This request for comment regarding notability and how it applies to fiction has been created in order to gauge community opinion on whether a guideline or an essay is most appropriate.
All editors are invited to present comments as to the current treatment of fiction on Wikipedia, especially with regards:
Editors wishing to present specific proposals for a guideline, essay or another way forwards should do so in the proposal section. Other comments should be made in the views section.
The community is currently divided on how to treat fiction, as can be seen in the arbitration cases Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Episodes and characters and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Episodes and characters 2 and the recent poll on plot summaries which ended in no consensus. The divide centres on the amount of detail with which Wikipedia should cover fictional topics, and whether articles split from a "parent article" in line with Wikipedia:Summary style are part of an overarching topic or become an article on a new and separate topic. While we have our personal opinions on best practise, it is currently unclear as to where consensus lies on many of these issues.
I believe that the general principles espoused by Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view are the bedrock as regards the content of our encyclopedia. Information has to be sourced because we do not rely on our own reputation. Readers have to be able to check the material and verify our assertions for themselves. It is also important so that we avoid plaigarism. Since we do not rely on our reputation, we cannot advance our own opinions or attempt to document new occurrences or publications. We only summarise reliable sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and that directly support the information as it is presented. Beyond everything else, we ensure that we are representing fairly, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources.
The whole controversy over FICT has gotten to the point of being stupid; neither side seems willing to work towards a consensus (at least the last time I checked, which was a few weeks ago). I think that the biggest reason for this conflict and its lack of resolution is because FICT is trying to do too much. How can fictional locations, TV episodes, and the main characters of novels all really be held to an identical notability requirement? I think that the best way forward may be to try splitting FICT into a number of subsections (all on the same page, though; we don't need multiple essays/guidelines on this topic), to cover different aspects of fiction. Holding Dragon (Dungeons & Dragons)—a topic which is almost certainly notable in my opinion because of how much it influenced future depictions of dragons in Western culture and their popularity within D&D—to the same standards as Drizzt Do'Urden, the main character in over 10 NYT best sellers, seems ridiculous. Characters should be held to a different standard from episodes, concepts, places, types of creatures, etc., because a single set of criteria will never apply perfectly to all of them at once. – Drilnoth ( T • C • L) 13:52, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
One thing that I see happen all too often is when something is deleted as lacking notability. This is certainly the only course of action that can be taken in some instances, but especially with fictional topics merging the content to a better location makes more sense. Deletion is what really causes inclusionists to get frustrated with the policy building, and keeping non-notable articles does the same for deletionists. An in-between point—merging content which is non-notable—should help to find a balance between the two sides of the dispute. Some non-notable topics certainly need deletion. Some probably need to be kept as separate articles (e.g., the promising merge targets are all too long already). But many can be merged with wider topics or "list of..." articles to WP:PRESERVE information while also not leaving a non-notable topic with its own article. Note that when I say "merging" in this case, I mean a real merger... quite often articles are merged with only the lead paragraph or the equivalent remaining afterwords. All relevant content should be actually merged, although trimming it for reasons other than non-notability makes sense. – Drilnoth ( T • C • L) 13:52, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Given the amount of effort to try to get a FICT guideline with two different approaches, it is pretty clear to me that this is pretty much going to be impossible to spell out how FICT varies from the GNG in a manner that meets consensus that is nothing less than a detailed list of rules of when fiction articles are appropriate or not, well above and beyond what one would expect given that WP is not a bureaucracy. The closest we came was Phil Sandifier's version that basically surmised that fiction elements either need to meet the GNG, or otherwise meet three prongs (importance of the work, importance to the work, and existence of real-world information), but even with that, the devil was in the details (what sources were acceptable, are editors' subjective views appropriate justification, etc.) And since policies and guidelines are to follow consensus and not the other way around, attempts to try to define what should be appropriate (as being done now) are also being met with resistance.
It needs to be realized we have a huge number of fiction articles created when WP was more wild (pre-2006-ish), when notability wasn't an issue. As WP as started to mature, there is a push to improve this area - making fiction meet the same qualities as more rigorous articles on science, history, and the like. This pendulum did swing a bit too far (and thus created the two Ep&Char ArbCom cases), and is slowly swinging back - not as far as it was, but we are slowly finding where it will come to rest. However, we still have WP's past to deal with while at the same time we don't want to encourage article growth like those past articles. A fiction notability guideline is going to be difficult to write without grandfathering in articles, again created unnecessary bureaucracy.
At the end of the day, I think the best solution is what most of FICT have realized: the GNG is the best advice for fiction elements, with AFD being the ultimate decider if articles are kept. The logic if articles are kept at AFD is more or less hit or miss, but you improve the chances for that article being kept by having certain qualities, such as the three prongs from Phil's FICT proposal. But we cannot insist on that being a requirement for fiction articles, because there are numerous examples of articles being kept that do not satisfy those. Thus the best advice is to leave FICT as an essay, pointing readers to the GNG, what elements will improve an article's chances at AFD, and then pointing them to WP:WAF.
And that's where the efforts to improve fiction covered need to be focused. WAF needs to help groom the coverage of fiction across the board in manners that are driven by consensus. Case in point: a recent push to merge non-notable South Park episodes was met with a lot of resistance. Instead, myself and others suggested a solution whereby if a small example of current non-notable episodes could be shown to be notable, the rest would be assumed to be so, with a good-faith assumption that over time other SP articles would be improved. This was a satisfactory solution that proved to be in favor in retaining the articles. Through WAF and watching other similar discussions, we can help guide editors better on how to approach articles on fiction - writing from the top-down instead of bottoms-up, and considering collections of non-notable information instead of separate articles. Maybe out of this will fall more obvious FICT guidelines, but at the present time, we just can't do that.
