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NFILM states that a film is likely to be notable if it has "full-length reviews by two or more nationally known critics." To me, this means a critic that is notable enough to have their own Wikipedia article. Just because a critic has written for a website that is available (as all websites are!) worldwide, that does not make them "nationally known". This question stems from the deletion discussion for Art Machine, where a film that doesn't come close to passing GNG is getting "keep" votes based on reviews from unknown critics on three websites (in addition, one of the sites is probably not an RS). What say you, community? Wes sideman ( talk) 11:00, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
While the "nationally-known critic" criteria may be applicable for USA or European countries (with fairly homogenus linguistic tradition in each country), the scenario in the case of India can be very different. The critic of films in one language (say, Tamil language) may be unknown in the media that discusse Hindi language or Bengali language films. For comparison, a nationally-known French language film critic may be not be well-known in Spain. However, France and Spain being two separate countries, there is no issues regarding notability criteria of films, as the critics are well-known in the individual countries.
Since language and countries are different things, should not we use critics well-known in that particular languages's film-related media/literature, rather than whether they are well-known in a country? Dwaipayan ( talk) 08:35, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
I'd support rewording the criterion for clarity, but the consensus position is indeed that what's required is not necessarily that the critic themselves is individually famous (although that may indeed be the case sometimes), but that a review is still valid support for notability so long the publication that it appears in is an established and
WP:GNG-worthy publication. We don't have standalone articles about Canadian film critics such as Radheyan Simonpillai or Norman Wilner or Craig Takeuchi, for example, but their film reviews most certainly are acceptable for establishing the notability of a film because they do appear in reliable source media.
Another thing to keep in mind is that with so many media outlets cutting back on their original arts reporting due to the media profitability crunch, more and more film reviewing is moving to exclusively online platforms such as RogerEbert.com or That Shelf or The Spool — and while some of those certainly qualify as reliable and notability-building reviews as well (for example, nobody in their right mind would ever challenge the legitimacy of a review by a writer at RogerEbert.com, given its legacy connection to probably the single most famous film critic in world history) there are others that would not (e.g. an amateur film critic reviewing films on his or her own self-published Blogspot). So obviously we still have to check for the reliability of a film review platform, but the solidity and reliability of the publication that is publishing the review counts for every bit as much as the established fame of the individual critic named in the byline.
Bearcat (
talk)
15:08, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
widely distributed in its countryand
country's nationwide publicationsdo not solve the intent of this discussion which is to remove the context of nationality from the wordings. Jay 💬 14:03, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I'd like to ask for clarification on whether an AfDed film article ( The Pursuers, which I AfDed but another editor voted to keep and stated it is notable) with a somewhat notable cast should be considered to be notable and passing WP:GNG? This was raised in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Pursuers by the sysop Necrothesp, who voted keep because it has a notable cast and passes GNG (though, in my opinion, they are database entries and mentions, except for one short capsule-like review), and also stated this in the user page. I'm afraid I have to disagree that films have inherited notability, though, contrary to other guidelines such as Wikipedia:Notability (web), this isn't directly said in WP:NFILM. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any guidelines, essays, or discussions that directly support or oppose inherited notability for films, so if editors could weigh in on this, that would be great! If I'm mistaken, please point me out, and many thanks! VickKiang 22:52, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
I suggest that we add the following text to the last paragraph of the WP:NFF section (existing language in green):
Additionally, films and television series that have already begun shooting, but have not yet been publicly released (theatres or video), should generally not have their own articles unless the production itself is notable per the notability guidelines.This means significant coverage beyond simple announcements of casting decisions or that photography has begun. It is unusual for a film's production to be noteworthy in itself, and typically only occurs for extraordinarily high-budget films, films where something goes wrong during production, or films with particularly controversial casting decisions that are extensively scrutinized prior to release.Similarly, films produced in the past which were either not completed or not distributed should not have their own articles, unless their failure was notable per the guidelines.
I think this addition reflects existing practice in AfD discussions; the addition is further needed because many inexperienced editors read NFF and take it to mean that if 3 sources publish a press release that a film has begun principal photography it is notable. signed, Rosguill talk 02:30, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
After a long vacation of ten years, I am back.🙃 I have some questions regarding the current MOS consensus. What are the thoughts on having tables with
box office data? Music track listings
like this? Is this useful? These articles passed as GA back in 2011, so they obviously need updating. Thanks for any input.
