I support this rule. I would think it to be so obvious as to be unnecessary, but obviously it's been violated enough times to make an explicit rule worth doing. -- Robert Merkel
obvious as to be unnecessary ... seconded! -- Tarquin
I guess this is linked to avoiding ideosyncratic subjects? Example: I once saw a game played which the participants called seven card xxxxstain, which would be unsuitable for wikipedia because its global participation is probably around twenty, so it's hopelessly un verifiable... Martin
From the project page:
What does "largely irrelevant" mean? Contribute your views to Wikipedia:Articles about fiction.
The articles on fictional characters are going out of control. Simpson, Star War, Star Trek, Harry Potter. A strict guideline is definitely a priority.
I know many classic novels having more than one hundred characters. It is tempting to add all of them in Wikipedia, but I want to wait until we have a clear guideline.- wshun 20:34, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Why would anyone want to stop people writing articles? The more articles, the better. Having an article on the used ship salesman in Monkey Island does not prevent us from having an article on physics or something. CGS 22:01, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC).
From a practical view point. Everything is unique, but you can't have articles on everything. We don't write about every physicists, so why do we write about every fictional characters? BTW, mentioning the used ship salesman in the article of Monkey Island is, functionally speaking, better then writing a separate article about the character. wshun 22:36, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)
We don't write about every fictional character. If we have more fictional characters than physicists listed it is because that is what people prefer writing about. Whether a character (fictional or otherwise) should be on their own page or page about whatever it is they are related to should probably depend on how much there is to write about them. A page containing info on all the Harry Potter characters, for example, would be way too long. Angela
But if someone wants to quietly document every single character invovled in the Star Trek universe, with a bio, episode references, et cetera, why stop them? CGS 22:46, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC).
Currently, there are many articles about fictional characters. Unluckily, most of which are hopeless stubs. The number of such stubs grows very quickly and every time a suggestion of VfD leads to a lengthy debate, partly because it is never NPOV to say whether or not a character is important.
I hereby offer two possible solutions:
-- wshun 03:55, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I really disagree with either of the above. There are many fictional characters, such as Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, just to name two off the top of my head, that are cultural icons. But to name every charactger in every episode of some TV series that lasted five episodes, and to make them seem somehow of the same weight, is ludicrous. And I definitely don't agree with spinning off all fiction into a separate Wiki. Would this include all television shows and movies? RickK 04:06, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Why do you want to list them on VFD? That's just asking for trouble. You should merge them to a characters page, Atlas Shrugged style. As for WikiFiction: I know there's been a lot of fan wikis going up recently, for example This Might Be A Wiki. Perhaps we could expand your proposal somewhat to encompass that sort of site; to jump on that bandwagon. A fan wiki, with WP:WWIN #8 relaxed. (via edit conflict with RickK) -- Tim Starling 04:22, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)
The thing is that while The Simpsons has 100 characters. All but 10 are very shallow ("stubs"). On the other hand, some novels has 100 characters, and 60 of then have some real things to be said in an encyclopedia ("articles"). -- Menchi 05:35, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)
I hate to sound elitist, but is has to be a sad commentary on the state of education that there is any significant number of people that actually would write on each fictional character that appears on a TV episode. It does show what a bored human mind is lead to. I'm not sure if these people are just killing time and excercising their fingers, or actually think that sort of information will have some lasting interest. I like the idea of a whole separate wiki for that, but clearly there is room here (and interest) for many fictional characters; so where does one draw the line. I think it should just be a rule that a show (like the Simpsons) gets one or two pages and only the important stuff need be expanded upon within that limitation. I love the Simpsons, by the way, but in the not too distant future, the entire phenomenon will rate less than a page (and perhasps only a paragraph) in any real encyclopedia. - Marshman 05:50, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think it's a bad idea to splice off into different sub-encyclopedias, which is what "wikifiction" would be. But we do have too much on pop culture -- as Marshman says, people find it much easier to ramble about it off the top of their heads than do actual research. I guess we have too many clones of Comic Book Guy about ;) There was talk on the pump about this last week -- might still be up there ^^^. Create more article on important fictional characters to balance it out! -- Tarquin 09:59, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Can someone explain to me exactly what the problem is? Why is it bad to have these pages? They don't stop us having other pages, they don't hurt anyone! CGS 16:54, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC).
