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Hey all, I've been looking into tinkering with the project banner template ever since we've added the task forces, and I finally have been able to take the time to look through the code. I've actually synthesized something that retains most of the style of the current banner, while overhauling the code underneath so that things like adding particular articles to certain project categories becomes more automated. This new template will also allow the task forces to keep their own assessment tables concurrently with the full project one. Most of the code was retooled from {{ WPMILHIST}}. I'm still working out minor issues in the template sandbox and tweaking things like precise category names, but I think it's far enough along that it can be open for general critique and review.
You can see the template here: User:Girolamo Savonarola/banner. I've also posted a similiar message on Template talk:Film, so it might be better to consolidate discussion either there or my template's talk page. Many thanks! Girolamo Savonarola 02:58, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
In a discussion over whether Sicko (film) is the "fourth-highest grossing documentary film" another editor raised the point that the Jackass films are documentaries. I disagree. The editor is currently edit-warring on both of these films' articles to put the documentary category on them. Other opinions would be helpful. -- David Shankbone 04:28, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
I can find many more (including a piece I've had tentatively accepted for publication in a reliable source). How many do we need for a consensus? How about the objectors find one reliably-sourced film critic who says it is not a documentary? THF 12:10, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
(unindent) And Google has over 35,000 hits for "reality film." As a member of WikiFilm I propose we create a new category. In fact, here is an excellent article on the difference between a "documentary film" and a "reality film".
Critical to this is an awareness that although documentaries always deal with real-life events, they aren't those events. Like reports written in newspapers, spoken on radio or shown on TV, they're only ever about those events. And that's all they ever can be. As Nicolas Philibert, the French director of the international hit, To Be and To Have, puts it: "A documentary isn't the raw event, the raw reality. Nor is it a photocopy of reality. It's a construction, a reconstruction of events made up of many choices. I decide whether to film this or that, whether to put my camera here or there, how to combine the shots I've filmed, and so on. Showing is choosing. Editing is renouncing. Filming this is not filming that."
-- David Shankbone 14:02, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
FWIW, I've heard the term "nonfiction film" used increasingly to describe films which are not purely fictional. So Sicko, Jackass (questionably), Trading Spaces, American Idol, though not "documentaries," are surely nonfiction. Whether Michael Moore is "performing" as opposed to simply interviewing people and present facts, is another issue. ;) David Spalding ( ☎ ✉ ✍) 22:27, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
As I alluded to above, I have researched, generated, and sold for publication in a reliable source a list of the highest-grossing documentaries that is more accurate than the Box Office Mojo list commonly used on Wikipedia. Per WP:COI, I should discuss on a talk page, rather than simply insert the material. I recommend its inclusion in relevant articles: while the standard for Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth, it is still better to have verifiable accurate information than verifiable inaccurate information. To the extent these figures disagree with the demonstrably inaccurate and internally inconsistent Box Office Mojo rankings, and one thinks the Box Office Mojo ranking statistics should be included at all, WP:NPOV would seem to suggest that both points of view be included. One possible solution is a List-of-highest-grossing-documentaries article, like List of highest-grossing films in the United States and Canada, that can be created that includes the disparate rankings from The American, from Box Office Mojo, and from The Numbers.
I have raised the issue on a couple of talk pages; in each case, David Shankbone objected. Rather than scatter identical debates on several different talk pages, it makes more sense to center the discussion here. David Shankbone objects to the inclusion of the list in any article because the article criticizes Michael Moore, because he objects to the title of the article chosen by the publication's editors, because The American (magazine) is not a film publication (though it has published other articles about film), because the magazine has libertarian/conservative/pro-business affiliations, and because he contends the magazine is not notable. If I've inadvertently inaccurately characterized his criticism, I'm sure he won't hesitate to let us know.
What say the WikiProject? THF 04:00, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
-- David Shankbone 16:08, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Based on arguments over this list on Talk:Sicko, Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents and Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard, the consensus is that this list should in no way be used. -- David Shankbone 15:29, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
I am having an extremely difficult time with User:Dohanlon changing the titles of numerous French film articles (mainly involving Juliette Binoche) back to the original French title. He's essentially trying to crowbar the issue by claiming that if any English territory ever referred to the film in the vernacular, then the title should be the French one, regardless of the WP:UE and WP:NCF guidelines. I've had extensive discussion with no progress. Someone else wanna have a go? Thanks, Girolamo Savonarola 22:37, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Really? No opinions? Doctor Sunshine talk 14:21, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Its a difficult one this. I must admit for French. Spanish and Itlaian film I prefer the native titles. It is only where translation is difficult e.g with wider field countries like Bulgaria, Russia, China etc which use a totally different leterring system. I'd prefer to keep the titles to correspond to the posters and then state the english title in bold in the intro. For instance you wouldn't have a article on Mont Blanc as White Mountain on wikipedia would you -but saying this The Eiffel Tower wouldn't be in frnech either -its confusing itsn't it! But you can't "have a go" at that user for his efforts . See Ascenseur pour l'échafaud -this is exactly how I like to see them. ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ "Expecting you?" Contribs 11:44, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Les Misérables for instant is wel known worldwide by that frnech title. To name the article anthing else would seem odd. Well this is my view of the French films if they haven't been released under a different title. They should keep the original names -its not as if the articles are in french is it? -Also if you are browsing through the categories many title sin english may seem unrecognizable to those familiar with the french titles ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ "Expecting you?" Contribs 11:53, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
My feeling is that the title of the article should correspond to the film poster title. For instance Gio was right to redirect to The Horseman on the Roof as this has been rleased in the english speaking world with this exact title. ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ "Expecting you?" Contribs 11:56, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Blofeld, you're making a bad comparison - Mont Blanc and Les Mis are both overwhelmingly known by their vernacular titles in the English speaking countries. No one contests those. The issue is whether we should always favor the veracular per se regardless of all other factors; the answer, as per WP:UE and WP:NCF is currently no. Changing basic guidelines like WP:UE is not going to happen here, so if you have a broad problem with that guideline, I'd suggest taking it there. All we are trying to discuss here is how to implement the UE guideline on films when there are differences in English countries. (Speaking of which, should be move this discussion to NCF?) Girolamo Savonarola 22:45, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I've just come across this issue, and others, after seeing the mess that the Juliette Binoche article is in. In my opinion, any English title, if "widely" circulated, is preferable to the original foreign language title. There are obviously going to be exceptions (Chocolat) because that is how some films are distributed, but we are the English Wikipedia, and if a certain amount of sources refer to the film by its English title, then there should be no cause for edit warring in these cases. On a different note, the user who has mucked up many of these articles has also moved the previous articles to several other incorrect names, causing numerous superfluous redirects. For example, La Vie de Famille (1985 film); it is now impossible to move the article back to Family Life (film), which already exists as a redirect, and La Vie de Famille, if it were to keep the original, French title, is more than enough to keep without the "1985 film" indicator, since nothing else exists under this title. There are a handful of these with similar unnecessary dab indicators in parentheses; how do we fix this? I honestly think this editor just greatly misunderstands naming conventions, but the edit warring and moving back and forth is greatly messing with the interwiki links. María ( críticame) 20:53, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
OK, I've come round to Dr Sunshine's point about the WP:UE perspective, and I think we should rewrite WP:NC(F) to reflect it: we should recommend using the commonest English name, even if that sometimes means using US-only titles. However, I'd like to reiterate my point about using the names on DVD boxes or film posters (whichever is most appropriate) as our indicator of what the film's title is. I'm slightly concerned by Maria's attitude that if "a certain amount of sources refer to the film by its English title" then we should use it - film reviewers and film historians can be pretentious and/or lowbrow and may not refer to films by their commonest wide release title. It's the latter we must reflect in the film's title, not "any" English title. Cop 663 01:39, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
The thing is - I see these sorts of arguments back and forth all of the time when it's regarding French titles. This is not to say that articles on films with different languages haven't sometimes started with the vernacular title, but it seems that usually when the Italian or Spanish titles, for example, are moved to the common English title, there's little if any complaint. Proportionally, however, I've seen a great deal more contention regarding the French titles. And it seems that the French films are proportionately more likely to start with a foreign title than most other languages' film articles - even when the starting editors are clearly familiar with WP:UE policy. Is there some reason why this is happening? (Or at least appears to be?) I'm not trying to attack anyone or anything, but perhaps if there's a central root of this problem, it would be good to identify and address it. Girolamo Savonarola 02:22, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
If anyone could please step in at Talk:Children of the Century...it's getting kinda ugly. Girolamo Savonarola 21:16, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure I'm ready to get involved in the Children debate quite yet but I took a stab at modifying the policy per the above discussion. I hope the see also links to WP:UE and WP:ENGVAR are enough in terms of general dispute advise. I want to avoid instruction creep too. Here's what I did, by the way. Doctor Sunshine talk 02:52, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Template:Alien is very bulky, and just seems to be cluttered with any content related to Aliens and Predator. While they have had some crossovers, I think it needs a split of some sort. A few crossovers shouldn't justify lumping them together. I've brought this issue up in the past, with only a few replies. Anyone an expert on either series, want to help clean the template up and help with a split? RobJ1981 09:53, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
We are requesting assistance to find out what the consensus is for the Highlander (film) poster. It was discovered that the original image was actually for a video game and since then two candidates have been fighting for supremacy. Well since there can be only one, yes I am having fun with this :-), we need you help. The debate seams to boil down to stylistic preference and which one was the original. The conversation is located on the Highlander talk page for reference. The candidates are Image:Orig.highlander.poster.ital.JPG.jpg and Image:Highlander 1 poster.jpg The first poster is admittedly the Italian movie poster Style B version. The second is the US Style A version, and possibly the only original US poster created.