Effectively, I urge the same solution as suggested by Hiding; to replace FICT with an essay until it is clear that a guideline can really be developed, and instead focus the energy on helping to shape the style of fiction articles through WAF. -- MASEM ( t) 14:43, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
It is my belief that while there is a need for some level of measure beyond just verifability, that level is low that almost anything will have at least one "third-party source" for it. However the current notability guideline as well as specifically the general notability guideline fail in regard to fictional elements (not the works themselves, but the elements within it) as it was never designed with the intent of handling such things. Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:compromise and Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:Reevaluation have shown that while the consensus is that notability should be kept, there is clear indication that the current notability guidelines, specifically the main one, are not the ones we should be using. For fictional problems this causes problems as recently brought up at WT:N#Should insignificant subjects be considered notable. Though the point goes beyond just fictional elements, it does address the underlying problem with the current GNG: That the bar set is so high that it is to essentially act for elements as WP:NOT for most comtemporary literature and at the same act as though it the guideline doesn't exist at all for classical and antiquity literature since even a the third man standing to the left has had some scholarly review. Therefore some different criteria must be established.
There is no consensus on how notability (as a reason for deletion) applies to fiction. My best idea for a way forward is to divide the problem into smaller well defined problems (eg recurring characters in a TV series). -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 06:03, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
I believe that there is a consensus regarding works of fiction that stand as a single entity (eg War and Peace), and that consensus (that a standalone work of fiction must have verified notability) should not be lost. I believe that where we are struggling is with works that are part of larger series, and elements that are part of works, where there is no consensus as to the level of detail which is acceptable, and the extent to which the notability of the work as a whole should serve to cover content which has become granular. Focusing on these issues, rather than attempting to cover the more nebulous concept of fiction as a whole, may help to find consensus.-- Elen of the Roads ( talk) 16:49, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
The community is split in regards to fiction, but the deletionists are slowly gaining the upper hand as the vocal supporters simply say "screw it" and leave Wikipedia for other places, bringing with them the silent masses. As Wikipedia heads more and more towards notability and away from the useful and interesting. Many editors join Wikipedia because they have a subject that they have seen articles on that seem short or stubbish and want to expand upon them, but if they are about some obscure plant species from Australia than they are welcome, but if they are about the exploits of Strom the Smith and pals in Fantasylandia, than they better not let the door hit them on their way out. The whole point of the notability guidelines was that to insure that things that people care about were on wikipedia and at one point (I wouldn't be surprised if it was not so anymore) fictional characters and series that shared names with actual people and places usually had longer articles with more hits than the real things, but these articles are slowly dying and disappearing. Wikipedia editors are looked upon with derision and shame commonly because of what are seen as rabid deletionist practices and the completely lopsided coverage of material by editors, Scientology having a massive portal and many articles while the Falun Gong movement (at one point) was a handful of medium size articles, the existence of a Paris Hilton portal, and the multitude of geeky wars (just like this one!). Basically, Wikipedia is a website that serves as a source of information, for research papers and showing off to your friends, and the lack of consistency caused by edit wars only hurts the site, but if an agreement cannot be reached among the editors, the good of Wikipedia as a source of potentially interesting information, already organized and collected, with links for further research should be considered. Wikipedia is for the readers not the editors!
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Fiction and notability are hard to deal with, it's true, but that simply means a more open way of looking at notability needs to be taken. I think we can for the most part agree several million fan fictions are probably a larger sign of notability and popularity than 3 news articles, but the first is obviously going to be difficult to cite. Dealing with works of fiction in the real world commonly means very few if any possible citations, the creation of styles, effect upon society, and critical reception can be hard to source, unless someone's already written a book about how popular the work of fiction is (which is in and of itself going to be mostly original research) there is going to be very little to cite, but does that necessarily mean the work of fiction isn't very notable or worthy of more than a stub? Works of fiction are very hard to deal with simply because they exist in an awkward niche somewhere between the Starbucks Coffee you had this morning, that revealing article on lead paint you read in Times, the youtube video you saw last month that made you cry (what was it's name again?), and your imaginary friend when you were three. I believe there is a consensus on the problems with research and notability as they apply to certain parts of fiction, but there is no clear consensus on what needs to change.
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I generally agree with Hiding's essay. The only sticking point for me is what "other standards sometimes come in to play" are unclear. As I understand it, specific notability guidelines merely specify details about the general notability guideline as it pertains to specific subjects (for example, I work a lot on music articles, so WP:SONGS has a more specific criteria of what makes a song notable; in essence and practice, WP:SONGS is stricter than the GNG), and are not meant to supercede the general notability guidelines. If it fails the GNG, the article should be deleted. That's the whole point of the GNG.
Now, there are a lot of fiction-related articles I have worked on and that I am interested in working on, but I notice time and again repeated issues. Among these are overreliance on primary sources (in particular, the stories themselves), assumptions of inherited notability, and too much emphasis on creating subarticles (for example, making pages for every episode in a TV series). Frankly, most of the fiction articles on Wikipedia are utter messes that simply reiterate in-story details, the biggest offenders being character articles. Not all areas that deal with fiction are plagued by these problems: Wikipedia:WikiProject Films and Wikipedia:WikiProject The Simpsons are just two examples of fiction-related WikiProjects that turn out scores of excellent articles. What makes them so successful is the emphasis they place on secondary sources, not on primary sources and in-story details. The emphasis on primary sources on many fiction articles is disturbing; notbility should never be based on in-story context such as how "important" a character is in a work, or that an "important" plot development occured in an episode. If it's so important, find me a third-party, reliable secondary source that says so. Anything else would be personal opinion and original research, and per Wiki guidelines, can be challenged and removed.
One idea I suggested below was that we need to stop thinking about these pages as "fiction" articles. The reason there are so many FA and GA film articles is because they are treated as articles about productions, not as stories. The emphasis is on who made it, when it was made, how much money it made, and what people thought of it. That's how you approach a fiction article, not by relying on what the stories say. We need to turn away from the focus on fiction and instead think of these subjects as productions, publications, broadcasts, plays, copyrighted characters, and so forth. That's the first step to determining how to establish notability and whether or not articles need to be merged. There's an old maxim that "Every character is someone's favorite". Well, that may be, but not every character is notable. That's just a fact. Sometimes they are a prop to service a larger production and thus only need to be discussed as part of that larger work. Same with TV show episodes; a TV show may be notable, but that doesn't mean that each episode is. If a TV show episode is going to have its own article, it needs its own notability established. An example I can offer is the Nirvana album Nevermind, which I have worked on for over two years. The album is certainly notable, but that doesn't mean every individual song on the record is. The song that have articles meet the GNG, while those that don't fail the GNG or simply have too little written about them to warrant separate articles that will never expand beyond stubs. Thus we aren't afraid to merge articles or turn them into redirects based on what is available published by reliable secondary sources. This attitude may be hard for some to accept, but ultimately our goal on Wikipedia is to provide a compnedium of documented information and knowledge, not to give you plot synopses of TV series episodes you missed.