A spin-off encyclopedia for pop cultures should be welcomed by fans. It doesn't hurt if it include all television shows and movies, if the fans bother to add them. Important characters could still be on Wikipedia. Just like we have Wikiquote but we have the article I have a dream also.
To CGS: Yes, the articles don't hurt anybody. But Wikipedia doesn't welcome stubs.
To Ram-Man: Hey, every city has its amazing story (unlike those dumb characters), just nobody from those cities write something about them yet. :( - wshun 19:52, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
The sheer bulk of obscure Harry Potter references, for example, are getting out of control. Do we really need articles on Occlumency (which has less cultural relevance than " bling bling") or 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey? The Occlumency article should be moved to a page with several terms used in the series (if it is kept at all), while the information in the 4 Privet Drive article should be in a Harry Potter characters page. However, I do support the idea of Wikifiction if most of the more obscure pop cultural references get moved there and grouped into specific categories such as Science Fiction (TV), Science Fiction (Books), etc. -- Kaijan 02:19, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I don't see how people think that splitting this stuff into another wiki helps things any. What is truly accomplished by that? It's not really out of the way... and just makes the interface (the important bit) more clunky. I think people have a very strange attitude about 'room'. Now, this said, there's a lot of small articles that can be combined- Harry Potter Glossary would handle the example above of Occlumency... things like that. But VfD is getting spammed with large numbers of things that don't need to be there, with the utterly meaningless term 'Non-encyclopedic' attached. We should focus on: *adding more content
I still don't see anything wrong with having "Wikifiction" created. Libraries have reference books specifically for fictional characters, yet they're horribly out of date and necessarily limited due to their being made out of paper. Why not create a new Wiki to list and describe all the fictional characters extant, both major and minor? Wikifiction is really a separate issue from the guidelines for fictional characters at Wikipedia, and it should be discussed as such. -- Kaijan 09:46, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Is there/should there be either a standard designation for the plethora of articles on the characters, locations, etc. of self consistent fictional universes. Those of science fiction and fantasy seem to be especially prevalent (e.g. Star Trek, Star Wars, Tolkien's Middle-Earth, Harry Potter). A few of these could almost sustain a wiki-encyclopedia of their own... As it's traditionally not customary for encyclopedia to include numerous articles on fictional characters... has this issue been hashed out already? - Seth Ilys 21:22, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of encyclopedias. There is therefore nothing wrong with having a great many Middle Earth, Star Trek or Star Wars articles if there is enough to write about each subject. But if all there ever can be is a stub on a subject then it should be merged into a larger article. There certainly is no consensus to do this to the extent the Eloquence suggests. -- mav 13:02, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Is there a formulated policy on items in books, films, television, etc.? For example, I am dealing with Stargate (film) and the TV show Stargate SG-1 and have encount ered many articles on items of the fictional universe, such as Jaffa (Stargate SG-1), George Hammond, and Goa'uld. I think these should be merged with one of the main articles or put in an article like "Stargate (universe)". The advantage of the second option is that many universes have multiple books, films, and shows, like Star Trek or Star Wars. This present on has a film and two TV shows. Another option would be to create a new namespace for fiction and use the same unique names for every item, with the parenthesis of the context, as it is done now. It would also allow for the fiction to be separated for certain releases or archives of the encyclopedia. Comments? Have I missed something obvious? - Centrx 23:48, 26 May 2004 (UTC)
There's a (humorous, in my opinion) dispute with the Harry Kim article that I think should seriously spin-off a Wikipedia policy. At issue is that there are two Harry Kims: the Star Trek character and an actual elected mayor of Hawai'i County. One person objected to creating a disambiguation page out of the main Harry Kim space and redirect to two separate articles, as others like myself would like to do. One for Harry Kim (fictional) and Harry Kim (politician). Another person suggested that the living, breathing Harry Kim take precedence over a fictional character and therefore should have the main space while redirecting to Harry Kim (fictional). On the otherhand, some have argued that the fictional character takes precedence over the actual person because the fictional Harry Kim is more widely known and therefore deserves the main space while the actual person gets a mere redirect.
