reyk _YO! 05:10, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

This is a phrasing issue. A merge certainly is the minimum coverage for such elements. But the second phrase is meant to say that "we only go beyond the minimum (a merge) if there is independent coverage". We can work out the exact wording with some effort. Randomran (talk) 16:07, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps something like "Elements that do not have independent coverage should be treated as part of the work of fiction, rather than a topic in its own right." Reyk _YO! 01:20, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Can you explain the phrase " reliable sources can verify that the element is an important part of a notable work of fiction", and/or give an example? Do you mean that the topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 07:59, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

This is definitely a step forward, one I'd support. Removes a lot of instruction creep and limits systemic bias quite a bit. MLauba (talk) 08:10, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Two things. First, the GNG needs to be mentioned (even if it is both points taken to extreme) as the default guide for notability. Second, I think the first criteria needs "third-party" in there, otherwise, you open the door for elements of webcomics (to name one area) to have articles. Importance to the work needs to be shown independent of the work (or creator of the work) itself. --MASEM (t) 13:51, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

I'ld like to echo Gavin here: the step 1) is to me unclear. Step 2 can be very easily achieved by very completely unimportant things, e.g. some of the artifacts used in the LotR movies (weapons, ...) get discussed at length in the LotR DV commentary as examples of the Weta Workshop results. The same happens probably as ell for many less notable movies, since every slightly successful movie gets a DVD release with a handful of extras like the Making Of and so on. Being discussed in releases by people involved with the original work of art (the author, actors, company, ...) does not in any way indicate notability: of course, these sources can be used once it is clear from truly independent sources that X deserves an article (or a section in another article).

I fail to see why we are still trying to lower the bar for articles about elements of fiction so that once one independent source mentions X as being a major element, no further independent coverage of the subject is needed at all, only texts written by the author or the company or something similar. We currently have an article on e.g. Brainy Smurf, and there is an article mentioning Brainy as one of the favourite characters[1], while also making clear that the DVD edition has "character profiles". For the sake of discussion, let's assume that there are no independent reliable sources discussing Braint at length, only similar mentions likethe one we have here: does he get an article in the above proposal, or should it be included in a list of characters?

If the above proposal means that he gets an article based on the info I provided, then I oppose this proposal, as it setsthe bar for inclusion way too low. Fram (talk) 14:05, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

The proposal is asking for a minimum of two sources: one that establishes the role of the element within the context of the fiction, and one that establishes a real-world facet of the element. Now, I agree that technically, as written now, this can be meet by a single comment made by the creator, and that's too weak a line. That's why I think the importance has to be established by a third-party source, thus as in your case above, there would not be enough info for Brainy to have his own article. However, this "third-party" aspect needs to be added to make that work, otherwise, as it reads, Brainy could have his own article. --MASEM (t) 14:13, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

As a response to both you want Gavin, the (1) and (2) here now are meant to reflect the current prongs 2 and 3, which have consensus. The only thing that changes is we drop the first prong, and re-affirm the independent sourcing requirement for a stand-alone article. We'd word and re-word the test until it basically resembles what we have now, aside from those changes. Randomran (talk) 15:23, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Sorry Randomram, I apologise if I was not making myself clear, but I was not asking if has consensus or not. Could you clarify the wording. What does the phrase "reliable sources can verify that the element is an important part of a notable work of fiction" mean exactly, and can you provide an example to illustrate this? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 16:17, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Not to speak for Randomram, but here's my take: An article like this (TVGuide interview with an actor from the show "The Big Bang Theory") establishes the four lead characters of the work in the intro paragraph, thus being a third-party source describing an element's importance. The interview itself weakly helps to establish the real-world aspects as well, but there really should be more there. --MASEM (t) 16:24, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

even I agree with Gavin here--or at least what I think he is trying to say. . If someone is the hero of a major novel, we do not really need a sentence saying "because x is the hero of the novel he is therefore important". The question might be about the evidence for x being the hero, but in most works of fiction it really is obvious to a first reading, and can be found if there is any review at all. More often, the question is how far down the list of characters we go. Gavin would generally not go far at all, while some people would include a separate article for everyone with a name, and some without. There is IMO no viable approach to this except the compromise of accepting that the degree of coverage is proportional to he importance and the amount of material worth saying.We will still have the question of applying it consistently and rationally, but we may get away from the article/bare list distinction. It will be much easier to discuss whether we should have two paragraphs or five, than whether we should have ten or zero. DGG (talk) 01:00, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, I think it's better to get at how much detail we want to put into our coverage rather than try to answer a single question relating to coverage ("When does an X get its own article?"). Sometimes you don't need/want to mention it at all, sometimes you only want to mention it in the plot summary, sometimes it will have a place in a list, sometimes it can be broken out into its own article but you'd rather not, and sometimes it really is proper to have a separate article on whatever it is you're writing about. It's really a content-driven system, but the question of "How much content?" is what the proposed prongs really get at, not simply at whether some fictional thing gets an article or not. Nifboy (talk) 03:15, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

I am not understanding what this means. Looking at Masem's example, I don't see how an interview with an actor about his role in a TV series establishes "importance" for a particular character; my understanding is that to establish any sort of notability (or "importance", which seems to be a poor cousin) means that the source must address the subject directly in detail, and no original research is needed to extract the content. If we can't agree amoungst ourselves whether this is what the wording is trying to say, then what hope has an editor who has not followed this talk page for two years got of extracting clear guidance from it?
What has made me optimistic about constructing a compromise wording for WP:FICT is the honesty that has been brought to the discussions by the particants to date. When drafting this guideline, it is best practise to openly and honestly state where, why, and what is the benefit from departing from Wikipedia's existing policies and guidelines, rather than attempt to ignore, or worse, to hide such departures. It may, at the end of the day, be better that we do depart from the existing strictures, but we really have to be honest about it. If we attempt to write a guideline that uses language that uses obfuscation to hide its objectives, then it won't stand up scruitany from our peers, i.e. the rest of Wikipedia's community. I know that Randomran is trying to reach a compromise here, but simply stating that this represents the "consensus" view when it is neither clear what that view is, nor what this wording means, is not helpful. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 09:03, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

In the example, I pointed to the paragraph before the interview that describes the show, thus asserting the importance of four characters to the wok. The interview itself doesn't do that, only the part before that (written by a third-party source). --MASEM (t) 11:42, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

Discussing the meaning of this prong is really off topic at this point. I mean exactly what a consensus of editors currently means in prong two, the "importance of the element" test. This isn't a chance to argue about what the "importance of the element" prong means. The proposal I'm putting forward is to scrap the "importance of the work" prong, and re-affirm the independence requirement. Randomran (talk) 18:42, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

the requirement that the source primarily or directly address the importance , or even that it primarily or directly address the subject is just plain wrong. I was in fact proposed some time ago that a usable source for WP:N had to be sa magazine article or a book or primarily focussing on the subject. This was soudly reject, and the requirement now remains that it covers the subject in some substantial was. IUt was actually being argument that the presence of a book about the subject was required, and one about a group of people with a chapter on him was insufficient. The requirement now is mroe realistic--it has to be more than a mention. Obviously, the higher requirement would probably eliminate most of popular culture, and most athletic figures and politicians also, and most schools and villages and products and companies. ; Wikipedia would then be an abridged encyclopedia, not a comprehensive one.

Randomran says it nicely in a way I can diametrically oppose: the intent is ought to be'to greatly increase the strength of the importance of the work prong, with the reasonably intent that we devote much more attention to characters and whatever of works that are worth the detail, and to diminish as far as possible the idea of independent sources being necessary to do so. As long as we have enough for V, why should it matter? What is so hard about the idea that we cover more3 extensively the more important characters in the more important fiction? Seems obvious to me, and always did. DGG (talk) 08:36, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

That's a moot point. The more important the work of fiction, the more likely it is that the major characters and elements can pass notability standards in their own right. This proposed and endlessly bickered-about guideline is not aimed at things that can pass the general notability guideline. And I simply don't see why fiction should get an exemption from the requirement for independent sources, when no other subject material on this encyclopedia does (and rightly so). Reyk _YO! 08:52, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't think anyone's trying to give a free-pass to non-notable articles, I think we're just tying to accept the reality of the situation that in fiction, a lot of real-world detail comes from primary sources. As I understand the wording, this guidelines still requires that the GNC be met, if only at a minimum level. --Kraftlos (Talk | Contrib) 09:03, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Actually, Randomran's new proposal is less strict than the GNG and so was Phil Sandifer's before it. I agree that some wiggle room to accommodate coverage of fiction is necessary and accepted by the community; I just don't want to lower the bar too far because that would compromise some principles that I believe are very important: Firstly, that notability is not inherited and secondly that Wikipedia should not be the first to write about something if nobody else has. If some aspect of fiction can be verified but can not shown to be notable then it should not be glorified out of proportion by having a stand-alone article, as though it's a topic in its own right. It isn't. It can only be treated as an aspect of the work of fiction that it's in, and by all means write about it in that article. Reyk _YO! 09:16, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

DGG, I'm not sure you read it properly. We don't greatly increase the strength of the "importance of the work prong". We scrap it. We stop paying attention to the importance of the work (aside from bare notability). Even if you wouldn't support this overall proposal, you have to admit that this is an improvement on the current version. Let's make incremental progress. Randomran (talk) 15:51, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Just a typo, my "is" should have read "ought to be". I've fixed it. As I said, I totally oppose what you are doing with this prong. Far from eliminating it, I'd ake it basic. just the opposite of what you would do.. The first prong is critical to ridding us of articles on characters of minor works. and justifying those of major ones. Readers are much more likely to be interested in what's important--we should cover the others of course, but more brieflty. Furthermore the major works are the ones that will have sources and reviews andarticles and books written about them--thisshould be the first level distinction: is the work wreth wring about in detail, or only in summary., DGG (talk) 22:20, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure that it *is* critical, *if* you acknowledge our policies that require independent/third-party sources for every article. A minor work would be unlikely to have such sources, while a major work would. Thus, a major work is more likely to have stand-alone character articles, while a minor work would cover the characters within the main article. See Arcana Jayne or Van Von Hunter to see how minor works generally cover their characters. The first prong isn't critical here, because the requirement of independent sourcing takes care of it. Randomran (talk) 22:49, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

I like the way Randomran identifies the different opposing philosophies that have been involved in this discussion and I appreciate the honest attempt to compromise. I think this proposal can work, and like he said don't get hung up on the wording we can hammer that out later. --Kraftlos (Talk | Contrib) 09:03, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

Its hard not to get hung up on the wording if you don't understand it. It is not clear what the phrase "if reliable sources can verify that the element is an important part of a notable work of fiction" means exactly. If the wording was clear, it would probably say that for a source to provide non-trivial content for an article, it must address the element directly in detail, and no original research is needed to extract the content. However, because "importance" has never been defined in terms of any objective criteria in our discussions, it is not clear whether this statement means that trivial content is proof of importance. I confess to being totally hung up on the wording, maybe because I must be the only editor here who does not get it? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:51, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

My two cents; would "if it is verifiable that reliable sources consider the element an important part of a notable work of fiction" work any better? Is the goal to allow a statement from the actor playing the role, or the author of the work, in which they state, "this character has a central role in advancing the plot" or something similar as a means of verifying notability? Hiding T 14:38, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure that I would be happy with an actor's assertion of importance, because every actor wants to think that their role is important. I think the author's assertion has to be acceptable for the sake of compromise.—Kww(talk) 14:50, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Showing my work

It looks like there's overwhelming consensus that this proposal is a step in the right direction, with a few people feeling that this is at worst a lateral move. There are a few people, notably Gavin Collins and DGG, who are hung up on the wording of the existing prongs. Those concerns are legitimate, but they're not what's at issue right now because I'm not trying to change those prongs. Let me clarify that the proposal only drops the first prong, and un-buries the "independent sourcing" requirement that's stated later in the current guideline:

Articles covering elements within a fictional work are generally retained if their coverage meets these ~~three~~ two conditions:

Importance of the fictional work: To justify articles on individual elements, the fictional work from which they come must have produced significant artistic impact, cultural impact, or general popularity. This is shown when the work (not the element) exceeds the relevant notability guidelines.
(1.) Role within the fictional work: The element must be an important element, and its importance must be verifiable. The importance of characters and episodes can be demonstrated through the use of primary or secondary sources, while the importance of other elements must be validated in independent secondary sources.
(2.) Real-world coverage: Significant real-world information must exist on the element beyond what is revealed in the plot of the fictional work. Examples of real-world coverage include: creative influences, design processes, critical commentary, and cultural reception. Sometimes this real-world perspective can be established through the use of sources with a connection to the creators of the fictional work, such as creator commentary. Merely listing the notable works where the fictional element appears, their respective release dates, and the names of the production staff is not sufficient. In practice, this is generally the most important of the three prongs.

(Note: I copied this next phrase from our current guideline at Wikipedia:Notability_(fiction)#Independence. I prefer the wording I initially proposed as being more clear, but I'm copying this statement to be transparent about what I'm trying to do.) "Articles that resist ~~good-faith efforts to improve them to good article status, including~~ the search for independent sources, are often merged into other articles. Both the guideline on reliable sources and policy on verifiability call for articles to "rely on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. "

We drop the first prong, and un-bury the "independent sourcing" requirement that's stated later in the current guideline. That's all. I prefer the wording I initially proposed as being more clear, but it's meant to be functionally equivalent to this right here. We can improve the wording as needed.