Mike
Allen
15:47, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
The section Future films, incomplete films, and undistributed films only says that such films should not have their own articles, but does the same also apply to mentioning when the films rights to a given property have been acquired by a studio, as with this article on the rights to Scott Snyder's novel being acquried by 20th Century Studios? I think it does, the principle is the same (Wikipedia will be filled with loads of material on the acquistion rights to properties that ended up not getting produced), but I'd like to hear what others here have to say. Nightscream ( talk) 19:08, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
I want to propose that we beef up what this notability criterion says about notability on the basis of awards. At present, the criterion says solely that "the film has received a major award for excellence in some aspect of filmmaking", and then uses a footnote to vague out ("Standards have not been defined...") on the question of what constitutes a "major award" — with the result that this criterion has often been incorrectly interpreted to mean that any film award that exists at all confers an automatic notability pass regardless of the quality of sourcing that is or isn't used to support the "majorness" of the award.
The problem, of course, is that not all film awards are actually created equal. Some awards are more "major" and notability-making than other awards, some film festivals are more "major" and notability-making than other film festivals, and on and so forth. There exists, for example, a large network of fake "film festivals" that do not actually screen films for the general public at all, but in fact exist solely as vanity award mills, allowing any filmmaker to purchase an "award" so that they can claim to have won film festival awards in their marketing materials, as well as many real local or regional film festivals and regional film organizations which present real awards that still aren't necessarily always of broad national or international significance. (There have, for example, been attempts to claim that even just winning "Best Local Film" at the local film festival in a filmmaker's own hometown is a notability clinch for a film even if it's never had a single titch of beyond-hometown distribution or coverage at all. That didn't work, thankfully, but it has been attempted.)
Standards for this, in a nutshell, actually have been defined at AFD, and NFILM just hasn't caught up with codifying them yet. Essentially, a film is not automatically notable enough to have a Wikipedia article just because the body text has the word "award" in it. Notability on the basis of awards, rather, hinges on the degree to which the claim can or cannot be reliably sourced to GNG-worthy third-party coverage about the award presentation in media outlets or books independent of the claims. This is not solely a question of whether the award or festival has a Wikipedia article or not, as there may be film awards and festivals that have articles but probably should not, and film awards and festivals that do not have articles yet but probably should.
As a basis to start discussion, I would propose that the following types of awards indeed should be, and in fact generally are, accepted as notable awards:
Awards presented at film festivals of more local or regional prominence, whose coverage is largely limited to their own local area, might not necessarily secure the notability of a film all by themselves if that's the only notability claim being made; however, a film that wins an award in this tier of film festivals will very often have other legitimate notability claims as well, so it's appropriate for awards of this type to be mentioned in film articles so long as they're properly sourced. Conversely, a film award should not confer notability on its winners at all if reliable source media coverage about the award presentation does not exist, such that you have to rely on the film studio's own self-published marketing materials, the award's own self-published press releases about itself, social networking posts or YouTube video clips of the award presentation to source the claim. And by the same token, an award shouldn't confer notability just because it seems to serve a similar purpose to another award, but rather the depth of media coverage that the award does or doesn't actually get should still be the determinant. For example, Canada's Joey Awards are not a notability-making award just because they're presented to young actors and thus have a similar "mandate" to the American Young Artist Awards, because they don't get the coverage that the Young Artist Awards get.
Similarly, films are able to claim notability on the basis of nominations for awards, but this is still vulnerable to misinterpretation and abuse. Generally, award nominations are valid notability claims if the award curates and releases a shortlist of finalists between the "consideration of all eligible submissions" and "announcement of the final winner" phases, but not if the film is an automatic "nominee" just by virtue of its presence at the event. For example, every feature film that screens at the Toronto International Film Festival is inherently a "nominee" for the People's Choice Award, so being a "nominee" for that award is not a meaningful or notability-boosting statement in and of itself (but boy, do editors still try it anyway) — whereas the Academy Awards release a shortlist of five finalists per category between the submission deadline and the announcement of the winner at the ceremony, so being an Oscar nominee is a more significant distinction. Conversely, TIFF's Platform Prize, a special award reserved for the eight to twelve films playing in one specific program whose titles were curated for the express purpose of competing for that award, has a stronger basis for being claimed as a noteworthy nomination. As with award wins, this should properly depend on the ability to reliably source, in references independent of content self-published by the awards committee, that a shortlist of nominees was announced somewhere between the "everything's a potential nominee" and "we know the winner now" phases of the process.
