Misplaced Pages

Since wikipedia is not paper, the true and best improvement is in its continued growth...not in making it a paperless clone of Britanica. That was not why wikipedia was founded.Ikip (talk) 20:45, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose If this passes I predict that literally hundreds of interesting, useful and hard-worked articles will be mass-expunged within days. Fictional works play a key role in the entertainment of billions of human beings, and not all of these works, or even very many of them, are "notable" in terms of having other words written and published about them elsewhere. Why must something be ignored if some other, separate entity has not noticed it? Who is to say how much "notice" is sufficient? If something exists and is a part of the lives of tens, hundreds, thousands or millions of people, is that not notice enough? --Captain Infinity (talk) 18:47, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose in several particulars. (1) "Sources with a connection to the creators of the fictional work" may provide significant real-world content to be included in an article, but they are wholly irrelevant to establishing notability. This is fundamental: only independent sources provide evidence of notability. (2) "Central to understanding" should not be presumed, but verified by independent reliable sources. (3) "Understanding the fictional work" misses the target anyway. Misplaced Pages is not a study guide for understanding the work. The objective should be "understanding the reception, impact, and significance of the work". Finally, I think the third point goes to the heart of the matter: notwithstanding that the proposal pays lip-service to WP:NOT, its principal effect would be to further encourage the already prevalent misuse of notability criteria to rationalize content that is not encyclopedic in the first place. As an aficionado of certain forms of fiction myself, I would like to see more and better encyclopedic coverage. This proposal is not the way to get there. ~ Ningauble (talk) 19:01, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose - The "Importance of the fictional work" section is too ambiguous and could result in uneven application of the guideline. The "Role within the fictional work" section could lead to "patchy" coverage of some subjects (to give an example, Star Trek episode "Plato's Stepchildren" could be deemed to meet the requirements, whereas "Wink of an Eye" might not be). I also think the proposal as a whole is too restrictive. --GW… 19:03, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose as per editors above. The text is confusing and too complex. There are already policies and guidelines which cover this issue adequatelyTaprobanus (talk) 19:15, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
  • If there are policies and guidelines that are sufficient to handle the area of fiction, why are we still having edit wars over fiction? The lack of guidance is what is hurting the work right now. --MASEM 19:37, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Adding more rule creep and bureaucracy are not going to magically solve 4 years of edit warring. Ikip (talk) 19:58, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

According to ArbCom's decision to not heard Ep&Char 3, it will help. The current situation is not acceptable to continue indefinitely. --MASEM 20:33, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

I am not familiar with that decision, where is it at? It comes down to respect, respect of editors and respect of other editors contributions. This guideline will not solve the problem, once and for all, it will simply inflame it. Once editors move in to merge and delete hundreds of episode and character pages, editors who contributed to those pages are not going to simply say, oh, there is this brand new approved guideline, please go ahead and delete several months work. Ikip (talk) 10:03, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

• Support in principle. Slightly troubled by the fact that "particular cultural or historical significance ... beyond the basic threshold of the general notability guideline" isn't as clear as it could be, and that "fictional work" isn't defined; for example, I would not like to say that a character that only appears in one episode of "Columbo" or "Murder She Wrote" is individually notable, even if he is the main villain of that episode, so clearly central to that episode. But the basic idea is in the right place, so I'll support. --GRuban (talk) 20:05, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support. Mike Christie (talk) 20:33, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
• Reluctant oppose with a view to changing to support in the spirit of encouraging compromise and consensus. My position here is similar to Goodraise, CRGreathouse and Jayron. I am generally against instruction creep and specific notability guidelines, but I accept that compromise is necessary, and that in this case, a separate guideline to articulate that compromise is necessary. The current text is poorly written. It is too long and goes beyond its remit.
  1. I would encourage editors to regard specific notability guidelines as clarifications or elaborations of WP:GNG, not as additional or contradictory notability guidelines. In this case, in a nutshell, the proposal says that for fictional elements, "independent of the subject" in WP:GNG can be taken to mean that the work is particularly significant according to reliable third party sources, and the element itself has received evaluative (non-promotional) coverage from a real world perspective in reliable secondary sources.
  2. The guideline needs to be renamed as WP:Notability (fictional elements), and should not elaborate the notability guidelines for the fictional works themselves.
  3. The guideline should not tell editors what will happen because it exists. "An article with a verifiable real-world perspective that establishes real-world notability will rarely be deleted." According to whom? Similarly, "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."
  4. The guideline should not tell editors what they can and cannot do. "Editors may consider whether the fictional subject could be treated as a section or part of a parent article or list instead of a standalone article..." They may indeed.
  5. The guideline has no business articulating when articles on fictional elements may or may not be eligible for good article status.
  6. Moving the proposed text in the direction of Goodraise's draft, particularly the short early version, would help. Geometry guy 20:48, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
  • • Can I get you to hop on down to Wikipedia_talk:FICT#Third_prong_editing_question. and give that edit a thumbs up? I think we can knock out your 3rd point. Protonk (talk) 01:00, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• Weak support. I'm supporting only because this is probably the best compromise we'll get (and we need something), but I'd like to see more emphasis on real world notability.--Fabrictramp | talk to me 21:10, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support. older ≠ wiser 00:04, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose. I share Phil's concerns about what has transpired. older ≠ wiser 23:17, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
• Support, as a step toward deleting or forcing improvement to a lot of crummy articles, which is a good thing in my view. Propaniac (talk) 00:49, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• Weak Oppose. (6 edit conflicts!) While I generally agree with it, I do not think that fiction should be held to a higher standard of notability. I generally agree with SoWhy, but I might support if the higher standard part is changed. Jonathan321 (talk) 00:06, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
  • The proposal does not hold fiction to a higher standard. Phil Sandifer (talk) 02:51, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support --If only to prevent a spate of "user owned" pages. The only thoughtful thing I can add is to encourage fans of lesser-known works to create their own wikis, in the way Star Trek or Star Wars fans have. (And as the fans of many other franchises have done, judging by the banner ads on the before mentioned fan wikis.) Dahile00 (talk) 02:05, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Closing administrator please note, this editor has only 6 edits. Ikip (talk) 10:45, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

• Support per Fabrictramp. It's not perfect, but let's call it good enough for now and move on to actually writing about fiction in a good, encyclopedic manner. Jclemens (talk) 02:30, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support, step in the right direction. --Brownsteve (talk) 05:11, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support just about as good as you can get. Let's just hope that it isn't used to justify a million obscure D&D character pages.--Protocop (talk) 06:28, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support for what it's worth, if only so that we can get this done and get to improving or culling the piles of badly written articles on fictional subjects out there. Lankiveil 09:00, 31 January 2009 (UTC).
• Oppose. I support the concept, but I do not think that fictional items should need to be considered "central" to the fictional work to be included; I think Misplaced Pages should be more comprehensive than that, so long as the other two major requirements are satisfied. The Jade Knight (talk) 10:36, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose Notability is highly subjective and one of the great strengths of Misplaced Pages is that highly specialised articles on obscure topic areas can still be dealt with in a concise and relevant way to an uniformed reader. If a page meets quality standards, there are people willing to write it and people willing to read it, then I see no reason why it should not be included on the strength of its pop culture significance etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Coolcamxl (talk • contribs) 11:05, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• Comment. While I agree with the criteria put forward, I think that adopting them would cause too much disruption. Let's be honest: More than 75% of all articles about fiction would not fulfil the proposed criteria. Hence, some articles will be proposed for deletion, causing uproar and endless discussions, making the implementation of these rules for already existing articles cumbersome or even impossible. Other articles will randomly escape the executioner's axe. In the end, it would just draw our attention and time away from the real editing work. Sijo Ripa (talk) 12:13, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Without any looser requirements on sourcing for fictional elements as outlined in this proposed language, I would estimate that somewhere between 80 and 90% of fiction articles would not meet the default notability guideline (eg they fail it now). The point here is to try to assert more allownace for fiction while we readdress how WP needs to be able to accommodate fiction better.
• Oppose -- although I agree with all three prongs in their essence, the language here is too vague and weak to actually be enforceable in a clear and consistent manner. I consistently see language here that could not hold up to the rigors of a fierce Wikipedian debate. And debate there will be, particularly since (apart from general notability and and the policy about writing from an out of world perspective) fiction articles here at Misplaced Pages have been pretty much an ungoverned "Lord of the Flies" environment. When this policy goes out, it will open a firestorm of AfD, since MANY fiction articles are fancruft and are disporportionately represented (eg. too many) here at wikipedia because of the site's young demographic. Improvement to the policy would include concrete examples of featured or good articles that already specifically meet each or all of the prongs. It should also give examples of fandoms that have a network of articles that already have been generally well-managed according to this policy already (the Simpsons maybe?). Also, this poliicy should use more langauge that is univeral to the project. I think "important" is a supremely subjective word that is unfit to be used in the "nutshell" box. Misplaced Pages runs on notability, verifiability and (in the case of fiction) real world perspective. This sort of tried and true, commonly recognized language (and other similiar veribiage taken from other policies but modified for this policy) should dominate. One more thing: first-person sources are (and should be considered) a last resort, a necessary evil. Persons involved in a project have a HIGH personal investment in the work and thus are inherently biased -- for good or bad. At the same time, they often are the sole source for very early development and behind-the-scenes details. Thus, first-person sources should always be "outted" in the actual body of the article, not just in the footnotes or references. For example, if the New York Times says an episode used 38 pints of fake blood, the article can read, "Thirty-eight pints of blood were used in this episode." But if Michael Chriton (former executive producer) said that an episode used 38 pintso of blood, the article must read "Chriton said that 38 pints of blood were used." Of course, discretion and attention to style should be considered, but a verifiablity norm universal to the journalistic and encyclopedic community cannot be side-stepped or even miminalized for tihs one policy. I do like the 'presumption of resources' clause, or over-zealous deletionists may have a field-day. Again, the essence of the policy is good, but not concrete or enforceable enough as it stands.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 13:18, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• Comment: To the persons that say a weak policy is better than no policy at all, I strongly disagree. Misplaced Pages is based on the presumption that having bad articles live among good ones isn't all that bad as long as the entire project is gradually improving. Whether we appove this admittedly flawed policy or not, there will always be some bad articles, becuase all articles start out bad. But if do approve a flawed policy, not only will we be stuck with the already bad articles, but we'll impose a flawed policy on the good ones. This is the equivalent to putting poorly-fitting casts on all your kids' legs just because you can't find a doctor to make a decent cast for the one child that actually has a broken leg. It would be better for that one child to try to heal on his own than to cripple a whole-bunch of healthy kids.--Esprit15d • talk • contribs 13:31, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
  • Language issues do need to be corrected and that's definitely a welcome help. However, as I note above to Sijo Ripa's comment, if we take FICT out of the picture, there's a larger number of fiction articles that fail the notability guidelines right now. Yet, is there a massive storm at AFD to get rid of them? Not really, though they continue to come forward. The language of this was selected to make sure that we don't have another TTN situation, as to give those that care about their articles a rather easy set of obstacles to overcome to keep articles, rather than the more difficult "significant coverage in secondary sources" (which generally tends to exclude developer commentary). As there's no bots that can be used to initiate these AFDs , and we still are warned of fait accompli mass-nominations without giving editors a chance to correct, the fear that passage of this proposed guideline will lead to a rush at AFD is rather unfounded -- though we do admit that if there is bad misapplication of this when it passes, there's a need to correct it. As for the last point, this guideline will not affect any pre-existing "good" fictional element articles - it only increases their numbers by moving some that would be considered "bad" as a "good"-in progress situation. Again, the default without FICT is WP:NOTE, which is stronger than this, and I don't believe this is what those interested in retaining fiction articles want. --MASEM 14:00, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose The proposed guideline appears overly vague, mangles the English language, and will generate more trouble. What is a "significant" work? What kind of "independent" source is it that can come from the source's creators and promoters? The third "prong" requiring significant coverage appears to be nothing more than a reiteration of the GNG. I don't think this proposed guideline is an improvement over current policy at this time. Ray (talk) 15:40, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support - I agree with User:Sephiroth BCR: better to have than to not have it. It's not my ideal and it's very vague, though that latter issue would likely be resolved as the number of AFDs decided under this guideline increased. I'd prefer to see something a little less restrictive, but at this point almost anything is better than nothing. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 15:42, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• Weak Support - I would prefer it were stricter, and more specific about what sort of sources might be acceptable, and which not. But it is an improvement over the current de facto situation, and any step in the right direction is to be applauded. Hopefully, if adopted, it will become clearer as it is increasingly applied in practice. Anaxial (talk) 16:22, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• Weak Support - I really like the idea of stipulating that the work the element is a part of must exceed notability. However, the vagueness of both this and the other prongs needs work. A tough task indeed. --Omarcheeseboro (talk) 16:42, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose: This is, due to its extremely ambiguous wording (the result of numerous concessions and agreements between users), a useless and unneeded piece of policy that is basically already covered by the general policies guarding all of the wiki. All this will lead to is another hat for the coatrack or both deletionist and inclusionist (both due to the above mentioned ambiguous meanings) in edit wars and arguments. Unnecessary, unneeded, undesirable, unable to deliver. Hooper (talk) 19:42, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• Support, although relunctantly because I beleive the wording could lead to the possible deletion of thousands of articles which would become non-notable by the standards of this guideline. I do however think the assesment is fair, and something needs to be done to limit the many articles on ficitional topics with little or no references, and serving little or no value except as a database to be used by fans of the topics covered. Charles Edward (Talk) 21:23, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
• Strong Oppose I particularly dislike the "three-pronged test". A subject should not have to pass all three criteria in order to have a standalone article. Indeed, based on the last criteria, most of the fiction-related content on Misplaced Pages would have to be removed or merged into lists of ever increasing length. It is particularly difficult to find "significant, real-world information... creative influences, design processes, and critical, commercial, or cultural impact." for most fictional material - especially characters, locations, etc. And it is often a matter of an editor's personal opinion whether a piece of work bears evidence of such influence. Also, this proposal is worded quite vaguely, appears to possibly contradict itself at several points, and is above all unnecessary.