Evidence for both posters originality: American Type A version Italian version
Movie Posters USA movieposter.com Movie Poster shop The Movie Poster Page cyber-cinema google produce poster search
The conversation has been ongoing for about a day with myself UKPhoenix79 and Arcayne.
Arguments for Image:Orig.highlander.poster.ital.JPG.jpg by Arcayne
Arguments for Image:Highlander 1 poster.jpg by UKPhoenix79
Despite present and to the point conversations we are unable to agree. Please can you help us correct this. I'm sorry if I have skewed this in any way I will give Arcayne a link to this discussion so that he can add more to this. Thanks! -- UKPhoenix79 10:08, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Please see Women in Indian film, List of Indian film actresses, Category:Indian women film actors, and the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_August_4#Category:Indian_women_film_actors. There is obviously some merging to be done, but I leave it to the experts here. DGG ( talk) 16:41, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
I think this page is incorrectly tagged as a film: Back Street. Anybody like to comment.
Might be an idea to create a tag/category that we can add to pages to mark articles such as this for review and removal of tags if needed.
RWardy 20:10, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
It seems pretty open and shut - if films were made, they should be split into their own articles. Under what circumstances would an article require both a film infobox and a character one? Girolamo Savonarola 01:46, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I would like to seek the community's opinions about a situation regarding the listing of non-classic producer positions in film articles. I had assumed that consensus was established that names of executive producers and associate producers were too
indiscriminate, but there does not really seem to have been a full discussion about the matter. (If there is, feel free to point it out on the archives; I do not see any there.) The discussion can be found at
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Films/Style guidelines#Producers, executive producers, et al.. —
Erik (
talk •
contrib) -
14:47, 21 August 2007 (UTC) Moving discussion here, as we need more opinions.
Due to a situation at The Spirit (film), I'd like to ask for other editors' opinions about the inclusion of attributes for executive producers and associate producers. It seemed that these attributes were only briefly included in the Infobox Film template before being removed. I couldn't find a full-fledged discussion about the matter, but the implicit logic seemed to be that it was indiscriminate information. In my work with film articles, it seems that any producer position beyond the classic producer position (like Joel Silver & co.) would be indiscriminate. For example, WikiProject Films' most recent article of FA status 300 has sixteen overall producers listed, but the list is limited to the four "classic" producers. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial also lists two classic producers out of three overall producers. Yet The Pit and the Pendulum lists three overall producers, with only one of them being a "classic" producer. Another article of FA status, Borat, is also strikingly inconsistent -- the star, Sacha Baron Cohen is listed as a "classic" producer at IMDb, yet he is not listed, while two executive producers are. Additionally, the Infobox Film template for Terminator on WP:MOSFILMS shows three overall producers, with only one of them being "classic". I think we need to have a discussion to establish consistency in which producers should be mentioned in the template -- it seems to me that 300 listing all sixteen of their producers would be a bit too much. (For The Spirit, it would be seven listings instead of three.) What do other editors think? They can read about a breakdown of the different positions at film producer, but I'd rather use an off-wiki reference.
To sum up the conflict at The Spirit, the other editor believes that because all the different producers were mentioned in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, they should be included in the article. I opposed this, considering listings beyond "classic" producers indiscriminate information, and two other editors have agreed with me on this premise. Also, the trade papers are for the Hollywood industry, so mentioning all the producers of a film are the most relevant in this field. However, from my experience, producers that are not part of the "classic" mold rarely ever get covered beyond these trade papers. Of course, I concern myself with future films, where these trade papers are more relevant, so I do not know how an attempted consistency would apply to older films, which in my opinion seem to have less numbers of producers. This difference may be why the detail in the producer attribute of the Terminator example in WP:MOSFILMS is accepted -- three is a comfortable threshold, but seven or sixteen may be too much. Thoughts on this matter? — Erik ( talk • contrib) - 14:30, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
If you want to be especially pedantic, the entire article shouldn't even exist yet, since it violates the future films guidelines in WP:NF. However, the article was created months before this guideline change, so the point probably shouldn't be pressed. In either case, it's probably worth leaving the issue at an acceptable compromise for the moment - anything can happen between now and the release of the film, and several factors can always change the final producers credits. Girolamo Savonarola 17:27, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I'd support a general attitude that Execs are non-notable in general, but on a case by case basis, may warrant in-article coverage of notable choices. No on infoboxes unilaterally, though. ThuranX 05:06, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
While we're discussing certain issues above, can start to come to a general consensus on the point that the infobox should not contain information about line producers, co-producers, associate producers, etc.? In other words, while we're still discussing "classic" producers vs. exec producers, can we all agree that we can rule out all other types of producer credits? Girolamo Savonarola 17:33, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Just to note that the current parameters are set so that the heads of department (HODs) can be displayed. We can list the cinematographer, but why should the infobox list the gaffer or the focus puller? The line producer/associate producer/co-producer roles are equivalent: senior assisting capacities. And once again, please limit this discussion to those roles; the conversation about exec producers is happening above. This sub-proposal was meant to sweep up some outliers, in order to make the original discussion more clear-cut. Girolamo Savonarola 22:18, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Yet again, two industry trade articles have been published today in connection with the casting of Eva Mendes in The Spirit and the producers under discussion have been mentioned. How can any intellectually honest editor conclude, in the absense of a reliable source that those producers were mere moneymen or inconsequential to the outcome of the film? What speculation of editors of film articles is permitted to govern that only "classic producers" are worthy of mention?
Erik, I'm sure in good faith, but in the clear absence of consensus, has already edited Schindler's List to remove Kathleen Kennedy and other producers who have been mentioned in favor of "classic producers". I reverted the edit because this conduct is just incomprehensible to me. On the one hand that editor argues that we have a consensus, then concedes we don't and then argues for reaching a consensus here on this page and then acts when there isn't. What is wrong with this picture? I think that this matter should have a RfC. This is all just too idiosyncratic to a particular taste or view of the limits of an article. I don't think that this encyclopedia is just a specialty publication. Dawgknot 15:36, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree that the infobox should keep to the "classic" producers. If there's anything to be said about the remainder they can be included in the prose. Infoboxes are too long as it is. They're meant to be concise summaries of the article, not a credit roll. Doctor Sunshine talk 00:37, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
None of us has enough time left in our lives to worry about this stuff. How about this? In the spirit (The Spirit) of compromise, can we agree that Executive Producers and Producers would be listed in the info box and the Associate Producers and CoProducers will only be mentioned if there is something somehow noteworthy about their particular contribution in the same way as a Costume Designer or Special Effects creator would in a particular film? In The Spirit article, for example, one of the CoProducers is already mentioned in the text for having been on a panel about the movie. In that way, important people will not be left out merely because we can't agree on what basis to decide if they are important.
This will also have the salutary effect of letting us clean up other films that have inaccurately recorded the credit of some producers without eliminating many of them. If we can reach this agreement, then all we have to do is request a change to the info box template which shouldn't be hard to get if we are in agreement. If they request the code for the fix, I'll try to supply it. I think I saw a format for it somewhere. Will this solution fly? Dawgknot 00:03, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Where do we stand on this offer? Can we agree to edit the template of the infobox to include Executive Producers? Dawgknot 03:48, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
The article and category of the same name came from a disagreement, but one that I think fleshes out the issue well: What are films such as
Jackass The Movie and
The Real World Cancun? Are they documentaries, in the same category as
Capturing the Friedmans,
March of the Penguins and
Ken Burns's work, or are they something different? If they are documentaries, are they a sub-genre of documentary or their own entity (e.g., a
Reality film)? It's worthwhile to research and flesh out, which is the reason for my strong keep. I think it strikes most people odd that
Jackass Number Two is being called a documentary, whether it technically fits that definition or not. Unfortunately, the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences's definition is unhelpful (a recording of an unfiltered performance is excluded from documentary). Anyway, whether this should or should not exist is up for discussion, and could use some voices:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Reality_film
--David
Shankbone
13:59, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Henry Fonda has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Grim-Gym 02:22, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Got a question for which I can't seem to find a direct answer. Some film articles contain images in them, particularly in the synopsis/plot section. I was thinking about illustrating some of my articles with stills from movie trailers. 1) Is it okay to add images in an article for a lesser known film? (Therefore going to have less content... and not going to be an FA...) 2) Is it okay to use still images taken from movie trailers? 3) If it IS okay, is it advisable? Thank you for your help! Nihao48 04:56, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
Here is an example of a film article that shows what I'm going to talk about.
As you may notice, all the distribution details and release dates use template:flagicon. I suppose the thinking was that it made the infobox look prettier and the flags occupy a uniform space, improving the tidiness of the infobox.
However this overlooks the fact that the reader now needs to know the flags of many nations on sight when reproduced in a small format. I'm sure I'm not the only person who finds this difficult.
Surely there is a better way of presenting this information. How about using ISO country codes? Most of us know ES, FR, TW, etc, although we might find it hard to recognise the flags of those countries. Using these codes, or other, similar codes designated by ISO, would surely improve our presentation of information while answering concerns about use of space in infoboxes. -- Tony Sidaway 18:25, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm starting to think we should rewrite
WP:MOSFILM to avoid flags altogether. They do help save space, but they're not necessarily easy for everyone to read - in particular
Australia and
New Zealand are barely distinguishable. And if the producing company is something obscure like
Mali, they're useless.
This essay makes good arguments against flags appearing without country names. Should we simply recommend using country names, even if it looks ugly?