This is a bit rambling, but basically my opinion is: I agree with Hiding's current essay draft aside from the lack of clarity on specific fiction-related notability guidelines; any fiction-notability guideline can only clarify, not supercede, the general notability guideline, and we need to stop acting like that isn't so; we need to combat institutionalized perceptions about fiction articles (particularly emphasis on story details and primary sources); and we need to look at high-quality fiction-related articles, and even article in other topic areas, for a way forward. Who here works solely on fiction-related articles, and has never worked in another subject area on Wikipedia? Because you can learn a lot about greta article-writing by doing that. Let me tell you, the longer I hone my editing skills in other subject areas of Wikipedia, the more disappointed I am when I come to work on a fiction-related article about a bit character from a comic book series that relies solely on in-line citations from the comic books the character appeared in. Because if made an article that relied primarily on primary soruces for any other subject area, I'd be rightly called out on it and prompted by others to find secondary sources to establish notability and provide an accurate scholary overview of the topic. WesleyDodds ( talk) 08:18, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
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What the subject says. There is no need for a separate fiction notability guideline, as I cannot see how one could be crafted that would complement the GNG and not be prone to reliance on primary sources, given the general tenor of conversation regarding these types of articles. Basically, in my view a fiction guideline cannot be satisfactorily crafted that would result in the creation of better articles; instead, the tendency would be to institutionalize unproductive attitudes and approaches to fiction articles (ie. making separate articles for every episode in a TV series, even if not every episode is covered by secondary sources). Better to rely on the GNG and specific topic guidelines (films, television, comics, etc.) which make an effort to consider the non-fictional aspects of the topics. WesleyDodds ( talk) 10:36, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Not everything needs its own article, but it might be an essential component of a larger fiction topic. Instead of letting it sit and fester, and before jumping into the AFD tiger pit, be bold and merge fiction articles without notability established into larger topics when applicable. You can always split off an article again when you find sufficient secondary sources. WesleyDodds ( talk) 10:50, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Just a question right now, perhaps to return with a view later. Are outcomes important? We have the old saw that policies describe consensus, but that gets tautological real quick. We don't exactly just record all outcomes from current events and then derive a principle based on them. However, our past debates on fiction have been influenced by (sometimes) anecdotal statements that "articles with no context get deleted" or "articles which are central to a work get at least merged".
For a while in May I was working on Randomran's list of project VG outcomes at AfD, User:Randomran/VGAFD. The list was constructed by digging through each day of XfD discussions for VG related articles and recording their outcomes (including an implicit record of the eventual outcome through an article link) on the page. I had hoped that we could take the data and come to some general conclusions with it, at least about broad categories of articles. As you can see, work on the page has stopped, for various reasons--chief among them that I was worried it would all be for nothing (You can help! Post on my talk page for some ideas on what can/should be done to complete the dataset). I'm trying to test the waters at this RfC about continuing the 'project'.
Is this something that would sway the debate if the data pointed toward particularly strong habits in practice? Would deletionists (forgive the broad characterizations) agree to broaden standards in writing if we showed that standards were broad in practice? Would inclusionists (again, generalizing for argument's sake) agree to narrower standards if we showed that standards were narrow in practice? Or would people be uninterested in the results?
Sign in under support if you think it is worth finishing and analyzing. Sign in under oppose if you think it isn't worth the bother. Please make a comment if you want to, we can have a healthy discussion here without kicking things back to the talk page.
I think the previous "real world impact" criteria are fine, if properly construed. My thoughts on notability of fictional topics are at User:Jclemens/FICT, but in a nutshell they are that independent primary sources (e.g. commercial derivatives) adequately demonstrate notability. Jclemens ( talk) 02:37, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
Given that I believe no consensus exists, I propose, that rather than attempt to create a guideline which details how notability affects fictional topics, we instead write a brief essay explaining the current situation. The essay would point editors to Wikipedia:Notability, and note that where an article does not meet that standard, they should consider merging the information to a suitable article otherwise the article may become a candidate for deletion. The essay would then explain that articles are not always deleted because of Wikipedia:Notability. The essay would give reasons why a consensus may emerge for an article to be kept. Namely that the article:
A second proposal is to use a form of mediation to work towards a guideline. Roughly, all interested parties would participate in a discussion which would be moderated by a mediator or mediators. The mediators would be there to facilitate a consensus rather than impose one, keeping the discussion focussed on areas of agreement rather than of disagreement, likely through the use of time-bound discussion. Current debate on Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) has produced no guideline of lasting value in two years of attempts. Although this is likely due to a clear lack of consensus, it is possible it may be due to other reasons. A mediated discussion, which would ideally last six weeks, would at leats give a good faith attempt to creating a consensus or declaring a lack of one. This proposal may be rendered irrelevant depending on the outcome of this RFC.
My proposal is two parts. First it is to allow for a multitude of minor (not trivial) direct references for elements to qualify as an alternative for a minimum for elements. This is because most contemporary works of fiction that have reviews on them will only review the work itself. Any mention of any character will be at most, in all but a few rare cases, a paragraph long. At the same time we need to define what is considered a trivial element to the work and anything trivial, even if it has exhaustive scholarly work should not have its own separate page and possibly even section. For me, removal of it will not affect most readers interested in the work as a whole. Mentioning such elements, even if they have scholarly review does not go along with the spirit of WP:WAF#Accuracy and appropriate weight.
At this point I do not believe that any community-wide consensus exists on the matter of fiction and notability. I do believe, however, that strong consensus exists for certain policies on what fiction articles aren't - a minimum threshold. Some people advocate more restrictions on top of these, others do not.
I have an active proposal at Wikipedia:Fiction that seeks to codify clear rules on fiction articles. This proposal is *not* a notability guideline, and it carefully avoids precluding or endorsing a future notability guideline that could exist alongside it. It sets some restrictions, independent of other proposals.