I would also mention that this would, if it went into effect and was actually enforced (which would be rather difficult IMO), create such a plethora of lists relating to fictional content as would reflect poorly on the overall nature of the encyclopedia. WP:NOT says "Misplaced Pages is not a directory" - this includes such lists. Our readers come here to read articles, not browse through lists. And I think we should consider that carefully. –The Fiddly Leprechaun · Catch Me! 21:58, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose because I feel that Misplaced Pages is a place where all things must be documented. If you apply this "three prong test" you will forbid a large volume of literature from being added to our collection of articles for no good reason. --Rgemerson (talk) 02:51, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
• Strong support - May not be ideal, but it's a start, and we really need a guideline for this area of the encyclopedia. Gatoclass (talk) 08:54, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
  • It is not a guideline, it is just a deletionist's opinion, and it is too harmful to Misplaced Pages's further evolution. Krasss (talk) 21:05, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose The only aspect of the "three-pronged" test that is necessary is the verification of "Real-world coverage". The other points are unnecessary and place too much importance on associated works. Unlike a number of editors here, I feel it's too lenient, and feel it would be used to justify keeping articles on minor fictional characters and so forth. Either an element of fiction is notable under overarching guidelines or it isn't. WesleyDodds (talk) 09:07, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
  • That seems conflicting to say its too lenient and yet that the only prong needed is the third. There are minor characters that assert notability for a separate article, but these usually are due to them meeting the first two prongs (see, for example, Sideshow Bob). Those prongs together prevent having articles on every character from a barely-notable web comic, or from a short-lived TV show, or the like, while allowing characters and such from a multi-year, highly successful work that has entered the public conscious to be given their rightful due. These prongs together address the fact that not all fiction is created equal. --MASEM 13:10, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

The intention of the test is to create a more lenient criteria for judging notability, but in practice you only need the third prong. Basically, the proposal is flawed. Regarding your example, Sideshow Bob would merit his own article in the first place because he has been covered and discussed by several secondary sources. The other two tests are useless. WesleyDodds (talk) 23:04, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, then we just have a difference of opinion. I agree that the third prong is noticably stricter than the first prong. But both are needed. I support this compromise because the status quo leaves us with deleting characters who are central to a work of fiction regardless of that centrality. That is an outcome that illustrates (to some) the disconnect between WP:N and "reality" (you can argue about their definition of reality). This guidance attempts to bridge that without giving away the farm. Protonk (talk) 23:14, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Unfortunately not everything merits an article. Some fictional articles should be deleted. That's a harsh truth. Really, if the subject can't fulfill the third criteria, whether or not it meets the first two is pointless. Also, comparing this guideline, to say, the ones determining notability for musical groups and songs, it's very lacking. Those guidelines deal with what kind of sources are acceptable to determine notability. In comparison, this guidelines feels very insular. How many other notability guidelines were consulted in crafting this? WesleyDodds (talk) 23:25, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Of course. Not everything merits an article (though there is a range of opinions on that as well). I would also argue that most people feel that some real world connection should exist in these articles, but that a range of opinions exists there as well. We are attempting to write a guideline to allow for that range. We want to avoid infinite splits into increasingly more trivial articles and we want to avoid just saying ">2 RS or it goes" for articles which may have been spun from their parent due to SIZE. How do you suggest we do that in the fashion that MUSIC or NB does? Misplaced Pages:Notability_(books) offers 5 criteria. One is basically the GNG (which is what most books are kept/deleted on anyway). 4 is spotty in terms of falsifiability. 5 is pretty indefensible as a notability criteria. Misplaced Pages:Notability (music) doesn't really analogize well. If a musician charts or is broadcast, they can get an article. Ok. What is the analogue to WP:FICT? Even then, charting doesn't map well to independent sourcing (presumably the idea) and there are several cases where an article would be deleted by WP:MUSIC and kept by the GNG. Likewise with ATHLETE, which is just as arbitrary. I'm not trying to drag those guidelines down, just note that we aren't really placing them under the same scrutiny and that they don't serve the same functions. A musician or author isn't an obvious daughter to a larger, notable subject. Every fictional element is. That doesn't translate across. So we have looked at some of those guidelines (note below the discussion of the size of this guideline in comparison) when creating this, but for some of the reasons I pointed out, that referencing will not be noticable in the text of the guideline. Protonk (talk) 23:38, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

As someone who has worked both on fiction articles and music articles, I can say the music guidelines for notability have been far more useful and relevant than these proposed guidelines. The real problem is that priority emphasis is not being placed on secondary sources. When I work on a fiction article, my first thought is "What sources can I find at my library or online?", not "How important is this to a larger fictional work?" Because it's irrelevant. Secondary sources will determine if it is important enough to merit its own article. That's why the songs guideline works so well. Charting on a national sales chart is a very clear-cut criteria for gauging notability based on secondary sources. We don't have that here; instead there's a focus on how much a character has appeared in a series and so forth. Personally I think there needs to be another overhaul of the proposed guideline, and until then, I will continue to oppose. WesleyDodds (talk) 23:48, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

"Charting...is a very clear cut criteria for gauging notability based on secondary sources". I agree, partially. It is a good proxy. Charting doesn't mean that something will be covered. It means that it is likely to be covered. But I think that we understand each other well enough. Hopefully some overhaul of the guideline can be made so that it satisfies your concerns (though it seems like you are looking for a recapitulation of the GNG). Protonk (talk) 23:57, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose - This seems to be way over the top in my opinion. Why must fiction significantly exceed the basic threshold of the relevant notability guideline? Are we trying to delete every low important piece of fiction from Misplaced Pages? I feel that only the third prong, real world coverage is required to demonstrate notability.--Captain-tucker (talk) 11:06, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
  • This is not meant to delete such articles, only to recognize that failing to meet any of the prongs usually means that these topics are covered in a larger article (via merges, not deletions). See my comments above and before this for more. --MASEM 13:10, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose Way too strict. Many people come to read Misplaced Pages articles about a movie or show even if it is not of "particular cultural or historical significance". If there is an article about an anime character, who cares, except those interested in this anime character ? Plus, fiction is an area where a lot of Misplaced Pages newbies start their first article, I don't want them to be slashed because of such a guideline, see Misplaced Pages:Please_do_not_bite_the_newcomers. Nicolas1981 (talk) 11:22, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Characters and the like from shows of little "particular cultural or historical significance" can still be covered in the show's article, with redirects used to help locate information (they are cheap). As to the second point, a lot of first time Wikipedians also make their first article on their own garage band, on themselves, and the like, many which are speedily deleted. Note that fiction articles do not outright qualify here, but instead in many cases merges can be done to retain their contributions. --13:10, 1 February 2009 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Masem (talk • contribs)
• Support and suggest stronger criteria re: pop music, especially punk rock. Spoonkymonkey (talk) 14:25, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. First, as already pointed out, the title is misleading; even the lead admits that it's not about fiction - this was de-generalised elsewhere - but about elements of fiction. Who do you think you're fooling? Why? Second, the vaguest possible criteria placed at #1 is useless and dangerous. "Significant artistic impact, cultural impact, or general popularity" are not strictly defined, and cannot be. These ambiguous "criteria" do more harm than good. Third, wording of #2 (recurring character) emphasizes tv crap (maybe it should, but then what's the point of "central to understanding"?!) at the expense of real literature. Jason and Medea are not recurring, should they be deleted? Probably ... but then, it appears that the first sentence of #2 deliberately overrides RS, and must be failed for this deviation alone (it appears that "central to understanding" may be claimed without reference to RS, while not central or not understandin need them). Take away these worthless #1 and #2, and it's reduced to quotes from upper-level rules. NVO (talk) 20:07, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Your examples fail in your case. The guideline says very clearly that any article which passes WP:N simultaneously passes this one. And I would bet a good deal of cash we could find information on both that exist in the reliable sources which would save those two articles, quite easily. The fact that the two articles are about heroes whom are 2500 years old may help in that regard.
    And we're not trying to fool anybody; I'm not sure where you got that idea; it is acknowledged that the name might be an issue. For prong one, those are the criteria placed upon the work from which is element is derived, not the element itself.
    As for prong two, if it emphasizes "tv crap", that may be poor wording of the guideline. It's quite easily possible to apply "recurring characters" to video games, comics (Calvin and Hobbes), book series (Wedge Antilles, protagonist of Rogue Squadron). That you see this as "at the expense" was a view that the creators/wonkers of the guideline didn't want to happen. No comment whatever I left unanswered. --Izno (talk) 23:00, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
• Support in general, although, like any other notability policy, this type of separate policy or guideline is entirely unnecessary if we simply require that an article have enough reliable sources available that it can meet the existing content policies such as the verifiability policy. That reduces this whole problem to a much simpler one that has been already solved. If there are enough reliable sources, the article can exist. If not, not. It also eliminates the subjectivity in the importance and role parts of this guideline. But since this proposal has heavy reliance on reliable sources and verifiability it will suffice. Articles should always be reduced to what the reliable sources support and that should extend to whether an article should exist on a topic or not. - Taxman 20:52, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
• Support. As far as I can tell, the wording of this proposed guideline will allow for well-written, verifiable articles about television episodes. -- Wikipedical (talk) 21:25, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose The guideline is too long and complex, and there are too many guidelines already. --Rumping (talk) 23:12, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
• Support. Recent copyedits have made this proposal much more clear. I can approve of it as it appears now ] and it would be helpful to have a this guideline active. --Kraftlos (Talk | Contrib) 23:12, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose. Unclear, and unneccesary. - brenneman 00:02, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
• Support If it needs further refining it can get it afterwards. We need to start somewhere. BreathingMeat (talk) 02:41, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
• Support as a hard-fought compromise with support from both sides of the aisle. I support increasing clarity where possible, but I am mindful that changes that appear minor may actually be significant. An acceptable balance of succinctness and explanation may not be reachable. Flatscan (talk) 04:25, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
• Support the idea, oppose the language I believe this to be a step in the right direction, although the language needs to be tightened. There are aspects of prong 1 that I am not terribly keen on: defining "general popularity" sounds like a potential minefield to me, artistic and cultural impact aren't much better. Prong 2 is not particularly clear - how are we defining "episode"? That could mean a television episode, an installment of a serially published novel, such as Bleak House, or an episode within a work: the penis throwing episode of Jude the Obscure. That is a major loophole and could lead to problems. Otherwise this is OK, I don't really see it radically changing the status quo but I welcome the renewed emphasis on verifiability and sources for fictional subjects. There is not a real answer to the content issues that face Misplaced Pages: I don't think that IG-88 is notable, others clearly do; I think that minor Swedish poets are notable, others perhaps do not—we've been having these arguments for the five years I've been on the project and, frankly, they bore me. There is not going to be a policy or guideline that will precisely define what is notable and what is not, but I think that this guideline may eventually help define broad limits on what we want and do not want when it comes to fiction. That can only be a good thing. Rje (talk) 05:26, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
• Support My earlier concerns at the straw poll have been alleviated by the clarifications made to the guideline regarding reliable and independent sources. Raven1977_{My edits} 14:39, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
• Note to closing administrator This RfC was posted on 28 January 2009. In the 6 days since then there has been 110 changes to this proposal (as of February 3rd). This means that those who voted for the proposal earlier, voted on a different proposal. In my opinion, these 110 changes over 6 days also shows a lack of consensus. Ikip (talk) 09:54, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose per many of the above who cited WP:CREEP. Having one notability guideline is bad enough. Power.corrupts (talk) 19:54, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
• Weak Oppose as it does not sufficiently take into account that not all extremely successful works (particularly older examples, wherein the source language is not English) have an array of accessible and reliable western mentions and/or treatises on the subject. A considerable part of the Misplaced Pages visitors also rely on it to access more obscure character information, but it can be argued that this is what Wikia is for. Some greater correlation between the two sources might be an idea. The all-accessible notable basics within Misplaced Pages, and an end link at the bottom of the main page (in the Wikiquote manner) perhaps? Is there a handy command previously available for this? Dave (talk) 16:40, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
  • In all cases, characters or elements who are covered in reliable sources meet our inclusion guidelines (including this one). Protonk (talk) 16:47, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
    • Please speak carefully, Protonk ... it's our tendency to misuse the categories of sources that causes much of the confusion. That would be a one-prong test. If the sources were reliable, but not independent, such characters would fail WP:N, and they would have to meet all three prongs before this guideline would include them. Your statement would only be true if they were independent reliable sources.—Kww(talk) 17:14, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
    • Sorry. Kww is right. Though I suspect the sources Dave is talking about would be both independent and reliable. Protonk (talk) 19:03, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
    • My apologies for being unclear. I was thinking about that it's been very hard to find (encyclopaedically useful) acceptable press or book mentions for various extremely successful manga, and drew the loose conclusion that the same likely holds true for other Eastern media. If a considerable amount of reliable third party sources would be required to feature any mention/article whatsoever within Misplaced Pages then quite a lot of (notable in the extreme success and fandom popularity sense) works would go without any mention whatsoever. Then again, I may have misunderstood the text. Dave (talk) 19:37, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
      • If you are discussing creating articles based solely upon editors' personal interpretation of the manga itself, there isn't any real possibility of that being acceptable. We've argued back and forth about how independent secondary sources need to be, and what the acceptable ratio of secondary to primary is, and what the acceptable ratio of independent secondary sources to non-independent secondary sources is, but the chances of a guideline being passed that allows articles with no secondary sources at all is effectively zero.—Kww(talk) 20:22, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Oppose. I have given my reasons below as part of a general discussion, but as I see that !votes in this straw poll are still being counted, I place mine here so my view is counted. Then, according to Misplaced Pages:Policies#Proposals we should tag this as failed. It has had several years to gain consensus and constantly fails. My suggestion is that we mark it as an essay rather than a failed proposal. SilkTork * 08:41, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Strong Oppose. The text at present is inconsistent (there is still reference to the three pronged test but the test has been renamed for instance, and the text now talks about conditions). It suffers from massive WP:CREEP. The guideline, if adopted, would also immediately generate hundreds, if not thousands of additional articles in need for cleanup, review, merging or deletion - a severe case of WP:BURO. "Notability of Elements of Fictional Works", in particular the first and the third conditions, are ackwardedly worded and will be constantly subject to the systemic bias that if one editor doesn't know about something, it cannot be notable - a source for more senseless edit wars instead of less of these. Last but not least, per Ikip. The text should be completely frozen during the RfC for adoption, since the early voters and late voters aren't considering the same guideline anymore. MLauba (talk) 12:29, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