Cop 663
02:29, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
After reading the above, I have removed the instruction to use flags at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Films/Style_guidelines#Release_dates, since consensus seems to be against them. I personally don't plan to remove flags from infoboxes in a systematic way, but I will certainly begin removing the more egregious examples as I discover them. Cop 663 14:41, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
IMDB.com has a "user rating" for each movie so visitors can see how other visitors have graded the movie.
Can someone write and implement such a plugin into Wikipedias movie articles?
Digg.com grades its articles and lets its visitors sort the articles by popularity. It would be nice to be able to click on the Wikipedia "sci-fi-movies"-section, and then on "sort by voted article quality" or "sort by voted movie quality". And come to think of it; every article on Wikipedia could have a 0-10 quality grade, that comes from visitors/members votes. Is this the right place to discuss such a plugin? Has this been discussed/proposed earlier? A voting plugin could be used for any purpose. Not just the quality of articles/movies. So it would be time well invested writing such a plugin. We could also make the plugin take up small screen space and make it easily embeddable. Oftentimes someone asks for consensus on a particular matter on these talk pages. I think it would be great if someone would be able to write a question or proposal, add a <vote> tag and get: "Am I beautiful? (Y)(N)(Results)". It would be compact and useful.
When I find a movie title that sounds interesting, I prefer to come to Wikipedia instead of going to IMDB to see what the movie is all about. But there is always this question: "Ok, now I know what the movie is about. But is it good enough to bother watching?". Tommy 14:23, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
How's this idea any different from albums having a rating pulled through from sites like Allmusic or Rolling Stone, Q, Mojo, etc? Lugnuts 11:24, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
The
Jason Voorhees article is up for featured article status. Please bring your opinions/criticisms to
its FAC page. Thank you.
BIGNOLE
(Contact me)
02:59, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I've seen several WikiProjects that have been taking roll calls to determine who are active and inactive members of the their projects. Are we willing to do the same thing? I would like to know in the next couple of days so I can include a notice in the monthly newsletter. If approved, we can then send it to all current members. This will help to cut down on delivery lists by not having to deliver to inactive members. We could set up a period of a few weeks to a month for members to include their names before we move inactive members to another section. An example message (based off of another roll call message):
"Hey fellow Wikipedian! Your username is listed on the WikiProject Films participants list, but we are unsure as to which editors are still active on the project. If you still consider yourself an active WP:FILM editor, please move your name from the current members list to the Active Members list. You may also wish to add {{User WikiProject Films}} to your userpage, if you haven't done so already. Conversely, if you do not wish to be considered a member of the WikiProject, leave your name where it is and it will be moved to the Inactive Members section. If you wish to make a clean break with the Project you may move your name to the "Known to have left" section. Thanks and happy editing!"
If somebody knows how to make this more decorative with a background color to the text that would probably be more eye-catching for talk pages and more likely to be responded to. Anyway, what do you guys think? -- Nehrams2020 03:51, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I would be in support of a roll call so we can define our current roster better. I'd suggest having this roll call last long enough to ensure most of the list will be aware of the situation. Maybe in going through with this, we can ask members to redefine their goals in relation to this WikiProject. It would be beneficial to know what everyone's preferences are, for easier collaboration. — Erik ( talk • contrib) - 12:01, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes this is good. It roots out those who are actively contributing the the project and those aren't. ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ "Talk"? 19:20, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
TakuyaMurata ( contribs) has been adding [[United States|American]] to the lead sentence of a few film articles lately. I was not sure of this approach, as it seems nonstandard. What do others think? — Erik ( talk • contrib) - 11:28, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
On Fargo (film), I thought it was pretty odd that the countries listed were the UK and the US, so changed it to just the US. Another editor changed it back, noting that Fargo was a Working Title Films (UK) production. So I've left it alone for now.
I looked at the parameters on Template:Infobox Film, and the only guidance I find is to "Insert the country or countries that the film was produced in. Link each country to its appropriate article if possible." What does that mean exactly? Where the film was made, or where the money came from?
I know this has probably been discussed before ad nauseum, but if the field is for where the film was made, then that would mean Star Wars IV is a UK-Tunisian film and Apocalypse Now is a Philippines film. It just seems ridiculous to call Fargo a British film, when there's nothing inherently British about it, except that it had the backing of a British production company. — Wise Kwai 15:16, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree that something needs to be done to remedy this, although I concur that "guidelining" it will be difficult if not impossible. For a case that will blow your mind, see Blackboards. Does anyone really see this as part of the history of Italian or Japanese cinema? Let's be honest here - it's an Iranian film that needed money, which happened to be supplied by Italian and Japanese groups. The location of the funding did not fundamentally change the film in any regards; all they did was facilitate this film by supplying funds. Girolamo Savonarola 20:53, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
After a night's sleep to let my stomach settle down, I think Cop's laissez-faire approach is probably the best approach in dealing with this issue. I guess what I'm trying to say is: Sorry I brought it up - it just ain't that big a deal in the greater scheme of things. — Wise Kwai 06:08, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
The discussion about whether to include production companies in the infobox has been had a few months - see here. A vague consensus emerged that it was a good idea. But then nobody did anything about it. Maybe we should be more decisive this time? Should we have a vote or something? Cop 663 20:14, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
I've just been tidying up 20th Century Fox. The predecessor companies that merged to form this company are Fox Film Corporation and 20th Century Pictures. Fox Film Corporation used to have its own article (the history is at Fox Film) and got merged. 20th Century Pictures also used to have its own article (the history is at Twentieth Century Pictures), and was similarly merged. I'm not 100% convinced these early film companies are well-served by being merged into 20th Century Fox, but I reorganised the page to make things a little clearer, and spun out the list of Fox Film Corporation films to List of Fox Film films. I also created List of 20th Century Pictures films. I'm not sure how this sort of thing is best handled, so I'm now offering this all up for review here. Thanks. Carcharoth 15:55, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Just an "FYI" for those that attend to the categorization of film stubs, specifically those dated-by-year - comedy, drama, horror: For those films that do not have a specific "by decade" stub template, it is now possible to "force" the categorization out of the top category into the "by decade" category by adding:
|category=[[Category:XXXXX]]
For example in an 1890 horror film the stub will look like this:
This does not effect any stub templates that do not add the piped "force" category. SkierRMH 00:05, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
As I foresee this discussion probably going out of a "film" discussion into some of the internal technical features, I'd suggest the discussion be carried out on my talk page. SkierRMH 00:10, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi folks. A user is changing the lead of articles about the third films in a series. Rather than them being described as the 'second sequel', the term 'threequel' seems to be cropping up. It's not an expression I've come across before, but it Googles relatively well in relation to recent films. How do we feel about this? I'm not entirely comfortable with it. The JPS talk to me 21:57, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
There was a time when the term prequel was new, and now it's understood by just about everyone. And Google tests DO have a bearing on the matter if a search for "threequel" yields 47,100 results. The word is used not only in trade papers such as Variety and film-oriented magazines such as Entertainment Weekly but by mainstream publications like the New York Times, New York Magazine, and even the Christian Science Monitor, as well. I still maintain that an article for "threequel" was a valid addition to Wikipedia, and its redirection to sequel can be reverted by an administrator. Thank you. ConoscoTutto 15:06, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
I've just been browsing and cleaning up the telugu list a bit and in seeing some of the articles they are shockingly terrible!!! It amazes me how many contemporary Bollywood articles on actors and films have the golden seal!! yet most of the tamil. telugu and malayalam articles are diabolical!!!!!! I know Bollywood is the main and most popular industry but the Indian cinema work group shouldn't neglect the other articles. They are either polished articles or completely unclear stubs which aren't even written in proper english!!! I really think the Indian cinema work group or some of us should try to start developing the other articles. The film articles on Tamil. Telugu, Malayalam films are the worst on wikipedia. They are a shambles ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ "Talk"? 18:36, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
What makes an article high-Importance?? I wonder because Independence Day doesnt get the attention I thought a high-Importance article gets....which brings me to another question....he it really B-class? It has tons of trivia(I mainly removed what was taken from IMDB) and many things wrong with it...I really think its start class.. THROUGH FIRE JUSTICE IS SERVED! 00:45, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
My question isn't about what the importance parameter is - it's about what are we doing with it? The class parameters are important because they give us an overall picture of the state of the project en masse as far as where we stand on average, what articles would be ripe for quickly bringing to FAC, and what needs immediate attention to bring past Stub status. Those have immediate tangible benefits and the classifications have fairly objective guidelines for assessment.
Importance, however, is not so clear-cut. For projects of a much smaller scope, such as a single contained hierarchy (like Star Wars), it's easy to name the most prominent and work your way down. But when dealing with the Films project, where the vast majority of our articles are film titles, they don't really have a natural information hierarchy - they're all on the same fundamental organizing level. So distinctions often become very subjective and ripe for silly tagging edit wars. Some of the larger projects have completely abolished the use of importance (such as Military History). Others, like Biography, have decided that doing a project-wide importance assessment is too subjective and not productive enough for their purposes, and instead have merely assigned a Top importance to a small handful of subjects which have been listed in multiple independent rankings. The reason for this is to try to concentrate the project effort foremost on vital topics that would be considered overall Wikipedia Core or Core Supplemental topics.
I happen to agree with one of these more limited approaches - I think it's unrealistic for the project to be spending time trying to decide what all 30000 (as of now) articles need in terms of importance tags, much less spending time trying to come up with those guidelines for how to tag them. It wastes valuable project time for little payoff in the sense of what will ultimately be done with the data for the vast majority of the articles (nothing) and will likely create a lot of ill-will amongst editors who disagree with the importance of film X.