There are basically two camps. One camp believes an actual person gets precedence over a fictional character anytime, despite the current Wikipedia policy of giving the main space to the more widely known subject. The other camp stands by that current policy. I think we need clarification on this issue. -- Gerald Farinas 16:44, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I've changed the page a bit. First, I've sectioned it by certain general guidelines that should be followed when writing about fiction, I didn't alter the content much in this case. There are 4 guidelines at the moment, and they all help make sure articles about fiction are
I also expanded a section about making sure that the article is encyclopedic (one of the aforementioned 4 requirements), which I think will ensure that articles won't be simple "fancruft", rather true articles about topics within fiction.
— siro χ o 23:52, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)
At present there are many articles in the Wikipedia namespace that seek to give guidance on how to write better articles. I propose consolidating these into a much smaller number. On User:Jongarrettuk/Better writing guide I propose how these could be consolidated. The proposal is not to change advice, just to consolidate it. If I have inadvertently moved what you consider to be good advice that is currently in the Wikipedia namespace, please re-add it. I'm hope that the proposal to merge all these articles, in principle, will be welcomed. Of course, it may be preferred to have 2, 3 or 4 inter-connected articles than just one and would welcome advice on how this could be done. (In particular, perhaps all the guidance on layout should be spun off into one consolidated article on layout.) I'm also aware that putting lots of different bits of advice together may throw up anomalies or bits that people now disagree with (including bits that I myself disagree with:) ). I ask for support for the consolidation. Once the consolidation has happened, the advice can be changed in the normal way. Please feel free to improve on the current draft consolidation, but don't remove or add advice that is not currently on the Wikipedia namespace. If all goes well, I'll add a new Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles page on the 19th, though maybe some bits of the new article will need to be phased in over a longer period. I'll also take care to preserve all the archived discussion in one place. jguk 20:00, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There is currently a proposal to make articles about fanfiction, or characters from fan fiction or RPGs subject to speedy deletion. Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal#7. I susgest that peopel intersted in this subject commetn on this proposal, and consider voting on iot when it is up for vote. DES 28 June 2005 19:56 (UTC)
I've asked this at template talk:fiction, but since that namespace doesn't get much visitation, I'll ask it here, too. I've encountered a lot of articles where the first sentence may identify the subject as a fictional character, but then the entire article is nothing but references to the work of fiction: fictional places, fictional events, other fictional characters, without once 1)idenfitying this millieu as fictional, or 2)citing the work of fiction in which these fictional events occured (akin to if the article Luke Skywalker were to say he destroyed the Death Star without including that it happens in Star Wars Episode IV:A New Hope). Everytime I've added the template:fiction tag to it, it's been removed with no change or very little change (typically a clarification at the start that the character is fictional). Am I using the wrong tag? Should that be a template:context tag instead? template:unreferenced? Or should I just go ahead and write a new template?
Time and again, I run across video-game articles that do not use present tense to describe the plots of the games. I'm trying to correct these as I find them, but there are so many that it's a losing battle. Would it be out of line if I added a note to the "Check your fiction" section that the perpetual present tense applies to video games as well? And on a related topic -- this present tense should extend to explanations of gameplay, as well (if I put in Super Mario Bros. today, it plays the same as it did in 1985). Is this the appropriate place to mention this, or can anyone point me elsewhere? Thanks . . . . Amcaja 20:04, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
I support this rule. I would think it to be so obvious as to be unnecessary, but obviously it's been violated enough times to make an explicit rule worth doing. -- Robert Merkel
obvious as to be unnecessary ... seconded! -- Tarquin
I guess this is linked to avoiding ideosyncratic subjects? Example: I once saw a game played which the participants called seven card xxxxstain, which would be unsuitable for wikipedia because its global participation is probably around twenty, so it's hopelessly un verifiable... Martin
From the project page:
What does "largely irrelevant" mean? Contribute your views to Wikipedia:Articles about fiction.