I would advocate passing it, as I think it sets restrictions we do basically all agree on, and letting fiction notability sit for a few months. Those who want to clean up our fiction articles should find sufficient ammunition in Wikipedia:Fiction to make plenty of progress with it, and once that is done I suspect that it will be clearer what sort of additional policies we may need.
If it's not a guideline proposal - I'm not sure what there is to pass"? I'm not trying to be smart, I'm just not clear on what is being proposed here. — Ched : ? 09:28, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
I propose a survey, which is one of the recommended steps in the dispute resolution policy. My idea isn't new; I proposed the same idea 8 months ago (at Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction)), and asked a sitting arbitrator about the idea but received no response at the time. I have my own opinions about where it should take place, the participants, and which questions should be asked. I think a survey would be the best way forward.
The survey could be located at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Fiction Survey 2009, or Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Fiction Survey 2009, or maybe even off-site like Wikipedia:Survey 2008, or users could create a subpage in their userspace (like Special:Mypage/Fiction Survey 2009) and answer the questions there, similar to how a past survey was conducted. I think the user subpage option would eliminate unnecessary conflict, so I favor that option. Although, an off-site survey could also gauge reader opinion, but there could be some drawbacks to an off-site survey. A template could be created (and later protected), perhaps Template:Fiction Survey 2009, containing the final questions, and users could then substitute the template on their subpage and then answer it. The template could also place the survey subpages into a category.
I would like to see as much participation as possible. These sort of discussions really need new blood. Over 158,000 users have made at least one edit in the past month. [1] Wikipedia currently has 2,904,822 articles. [2] As of April 16, 2009, Category:Fiction had 1,071,665 articles under it [3] — 36.9% of Wikipedia's articles. Personally, I would like to see a lot of input from Wikipedia's most prolific article creators. According to this page, as of April 30, 2009, the top 5,000 article creators had created 1,679,835 articles — 57.8% of Wikipedia's articles. I think a timeframe of three months (or even six months) for the survey would be okay.
Wikipedia:Advertising discussions could be followed to get the word out. I even think that talkpage notices to all users have who have edited in the past month (or only those with a certain number of edits) would not be unreasonable. Maybe random users could be contacted. A quick and dirty way of doing that is to click Special:Random and then notify the last editor who edited the article. Or maybe a bot could do the notifying.
I think the most important thing is the questions the survey asks. A draft of a fiction survey has been in my userspace since October. This is the current version, and does not mention notability. Here is a previous version that does mention notability. I suppose the most basic question could be "What are your thoughts about fiction on Wikipedia?" or "Do you think there is a problem regarding fiction on Wikipedia?" Final questions could be hashed out at Template:Fiction Survey 2009 (or editors could write survey questions in their userspace which could then be compared and contrasted). I suppose questions could even be decided upon here, although I would like to avoid the survey developing like Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:compromise did.
All survey participants could also be encouraged to write their own essays regarding fiction in their userspace. As to evaluating the survey, maybe 9 random admins could do it. I also think that a sitewide survey on Wikipedia:Notability itself would be beneficial, and I'm unaware of any previous attempts to do one. -- Pixelface ( talk) 20:44, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Since a great deal of AfD debate centres around spinout articles, I propose that we revisit the view that notability is not inherited, with a view to establishing whether or not there is a consensus that where a series of fictional works does have very well established notability, a cluster of lead and spinout articles on the series may share that notability, rather than having to establish a separate notability for themselves. Elen of the Roads ( talk) 16:56, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
Discussion
Let's just fall back to WP:N and delete WP:FICT. I see no real chance, without mediation, that a real proposal will come forward that has a chance at consensus. We drop all this "real world" stuff (which isn't part of WP:N and shouldn't be part of NOT#PLOT per the RfC), thus allowing reviews and third-party books on fiction topics (such as biographies of the author) to count as the reliable sources that they are.
Combination of two of the above:
A new version of Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) has been proposed.
Eliminate elitist and subjective terminology like "notability" altogether and instead adopt Inclusion guidelines as the basis for inclusion.
I think the best way forward is to stop thinking of these items as "fiction". People get too wrapped up in the fictional details, often to the detriment of secondary sources. Simply put, if you think of a film or a television show episode in terms of a production, or novels and comic books as publications instead of simply stories, then it's easier contextualize them in the face of the notability guidelines. Above all, what needs to happens is we need to stop overrelying on primary sources. This is the biggest problem facing fiction-related articles on Wikipedia, as too many people are more interested in charting chararcter minutae instead of trying to explain to the general reader why they should care in the first place. WesleyDodds ( talk) 03:21, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
Summarizing the results of the polling as of the time of writing (Note WP:POLLING applies): -- Cybercobra ( talk) 07:16, 9 June 2009 (UTC) Updated data as of timestamp -- Elen of the Roads ( talk) 16:20, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
The creators of some proposals have created pages that are included as part of their proposal. Interested editors are encouraged to participate in the construction of these pages.
This RFC has established that the community is divided on the treatment of fiction and that this divide centres on both the amount of coverage Wikipedia should provide on a fictional topic and whether articles split from a parent article (per Wikipedia:Summary style) should be seen as part of the overarching topic, or as a seperate article. This RFC has furthermore established that content should be verifiable, not contain original research and present information from a neutral point of view. There is consensus per this RFC that an essay be written to explain this situation and to provide appropriate advice (See Proposal 1 above). It was also proposed to follow this up with a survey to attain the extent of coverage of fiction on Wikipedia.
There are views that WP:FICT might be trying to do to much; and that different guidelines might be required for different elements (i.e. modern vs. classical, episodes vs. characters vs. locations; etc.). Proposals to fall back to using WP:N and to either delete WP:FICT, or to leave it as an essay did not attain wide consensus in the RFC.
A proposal to revisit the issue of "inherited notability" was rejected. Two proposals to adopt WF:FICT and/or Inclusion guidelines did not attain support per this RFC. Another proposal towards the formation of a mediation to work towards a single guideline has been rejected as being premature at this stage.
— G.A.S talk 09:38, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
This request for comment regarding notability and how it applies to fiction has been created in order to gauge community opinion on whether a guideline or an essay is most appropriate.