Therefore I propose that we either decide to abandon the Importance parameter completely, or come to some agreement on a very limited use of it solely to identify our Core project articles. Girolamo Savonarola 01:59, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
I did not think I would get this much input.....thanks for the input, especially the the refs...but I dont think I understand them clearly..
"[Keyword Hit]BAUGHAN, Nikki: The top 20 blockbusters of all time Film Review (0957-1809) v.Spec. n.52 , June 2004, p.68-87, English, illus 'The top 20 blockbusters of all time' featuring details of INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996)."
Whats keyword hit? 'The top 20 blockbusters of all time' featuring details of INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996)." : I take it this is a lil info of the ref? Cause if it is, I'll bold it out, to help me understand the refs more. THROUGH FIRE JUSTICE IS SERVED! 02:33, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Greg Jones II 20:10, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
In regard to non-free images used in the Plot sections of film articles, I am wondering if there is a better way to choose images, if at all. Traditionally, film articles have screenshots (limited to two for the most part), but in looking at Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (for which I had noticed its FAR process), I was wondering, are subjectively selected images for the Plot section really in line with fair use policy? At the Star Wars film article, I could replace the two images in the Plot section with another two images, and the change would not impact the article at all. This seems to indicate that such images would be decorative; there are dozens and dozens of screenshot candidates that could be added to a Plot section. What would be the justification in choosing them, if at all? I've found that images in the Plot sections of Dirty Dancing and Branded to Kill have some sort of real-world relevance. When I write film articles these days, I find myself fitting images outside of the Plot section, such as Sunshine (2007 film) and Road to Perdition. I feel hard-pressed to pick what image would be most representative of the Plot. Another example is A Beautiful Mind (film), in which there is a picture of Crowe as Nash in the Plot section. Yet we can see Crowe as Nash in the poster image. Some time ago, an admin brusquely removed images from the Plot section of 300 (film) (though editors, including me, contested him and were able to keep the images). This was somewhat a turning point in ensuring that whatever non-free image I add, its rationale would be as indisputable as possible. This seems most possible with real-world context, as opposed to choosing from a flurry of possibilities for any scene mentioned in the Plot section. I'd like to hear others' opinions on this matter; what is the most suitable way to incorporate non-free images into the Plot section? — Erik ( talk • contrib) - 02:56, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
I know what you mean about wanting an airtight rationale. It's a little disheartening to see or have useful images disappeared because someone got trigger happy and it slipped past you because your watchlist is too big. I think the fairuse paranoia is starting to subside though and the pendulum's swinging back towards the middle ground.
In any event, here's how I see it,
After that, I think common sense is the best guide. Figure out what stands out about the film (between cast, crew, iconic bits, special effects, controversies, marketing, etc.) and can't be illustrated by words alone. Preferably an image would cover multiple aspects. I think the style guide (or a style guide somewhere) recommends no more than one image per every 250 words but obviously you want to keep the fairuse count as low as possible without harming the article.
However, I'd take things slow with removing "decorative" images. For one thing, nice looking articles might not be our primary goal but making a professional encyclopedia is. By this I mean, any image can be contextualized by its caption, so try to fit them in the most relevant section but if they have to go somewhere else, that's fine. Secondly, even a random screenshot illustrates something. For example, it's impossible to subjectively describe in text whether a film has good cinematography—so any image can potentially provide valuable information. That said, if there's a better image that can represent that as well as any number of other aspects we should trade up. Fox example, that one in the plot section of A Beautiful Mind is pretty bad, especially as it seems to have been further cropped and then desaturated from its source, but it still illustrates the visual look of the film and Crowe is in character, where often actors are posing or exaggerating for posters (see Rashomon for a good example). So, I'd like to see that one removed but only when it's replaced by something better that conveys the same (or more) information. And in regards to Mike Myers, we ideally want to keep articles self-contained, people shouldn't have to click between 12 different articles for what should be summarized in one—a full cast shot isn't necessary in Halloween but Myers is pretty important. Doctor Sunshine talk 15:31, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Two of this WikiProject's Good Articles, Silent Film and Facing the Giants, have been nominated for Good Article review. Everyone is invited to contribute to the discussions concerning these article's GA status there. Drewcifer 03:57, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
As an example of the new capabilities of the revised project banner, I've just added the
|Persian-task-force=yes
parameter to as many relevant films as I could find. This then allowed me to set up the appropriate category structure to create another assessment table just for the task force, which you can see at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Persian cinema articles by quality statistics. Note that this exists in parallel with our project-wide assessment, allowing both the whole project and the task forces to each see where they stand, all implemented under one project banner. There's a slight gap in that the importance for the task forces is not yet ready (I simply forgot to include it in the code; shouldn't be too difficult to correct), but this only affects the task force assessments, not the project-wide assessment.
With this now ready and available, there are some much larger questions that I think need to be considered. The first and most obvious one for me is integrating Wikipedia:WikiProject Indian cinema within WP Films as a task force, under a shared task force arrangement with WP India in which the task force address will be located here, but the task force will also be jointly operated with WP India in the same way as some of our current task forces such as Chinese and French cinema are. This needs to be mentioned simply because of two reasons: one, the Indian cinema group is by far the largest and most functional of all national/regional cinema editing groups, and secondly because historically there was a disagreement over moving the project to WP Films as a task force. It is my hope that with the integrated project banner code which will allow the project some assessment autonomy, we will be able to integrate them more easily into our group and also reduce banner clutter/redundancy so that Indian films no longer will need to have both a Film banner and an Indian cinema banner; the Indian task force identification is now encoded within the Film banner.
Second, the current task forces are all national cinema-based, and their interest - justifiably - extends not only to national films, but national filmmakers. I don't believe that it makes sense to delimit their scopes purely to the films, and a perusal of some of the task force article request lists (all transcluded into Wikipedia:WikiProject Films/Requests) corroborates this. Therefore, I believe that we should allow the task forces - and the whole WP Films project at large - to expand our scope. It is true that we already do have an Actors and Filmmakers project, but this project is more rightly a workgroup of WP Bio, and there is no reason why the biographical articles can't be tagged both as a WP Bio article and a WP Films article. (Indeed, this is current practice at projects like Military history.)
Which brings me to another point. I believe that with the interest, participation, and scope that we already have, it makes sense to centralize the topic, much as several other successful WikiProjects have already done. What I mean is that the idea of subdividing the entire topic of Film into several WikiProjects such as Films, national cinemas, Filmmaking, etc is probably hurting each of these projects in the long run because it divides up common effort and common forums for discussion. I believe that the task force model is ideal for integrating different clusters of interest and type, with the added benefit of a larger overall membership and centralized coordination of common needs such as style guidelines, assessment, etc. so that each task force does not need to re-invent the wheel. Instead, all of the boring administrative overhead is left to the project at large so that the task forces can remain focused on work on the articles. It also avoids confusion for new or unfamiliar editors by having a central project that has scope over all film-related articles, instead of wondering which of several projects one should join/ask questions of/request help/point out issues, and resolves problems with certain areas of film-based articles which currently do not fall within any project scope. I, for one, am interested in merging WP Filmmaking into either one or several task forces, to start.
My final point, which I've already discussed in the Roll Call thread above, is that I believe that given the large number of members and articles, we could really benefit from one or several Project Coordinators. This job already exists at WP:MILHIST and is purely an administrative role involved with project housekeeping and...coordinating! The position would have absolutely no executive powers or special privileges with regards to content disputes or anything of that sort. It's merely a behind-the-scenes position to keep the project running smoothly and efficiently. (Just to clarify.)
Anyway, I know that's a lot of proposal up there, so I'd appreciate any and all comments. Thanks! Girolamo Savonarola 07:31, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Can someone help fix the article on this screenwriter? Her notability seems borderline at the moment. Did she get a credit for Map of the World for example? Nick mallory 12:11, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't know if anyone's noticed, but your unassessed films category now seems to contain every article tagged with your banner, which I know it didn't only yesterday. Something wrong with the banner, maybe? Katharineamy 23:26, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
It seems that the NA (na) in the importance scale has disappeared, leaving every film that was in these categories - Dab, template, category, NA, and list - categorized as such now showing as "???". There's thousands of these now showing as non-rated on the importance scale - which isn't correct. SkierRMH 03:42, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Template:Needs film infobox has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Girolamo Savonarola 19:49, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
From my point of view the article has fulfilled the start requirements, it can be reassessed.-- Nemissimo 00:38, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
There is a debate at Talk: Superman Returns#Fair use over the inclusion of a screencapture in the plot section. We would like a lot of opinions so that this debate isn't just between two people. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 23:20, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
WP:MILHIST is currently moving towards creating a "War films task force" (relevant discussion here). Since WP:FILMS is the natural partner for running this task force jointly, I have been asked to bring the matter before the Films project for discussion. Comments would be welcome! Kirill 02:41, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
As per previous discussions (see "Roll call" above), it appears that there is community interest in the creation of Coordinator positions. A /Coordinators page has been created to explain the position, and a separate election subpage is also now set-up to begin the election process.
Effective immediately, there will be a two-week signup period during which project members may self-nominate for a Coordinator position and begin to take questions and comments. Then from September 28-October 11, the voting will commence. The voting system will be approval voting. Most of the procedure and protocol for the position and the election is cribbed directly from WP:MILHIST, but if people have any questions or comments regarding the process itself, please feel free to offer them either here or on the article talk pages! Thanks, Girolamo Savonarola 05:23, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
![]() | This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 10 | ← | Archive 13 | Archive 14 | Archive 15 | Archive 16 | Archive 17 | → | Archive 20 |
Hey all, I've been looking into tinkering with the project banner template ever since we've added the task forces, and I finally have been able to take the time to look through the code. I've actually synthesized something that retains most of the style of the current banner, while overhauling the code underneath so that things like adding particular articles to certain project categories becomes more automated. This new template will also allow the task forces to keep their own assessment tables concurrently with the full project one. Most of the code was retooled from {{ WPMILHIST}}. I'm still working out minor issues in the template sandbox and tweaking things like precise category names, but I think it's far enough along that it can be open for general critique and review.