Again, this isn't a final proposal meant to obtain consensus. This is an incremental change that is supposed to, at worst, do nothing about peoples' attitudes towards this guideline except make it slightly simpler. Do we really need the first prong if we already require independent sourcing? Randomran (talk) 14:55, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I thought we had all agreed a ages ago that only objective evidence can be used for tests. The test for importance based on primary sources will be ineffective, since every character and episode can be shown to be important if they appear in the primary work. This reminds me of the story of the "bed" that guests of Sodom were forced to sleep in: if they were too short they were stretched to fit it, and if they were too tall, then their feet were cut off. The "bed" in this story is similar to the "test", in the sense that editoral opinion based on primary sources can be streched or cut in order to obtain the required fit. Can't you just drop the reference to primary sources once and for all so we can move forward? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 15:45, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

Gavin, I'm not doing anything to the "role within the fictional work" prong and it's completely beside the point right now. I recognize and understand your objection, but it has nothing to do with what I'm proposing. My proposal kills the first prong and cuts/pastes the independence requirement. Anything other changes will have to be discussed separately, so we can make progress where people *do* agree. Randomran (talk) 15:50, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with your proposal to take out the first prong, and I have already said that it makes sense[2]. However, the test for primary sources really must come out, since since every character and episode can be shown to be important if they advance the narrative of the primary work, which of course is the reason why they were created in the first place. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 15:58, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I appreciate your willingness to move forward. I'd be comfortable with your phrasing of the "importance" prong, just as much as the current phrasing. Really, any phrasing is compatible with this proposal I'm putting forward. The key is that it would need to have a consensus, and I wouldn't feel comfortable just unilaterally changing it without a thorough (and separate) discussion. Randomran (talk) 16:05, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not hung up over the wording, or over small variations. Where I do object is to the proposed entire elimination of of the first prong. I think it's the major factor. Someone may think it's just equal to the others. I can see t hat. But not of no importance whatsoever. Characterizing this as "hung up over wording" sounds like a attempt to indicate that the opposition is only over trivia, when it remains over some of the basic concepts. The original idea here of MASEM was workable, and, if there had not been strenuous objection form those who want to minimize the number of character articles rather than compromise over it, we could have found acceptable language. But when the opposition is over anything that would open the door to accepting such articles, there's no place to compromise. DGG (talk) 03:20, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm actually surprised that you're opposed to ditching the first prong, and I had honestly thought I had done a poor job of communicating this proposal to you. I would have thought that you'd appreciate a simpler test, and ditching one of the barriers to inclusion. But I respect your objection that dropping the first prong might open the floodgates. I'd like to show you why that isn't the case, by referring to the soft "independence" requirement (which is in the current proposed guideline, but stated further down). A character from an obscure webcomic might pass the second prong for being important to the work, and the character might pass the third prong with real-world coverage. But this won't entitle the webcomic character to its own article without independent sources. At most, the character would be merged into the main article about the webcomic. This treatment of the subject isn't controversial. A quick look at obscure fiction like Arcana Jayne or Van Von Hunter shows that this is what we do with otherwise important characters from obscure fiction. Randomran (talk) 03:28, 17 March 2009 (UTC)

yes, we have ways of getting the right result, but finding other provisions, most notably adjust what we consider a reliable source for the genre. But you should i know that I consider the GNG something to be used only if we havent anything better. It would be much cleaner to separate out what we dont want in a way that corresponds to the fiction, not the accident of sourcing. There's another misconception, that I support the fullest possible coverage of fiction: I support full reasonable coverage of important fiction, and the summarizing of the rest into combination articles. DGG (talk) 00:10, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

We definitely shouldn't let the GNG do it all, and I agree with you that we want full reasonable coverage of important fiction, and that we should summarize the rest into combination articles. But that's something that we accomplish with the independence requirement: elements that meet the test (3 prong OR 2 prong) will be included at worst by merging it somewhere, and those with independent coverage will get their own articles.
I guess I'm not sure what your objection is anymore. Are you concerned that dropping the first prong will open the floodgates to a bunch of bad articles? Because it's clear that it doesn't. Without independent sourcing, an "important" element will be merged into a main article: see the character lists in Arcana Jayne or Van Von Hunter. We'll do that kind of thing whether we use the 2-prong version on this talk page, or the 3-prong version that's on the current proposed guideline. Randomran (talk) 00:39, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Why not change the first prong to "Notability of the fictional topic: To justify a standalone article on a fictional topic, it must have had some significant artistic merit, cultural influence, or other real-wold impact. This is demonstrated when the topic is the subject of reliable secondary sources". We all know this is true, so why beat around the bush? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:16, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I totally agree that the original work as to have reliable third-party sources, but I'd rather just link to the GNG and keep it short. Randomran (talk) 14:32, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

The reason we're here in the first place is that the GNG doesnt work for these topics, or at least there is no consensus that it does. The proof that there is no consensus that it does is the thousands of afds with variable results. Fictional content is one of the exceptions. I continue to see not the least reason for secondary sourcing for these articles, if the primary source shows the importance. At root, this is the problem. If we disagree on this, all we can do here is say that "it is not agreed whether ...." DGG (talk) 18:26, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

You say that, but evidence do you have to support it? It seems to me that fictional topics and WP:GNG are a match made in heaven. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 21:16, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

No, the GNG is more concerned with the basic article, ie the work itself, not elements within it. The GNG was not designed ever to handle fiction that hadn't had academic reviews on it, especially fictional elements. Trying to have it work for every such article is trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

As for this proposal, I have commented before that the first prong could be removed with little impact. The current 3rd prong takes care of cases like webcomics and the like as well as a general statement like the one used in the proposal.じんない 22:33, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

DGG, I'm not sure what your objection has to do with this proposal. The GNG works just fine for actual works of fiction, with plenty of reviews on the works themselves. The issue is coverage of elements of fiction... and the proposal does not rely upon the GNG. And to the extent that it does, the two-prong version is actually less reliant upon the GNG than the 3-prong version on the main page right now. Could you explain, in detail, what part of the proposal you dislike, and how you would like to see it changed? Randomran (talk) 22:12, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Multi-phasic transdimensional super conducting guideline

I'm proud of those who stuck with this thing over the months. I honestly think WP:FICT is much better than it once was, and that we should continue to keep trying. I think FICT holds some great advice, and that alone makes it a powerful guideline. What tag you place on it will never change that.

WP:FICT is active, it is alive, and continues to attempt to solve some of the biggest puzzles of Wikipedia. Think about the scope of the issue here. We're dealing with core issues that have been debated since day one of Wikipedia. This is a formula that will never be perfect, but that shouldn't stop us from trying. FICT (in parts), WAF, and other pages caught on as good ideas that spread like fire.

You all don't have to agree on the same thing. We've been trying to do something like that, and it's not working out.

One idea is to make more than one FICT, in a sense. If we don't have a single consensus then we should present the major view points and the thinking behind them. As an editor seeking guidance (in the true meaning of the word) that would be very helpful to me. I would want to know why some people think one way, and why others feel differently.

I believe that is the future of Wikipedia guidelines for controversial topics like this one. Present different ideas and points, lead into further reading for those points, and make that itself the guideline. Let the good ideas spread, let editors listen to more than one idea of what FICT should be, and allow them to be more informed about the issue itself.

It's the most honest way to present the issue to other editors that I can think of. You don't have to call it a guideline by Wikipedia's definition, but it would be a great tool for our editors, whatever it's called.

If my idea sounds strange, it might be because I haven't been using Wikipedia regularly since several months ago ;) -- Ned Scott 05:40, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I am more hopeful we won't have to make more than one FICT, and that we will be able to agree on a single unified guideline. I agree with you that the process of hammering out a compromise is useful, as the issues where there are disagreements are now becoming explicit, whereas they hidden or not clearly understood in the past. A recent shift in my understanding of where there has been disagreement relates to the realisation that we need to seperate "topic inclusion criteria" from "article deletion criteria". This is necessary, because we need to have topic inclusion criteria that conform with Wikipedia's existing policies and guidelines, whilst at the same time providing guidance on article deletion criteria that reflects the process of peer review at WP:AFD. We can do this by including these two strands of the discussion in seperate but complimentary sections, namely "Notability of ficitonal topics" and "Articles that don't meet the inclusion criteria". Once we agree on a two tier approach, I think it will have sufficient common ground to have one guideline on fictional topics that meets all our requirements. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:52, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I think a two -tier approach is absolutely necessary now; one tier for existing articles, and one for new articles (see my Grandfather approach above). We don't want to penalize older articles and force a fait accompli situation, but at the same time, we need to avoid lax standards that would allow for lots of fiction element articles that will never likely demonstrate notability. I think the grandfather approach (with some agreed-on date to decide old-vs-new) is the easiest way of going forward. --MASEM (t) 23:05, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't think applying a date will be accepted, since it is an exemption by another name. Its a bit like saying, "Wednesday is Anything Can Happen Day!", but it won't work, because there is no reasonable arguement that could explain why notability would not apply then as it does now. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 13:49, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

Not really. If we propose a working solution at large, we can include a specific date in that proposal, and if it passes, we give fair notice about that date. It would be reasonably offset in the future to give time to get the word out as well. For example, if we had managed to assert through global discuss consensus on this approach today (March 20) I would assert the grandfather date to be May 1. It is only arbitrary if we assert it in a vacuum without announcing it.
The other way to do it, and that is more bitey, is to work to assert a new speedy delete for new fictional topics that immediately fail whatever qualifiers we assert for them, so that they can be caught on New Page Patrol, with any other normal deletions being taken the route of "article deletion criteria". I really don't like that as it does bite newer editors, but it's the only other way to watch new fiction articles other than looking at the date of creation. --MASEM (t) 15:37, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

You say not really, but you don't provide a reasonable arguement that could explain why notability would not apply on one date and not another. Without a knock out arguement, it won't stand up to peer review nor will it be enforceable. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 15:48, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

We're saying, as part of a compromise on how fiction is handled, that there are a lot of existing articles on fiction that should not suddenly fall under stricter standards and thus give them time to be sorted out, but at the same time, newer articles should be written to these higher standards. We need a line to define "existing" verses "new". A hard date (even a soft date, "articles created around or after May 2009") is that line that would be needed if we took that approach. --MASEM (t) 15:53, 20 March 2009 (UTC)

If you are refering to WP:GNG as "stricter standards", then they are already being governed by them. We just can't provide an exemption to articles written before a past or future date, as there is notability is not temporary. WP:N can almost be said to the Alpha and Omega of inclusion criteria; it is not guideline that can be switched on and off like a light switch. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 12:09, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

next step

People are somewhat divided on whether to abandon this proposal. Some people never liked it to begin with, but others simply don't know what the next step would be if we decided to change it based on feedback. My question to both camps -- whether you think this proposal is a failure or not -- is what proposal do you think *will* gain consensus on Wikipedia? How will that new consensus proposal differ from what we have now, and/or what will be the new starting point?

If nobody can come up with anything with a lick of hope, I think the #Proposal_to_gain_more_support_from_the_community had some merit, especially when you examine the number of people who just wanted a simpler guideline. I'm not sure we're going to gain much more support with different inclusion/exclusion balance, because I think we're pretty close to the center of public opinion. The number of "too inclusionist" !votes roughly balanced out with the "too exclusionist" !votes.

We've beat the "failure" issue to death. If this is a failure (whether catastrophic or marginal), then what do you think will succeed? Randomran (talk) 14:09, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

WP:N, which has recently reestablished that is has support from the community in general. Fram (talk) 14:46, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this guideline can be marked as fail. Although I agree with Fram that WP:N is effectively the default guideline (if I understand him correctly), if it did, I don't think this will happen because we do have a big problem with most articles on fiction offering little, if any encyclopedic coverage. WP:FICT will become a guideline in some form, as there is a real needs to address the dual real-world/fantasy world nature of fictional coverage, and WP:WAF is to far removed from article inclusion to provide guidance on this issue. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 16:41, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Do you not think you're going at this backwards? Why not describe what people are doing. They're merging stuff into lists, and breaking stuff out when they can source enough material. There are a large number of good articles being written as you continue to discuss this. Put it to bed. It doesn't matter any more. If you want to capture consensus, just tell people to go read WP:N. People have moved on from this fight, they've learnt how to use WP:N and they're starting to source stuff in great sources. If you want to be of any use, start listing sources where people can get info from. Point them to DVD commentaries, point them to established authors, point them to credible blogs, point them to online reportage, point them to old print magazines, point them anywhere. For roleplaying, point them to Dragon and White Dwarf. For comics point them to The Comics Journal and Wizard. For television, point them to TV Zone, for science fiction point them to Starburst, for fantasy point them wherever it is you go. These sources exist. They can be summarised. Go tell them to do it, go tell them to summarise, to cite their sources, to cite any opinion to a recognised expert, to build encyclopedic articles. Just don't get all stuffy and tell them not to write something unless fifty newspapers and academically published authors have written 5000 page treatises on the Bat-Signal. If it is sourced, if it is verifiable, we'll make a purse out of it. We'll place it where it is useful, where it is verifiable. If we stop thinking of this page as a barrier and start thinking of it as a gateway, we'll be on the right track. Move on. Hiding T 21:08, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
- I'd like to think this guideline was making an attempt to describe what people were already doing. The problem is that a lot of people don't really like what we're already doing, so they'll insist upon "fixing" the current behavior where articles are being "improperly" kept/deleted in a "disruptive" way. Hence no consensus for the guideline, or at least the version that existed a month or so ago. Randomran (talk) 22:22, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
  - Consensus is not unanimity. This guideline worked best and had a strong consensus back when it told people that some fictional characters get articles if they warrant it, and that those that don't warrant it will be merged or deleted. When people wanted to start working out which characters warranted it, the problems started. Go back to the simple stuff. You know the best solution might be to simply re-state Wikipedia:Verifiability. When working out which fictional concepts to cover in Wikipedia, please bear in mind that if no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it. What more could you possibly add, or want to add? Why make it so complicated? Why give people a reason to argue. That already has consensus, so it is the end of the argument. There's nothing to disagree with, and nothing to expand upon. Got a dispute over a given article? Use the article talk page, tag the article appropriately and look for merge targets or consider prodding. We don't need to be here. Move on. Hiding T 22:35, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
    - I don't think that line in WP:V that came about after you proposed it actually has community-wide consensus. --Pixelface (talk) 04:08, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
      - Ok, if you are correct then you should easily be able to remove it, shouldn't you? So I look forwards to that working out. Hiding T 09:35, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
        Re-stating yourself is easy. But removing things from policy nowadays is actually more difficult than you might think. Consensus to remove & consensus to be policy are two different beasts. I believe in the latter, not the former. Although one editor did express an opinion in this thread that that sentence did not belong in V, as well as this thread. Some people seem to enjoy creating new 27b-stroke-6's for Wikipedia. Personally, I look forward to Harry Tuttle's arrival. I'll disengage again now. --Pixelface (talk) 07:45, 29 March 2009 (UTC)
  - Perhaps rather than trying to set-up extra sets of guidelines we need to revert back to the previous version and make it more of a guide to help people deal with the question of notability in fiction based on solutions/precedents that editors have come up with. The let people use their common sense/consensus in AfDs, merges, etc. based on the broader guidelines, like WP:N and WP:V. Primary sources are fine but don't establish notability (for example a creator saying on their blog that a character was based on specific people/ideas), if am article is failing on WP:N then start a merge discussion to merge it into an appropriate article (so a character would go to a "minor characters" list), etc. People's time would be better served discussing how to deal with problematic articles (as Hiding and I are for comics) and assembling resources that can be used (again as we've been doing here: WP:CMC/REF, because there are a lot of resources out there it is often that people haven't gone out looking for them and this helps). (Emperor (talk) 22:44, 24 March 2009 (UTC))
    - Exactly. Maybe, if you want to move this forwards, start telling people how to judge the reliability of a source with regards fiction. Point out that dvd commentaries are perfect reliable sources for creator opinion and production details, as are reviews. Point out that print magazines are good reliable sources. Caution people to consider bias; for example an actor suggesting the character he is portraying is an important protagonist may be beefing up his role, and that a reviewer, historian, scholar or creator is better placed to source an opinion on importance to the work from. Point out that blogs by respected writers are reliable sources of opinion. Point to statistics as reliable sources for what they measure, point to the established websites that cover a field and have gained credence within the relevant field. Tell people how to evaluate a source and discern the reliability of what it says. That's a potential way forwards. Hiding T 22:49, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
      - To some extent you're right: there is no problem, because we have WP:V and WP:N and even WP:OR that all make third-party sources a requirement. But there's a problem when a small but significant group of editors completely ignore these basic consensus principles. They insist there is no consensus for these principles, and it's frustrating to ask them what there *is* consensus for, because they often propose ideas that have even less support than what we have now. So we end up with this ferocious WP:BATTLEGROUND that spills out onto AFDs, and DRVs, and ANIs, and even ArbCom. Coming up with a standard for which characters we keep or delete was an effort to save people a lot of agony. Randomran (talk) 23:39, 24 March 2009 (UTC)
        This would seem to imply this was supposed to be a solution to much broader problems and with such a wide aim you are always going to fall short. This can't really hope to "fix" a problem with a small group of editors over core guidelines. Especially if they haven't been compromising. I have to say I am surprised as I've found most editors perfectly open to having the guidelines pointed out to them and any ongoing problems can be sorted out through a consensus in the relevant project. It may be there are disfunctional projects but that would have to be dealt with in a different way by addressing the issue directly. As I say above assembling resources and help can go a long way to heading these issues off at the pass, because there are sources out there. Equally, establishing structures that can help preserve information can go a long way to mollify a lot of concerns (a lot of articles that fail tend to be an infobox/image with a over-abundance of plot which can usually be trimmed down to a size where merging to an overview article is viable. I can name names but I'm sure we've all seen dozens of such articles) - a lot of the concern is about the loss of important information. Of course, it may be some people just love acres and acres of in-universe plot with no sources but they have to be few and far between (and would be better directing their main attentions to specific Wikia projects) but such efforts will leave them in a tiny minority and ultimately the bottom line is we have to work with a consensus. (Emperor (talk) 02:18, 25 March 2009 (UTC))