• Strong Oppose per lack of requirement for independent sources. This whole push is one to lower the bar for what amounts to elements of trivia. This really needs to be recast as a discussion about the stuff the fans want to include; i.e. endless detail about television E&C and other such things. Specifically, it is not really about 'fiction'. No one is arguing to delete Lady Macbeth or The Little Prince; it's always about some unimporatnt thing; something unencyclopaedic. Jack Merridew 12:25, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose This guideline appears to have changed dramatically since it was first put forward for adoption. When I originally voted to oppose it on the grounds that the 'at a glance' section was contradictory it set a higher standard than WP:N. This has now been changed to what appears to be a much lower standard - though this is so confusingly worded that it's hard to tell. No notability guidelines should undermine WP:N, and the fact that such a dramatic change could occur strongly indicates that the guideline is not stable and does not have consensus support. It's also highly disappointing that this was allowed to happen given that editors were voting on adopting it - many of the above votes are presumably now invalid given that the guideline has changed significantly. Nick-D (talk) 07:20, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

  Yup, I said about this some days ago (second chunk of diff). Cheers, Jack Merridew 12:39, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

• SupportOppose and in fact, a much stronger support that I thought I'd give. As much as I'd like to say the relevant guideline for dealing with fiction is here, Misplaced Pages is badly in need of a guideline dealing with these sorts of articles, and the proposed guideline seems little more than a clearly-dictated version of the almighty GNG. I hope this passes. Themfromspace (talk) 07:21, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

  Changed to oppose: I just read Jack's comment about the lack of "independant" sources, and this frightens me. More than once I've seen an article that shouldn't belong here be kept at AfD because of coverage from within the sphere of fiction, or from sources only covering that particular aspect of fiction. I can't accept this fundamentally different and lower standard than the GNG. Themfromspace (talk) 20:19, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose strongly Many people are interested in detailed information about fiction (stories, characters). The notability guidelines do not reflect this. An encyclopedia that would not include this type of information is lacking. I saw that Nicolas1981 also voiced this argument, as others probably have as well. Debresser (talk) 14:20, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
• See also the discussion on Misplaced Pages talk:Notability#General interest, where it has been pointed out that there is a general discussion on the notability subject on Misplaced Pages:Notability/RFC:compromise. In view of this general discussion I think we should not make any decision at this moment.
• Weak Support as a step in the right direction. We need some policy in this area - arguments like it are routinely used in AFD already, and a general policy would be very helpful. The proposed one, while flawed for many reasons, is still better than nothing. Robofish (talk) 13:45, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
• Oppose as long as characters/episodes are given a blanket pass (regardless of whether the word "major" is included or not). Oppose will get stronger if language on independent sourcing being required is further watered down or removed. Karanacs (talk) 19:27, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
• Weak Support, A general guideline will help settle a number of debates, still needs some work though.Smallman12q (talk) 04:28, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Tally of recurring comments (currently incomplete)

1. ^ Not enough empahsis is put on third party sources
2. ^ Proposed policy is too inclusionist.
3. ^ Proposed policy is too deletionist.
4. Proposed policy focuses too much on article quality
5. ^ Appears to be stricter than other notability guidelines.
6. ^ Guideline's wording is confusing or unclear.
7. Proposed policy does not meet no original research guidelines.

Reconsidering notability in general and in fiction specifically

See Misplaced Pages talk:Notability#General interest for an interesting discussion on this subject as it pertains specifically to fiction as well.

Prong 2

We're getting nowhere on this, just going backwards and forwards between the two different versions. How about we simplify it?

• The element must be a significant part of the work which is important to a full understanding of the work. Major characters and episodes containing important plot points are more likely to be significant than minor characters or episodes that have no effect on ongoing continuity.

This leaves the question of how to determine what is significant or not to discussion at AFD, where, frankly, consensus is more likely to be achieved than here and now. It gives the bare minimum of guidance, but guidance I think we can all agree is accurate. If AFD contributors want to see evidence of the significance of an element, let them demand it at AFD. In most cases, I think it will be self-evident. JulesH (talk) 19:09, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I like it. I think the old version got too mired in "prove it" language that the original meaning was lost. Nifboy (talk) 20:43, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

• The test is meaningless, as no objective evidence is required to pass it. You may as well say that all fictional elements are a significant part of the work. --Gavin Collins (talk) 20:58, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

• There was a time when you said you could live with that, because the third prong was strong enough. Randomran (talk) 21:18, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

• I think we get too mired up in the evidence requirement, and I'm not going to play the game of approving changes to the meaning I like, and then arguing that you can't change the meaning if I don't like the change. The language that was in place during the RFC did require sourcing, but it didn't make any requirements as to whether it be primary or secondary or third-party. I don't think it's appropriate to tighten it at this stage of the game. If people want to explicitly point out that the nature of the sourcing isn't specified, I'll buy that under the guise of clarification. Either eliminating the requirement or tightening it by requiring that the sources be either secondary or independent isn't fair play.—Kww(talk) 21:32, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

In answer to Randomran, if you split the third prong into two seperate tests, making the second prong a test for real-world coverage and third into a test for substantial coverage only as I have proposed ages ago, then you have two out of the three objective tests needed to make up the three prongs. But to base the second prong on subjective criteria won't work, as it is not usable as guidance in editorial disputes where there are differences of opinion. You may as well say "'The element must be a significant part of the work, but only if WP:ILIKEIT". --Gavin Collins (talk) 21:49, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

• I think we need a bit of a history lesson here, because what you're talking about is the original version that was put together by Phil in his userspace, before he put it out here to work on back in December. Back then, it was written in such a way that you can prove importance by reference to the primary source -- at a minimum. If I understand you correctly, that's what you're saying you'd be okay with.
  Gavin Collins wasn't okay with that. He was concerned that a reference to a primary source would at best be debatable, and at worst would *always* prove importance. Someone would say "Character X killed 12 vampires throughout the story! Of course he's important!" The issue was revisited countless times. He ultimately conceded he could live with the second prong only because the other two prongs existed, but that he felt it was useless and would always be passed in practice.
  Not wanting to settle for mediocrity, I wanted to tighten up exactly what kind of statements of importance -- with reference to the primary source -- we could accept. One of those standards was "this is a recurring, non-cameo character". If you have a bunch of episodes where the character shows up and does something important, then that would prove enough to pass the second prong. And as a compromise to that, I offered that *everything else* would need better sources than that -- an inanimate object like The One Ring would need proof of importance from reliable third-party sources because it's the exception more than the rule.
  Somewhere along the line, that became interpreted that third-party sources were required for all fictional elements, and that the statement about characters being recurring was a statement of clarification, let alone a statement to make the standard even tighter. Of course, this was simultaneously misinterpreted to be closer to the original version in December, so basically we had two groups of people agreeing to a guideline with two different meanings. (Again, I point this out not to say which side gets to be right, but more to point out that we can't have a guideline unless everyone agrees to something. The past is the past, it's time to come up with something we can all live with.)
  So what do we do now? As a concession to inclusionists, I think we *have* to have at least one prong that can be passed by reference to primary sources in *some* cases, or we have to scrap the prong entirely. If the requirement is reliable third-party sources, we're back at WP:N -- plus we've made it harder to reach a consensus by adding the first and third prongs to make it even more stringent.
  So yes, let's allow people to pass the second prong (importance) by reference to primary sources, because that's the only way we're going to have any support from moderate inclusionists. But for the sake of guys like Gavin who are worried that this will make it too easy to prove importance, it would help us if we could clarify what kind of stuff from primary sources would prove importance. I'd say "recurring character", but if that's a non-starter, I'd like to see some brainstorming. Because "no, no, no," isn't working, isn't getting us anywhere, isn't building a consensus. Randomran (talk) 21:55, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

• I thought "reoccurring, non-cameo characters" was a good phrase that would get a majority of more important characters while weeding out the obviously minor ones.じんない 22:26, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
• I think we are in fairly close agreement on this issue, Randomran. Given the language we had during the RFC, I think a well-reasoned argument for importance based on primary sources alone would pass the second prong.—Kww(talk) 00:51, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• I'm glad we're making progress, and it's big of you to find ways to expand support for this guideline among inclusionists. I think this is actually pretty generous. Maybe too generous, for a lot of the reasons that Gavin Collins said: what does a well-reasoned argument for importance using primary sources look like? "We'll know it when we see it" leaves this prong open to abuse, and the whims of crowds. The intention of something like "show that this is a non-cameo recurring character" was meant to tighten it up. I'm not married to that as a definitive standard. But I hope you understand why some people would like this to be tighter, and hope that you have some ideas of how to get us there. For example, "a character will pass the second prong if reliable (primary) sources can show that X..." Randomran (talk) 00:56, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• I'll refer back to my earlier comments on this topic. As for language, I maintain that the simplest language that conveys the same meaning that we had is 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 secondary sources. As for tightening, I'm not really in favor of shifting the meanings of the prongs. I think the best that can be done is a paragraph of explanation that provides a list of possible arguments, but with a strong caveat in the paragraph that those arguments aren't magic tickets: they have to be accepted at AFD time.—Kww(talk) 01:11, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• I hope that you'd reconsider. Not just to get the support of anti-wikilawyers (people who worry that people will manipulate any subjectivity in a guideline to their advantage), but to gain the support of inclusionists and deletionists who are just as worried about people twisting the guideline based on WP:ILIKEIT/WP:IHATEIT. You couldn't think of one test that would even give us a *presumption* that a character passes the second prong, a presumption that could be overridden by common sense? Randomran (talk) 01:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• Aside from my aversion to changing, as opposed to clarifying, the problem is also one of this being a very unusual case in the first place. The element is from an extremely popular work, or it wouldn't pass the first prong. There's substantial real-world information about it, or it wouldn't pass the third prong. But yet, there aren't two third-party sources that discuss the element directly, because, if there were, it would pass WP:N and we wouldn't be arguing about prongs at all. That's what's causing my reluctance to list a presumption, because we are at an exception case already: why did this element that is so important to the work go unnoticed by all reviewers and commentators? If it went unnoticed, why is it important? I think that really is a case-by-case issue.—Kww(talk) 01:47, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• I can live with that, at least until someone else tries to revisit the issue. I think it would help a lot if you added the language you mentioned above. (I'd add it myself, but seeing as I've already modified that prong a lot I wouldn't want people to get the impression I was trying to monopolize it.) Randomran (talk) 01:58, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• I'd like to see someone chime in on this little subdiscussion first.—Kww(talk) 02:03, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• It sounds good to me. These changes seem minor to me, though. In the abstract, they may be important, but I don't think a very large percentage of articles are going to be effected (read different AfD result) by them. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 02:14, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• I am opposed. Phil Sandifer (talk) 02:51, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• Could you kindly explain what you perceive the difference in meaning to be between my proposed text and the text of the second prong in this version?—Kww(talk) 02:59, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• Sure. Your proposed text is meant to require proof for episodes and characters, wehreas the second prong in that version is meant to whitelist them. As a firm believer in authorial intent (at least for today) there is a big difference there. Phil Sandifer (talk) 03:44, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• Please answer the argument neglecting authorial intent, as few RFC !voters reviewed the hundreds of kilobytes of preceding discussion, so authorial intent was not clear to them. They read the words, and expressed an opinion on the words. I'm traveling today, and will be unable to reply before 11PM Atlantic Standard Time. Please don't interpret a pause as anything other than that.—Kww(talk) 09:46, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• I do not see speculating about the possible motivations of RFC !voters as a particularly useful mode of analysis. Clearly some thought they were supporting a whitelist. Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:08, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• I don't place a high value on speculation either. That's why I support restricting changes to clarify text as actually written. Not how I think one group perceived it, or how I think another group intended it, but as actually written. I oppose efforts to increase the requirements for sourcing beyond what was written during the RFC phase, and I didn't see a prohibition for primary sourcing for the importance of episodes and characters in that language. The second sentence made such a requirement, but it was about other elements. The third indicated that an argument above the level of a blind assertion had to be made, and linked to a requirement for sourcing in general.—Kww(talk) 14:33, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