You can see the template here: User:Girolamo Savonarola/banner. I've also posted a similiar message on Template talk:Film, so it might be better to consolidate discussion either there or my template's talk page. Many thanks! Girolamo Savonarola 02:58, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
In a discussion over whether Sicko (film) is the "fourth-highest grossing documentary film" another editor raised the point that the Jackass films are documentaries. I disagree. The editor is currently edit-warring on both of these films' articles to put the documentary category on them. Other opinions would be helpful. -- David Shankbone 04:28, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
I can find many more (including a piece I've had tentatively accepted for publication in a reliable source). How many do we need for a consensus? How about the objectors find one reliably-sourced film critic who says it is not a documentary? THF 12:10, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
(unindent) And Google has over 35,000 hits for "reality film." As a member of WikiFilm I propose we create a new category. In fact, here is an excellent article on the difference between a "documentary film" and a "reality film".
Critical to this is an awareness that although documentaries always deal with real-life events, they aren't those events. Like reports written in newspapers, spoken on radio or shown on TV, they're only ever about those events. And that's all they ever can be. As Nicolas Philibert, the French director of the international hit, To Be and To Have, puts it: "A documentary isn't the raw event, the raw reality. Nor is it a photocopy of reality. It's a construction, a reconstruction of events made up of many choices. I decide whether to film this or that, whether to put my camera here or there, how to combine the shots I've filmed, and so on. Showing is choosing. Editing is renouncing. Filming this is not filming that."
-- David Shankbone 14:02, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
FWIW, I've heard the term "nonfiction film" used increasingly to describe films which are not purely fictional. So Sicko, Jackass (questionably), Trading Spaces, American Idol, though not "documentaries," are surely nonfiction. Whether Michael Moore is "performing" as opposed to simply interviewing people and present facts, is another issue. ;) David Spalding ( ☎ ✉ ✍) 22:27, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
As I alluded to above, I have researched, generated, and sold for publication in a reliable source a list of the highest-grossing documentaries that is more accurate than the Box Office Mojo list commonly used on Wikipedia. Per WP:COI, I should discuss on a talk page, rather than simply insert the material. I recommend its inclusion in relevant articles: while the standard for Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth, it is still better to have verifiable accurate information than verifiable inaccurate information. To the extent these figures disagree with the demonstrably inaccurate and internally inconsistent Box Office Mojo rankings, and one thinks the Box Office Mojo ranking statistics should be included at all, WP:NPOV would seem to suggest that both points of view be included. One possible solution is a List-of-highest-grossing-documentaries article, like List of highest-grossing films in the United States and Canada, that can be created that includes the disparate rankings from The American, from Box Office Mojo, and from The Numbers.
I have raised the issue on a couple of talk pages; in each case, David Shankbone objected. Rather than scatter identical debates on several different talk pages, it makes more sense to center the discussion here. David Shankbone objects to the inclusion of the list in any article because the article criticizes Michael Moore, because he objects to the title of the article chosen by the publication's editors, because The American (magazine) is not a film publication (though it has published other articles about film), because the magazine has libertarian/conservative/pro-business affiliations, and because he contends the magazine is not notable. If I've inadvertently inaccurately characterized his criticism, I'm sure he won't hesitate to let us know.
What say the WikiProject? THF 04:00, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
-- David Shankbone 16:08, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
Based on arguments over this list on Talk:Sicko, Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents and Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard, the consensus is that this list should in no way be used. -- David Shankbone 15:29, 10 August 2007 (UTC)
I am having an extremely difficult time with User:Dohanlon changing the titles of numerous French film articles (mainly involving Juliette Binoche) back to the original French title. He's essentially trying to crowbar the issue by claiming that if any English territory ever referred to the film in the vernacular, then the title should be the French one, regardless of the WP:UE and WP:NCF guidelines. I've had extensive discussion with no progress. Someone else wanna have a go? Thanks, Girolamo Savonarola 22:37, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
Really? No opinions? Doctor Sunshine talk 14:21, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Its a difficult one this. I must admit for French. Spanish and Itlaian film I prefer the native titles. It is only where translation is difficult e.g with wider field countries like Bulgaria, Russia, China etc which use a totally different leterring system. I'd prefer to keep the titles to correspond to the posters and then state the english title in bold in the intro. For instance you wouldn't have a article on Mont Blanc as White Mountain on wikipedia would you -but saying this The Eiffel Tower wouldn't be in frnech either -its confusing itsn't it! But you can't "have a go" at that user for his efforts . See Ascenseur pour l'échafaud -this is exactly how I like to see them. ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ "Expecting you?" Contribs 11:44, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Les Misérables for instant is wel known worldwide by that frnech title. To name the article anthing else would seem odd. Well this is my view of the French films if they haven't been released under a different title. They should keep the original names -its not as if the articles are in french is it? -Also if you are browsing through the categories many title sin english may seem unrecognizable to those familiar with the french titles ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ "Expecting you?" Contribs 11:53, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
My feeling is that the title of the article should correspond to the film poster title. For instance Gio was right to redirect to The Horseman on the Roof as this has been rleased in the english speaking world with this exact title. ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ "Expecting you?" Contribs 11:56, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
Blofeld, you're making a bad comparison - Mont Blanc and Les Mis are both overwhelmingly known by their vernacular titles in the English speaking countries. No one contests those. The issue is whether we should always favor the veracular per se regardless of all other factors; the answer, as per WP:UE and WP:NCF is currently no. Changing basic guidelines like WP:UE is not going to happen here, so if you have a broad problem with that guideline, I'd suggest taking it there. All we are trying to discuss here is how to implement the UE guideline on films when there are differences in English countries. (Speaking of which, should be move this discussion to NCF?) Girolamo Savonarola 22:45, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
I've just come across this issue, and others, after seeing the mess that the Juliette Binoche article is in. In my opinion, any English title, if "widely" circulated, is preferable to the original foreign language title. There are obviously going to be exceptions (Chocolat) because that is how some films are distributed, but we are the English Wikipedia, and if a certain amount of sources refer to the film by its English title, then there should be no cause for edit warring in these cases. On a different note, the user who has mucked up many of these articles has also moved the previous articles to several other incorrect names, causing numerous superfluous redirects. For example, La Vie de Famille (1985 film); it is now impossible to move the article back to Family Life (film), which already exists as a redirect, and La Vie de Famille, if it were to keep the original, French title, is more than enough to keep without the "1985 film" indicator, since nothing else exists under this title. There are a handful of these with similar unnecessary dab indicators in parentheses; how do we fix this? I honestly think this editor just greatly misunderstands naming conventions, but the edit warring and moving back and forth is greatly messing with the interwiki links. María ( críticame) 20:53, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
OK, I've come round to Dr Sunshine's point about the WP:UE perspective, and I think we should rewrite WP:NC(F) to reflect it: we should recommend using the commonest English name, even if that sometimes means using US-only titles. However, I'd like to reiterate my point about using the names on DVD boxes or film posters (whichever is most appropriate) as our indicator of what the film's title is. I'm slightly concerned by Maria's attitude that if "a certain amount of sources refer to the film by its English title" then we should use it - film reviewers and film historians can be pretentious and/or lowbrow and may not refer to films by their commonest wide release title. It's the latter we must reflect in the film's title, not "any" English title. Cop 663 01:39, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
The thing is - I see these sorts of arguments back and forth all of the time when it's regarding French titles. This is not to say that articles on films with different languages haven't sometimes started with the vernacular title, but it seems that usually when the Italian or Spanish titles, for example, are moved to the common English title, there's little if any complaint. Proportionally, however, I've seen a great deal more contention regarding the French titles. And it seems that the French films are proportionately more likely to start with a foreign title than most other languages' film articles - even when the starting editors are clearly familiar with WP:UE policy. Is there some reason why this is happening? (Or at least appears to be?) I'm not trying to attack anyone or anything, but perhaps if there's a central root of this problem, it would be good to identify and address it. Girolamo Savonarola 02:22, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
If anyone could please step in at Talk:Children of the Century...it's getting kinda ugly. Girolamo Savonarola 21:16, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure I'm ready to get involved in the Children debate quite yet but I took a stab at modifying the policy per the above discussion. I hope the see also links to WP:UE and WP:ENGVAR are enough in terms of general dispute advise. I want to avoid instruction creep too. Here's what I did, by the way. Doctor Sunshine talk 02:52, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
Template:Alien is very bulky, and just seems to be cluttered with any content related to Aliens and Predator. While they have had some crossovers, I think it needs a split of some sort. A few crossovers shouldn't justify lumping them together. I've brought this issue up in the past, with only a few replies. Anyone an expert on either series, want to help clean the template up and help with a split? RobJ1981 09:53, 15 August 2007 (UTC)
We are requesting assistance to find out what the consensus is for the Highlander (film) poster. It was discovered that the original image was actually for a video game and since then two candidates have been fighting for supremacy. Well since there can be only one, yes I am having fun with this :-), we need you help. The debate seams to boil down to stylistic preference and which one was the original. The conversation is located on the Highlander talk page for reference. The candidates are Image:Orig.highlander.poster.ital.JPG.jpg and Image:Highlander 1 poster.jpg The first poster is admittedly the Italian movie poster Style B version. The second is the US Style A version, and possibly the only original US poster created.