You people are all arguing over what to carve into a dead tree and what sign to hang on it, completely forgetting that you each have a bag full of seeds slung over your shoulder, and your own land. --Pixelface (talk) 04:03, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I was just about to say the same thing. How many times have I seen a new section on this page that says "next step"? I think the next step is to give it a frigging rest, jeeze. --Nick Penguin_(contribs) 04:06, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Wow, you didn't read a single word I wrote. Jeez. Hiding T 09:30, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I did read it, so I read it again to make sure we were thinking the same thing. It sounds like we are both tired of watching this conversation wander in the same unproductive circles. The same rejected solutions, the same unhelpful repetitions, all that fun stuff, and none of it has done anything for this proposal except to frustrate a lot of people. If this is going to go anywhere, then everyone needs to take a step back, take a deep breath and a chill pill, and come back at it in a month or two with some new ideas, not slightly rephrased old ideas, because the old ideas didn't work the first time. And hopefully you're right, maybe in two months everyone will realize that WP:N and WP:V really were sufficient all along, and this page really could be marked as historical. --Nick Penguin_(contribs) 14:49, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I keep playing around with this idea in my head for making more than one "guideline" (basically quasi-essays or whatever one wants to call them) and having WP:FICT cover the major ones. Kind of like a summary page that says "some people feel this way, some other people feel this way", etc. Wikipedia is too big to get everyone to agree on the same thing when it comes to something like this. It was pretty hard to get everyone to agree when we weren't nearly as big. Allow good advice and arguments to stand for themselves, and see what people take from that. The tags on the page don't matter that much, but the ideas do.

In other words.. put everything out there and see which ones people actually use over time. I don't know if that will work or not, but it's an idea. -- Ned Scott 07:27, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I've just restored the essay tag per this discussion and the one above it. I can only see Randomran and Gavin interested in working up a proposal. Maybe they'd be best doing it in user space? The consensus seems to be to move on. Hiding T 09:41, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
- I think most people have grown so tired of active FICT proposals that they have indeed moved on. Maybe WP:N is sufficient for most fiction discussions now, but I guess that this or another new FICT proposal can/will be discussed in 6 or 12 months again if it's still necessary then. I am fine with FICT as an essay for the foreseeable future. – sgeureka ^t•c 12:21, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
  - I think it would be useful to see if FICT-as-essay helps. One facet of the issue is that TTN hasn't done any edits since 2008, and the most recent fiction todo has been the South Park episodes, so it's hard to judge then and now because more than one thing has changed. --MASEM (t) 13:13, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
    - I can certainly live with restoring the tag, as much as trying to press forward with refining this proposal. I'm just trying to understand what "moving on" means. If "moving on" is just going to be a return to the WP:BATTLEGROUND of a clump of editors enforcing our current guidelines, and a bunch of other editors insisting the guidelines don't apply to them, then we're going to repeat a lot of the same problems that most of these same users hate. A return to the battleground means that someone *is* going to need to put together a new proposal a month or so from now, after things have cooled down. Randomran (talk) 15:20, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
      - Moving on would mean that we put this all behind us, and just work out ways to work together. We already have the tools to avoid Wikipedia becoming a battleground; they are at WP:CONSENSUS, WP:AGF and WP:CIV. Anyone who escalates a situation to one of hostility should either be talked to calmly, explaining the situation, or ignored. For more help see the dispute resolution process. There is no need for a proposal, there is simply a need for editors to learn how to collaborate. That's what move on means. It means move on and work in article space rather than project space. Hiding T 16:10, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
        Exactly. As I noted, the only major "fire" in terms of fiction of recent was over at List of South Park episodes and I think I helped suggested a workable route forward from that that no one seems to be upset about (it's a good faith assumption approach on both sides). If it escalates, then we'll have to decide what to do then, but until things clearly fall out of balance, I think it makes sense to let this go, keep it an essay for good (but unactionable advice) and go from there. --MASEM (t) 16:13, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
        
        I'm willing to give it a try. If some conflicts escalate, I may have questions for both of you, to try your more optimistic approach. Often discussions degenerate into a non-collaborative spirit, even if people hide behind pleasantries and cold "logic". Randomran (talk) 18:06, 25 March 2009 (UTC)
I don't agree with Hiding's views about converting WP:FICT into an essay. In my view we have got to the point where I think there is a general realisation that we can't give fictional topics special treatment that would involve an exemption from other Wikipedia policies and guidelines, or making new ones up that are not based on objective evidence. I can understand why Hiding would now like to ditch this proposal now we have reached this point. All of the arguements in favour of providing exemptions have been tried and refuted, and now we have to build a guideline which addresses which fictional topics are suitable for inclusion - those that are subject of real-world coverage from reliable secondary sources that might be presumed suitable for an standalone article in Wikipedia - whilst explaining why those topics that don't are not encyclopedic. I still think we have an important mission to accomplish, and I invite editors who are interested in fiction as an important subject area to continue in discussions that will result in this proposal being rebased. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 20:16, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I have changed the tag (again), as this is not a proposed guideline any longer. A new proposal may be made someday, but the current text is clearly a rejected proposal, and to continue to tag it as a proposal after almost everyone agrees that there is no clear consensus (although it had considerable support) for it is incorrect. Fram (talk) 07:38, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

It is still a proposed guideline, regardless of the tag. The idea that "almost everyone agrees that there is no clear consensus" is debateable; if the last RFC is anything to go by, love it or hate it, it is still of huge interest to the editorial community. I personally would not tag it as failed: it is a bit premature to bury this guideline while it is still alive. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:13, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

No Gavin. Almost everyone agrees that the result of the last RFC was a clear "no consensus", even though it has the interest of some people (that's why we're here). You can always formulate a brandnew proposal, but it is incorrect to label something which has, after countless discussions and an RFC, failed to gain consensus, as a proposal. There is a day when something ceases to be a proposal and becomes a failed proposal, and that day has come for the current WP:FICT. Fram (talk) 08:26, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

So? The discussions are on going. Quit if you want. I invite interested editors to stay on and continue to make amendments until we do have a working guideline. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 10:19, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you start a new proposal (from scratch or based on this one) somewhere else (userpage, sandbox, subpage of this page, ...), get some initial discussion and thoughts on it, and then present it again to the community, instead of continued tinkering over a dead horse? People agreeing that this is no longer an active guideline proposal include (from the last two sections on this talk page alone) Ikip, Phil Sandifer, Masem, Hiding, ThuranX, NickPenguin, sgeureka, Ramdomran and me. Peopl claiming that this is still an active proposal seems mostly to be limited to you alone. Whether it is a failed proposal or an essay can be debated, but to mark it as an active proposal is both ignoring the RFC and the majority of comments made since. Fram (talk) 10:41, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Since WP:FICT is the site the proposed inclusion criteria for fiction, I don't see any reason why we need to have an alternative venue. Masem regularly writes alternative drafts to WP:FICT, but in the end he has to bring it here for discussion, since this is the forum where changes to the proposed guideline have to be discussed. I still don't understand why tagging this proposal as an essay or "failed", when it must be obvious to you that discussions are ongoing and they certainly have not stopped for sure. Unless you are keen to sabotage the ongoing discussions (which I don't think is your intention), then lets continue.
If you look back through the archived discussions, you will see there have been frequent proposals to mark this guideline as failed when one or more participants is not happy for what ever reason. What you really need to do is say why you are unhappy; what aspects of the current proposal you are unhappy with and why they don't work for you. Marking this disucussion as "failed", "essay" or "historic" will not get your grievances addressed - you have to roll up your slieves and make your complaints explicit. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 12:01, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

No, first you need a fresh proposal, then you can tag it as proposal. To keep a rejected proposal around as "proposal" is useless. Why I am unhappy is irrelevant; this proposal has failed to get the consensus behind it. I am not convinced that we need a WP:FICT, but I am always willing to discuss a new proposal. Until then, I want this page to reflect the current status, not what it may become someday. Fram (talk) 12:06, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I have a fresh proposal being tabled under Inclusion criteria: Moving Forward. You can tag WP:FICT as anything that you want, but the reality is that discussions will continue on the basis that this is a proposed guideline, even if you don't want to discuss the specific issues behind your general complaint that it has "failed". --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 12:15, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

What "specific issues"? It has failed to get a consensus. What more should I discuss? I repeat, I don't see the need for a separate guideline. However, if and when a new text has become polished and mature enough to be considered a "proposed guideline", I'll take a look at it and give my opinion of it, just like I have done with this one. For now, let me just correct your vision that I tagged it because 'I considered it failed, and instead give you the text of the tag: "This proposal has failed to attain consensus within the Wikipedia community. A failed proposal is one for which a consensus to accept is not present after a reasonable amount of time, regardless of continuing discussion." This tag describes exactly the current situation and your reality that "discussions will continue". What's the big problem with it then? Fram (talk) 13:50, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Or a better way to say it, I think it's pretty much impossible at the present time to objectify how to we should consider the treatment of fiction element articles, beyond that the more you meet the WP:GNG, the more likely they will be kept if challenged at AFD. The discussion from Phil's proposal showed that there was always a devil in the details due to inconsistencies. Should we try to work those out now? No, but that's not saying we'll never try again. --MASEM (t) 14:09, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

See, I don't think we need any more guidelines, per se - something with a strict breakdown of how notability applies to fiction. To be honest WP:GNG pretty much covers the bases. Instead something more like an essay might be better: explaining to people how to source things, what is good for what and how we can WP:PRESERVE information. Personally I want something that will help improve the articles and/or information we have not a set of criteria we can point to which demonstrates to people why the article is failing WP:N and needs to be deleted/merged (which most people can already interpret as it applies to fiction). I'd rather take a less antagonistic/confrontational approach which tends to only alienate people and polarise opinions. What it does is put some of the responsibility on to the relevant projects - to establish sources that can be used (and what they are good for - for example, the TV project might have information on viewing figures, good places to find reviews, information about what DVD commentaries can be used for, etc.) and establish structures/procedures that can absorb articles that fail notability (often in AfDs you run into no consensus when the option is either keep or delete but if you can provide an alternative it makes the discussion easier and more likely to end in a consensus). A compromise between radically inclusionist and deletionist standpoints, which could ultimately benefit the project as a whole (there are clearly times when material needs to be deleted but a lot of times there is borderline content that you'd not want to lose but can't really justify keeping). I've been discussing this with a few people here in relation to the Comics Project and we are working on this kind of thing. An essay format would allow us to draw together thoughts and ideas about what people have found works best - in improving failing articles as well as the best ways of dealing with those that aren't. (Emperor (talk) 23:07, 26 March 2009 (UTC))

Many editors speak of a compromise in these discussion about the inclusion criteria for fiction, but it always seems that the only thing that result in is compromised quality. Fiction is one of the subject area that desperately needs a guideline as most articles in this area fail WP:NOT and WP:N. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 22:34, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Fiction and Primary Sources

Gavin, it sounds to me like your trying to argue that WP:PRIMARY should not apply to characters. That somehow, even if they already meet WP:N, the use of primary sources to state anything is wrong. If that's not the case, please describe when you think it would be appropriate. If not, well then you should take your argument to WP:V because it holds no ground here for stating facts, which is what we have been trying to get across to you. Not synthesis, facts.じんない 22:29, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Again you have fallen into the trap of describing fictional characters in terms of "facts" that can be summarised from the primary source that don't contain any factual biographical detail at all, they contain fiction. If you want to get real-world facts, you have to cite real-world commentary from reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject matter, othewise risk creating synthesis. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 23:35, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

The "fact" that Romeo and Juliet kill themselves, that Dorothy's travels to Oz were all a dream, or that Spongebob lives in Bikini Bottom are all facts - they're facts about the works or elements of fiction, but those facts are written down or on film or whatever and are otherwise fixed points. The primary work (ignoring translation errors) clearly states these. Now, we agree that from notability, we can't just fill an article with facts taken from the primary work and call it good, but at the same time, there's nothing wrong with using a reasonable number of such facts to describe the work or element in context to help the reader. --MASEM (t) 23:45, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Even with secondary sources, you always risk creating synthesis. The question is whether you do create synethsis, or whether you don't. You can spot when someone is actively interpreting a work of fiction, rather than passively observing and summarizing it. That's the line. It doesn't mean we disbar primary sources. And indeed, we don't. See WP:PRIMARY, or see featured article Master Chief (Halo) which makes liberal use of primary sources. While I understand and respect your standards, they're much higher than anyone else's in the entire community. Randomran (talk) 23:47, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Gavin, that is a fringe idea of the interpretation of WP:V and therefore unlikely to get enough support for anyone to warrant compromising to meet that standard.じんない 23:55, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