The articles on fictional characters are going out of control. Simpson, Star War, Star Trek, Harry Potter. A strict guideline is definitely a priority.
I know many classic novels having more than one hundred characters. It is tempting to add all of them in Wikipedia, but I want to wait until we have a clear guideline.- wshun 20:34, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Why would anyone want to stop people writing articles? The more articles, the better. Having an article on the used ship salesman in Monkey Island does not prevent us from having an article on physics or something. CGS 22:01, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC).
From a practical view point. Everything is unique, but you can't have articles on everything. We don't write about every physicists, so why do we write about every fictional characters? BTW, mentioning the used ship salesman in the article of Monkey Island is, functionally speaking, better then writing a separate article about the character. wshun 22:36, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC)
We don't write about every fictional character. If we have more fictional characters than physicists listed it is because that is what people prefer writing about. Whether a character (fictional or otherwise) should be on their own page or page about whatever it is they are related to should probably depend on how much there is to write about them. A page containing info on all the Harry Potter characters, for example, would be way too long. Angela
But if someone wants to quietly document every single character invovled in the Star Trek universe, with a bio, episode references, et cetera, why stop them? CGS 22:46, 16 Aug 2003 (UTC).
Currently, there are many articles about fictional characters. Unluckily, most of which are hopeless stubs. The number of such stubs grows very quickly and every time a suggestion of VfD leads to a lengthy debate, partly because it is never NPOV to say whether or not a character is important.
I hereby offer two possible solutions:
-- wshun 03:55, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I really disagree with either of the above. There are many fictional characters, such as Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, just to name two off the top of my head, that are cultural icons. But to name every charactger in every episode of some TV series that lasted five episodes, and to make them seem somehow of the same weight, is ludicrous. And I definitely don't agree with spinning off all fiction into a separate Wiki. Would this include all television shows and movies? RickK 04:06, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Why do you want to list them on VFD? That's just asking for trouble. You should merge them to a characters page, Atlas Shrugged style. As for WikiFiction: I know there's been a lot of fan wikis going up recently, for example This Might Be A Wiki. Perhaps we could expand your proposal somewhat to encompass that sort of site; to jump on that bandwagon. A fan wiki, with WP:WWIN #8 relaxed. (via edit conflict with RickK) -- Tim Starling 04:22, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)
The thing is that while The Simpsons has 100 characters. All but 10 are very shallow ("stubs"). On the other hand, some novels has 100 characters, and 60 of then have some real things to be said in an encyclopedia ("articles"). -- Menchi 05:35, Aug 20, 2003 (UTC)
I hate to sound elitist, but is has to be a sad commentary on the state of education that there is any significant number of people that actually would write on each fictional character that appears on a TV episode. It does show what a bored human mind is lead to. I'm not sure if these people are just killing time and excercising their fingers, or actually think that sort of information will have some lasting interest. I like the idea of a whole separate wiki for that, but clearly there is room here (and interest) for many fictional characters; so where does one draw the line. I think it should just be a rule that a show (like the Simpsons) gets one or two pages and only the important stuff need be expanded upon within that limitation. I love the Simpsons, by the way, but in the not too distant future, the entire phenomenon will rate less than a page (and perhasps only a paragraph) in any real encyclopedia. - Marshman 05:50, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I think it's a bad idea to splice off into different sub-encyclopedias, which is what "wikifiction" would be. But we do have too much on pop culture -- as Marshman says, people find it much easier to ramble about it off the top of their heads than do actual research. I guess we have too many clones of Comic Book Guy about ;) There was talk on the pump about this last week -- might still be up there ^^^. Create more article on important fictional characters to balance it out! -- Tarquin 09:59, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Can someone explain to me exactly what the problem is? Why is it bad to have these pages? They don't stop us having other pages, they don't hurt anyone! CGS 16:54, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC).