Evidence for both posters originality: American Type A version Italian version
Movie Posters USA movieposter.com Movie Poster shop The Movie Poster Page cyber-cinema google produce poster search
The conversation has been ongoing for about a day with myself UKPhoenix79 and Arcayne.
Arguments for Image:Orig.highlander.poster.ital.JPG.jpg by Arcayne
Arguments for Image:Highlander 1 poster.jpg by UKPhoenix79
Despite present and to the point conversations we are unable to agree. Please can you help us correct this. I'm sorry if I have skewed this in any way I will give Arcayne a link to this discussion so that he can add more to this. Thanks! -- UKPhoenix79 10:08, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Please see Women in Indian film, List of Indian film actresses, Category:Indian women film actors, and the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_August_4#Category:Indian_women_film_actors. There is obviously some merging to be done, but I leave it to the experts here. DGG ( talk) 16:41, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
I think this page is incorrectly tagged as a film: Back Street. Anybody like to comment.
Might be an idea to create a tag/category that we can add to pages to mark articles such as this for review and removal of tags if needed.
RWardy 20:10, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
It seems pretty open and shut - if films were made, they should be split into their own articles. Under what circumstances would an article require both a film infobox and a character one? Girolamo Savonarola 01:46, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I would like to seek the community's opinions about a situation regarding the listing of non-classic producer positions in film articles. I had assumed that consensus was established that names of executive producers and associate producers were too
indiscriminate, but there does not really seem to have been a full discussion about the matter. (If there is, feel free to point it out on the archives; I do not see any there.) The discussion can be found at
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Films/Style guidelines#Producers, executive producers, et al.. —
Erik (
talk •
contrib) -
14:47, 21 August 2007 (UTC) Moving discussion here, as we need more opinions.
Due to a situation at The Spirit (film), I'd like to ask for other editors' opinions about the inclusion of attributes for executive producers and associate producers. It seemed that these attributes were only briefly included in the Infobox Film template before being removed. I couldn't find a full-fledged discussion about the matter, but the implicit logic seemed to be that it was indiscriminate information. In my work with film articles, it seems that any producer position beyond the classic producer position (like Joel Silver & co.) would be indiscriminate. For example, WikiProject Films' most recent article of FA status 300 has sixteen overall producers listed, but the list is limited to the four "classic" producers. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial also lists two classic producers out of three overall producers. Yet The Pit and the Pendulum lists three overall producers, with only one of them being a "classic" producer. Another article of FA status, Borat, is also strikingly inconsistent -- the star, Sacha Baron Cohen is listed as a "classic" producer at IMDb, yet he is not listed, while two executive producers are. Additionally, the Infobox Film template for Terminator on WP:MOSFILMS shows three overall producers, with only one of them being "classic". I think we need to have a discussion to establish consistency in which producers should be mentioned in the template -- it seems to me that 300 listing all sixteen of their producers would be a bit too much. (For The Spirit, it would be seven listings instead of three.) What do other editors think? They can read about a breakdown of the different positions at film producer, but I'd rather use an off-wiki reference.
To sum up the conflict at The Spirit, the other editor believes that because all the different producers were mentioned in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, they should be included in the article. I opposed this, considering listings beyond "classic" producers indiscriminate information, and two other editors have agreed with me on this premise. Also, the trade papers are for the Hollywood industry, so mentioning all the producers of a film are the most relevant in this field. However, from my experience, producers that are not part of the "classic" mold rarely ever get covered beyond these trade papers. Of course, I concern myself with future films, where these trade papers are more relevant, so I do not know how an attempted consistency would apply to older films, which in my opinion seem to have less numbers of producers. This difference may be why the detail in the producer attribute of the Terminator example in WP:MOSFILMS is accepted -- three is a comfortable threshold, but seven or sixteen may be too much. Thoughts on this matter? — Erik ( talk • contrib) - 14:30, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
If you want to be especially pedantic, the entire article shouldn't even exist yet, since it violates the future films guidelines in WP:NF. However, the article was created months before this guideline change, so the point probably shouldn't be pressed. In either case, it's probably worth leaving the issue at an acceptable compromise for the moment - anything can happen between now and the release of the film, and several factors can always change the final producers credits. Girolamo Savonarola 17:27, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
I'd support a general attitude that Execs are non-notable in general, but on a case by case basis, may warrant in-article coverage of notable choices. No on infoboxes unilaterally, though. ThuranX 05:06, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
While we're discussing certain issues above, can start to come to a general consensus on the point that the infobox should not contain information about line producers, co-producers, associate producers, etc.? In other words, while we're still discussing "classic" producers vs. exec producers, can we all agree that we can rule out all other types of producer credits? Girolamo Savonarola 17:33, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Just to note that the current parameters are set so that the heads of department (HODs) can be displayed. We can list the cinematographer, but why should the infobox list the gaffer or the focus puller? The line producer/associate producer/co-producer roles are equivalent: senior assisting capacities. And once again, please limit this discussion to those roles; the conversation about exec producers is happening above. This sub-proposal was meant to sweep up some outliers, in order to make the original discussion more clear-cut. Girolamo Savonarola 22:18, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Yet again, two industry trade articles have been published today in connection with the casting of Eva Mendes in The Spirit and the producers under discussion have been mentioned. How can any intellectually honest editor conclude, in the absense of a reliable source that those producers were mere moneymen or inconsequential to the outcome of the film? What speculation of editors of film articles is permitted to govern that only "classic producers" are worthy of mention?
Erik, I'm sure in good faith, but in the clear absence of consensus, has already edited Schindler's List to remove Kathleen Kennedy and other producers who have been mentioned in favor of "classic producers". I reverted the edit because this conduct is just incomprehensible to me. On the one hand that editor argues that we have a consensus, then concedes we don't and then argues for reaching a consensus here on this page and then acts when there isn't. What is wrong with this picture? I think that this matter should have a RfC. This is all just too idiosyncratic to a particular taste or view of the limits of an article. I don't think that this encyclopedia is just a specialty publication. Dawgknot 15:36, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree that the infobox should keep to the "classic" producers. If there's anything to be said about the remainder they can be included in the prose. Infoboxes are too long as it is. They're meant to be concise summaries of the article, not a credit roll. Doctor Sunshine talk 00:37, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
None of us has enough time left in our lives to worry about this stuff. How about this? In the spirit (The Spirit) of compromise, can we agree that Executive Producers and Producers would be listed in the info box and the Associate Producers and CoProducers will only be mentioned if there is something somehow noteworthy about their particular contribution in the same way as a Costume Designer or Special Effects creator would in a particular film? In The Spirit article, for example, one of the CoProducers is already mentioned in the text for having been on a panel about the movie. In that way, important people will not be left out merely because we can't agree on what basis to decide if they are important.
This will also have the salutary effect of letting us clean up other films that have inaccurately recorded the credit of some producers without eliminating many of them. If we can reach this agreement, then all we have to do is request a change to the info box template which shouldn't be hard to get if we are in agreement. If they request the code for the fix, I'll try to supply it. I think I saw a format for it somewhere. Will this solution fly? Dawgknot 00:03, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Where do we stand on this offer? Can we agree to edit the template of the infobox to include Executive Producers? Dawgknot 03:48, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
The article and category of the same name came from a disagreement, but one that I think fleshes out the issue well: What are films such as
Jackass The Movie and
The Real World Cancun? Are they documentaries, in the same category as
Capturing the Friedmans,
March of the Penguins and
Ken Burns's work, or are they something different? If they are documentaries, are they a sub-genre of documentary or their own entity (e.g., a
Reality film)? It's worthwhile to research and flesh out, which is the reason for my strong keep. I think it strikes most people odd that
Jackass Number Two is being called a documentary, whether it technically fits that definition or not. Unfortunately, the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences's definition is unhelpful (a recording of an unfiltered performance is excluded from documentary). Anyway, whether this should or should not exist is up for discussion, and could use some voices:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Reality_film
--David
Shankbone
13:59, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Henry Fonda has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Grim-Gym 02:22, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
Got a question for which I can't seem to find a direct answer. Some film articles contain images in them, particularly in the synopsis/plot section. I was thinking about illustrating some of my articles with stills from movie trailers. 1) Is it okay to add images in an article for a lesser known film? (Therefore going to have less content... and not going to be an FA...) 2) Is it okay to use still images taken from movie trailers? 3) If it IS okay, is it advisable? Thank you for your help! Nihao48 04:56, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
Here is an example of a film article that shows what I'm going to talk about.
As you may notice, all the distribution details and release dates use template:flagicon. I suppose the thinking was that it made the infobox look prettier and the flags occupy a uniform space, improving the tidiness of the infobox.
However this overlooks the fact that the reader now needs to know the flags of many nations on sight when reproduced in a small format. I'm sure I'm not the only person who finds this difficult.
Surely there is a better way of presenting this information. How about using ISO country codes? Most of us know ES, FR, TW, etc, although we might find it hard to recognise the flags of those countries. Using these codes, or other, similar codes designated by ISO, would surely improve our presentation of information while answering concerns about use of space in infoboxes. -- Tony Sidaway 18:25, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm starting to think we should rewrite
WP:MOSFILM to avoid flags altogether. They do help save space, but they're not necessarily easy for everyone to read - in particular
Australia and
New Zealand are barely distinguishable. And if the producing company is something obscure like
Mali, they're useless.
This essay makes good arguments against flags appearing without country names. Should we simply recommend using country names, even if it looks ugly?