• Phil/Kww: that's why I think there's benefit to saying what kind of evidence from a primary source would help something pass the second prong. It would effectively create a white list, which appeals to more inclusionist Wikipedians. And it adds more clarity that what importance actually means, which reduces chances for Wikilawyering, or "tyranny of the AFD mob". Randomran (talk) 03:50, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• Primary sources are of no value as a basis for a objective test because they require personal interpretation. I thought we had dropped the idea that primary sources could be used in the second prong ages ago. I have therefore reverted part of Randomran's changes. For the first time in ages, this guideline is fully compliant with WP:V, WP:N and WP:RS. What ever change comes next, please don't construct an exemption for characters or episodes, as their importance relative to other elements of fiction is a matter of unverifiable opinion, not fact. --Gavin Collins (talk) 14:49, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

What if we were to take Prong 2 like this:

The element must be a significant part of the work which is important to a full understanding of the work. It is presumed that episodes of X and characters of Y (see below) are always important; any other fictional element should have objective evidence from third-party sources to show importance to the work.

The X and Y are placeholders but I would envision them in this fashion:

"Episodes of X" - "Episodes of any nationally-broadcasted prime-time show"

"Characters of X" - "Lead character of a work of multiple volumes (which includes a television show, a book series, a video game series, or a movie series), appearing in more than 75%"

The reasoning is for the above is to assert some leeway for inclusionists while providing objective evidence that the deletionists are looking for. In the case of the episodes, nearly every nationally broadcasted prime-time show is going to have a review or ratings information, so even at the creation it may not have those details but likely can get them to meet the third prong. Now, we can probably argue left and right on "lead characters" but realistically, it is something that any English-taught person is going to be able to make the rationale distinction, moreso when in a group; however, by asserting some "%age" of works they appear in, this gives a better definition of when they should be described; in this fashion, because of the high number of appearances, is likely to be mentioned to some degree in reviews of the series or individual elements of it.

It's by far not perfect; I'm sure someone like Kww will disagree to the point on episodes, but given that during TTN's merging processes that these raised the most ire, I'd rather see them get the benefit of a doubt and be kept, though still encourage editors to merge, not due to notability but just editorially, to a list to improve the overall comprehension. (Remember that articles still need to meet the third prong ultimately, so this is not a complete allowance for all episodes). Gavin probably won't like the "lead character" designation (there are minor characters that appear in >75% of works, such as Neviel Longbottom from Harry Potter) but I think it is necessary to recognize that third party sources will not specifically identify characters as being important despite discussing the character to length, and thus any "allowance" on a character is going to have to assume best practices and good faith that editors can fairly distinguish a "lead" character from a "major" one or a "minor" one. And of course, for all other elements, we still ask for some statement of importance, so it's possible for other television episodes, characters, and other facets of fiction not listed here to gain their own articles. It's ultimately a bit of give & take, to recongize bounds of what should be covered in greater depth compared to what sources are available.

Of course, the criteria are free to be toyed with, I think they are a reasonable mid-point now, but there may be better ways of stating it. --MASEM 14:58, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I am happy to cut some slack, but constructing an exemption for characters and episodes just because they are considered to be important in the mind of an editor (even a great mind, such as Masem) is not a good idea, because it means the test is not based on objective evidence, and cannot be peer reviewed. A better idea is to say that an important character or episode is one that is the subject of real-world coverage, i.e. it is the subject of commentary that treats it as an element of fiction, not as an element of plot. Since you need real-world coverage to write an article in anycase, please consider this counter proposal. That leaves the third prong free to focus on defining substantial coverage. --Gavin Collins (talk) 16:13, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Well again, I've provided three statements for prong two that are about as objective as we can state:

• The element has a third-party source to describe its importance to the work.
• The element is an episode of a prime-time show.
• The element is a lead character that appears in a majority of the portions of a serial work

These are objective, save for what one may define as "lead character" but again, I implore that "lead character" is harder to dispute than "major character".

We already have the third prong that is there to establish the element as a part of a work of fiction, and not in terms of the fiction itself. If there is a need for "substantial" coverage then the third prong can be amended to include that, but as has been pointed out, we do sorta need something to protect any element of any show that's on DVD that has developer commentary from suddenly getting an article just because the developer said it. That said... (see next section) ---MASEM 16:36, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• In fairness, which element is an episode of a prime time show, or a lead character, or is neither is a matter of opinion, not fact. I have amended the criteria so that some objective evidence is required to satisfy each prong, and my understanding of this amendement is that it meets the consensus to date:

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

1. 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.
2. Role within the fictional work: The element must be an important element, and its importance must be verifiable. The importance of characters and episodes must be verified through real-world coverage that is independent of the primary source, i.e. coverage beyond what is revealed in the plot of the fictional work. 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.
3. Significant coverage must exist on the element. Examples of significant coverage include: creative influences, design processes, critical commentary, and cultural reception. Merely listing the notable works where the fictional element appears, their authors or 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.

Could you have a look at this and if it is not acceptable (which it might not be) then draft a version that is more likely to be acceptable from a wide range of viewpoints as I believe this one is. --Gavin Collins (talk) 23:23, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

The problem I have with this in general is that importance to the work is not necessarily going from "real-world sources", case in point being Cliff Notes to describe more classical works, as CLiff Notes are almost always in-universe but third-party. The key that I get from Kww and yourself is that we cannot accept importance to the work from a source anything less than an independent (third party) source, which makes complete sense to prevent system gaming. The "real-world" aspect is part of the third prong about additional sources.

Which brings me to why the above third prong is somewhat a problem. Remember that this is meant to be an olive branch to at least bring some calm to fiction. Thus, insisting on "significant coverage" (which, I read as being of quantity, not quality) of real-world information is a high barrier for most fiction and is definitely too strong (IMO) to appease that side. The third prong is better stated as "Non-trivial, real-world coverage", and the rest of that is fine. --MASEM 00:49, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Please don't misrepresent me, Masem. I've stated multiple times that I'm willing to accept an argument for importance based on primary sources.—Kww(talk) 05:47, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

• I don't see how primary sources can be used to discern whether an element is important or not, as it only through the medium of real-world commentary, criticism or analysis that a fictional element would be identfied as such. And in answer to Masem, I don't see how we can justify an exemption for any class of fictional element other than on the basis of subjective criteria (which all boil down to WP:ILIKEIT), becasue blanket exemptions are not based any objective evidence, just opinion.--Gavin Collins (talk) 09:56, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

• Sorry, Kww, I must have misread your comments.
• To Gavin, I've given two examples of criteria that are about as objective as you can get; episodes of prime time nationally broadcasted shows (that's clearly objective) and lead characters of serialized works ("lead character" has some wiggle room but much less than "major character") --MASEM 13:27, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

• They aren't Masem. For instance, on what basis was it decided that episodes of prime time nationally broadcasted shows should get their own articles? Masem' opinion. This criteria is not going to stand up to peer review, as it is basically a personal judgement on what you think is are valid criteria. No matter how valid your judgement is with regard to this issue, it is still your personal opinion and can't be validated. The problem which arises from a lack of objective evidence is two fold - firstly if anyone has a favourite episode that was not nationally broadcasted which they think should be featured in a Misplaced Pages article, then they are going to invent their own inclusion criteria based on arguments that are equally valid as your own. Imagine yourself in a perpetual editorial dispute with Pixelface about an episode which neither of you can agree should be or should not be included as a standalone article (may the gods preserve you from such a fate). To resolve this dispute, you will need more that you own personal view that "Masem believes that episodes of prime time nationally broadcasted shows should automatically pass the second prong", because it won't wash with Pixelface (or anything else you might say that runs contrary to his viewpoint). You will need some form of objective evidence to resolve such a dispute.
  Secondly, there is no point in aserting that a episodes of prime time nationally broadcasted shows should pass the second prong if sufficient coverage to write an encyclopedic article is not available. I think you might be assuming that there ought to be significant real-world coverage will break down if none can be found. Your whole argument boils down to putting the cart before the horse - assuming a topic is important before evidence of importance can be found. Alas, this approach won't work. --Gavin Collins (talk) 20:21, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

A thought

We seem to be hung up on sourcing issues. Maybe there's a completely different way to do this, and that could be something as "simple" as:

An element of fiction is presumed to be notable (having its own article) if it meets the GNG (significant coverage in secondary sources), or has at least one non-trivial third-party source in addition to at least one primary or first party source such as directory's commentary and interviews that describe the real-world aspects of the element.

No prongs, nothing. One of the barriers on fiction is "significant coverage" as most do not get anywhere close to that, but do have the primary sources and commentary to establish real-world. Taking the idea of the second and third prong and combining them (of some variation), to me, you get something that says basically we want 1 third-party source among other real-world sources and we're happy. Nothing to do with the work's importance or the element's importance. (And of course, any GNG-meeting topics are fair game). All we have to be aware is what is non-trivial (which does have some subjectivity to it but I think we can define that pretty decently), the rest is purely objective.

I know this is probably stronger than Phil's original vision of the prongs, but this seems to be language that at least simplifies the prongs and addresses the sourcing issues that people have. I still believe that there ought to be limited exception cases as I describe above (episodes of a prime time series, and clear lead characters of a serial work) based on presumption that sourcing can be found for these, and with strong emphasis on editorial decisions to merge content for better comprehension. --MASEM 16:36, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I like it. AfD's way of working already saves most fictional topics (against our guidelines, thankfully) and this wording would actually give editors a pretty good idea on how to improve articles. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 02:43, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Wow. This is much better than the "three-pronged test" and is more in line with what I had been trying to propose all along. Simple, reasonably objective tests, only one of which need to be passed for a presumption of notability. This is a good start and if we could at least agree on this wording, we will come a long way towards a good fiction notability guideline. If we could add to this that articles which don't pass these criteria should not be nominated for deletion if there is a relevant article on a notable topic to which it can be merged or redirected, then you'd likely have a guideline with my support. DHowell (talk) 05:18, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Opposed

I am, at this point, categorically opposed to this proposal. The second prong, as it stands in Gavin's accounting, is the most strict version of this prong yet proposed. It is clear that this guideline - which was already a significant compromise on the inclusionist side at the start - is simply going to be shifted ever closer to WP:N.