It is not a fringe interpretation, and I can demonstrate the issues which you are trying to skirt over, or perhaps don't understand. The key problem with in universe coverage of a topic is that it is not factual, and therefore not reliable. This is the nature of fiction - the characters and events are a fictional construct whose objective is to support some sort of narrative; fiction was never intended to be a used as a source real-world coverage for an encyclopedic article, as the "facts" which it contains are not verfiable.
To illustrate this point, I would draw your attention to debate about whether a proup of non-human fictional characters could be described as a race which occured during Kender mediation. To cut a long story short, Kender were described as a race in versions of the article prior to mediaton, which was a fairly fundamental misunderstanding, because there is no real-world source available to support this crackpot idea and it would be impossible to write an article along these lines. Some editors insisted on using the term "race" on the basis that this was what was used in the primary source, but they were failing to understand that the primary sources are fictional, not factual. The issue was resolved when we agreed on using the correct real-world term fantasy race, which is type of literary trope known as a Metonymy. The point I am making is that fictional coverage taken primary source is not reliable because it is not rooted in the real-world, where characters are discussed in terms of literary convention.
Another example that fictograhical articles are original research is illustrated by the section on the so called "fictional origin" of Kender. The primary sources provide at least two distinct "creation" type myths to explain their fictional origin, but who can say there are not more, some of which may contradict the others? None of these so called facts can be verified from the primary source if they are contradictory. This illustrates the main problem with "biographies" of fictional characters is that the contributors to these articles are forced to interpret the literary intentions of the authors, and to fill in the gaps or plaster over contradictions. It may be legitimate for authors to use fictography as a legitimate of literary genre, but for contributors to articles to use a type of literary genre to write articles it is clearly a form of original research. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:53, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

You've wandered towards the end there. When you say that "The primary sources provide at least two distinct "creation" type myths to explain their fictional origin, but who can say there are not more, some of which may contradict the others? None of these so called facts can be verified from the primary source if they are contradictory." Your last sentence seems to state that it is not a fact that two fictive origins have been given, when clearly that is a fact. It also appears to have launched into an in-universe model of thiniking, since it seems to be indicating that within the fictive universe more origins may exist. That's speculation, and has no p;lace in our universe, where the primary source would verify only tow origins had been published. And the end of the first sentence isn't addressing the issue either, because it applies to anything. Just because we have a source which states x, we can never guarantee that there may also be a source which states y. Other than that, I don't disagree. I avoid a fictive bios for much the same reasoning. Hiding T 11:05, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

A work of fiction is reliable only for the coverage of in-universe aspects of the work of fiction. So while our current policies and guidelines point to editors to maintain an out-of-universe approach towards writing about fiction (in that yes, it is true that Kender are a fictional race, and not simple a race), details on specific in-universe aspects can still be summarized from the primary source, augmented by secondary/independent sources whenever possible. The second point about being two origin myths - well, the same thing can happen with non-fictional articles as well. I would suspect that articles on many extraterrestrial phenomena like black holes and quasars do not include every possible theory as to the creation of these phenomena, and nor is it our place to try to align the theories so they all work nicely. In the Kender example, it would be perfectly valid to spell out the two myths for creation (presuming these were in-universe myths thought by the characters) and not attempt to make any assessment of which is correct - that's valid use of WP:V - but any attempt to merge the two or correct their differences is OR unless independently sourced. Again, a lot of what you have against using the primary source for fiction can occur everywhere else by poor editors and lack of working towards consensus and editing standards. The only aspect that fiction introduces is the potential to treat the in-universe as occurring as a real-world event, and that's just a matter of avoiding certain writing style, not sourcing. --MASEM (t) 12:14, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

You're talking past each other. Have a look at Kender, I think you'd both be on the same page. Hiding T 13:48, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry Gavin, but I think you're alone on that strict interpretation of WP:OR. WP:PRIMARY, a section of WP:OR, contradicts almost everything you're saying. "Without a secondary source, a primary source may be used only to make descriptive claims", and, "an article about a novel may cite passages from the novel to describe the plot." You're going to have to make changes to our actual policy. And then you're going to have to systematically use the revised version of WP:OR to argue to demote featured articles such as Cortana, Flood (Halo), Master Chief (Halo), Bart Simpson, Homer Simpson, Pauline Fowler, Batman, Superman, Jason Voorhees, Jack Sparrow, Jabba the Hutt, Palpatine, and Padmé Amidala. If you get that far, then yes, we'll remove any suggestion that you can rely upon primary sources from this essay. But don't be surprised if you have trouble building a consensus for any of that. Randomran (talk) 15:47, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

Yhat's what I've been trying to say. While he is certainly entitled to his opinion, any gudeline must follow policy. WP:V and WP:OR clearly allow for primary sources to say descriptive things. Now the amount of in-universe detail may be up for interpretation, but at least some in-universe information is needed to know the context of the subject the article is about.じんない 21:46, 2 April 2009 (UTC)

You're not listening to Gavin. And you can take Batman and Superman off your list, because they don't breach the points Gavin is discussing. Gavin is firmly behind using primary source to make descriptive claims. But his point is that it often involves speculation to rationalise primary source. Like I say, if you actually look at the article Gavin is discussing, Kender, then I think you'd find you are on the same page. This is why WP:FICT gets bogged down. Nobody actually listens, you're all too busy defending positions which are not under attack. Hiding T 08:35, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Isn't Gavin the one who was asserting in the past that Kermit the Frog wasn't a fictional character?... - jc37 08:36, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

In the sense that Kermit the Frog is a piece of cloth, yes he was. I think again, that debate foundered because people were not listening to each other. Gavin's point was that Kermit the Frog isn't real, so shouldn't be talked about as if he was real. The problem was, most people are already on that page. What Gavin wanted to get across is that you can't write Kermit the Frog did this, and Kermit the Frog did that, because Kermit the Frog doesn't do anything. He's a work of fiction. Now the area of debate is at what level do our readers suspend their disbelief, and we can start talking on the level that everyone knows Kermit is fictional, so we can discuss Kermit being seen to do this and that. It's kind of like how Superman is just lines on a page, or better yet The Treachery of Images. I tend to disagree with Gavin over issues of consensus more than anything else, but I think Gavin thinks we disagree over a lot more. I want this stuff to be written about as it exists to us, not how it would exist if it were real. I support plot summaries, and I support utilising plot in an article, and I don't think an article should be deleted just because it is solely or mostly plot. But I do think it should be improved. Hiding T 12:01, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

In answer to Jinnai's opening question, I am not against the use of primary sources in articles about fictional characters, since primary sources are very useful for providing context in support of real-world commentary from reliable secondary sources which are independent. I think we are agreed on this point, and I think this is the approach that, for the most part, has been adopted in the article about the fictional characters called Kender - where a primary source is cited, it is identified as such to distinguish it from the real-world coverage. The only problem with that article is that real-world commentary (from the creators of Kender) is not independent of the primary source, but that is another issue.
Where I think we disagree is that the use of primary sources which are not being used to provide context for real-world coverage. As Hiding makes clear, to rationalise the primary source involves speculation. When writing about fictional elements, primary sources provide context to real-world commentary, but not "facts". Primary sources are good servants, but bad masters. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 11:55, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're even proposing anymore. You're saying we can use primary sources for fictional characters and such. I can't really agree or disagree with whether they're better servants or masters. Obviously we want people summarizing a work, rather than analyzing it. And WP:OR already states that explicitly. So what's the problem? Randomran (talk) 04:11, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

What is being proposed is to have inclusion criteria which are consistent with this dissussion, as I think we are agreed on this position:

If a fictional topic has received significant real-world coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article.

Up to now, it has been argued that the above statement is just a restatement of WP:N, but this is ignoring the key issue with fiction that every article needs to be underpined by real-world coverage, otherwise it risks failing WP:NOT#PLOT. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:39, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

The version of this that failed passed PLOT. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 09:50, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

That's what I'm trying to figure out. WP:OR, which is policy and this at most would be adopted as a guideline, states that "Without a secondary source, a primary source may be used only to make descriptive claims, the accuracy of which is verifiable by a reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge. For example, an article about a novel may cite passages from the novel to describe the plot, but any interpretation of those passages needs a secondary source." That clearly uses an example of something generally used without context as fictional: "novel". That means in Kender, the "fictional origin" section uses declarative statements about the origin itself. It clearly by the tone "fictional" denotes that this isn't real. However for a higher class article to look at for comparison, Sasuke Uchiha would be better. It goes into his background, but it starts out mentioning he is a fictional character and it is reinforced by a "creation and concept" section. Furthermore the images themself also as visual representations that further clarrify this is a fictional character as animated people don't exist in the real-world. While the section on his character is possibly done more in-universe, the rest of the page already gives enough context that this is a fictional character. As if that weren't enough, the first paragraph in the character section starts with the statement that Sasuke exists in the Naruto Manga.じんない 14:04, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Whilst I appreciate that WP:OR allows an article about a novel to cite passages from the novel to describe the plot, it was never intended to give licence to slicing and dicing the individual episodes and scenes in order to construct a narrative sequence viewed from the "perspective" of one charcter. Attempting to view plot from the perspective of a fictional character is speculation. Although descriptive claims may be made to describe the plot of a work of fiction, the Sasuke's Character outline goes beyond describing the plot to performing a complete rewrite of it, using a perspective and narrative sequence that has been synthesised. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 15:25, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

By that same logic, we would be able to only use a biography of a real person (which does not exist for many) to write the article on that person instead of bringing together a plethora of other reliable sources about that person to summarize that article. Again, breaking down sources (primary, secondary, whatever) and reassembling them to provide a summary of the sources without introducing OR or POV is exactly what an encyclopedia is supposed to. Now, I do agree that whenever it is possible that when doing this for fiction that real-world information from sources be brought in for better support, but it is a long-standing consensus that it is not required per Jinnai's quote from WP:V. (This works on the assumption that notability is demonstrated elsewhere in the article). --MASEM (t) 15:35, 6 April 2009 (UTC)
The fact remains that we can, and we do, and the guidelines let us. Summarizing the parts of a plot that pertain one character is no more synthesis than summarizing the parts of a history book that pertain to one country. Summary is not synthesis. Randomran (talk) 16:02, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

In answer to Masem, you are mixing up the logic of the real-world with a fantasy world perspective. Sure, you could use primary sources to construct a real-persons biography, but that would be legitimate since they exist in real-time. In the world of fiction plot runs to a different timetable and the perspective is chosen by the author. Fictography is a useful metafictional device, but it is not encyclopedic. Your analogy is not valid. In answer to Randomran, citing primary sources to provide context to real-world coverage is legitimate, but writing fictography is synthesis. If you want to see an example of primary sources being used to construct a fictography of a fictional country, read the article Silverymoon and you will see what I mean. Primary sources are good servants when they provide context in support of real-world commentary, but in this article they have become the "master" source with the result that they no longer provide a summary of the plot, they are being used to construct a synthesised story with an entirely different fictional perspective. This is synthesis in its worst form, but not much worse than the Sasuke's Character outline, in that they both try to present the "fictional facts" outside of context of the primary sequence of events described in the fictional work. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 16:19, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

That's a question of execution, rather than anything being inherently wrong with primary sources. History of East Asia sucks too. But somebody will reference it, improve it, discuss it... There's nothing inherently wrong with selectively summarizing a source to focus on one specific aspect of a topic -- whether you're choosing the relevant parts of a primary OR secondary source. A consensus of editors believe that these kinds of articles can represent the best that Wikipedia has to offer, including Cortana, Flood (Halo), Master Chief (Halo), Bart Simpson, Homer Simpson, Pauline Fowler, Batman, Superman, Jason Voorhees, Jack Sparrow, Jabba the Hutt, Palpatine, and Padmé Amidala. Randomran (talk) 16:28, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

This conversation is running in circles (I don't think we're going to convince Gavin, nor vice versa) and I've gone to seek more help on the issues of OR/SYN on WT:OR (here). --MASEM (t) 16:43, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

In answer to Randomran, its more than a matter of execution. I think summarising the plot provides context for works of fiction, but chopping up the plot summary and reordering it for articles about about characters is synthesis. Maybe we will have to agree to disagree on this issue. But when I read articles like Silverymoon, I can tell there is something wrong with the way the primary sources are being used, related to taking episodes and scenes out of context from the primary sequence of the plot as written by the author. Perhaps this is too fine a point to be grasped, but changing the perspective and focus of a fictional work to create a fictography and then presenting the result in such a way as if it was fact is a way of contructing a pretend article. This is analagous to playing with dolls or toy soldiers and pretending that their actions are real. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 16:56, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

We're going to have to agree to disagree. It's not just that what you find wrong is happening all over Wikipedia. It's also that what you find wrong is resulting in articles that are considered to be among the best (top 1%) of articles on Wikipedia. You're still entitled to your opinion, obviously. But until more people see things your way, it's probably not appropriate to use it as a part of this essay. You might have more luck persuading people by taking those articles to the featured article review, or modifying our policy on WP:OR. Randomran (talk) 17:11, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

I will accept that it may be onerous to insist that primary source should be used to provide real-world coverage of fictional in every case. However, I think we are agreed that if a fictional topic has received significant real-world coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, then it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 13:22, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think anyone denying that last point for notability purposes (in as far as we're considering this right now). --MASEM (t) 15:25, 7 April 2009 (UTC)
Nobody here disputes WP:N, and an article that meets the guideline is surely notable. This essay is something a little different though. Randomran (talk) 15:52, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Related sources

A thought occurred to me today after the discussions at WP:PLOT. What we could perhaps look at is an umbrella approach. We've got a fictional topic, say Buffy. Buffy is a notable topic. Now within coverage of Buffy, we've got independent sources, primary sources and related sources. Independent sources are going to be newspaper articles and the like. Primary source is the work itself. Related sources are creator commentary and interviews and the like. So here was my thinking on the umbrella approach: If the topic meets WP:N, the topic gets an article. When coverage of the topic gets overly large, areas which have sufficient coverage in related sources get a spin out article. Yes, it is subjective, but if we term it as multiple reliable related sources we could be onto something. If there are trivial related sources, like actor x says he thought his bit part was central to episode x, tough. You're not under the umbrella. So it's kind of, notable topic per WP:N gets article. Element within a notable topic with minimal coverage in independent sourcing but multiple coverage in related sourcing can be spun out per WP:SS if size constraints become an issue. Element within a notable topic with no independent sourcing, minimal coverage in related sources does not get article, but is merged back to a suitable article on either a related element or notable topic. It's a potential way forwards? I appreciate it bears some similarity to the three prongs, but I think it may be short enough and not require reams of explanatory text. Where an article doesn't meet the criteria we could just direct people to both the editing and deleting policies. Have we got something here? Hiding T 15:32, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm not really comfortable with the idea that any old thing can be split out. First, it seems kind of WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Second, it also risks avoiding the necessity of WP:THIRDPARTY sources, which are required by multiple policies. Randomran (talk) 15:52, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the minimum a policy calls for is a third party source. As to indiscrimate, it doesn't meet that either, because we are discriminating. And I haven't, anywhere, said any old thing can be split off. I've laid out fairly objective conditions which should be met before something can be split off. So either I'm not communicating that properly or something else is happening. Hiding T 16:14, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

So long as we take care of the minimum policy on third-party sources, I'm okay with it. As for indiscriminacy though, it's a problem in practice. It's easy to expand a section, any section, and it's almost as easy to find information on development for that section (for video games especially). I'd be more comfortable if we had discriminate classes of things that sometimes get spun out, if there are related sources (and at least one third party source). Say, "A list of characters or episodes is acceptable as part of the coverage of a fictional work. If a section about characters or episodes becomes sufficiently large, with information in related sources, it can be spun out into its own topic." Right now we treat episodes and characters as being a little more worthy of detailed articles about their plot. But articles on inanimate objects or events we don't, because they usually end up going into detailed physical descriptions, or game guide information, or what have you. Randomran (talk) 16:36, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