A spin-off encyclopedia for pop cultures should be welcomed by fans. It doesn't hurt if it include all television shows and movies, if the fans bother to add them. Important characters could still be on Wikipedia. Just like we have Wikiquote but we have the article I have a dream also.
To CGS: Yes, the articles don't hurt anybody. But Wikipedia doesn't welcome stubs.
To Ram-Man: Hey, every city has its amazing story (unlike those dumb characters), just nobody from those cities write something about them yet. :( - wshun 19:52, 20 Aug 2003 (UTC)
The sheer bulk of obscure Harry Potter references, for example, are getting out of control. Do we really need articles on Occlumency (which has less cultural relevance than " bling bling") or 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey? The Occlumency article should be moved to a page with several terms used in the series (if it is kept at all), while the information in the 4 Privet Drive article should be in a Harry Potter characters page. However, I do support the idea of Wikifiction if most of the more obscure pop cultural references get moved there and grouped into specific categories such as Science Fiction (TV), Science Fiction (Books), etc. -- Kaijan 02:19, 21 Aug 2003 (UTC)
I don't see how people think that splitting this stuff into another wiki helps things any. What is truly accomplished by that? It's not really out of the way... and just makes the interface (the important bit) more clunky. I think people have a very strange attitude about 'room'. Now, this said, there's a lot of small articles that can be combined- Harry Potter Glossary would handle the example above of Occlumency... things like that. But VfD is getting spammed with large numbers of things that don't need to be there, with the utterly meaningless term 'Non-encyclopedic' attached. We should focus on: *adding more content
I still don't see anything wrong with having "Wikifiction" created. Libraries have reference books specifically for fictional characters, yet they're horribly out of date and necessarily limited due to their being made out of paper. Why not create a new Wiki to list and describe all the fictional characters extant, both major and minor? Wikifiction is really a separate issue from the guidelines for fictional characters at Wikipedia, and it should be discussed as such. -- Kaijan 09:46, 28 Aug 2003 (UTC)
Is there/should there be either a standard designation for the plethora of articles on the characters, locations, etc. of self consistent fictional universes. Those of science fiction and fantasy seem to be especially prevalent (e.g. Star Trek, Star Wars, Tolkien's Middle-Earth, Harry Potter). A few of these could almost sustain a wiki-encyclopedia of their own... As it's traditionally not customary for encyclopedia to include numerous articles on fictional characters... has this issue been hashed out already? - Seth Ilys 21:22, 27 Dec 2003 (UTC)
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia of encyclopedias. There is therefore nothing wrong with having a great many Middle Earth, Star Trek or Star Wars articles if there is enough to write about each subject. But if all there ever can be is a stub on a subject then it should be merged into a larger article. There certainly is no consensus to do this to the extent the Eloquence suggests. -- mav 13:02, 1 Jan 2004 (UTC)
Is there a formulated policy on items in books, films, television, etc.? For example, I am dealing with Stargate (film) and the TV show Stargate SG-1 and have encount ered many articles on items of the fictional universe, such as Jaffa (Stargate SG-1), George Hammond, and Goa'uld. I think these should be merged with one of the main articles or put in an article like "Stargate (universe)". The advantage of the second option is that many universes have multiple books, films, and shows, like Star Trek or Star Wars. This present on has a film and two TV shows. Another option would be to create a new namespace for fiction and use the same unique names for every item, with the parenthesis of the context, as it is done now. It would also allow for the fiction to be separated for certain releases or archives of the encyclopedia. Comments? Have I missed something obvious? - Centrx 23:48, 26 May 2004 (UTC)
There's a (humorous, in my opinion) dispute with the Harry Kim article that I think should seriously spin-off a Wikipedia policy. At issue is that there are two Harry Kims: the Star Trek character and an actual elected mayor of Hawai'i County. One person objected to creating a disambiguation page out of the main Harry Kim space and redirect to two separate articles, as others like myself would like to do. One for Harry Kim (fictional) and Harry Kim (politician). Another person suggested that the living, breathing Harry Kim take precedence over a fictional character and therefore should have the main space while redirecting to Harry Kim (fictional). On the otherhand, some have argued that the fictional character takes precedence over the actual person because the fictional Harry Kim is more widely known and therefore deserves the main space while the actual person gets a mere redirect.