Which is admittedly a lot of words to say that essentially what I'm proposing here is that we much more clearly define a "major" award as one that can be shown to garner reliable source coverage about it in sources independent of itself — which, when you get right down to it, is basically already the rule that's typically applied when "award-winning" films go to AFD (films that claim notability on the basis of unsourced or primary sourced awards from minor film festivals routinely get thrown in the trash compactor, for example), and just hasn't been codified as such here yet. So that's what I'm putting forward for discussion, and would welcome any input. Bearcat ( talk) 23:43, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
The current wording states,
"Additionally, films that have already begun shooting, but have not yet been publicly released (theatres or video), should generally not have their own articles unless the production itself is notable per the notability guidelines."
which is a bit ambiguous, and is being used by editors to mass-delete articles of unreleased films that are currently filming or in post-production. In this particular case, the article was moved to drafts even though it had more "keep" votes.
Could the text provide us with an exact criteria as to what would make such films notable, since the "notability" criteria for released and unreleased films won't be the same, as analysis/themes/reviews of unreleased films will obviously not be available until release. Furthermore, production details are almost always kept under wraps until the film is about to release, to prevent plot leaks. So what exactly would make the production notable? Krimuk2.0 ( talk) 06:26, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
a wonderful, happy experience for alldoesn't get the same press that would put it above the criteria Mike has proposed. — JohnFromPinckney ( talk / edits) 14:57, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Just a note that this recent addition to NFILM stemmed from WT:FILM#Useless superhero character articles. The discussion, which only lasted 2 weeks and had limited participation, dropped the idea of adding to NFILM, but it was ultimately added anyway. The latest discussion is at WT:FILM#Survey aftermath. Adding a searchable note here for future reference. -- GoneIn60 ( talk) 16:26, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
I believe that ProductionList.com is a site where, similar to imdb, anyone can register an account and submit production information. It does not appear to have editorial oversight. I ask because I corrected a simple error in a reference on The Passion of the Christ: Resurrection, and reading the references further, I noticed that there do not appear to be any reliable sources that state principal photography has commenced. There's a handful that predict that principal photography would commence in April 2023, but nothing after that. ProductionList.com looks like it's being used as such a source, which is why I'm asking. It would be surprising to me if a sequel to a film that had such a high profile had started shooting and not one film news site had reported on it, which is why I'm suspicious of the bare entry at [1]. Fred Zepelin ( talk) 16:54, 10 June 2023 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Notability (films) page. |
|
Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3Auto-archiving period: 30 days |
This project page does not require a rating on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||
|
This page was nominated for deletion on February 27 2007. The result of the discussion was keep—the nomination was withdrawn. |
NFILM states that a film is likely to be notable if it has "full-length reviews by two or more nationally known critics." To me, this means a critic that is notable enough to have their own Wikipedia article. Just because a critic has written for a website that is available (as all websites are!) worldwide, that does not make them "nationally known". This question stems from the deletion discussion for Art Machine, where a film that doesn't come close to passing GNG is getting "keep" votes based on reviews from unknown critics on three websites (in addition, one of the sites is probably not an RS). What say you, community? Wes sideman ( talk) 11:00, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
While the "nationally-known critic" criteria may be applicable for USA or European countries (with fairly homogenus linguistic tradition in each country), the scenario in the case of India can be very different. The critic of films in one language (say, Tamil language) may be unknown in the media that discusse Hindi language or Bengali language films. For comparison, a nationally-known French language film critic may be not be well-known in Spain. However, France and Spain being two separate countries, there is no issues regarding notability criteria of films, as the critics are well-known in the individual countries.
Since language and countries are different things, should not we use critics well-known in that particular languages's film-related media/literature, rather than whether they are well-known in a country? Dwaipayan ( talk) 08:35, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
I'd support rewording the criterion for clarity, but the consensus position is indeed that what's required is not necessarily that the critic themselves is individually famous (although that may indeed be the case sometimes), but that a review is still valid support for notability so long the publication that it appears in is an established and
WP:GNG-worthy publication. We don't have standalone articles about Canadian film critics such as Radheyan Simonpillai or Norman Wilner or Craig Takeuchi, for example, but their film reviews most certainly are acceptable for establishing the notability of a film because they do appear in reliable source media.
Another thing to keep in mind is that with so many media outlets cutting back on their original arts reporting due to the media profitability crunch, more and more film reviewing is moving to exclusively online platforms such as RogerEbert.com or That Shelf or The Spool — and while some of those certainly qualify as reliable and notability-building reviews as well (for example, nobody in their right mind would ever challenge the legitimacy of a review by a writer at RogerEbert.com, given its legacy connection to probably the single most famous film critic in world history) there are others that would not (e.g. an amateur film critic reviewing films on his or her own self-published Blogspot). So obviously we still have to check for the reliability of a film review platform, but the solidity and reliability of the publication that is publishing the review counts for every bit as much as the established fame of the individual critic named in the byline.