All editors are invited to present comments as to the current treatment of fiction on Wikipedia, especially with regards:
Editors wishing to present specific proposals for a guideline, essay or another way forwards should do so in the proposal section. Other comments should be made in the views section.
The community is currently divided on how to treat fiction, as can be seen in the arbitration cases Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Episodes and characters and Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Episodes and characters 2 and the recent poll on plot summaries which ended in no consensus. The divide centres on the amount of detail with which Wikipedia should cover fictional topics, and whether articles split from a "parent article" in line with Wikipedia:Summary style are part of an overarching topic or become an article on a new and separate topic. While we have our personal opinions on best practise, it is currently unclear as to where consensus lies on many of these issues.
I believe that the general principles espoused by Wikipedia:Verifiability, Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view are the bedrock as regards the content of our encyclopedia. Information has to be sourced because we do not rely on our own reputation. Readers have to be able to check the material and verify our assertions for themselves. It is also important so that we avoid plaigarism. Since we do not rely on our reputation, we cannot advance our own opinions or attempt to document new occurrences or publications. We only summarise reliable sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and that directly support the information as it is presented. Beyond everything else, we ensure that we are representing fairly, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources.
The whole controversy over FICT has gotten to the point of being stupid; neither side seems willing to work towards a consensus (at least the last time I checked, which was a few weeks ago). I think that the biggest reason for this conflict and its lack of resolution is because FICT is trying to do too much. How can fictional locations, TV episodes, and the main characters of novels all really be held to an identical notability requirement? I think that the best way forward may be to try splitting FICT into a number of subsections (all on the same page, though; we don't need multiple essays/guidelines on this topic), to cover different aspects of fiction. Holding Dragon (Dungeons & Dragons)—a topic which is almost certainly notable in my opinion because of how much it influenced future depictions of dragons in Western culture and their popularity within D&D—to the same standards as Drizzt Do'Urden, the main character in over 10 NYT best sellers, seems ridiculous. Characters should be held to a different standard from episodes, concepts, places, types of creatures, etc., because a single set of criteria will never apply perfectly to all of them at once. – Drilnoth ( T • C • L) 13:52, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
One thing that I see happen all too often is when something is deleted as lacking notability. This is certainly the only course of action that can be taken in some instances, but especially with fictional topics merging the content to a better location makes more sense. Deletion is what really causes inclusionists to get frustrated with the policy building, and keeping non-notable articles does the same for deletionists. An in-between point—merging content which is non-notable—should help to find a balance between the two sides of the dispute. Some non-notable topics certainly need deletion. Some probably need to be kept as separate articles (e.g., the promising merge targets are all too long already). But many can be merged with wider topics or "list of..." articles to WP:PRESERVE information while also not leaving a non-notable topic with its own article. Note that when I say "merging" in this case, I mean a real merger... quite often articles are merged with only the lead paragraph or the equivalent remaining afterwords. All relevant content should be actually merged, although trimming it for reasons other than non-notability makes sense. – Drilnoth ( T • C • L) 13:52, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
Given the amount of effort to try to get a FICT guideline with two different approaches, it is pretty clear to me that this is pretty much going to be impossible to spell out how FICT varies from the GNG in a manner that meets consensus that is nothing less than a detailed list of rules of when fiction articles are appropriate or not, well above and beyond what one would expect given that WP is not a bureaucracy. The closest we came was Phil Sandifier's version that basically surmised that fiction elements either need to meet the GNG, or otherwise meet three prongs (importance of the work, importance to the work, and existence of real-world information), but even with that, the devil was in the details (what sources were acceptable, are editors' subjective views appropriate justification, etc.) And since policies and guidelines are to follow consensus and not the other way around, attempts to try to define what should be appropriate (as being done now) are also being met with resistance.
It needs to be realized we have a huge number of fiction articles created when WP was more wild (pre-2006-ish), when notability wasn't an issue. As WP as started to mature, there is a push to improve this area - making fiction meet the same qualities as more rigorous articles on science, history, and the like. This pendulum did swing a bit too far (and thus created the two Ep&Char ArbCom cases), and is slowly swinging back - not as far as it was, but we are slowly finding where it will come to rest. However, we still have WP's past to deal with while at the same time we don't want to encourage article growth like those past articles. A fiction notability guideline is going to be difficult to write without grandfathering in articles, again created unnecessary bureaucracy.
At the end of the day, I think the best solution is what most of FICT have realized: the GNG is the best advice for fiction elements, with AFD being the ultimate decider if articles are kept. The logic if articles are kept at AFD is more or less hit or miss, but you improve the chances for that article being kept by having certain qualities, such as the three prongs from Phil's FICT proposal. But we cannot insist on that being a requirement for fiction articles, because there are numerous examples of articles being kept that do not satisfy those. Thus the best advice is to leave FICT as an essay, pointing readers to the GNG, what elements will improve an article's chances at AFD, and then pointing them to WP:WAF.
And that's where the efforts to improve fiction covered need to be focused. WAF needs to help groom the coverage of fiction across the board in manners that are driven by consensus. Case in point: a recent push to merge non-notable South Park episodes was met with a lot of resistance. Instead, myself and others suggested a solution whereby if a small example of current non-notable episodes could be shown to be notable, the rest would be assumed to be so, with a good-faith assumption that over time other SP articles would be improved. This was a satisfactory solution that proved to be in favor in retaining the articles. Through WAF and watching other similar discussions, we can help guide editors better on how to approach articles on fiction - writing from the top-down instead of bottoms-up, and considering collections of non-notable information instead of separate articles. Maybe out of this will fall more obvious FICT guidelines, but at the present time, we just can't do that.