As it stands, the proposal no longer reflects the original intent, AfD consensus, actual practice, or anything but the desire of the most rabidly deletionist fringe dressed up in the language of compromise. I apologize profusely for any role I had in crafting this debacle. Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:10, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

The current second prong is the standard I have seen used in many AfD's and so on: articles on minor characters, episodes, ... are merged to lists. This is in line with this proposed guideline, which only states that minor characters...should not have separate articles, not that these articles must be deleted. A rabidly deletionist guideline would be completely different, and the current proposal is a significant compromise from both sides and has the consensus of many people who are neither inclusionist or deletionist (a group which represents hopefully the majority of editors on Misplaced Pages). But as stated, I have no objection on marking this proposal as "failed", and using the GNG as the guideline for all fictional subjects. Fram (talk) 15:33, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• I reverted Gavin's change. He was previously fine with a version of the guideline where importance can be asserted through primary sources. I don't understand why he's suddenly so keen on pushing a standard that is doomed to end in no consensus, which he must clearly be aware of. There is absolutely no value in backtracking, especially when other people on the deletionist side are finally coming around to the idea that we don't need to make all three prongs into an airtight fortress. Randomran (talk) 18:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• I still consider either a whitelist or the abandonment of the second prong necessary for support. Anything else is too strict. Phil Sandifer (talk) 23:21, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• Primary source are not acceptable. See my proposal above, but sources other than primary sources have to be used to establish importance, as that would be an example of self-referencing. The autor or creator commentary is only acceptable if it is substantial and made from a real-world perspective, i.e. the commentary goes beyond beyond what is revealed in the plot. --Gavin Collins (talk) 23:25, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• Which is the third prong. As I said, for the second prong (and the second prong alone) I either want to whitelist episodes and characters, or simply drop the prong and depend on #1 and #3. Either is an acceptable outcome for me. Phil Sandifer (talk) 05:26, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

• Whitelists are a non-starter. For a begining, you need to have inclusion criteria to compile them, and having inclusion criteria within inclusion criteria seems absurd to me, unless I have misunderstood the proposal. Secondly, whitelists that are drawn up based on personal opinion dressed up as consensus won't stand up to peer review unless they are backed up with objective evidence of some sort. I think we must coming to the point where we all agree that each prong must be backed up by some sort of evidence other than the opinions of Wikipedians.--Gavin Collins (talk) 10:02, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Just to be sure here, Phil and Gavin - you're not really talking about the creation of a whitelist, are you?  —SMALLJIM  14:45, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm going to reiterate that I'm as opposed to tightening the second prong at this stage as I am to loosening it. Moving the goalposts is moving the goalposts, and I don't care which team benefits. As to the specific content of a whitelist, I'll restate and amplify my reasoning: this guideline isn't supposed to be a floodgate or a roadblock, it's supposed to be a compromise. When we are dealing with material that lives or dies by the second prong, these conditions apply:

1. The work itself is extremely well sourced, or it would have failed prong one.
2. The sources provided have given a wealth of real-world information about the topic, or it would have failed the third prong.
3. Independent sources haven't directly discussed the element, or it would have passed WP:N, and we wouldn't be talking about prongs.

Given that set of conditions, we are at an inherent contradiction: the element is being represented as important, but yet, our primary measure of importance, the availability of independent sourcing, says it is not. Getting past that contradiction requires an explanation of some sort. Whitelisting turns the compromise into a floodgate: you might as well write Television episodes that have been presented on DVDs with commentary are inherently notable, which few exclusionists would take as a compromise. Requiring third-party sourcing for importance does essentially change this into WP:N, and no inclusionist would view that as a compromise.

That leaves us with essentially two choices: requiring at least developer commentary to substantiate importance, or allowing arguments based on primary sources to substantiate importance. Allowing primary sources is more open to abuse, and requiring developer commentary is seen by many as too strict, but both of them at least represent a compromise position. This takes us to the language we had: for those things that we pragmatically recognize tend to get articles, episodes and major characters, it did not require secondary sourcing, although it still required justification. For everything else, those things that tend to get a higher level of scrutiny, like rings, guns, locations, wands, fictional organizations, it explicitly called out a need for secondary sourcing, without raising the bar to the level of requiring third-party sources for them. Since that is what was in the language during the RFC, and since it represents a compromise withing a compromise, I really feel we need to stick with that as the rules. The language which expresses those rules is debatable, but I don't think we should be debating the rules themselves anymore—Kww(talk) 15:25, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

It seems to me at this point Gavin is the only one calling for independent third-party sources and Phil the only one who called for a whitelist and thus both sides are at the extreme edges with little support for either.

I am willing to say for reoccuring non-cameo characters and episodes in serialzed work that the primary source or development staff's commentary (should be somewhat vague since different forms of media use different terms and different setup) while anything else requires the latter and cannot use the primary source.じんない 22:58, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

• I am not calling for independent third-party sources. I want to see "importance of episodes and characters must be verified through real-world coverage that is independent of the primary source, i.e. coverage beyond what is revealed in the plot of the fictional work". Perhaps my wording is unlear, but this is requirement is not dependent on independent third-party sources - any reliable source will do. --Gavin Collins (talk) 10:42, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

The way it works

Looking at the current version of the three prongs, it would be useful to see a flowchart, but I see them working well because each prong is working towards a set of tests that will encourage encylopedic content. Since you need real-world coverage to write an article, I think the second prong is a "no brainer", since without real-world coverage, the article is at risk of failing WP:NOT#PLOT. I think the second prong is useful that it also promotes citing coverage that is independent of the plot, as most in universe coverage tends to come from promotional sources. The third prong is a test to encourage non-trivial coverage. So for instance, you cannot have an article on Allison Cameron if the only real-world coverage from the New York Times were to say "She looks good in a white coat". We need commentary that provides context, criticism and analysis - the minimum you would expect from a school essay. Having listened to everyone, I think this version is more likely to achieve widespread support, because it provides common sense guidance on writing encyclopedic articles about fictional topics. --Gavin Collins (talk) 10:21, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll repeat these two points from above:

"Importance to the work" is not something that is always evidenced by real-world information. A source may say "John Smith is the lead character of X"; that's not a real-world perspective, as that's still dealing with the fiction itself, but (importantly) as long as it is being stated by a third-party source, it establishes that "John Smith" is important to the work. The real-world aspects are the comments and criticisms that extend beyond the fiction and thus are part of the third prong. (The third-party source here is necessary to prevent someone that creates their own works to assert that all elements are important in their work and then having that source used to justify several separate articles.)

Calling the third prong "Significant coverage" (borrowed from WP:N) implies quantity, but your description implies quality of the sources. This probably is better called "Non-trivial coverage" or "Non-trivial real-world coverage". --MASEM 13:24, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

This is beginning to get silly. Are we playing a big game of darts with this guideline? Every couple of days we have a new set of "prongs" to throw darts at in the vain hope that something will stick. Seriously people, quit the games already. Kyaa the Catlord (talk) 15:28, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

In answer to Masem, I am trying to help you out here. If an element of fiction passes WP:N by being the subject of coverage (real-world or other wise) from a reliable secondary source, then you don't need to concern yourself about the three prongs. But if it does not, then passing the three prongs seems to me the next best thing. Capiche? --Gavin Collins (talk) 20:33, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Right, but I'm pointing out that, using your version of the three prongs, there are subtle problems. The third one is simply a wording issue, since "significant" in the context of WP:N means "quantity", but the way the third prong is written, that's not what it is looking for; it's looking for non-triviality of the sources (which yes, could be implied by "significant" but it's going to be confusing having two different "significant"s in two different guidelines. But the important factor here is the demonstration of the importance of an element does need to come from an independent source (and we discussed this specifically excludes the creators of the work, since they are biased as to what is important), but this does not need to be a "real world" facet of the element. That is, since we're talking "importance to the work", the source is going to likely talk about the element within the concept of the universe of the work of fiction itself. Thus, the phrase "real world" should not appear in the second prong, but should be a factor of the third prong. --MASEM 12:13, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

• I think you will find that significant coverage is more than quantity, as WP:N says it means that sources address the subject directly in detail, and no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than trivial but may be less than exclusive. I didn't see any mention of quanity, so that is something you are reading into the term "significant" all by yourself.
  As regards importance, I think real-world coverage is a key indicator. From the perspective of writing an encyclopedic article, it is a key prerequisite. From a critical or judgemental perspective that is used in commentary, a real-world perspective is also needed, because no fictonal character I know of has every been judged to be important within the context of the plot or narrative. Clearly the real-world perspective must be independent from the plot. We can't talk about an element being important from the perspective of the plot, because every element of fiction is important, otherwise they would not have been created in the first place. --Gavin Collins (talk) 22:44, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

• "Significant" in WP:N is often considered (if mistakenly) "2 or more sources". It's not stated like that , but that's what many read as a rule of thumb. We don't want that same mistake here and from the discussions, the precision term for the third prong is "non-trivial real world sources". As for the second prong, if a reliable third party source states "Character X is a lead character", that deems that character "important to the work". The importance to the work has to be frame in the in-universe context, which may include a real-world facet but does not have to. --MASEM 23:05, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

• I disagree. Significant has no association with a requirement for 2 or more sources in Misplaced Pages, real-life or anywhere else. WP:N requires multiple sources, it is true ("N=2RS"), but that has nothing to do with significance. In any case, we are all argreed that significant coverage should the basis for prong 3, because nobody wants to to use on trivial coverage as a basis for inclusion criteria. --Gavin Collins (talk) 16:40, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

current danger to the compromise

The only hope of consensus here is a compromise. Any compromise will involve having less than full separate articles for some characters of borderline notability. The information on them would need to preserved instead in combination articles, which is a highly appropriate manner not running afoul of what some people think to be the Notability requirements--since the contents of an article does not have to be every paragraph of it notable. I'm therefore dismayed to see the AfD WP:Articles for deletion/List of M.I.High Characters--where a list of exactly this nature is in danger of being deleted. If this sort of danger to content is going to be present, I can no longer support any compromise like the one being discussed--to preserve content we will then need a definition of Wotability (to use a word of A Man in Black's devising) that makes it clear that separate articles on all significant fictional characters are justified regardless of secondary sourcing. If we can't be sure of keeping even compromise combination articles, we would do better to try whenever possible to hold onto as much as possible as separate articles. The information has to go somewhere. If there are people who absolutely insist on excluding such information altogether, they are clearly unwilling to compromise. I believe there are in fact some people who want to restrict content on fiction to the minimum. I hope they will see the wisdom of not trying to fight on such a basis. DGG (talk) 02:42, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

The danger in your line of thinking is where you contend that all information on Misplaced Pages belongs on Misplaced Pages. The fact that episode X in the Y television series makes a three-second aside about figure G does not need to belong in figure G's article. Misplaced Pages isn't a dumping ground for trivial information, and it hasn't been for a while. Not all content on here deserves to be preserved. Themfromspace (talk) 05:03, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

DGG you need to switch tack, and consider whether such topics would be supported by enough coverage to write an encyclopedic article. For instance, List of M.I.High Characters has none, it fails WP:NOT so there is no point in preserving it. I am willing to compromise on how to achieve this end, so long as we are agreed that the objective is to write encyclopedic articles, rather than permit topics on random stuff to be dumped in Misplaced Pages that has no real-world content at all. --Gavin Collins (talk) 10:37, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

DGG, I am not singling out any editor here but keep in mind that many of these editors on the AfD circuit are practicly single purpose accounts, in that all they do is delete other editors contributions. As I wrote on WP:Articles for deletion/List of M.I.High Characters:

"It appears that even lists are not immune from deletion now. So much for the great FICT comprimise." Ikip (talk) 09:25, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

We have specifically avoided stating anything on how lists are to be handled for the time being. That's a much larger sticky wicket that would need to be dealt with. --MASEM 14:38, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

No, the current danger is that an already agreed upon compromise is now being rolled back, once again in favor of making the guideline stricter, despite the fact that we are already at point where it is stricter than existing practice, and where, in the RFC, more people objected to its strictness than its leniency. Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:18, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

The version in place at the moment you wrote that comment is in no way stricter than the version commented on during the RFC. Have you ever stopped to consider that perhaps the greatest danger to the compromise is people that refuse to compromise? People that insist that television episodes inherit notability from their parent series, and refuse to recognize that a common practice for episodes is to segregate them into list articles?—Kww(talk) 15:25, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Your insistence on denying the reality that people, in good faith, read the old version as a whitelist is problematic. There are comments in the RFC *specifically referencing* the free pass to episodes and characters. The fact of the matter remains - a compromise was reached to whitelist episodes and characters. Now that compromise is being renegotiated. That is bullshit. Phil Sandifer (talk) 15:29, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I haven't denied that people misread it. I've said that there's no fair and just way to accommodate that problem. People have misread all kinds of things, and voted all kinds of ways based on various misapprehensions. That doesn't give us license to change text to match misreadings, only to clarify text where misreadings occurred.—Kww(talk) 15:38, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

• Phil, I think you are trying it on. Exemptions were firmly rejected in in the RFC. Editorial walled gardens for certain types of character or episode is something we all agree must be avoided. In anycase, your suggestion goes against the spirit of WP:NOTINHERITED. However, I still think we can find a compromise that will work. --Gavin Collins (talk) 15:59, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

The problem, however, means that the RFC gives us little to no data on the subject of support or opposition for a whitelist. In which case the previous compromise on a whitelist - one that Gavin, if I recall, was party to - retains some credibility. More to the point, however, is the fact that this is stricter than current practice, and that the whole guideline seems to me stricter than there's a broad consensus for.

