See also WT:EPISODE#Proposed split of EPISODE. -- Ned Scott 21:53, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
It remains my conviction that notability guidelines are overly programatic and number-based ways of dealing with something that is best dealt with via context and judgment. Deletion decisions should not be made by robots, and this guideline, like most of our notability guidelines, proposes to do just that. Phil Sandifer ( talk) 03:52, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
The second criteria here is significantly broader than WP:N. WP:N says: "A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." Note that "sources" is plural. The proposed language here says "An episode of a television is likely to be notable if it has achieved one of the following conditions: ... The episode has been critically reviewed from a reliable secondary source." Note the different language, and that secondary source is singular. I think we should simply restate the language from WP:N to avoid guideline madness, alternative conflicting interpretations, possibilities of ambiguity, and so on. -- Lquilter ( talk) 16:28, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
The other thing that strikes me about this proposal is that it is clearly oriented towards serial fiction works and TV series generally. I'm not sure that this proposal has been carefully vetted for how it would apply to academic book series, lecture series, academic journals, and so on. When and if this is ever to go forward, we need to carefully and systematically consider all types of serial works, and thoroughly discuss how this guideline would apply to them. -- Lquilter ( talk) 21:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, I don't support or oppose any creation of a certain episode article. However, many episode articles (such as episodes of Prison Break) contain only plot summary and cast. In fact, there're more things which can be included in them, such as production, and episodes of The Simpsons are almost well-written, including not only synopsis but production notes and cultural references. So rather discussing this notability guideline, we'd better focus on the style guideline of episodes.-- RekishiEJ ( talk) 18:15, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
What I dislike about this proposed guideline is the fact that it renders Wikipedia, to a degree, incomplete, encouraging the proliferation of redlinks, too. Let's say a television series produces 22 episodes in a season, but only 3 of them actually somehow satisfy this nebulous wibbly-wobbly notion of "real world notability". So does that mean that only 3 episodes of a season get articles and the rest don't? That doesn't make sense. Same with book series. Imagine, if you will, if The Two Towers or Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets totally bombed, were ignored by the media, no one bothered to make movies about them ... so under this guideline it would mean that a complete accounting of the Lord of the Rings or Potter book series would not be possible? I'm of the view that such exclusionary tactics on the part of Wikipedia will just drive people away from the project, but at the same time, I'd rather see an all or nothing approach. If you want them, then it should be left to editor discretion whether a series justifies individual episode articles or season summaries (which, by the way, have also been put up for AFD, so not everyone wants them either). Common sense has to prevail somewhere. It's doubtful that an attempt at doing individual episode articles for a daily soap opera would work well, so more likely a year-based article would work. If, on the other hand, you don't want episode articles period, full stop, then ban them. Just expect to see a bunch of people throw up their hands and move to Citizendium or start up yet another rival wiki. Every time a Wikia site is started dedicated to a specific topic, Wikipedia loses a base of information. But people don't seem to understand that. 23skidoo ( talk) 21:01, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Is this guideline still necessary if the current post-spinout WP:FICT succeeds? Percy Snoodle ( talk) 10:34, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
See also WT:EPISODE#Proposed split of EPISODE. -- Ned Scott 21:53, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
It remains my conviction that notability guidelines are overly programatic and number-based ways of dealing with something that is best dealt with via context and judgment. Deletion decisions should not be made by robots, and this guideline, like most of our notability guidelines, proposes to do just that. Phil Sandifer ( talk) 03:52, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
The second criteria here is significantly broader than WP:N. WP:N says: "A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." Note that "sources" is plural. The proposed language here says "An episode of a television is likely to be notable if it has achieved one of the following conditions: ... The episode has been critically reviewed from a reliable secondary source." Note the different language, and that secondary source is singular. I think we should simply restate the language from WP:N to avoid guideline madness, alternative conflicting interpretations, possibilities of ambiguity, and so on. -- Lquilter ( talk) 16:28, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
The other thing that strikes me about this proposal is that it is clearly oriented towards serial fiction works and TV series generally. I'm not sure that this proposal has been carefully vetted for how it would apply to academic book series, lecture series, academic journals, and so on. When and if this is ever to go forward, we need to carefully and systematically consider all types of serial works, and thoroughly discuss how this guideline would apply to them. -- Lquilter ( talk) 21:37, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, I don't support or oppose any creation of a certain episode article. However, many episode articles (such as episodes of Prison Break) contain only plot summary and cast. In fact, there're more things which can be included in them, such as production, and episodes of The Simpsons are almost well-written, including not only synopsis but production notes and cultural references. So rather discussing this notability guideline, we'd better focus on the style guideline of episodes.-- RekishiEJ ( talk) 18:15, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
What I dislike about this proposed guideline is the fact that it renders Wikipedia, to a degree, incomplete, encouraging the proliferation of redlinks, too. Let's say a television series produces 22 episodes in a season, but only 3 of them actually somehow satisfy this nebulous wibbly-wobbly notion of "real world notability". So does that mean that only 3 episodes of a season get articles and the rest don't? That doesn't make sense. Same with book series. Imagine, if you will, if The Two Towers or Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets totally bombed, were ignored by the media, no one bothered to make movies about them ... so under this guideline it would mean that a complete accounting of the Lord of the Rings or Potter book series would not be possible? I'm of the view that such exclusionary tactics on the part of Wikipedia will just drive people away from the project, but at the same time, I'd rather see an all or nothing approach. If you want them, then it should be left to editor discretion whether a series justifies individual episode articles or season summaries (which, by the way, have also been put up for AFD, so not everyone wants them either). Common sense has to prevail somewhere. It's doubtful that an attempt at doing individual episode articles for a daily soap opera would work well, so more likely a year-based article would work. If, on the other hand, you don't want episode articles period, full stop, then ban them. Just expect to see a bunch of people throw up their hands and move to Citizendium or start up yet another rival wiki. Every time a Wikia site is started dedicated to a specific topic, Wikipedia loses a base of information. But people don't seem to understand that. 23skidoo ( talk) 21:01, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Is this guideline still necessary if the current post-spinout WP:FICT succeeds? Percy Snoodle ( talk) 10:34, 1 May 2008 (UTC)