We're talking past each other. I also disagree with you in some respects. In comics it's preferable to split out sections on objects and events than it is on individual issues, because there is better sourcing available on the former, so each medium requires different handling. That's what I was trying to achieve with my thinking. I think a notability guideline which seeks to cover all of fiction should not limit itself only to those which are episodic in nature, but should try and offer guidance which can be better adapted to suit a case by case approach. There's more to fiction than television and video games. And I'd already pointed out that detailed physical descriptions and game guide information wouldn't be considered related sources. They are primary source. Such sourcing wouldn't be suitable upon which to base an article on, per WP:PLOT. Hiding T 16:45, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

I'm sympathetic that comic books have their own needs, and organizing by episode doesn't make as much sense as organizing around a concrete event or sequence of events. But physical objects are easy to list in a video game, let alone moves. And, unfortunately, they're the kind of thing that does get coverage in developer diaries, outlining how they balanced the rocket launcher, or how they texture mapped the rocks. Which is why I'd prefer to be conservative and focus on one or two discriminate classes of articles that can still be good articles with relaxed standards, and let the other ones be settled with good old fashioned Notability. Randomran (talk) 16:49, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Like I said, if there are trivial related sources, like actor x says he thought his bit part was central to episode x, tough. I'm sure that could be tweaked to read If there are trivial related sources, like developer x says he thought his work texture mapping the rocks was central to the game, tough. But again, we're talking past each other. It's quite clear we want the same thing, I just can't work out how to put that into words. Hiding T 16:57, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I think most of us in the middle of the debate have a good sense about what should have an article and what shouldn't... beyond the articles that are allowed by WP:N. It's just tough to articulate. You want to give the seal of approval to a few solid fiction articles, but you don't want to open the flood gates. We'll have to think about how to get there. Randomran (talk) 17:18, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

In answer to Hiding, I don't see how coverage of fiction can be improved by allowing topics that are only cited in questionable sources as this goes against the spirit of WP:V. Since fiction is a well sourced subject area, I don't see how this proposal could be of benefit, unless you have specific examples to illustrate how anythng less than reliable secondary sources could be provide useful encyclopedic coverage. Afterall, if a source is trivial or not-reliable, then the likelyhood is that the coverage it offers is going to be poor. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 22:30, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Llamas

Funny, this is what a Man in Black replaced the essay tag with:

This page is a thing. It's not a policy, and we're reasonably sure it's not a llama, but beyond that nobody is quite sure.
Perhaps people can't agree on what it means. Perhaps people can't even agree on what it says. Perhaps people on Wikipedia really enjoy arguing about abstract concepts. All in all, it's quite confusing, and you'll probably be better off just reading about llamas instead.

Ikip (talk) 06:43, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. I'm fairly sure this page is in fact a llama. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 12:21, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Cuidado llama! --Gwern (contribs) 13:23 29 March 2009 (GMT)

I don't know about this page being a llama, but it certainly attracts a lot of drama llamas. --Nick Penguin_(contribs) 15:46, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Good for a laugh, and probably some truth to it. Let's move onto more serious matters though. Randomran (talk) 18:03, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

"Either Jones owns a llama, or Brown is in Boston...." — Deckill er 15:50, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

This page is the Wikipedia equivalent of a Pushmi-pullyu; some editors are not sure if it Failed, Historical or just an Essay, but they can't agree because they are not looking at this Proposal from a real-world perpsective.

Perhaps this is better? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 22:14, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I quite like both suggestions. Phil Sandifer (talk) 13:27, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Failed or essay

This is no longer a proposal. There is no consensus, despite it being on the burner for longer than any other proposal in the history of Wikipedia. The wording of the {{Failed}} template spells it out:

This is a failed proposal.

Consensus for its implementation was not established within a reasonable period of time. If you want to revive discussion, please do so below or initiate a thread at the village pump.

I'll repeat the text: A failed proposal is one for which a consensus to accept is not present after a reasonable amount of time, regardless of continuing discussion.

That neatly sums up the situation here. There is no consensus. The amount of time given has been more than reasonable. The continuing discussion is going nowhere, and has to stop at some point. Regroup, rethink, and come back with a NEW proposal. Meantime, give this one a rest, and stop calling for RfCs and Central Discussions.

There is the option of going for {{Historical}}

This page is currently inactive and is retained for historical reference.
Either the page is no longer relevant or consensus on its purpose has become unclear. To revive discussion, seek broader input via a forum such as the village pump.

Or {{WikiProject notability advice}}

This is an essay on notability. It contains the advice and/or opinions of one or more WikiProjects on how notability may be interpreted within their area of interest.

This information is not a formal Wikipedia policy or guideline, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community.

Or {{essay}}

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

My feeling for some time is that this should be tagged as {{WikiProject notability advice}}, as the good work will remain, and people can still consult it for guidance. I'll be bold and tag it as such, as we have reached a point where discussion is not making progress, and some action needs to be taken to end this. SilkTork *^YES! 22:08, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Reasonable also is also flexible. Per the scope of the proposed guideline and it's previous history, that it hasn't reached consensus yet I doubt this is failed. If after another 6 months it still hasn't I might be more inclined. Reasonable also holds that when we have exhausted all known avenues to gain consensus. We haven't. We srill have some I listed right above at a minimum.じんない 22:25, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

As I've said above (e.g. [3]) reverting back to an earlier version and using that as a basis to build more of an essay about notability in fiction seems the best approach. If we did that then {{WikiProject notability advice}} seems the ideal approach. (Emperor (talk) 23:11, 26 March 2009 (UTC))

I think the essay is something that people will be able to live with, since there is a wide amount of support for this guideline, and a lot of the opposition isn't based on disagreement but based on hostility to rule creep. That said, I'd also support continuing on with this proposal, since I still don't think anyone has shown a worthy alternative. And likely, if no one offers a worthy alternative after a couple of months, I think we'll ultimately end up with some kind of improved version of the current proposal. Randomran (talk) 23:15, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

I second that. This is an important proposal if the length and depth of the discussion is anything to go by, and is likely to continue to be so. However, this is more than just a talking shop, as I think the contributors to this proposal want to provide useful guidance to other editors, not just express their own personal opinions. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 23:35, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. I suspect a lot of us have been meeting such issues and are developing ways to deal with these issues within the respective projects. I see this as drawing the general principles together into one place where they might help others deal with them when they run into them (so we don't go reinventing the wheel). Personally I'd like to see ways of improving or preserving things that are not a complete notability failure, as it is this grey area, especially in fiction that seems to be the sticking point. (Emperor (talk) 23:43, 26 March 2009 (UTC))

Failed is my first choice, but I know enough editors support this effort, and I respect that, so I think essay, in whatever form is a good comprimise. Ikip (talk) 02:06, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Ikip on this. {{Failed}} is my first choice since this allows falling back to WP:V and WP:NOTE. I question keeping this version of WP:Notability (fiction) as an {{Essay}} because it would be a conspicuous contradiction of policy, ignoring the requirement for third-party sources under some circumstances. However, if it is felt that progress can be made toward a more broadly acceptable compromise under a different header template, then okay whatever. Next discussion please. / edg ☺ ☭ 12:49, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

An essay tag would still mean that the fallback position is NOTE and V, but it does state that there's some truth that these (or at least NOTE) is not held absolute at AFD. It gives honest, but unenforceable, advice about how to write a fiction element article to avoid the swath of AFD. --MASEM (t) 13:19, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

{{WikiProject notability advice}} is for notability essays created by WikiProjects. It doesn't apply here. --Pixelface (talk) 07:55, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

And it all started back in mid-2007 with my initial draft... I basically stopped participating in the discussion by September of that same year, and I guess none of the variations since have been able to strike a compromise. A real pity, and something we should be ashamed of. — Deckill er 02:51, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Failed is my first choice as well, but out of respect for all the hard work that's been put into it (even though personally this proposed guideline has been the bane of my existence for some time), I think it should be tagged as an essay. Steve Crossin ^Talk/₂₄ 03:25, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Failed or essay are both fine by me. Fram (talk) 07:43, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I think this is a guideline that eventually needs to be established. However, if taking it off the "proposed" burner would take the pressure off and allow some creative work to be done, then by all means keep it as an essay til we have something better to propose. I agree, I don't think all avenues have been exhausted. Have we considered appointing a committee or small group to work on this, perhaps we would have more success if there weren't a hundred voices talking at once and pages of conversations to read every day. --Kraftlos (Talk | Contrib) 10:00, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I can't see a committee working. That was tried before with a a few participants working up a proposal to present to the community. My impression is that it failed because of one comma. That should demonstrate to everyone the ridiculousness of the situation and the need to move on. The page was fine until people saw a need to bring it in line with WP:N. To my mind that rather missed the point that WP:N already existed, so we didn't need to make a second one. WP:V, WP:PLOT, WP:WAF and WP:N are already in existence. From memory, we started from WP:NPOV, and that wasn't enough, so we added WP:NOR and WP:NOT, and then that wasn't enough, so we added WP:V, and then that wasn't enough, so we added WP:FICT, and then that wasn't enough, so we added WP:PLOT and that wasn't enough, so we added WP:N, and that wasn't enough, so we added WP:WAF, but that wasn't enough, so we rewrote WP:FICT, and then that didn't work, so we added WP:PLOTSUM, but that didn't solve everything so we... We're just arguing over the same line in the sand. We just keep moving further down the beach. It's pointless. There's no guidance that is going to work beyond telling people to debate the issue civilly on any given article and reach a consensus. All the guidance in the world and more is already there. One more page will solve nothing. Deckiller's proposal was fine in theory, but failed in practise per two arbitration cases. The problem's started when everyone insisted their way was the best way forwards. The best way forwards is different for every single article. Give it up. Go work on articles, work out what to merge, what to delete and what to keep, and see if people agree with you, and accept it both when they do and when they don't and don't be a dick about it either way. That would go a long way to solving all the issues. Hiding T 11:33, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I think I've found a good compromise. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 20:39, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Time to get started on Wikipedia:Notability (llamas) then. --MASEM (t) 21:47, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I see it as failed myself, llamas, aside. However, the work of many pro-fict and con-fict editors in this discussion is to be praised and appreciated, as it shows the processes of Wikipedia have not been petrified with age. It lives! Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 23:29, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

It is hard to tell just what part of it haas fairled, in which version, or what which reason. Some of what is said here is generally accepted, some is disputed. Marking it as failed might be incorrectly taken to indicate the entire line of thought was rejected as an approach, which is not the case. Thus an essay tag is best -- probably the one for essay--notability DGG (talk) 22:31, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

8 out of 10 llamas which expressed a preference.... Discussion has been up for over 5 days, and consensus is for an essay tag, and people have either suggested "any essay tag" or the notability essay tag. I'm removing from the cent template and marking the page with the notability essay tag. SilkTork *^YES! 07:21, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

An essay that "contains the advice...on how notability may be interpreted" is a proposed guideline in all but name. We can always run an RFC to formalise its status if need be.

--Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 07:32, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I have changed the tag to the simple "essay". The previous tag suggested that different projects actually endorsed the page, but it is not clear to me which projects this would be. Fram (talk) 07:42, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

is there interest in keeping the old proposal as an essay? or moving to something different?

Recently, User:Gavin.collins made pretty substantial changes to the essay. They resembled proposed changes from this discussion, which had no real support let alone consensus, back when this was still a proposed guideline. Now that the proposal is more essay than guideline -- it's the advice of one or more Wikipedians -- to what extent should it continue to reflect the old proposal? Would others rather take a kick at the can with something different?

I do think that there is some value to keeping the essay, because it's "the closest thing to a consensus guideline besides WP:N". But if enough other people want to move on and have this essay advocate for something noticeably different, I don't want to be the only editor holding this essay back. (Personally, we may as well just re-state WP:N with some qualifiers if we don't see much value to keeping the non-consensus proposal as an essay.) Randomran (talk) 13:30, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this page — whatever specific version is on top at the moment — represents any consensus; the pushmi-pullyu comment sums things up. This page will move on and this version will be in the history; that's the nature of a wiki. Recall Hiding's suggestion;

When working out which fictional concepts to cover in Wikipedia, please bear in mind that if no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it.

How about we copypasta that to the page and give it a reasonable nutshell? I'd be fine with reasonable bits based on WP:N, too (not checked that talk-war, lately, but mean the long-standing 'N'). G'day, Jack Merridew 13:46, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I think that simplifies it too much. There are a lot of points in the failed proposal that approached a consensus but there's too much fine print to have gotten it there; as such they should be leave as an essay to provide that type of guidance. --MASEM (t) 13:59, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I can certainly see building it up a bit from there, or somewhere near there. I don't think locking this down with essay-status is appropriate long term; someday there will be a consensus guideline (or policy) on this issue and it will be on yon page. If anyone wants to fork this as an essay elsewhere, fine. I believe starting over with something small and based on long-held consensus is the best route forward. Build from there as discussions proceed. G'day, Jack Merridew 14:18, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

(EC) I didn't read anything about those changes that weren't in line with this essay's general values. I say let the essay evolve rather than stay the same, that's why we have a page history. I still think this page could be significantly shorter tho. --Nick Penguin_(contribs) 13:49, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Man, you guys are chatty Cathies. The old Deckiller/Phil Sandifer proposal is here. I started something rudimentary. Feel free to shape it into any hooved ruminant you choose. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire - past ops) 14:25, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea of a fresh start. Chapter 2. --Nick Penguin_(contribs) 14:53, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I'll defer to the consensus. If folks want to just move passed it and develop the essay, let alone a new proposal, go ahead and do your thing. Randomran (talk) 15:57, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Eventually it is going to be a proposed guideline - like earthquakes in Italy, the next RFC is only a matter of time. We have covered a lot of ground in our discussions over the last months and many new lessons have been learned. I feel agreement is due soon. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 16:34, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree 100%. The last thing I'd say is some cool-off time would probably help. I think virtually any proposal would be rejected now, just because people are a little exhausted. I've got nothing but patience though. Randomran (talk) 16:36, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

As it stands, this proposal - which amounts to a restatement of WP:N - has clearly failed to win consensus, and does not seem to me to be offerable as a good faith, serious proposal. I have replaced it with a simple description of the current situation. Phil Sandifer (talk) 19:01, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Actually, although people have tried scrapping the GNG entirely, one proposal that hasn't been tried is just going straight for WP:N. It's not like pursuing the middle has resulted in a significant gain in support (maybe 10%) from the previous proposal, with 20% of editors still treating the proposed compromise as too exclusive. On the other hand, a solid 20-30% of editors felt the compromise was too inclusive, and too complex. WP:N might have more support than the compromise. Not that I'm holding my breath that it will work. But if people want to try it out, the worst thing that can happen is we rule it out, and people are forced to admit that we need a middle ground. Randomran (talk) 19:12, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