I, at this point, propose removing the second prong outright. It is clear that no good compromise exists on it, and a strong case can be made that "importance to the fictional work" amounts to an in-universe importance that is lacking in credibility. Elements of highly significant fictional works about which there is a lot of real-world coverage is an adequate notability standard. Phil Sandifer (talk) 16:03, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I thought this was how I was helping you, by seperating the requirements for significant and real-world coverage by splitting them between prongs 2 and 3. But if you want to drop prong 2 and roll the two requirements into prong 3 then I won't complain.--Gavin Collins (talk) 16:17, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

The importance test of the second prong is an important part of the guideline itself, and should not be dropped. There is no reason to allow Misplaced Pages to become an echo of DVD commentary. Again, this is too substantial of a change to the guideline to make without invalidating the results of the RFC. Eliminating the second prong is logically equivalent to generating a universal whitelist.—Kww(talk) 16:30, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I've always viewed that the version of FICT based on Phil's original proposal is not a permanent version, only one to get into place to prevent massive disgruntlement on either side of the argument over fiction while setting the stage to discuss treatment of fiction as a whole overall (WAF, support or lack thereof for lists, etc.) as well as possible notability arguments (though to me, it seems we've now since had the latter discussion, showing that WP:N really isn't likely to move anywhere).

That said, my belief for the best outcome here at FICT is something that is at least addresses the major issues with poor sourcing that most fiction element articles end up with, while balancing with a level of inclusion that can be generally met by more significant fictional elements, with the balance on inclusion for the time being until we can address the larger picture. Not a license to create tons of fiction element articles, but at the same time, preventing the next ArbCom Ep&Char case from happening because of rampant merging or deletions.

This is why I agree that a final permanent version of FICT should not presume any episode and character to be immediately notable without sourcing, but in this interim version, I am willing to acknowledge (and hope that others) that some episodes and characters may not need that type of sourcing for the time being, specifically limiting it to those cases that will generally have sources if you look hard enough. For me, I've offered this limited exception to primetime TV episodes and the lead characters from serial works or series - both areas that you just need to do some leg work to source appropriately and thus should have the benefit of the doubt for the current intermediate version of FICT only. Once we've sat down to talk about fiction handling in general, and set out a new FICT, that benefit of the doubt goes away (unless we decide it should be retained). Again, this is merely an olive branch to help keep things at bay until we work out the larger problems with the whole system. --MASEM 16:19, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Masem, you are just muddying the water by trying to bring articles that fail WP:NOT#PLOT into the equation. Such plot-only articles (which you refer to as "articles with poor sourcing") are not encyclopedic, becuase they don't have any real-world content. --Gavin Collins (talk) 16:32, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm talking about articles that likely have good potential to be sourced to meet the prongs or the GNG, in the same manner that WP:MUSIC, WP:BIO, etc. work by defining certain objective criteria that lead to well-sourced articles, even if they currently exist in a poorly sourced state; we're not supposed to be judging by the present article state but the potential article state and that's why considering two limited cases which often produce well sourced articles after some elbow grease has been applied is appropriate. --MASEM 16:41, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

• We already have articles with good potential covered in Articles that don't meet the inclusion criteria, so you have no need to worry. --Gavin Collins (talk) 16:46, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

the darkening future....

And I see the "prongs" are back... and I read the latest draft very carefully... and then considered an example where it would work to the detriment of Wiki... and there are thousands more. A Phaser is one of the more important "elements" in the Star Trek series and is included in the comprehensive List of weapons in Star Trek. Now I have no doubt that Star Trek as a television series and as a set of films can be shown to exceed the WP:GNG (the proposal still requiring something to exceed current notability standsard), so fictional "element" of a phaser would meet PRONG 1 of this proposal. And a phaser can be easily WP:V'd as esily meeting PRONG 2... but even understanding its importance, specially where it is an "element" seen and used in every episode and every film, those cannot be used as WP:V per PRONG 2 because one has to show coverage away from the Primary Source of the series itself. Now one has to go find sources which speak of its use. Fine. And then, we get to "the most important" PRONG 3, with its use of the subjective phrase "significant coverage". I can well see how there will be hundreds of sources that say something like "by firing his phasers, Kirk was able to destry the Klingon vessel". A major part of every episode, the series and the films... but failing PRONG 3. SO then the search will be on to find the different sources that speak in depth of the fictional element.... and they do exist... so PRONG 3 might then be met. But I chose this example specifically because this "element" in this list of "elements" of a notable subject, might be found to meet the three "prongs" and stay... but the list itself (like thousands of other such) does not curently have the sourcing required under this proposal. Look for yourselves if you wish... 98% back to primary sources. Uh-Oh. LIke zsherman's March to the zsea... I can see well-meaning editors tagging this and thousands of other such articles for deletion because in their current state they do not meet the much more stringent criteria of the proposal. The words have beem moved about, but matter is essentially the same as it was last month (though thankfully less obfuscated), im a increased beauracracy that will cause a massive wave of deletion proposals all across wikipedia. What might the authors here propose to stave off the bum's rush to delete? Though articles may be improved while in AfD, even this one example would require dozens of hours of reseacrch to make its many, many elements meet this proposed criteria. If there are thousands of articles tossed into AfD with a matter of days (and this is frighteningly and extremely likely probability, admit it), it will become impossible to address the new concerns of all before their ticking clocks runs down. I see it as a purge that would make Kristallnacht seem like a teaparty. Just recently, a set of episodes was tossed to AfD... and even as I and others were struggling to meet the AfD's concerns, there was just too many on the table and not enough time to get to then all. The entire set was tossed after portions were merged. Multiply that by thousands... I shudder at the inevitable disruption to the entire project. What answers? What answers? Schmidt, 08:25, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

What was deleted? - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 08:31, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry and correcting.... it was a merge where substantial content was lost. However the recent response make my fear even more real... see my response below. Schmidt,

In answer to MichaelQSchmidt, I disagree with your interpretation. Looking at the content Phaser, I note there it does not cite any real-world coverage that is independent of the primary source, i.e. coverage beyond what is revealed in the plot of the fictional work, Furthermore what coverage there is is not substantial - there is mention of the creative influences, design processes, critical commentary, and cultural reception that would indicate why this fictional weapon has had such a persistent influence on science fiction. It is quite possible that sourcing could be imroved, but the coverage of this topic seems to me to fail two of the three prongs. --Gavin Collins (talk) 08:40, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry you confirm my worst fears. As I chose the example of the phaser because I fully understand it does not meet the critera as currently proposed, although it specifically could BE made to meet all required "prongs"... but only after much, much, much work Goggle, Google books, Google scholar. Your response here, and I accept it the very best of good faith, is what I would expect a thousand-fold toward the thousands of articles requiring extreme amounts of editor time to "bring up to code" if this were a guideline. It would be a bloodbath of apocolyptic proportions. Schmidt, 08:52, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

As a WP:Article Rescue Squadron member, I already see WP:FICT being used to delete articles. The dark future is already here.

As (in)famous TTN said:

"You'll never really get rid of those kind of people ...Now they only have any sort of "power" over the big series like Harry Potter due to numbers, but things like that will always go slowly due to numbers anyways. I'm just sticking with picking off smaller , and then trying to tackle larger ones every once and a while. Once the weaklings are fully gone, it'll probably get easier to deal with the larger ones."

Every once in a while, an editor drops the passive agressive facade we must all wear, and comes out and speaks frankly and candidly, and is inevitably punished for it.

See also This surprisingly frank admission by a former Wikipedian.

Ikip (talk) 09:10, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

In answer to MichaelQSchmidt, I don't accept your suggestion that, if Phaser were to be article, the article would be deleted - see Articles that don't meet the inclusion criteria for guidance. Remember, WP:FICT is several times removed from the process of deletion at WP:AFD, and all nominations have to be peer reviewed, and my gut feeling is that this topic would be preserved even though it is not well written at the moment. Personally, I think a good article could be written about Phasers, in the same way other elements of science fiction, like HAL 9000 have been written up. Not every element is as important, however, which is why I think the three prongs are a good test to identify which ones would make good articles, and which ones are better off as being included in the over-arching work from which they are derived. --Gavin Collins (talk) 10:03, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Phaser was simply an example. And not as an example THAT could not be improved. Only of what would be deleted. I assert that it would be tossed into a huge and growing bonfire... and if not improved, it would be deleted. And peer review or no... if the number of articles pumped into AfD by well-meaning editors in a good faith interpretaion of FICT were to jump into the multiple of multiples of thousands per week instead of the multiples of hundreds, that only a few would survine long enough to be improved is a near certainty. You yourself looked at phaser and granted that it did not meet FICT. I know it did not before I looked for it as an example. I used it as an example and want to stress that if ten thousand articles are tossed to AfD in a matter of days.... very few would survive. Period. Even if they had the "potential" to be improved, the tendency is to toss to the dogs and move on. God bless the edotors who do... and I admire them that do.... but sadly very few actually improve an article they toss in the fire. They make a notation about it failing a guideline and there it sits. Other might discuss and show the difference and the artickle returns. But as the volume of new AfDs would be more massive than could even be imagined, Phaser would find its way to AfD along with others in the grand pogrom. And the disruption caused by the overwhelming explosion of content into AfD's will not work to improve Wiki.... quite the opposite. The eruption of Vesuvius and destruction of Pompeii will be seen as a weenie roast by comparison, as well-meaning editors toss averything into AfD with a speed and volume that will absoultely overwhelm any efforts to improve articles. It will be a bloodbath. Schmidt, 10:51, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I think you are exagerating somewhat. For instance, a short search suggests to me that there is real-world coverage of phasers which would support my view that fictional elements which are important in terms of prong 2 would survive AFD. In my view, this draft of the guideline works, and works well. --Gavin Collins (talk) 12:23, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

To GavinCollins, This is no exageration. It is a real exmple of what will be destroyed. Yes, phasers "could" be improved when sent to an "afd". But would they? If something such as phasers (by example), an "element" which even you agree "could" be improved, were it to show up as part of the Massive AfD creation that FICT would inspire... the question and problem is.... would it? The number of new AfD would become astronomical... and articles will be deleted that might have been worth saving. Not an occasional one or two.... but hundreds and thousands will never have the chance for improvement....as there are only so many hours ina day. I have already run across editors using FICT as a reason to nominate to AfD. If this overzealous proposal were to be made guideline, wiki would be thrown into such incredible chaos, that it as almost beyond imagining. Talk about disruption.... Woah. Schmidt, 17:10, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

MichaelQSchmidt, what's so bad about unsupportable, non-notable topics being upmerged or removed? You write as though that's some horrific thing, but really, it's not. It allows us to write a denser main article about many topics, giving a notation, probably in the form of a dependent clause, to the many elements of a show which aren't notable beyond their in-universe roles. We're left with a more comprehensive main article, one in which more readers get more info with less clicking to other articles. Sounds like us fulfilling our goals MORE, not less. Nothing says articles cannot be spun out when they do have sufficient coverage. ThuranX (talk) 12:50, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

ThuranX, what's so good about a guideline that will encourage a massive pogrom? First, notability is a subjective term, and always will be... and if any article is crappola, it will go, one way or another. But what is absolutely horrifc is that no one seems to be addressing the reality of what will transpire. Articles that are percieved as not meeting FICT will be tossed into the bonfire... not by the dozens.... not by the hundreds... but by the thousands and thousands... and not in a trickle so interested editors might address the concerns which brough them to afD... but in a deluge that will overburden the AfD system in an incredible and extreme abuse-of-process. It WILL happen. That's not crystal. And if even one article gets deleted that could otherwise have been corrected to meet the more restrictive proposal but was not because of the sheer volume of what will be tossed on the ash heap.... that acts a disservice to all of wikipedia in a disruption that does not serve the prohect. Consider.... Pre FICT: You and I are standing 15 feet apart. I have two coins in one hand and I toss them to you. One coin is gold and the other lead. As they travel at you through the air, you might be able to catch the glint of gold and catch the coin of value. That's our AfD process now... where we have time to react and catch the articles with potential and dismiss the ones without. Post FICT: You and I are standing 15 feet apart. But I am not alone. I have 100 others beside me. We all toss coins at you at the same time. How many are gold? How many are lead? Quickly... The are flying at you. You do not have time to look at every coin. You catch one... but realize too late that you saw 10 others that might have been gold too. The potential for immediate and extreme harm through major disruption to the project is a reality that cannot be dismissed. I have already crossed paths with editors sending something to AfD and quoting failure of meeting FICT as the reason. Test cases? It will be a bloodbath. Schmidt, 17:10, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