There are basically two camps. One camp believes an actual person gets precedence over a fictional character anytime, despite the current Wikipedia policy of giving the main space to the more widely known subject. The other camp stands by that current policy. I think we need clarification on this issue. -- Gerald Farinas 16:44, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)
I've changed the page a bit. First, I've sectioned it by certain general guidelines that should be followed when writing about fiction, I didn't alter the content much in this case. There are 4 guidelines at the moment, and they all help make sure articles about fiction are
I also expanded a section about making sure that the article is encyclopedic (one of the aforementioned 4 requirements), which I think will ensure that articles won't be simple "fancruft", rather true articles about topics within fiction.
— siro χ o 23:52, Oct 26, 2004 (UTC)
At present there are many articles in the Wikipedia namespace that seek to give guidance on how to write better articles. I propose consolidating these into a much smaller number. On User:Jongarrettuk/Better writing guide I propose how these could be consolidated. The proposal is not to change advice, just to consolidate it. If I have inadvertently moved what you consider to be good advice that is currently in the Wikipedia namespace, please re-add it. I'm hope that the proposal to merge all these articles, in principle, will be welcomed. Of course, it may be preferred to have 2, 3 or 4 inter-connected articles than just one and would welcome advice on how this could be done. (In particular, perhaps all the guidance on layout should be spun off into one consolidated article on layout.) I'm also aware that putting lots of different bits of advice together may throw up anomalies or bits that people now disagree with (including bits that I myself disagree with:) ). I ask for support for the consolidation. Once the consolidation has happened, the advice can be changed in the normal way. Please feel free to improve on the current draft consolidation, but don't remove or add advice that is not currently on the Wikipedia namespace. If all goes well, I'll add a new Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles page on the 19th, though maybe some bits of the new article will need to be phased in over a longer period. I'll also take care to preserve all the archived discussion in one place. jguk 20:00, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)
There is currently a proposal to make articles about fanfiction, or characters from fan fiction or RPGs subject to speedy deletion. Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion/Proposal#7. I susgest that peopel intersted in this subject commetn on this proposal, and consider voting on iot when it is up for vote. DES 28 June 2005 19:56 (UTC)
I've asked this at template talk:fiction, but since that namespace doesn't get much visitation, I'll ask it here, too. I've encountered a lot of articles where the first sentence may identify the subject as a fictional character, but then the entire article is nothing but references to the work of fiction: fictional places, fictional events, other fictional characters, without once 1)idenfitying this millieu as fictional, or 2)citing the work of fiction in which these fictional events occured (akin to if the article Luke Skywalker were to say he destroyed the Death Star without including that it happens in Star Wars Episode IV:A New Hope). Everytime I've added the template:fiction tag to it, it's been removed with no change or very little change (typically a clarification at the start that the character is fictional). Am I using the wrong tag? Should that be a template:context tag instead? template:unreferenced? Or should I just go ahead and write a new template?
Time and again, I run across video-game articles that do not use present tense to describe the plots of the games. I'm trying to correct these as I find them, but there are so many that it's a losing battle. Would it be out of line if I added a note to the "Check your fiction" section that the perpetual present tense applies to video games as well? And on a related topic -- this present tense should extend to explanations of gameplay, as well (if I put in Super Mario Bros. today, it plays the same as it did in 1985). Is this the appropriate place to mention this, or can anyone point me elsewhere? Thanks . . . . Amcaja 20:04, 2 September 2005 (UTC)