Effectively, I urge the same solution as suggested by Hiding; to replace FICT with an essay until it is clear that a guideline can really be developed, and instead focus the energy on helping to shape the style of fiction articles through WAF. -- MASEM ( t) 14:43, 5 June 2009 (UTC)
It is my belief that while there is a need for some level of measure beyond just verifability, that level is low that almost anything will have at least one "third-party source" for it. However the current notability guideline as well as specifically the general notability guideline fail in regard to fictional elements (not the works themselves, but the elements within it) as it was never designed with the intent of handling such things. Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:compromise and Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:Reevaluation have shown that while the consensus is that notability should be kept, there is clear indication that the current notability guidelines, specifically the main one, are not the ones we should be using. For fictional problems this causes problems as recently brought up at WT:N#Should insignificant subjects be considered notable. Though the point goes beyond just fictional elements, it does address the underlying problem with the current GNG: That the bar set is so high that it is to essentially act for elements as WP:NOT for most comtemporary literature and at the same act as though it the guideline doesn't exist at all for classical and antiquity literature since even a the third man standing to the left has had some scholarly review. Therefore some different criteria must be established.
There is no consensus on how notability (as a reason for deletion) applies to fiction. My best idea for a way forward is to divide the problem into smaller well defined problems (eg recurring characters in a TV series). -- SmokeyJoe ( talk) 06:03, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
I believe that there is a consensus regarding works of fiction that stand as a single entity (eg War and Peace), and that consensus (that a standalone work of fiction must have verified notability) should not be lost. I believe that where we are struggling is with works that are part of larger series, and elements that are part of works, where there is no consensus as to the level of detail which is acceptable, and the extent to which the notability of the work as a whole should serve to cover content which has become granular. Focusing on these issues, rather than attempting to cover the more nebulous concept of fiction as a whole, may help to find consensus.-- Elen of the Roads ( talk) 16:49, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
The community is split in regards to fiction, but the deletionists are slowly gaining the upper hand as the vocal supporters simply say "screw it" and leave Wikipedia for other places, bringing with them the silent masses. As Wikipedia heads more and more towards notability and away from the useful and interesting. Many editors join Wikipedia because they have a subject that they have seen articles on that seem short or stubbish and want to expand upon them, but if they are about some obscure plant species from Australia than they are welcome, but if they are about the exploits of Strom the Smith and pals in Fantasylandia, than they better not let the door hit them on their way out. The whole point of the notability guidelines was that to insure that things that people care about were on wikipedia and at one point (I wouldn't be surprised if it was not so anymore) fictional characters and series that shared names with actual people and places usually had longer articles with more hits than the real things, but these articles are slowly dying and disappearing. Wikipedia editors are looked upon with derision and shame commonly because of what are seen as rabid deletionist practices and the completely lopsided coverage of material by editors, Scientology having a massive portal and many articles while the Falun Gong movement (at one point) was a handful of medium size articles, the existence of a Paris Hilton portal, and the multitude of geeky wars (just like this one!). Basically, Wikipedia is a website that serves as a source of information, for research papers and showing off to your friends, and the lack of consistency caused by edit wars only hurts the site, but if an agreement cannot be reached among the editors, the good of Wikipedia as a source of potentially interesting information, already organized and collected, with links for further research should be considered. Wikipedia is for the readers not the editors!
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Fiction and notability are hard to deal with, it's true, but that simply means a more open way of looking at notability needs to be taken. I think we can for the most part agree several million fan fictions are probably a larger sign of notability and popularity than 3 news articles, but the first is obviously going to be difficult to cite. Dealing with works of fiction in the real world commonly means very few if any possible citations, the creation of styles, effect upon society, and critical reception can be hard to source, unless someone's already written a book about how popular the work of fiction is (which is in and of itself going to be mostly original research) there is going to be very little to cite, but does that necessarily mean the work of fiction isn't very notable or worthy of more than a stub? Works of fiction are very hard to deal with simply because they exist in an awkward niche somewhere between the Starbucks Coffee you had this morning, that revealing article on lead paint you read in Times, the youtube video you saw last month that made you cry (what was it's name again?), and your imaginary friend when you were three. I believe there is a consensus on the problems with research and notability as they apply to certain parts of fiction, but there is no clear consensus on what needs to change.
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I generally agree with Hiding's essay. The only sticking point for me is what "other standards sometimes come in to play" are unclear. As I understand it, specific notability guidelines merely specify details about the general notability guideline as it pertains to specific subjects (for example, I work a lot on music articles, so WP:SONGS has a more specific criteria of what makes a song notable; in essence and practice, WP:SONGS is stricter than the GNG), and are not meant to supercede the general notability guidelines. If it fails the GNG, the article should be deleted. That's the whole point of the GNG.
Now, there are a lot of fiction-related articles I have worked on and that I am interested in working on, but I notice time and again repeated issues. Among these are overreliance on primary sources (in particular, the stories themselves), assumptions of inherited notability, and too much emphasis on creating subarticles (for example, making pages for every episode in a TV series). Frankly, most of the fiction articles on Wikipedia are utter messes that simply reiterate in-story details, the biggest offenders being character articles. Not all areas that deal with fiction are plagued by these problems: Wikipedia:WikiProject Films and Wikipedia:WikiProject The Simpsons are just two examples of fiction-related WikiProjects that turn out scores of excellent articles. What makes them so successful is the emphasis they place on secondary sources, not on primary sources and in-story details. The emphasis on primary sources on many fiction articles is disturbing; notbility should never be based on in-story context such as how "important" a character is in a work, or that an "important" plot development occured in an episode. If it's so important, find me a third-party, reliable secondary source that says so. Anything else would be personal opinion and original research, and per Wiki guidelines, can be challenged and removed.
One idea I suggested below was that we need to stop thinking about these pages as "fiction" articles. The reason there are so many FA and GA film articles is because they are treated as articles about productions, not as stories. The emphasis is on who made it, when it was made, how much money it made, and what people thought of it. That's how you approach a fiction article, not by relying on what the stories say. We need to turn away from the focus on fiction and instead think of these subjects as productions, publications, broadcasts, plays, copyrighted characters, and so forth. That's the first step to determining how to establish notability and whether or not articles need to be merged. There's an old maxim that "Every character is someone's favorite". Well, that may be, but not every character is notable. That's just a fact. Sometimes they are a prop to service a larger production and thus only need to be discussed as part of that larger work. Same with TV show episodes; a TV show may be notable, but that doesn't mean that each episode is. If a TV show episode is going to have its own article, it needs its own notability established. An example I can offer is the Nirvana album Nevermind, which I have worked on for over two years. The album is certainly notable, but that doesn't mean every individual song on the record is. The song that have articles meet the GNG, while those that don't fail the GNG or simply have too little written about them to warrant separate articles that will never expand beyond stubs. Thus we aren't afraid to merge articles or turn them into redirects based on what is available published by reliable secondary sources. This attitude may be hard for some to accept, but ultimately our goal on Wikipedia is to provide a compnedium of documented information and knowledge, not to give you plot synopses of TV series episodes you missed.