"Kristallnacht", "Bonfire", Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii, "pogrom"- do you want to tone down the hyperbole just a tad? Reyk _YO! 23:39, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Speaking as an semi-expert in hypertext usability, this is the opposite direction from the one we should be moving in. But that's a stylistic issue, and somewhat tangential to the one of notability. JulesH (talk) 13:38, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm curious to know how merging to lists (which with the use of {{anchor}}, we can link directly to any part) is against hypertext usability? --MASEM 14:22, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

The most common advice for writers of hypertext is to use pages that are as small as you can to convey the message you want to convey. See, e.g. Jakob Nielsen's book Hypertext and Hypermedia for a rationale. In Internet applications, this is modified slightly by the delays for page loads, but still the ideal page size is somewhat shorter than most Misplaced Pages articles. JulesH (talk) 19:19, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

That's what I thought, but WP's MOS is to avoid small articles even if they are "complete" (per WP:STUB, WP:SS, and WP:SIZE). Not that this isn't good advice in general, but I think the general consensus is generally against this. --MASEM 20:28, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

• In answer to MichaelQSchmidt, I still don't accept your suggestion that, if Phaser were to be article, the article would be deleted - see Articles that don't meet the inclusion criteria for guidance. AfD is a peer review process, and believe me nominations get stopped in there tracks if there is even a mere hint that the topic has potential to be improved. The real question is how many articles on fiction that will be deleted and could never be improved to meet any of Misplaced Pages's policies and guidelines, and this question falls outside the scope of our discussions becuase nobody knows. --Gavin Collins (talk) 17:17, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

• Gavin. Forget phasers. They were only used an example of what could/might/will be lost in the shuffle and confusion of the inevitable mass set of deletion nominations resulting from FICT. My worry being missed here is that in this ill-conceived proposal, even if offered with the best of intentions, has the dire potential for a bloodbath across all of Wiki. Yes... AfD is supposed to be a peer review process. I know. I have participated in them. Nominations (hopefully) get stopped in their tracks if there is even a mere hint that the topic has potential to be improved. But I have repeatedly had editors ignore that "hint of potential" and not dig through the extra few pages of a cursory search. I have repeatedly seen nom's themselves not consider WP:BEFORE or WP:POTENTIAL or WP:ATD. I have repeatedly seen noms use AfD as a means to force improvements when an article had sat too long (in their minds) without improvement, contrary to there being no WP:DEADLINE for such to happen. The grim reality is that this peer review system, subject to abuse either intended or accidental, will become so overburdened by the influx of new AfD nominations that it will fail to work. If an editor has the time to donate himself to in-depth reviews toward the concerns of only 20 AfDs a day (an arbitrary number only for example purposes), what happens when the number of AfDs multiply by a factor of 10... of 100... of 1000? The process will cease to work. Perhaps you may remember an early episode of the TV series I Love Lucy where Lucy and Ethel get a job wrapping bonbons as the come through a slot in the wall on a conveyor belt? The two ladies do okay... grabbing the bonbons and wrapping them... they get a rythym going that accomplishes what they are there to do. Then the line speeds up... faster and faster... until bonbons are flying along the conveyor at breakneck speed and spilling all over the floor in a huge mess. This is what FICT will create at AfD and it will not be funny. You write above, "The real question is how many articles on fiction that will be deleted and could never be improved to meet any of Misplaced Pages's policies and guidelines, and this question falls outside the scope of our discussions because nobody knows." THAT is exactly my concern. Nobody knows... and so nobody is addressing this. Ignoring this very real concern is not in the best interests of the project. Schmidt, 19:54, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

• Just a note, in general, the second ArbCom case for Episodes and Characters has edicted against any fait accompli mass nominations that overwhelm editors to try to improve.
• However, much of your complaints is about the AFD process and not FICT in general. As long as advise like WP:BEFORE are optional, or that we have no other process like "Article for Discussion" to help improve articles and not deletion, AFD will continue to remain chaotic as you suggest, FICT or no FICT. The end result of FICT is only a barometer to say whether notability is shown or not. If that's used at AFD to delete articles with potential, that needs to be addressed there; we can advice about potential and the like, but we can't stop those hard-set that believe notability is an absolute that must be met. --MASEM 20:34, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

• Well, my "complaint" I suppose is about the interpretation and how I see that the "barometer" will be used as a club and not a scalpel. As I wrote above, editors are already using it in their nomination explanations... and it is not even an essay, much less a guideline. If that is any indicator of what the future holds... I dread it. I still believe it requires the parent to be more important than other parents for them to then be allowed "children". Can you provide a link to that ArbCom case? I think I will have to keep it right at hand... just in case I come across more multiple nominations. Thank you. Schmidt, 02:19, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

• Here's the ArbCom stuff:

• Episodes and Characters - Initial complaint after TTN's actions, end result was "Parties urged to work together".
• Episodes and Characters 2 - Second complaint after TTN's actions, end result was "Parties urged to work together", as well as asserting TTN's fait accompli approach and placing a 6 month editing restriction on him.
• Episodes and Characters 3 - Complaint after TTN's Ep&Char 2 block was completed, but was rejected.

• I also know of at least two "arbcom enforcement" complaints against TTN after his 6 month block was lifted but before Ep & Char 3, but resulted in no action. --MASEM (t) 22:51, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Gavin Collins' proposed version of prong 2

I fail to see how this isn't setting a stricter standard than WP:GNG. If we have to verify the importance of the element through independent secondary sources, then isn't the GNG passed for any subject that passes this proposed phrasing?

Frankly, I'm more than willing to consider an element of a work of fiction important just because its author says it is. Who knows the subject better than the author? Obviously prong 1 must be satisfied with reference independent sources, but I really see no reason why any other prong should need them. JulesH (talk) 13:37, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Because the secondary sources don't need to be independent of the creator ... they can be things like DVD commentary. I don't support that version, but it isn't stricter than the GNG.—Kww(talk) 13:41, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I think we have to admit that the Randomran version does not work, because it provides a questionable exemption to characters and episodes that won't standup to peer review. As regards JulesH suggestion that the author knows his own work best, I thought we had this coverged in the second prong, which used to say "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". I am not sure why he revered, as this guideline will offer far more guidence to this end as long as it remains focused on substantial real-world coverage from any source. --Gavin Collins (talk) 16:13, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Too many subjective terms and will be thus prone for abuse. Schmidt, 17:15, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Covering the ability to use commentary on one prong doesn't mean it's automatically covered on all of them. Both the 2nd and 3rd prongs need to be satisfiable with creator commentary, and other non-independent sources like series guides and universe encyclopediae, otherwise both will be extremely hard to satisfy.

I also think the 2nd prong (i.e., importance of the element, as there seems to have been some confusion over the order of them lately) needs to be satisfiable with primary sources: the simplest way to demonstrate importance of an element within a work would be to effectively say, "what effect on the whole would it have if this element were not present". In many cases, this is extremely obvious from primary sources.

For example, try describing the plot of Babylon 5 without Michael Garibaldi, and you won't get very far: he's clearly an important character who is the subject of or key actor behind several of the most important plot points in the series. Try doing so without Na'Toth and you may have more luck; the character is involved in a number of important plot points but can be glossed over. So I'd say that Garibaldi's importance can be verified through primary sources, but Na'Toth's cannot.

Yes, this is a subjective test. I don't really think this is a huge issue. The question of whether a source is significant (as the term is used in WP:GNG) is also slightly subjective. Does this cause huge issues? No. Sometimes there's a disagreement over whether a source is significant or not in an AFD, at which point the closing admin may have to make a decision over what the consensus with regards to that source is. The same will apply here. Other notability guidelines that include subjective tests include WP:PROF (what exactly constitutes "significant impact"?), WP:BK (what does it mean that an author is "so historically significant that any of his or her written works may be considered notable"?), WP:MUSIC (how do we judge that an act "has become the most prominent representative of a notable style or of the local scene of a city"?), WP:CREATIVE (what is a "significant new concept, theory or technique"?), etc. JulesH (talk) 19:09, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Let's not play the WP:OWNERship game. Kww had just as much role in writing that version as I did. And I fail to see how something that passes the second prong using primary sources would somehow fail other guidelines, considering we require real world information in the third prong, and require independent sourcing later in this guideline. Not every prong needs to be a fortress. Randomran (talk) 19:22, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

• You can read anything you want into the primary source itself - it just takes a little imagination. A test of importance base on primary sources is a sham test, because it boils down to what your personal opinion is about the plot. --Gavin Collins (talk) 23:28, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

• It certainly does no harm. You agreed it does no harm and could live with it being in the guideline, largely because the other two prongs are so effective. (And we've since tightened up the requirement for independent sourcing, if you look elsewhere in the proposal.) Moreover, I don't think it's just harmless, I think it's mildly helpful. Yes, the second prong might be susceptible to the whims of mobs and fan-groups. But I'm willing to defer to the wisdom of consensus. As Kww put it, a well-reasoned argument based on primary sources should allow something to pass the second prong. The converse is true: a poor argument based on primary sources will probably not pass the second prong. I'd *love* to outline here what we consider sufficient verification of importance from a primary source, but there is some resistance to that idea. But if you had some suggestions that would take us away from WP:ILIKEIT while still accepting that verification can come from primary sources for just the second prong, I'd back you up. Randomran (talk) 01:31, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

• In answer to Randomran, in the earlier version you refer to, there was no mention of primary sources. The second prong was based on a test that required objective evidence in the form of reliable sources. Unless I am mistaken, reliable sources directly support the information as it is presented in an article and should be appropriate to the claims made. I feel we are all getting our wires crossed over this issue, because I think we all are trying to broaden the inclusion criteria, whilst at the same time trying to draft a version of WP:FICT that will stand up to peer review. I thought we had achieved this with the earlier version, but a test based on primary sources will cause more problems becasue in editorial disputes, you are asking rival editors to resolve their difference using arguments based on different but equally valid points of view, and that sounds like a reciepe for deadlock in my view.--Gavin Collins (talk) 08:42, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

• The old version that you referred to said "Arguments based on primary sources like 'this character appears in every episode,' or 'this episode is the season finale' can also help satisfy this prong". The goal is to make sure this guideline has broad appeal among moderate inclusionists and deletionists. Part of that means embracing the middle ground proposed by Kww, who felt that a *reasonable* argument based on primary sources would be persuasive -- and only for the second prong. Randomran (talk) 06:14, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

• I do not agree with giving a free pass to episodes or characters, but I believe being able to use primary sources for those is a reasonable compromise. If someone disagrees that someone is important they'll have to show how they appear in every chapter/episode in prominent roles or how it is near impossible to explain a large segment of the plot without them. Furthermore with the 3rd prong it makes certain that an article won't be just plot. If it is, then it should be merged or the information added.じんない 06:52, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

• I don't see the value of having a test based on primary which every element can pass - it is just a sham, and offers no guidance (see previous discussions for my take on this). We know from prong 3 that significant coverage and real-world coverage is need - why not make one of these requirements the basis for the second prong? --Gavin Collins (talk) 09:58, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

• The point about working with some type of importance to the work is there to address the case where director's commentary or other close-to-the-source real world sourcing may exist for every single fictional element of the work (enough to pass the third prong) and that editors would want to break out separate articles for each characters and episode and the like based on that. Stressing some importance to the work prevents this type of splitting, but rarely is the importance of a plot element going to be pointed out by a third-party source (the creators' commentary should not be used since they could state every element is important). Allowing some common sense, good-faith distinction that can be reviewed at AFD about what is important is what is needed to compromise here; yes, there may be those that will assert every element important, but you can only cry wolf so far; furthermore we still need to fall back on editorial standards and avoid short articles that just can't be expanded further. --MASEM (t) 14:34, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
• I personally think that even a token requirement for importance will weed out the most obvious riffraff, which is why we need the second prong. Me personally, I'd rather clarify what kinds of evidence from primary sources would help you pass the second prong. But if we were to get rid of the prong altogether, I would be strongly against adding a new prong, because that would seem like complexity for the sake of complexity. After a quick glance at the RFC, the last viable way to expand support for this proposal is to make it less bureaucratic. A two prong test (or simple sentence with two requirements) would help satisfy that need. Phil Sandifer, below, is suggesting an idea along these lines, where we drop the second prong, and make the third prong on real-world coverage tighter to compensate. Randomran (talk) 16:34, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

• Wouldn't that be similar to the one that was brought to the ArbCom? Right now we have it so that we also need to show importance within the work, without that while not gramatically the same, in function it would be almost the same as what got us in this mess to begin with.じんない 00:56, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

• Gavin I contest your claim that everything can pass the 2nd prong using primary sources to show relevance to being central to the plot unless you are trying to pass it through a bunch of low intelligence people or those who don't care. I want you to show me some proof how even the minor item or character can since you are the only one claiming this and proclaiming it with a staunch attitude that you are absolutely positively right because frankly I don't see how it's possible except given those two extremes I mentioned above.じんない 00:45, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

In answer to Jinnai, I can understand why you should contest any staunch attitude, but I think the reasoning behind my view that "every fictional element can be judged to be important enough to pass the 2nd prong using primary sources" does stand up to close examination, which is why I am opposed to it. Firtstly, if I want to create an article, I am hardly going to admit that its topic is unimportant; for this reason alone, no article on fiction will fail this test as long as it is influenced by the inherent bias of personal opinion. Secondly, what is important to you, may not be important to me. Take for example the article Xander Harris - surely 3,000+ words of plot summary "proves" that the character is important? I just can see how primary sources can be used in this context - a test based on personal opinion goes against the spirit of WP:NOBJ. --Gavin Collins (talk) 14:41, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Outside of works treated in a scholarly manner (read: have treatments like Cliff Notes) you are not going to find sources that describe elements as "important"; they may describe other real-world aspects of the elements (why person X was casted, the influence of the creation of character Y) but these don't equation to "importance".