This has been tried - it explicitly failed to find consensus in the RFC. Phil Sandifer (talk) 19:15, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Do you have a link? I'm not saying I'm optimistic, but just that it hasn't been tried. If only for the sake of a reality check, it might be healthy to let them try and fall flat on their face. There's a good faith chance it could pass with support, unless you have an RFC where applying WP:N to fiction was rejected. Randomran (talk) 19:23, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

It was your RFC - Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:compromise. The idea that every spin-out article of a work of fiction needed to satisfy the GNG had less consensus than this proposal did. Phil Sandifer (talk) 05:18, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

You know, I would have loved to have closed that RFC properly if people could look passed their own narrow points of view. It seems that even so much as interpreting what other people meant with their !votes allows people to inject the same tired points of view into the debate, refusing to acknowledge that the numbers mean what they appear to mean. I agree with your interpretation of that RFC: there's not much chance that the GNG applies strictly to WP:FICT. But despite what you and I think, there's always the power of denial. I'm sure there are people who look at the RFC and *maybe* recognize that notability doesn't apply to all spinouts, but then turn around and say say "yeah, but you can't tell me that this exception to notability applies by and large to fiction". That's why there really would be value to closing that RFC properly: hidden between the numerical reaction to individual proposals reveals a few principles that have consensus, and a few approaches that are simply non-starters. But unfortunately, any independent party I've contacted to read through the RFC has fallen through. I'd like to think that what you said was a principle that became obvious from the RFC though: that it's evident that notability neither applies to no or all spinouts, but rather applies to a discrete class of "some", especially when it comes to lists. Randomran (talk) 05:45, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

@ Phil: You're too focused on TV. This page is supposed to be about all fiction. As I said a while ago, this is not about fiction, it is about TV episodes & characters; it is about pop-culture cruft — stuff that has been aggressively marketed at a target audience that shows up here, in all good faith, and serves as unwitting pawns of the marketing types. To properly sort this guideline, I still believe that a distinction needs to be made between fiction such as The Bard's, and the Buffyverse. These are merely two examples drawn for the prior discussion, but we all know the blocks of 'fiction' these refer too. There is certainly a lot of divergence of opinion on where to draw the line. I am tempted to boldly move your note to Wikipedia:Notability (TV episodes & characters), but will hold-off. In order to progress, this discussion needs to address the real subject that is at issue; it's not about universally-accepted-as-notable-fiction. Let's deal with the issues separately.

G'day, Jack Merridew 08:52, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

In answer to Phil, I would agee with that WP:N is not a set of inclusion criteria that attracts support when applied to fictional topics, but neither have the altenatives to WP:N have obtained widespread support. In my view all the alternative proposals have failed through having the same achilles heal - they were based on subjective inclusion criteria, at the heart of which was an editor's personal opinion as to why a particular topic should get its own standalone article. The alternative proposals that have been discussed on this talk page (Spinoffs/outs, FEAPOLT, Consensus) have been based on inclusion criteria that tried to get around the requirement for objective evidence. I agree with Randomran we have to write a draft that does not try to evade WP:N, and agree with Jack that we have to look at fiction as a whole, not just elements or works. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 12:41, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I think the "look at the whole of fiction" is a bit of a red herring. We don't have significant disputes over the inclusion of details of Pride and Prejudice, so notability criteria in that area seem like instruction creep. The point is to solve the problem we have - disputes over popular culture articles. Phil Sandifer (talk) 14:49, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't think this is necessarily what is meant; I think the idea that once a work of fiction's notability is established, what are the steps and to the degree that fiction elements from that work are to be discussed and when should they be broken out to a separate article, such that the coverage of work of fiction is appropriately complete with not only a description of what happens in the work but also the reception/creation/etc. aspects --MASEM (t) 14:52, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

IMO, a reading of the RFC on this proposal is that the balance isn't going to get much better. Maybe a little more inclusive, but not much more if we want to keep most of the people who basically like notability. I think our best bet is to simplify. Accomplish roughly the same balance with fewer rules. But at this point, I'm willing to try anything, even if we're going to rule out everyone's pet proposal by trial and error until folks realize that only the center remains (wherever it is). Randomran (talk) 14:59, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

So Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) should say that for much of fiction, WP:N is the applicable bit; however, for fiction (pop-culture) we may need something else, something that would need to be hashed out. Now, right-off, that raises the question of why might we need something else? Why should there be any sort of lowering of the bar here? Frankly, that's the core of this dispute and I feel it amount to an WP:ILIKEIT argument. Second question is why should elements of fiction get a special case write-up? If the SigCov in IndRS in there, folks are on solid ground. If not, it is fancruft. G'day, Jack Merridew 15:24, 10 April 2009 (UTC) (ec w/rand (distracted by an email))

Because there isn't a consensus to treat fiction the same as everything else. It's pretty much as simple as that. But if you want to propose that WP:FICT = WP:N, I think you should. It would be a learning experience, at the very least. Randomran (talk) 15:41, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I think the real prerequisite is to gain a clear consensus on the proper role of an SNG. That was not apparent during that RFC, and really shapes what can be said in WP:FICT. If viewed as additions and extensions, pretty much anything goes. If viewed as a list of exclusions, the content is extremely restricted. If viewed as "source clarification", it's restricted again, but in a different way, because it's hard to truly contradict WP:N in the name of "clarifying sources". I think it's going to be hard to ever gain a real consensus on content unless you can gain a real consensus on the role the guideline plays.—Kww(talk) 15:50, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

It's late here, so brief and then I'm off. In a nutshell, why do the fiction/pop-culture fans assert that that material warrants an exemption? It seems to me that much of it boils down to an acknowledgment that the sources et al just aren't there, that they want whatever included anyway, and so the rules need a special case because that's the only way to get what they like immunity from Da Button. G'Night, Jack Merridew 15:56, 10 April 2009 (UTC) ec w/kww

I certainly agree that fictional topics don't need special treatment, such as an exemption from the WP:N. There is just no point in constructing an exemption from good quality sourcing - fictional topics benefit from being the subject of high quality coverage from a greater number and a wider range of reliable independent secondary sources than any other subject area. There is a lot of high quality sources just waiting to be harvested, and more is becoming available on the internet all the time. So you might ask, what is the point of having WP:FICT at all? The reason is as follows:

It is general consensus on Wikipedia that fictional topics should not be split and split again into ever more minutiae of detailed treatment, with each split lowering the level of significant real-world coverage contained in an article. This means that while a book or television series may be the subject of significant real-world coverage, it is not normally advisable to have a separate article on every fictional character, episode, scene or chapter that appears in a work of fiction, such that it contains only trivial information, plot summary on its own or coverage that is over reliant on an in universe perspective.

I won't go into the many reasons why many editors have an intense desire to split fictional articles in this way, but perhaps the desire to split fictional topics is associated with the imersive characteristic of fiction which provides the imputeus to act out or re-live fictional works - one of the reasons why fiction is the most popular form of narrative. However, the issue which WP:FICT needs to address is when that spliting is of benefit, in the sense that it provides encyclopedic coverage, or when the spliting is not beneficial, when it gives rise to WP:FANCRUFT. The difference is real-world coverage vs. fantasy-world coverage, which is why I have been proposing for some time time now that this guideline follow this approach:

This page in a nutshell: A fictional topic that has received significant real-world coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article.

The other issue why this approach is important is to provide a defence against WP:NOT at WP:AFD. Even well sourced topics can fail WP:NOT#PLOT if they are merely plot summary; it is important to understand that WP:N is not sufficient as a set of inclusion criteria on its own. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 17:09, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

What if we admit that it is the case that there's really no special lower bar for FICT, that WP:N satisfies, but at the same time realizing WP:N is only as strong as a guideline, and consensus at AFDs will override it? In this way, we can focus on WAF and help people style articles that will likely not be targets of AFD, including when and how to split articles, figuring out how to deal with lists, and so forth? --MASEM (t) 20:03, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

This seems a sensible approach; there really is no grounds to lower the bar for the pop-stuff. And while I realize that N is only a guideline at the moment and that AfD-consensus sometimes runs off the rails, I hope that some form of WP:N makes it to policy status at some point; see my view on that form bellow. If they wrote fewer 'articles' that were not in-universe, fewer of them would be taken to the block. G'day, Jack Merridew 07:17, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

In response to the age-old "why does popular culture warrant an exemption" question, I can only ask my own - given that we have shown over several years that we can accurately and thoroughly cover these aspects of fiction, and given that they provide actual utility and value, why should we delete them? Because Jack Merridew thinks they're useless cruft? Is that really the core of the argument?

For all the trumpeting of compromise, it seems worth laying down something of a line in the sand. The following seems to me inarguable:

Since its inception, Wikipedia has allowed articles on details of popular culture to be developed.
These articles are oft-used and amount to some of our most-read articles.
These articles are generally accurate, or at least no more inaccurate than any other subject area.

A proposal that increases their accuracy, increases their depth, and increases their usefulness is a good proposal. I am perfectly willing to accept that the threat of deletion is a useful motivator in improving the articles.

However, the fact remains - the articles we have are accurate, informative, and useful. Any solution that does not aim to preserve and improve that is not a compromise, and is not acceptable. Phil Sandifer (talk) 20:05, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I've no problem with the concepts of "accurate, informative, and useful", but I will point out that most articles on fiction, these are only "accurate, informative, and useful" for someone that has some passing knowledge of the work. To make these encyclopedia-friendly, they need to be "accurate, informative, and useful" to any reader, and that means we have to take a far-off, out-of-universe view of the works, and that where most fiction articles fail. That's not to say any in-universe details are bad and need to removed, and not that we can't expand more once we've satisfied "accurate, informative, and useful" to the general reader. It's just that there is a lot of pre-existing articles on WP in a poor state and new editors continue to want to add more that retain that state. --MASEM (t) 20:15, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Usefulness is specifically not a criterion for keeping articles.—Kww(talk) 20:33, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I would suggest that when you have stopped considering utility to your users as a criterion in decisions, you have successfully crawled beyond the point where two hands and a flashlight can possibly recover you.

I would also suggest that specialization is not a problem in and of itself, and that if we are going to purge articles because they require a minimum of a passing knowledge of the work, there are a ton of math and science articles that are far, far more serious offenders than fiction. Phil Sandifer (talk) 21:09, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I must agree with Kww - Masem's argument has used before, but carries no weight in the absence of objective evidence. In answer to Phil, you too should re-evaluate your arguments for the same reason. What you are really saying is:

Since its inception, Wikipedia has allowed articles on details of popular culture to be developed, i.e.WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS;
These articles are oft-used and amount to some of our most-read articles, i.e. WP:INTERESTING;
These articles are generally accurate, or at least no more inaccurate than any other subject area, i.e. WP:NOHARM.

All of these arguments follow well trodden paths which have used time and time again, plus, of course, their closing point: if you don't believe what Phil/Masem are saying, then thousands of articles will be deleted - and it will be your fault! I just don't subscribe to this line of thinking and with good reason: WP:FICT is primarily a set of inclusion criteria, not deletion criteria. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 21:18, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Er, you misconstrued what I said - I don't agree with Phil's point about usefulness being a basis to keeping articles; or at least, in terms of "usefulness" we're talking about them being as a useful research article for any general reader, not for someone to figure out it was Episode 34 when Major Character A was killed. However, you also need to realize that it's not objective evidence that retains articles, it's consensus. Having objective evidence helps a great deal, but at the end of the day, if consensus says to keep an article that violates a number of guidelines (such as lacking evidence of notability) but otherwise true to remaining policy, then it stays. --MASEM (t) 21:40, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Niether is WP:INTERESTING a criterion for keeping articles. See if you can come up with an original argument for dumping WP:NOBJ. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 21:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Guidelines are always secondary to consensus. That was the entire point of Phil's last draft of FICT - sometimes AFD produces results that are complete against guidelines but are kept. --MASEM (t) 21:46, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, Masem. Putting the phrase "I think it is the consensus view that..." in front of the arguments to be avoided in deletion debates does not make your arguments original nor valid. Claims that a topic is "notable/useful/popular/interesting/accurate/should be kept by consensus" must adhere to Wikipedia's policy on verifiability. In the case of notability, it is not enough to simply assert that a topic meets a criterion without substantiating that claim with objective evidence. These other criteria which you and Phil have pulled out of a hat are not supported by any objective evidence, and if they were, they would effectively be a restatement of WP:N in all but name. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 21:54, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

I know that's a very ideal situation, that we require objective evidence every time for notability, but the fact that many AFDs close without it and that the last RFC on notability established that it is not standardized enough to be policy means that notability is as flexible as consensus allows it to be. It would be great if we could define more concrete rules of fiction elements that include objective evidence of notability that may be different than the GNG but still establish sourcing, but as the RFC here on FICT showed, to do that would require a lot of minute details being spelled out and otherwise creating a long useless document. We tried a more holistic approach with Phil's version and it fails when people wanted more details and then those details became points of arguments. Based on this, the best we can say on fiction is that consensus at AFD is the only determination with what is kept, but with the reminder that WP:N is considers a strong guideline that is followed and articles that fail to meet WP:N will likely but not always be deleted. And why a claim that there are no objective sources per WP:N at an AFD is likely going to weight more than a claim that "it's interesting and useful" -- but not always. WP:N is a baseline but it is fuzzy and appropriately so. That's why consensus leads policy and guidelines and not the other way around. Again, I stress that the last RFC on WP:N where it was suggested to make WP:N policy failed strongly - that's why we cannot be so focused on objective evidence but instead what is the best resulting articles that we want to get out from fiction elements to have included in WP. --MASEM (t) 22:10, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Congratulations, Gavin. You can cite essays in support for your points. Do you have an actual reason why we would want to change course and start removing accurate content that is actually used by our readers?

My point is not that the articles are interesting. Lord knows I don't find most of them the slightest bit interesting. My point is that they are informative. That people actually do *use* them. To learn information. If we discard that as a reason for doing something, we've discarded 'being an encyclopedia" as a reason. The fact that some idiot added "interesting" to a bullshit essay on arguments to avoid during deletion debates (and that is, incidentally, the single worst essay in the Wikipedia space) does not actually remove the fact that, as an encyclopedia, we are supposed to provide people with information. The statement "we should really stop providing people with this information" is an extremely weighty one for an encyclopedia. It generally needs an exceedingly good reason such as "the information is wrong," "the information is biased," etc.

Reference to "notability" for something that is known by millions of people does not pass the sniff test.

To this day, the advocates of heavy deletion of fiction have provided nothing resembling a shred of argument as to why we would want to stop providing accurate, useful information. They have cited essays, they have stamped their feet, and they have insulted people, but they have yet to give a single solitary reason that does not boil down to their own preference for mindless following of rules over actually providing a service to people.

So when we speak of compromise, please understand that my not demanding you (and I speak here of the deletionist side in general, and not Gavin who has shown himself to be far more reasonable than this) be banned from the project as the toxic cancer that you are is my first and largest concession. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:39, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Sheesh, 20Kb since last night. Was that all of the Evil Deletionist^® Cabal that you're so graciously deigning to allow to not be banned? ;) Seems you just called an entire block of editors a toxic cancer.