This is a bit rambling, but basically my opinion is: I agree with Hiding's current essay draft aside from the lack of clarity on specific fiction-related notability guidelines; any fiction-notability guideline can only clarify, not supercede, the general notability guideline, and we need to stop acting like that isn't so; we need to combat institutionalized perceptions about fiction articles (particularly emphasis on story details and primary sources); and we need to look at high-quality fiction-related articles, and even article in other topic areas, for a way forward. Who here works solely on fiction-related articles, and has never worked in another subject area on Wikipedia? Because you can learn a lot about greta article-writing by doing that. Let me tell you, the longer I hone my editing skills in other subject areas of Wikipedia, the more disappointed I am when I come to work on a fiction-related article about a bit character from a comic book series that relies solely on in-line citations from the comic books the character appeared in. Because if made an article that relied primarily on primary soruces for any other subject area, I'd be rightly called out on it and prompted by others to find secondary sources to establish notability and provide an accurate scholary overview of the topic. WesleyDodds ( talk) 08:18, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
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What the subject says. There is no need for a separate fiction notability guideline, as I cannot see how one could be crafted that would complement the GNG and not be prone to reliance on primary sources, given the general tenor of conversation regarding these types of articles. Basically, in my view a fiction guideline cannot be satisfactorily crafted that would result in the creation of better articles; instead, the tendency would be to institutionalize unproductive attitudes and approaches to fiction articles (ie. making separate articles for every episode in a TV series, even if not every episode is covered by secondary sources). Better to rely on the GNG and specific topic guidelines (films, television, comics, etc.) which make an effort to consider the non-fictional aspects of the topics. WesleyDodds ( talk) 10:36, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Not everything needs its own article, but it might be an essential component of a larger fiction topic. Instead of letting it sit and fester, and before jumping into the AFD tiger pit, be bold and merge fiction articles without notability established into larger topics when applicable. You can always split off an article again when you find sufficient secondary sources. WesleyDodds ( talk) 10:50, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
Just a question right now, perhaps to return with a view later. Are outcomes important? We have the old saw that policies describe consensus, but that gets tautological real quick. We don't exactly just record all outcomes from current events and then derive a principle based on them. However, our past debates on fiction have been influenced by (sometimes) anecdotal statements that "articles with no context get deleted" or "articles which are central to a work get at least merged".
For a while in May I was working on Randomran's list of project VG outcomes at AfD, User:Randomran/VGAFD. The list was constructed by digging through each day of XfD discussions for VG related articles and recording their outcomes (including an implicit record of the eventual outcome through an article link) on the page. I had hoped that we could take the data and come to some general conclusions with it, at least about broad categories of articles. As you can see, work on the page has stopped, for various reasons--chief among them that I was worried it would all be for nothing (You can help! Post on my talk page for some ideas on what can/should be done to complete the dataset). I'm trying to test the waters at this RfC about continuing the 'project'.
Is this something that would sway the debate if the data pointed toward particularly strong habits in practice? Would deletionists (forgive the broad characterizations) agree to broaden standards in writing if we showed that standards were broad in practice? Would inclusionists (again, generalizing for argument's sake) agree to narrower standards if we showed that standards were narrow in practice? Or would people be uninterested in the results?
Sign in under support if you think it is worth finishing and analyzing. Sign in under oppose if you think it isn't worth the bother. Please make a comment if you want to, we can have a healthy discussion here without kicking things back to the talk page.
I think the previous "real world impact" criteria are fine, if properly construed. My thoughts on notability of fictional topics are at User:Jclemens/FICT, but in a nutshell they are that independent primary sources (e.g. commercial derivatives) adequately demonstrate notability. Jclemens ( talk) 02:37, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
Given that I believe no consensus exists, I propose, that rather than attempt to create a guideline which details how notability affects fictional topics, we instead write a brief essay explaining the current situation. The essay would point editors to Wikipedia:Notability, and note that where an article does not meet that standard, they should consider merging the information to a suitable article otherwise the article may become a candidate for deletion. The essay would then explain that articles are not always deleted because of Wikipedia:Notability. The essay would give reasons why a consensus may emerge for an article to be kept. Namely that the article:
A second proposal is to use a form of mediation to work towards a guideline. Roughly, all interested parties would participate in a discussion which would be moderated by a mediator or mediators. The mediators would be there to facilitate a consensus rather than impose one, keeping the discussion focussed on areas of agreement rather than of disagreement, likely through the use of time-bound discussion. Current debate on Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) has produced no guideline of lasting value in two years of attempts. Although this is likely due to a clear lack of consensus, it is possible it may be due to other reasons. A mediated discussion, which would ideally last six weeks, would at leats give a good faith attempt to creating a consensus or declaring a lack of one. This proposal may be rendered irrelevant depending on the outcome of this RFC.
My proposal is two parts. First it is to allow for a multitude of minor (not trivial) direct references for elements to qualify as an alternative for a minimum for elements. This is because most contemporary works of fiction that have reviews on them will only review the work itself. Any mention of any character will be at most, in all but a few rare cases, a paragraph long. At the same time we need to define what is considered a trivial element to the work and anything trivial, even if it has exhaustive scholarly work should not have its own separate page and possibly even section. For me, removal of it will not affect most readers interested in the work as a whole. Mentioning such elements, even if they have scholarly review does not go along with the spirit of WP:WAF#Accuracy and appropriate weight.
At this point I do not believe that any community-wide consensus exists on the matter of fiction and notability. I do believe, however, that strong consensus exists for certain policies on what fiction articles aren't - a minimum threshold. Some people advocate more restrictions on top of these, others do not.
I have an active proposal at Wikipedia:Fiction that seeks to codify clear rules on fiction articles. This proposal is *not* a notability guideline, and it carefully avoids precluding or endorsing a future notability guideline that could exist alongside it. It sets some restrictions, independent of other proposals.