Bearcat (
talk)
15:08, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
widely distributed in its countryand
country's nationwide publicationsdo not solve the intent of this discussion which is to remove the context of nationality from the wordings. Jay 💬 14:03, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I'd like to ask for clarification on whether an AfDed film article ( The Pursuers, which I AfDed but another editor voted to keep and stated it is notable) with a somewhat notable cast should be considered to be notable and passing WP:GNG? This was raised in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Pursuers by the sysop Necrothesp, who voted keep because it has a notable cast and passes GNG (though, in my opinion, they are database entries and mentions, except for one short capsule-like review), and also stated this in the user page. I'm afraid I have to disagree that films have inherited notability, though, contrary to other guidelines such as Wikipedia:Notability (web), this isn't directly said in WP:NFILM. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any guidelines, essays, or discussions that directly support or oppose inherited notability for films, so if editors could weigh in on this, that would be great! If I'm mistaken, please point me out, and many thanks! VickKiang 22:52, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
I suggest that we add the following text to the last paragraph of the WP:NFF section (existing language in green):
Additionally, films and television series that have already begun shooting, but have not yet been publicly released (theatres or video), should generally not have their own articles unless the production itself is notable per the notability guidelines.This means significant coverage beyond simple announcements of casting decisions or that photography has begun. It is unusual for a film's production to be noteworthy in itself, and typically only occurs for extraordinarily high-budget films, films where something goes wrong during production, or films with particularly controversial casting decisions that are extensively scrutinized prior to release.Similarly, films produced in the past which were either not completed or not distributed should not have their own articles, unless their failure was notable per the guidelines.
I think this addition reflects existing practice in AfD discussions; the addition is further needed because many inexperienced editors read NFF and take it to mean that if 3 sources publish a press release that a film has begun principal photography it is notable. signed, Rosguill talk 02:30, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
After a long vacation of ten years, I am back.🙃 I have some questions regarding the current MOS consensus. What are the thoughts on having tables with
box office data? Music track listings
like this? Is this useful? These articles passed as GA back in 2011, so they obviously need updating. Thanks for any input.
Mike
Allen
15:47, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
The section Future films, incomplete films, and undistributed films only says that such films should not have their own articles, but does the same also apply to mentioning when the films rights to a given property have been acquired by a studio, as with this article on the rights to Scott Snyder's novel being acquried by 20th Century Studios? I think it does, the principle is the same (Wikipedia will be filled with loads of material on the acquistion rights to properties that ended up not getting produced), but I'd like to hear what others here have to say. Nightscream ( talk) 19:08, 10 January 2023 (UTC)
I want to propose that we beef up what this notability criterion says about notability on the basis of awards. At present, the criterion says solely that "the film has received a major award for excellence in some aspect of filmmaking", and then uses a footnote to vague out ("Standards have not been defined...") on the question of what constitutes a "major award" — with the result that this criterion has often been incorrectly interpreted to mean that any film award that exists at all confers an automatic notability pass regardless of the quality of sourcing that is or isn't used to support the "majorness" of the award.
The problem, of course, is that not all film awards are actually created equal. Some awards are more "major" and notability-making than other awards, some film festivals are more "major" and notability-making than other film festivals, and on and so forth. There exists, for example, a large network of fake "film festivals" that do not actually screen films for the general public at all, but in fact exist solely as vanity award mills, allowing any filmmaker to purchase an "award" so that they can claim to have won film festival awards in their marketing materials, as well as many real local or regional film festivals and regional film organizations which present real awards that still aren't necessarily always of broad national or international significance. (There have, for example, been attempts to claim that even just winning "Best Local Film" at the local film festival in a filmmaker's own hometown is a notability clinch for a film even if it's never had a single titch of beyond-hometown distribution or coverage at all. That didn't work, thankfully, but it has been attempted.)
Standards for this, in a nutshell, actually have been defined at AFD, and NFILM just hasn't caught up with codifying them yet. Essentially, a film is not automatically notable enough to have a Wikipedia article just because the body text has the word "award" in it. Notability on the basis of awards, rather, hinges on the degree to which the claim can or cannot be reliably sourced to GNG-worthy third-party coverage about the award presentation in media outlets or books independent of the claims. This is not solely a question of whether the award or festival has a Wikipedia article or not, as there may be film awards and festivals that have articles but probably should not, and film awards and festivals that do not have articles yet but probably should.