So, re Phil's three points:

You are arguing for a grandfather clause; i.e. we've been getting away with non-notable cruft for too long to be held to the rules; Bollocks to the rules!.
WP:POPULAR && WP:USEFUL; just because the proles like it is not grounds to consider something worthy of inclusion — the notion of notability is intended as an objective means of determining worthiness for inclusion.
{{totally disputed}} (someone know where that went?) — A core problem with the plot summary that is so common in many of the pop-culture/fiction 'articles' is that in the process of summarising the plot, many are engaged in a form of original research. They get to decide just what bits are important and how to interpret what a plot arc means. This is not their job; it's the job of the writers of the reliable independent sources — when they exist. <opinion>Many writing plot summary are doing so as a form fan fiction</opinion>

They call it TV programming for a reason; it's manipulative. They seek to influence behaviour and ways of looking at things, to make things seem more important than they are. There is no such thing as Must See TV^®. We do not have the issue of vast quantities of minutiae with most genres of fiction, only with a subset.

Millions of couch potatoes drooling slack-jawed as they gobble down their Poppycock^® does not make some element of fiction, say the Naugahyde^® covering on the back of the smaller Phaser^® models in Star Trek^®, worthy of inclusion here.

As to the argument that “Jack Merridew″ doesn't like it — sure, there's lots I don't like, but much of it is inarguably notable and reasonably sourced; such things are appropriate for inclusion, irrespective of my opinion. It's the highly questionably notable and bogusly sourced stuff that should meet a higher bar.

Strict adherence to WP:N is the center-ground; the other direction is raising the N-bar to define Independent as independent of the genre entirely, defining Reliable sources as those that are, you know, really reliable, Significant coverage as actually in-depth. WP:FANCRUFT is a pox on this project.

G'day, Jack Merridew 07:00, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

In answer to Phil and Masem, the guideline is not about article deletion, it is about article inclusion. The accusation that thousands of articles will be deleted as a result of amending this guideline is nonsense. Deletion is a matter of peer review at WP:AFD; we can't proscribe what editors should or should not do with articles that don't meet policies and guidelines.--Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:30, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Poll: autoformatting and date linking

This is to let people know that there is only a day or so left on a poll. The poll is an attempt to end years of argument about autoformatting which has also led to a dispute about date linking. Your votes are welcome at: Wikipedia:Date formatting and linking poll. Regards Lightmouse (talk) 09:42, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

"Biography" of fictional characters

Well there seem to me to be 3 main elements where we could go next. First is to start figuring out a way to include lists which was planned eventually. The second is to find a way to incorpeate works of fiction themselves. Both of these seem to be assumed by a small, but signfigant number of people who commented on the RFC or this page. Because it specifically doesn't deal with those elements I believe we may be losing members there. We can also try and remove any information on how to write an article except to note that it shouldn't just be plot info and punt that over to WAF.じんない 21:50, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

WP:WAF is an interesting guideline, but it is a "style" rather than an inclusion or content guideline, which offers a real-world perspective as a "nice to have", when in fact it is rather important when considering whether a topic is suitable for inclusion as its own standalone article. For instance, it would be possible to create an article that is entirely comprised on in universe plot summary which passes WP:N, but the result would be an article which did not contain any encyclopedic content that would still fail WP:NOT. A major breakthrough in this draft is to add to the article inclusion criteria the requirement to include sources that view fictional topics from a real-world perspective. I think eliminating this requirement (if that is what you are proposing) would therefore be a mistake. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 23:49, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps then WAF needs to be redone at the same time as it seems to violate core polices from that perspective. My point was though we could note that it needs independant reliable sources to demonstrate real-world perspective, but then leave it at that. We can also define what sources could be used to meet the second prong, such as director commentary for characters and episodes. The difference comes with phrases like "Although part of coverage of a fictional subject is a concise plot summary, an article written entirely from primary sources is a warning sign that the subject might not meet the three-pronged test above." That seems to be crossing the line and telling people how to write the article, not what constitutes notability of fictional elements. Removing phrases like that, redirecting to WAF and cleaning up WAF to conform with core policies and guidelines is likely to garner more consensus as some reasons given why the proposal was too beurocractic was it had too much of a load-bearing nature.じんない 00:34, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

This version removes talk about how to write the article without actually removing the impact of notability and the importance of sourcing.じんない 00:48, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Since we now seem to agree to the time being to put this as an essay, should we start seeing where we could gain most consensus? Perhaps we should start seeing how to incorporate lists since we weren't doing it before because of the pressure to become guideline. Right now that pressure is off.じんない 17:27, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I think the best step forward is to address how deep we should be covering fiction more under WP:WAF than here, with a notability standard possibly falling out of that. Are character lists and episode lists (standalone or not) always required? How do we write the "biography" of a fiction character? When we define what the shape of a fictional work coverage should be, we can then maybe define better notability standards for both articles and lists. --MASEM (t) 17:47, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Should I create a section there to discuss that or continue here?じんない 17:52, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

You can't write the "biography" of fictional character, that would be synethesis and in any case would be probably be over reliant on an in universe perspective to offer any tangible encyclopedic coverage. On the other hand, you could cite a broad range of real-world commentary from reliable secondary sources that would provide the context, criticism or analysis that can't be found on sites like Wookieepedia. Now that would be good. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 21:29, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Sure you can, just as you write a biography of a real person, by summarizing available sources, which for some characters may be across several different works of fiction. That said, a biography of a fictional character alone is not enough to justify an article (that's why we ask for real-world information), and nor do we want a fine level of detail. --MASEM (t) 21:41, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

You can't write a biography from summarising available sources: they have to be reliable and independent from the primary source, which is something Masem knows, but seems reluctant to state for some reason. Don't forget also, Masem, that you can't write a biography of a fictional character as they don't exist. It is all too easy to fall into the trap of writing about fictional elements as if they existed, which is what this proposed guideline is focused on; the inclusion of topics for which there is sufficient real-world coverage from reliable secondary sources to write an encyclopedic article from. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 22:01, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

You are mixing up our requirements for verification, for notability, and for avoiding original research. Information in articles needs to be from reliable sources, this does include the primary source. However, we need more than just the primary source for articles, that's what notability tells us. And we can't analysis the primary source beyond summation without the aid of secondary and independent sources. However, there is absolutely no restriction otherwise that primary sources can be summarized to create, for example, a fictional character history as part of a more complete article that has further in-depth analysis of the character; the only cautionary flag that needs to be raised here is WP:SYN. Of course, the summarizing of primary sources can be augmented by independent sources, but this is not always possible. The primary sources are verifiable. Just as plot summaries are accepted parts of complete articles on fiction works, a brief character history is acceptable in a article on a clearly notable character. --MASEM (t) 22:19, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

As Masem said, you can use primary sources to state facts such as age, occupation, etc. of a character if it's mentioned in the actual story. That is verifiable. Saying that because they are a doctor they have a PHD could be considered synthesis though as a fictional world may have fictional rules.

However just using primary or non-indenpendant sources is not enough for an article. Reliable third-party sources are still needed.じんない 22:25, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Apologies to Masem, I must have forgotten to mention synthesis as a potential pitfall. I am glad that he agrees with me that reliable secondary sources that are independent of the primary source could be allowed, at the very least, to augment a plot summary. But surely if an article were to be comprised of plot summary only, surely if would fail WP:NOT#PLOT, and if all of the sources cited were not independent, the the article would fail WP:NPOV? How would you avoid this "double bind"? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 22:37, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not. An article that consists of a character biography written with all other considers of WAF, V, RS, and NOR but lacks anything outside the bio is likely to be deleted as per NOT#PLOT. But if I have a reception or development or analysis section, I can still write a character history that itself only relies on primary sources and not violate any other policy. That's what I meant when suggesting the WAF approach - how best to compose a character "bio" as part of a larger article on the character or what else would need exist in addition to the primary-sourced "bio" to make the character article appropriate for WP. --MASEM (t) 22:46, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

What if that fictional character, say, appeared to support an objectionable political viewpoint, like anti-Semitism. How would you write a character history that itself only relies on primary sources? Does that mean you can't have articles about such characters if citing reliabe secondary sources that are independent "is not always possible"? Or would you allow such articles? --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 23:05, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm sure Masem and Jinnai have their own views... but secondary sources are always helpful for a character bio section, they're just not necessary. You can write it from primary sources. But while you could have a section written entirely from primary sources, there are many guidelines and policies that come out against entire articles based on primary sources. So yes, some independent sourcing is a must... but an article need not be 100% independently sourced. Randomran (talk) 23:15, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

If the fiction character or other aspects of the fiction do not explicitly state the character is anti-Semitic, despite all the asides and other states that fall in line with that, we cannot summarize and make that last leap of faith without a secondary source. Recent example: Persona 4 has a character that pretty much is gay, but that word nor any equivalent is used in the game. He's stated to be scared of girls but that's it; going from that to "being gay" is synthesis. From a summary perspective, we could only say his social identity is confused. However, there are secondary sources that assert that he is gay, and that's been used to assert the character is gay or appears to be so (the company that made the game stated they left it open). But if that source did not exist, I would not be able to say that. That's why its always good to keep plot sections short - the longer they run, the more likelihood something like this could slip in there. --MASEM (t) 23:44, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Even given Masem's point though, you couldn't directly go out an say he's gay. That would be saying that someone knew better than the creator what he was creating, which is impossible. You could say he appears to be gay or has gay-ish tendencies (i think there is a word for that...), but if the neither the primary source nor the creator (in this case the company or the writer/producer) do not say anything then you cannot. Fictional items are a bit different from real-life and therefore to use secondary sources as sythesis can only be done as a qualified nature, even by experts, because they cannot know what the creator was thinking. The exception is if they interviewed the creator. Pyschology studies can and have been done on characters, but if you read them they never really outside state anything as abosulute unless it was observable.じんない 23:56, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

In other words, what you and Masem are saying that without reliable secondary sources that are independent of the primary source, you cannot create a stand alone article that discusses controversial characters based on primary sources alone. On this point, I must agree with you, as I think there may be an underlying misconception that probably has not been stated explictly up to now; since most fictional elements are relatively harmless and uncontraversial in nature, there is no need to apply rigorous inclusion criteria in all cases, a misconception I do not support myself. Of course this premise breaks down when fictional characters are based closely on real-world persons. For instance, most people would recognise Amon Goeth as being an evil anti-Semite, but how could you describe a fictional adaptation based on him from primary sources? In order to disucss any historical novel with a contraversial charcter such as Schindler's Ark, or any work of fiction for that matter, surely it is clear that only coverage from reliable secondary sources independent of the primary source offer the only possibility of balanced article? It seems to me that there may be an underlying misconception that fiction is unbiased, and that the requirements for balance, independent sourcing and real-world perspective can be obtained from "verifiable plot" summary, when in fact they can't. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:53, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

There's two issues here, that need to be separated. The first is the assignment of any controversial description to a fictional character or aspect from primary sources. Whether anti-Semitic, gay, racist, whatever, either the primary source needs to explicitly state that, or a secondary source affirms that; it is OR otherwise to assume that because, for example, a character is shown to have an intense dislike of a former friendly character after learning that he is Jewish that first character is anti-Semitic. This is where, more importantly, secondary sources that evaluate and analyze works can help, but they aren't needed. If no secondary sources are there to establish the connection, the connection cannot be made.

The second aspect is balanced coverage per NPOV. If the story in the work of fiction is already politically charged (say Song of the South), then just like our policy on spoilers, we cannot change that POV in describing the plot itself; it is what it is and it is not our place to rewrite it to be politically correct or balance the POV that the work itself gives. Now, if that work itself gains controversy (from independent sources), then our NPOV policy steps in and says that we need to cover both sides of it through third-party sources. This would be the same for an individual character or other fictional aspect should that also occur.

It is still possible to write a plot summary with the consideration of the above but without using secondary or third-party sources. The plot summary just has to avoid making any synthesis or OR, and needs to stay with the same POV that the original work had. --MASEM (t) 13:26, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with your only part of your first point, that only secondary sources can be used evaluate and analyze controversial fictional elements, e.g. to identify Amon Göth's character (played by Ralph Fiennes in the film) as a rabid anti-Semite. However, I part company when you say that secondary sources "can help", i.e. that they are optional; I would say that they are a necessity in these circumstances, and really are a mandatory requirement. To simply sumamrise the plot from the perspective of Göth's character as he appears in the primary source can't provide balanced coverage, compared with the real-world person - there is just no context to make any judgement about him. It is far better to not have an article about fictional element if no real-world context from relaible secondary sources can be found.

With regard to your second point, I agree that we cannot change the POV of the book or film itself, but simply to write a plot summary from the perspective of character without providing any context from reliable secondary sources is asking for trouble, particularly for contraversial characters. As stated on the talk page for the article Uncle Remus from Song of the South, "While the Uncle Remus stories are amusing, it doesn't take into account that race relations cast into a comedic form were easier to believe and accept as the real thing". I can't vouch for validity of this statement, but I would say this would be a one of many important question that you would expect to be addressed in an encyclopedic article about a contraversial character. Again I would argue that it is far better to not have an article about fictional character if no real-world coverage from relaible secondary sources can be found, because without such sources, the topic's coverage is encyclopedic without them.

Overall I would conclude the for these reasons, reliabable secondary sources that are independent from the primary source are a necessity, not just niece to have:

This page in a nutshell: If a fictional topic is the subject of significant real-world coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, then it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article in Wikipedia.