I would advocate passing it, as I think it sets restrictions we do basically all agree on, and letting fiction notability sit for a few months. Those who want to clean up our fiction articles should find sufficient ammunition in Wikipedia:Fiction to make plenty of progress with it, and once that is done I suspect that it will be clearer what sort of additional policies we may need.
If it's not a guideline proposal - I'm not sure what there is to pass"? I'm not trying to be smart, I'm just not clear on what is being proposed here. — Ched : ? 09:28, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
I propose a survey, which is one of the recommended steps in the dispute resolution policy. My idea isn't new; I proposed the same idea 8 months ago (at Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction)), and asked a sitting arbitrator about the idea but received no response at the time. I have my own opinions about where it should take place, the participants, and which questions should be asked. I think a survey would be the best way forward.
The survey could be located at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Fiction Survey 2009, or Wikipedia:Centralized discussion/Fiction Survey 2009, or maybe even off-site like Wikipedia:Survey 2008, or users could create a subpage in their userspace (like Special:Mypage/Fiction Survey 2009) and answer the questions there, similar to how a past survey was conducted. I think the user subpage option would eliminate unnecessary conflict, so I favor that option. Although, an off-site survey could also gauge reader opinion, but there could be some drawbacks to an off-site survey. A template could be created (and later protected), perhaps Template:Fiction Survey 2009, containing the final questions, and users could then substitute the template on their subpage and then answer it. The template could also place the survey subpages into a category.
I would like to see as much participation as possible. These sort of discussions really need new blood. Over 158,000 users have made at least one edit in the past month. [1] Wikipedia currently has 2,904,822 articles. [2] As of April 16, 2009, Category:Fiction had 1,071,665 articles under it [3] — 36.9% of Wikipedia's articles. Personally, I would like to see a lot of input from Wikipedia's most prolific article creators. According to this page, as of April 30, 2009, the top 5,000 article creators had created 1,679,835 articles — 57.8% of Wikipedia's articles. I think a timeframe of three months (or even six months) for the survey would be okay.
Wikipedia:Advertising discussions could be followed to get the word out. I even think that talkpage notices to all users have who have edited in the past month (or only those with a certain number of edits) would not be unreasonable. Maybe random users could be contacted. A quick and dirty way of doing that is to click Special:Random and then notify the last editor who edited the article. Or maybe a bot could do the notifying.
I think the most important thing is the questions the survey asks. A draft of a fiction survey has been in my userspace since October. This is the current version, and does not mention notability. Here is a previous version that does mention notability. I suppose the most basic question could be "What are your thoughts about fiction on Wikipedia?" or "Do you think there is a problem regarding fiction on Wikipedia?" Final questions could be hashed out at Template:Fiction Survey 2009 (or editors could write survey questions in their userspace which could then be compared and contrasted). I suppose questions could even be decided upon here, although I would like to avoid the survey developing like Wikipedia:Notability/RFC:compromise did.
All survey participants could also be encouraged to write their own essays regarding fiction in their userspace. As to evaluating the survey, maybe 9 random admins could do it. I also think that a sitewide survey on Wikipedia:Notability itself would be beneficial, and I'm unaware of any previous attempts to do one. -- Pixelface ( talk) 20:44, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Since a great deal of AfD debate centres around spinout articles, I propose that we revisit the view that notability is not inherited, with a view to establishing whether or not there is a consensus that where a series of fictional works does have very well established notability, a cluster of lead and spinout articles on the series may share that notability, rather than having to establish a separate notability for themselves. Elen of the Roads ( talk) 16:56, 7 June 2009 (UTC)
Discussion
Let's just fall back to WP:N and delete WP:FICT. I see no real chance, without mediation, that a real proposal will come forward that has a chance at consensus. We drop all this "real world" stuff (which isn't part of WP:N and shouldn't be part of NOT#PLOT per the RfC), thus allowing reviews and third-party books on fiction topics (such as biographies of the author) to count as the reliable sources that they are.
Combination of two of the above:
A new version of Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) has been proposed.
Eliminate elitist and subjective terminology like "notability" altogether and instead adopt Inclusion guidelines as the basis for inclusion.
I think the best way forward is to stop thinking of these items as "fiction". People get too wrapped up in the fictional details, often to the detriment of secondary sources. Simply put, if you think of a film or a television show episode in terms of a production, or novels and comic books as publications instead of simply stories, then it's easier contextualize them in the face of the notability guidelines. Above all, what needs to happens is we need to stop overrelying on primary sources. This is the biggest problem facing fiction-related articles on Wikipedia, as too many people are more interested in charting chararcter minutae instead of trying to explain to the general reader why they should care in the first place. WesleyDodds ( talk) 03:21, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
Summarizing the results of the polling as of the time of writing (Note WP:POLLING applies): -- Cybercobra ( talk) 07:16, 9 June 2009 (UTC) Updated data as of timestamp -- Elen of the Roads ( talk) 16:20, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
The creators of some proposals have created pages that are included as part of their proposal. Interested editors are encouraged to participate in the construction of these pages.
This RFC has established that the community is divided on the treatment of fiction and that this divide centres on both the amount of coverage Wikipedia should provide on a fictional topic and whether articles split from a parent article (per Wikipedia:Summary style) should be seen as part of the overarching topic, or as a seperate article. This RFC has furthermore established that content should be verifiable, not contain original research and present information from a neutral point of view. There is consensus per this RFC that an essay be written to explain this situation and to provide appropriate advice (See Proposal 1 above). It was also proposed to follow this up with a survey to attain the extent of coverage of fiction on Wikipedia.
There are views that WP:FICT might be trying to do to much; and that different guidelines might be required for different elements (i.e. modern vs. classical, episodes vs. characters vs. locations; etc.). Proposals to fall back to using WP:N and to either delete WP:FICT, or to leave it as an essay did not attain wide consensus in the RFC.
A proposal to revisit the issue of "inherited notability" was rejected. Two proposals to adopt WF:FICT and/or Inclusion guidelines did not attain support per this RFC. Another proposal towards the formation of a mediation to work towards a single guideline has been rejected as being premature at this stage.
— G.A.S talk 09:38, 11 September 2009 (UTC)