Cop 663
02:29, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
After reading the above, I have removed the instruction to use flags at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Films/Style_guidelines#Release_dates, since consensus seems to be against them. I personally don't plan to remove flags from infoboxes in a systematic way, but I will certainly begin removing the more egregious examples as I discover them. Cop 663 14:41, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
IMDB.com has a "user rating" for each movie so visitors can see how other visitors have graded the movie.
Can someone write and implement such a plugin into Wikipedias movie articles?
Digg.com grades its articles and lets its visitors sort the articles by popularity. It would be nice to be able to click on the Wikipedia "sci-fi-movies"-section, and then on "sort by voted article quality" or "sort by voted movie quality". And come to think of it; every article on Wikipedia could have a 0-10 quality grade, that comes from visitors/members votes. Is this the right place to discuss such a plugin? Has this been discussed/proposed earlier? A voting plugin could be used for any purpose. Not just the quality of articles/movies. So it would be time well invested writing such a plugin. We could also make the plugin take up small screen space and make it easily embeddable. Oftentimes someone asks for consensus on a particular matter on these talk pages. I think it would be great if someone would be able to write a question or proposal, add a <vote> tag and get: "Am I beautiful? (Y)(N)(Results)". It would be compact and useful.
When I find a movie title that sounds interesting, I prefer to come to Wikipedia instead of going to IMDB to see what the movie is all about. But there is always this question: "Ok, now I know what the movie is about. But is it good enough to bother watching?". Tommy 14:23, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
How's this idea any different from albums having a rating pulled through from sites like Allmusic or Rolling Stone, Q, Mojo, etc? Lugnuts 11:24, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
The
Jason Voorhees article is up for featured article status. Please bring your opinions/criticisms to
its FAC page. Thank you.
BIGNOLE
(Contact me)
02:59, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I've seen several WikiProjects that have been taking roll calls to determine who are active and inactive members of the their projects. Are we willing to do the same thing? I would like to know in the next couple of days so I can include a notice in the monthly newsletter. If approved, we can then send it to all current members. This will help to cut down on delivery lists by not having to deliver to inactive members. We could set up a period of a few weeks to a month for members to include their names before we move inactive members to another section. An example message (based off of another roll call message):
"Hey fellow Wikipedian! Your username is listed on the WikiProject Films participants list, but we are unsure as to which editors are still active on the project. If you still consider yourself an active WP:FILM editor, please move your name from the current members list to the Active Members list. You may also wish to add {{User WikiProject Films}} to your userpage, if you haven't done so already. Conversely, if you do not wish to be considered a member of the WikiProject, leave your name where it is and it will be moved to the Inactive Members section. If you wish to make a clean break with the Project you may move your name to the "Known to have left" section. Thanks and happy editing!"
If somebody knows how to make this more decorative with a background color to the text that would probably be more eye-catching for talk pages and more likely to be responded to. Anyway, what do you guys think? -- Nehrams2020 03:51, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
I would be in support of a roll call so we can define our current roster better. I'd suggest having this roll call last long enough to ensure most of the list will be aware of the situation. Maybe in going through with this, we can ask members to redefine their goals in relation to this WikiProject. It would be beneficial to know what everyone's preferences are, for easier collaboration. — Erik ( talk • contrib) - 12:01, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
Yes this is good. It roots out those who are actively contributing the the project and those aren't. ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ "Talk"? 19:20, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
TakuyaMurata ( contribs) has been adding [[United States|American]] to the lead sentence of a few film articles lately. I was not sure of this approach, as it seems nonstandard. What do others think? — Erik ( talk • contrib) - 11:28, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
On Fargo (film), I thought it was pretty odd that the countries listed were the UK and the US, so changed it to just the US. Another editor changed it back, noting that Fargo was a Working Title Films (UK) production. So I've left it alone for now.
I looked at the parameters on Template:Infobox Film, and the only guidance I find is to "Insert the country or countries that the film was produced in. Link each country to its appropriate article if possible." What does that mean exactly? Where the film was made, or where the money came from?
I know this has probably been discussed before ad nauseum, but if the field is for where the film was made, then that would mean Star Wars IV is a UK-Tunisian film and Apocalypse Now is a Philippines film. It just seems ridiculous to call Fargo a British film, when there's nothing inherently British about it, except that it had the backing of a British production company. — Wise Kwai 15:16, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree that something needs to be done to remedy this, although I concur that "guidelining" it will be difficult if not impossible. For a case that will blow your mind, see Blackboards. Does anyone really see this as part of the history of Italian or Japanese cinema? Let's be honest here - it's an Iranian film that needed money, which happened to be supplied by Italian and Japanese groups. The location of the funding did not fundamentally change the film in any regards; all they did was facilitate this film by supplying funds. Girolamo Savonarola 20:53, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
After a night's sleep to let my stomach settle down, I think Cop's laissez-faire approach is probably the best approach in dealing with this issue. I guess what I'm trying to say is: Sorry I brought it up - it just ain't that big a deal in the greater scheme of things. — Wise Kwai 06:08, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
The discussion about whether to include production companies in the infobox has been had a few months - see here. A vague consensus emerged that it was a good idea. But then nobody did anything about it. Maybe we should be more decisive this time? Should we have a vote or something? Cop 663 20:14, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
I've just been tidying up 20th Century Fox. The predecessor companies that merged to form this company are Fox Film Corporation and 20th Century Pictures. Fox Film Corporation used to have its own article (the history is at Fox Film) and got merged. 20th Century Pictures also used to have its own article (the history is at Twentieth Century Pictures), and was similarly merged. I'm not 100% convinced these early film companies are well-served by being merged into 20th Century Fox, but I reorganised the page to make things a little clearer, and spun out the list of Fox Film Corporation films to List of Fox Film films. I also created List of 20th Century Pictures films. I'm not sure how this sort of thing is best handled, so I'm now offering this all up for review here. Thanks. Carcharoth 15:55, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Just an "FYI" for those that attend to the categorization of film stubs, specifically those dated-by-year - comedy, drama, horror: For those films that do not have a specific "by decade" stub template, it is now possible to "force" the categorization out of the top category into the "by decade" category by adding:
|category=[[Category:XXXXX]]
For example in an 1890 horror film the stub will look like this:
This does not effect any stub templates that do not add the piped "force" category. SkierRMH 00:05, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
As I foresee this discussion probably going out of a "film" discussion into some of the internal technical features, I'd suggest the discussion be carried out on my talk page. SkierRMH 00:10, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi folks. A user is changing the lead of articles about the third films in a series. Rather than them being described as the 'second sequel', the term 'threequel' seems to be cropping up. It's not an expression I've come across before, but it Googles relatively well in relation to recent films. How do we feel about this? I'm not entirely comfortable with it. The JPS talk to me 21:57, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
There was a time when the term prequel was new, and now it's understood by just about everyone. And Google tests DO have a bearing on the matter if a search for "threequel" yields 47,100 results. The word is used not only in trade papers such as Variety and film-oriented magazines such as Entertainment Weekly but by mainstream publications like the New York Times, New York Magazine, and even the Christian Science Monitor, as well. I still maintain that an article for "threequel" was a valid addition to Wikipedia, and its redirection to sequel can be reverted by an administrator. Thank you. ConoscoTutto 15:06, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
I've just been browsing and cleaning up the telugu list a bit and in seeing some of the articles they are shockingly terrible!!! It amazes me how many contemporary Bollywood articles on actors and films have the golden seal!! yet most of the tamil. telugu and malayalam articles are diabolical!!!!!! I know Bollywood is the main and most popular industry but the Indian cinema work group shouldn't neglect the other articles. They are either polished articles or completely unclear stubs which aren't even written in proper english!!! I really think the Indian cinema work group or some of us should try to start developing the other articles. The film articles on Tamil. Telugu, Malayalam films are the worst on wikipedia. They are a shambles ♦ Sir Blofeld ♦ "Talk"? 18:36, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
What makes an article high-Importance?? I wonder because Independence Day doesnt get the attention I thought a high-Importance article gets....which brings me to another question....he it really B-class? It has tons of trivia(I mainly removed what was taken from IMDB) and many things wrong with it...I really think its start class.. THROUGH FIRE JUSTICE IS SERVED! 00:45, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
My question isn't about what the importance parameter is - it's about what are we doing with it? The class parameters are important because they give us an overall picture of the state of the project en masse as far as where we stand on average, what articles would be ripe for quickly bringing to FAC, and what needs immediate attention to bring past Stub status. Those have immediate tangible benefits and the classifications have fairly objective guidelines for assessment.
Importance, however, is not so clear-cut. For projects of a much smaller scope, such as a single contained hierarchy (like Star Wars), it's easy to name the most prominent and work your way down. But when dealing with the Films project, where the vast majority of our articles are film titles, they don't really have a natural information hierarchy - they're all on the same fundamental organizing level. So distinctions often become very subjective and ripe for silly tagging edit wars. Some of the larger projects have completely abolished the use of importance (such as Military History). Others, like Biography, have decided that doing a project-wide importance assessment is too subjective and not productive enough for their purposes, and instead have merely assigned a Top importance to a small handful of subjects which have been listed in multiple independent rankings. The reason for this is to try to concentrate the project effort foremost on vital topics that would be considered overall Wikipedia Core or Core Supplemental topics.
I happen to agree with one of these more limited approaches - I think it's unrealistic for the project to be spending time trying to decide what all 30000 (as of now) articles need in terms of importance tags, much less spending time trying to come up with those guidelines for how to tag them. It wastes valuable project time for little payoff in the sense of what will ultimately be done with the data for the vast majority of the articles (nothing) and will likely create a lot of ill-will amongst editors who disagree with the importance of film X.