This is the point that we need to compromise on. We need to assume good faith that editors of fiction will recognize that calling every character of a TV show "important" is going to be very hard for others to stomach. If we don't allow this, we're back at a point where sourcing is pretty much impossible for many of these. Sure, we can add language that says that "importance" is preferably derived from third-party sources, and that claims of importance that lack evidence that show this may still be challenged at AFD. We can also clarify what "importance" usually means - such as a lead/major character that appears in every show, an episode that establishes key plot elements, and so forth - as well as what it doesn't mean. But for this FICT to be a compromise and gain consensus, we need to assume authors are not going to abuse it and allow importance to be ascertained by the primary source, with the caveat that this facet can be challenged at AFD if its not shown. --MASEM (t) 16:39, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

That is just the point, Masem: no editor will be acting in bad faith when they assert that their favorite character is important based on their reading of the primary source. It is where you get a dispute between two editors with differing opinions that are equally valid that is the problem. That is why editorial disputes are resolved by asking for objective source to break such deadlocks, and why we need to have some sort of objective evidence as proof that a topic is important, in the same we ask for objective evidence as proof of notability. My fear is if we allow primary sources to be used as test of importance, that will be interpreted as an encouragement to create of plot only articles based only on primary sources along the lines of Xander Harris. --Gavin Collins (talk) 17:13, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

But this is also why the third prong is important. I'm willing to give the benefit of doubt that a cameo or minor character is "important" if there's several sources that describe the casting or influence of the character (and thus which starts to tip the edge into GNG, which doesn't need "importance of the work" to have an article). That's why these three prongs aren't in vacuum with each other. None of these prongs is an absolute "yes/no", it's a matter of how all three prongs are met. --MASEM (t) 20:04, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Gavin, this is why we have a policy called WP:CONSENSUS. Not an essay, not a guideline, a policy. You say a character is important by citing the primary source. Fine. 99% of the rest say it isn't, then it isn't. What using the primary source allows you to do is to cite instances which would make it clear to the others that the element is important. If you or only a minority agree with that, then it fails prong 2.

Therefore I do not think prong 2 is an open floodgate you want. If you want I could add reference to consensus policy in there to strengthen it so that using a primary source to show importance would require consensus.

'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 secondary sources or through consensus using primary sources, while the importance of other elements must be validated in independent secondary sources.

じんない 00:30, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

What does the second prong do?

A straightforward question - aside from all discussions of its calibration, what do you all see the point of the prong as being? What important principle about fiction does it protect? Phil Sandifer (talk) 23:18, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

• A *lot* of fictional works pass the first prong. And if a fictional work has a developer blog or DVD commentary, there is bound to be real-world information on virtually anything -- how they set up the room in the second act, or how they rendered the trees in the minimap. The second prong is what holds a lot of the cruft back, so we focus on the truly major parts of a work. Randomran (talk) 01:35, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Mmm, but as it stands, my concern is that the second prong is effectively plot-centric. I'm starting to think it runs against WP:NOT#PLOT and WP:WAF. What if we were to scrap it, and instead raise the bar of the third prong to try to exclude real-world coverage that amounts to trivia? Phil Sandifer (talk) 02:39, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
    • I'd be open to that. I think that would gain us some support from the anti-bureaucracy wing of Misplaced Pages. Too many prongs can be a bad thing, let alone if each prong requires a lot of discussion rather than a bright obvious line that most people would agree to. But all in all, there is no consensus to have an article on every subject covered in DVD commentary. Randomran (talk) 02:45, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
      • Nor on every episode, and any effort to swap things around would have to preserve the concept that most episodes are placed in lists, and only exceptional episodes receive articles. As someone pointed out, there are more episodes of Pokemon than there are beasties.—Kww(talk) 02:52, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
        • You know, I'm really warming to the idea of collapsing the second prong into the third prong. Not only would it make the test tighter, for all those who oppose it on the basis that it's too bureaucratic... but I can see it in practice. To prove importance (with the possible* exception of characters and episodes), we won't accept primary sources. And real-world coverage necessarily requires going beyond the primary source as well. Basically, most fictional elements are going to require something outside the primary source that doesn't just provide any old information on reception or development, but also explains why the topic is important. For example, "The lead designer said the crown's graphics were designed to take advantage of the latest 3D graphics" would not be enough. While "The lead designer said the crown's graphics had to be grandiose, to reflect the fact that it is the main object that drives the conflict between all the characters," would at least begin to get us there. I know that's probably not the best example, but I'm hoping to get a brainstorm going. Randomran (talk) 03:13, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
          • And it has the helpful effect of really pushing us away from in-universe importance as such. It lets us deal with things like, for instance, Four to Doomsday, an unremarkable Doctor Who story interesting because it was produced out of sequence, and was actually Peter Davidson's first episode as The Doctor. Or other cases where something minor has a particular importance in production. Phil Sandifer (talk) 03:26, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
            • Doesn't that open things up to effectively becoming a production trivia guide? Items that are neither important to the story nor important enough to have attracted attention from third-party sources, but have some interesting facet in their production sounds like it opens up things like "the Buffy episode where Angel's makeup kept running under the heat of the lamps".—Kww(talk) 03:41, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
              • It depends on what kind of real-world coverage we think proves importance (that doesn't come from significant coverage in reliable third-party sources). Randomran (talk) 03:49, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
                • As always, I'm concerned about shifting from clarification to revision. But, assuming for a moment that we were going to revise, I'm still having difficulty understanding what a real-world assertion of importance might be that is distinct from the GNG. A direct quote from the creator saying "I think this episode is important"? How is that "real world" as opposed to our current standard? Don't rush with an answer if you don't want to ... bedtime's here.—Kww(talk) 03:54, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
• Pretty much what Randomran said, but stronger. There's a legitimate and real need to compromise. The purpose of allowing the limited exception encoded in this version of WP:FICT is to take care of the cases where a fictional work can not be adequately covered in the main article, and some level of spinout article is required. That being the purpose, it follows that only important aspects of the work can be spun out without regard to WP:N: those things without which the fictional work cannot be adequately understood. That may include a limited number of characters, or a limited number of crucial episodes, or a few macguffins. It can't logically extend to every character, episode, or location that happens to be covered in DVD commentary.—Kww(talk) 02:08, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
• I prefer the phrase "Granularity Out Of Proportion To Influence," or GOOPTI, as coined by User:Antaeus Feldspar, as opposed to mere "cruft". It's basically what remains of the old old FICT, which, in practice, established that an article's probability of being an article was proportional to its importance, because it makes sense to start trimming WP:PLOT at the least important stuff and work up. It also helps against redundancy, because setting up the context for a character's article is additional "overhead" that in its worst form has zero payoff. Nifboy (talk) 02:33, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
• My willingness to support any guideline at this point would have to include a specification that content on characters and episodes be merged into real combination articles, not bare lists (however titles), and that sufficient content be present, in proportion to the importance of the overall fiction (and the importance of the character, if relevant) and the amount necessary for adequate description NOT PLOT is less a problem in combination character articles, because one does not have to retell the whole plot to maintain context, and, of course, for episodes, the plot aspects support each other for most shows. But the content must be sufficient to be encyclopedic, not the extremely short one or two sentence summaries that violate NOT TV GUIDE. And, in view of recent challenges at AfD, there would need to be an explicit statement that the individual characters or episodes need not be individually notable. DGG (talk) 04:48, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

• Sorry DGG, but giving exemptions to various classes of spinout article in any form won't stand up to peer review, because exemptions are a type of blanket inclusion criteria that are not based on objective evidence. In answer to Randomran, I don't understand why we need to merge the second and third prongs, when the third prong is already the strongest. If anything, we need to split the thrid prong, which is actually a dual test for significant coverage and real-world coverage, both of which are key to writing encyclopedic articles. I have tried splitting out the third prong, and I would encourage other editors to consider this approach because significant coverage and real-world coverage are to some extent the type of objective evidence that make a good basis for tests. --Gavin Collins (talk) 09:21, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

• Pretty much what everyone else has said. We need something that stops trivia coming through, even when it is included in creators commentaries. Consider, for example, Peter F. Hamilton, who has published an entire 230-page book of background information on his series The Night's Dawn Trilogy. Without some additional filter on the information, all of the content of those 230 pages could effectively be replicated here, which would be an unreasonable amount of information to support the understanding of a work of information consisting of less than 4,000 pages of total fiction. So we do need some kind of importance criterion. I don't see the issue with it being a subjective test, though, so I think we should keep it simple, not specify in detail what kind of evidence of importance is acceptable or isn't, and then lets see how it's treated at AFD before tweaking it to get better results. JulesH (talk) 11:10, 24 February 2009 (UTC)
• With this proposal, I encourage people to take a look at the FICT version of December 2007 when the whole dispute over fiction-related policies and guidelines began. If the second prong was merged/removed (I don't care), FICT is pretty much returning to what it once was. Does that mean we're about to start another circle of discussion that is to end in early 2010 with similar results, or does it mean we're realizing that a working FICT will draw from WP:N, WP:NOT#PLOT and WP:WAF, no matter if implicitly or explicitly? – sgeureka 12:03, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

• I still think the second prong should be based on whether the topic is the subject of relaible sources - that is a good test and makes a useful contribution towards writing encyclopedic articles. Here is my proposed amendment:

Role within the fictional work: The element must be an important element, and its importance must be verified by objective evidence, such as commentary from reliable sources. Sometimes importance can be established through the use of sources connected to the creators of the fictional work, such as commentary from the author, but in any case, bald assertions of importance are insufficient.

I feel this is very close to version edited by Phil Sandifer at 17:34, 24 January 2009 and should be acceptable to all. --Gavin Collins (talk) 14:21, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I feel that your feelings are unjustified, and that you are misrepresenting the text of the second prong in the version you are pointing to.—Kww(talk) 14:37, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Can you give me a hint as you why you feel this way? I would say that reliable sources were thought to be key to this prong from the outset. Also, if you are unhappy about this wording, can you suggest an alternative that would work better? --Gavin Collins (talk) 14:57, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not referring to your feelings about what ought to be, I'm referring to the implication that Phil Sandifer approves of this wording. I will also point out that if your intention is to prevent the use of primary sources to validate importance, you haven't succeeded: primary sources are permitted via WP:RS, and WP:NOBJ refers there. You are back at the problem of having an intent which goes counter to your writing, and that causes no end of trouble.—Kww(talk) 16:23, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I do not see how outside evidenceis necessary to show that the protagonist of a really notable fictional work is an important element in the fiction. If we can accept this, and accept combination articles on middle-importance characters, we could agree. I do not think we will agree without this. DGG (talk) 16:52, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Alas, outside evidence is necessary, because neither the "protagonist of a really notable fictional work" nor the "middle-importance characters" can be defined or identified in an objective way. Once you realise these labels are arbitrary, can be easily challenged and even overturned by citing reliable sources, then I think you will understand that this approach is a dead end. --Gavin Collins (talk) 17:21, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

For reasons that I don't need to repeat, the ability to pass the prong by primary sources is not going anywhere. Our only options are to leave it as is now, where someone verifies something with a primary source and everyone discusses whether that's important enough. ... or to talk about the level of importance that would need to be verified in advance, so that AFDs can run more smoothly with less Wikilawyering and battling. Randomran (talk) 04:17, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Mistaken Attribution

Elements that have no relation to the creators and no role in the work itself can still get tagged on by later sources so the second prong vanishes. Otherwise please delete Play it again, Sam. Hcobb (talk) 17:31, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I think you will find this is an example of mistaken attribution, another example being Let them eat cake. Establishing the notability of such topics using WP:N is very important in order to avoid potential POV forks. --Gavin Collins (talk) 17:47, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Mistaken attributions are marked all over Misplaced Pages both inside main articles and as standalone articles. Since these do not appear at all in the main work this proves that the second prong cannot stand. The notability of elements in works of fiction are defined by society at large rather than by their placement (or lack thereof) in the works themselves. Hcobb (talk) 20:22, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh Really? Please do give some examples. --Gavin Collins (talk) 21:42, 26 February 2009 (UTC)