In conclusion, I don't think you can have balanced encyclopedic coveage of ficitional topics unless WP:FICT follows this approach. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 14:32, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

I think you're using a narrow exception to invalidate the whole rule. "Halo begins when Master Chief awakens from his cryogenic sleep... he goes on to fight the Covenant." That can entirely be verified in primary sources. See WP:PRIMARY for more information, which says that we can use primary sources to verify all kinds of facts. However, it also says we can't use primary sources to make interpretations. WP:V and WP:OR also say that we use more reliable sources for material that is likely to be challenged, including controversial claims. Or synthesis, for that matter, which is clarified in WP:SYN: making original links between a fictional character and a real one is original research to push a point of view. If you're the first person to say "so and so is based on such and such, who was an anti-Semite in real life", then you probably shouldn't add it. But this isn't a reason to require secondary sources for every single verifiable claim. If you disagree, go ahead and change WP:PRIMARY, but I doubt you'll get consensus for it. Randomran (talk) 16:13, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Randoman has what I was trying to get at; if the primary source does not state that Amon was anti-semitic despite a list of actions and statements that the character states that fall right in line with that, we cannot make that leap of logic to call him that. Only a secondary source can be used to establish that. There are some more descriptive elements that can be summarized without inference, but anything that is potentially charged or challenged, typically dealing with character motivations and intentions, needs to either be stated with support from secondary sources, or can't be stated at all if only using the primary source to summarize the plot. --MASEM (t) 16:58, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you on along a broad front: only those reliable sources that are independent of the primary source that address the subject directly in detail using the real-world as the primary frame of reference, and no original research is needed to extract the content, should be used to label characters as having certain subjective characteristics. However, where I differ from Masem is that these sources are a necessity in themselves and are more than just helpful. Plot summary on its only simply regurgitates the primary source without providing any context, and hoping that it will result in balanced coverage is simply naive, and from an intellectual standpoint is defective and deficient, which is one of the reasons why WP:N requires more than just primary sources to provide objective evidence of notablility. Going back to the earlier example of Song of the South invoked by Masem, you just can't give characters like Uncle Remus the encylopedic coverage they deserve using only primary sources, since primary sources don't provide any real-world context about the circumstances in which the author (Joel Chandler Harris) created the characters, or provide any commentary about the society which the author sought to portray. WP:FICT has to move away from the idea that we can justify a standalone article using primary sources as a point of reference as part of the three prongs, since a work of fiction is written from the in universe perspective of the author, and the only way to write an encylopedic article about fiction is to start from real-perspective in which author's point of view is subject to comentary, criticism and analysis. Plot summary is a good servant but a poor master, since it is is useful if it augements coverage from reliable sources that are independent of the primary source, but it result in failing WP:NOT#PLOT is used on its own. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 21:57, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm not saying that an article about a fictional character can be sourced only to the primary; we've already agreed that some real world aspect is necessary. What I'm trying to assert is that given that all other parts of the character's article help it to meet notability requirements, the sourcing the character's bio can be only sourced to the primary, but cannot engage in original research or POV-skewing and requires secondary or third-party sources to make claims that aren't explicitly stated in the work. Most likely if such sources are needed, they will help meet notability guidelines, but not always. Basically, these are two separate but often overlapping issues. Which comes back to my original point, when I say we should explore WAF as to how to write character bio's this is meant to be assuming that either the character bio is part of an article on larger coverage of the work of fiction, or that hte bio is supporting a single article about the character that has more information about the character's notability. --MASEM (t) 22:29, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Again I disagree, because you can't write a biography about a fictional person - they just don't exist, and think you are falling into the trap of relying on an in universe perspective as a point of reference. Fictional characters form part of a work's narrative and it requires original research to extract only those parts of the primary work relating to a particular character. For instance, the article about Uncle Remus only makes if it contains real-world commentary, crtiticism or analysis from reliable secondary sources that are independent of primary source as his role has already been summarised in the article about the work from which he is derived. On the one hand a concise plot summary is appropriate as part of the larger coverage of a fictional work, but to then use original research to extract a "bio" of a character from that summary seems to me to an example of be spliting a work of fiction again into ever more minutiae of detail treatment, with each split normally lowering the level of significant real-world coverage contained in an article. With each split there is a loss of context, so I can't support your views on this issue. It is clear that the only those characters that are subject of real-world coverage from reliable secondary source that are independent of the primary source can be presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article. Those that don't are merger candidates, since there is more encyclopedic coverage in the article about the fictional work if it provides more context than the standalone article about a character that provides none. To paraphrase Jinnai's earlier statement, Although part of coverage of a fictional work is a concise plot summary, an article about a fictional element written entirely from primary sources is a clear indicator that the topic does not satisfy the inclusion criteria for a standalone article. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 07:54, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Broadly you are both right. In some instances it is possible to provide a "biography" of a character, where primary or secondary sources already have. But for a stand-alone article, generally the article should rely on independent sourcing and be written from an out of universe perspective. But that's already enunciated in WP:PLOT, WP:N and WP:WAF. That's why I feel this page is redundant. We already have what tools we need, we just need to coach editors on how to use it. We shouldn't be arguing amongst ourselves here, we should be improving articles by finding and adding sources wherever possible. Hiding T 12:53, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Again I disagree. Biography is about living persons (hence "bio"), not fictional ones ( "fictography"). It is possible to write a fictive biography, but that is a seperate literary genre which is why I think why Masem's viewpoint is at least suggesting that original research, which it not allowable elsewhere in Wikipedia, could be acceptable for fictional characters. Although these issues are enunciated elsewhere, they need to be brought into this guideline. If I amend Jinnai's earlier statement again, I think this will become clearer when it is added to WP:FICT:

Although part of coverage of a fictional work is a concise plot summary, an article about a fictional element written wholly from an in universe perspective is a clear indicator that the topic does not satisfy the inclusion criteria for a standalone article.

Because of the dual nature of fiction which is covered from both a real-world and an in universe perspective, we clearly need a guideline, as there appears to be a lot of misunderstandings about this issue, even amoungst seasoned contributors to these discussions :p --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 14:48, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Again, let's start from the point that we assume we have an article about a fictional character because notability is met; the focus here is on the "biography" section of that article - not the greatest term, but reflects a summary of the character's history throughout the fictional works that they've appeared in. Constructing such a summary/bio from the primary works in of itself is not original research much in the same way summarizing a real person's life from first and third-party sources is. There is the potential to introduce OR and POV to this (again, if Amon is never explicitly stated to be anti-semitic despite numerous actions towards that, we cannot explicitly call him that if we only rely on the primary source), and that is often done when summary/bios are written purely from a fan perspective or in-universe approach. But this can happen in any article outside of fiction as well, it's a matter of which WP editor and what their ultimate goals are that might cause this to happen. Now, a summary/bio of a character can be enhanced by the addition of secondary sources to affirm inferences that could not be made due to OR/POV, and to third party sources to affirm more contentious facts about a character, but as long as the OR/POV line is not crossed, a summary/bio that accurately condenses the primary sources is completely appropriate in this case.

The point here is that the general act of summarizing sources (fictional character or otherwise) in itself not a violation of original research - that's how this entire encyclopedia is built. What is the problem is when certain edits step over the line and inject OR and POV into the summary. For fiction, directing people towards out-of-universe writing and focusing less on in-universe aspects of fiction is what helps prevent and/or catch OR/POV violations in the summation of the primary source. --MASEM (t) 15:13, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Gavin's not totally wrong, though. It is nearly impossible to summarize a character without committing some original research. One reader's "pious minister" is another reader's "deluded religious fanatic" or "manipulative con artist". I was surprised to discover in high school that my teacher and I had read two entirely different books named The Scarlet Letter, and that came about primarily because of our worldviews: she saw Dimmesdale as a good man tortured by his sin, and I saw him as an inherently evil man that was mildly insane. We could never agree on an interpretation of the book, primarily because we held diametrically opposing views on the value of religion in society. That's why I prefer to see even plot summaries and character descriptions that are rooted in reliable secondary sources ... I note, for example, that the Wikipedia article follows my teacher's perspective, and it does so by quoting a reliable literary critic.—Kww(talk) 15:33, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Same problem can happen real articles too. Adjectives and adverbs should be used very sparingly when writing articles for exactly this reason unless it's clearly given by sources. And yes, there's been a recent trend to at least assist plot sections with secondary sources whenever they can be used, but I would say we're a long way from requiring them (namely that but for a few types of fictional work, the full plot is rarely discussed to any length). --MASEM (t) 15:40, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why you'd write anything other than "priest who undergoes some physical or mental anguish". That's what's verifiable in primary sources. And this is a problem that occurs for secondary sources as well, by the way, as people are trying to find the most neutral and descriptive way to summarize what someone actually said, rather than trying to push a point of view. Interpreting sources (or, to put it better, un-interpreting sources) is just part of what we do. The best way to do it is by WP:CONSENSUS. Randomran (talk) 15:50, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I think Masem and Randomran are trying to paper over the cracks in their arguments. Of course there is a difference between summarising the primary work (to provide context) and engaging in original source to describe a character, but the divide is very clear, not blurry as they suggest. For a start, you can't write a biography about a fictional character (I think you should acknowledge this guys!) since they are not nor never were alive (nor even human in scifi adventures), so constructing a biography from a fictional work is clearly original research, because it is a contradiction in terms!.
Think of it this way - constructing a "biography" about a fictional character is orginal research, since it involves cherry-picking scenes and events from the primary source which only affect that character, and stacking them up in a way that makes it appear that the character has a seperate existence. From the perspective of the primary work, fictional characters are an inseperable part of the narrative, they can't standalone because they are part of larger work. Sure, you can summarise the work as whole, but once you focus on a specific character, you move from plot summary which provides context about the the fictional work to a form of original research that provides none. The only context in which you can discuss or describe a fictional character as being seperate is in terms of the real-world commentary received from reliable secondary sources that are independent of the primary work, i.e. if a character is the subject of real-world commentary then it does existence but only as a ficitonal topic. I admit this is a very subtle distinction, but you have to realise that the way we think of fictional characters is itself a type of literary trope can be misleading; although we are used to describing them as existing, they only exist as having human characteristics in our minds, but in a enclcyclopedia, they can only exist as topics that are discussed fictional constructs. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 16:18, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I acknowledge calling them "bio"s is misleading, but we can't ignore the fact that such "bio"s are part of character articles with otherwise established character notability. See both Homer Simpson and Superman, two FAs. The former has a very brief but summary description of Homer that pulls from episodes; the latter has a bit more depth (both "character" and "powers" sections) but it is also supported more by secondary sources. In both cases, we are pulling highly summarized details from a vast number of sources (more than 200 in both cases) to present the basics to establish the rest of the article in context. Not every character article may have the wealth of secondary information about that, but we know that needs to be there for the article to be there, but the "bio" aspect - whether we call it "biography", "role within the work" or whatever, is also part of these articles and needs to be exactly a brief summary of the character. The counter to this, which I completely agree is inappropriate in its depth, is something like Hiro Nakamura (the character from Heroes); the character passes the notability guidelines (there's creation infomration, and I'm pretty more secondary can be found) but here's where the "bio" approach is bad; it's not that any of this is original research, but it doesn't summarize, it lists out each action. That's why these sections should be more summary of the role. --MASEM (t) 16:40, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

I am glad that you acknowledge calling them "bio"s is misleading, but it is the intent to constuct a biography about a fictional character that is the problem, not how "biography" is labeled. I say again, you can't construct such biography without using synethesis; such a biography does not exist in the primary source, so creating one is original research. The same principle applies to secondary sources as well - unless the source itself contains a "fictography", then the construction of one is still original reasearch, because the plot is distorted when it is used to create little "sub-universes" in which only the character inhabits. In the example of Homer Simpson, it is clear that what is happening is that coverage from more notable topics such The Simpsons series itself, or notable episodes therefrom, are being "recycled" to create this form of synthesis. This form of synthesis is most clear from the article Characters of Kingdom Hearts, where the primary sources are cited so you can see how the synthesis is formed: narrative and events are used to construct identities for the characters that are seperate from the game, but the game does not provide this information directly. What this article does is to construct a series of literary tropes that create the illusion that the characters do exist seperately by using synthesis, when in reality the narrative and events cited were created as part of the overall game. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 17:18, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

That kind of strict interpretation of WP:OR is completely inconsistent with the actual policy on WP:PRIMARY sources, and does not apply to numerous featured articles that make liberal use of primary sources. Of course, these are featured articles because they also have reliable third-party sources, but these kinds of sources are most important for information about development and reception. Randomran (talk) 17:37, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

To put the record straight, WP:PRIMARY supports the use of primary sources to describe the plot about a work of fiction. Just to remind you plot is the primary sequence of events, summarizing it it is used to provide context. Nowhere in WP:PRIMARY does it say that plot can be selectively sliced and diced to provide coverage a about an element of fiction; this type of synthesis can at best described as "fictography", which is a literary genre, not legitimate form of encyclopedic coverage. Whilst I acknowledge your point that summarizing or rephrasing source material without changing its meaning is not synthesis, selectively slicing and dicing the plot so that the primary sequence of events is, the effect of which is primary function of summarizing the plot - to provide context - is lost. This is an important point, because allowing prohibiting synthesis in the form of fictography is what seperates Wikipedia from Wookieepedia. --Gavin Collins (talk|contribs) 08:28, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Wookieepedia was created upon the suggestion of the WMF Board of Trustees. At the time, Angela and Jimbo Wales were both on the board, and both founded Wikicities (which was later renamed Wikia), which hosts Wookieepedia. Much Wikipedia content was moved to Wookieepedia because of a user (who was later banned) nominating scores of Star Wars related articles for deletion.

What separates Wikipedia from Wookieepedia is that Wookieepedia exists to generate a profit and Wikipedia (supposedly) does not. Wookieepedia also does not have any policies or guidelines that advise users to move content to Wikipedia, as far as I know. Yet Wikipedia, strangely enough, has a policy and a a guideline which advises users to move content to a for-profit wiki founded by Jimbo Wales. It's rotten. --Pixelface (talk) 04:06, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

As best as I can tell, no WP policy page says material not suitable on WP should be transwiki'd to Wikia - if any policy/guideline does say this, it is always to a GFDL-compatible wiki (which, btw, if that wiki is GFDL, the information can be moved back to WP if it meets our standards - transwiki works both ways). There are some examples of possible wikis that include Wikia sites, and some projects may point specifically to a Wikia site for that added information, but no policy/guideline page says "transwiki to Wikia" for exactly the reason of making sure that it doesn't give the appearence that our policies are aiding in filling Wales' wallet. If you do know of one that says this specifically (again, not as an example), that needs to be found out and fixed. --MASEM (t) 04:43, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Masem, I already told you this at WT:NOT, in December, in this thread. Search for "05:33, 7 December 2008." And you yourself mentioned me removing mentions of Wikia from policy pages in the user RFC on me you wrote. Look for "or references to Wikia" in User:Masem/RFC (oldid). The policy WP:NOT and the guideline WP:WAF both plug wikis hosted on Wikia. WP:WAF has plugged Wookieepedia since the day it was created — March 27, 2006 — which just happens to be the same day that a press release came out saying Wikicities was renamed Wikia.

WP:NOT and WP:WAF may not use the exact words "transwiki to Wikia" but they don't have to. By mentioning Wikia as an alternative outlet, the effect is the same. Content being removed from a non-profit site and placed on a for-profit site. Content that was not generating a profit for Jimbo Wales begins to generate a profit for Jimbo Wales — because a Wikipedia policy and a Wikipedia guideline is directing people to do so, and yet somehow Wikipedia purports to be a non-profit site. Wikia content is licensed under the GFDL, which is why I cannot understand when you've said fiction content "can harm the free content mission" of Wikipedia or why people get so upset about fair use pictures in Wikipedia articles, and not upset about fair use pictures in Wikia articles. Where are all your objections about fiction content hurting the "free content mission" of Wikia? --Pixelface (talk) 10:40, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

They mention the Wikia sites only as examples of external wikis, but not as a list of choices to transwiki information to. I again note that the possible collusion between Wales and Wikia has been discussed at length and been determined to not be an issue with the way our policies are written. If you feel that a reevaluation is necessary, then you should open up a new discussion at one of the pumps (WP:VPP likely, since it should be consistent throughout all policy/guideline) Note that the GFDL only covers the text portion of articles, not non-free images and not even those from commons. And yes, people get upset over excessive non-free image use on en.wiki, and that's because the Foundation has charged us with keeping that to a minimum. --MASEM (t) 12:46, 12 April 2009 (UTC)