As a basis to start discussion, I would propose that the following types of awards indeed should be, and in fact generally are, accepted as notable awards:
Awards presented at film festivals of more local or regional prominence, whose coverage is largely limited to their own local area, might not necessarily secure the notability of a film all by themselves if that's the only notability claim being made; however, a film that wins an award in this tier of film festivals will very often have other legitimate notability claims as well, so it's appropriate for awards of this type to be mentioned in film articles so long as they're properly sourced. Conversely, a film award should not confer notability on its winners at all if reliable source media coverage about the award presentation does not exist, such that you have to rely on the film studio's own self-published marketing materials, the award's own self-published press releases about itself, social networking posts or YouTube video clips of the award presentation to source the claim. And by the same token, an award shouldn't confer notability just because it seems to serve a similar purpose to another award, but rather the depth of media coverage that the award does or doesn't actually get should still be the determinant. For example, Canada's Joey Awards are not a notability-making award just because they're presented to young actors and thus have a similar "mandate" to the American Young Artist Awards, because they don't get the coverage that the Young Artist Awards get.
Similarly, films are able to claim notability on the basis of nominations for awards, but this is still vulnerable to misinterpretation and abuse. Generally, award nominations are valid notability claims if the award curates and releases a shortlist of finalists between the "consideration of all eligible submissions" and "announcement of the final winner" phases, but not if the film is an automatic "nominee" just by virtue of its presence at the event. For example, every feature film that screens at the Toronto International Film Festival is inherently a "nominee" for the People's Choice Award, so being a "nominee" for that award is not a meaningful or notability-boosting statement in and of itself (but boy, do editors still try it anyway) — whereas the Academy Awards release a shortlist of five finalists per category between the submission deadline and the announcement of the winner at the ceremony, so being an Oscar nominee is a more significant distinction. Conversely, TIFF's Platform Prize, a special award reserved for the eight to twelve films playing in one specific program whose titles were curated for the express purpose of competing for that award, has a stronger basis for being claimed as a noteworthy nomination. As with award wins, this should properly depend on the ability to reliably source, in references independent of content self-published by the awards committee, that a shortlist of nominees was announced somewhere between the "everything's a potential nominee" and "we know the winner now" phases of the process.
Which is admittedly a lot of words to say that essentially what I'm proposing here is that we much more clearly define a "major" award as one that can be shown to garner reliable source coverage about it in sources independent of itself — which, when you get right down to it, is basically already the rule that's typically applied when "award-winning" films go to AFD (films that claim notability on the basis of unsourced or primary sourced awards from minor film festivals routinely get thrown in the trash compactor, for example), and just hasn't been codified as such here yet. So that's what I'm putting forward for discussion, and would welcome any input. Bearcat ( talk) 23:43, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
The current wording states,
"Additionally, films that have already begun shooting, but have not yet been publicly released (theatres or video), should generally not have their own articles unless the production itself is notable per the notability guidelines."
which is a bit ambiguous, and is being used by editors to mass-delete articles of unreleased films that are currently filming or in post-production. In this particular case, the article was moved to drafts even though it had more "keep" votes.
Could the text provide us with an exact criteria as to what would make such films notable, since the "notability" criteria for released and unreleased films won't be the same, as analysis/themes/reviews of unreleased films will obviously not be available until release. Furthermore, production details are almost always kept under wraps until the film is about to release, to prevent plot leaks. So what exactly would make the production notable? Krimuk2.0 ( talk) 06:26, 9 April 2023 (UTC)
a wonderful, happy experience for alldoesn't get the same press that would put it above the criteria Mike has proposed. — JohnFromPinckney ( talk / edits) 14:57, 13 April 2023 (UTC)
Just a note that this recent addition to NFILM stemmed from WT:FILM#Useless superhero character articles. The discussion, which only lasted 2 weeks and had limited participation, dropped the idea of adding to NFILM, but it was ultimately added anyway. The latest discussion is at WT:FILM#Survey aftermath. Adding a searchable note here for future reference. -- GoneIn60 ( talk) 16:26, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
I believe that ProductionList.com is a site where, similar to imdb, anyone can register an account and submit production information. It does not appear to have editorial oversight. I ask because I corrected a simple error in a reference on The Passion of the Christ: Resurrection, and reading the references further, I noticed that there do not appear to be any reliable sources that state principal photography has commenced. There's a handful that predict that principal photography would commence in April 2023, but nothing after that. ProductionList.com looks like it's being used as such a source, which is why I'm asking. It would be surprising to me if a sequel to a film that had such a high profile had started shooting and not one film news site had reported on it, which is why I'm suspicious of the bare entry at [1]. Fred Zepelin ( talk) 16:54, 10 June 2023 (UTC)