Therefore I propose that we either decide to abandon the Importance parameter completely, or come to some agreement on a very limited use of it solely to identify our Core project articles. Girolamo Savonarola 01:59, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
I did not think I would get this much input.....thanks for the input, especially the the refs...but I dont think I understand them clearly..
"[Keyword Hit]BAUGHAN, Nikki: The top 20 blockbusters of all time Film Review (0957-1809) v.Spec. n.52 , June 2004, p.68-87, English, illus 'The top 20 blockbusters of all time' featuring details of INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996)."
Whats keyword hit? 'The top 20 blockbusters of all time' featuring details of INDEPENDENCE DAY (1996)." : I take it this is a lil info of the ref? Cause if it is, I'll bold it out, to help me understand the refs more. THROUGH FIRE JUSTICE IS SERVED! 02:33, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Greg Jones II 20:10, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
In regard to non-free images used in the Plot sections of film articles, I am wondering if there is a better way to choose images, if at all. Traditionally, film articles have screenshots (limited to two for the most part), but in looking at Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (for which I had noticed its FAR process), I was wondering, are subjectively selected images for the Plot section really in line with fair use policy? At the Star Wars film article, I could replace the two images in the Plot section with another two images, and the change would not impact the article at all. This seems to indicate that such images would be decorative; there are dozens and dozens of screenshot candidates that could be added to a Plot section. What would be the justification in choosing them, if at all? I've found that images in the Plot sections of Dirty Dancing and Branded to Kill have some sort of real-world relevance. When I write film articles these days, I find myself fitting images outside of the Plot section, such as Sunshine (2007 film) and Road to Perdition. I feel hard-pressed to pick what image would be most representative of the Plot. Another example is A Beautiful Mind (film), in which there is a picture of Crowe as Nash in the Plot section. Yet we can see Crowe as Nash in the poster image. Some time ago, an admin brusquely removed images from the Plot section of 300 (film) (though editors, including me, contested him and were able to keep the images). This was somewhat a turning point in ensuring that whatever non-free image I add, its rationale would be as indisputable as possible. This seems most possible with real-world context, as opposed to choosing from a flurry of possibilities for any scene mentioned in the Plot section. I'd like to hear others' opinions on this matter; what is the most suitable way to incorporate non-free images into the Plot section? — Erik ( talk • contrib) - 02:56, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
I know what you mean about wanting an airtight rationale. It's a little disheartening to see or have useful images disappeared because someone got trigger happy and it slipped past you because your watchlist is too big. I think the fairuse paranoia is starting to subside though and the pendulum's swinging back towards the middle ground.
In any event, here's how I see it,
After that, I think common sense is the best guide. Figure out what stands out about the film (between cast, crew, iconic bits, special effects, controversies, marketing, etc.) and can't be illustrated by words alone. Preferably an image would cover multiple aspects. I think the style guide (or a style guide somewhere) recommends no more than one image per every 250 words but obviously you want to keep the fairuse count as low as possible without harming the article.
However, I'd take things slow with removing "decorative" images. For one thing, nice looking articles might not be our primary goal but making a professional encyclopedia is. By this I mean, any image can be contextualized by its caption, so try to fit them in the most relevant section but if they have to go somewhere else, that's fine. Secondly, even a random screenshot illustrates something. For example, it's impossible to subjectively describe in text whether a film has good cinematography—so any image can potentially provide valuable information. That said, if there's a better image that can represent that as well as any number of other aspects we should trade up. Fox example, that one in the plot section of A Beautiful Mind is pretty bad, especially as it seems to have been further cropped and then desaturated from its source, but it still illustrates the visual look of the film and Crowe is in character, where often actors are posing or exaggerating for posters (see Rashomon for a good example). So, I'd like to see that one removed but only when it's replaced by something better that conveys the same (or more) information. And in regards to Mike Myers, we ideally want to keep articles self-contained, people shouldn't have to click between 12 different articles for what should be summarized in one—a full cast shot isn't necessary in Halloween but Myers is pretty important. Doctor Sunshine talk 15:31, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Two of this WikiProject's Good Articles, Silent Film and Facing the Giants, have been nominated for Good Article review. Everyone is invited to contribute to the discussions concerning these article's GA status there. Drewcifer 03:57, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
As an example of the new capabilities of the revised project banner, I've just added the
|Persian-task-force=yes
parameter to as many relevant films as I could find. This then allowed me to set up the appropriate category structure to create another assessment table just for the task force, which you can see at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Persian cinema articles by quality statistics. Note that this exists in parallel with our project-wide assessment, allowing both the whole project and the task forces to each see where they stand, all implemented under one project banner. There's a slight gap in that the importance for the task forces is not yet ready (I simply forgot to include it in the code; shouldn't be too difficult to correct), but this only affects the task force assessments, not the project-wide assessment.
With this now ready and available, there are some much larger questions that I think need to be considered. The first and most obvious one for me is integrating Wikipedia:WikiProject Indian cinema within WP Films as a task force, under a shared task force arrangement with WP India in which the task force address will be located here, but the task force will also be jointly operated with WP India in the same way as some of our current task forces such as Chinese and French cinema are. This needs to be mentioned simply because of two reasons: one, the Indian cinema group is by far the largest and most functional of all national/regional cinema editing groups, and secondly because historically there was a disagreement over moving the project to WP Films as a task force. It is my hope that with the integrated project banner code which will allow the project some assessment autonomy, we will be able to integrate them more easily into our group and also reduce banner clutter/redundancy so that Indian films no longer will need to have both a Film banner and an Indian cinema banner; the Indian task force identification is now encoded within the Film banner.
Second, the current task forces are all national cinema-based, and their interest - justifiably - extends not only to national films, but national filmmakers. I don't believe that it makes sense to delimit their scopes purely to the films, and a perusal of some of the task force article request lists (all transcluded into Wikipedia:WikiProject Films/Requests) corroborates this. Therefore, I believe that we should allow the task forces - and the whole WP Films project at large - to expand our scope. It is true that we already do have an Actors and Filmmakers project, but this project is more rightly a workgroup of WP Bio, and there is no reason why the biographical articles can't be tagged both as a WP Bio article and a WP Films article. (Indeed, this is current practice at projects like Military history.)
Which brings me to another point. I believe that with the interest, participation, and scope that we already have, it makes sense to centralize the topic, much as several other successful WikiProjects have already done. What I mean is that the idea of subdividing the entire topic of Film into several WikiProjects such as Films, national cinemas, Filmmaking, etc is probably hurting each of these projects in the long run because it divides up common effort and common forums for discussion. I believe that the task force model is ideal for integrating different clusters of interest and type, with the added benefit of a larger overall membership and centralized coordination of common needs such as style guidelines, assessment, etc. so that each task force does not need to re-invent the wheel. Instead, all of the boring administrative overhead is left to the project at large so that the task forces can remain focused on work on the articles. It also avoids confusion for new or unfamiliar editors by having a central project that has scope over all film-related articles, instead of wondering which of several projects one should join/ask questions of/request help/point out issues, and resolves problems with certain areas of film-based articles which currently do not fall within any project scope. I, for one, am interested in merging WP Filmmaking into either one or several task forces, to start.
My final point, which I've already discussed in the Roll Call thread above, is that I believe that given the large number of members and articles, we could really benefit from one or several Project Coordinators. This job already exists at WP:MILHIST and is purely an administrative role involved with project housekeeping and...coordinating! The position would have absolutely no executive powers or special privileges with regards to content disputes or anything of that sort. It's merely a behind-the-scenes position to keep the project running smoothly and efficiently. (Just to clarify.)
Anyway, I know that's a lot of proposal up there, so I'd appreciate any and all comments. Thanks! Girolamo Savonarola 07:31, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Can someone help fix the article on this screenwriter? Her notability seems borderline at the moment. Did she get a credit for Map of the World for example? Nick mallory 12:11, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't know if anyone's noticed, but your unassessed films category now seems to contain every article tagged with your banner, which I know it didn't only yesterday. Something wrong with the banner, maybe? Katharineamy 23:26, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
It seems that the NA (na) in the importance scale has disappeared, leaving every film that was in these categories - Dab, template, category, NA, and list - categorized as such now showing as "???". There's thousands of these now showing as non-rated on the importance scale - which isn't correct. SkierRMH 03:42, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
Template:Needs film infobox has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. — Girolamo Savonarola 19:49, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
From my point of view the article has fulfilled the start requirements, it can be reassessed.-- Nemissimo 00:38, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
There is a debate at Talk: Superman Returns#Fair use over the inclusion of a screencapture in the plot section. We would like a lot of opinions so that this debate isn't just between two people. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 23:20, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
WP:MILHIST is currently moving towards creating a "War films task force" (relevant discussion here). Since WP:FILMS is the natural partner for running this task force jointly, I have been asked to bring the matter before the Films project for discussion. Comments would be welcome! Kirill 02:41, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
As per previous discussions (see "Roll call" above), it appears that there is community interest in the creation of Coordinator positions. A /Coordinators page has been created to explain the position, and a separate election subpage is also now set-up to begin the election process.
Effective immediately, there will be a two-week signup period during which project members may self-nominate for a Coordinator position and begin to take questions and comments. Then from September 28-October 11, the voting will commence. The voting system will be approval voting. Most of the procedure and protocol for the position and the election is cribbed directly from WP:MILHIST, but if people have any questions or comments regarding the process itself, please feel free to offer them either here or on the article talk pages! Thanks, Girolamo Savonarola 05:23, 14 September 2007 (UTC)