User:Ursasapien/Sandbox/Articles about elements of fiction

Articles about elements of fiction (like television episodes and characters)

During 2007 (and perhaps for some time before that), Wikipedia experienced a large scale edit war concerning whether elements of fictional works (like the characters in a video game or the individual episodes of a television series) deserve their own articles in Wikipedia. This battle escalated to the point that a Request for Arbitration was accepted concerning TTN's part in the greater struggle (redirecting individual episode articles on a massive scale). Although there was much said, I truly think TheDJ captured the issue in a most concise and eloquent way. The next part of this essay is his statement.

Statement by TheDJ

Just saw this arbcase fly by on one of the pages that I watch. All in all, I'm not surprised. There was no way that this was avoidable. The opinions are just too varied and there just had to come a time where a "deletionist vs. inclusionist" all out war on the Fiction related articles was going to develop. As a former active WP:TV project member and a participant in the discussion of many of the relevant guidelines that are fiction specific, I wanna voice some of the things that I think about this. It is here for those that want to read it, and I am not gonna have huge discussions about it that are probably going nowhere.

Observations:

1. Its a battle of deletionism vs. inclusionism
2. The tools in this war that are used are low quality articles.
3. Many episode articles are indeed of very low quality (but so are so many other articles, however episode articles are easy to identify through List of episodes and generally good categorization, as well of having the benefit of us having plenty of them)
4. Quality requires time to grow
5. Growth is being suppressed by TTNs actions
6. Not all episodes need articles
7. Wikipedia is not paper
8. TTN's process of dealing with it is effective and annoying

Things that have been tried before:

1. Setting up guidelines with advice both at the Wikipedia and the project level.
2. Asking people to favor an approach of expanding within more general articles before creating separate articles.

The causes:

1. Fandom passion (both wikipediafans and fictionfans)
2. WP:PAPER (we have incomplete limits on the knowledge that we want to collect, but infinite space to collect it)
3. A (for Wikipedia) relatively high average of inexperienced editors, especially among the editors of TV-topics. I'm talking about inexperience with writing in general, writing wikipedia articles, and in life. For a large part this is age related, for the other part, the problem lies with the fact that these groups are used to dealing with forums, tv.com and fanwiki's for discussing their topic.
4. Many non-TV editors (including myself these days) avoid the topic all-together because they don't care about it or simply don't want to be involved. That means it has basically become somewhat like the sandbox of our garden. (history that we cannot change retroactively)
5. A lot of activity (conflict quickly explodes because so many people are editing at the same time)
6. A lot of recentism

The solution:

• Good Wikiprojects... I have never really been a big fan of the "show-specific" Wikiprojects, but I have to say that several of them have really surprised me over the past year. The Simpsons, Smallville, Carnivale, Firefly and several other projects have shown to have "grown" several experienced editors that understand that good prose, sources and real-life events matter when writing these articles. These editors also closely watch (and have a lot of work because of that) the new articles and newest additions of these projects. Even Lost, which was a problem-child from the start, has improved considerably. It has the risk of WP:OWN, but it certainly has improved the quality of many articles.
• Time... I really think that semi-speedy deleting articles as TTN has been doing is no solution. It only aggravates people and doesn't help create better articles at all. I and others argued this same point in WP:EPISODE as well, resulting in the "dont simply delete episodes"-clause (which unfortunately some people then took as a blanket rule to apply to all episodes of any series alla WP:PAPER. Besides this however, no longer running series create a more stable base to work from (more books, less fans, more hardcore and knowledgeable fans). This has already shown to have benefitted several sets of articles. Why are we being so upfront about the stuff that's still running its (usually 6 years or so) course? We have plenty of time to fix them after the fandom-fans left and true wikipedia editors that are also fans of the series remain?
  • Don't hurry people and try to remain sensitive to their feelings at all times while you discuss. If you don't, you easily offend people and then its harder to get them to listen to you.
• A TV Review process I'm not against semi-deleting (redirecting) all together. I especially like the idea of the WP:TV-REVIEW that was attempted. It has two advantages, the most important one, is that it tackles a large group of episodes in one go (usually an entire series), the other being that it (ideally) has multiple people participating in discussion, in a process much like Good Article/FA/AfD process.
  • A broader group of people doing these "redirect-nominations", supported by a review group, whom within reasonability should be supported by a well informed AfD team.
• Good rules on what is simply NOT acceptable. In my opinion: plot-only articles with only an infobox and trivia should be forbidden, to be redirected after significant time of informing relevant editors/projects and only to be redirected to a "proper" target page. (the most basic information should still be available in some way there, to prevent "loss of a topic")
• A "new episode" watchlist/recent changes list. Having something like that will help us curtail the problem at the root, namely the new articles with some of the young and inexperienced editors. The only way to deal with this in the long term.

Conclusion

All in all, I don't think any of the above is something new. Most people know this at some level or another. It's just that we need to find the proper way to deal with it. TTN's methods although effective, and possibly even proper, are simply not working in building and educating. Yes we created a lot of litter in our house in the past, but why are we throwing away the house all together? I'd rather see us clean up at a slow pace and closely watch our newly built expansion wings. I ask the ArbCom to carefully consider how many potential editors we might be alienating and where we want to draw that line in the sand. And above all, - CIVILITY folks! --TheDJ 21:17, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The bottom line

The purpose of this essay is to look at the root causes of this conflict and suggest ways to move forward toward consensus. I believe, in the heat of this battle, we have all forgotten some of the pillars, with one side forgetting that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia while the other side is forgetting their etiquette and demanding rigid adherence to the rules. Regardless, the editors of Wikipedia can and must get beyond this.

Addendum

I, too, am not suprised that this has ended up at ArbCom again. As has been noted, there have been some significant discussions and I think some headway toward consensus. Sadly, some of the "deletionists" have chosen to ignore discussion and have madly continued their campaign to "clean up" Wikipedia at super bot speed. When they are challenged, they say something like, "Guidelines are immutable consensus. Resistance is futile. Prepare to be assimilated (and redirected)." I believe, as others have expressed, that the only way to properly make a difference is to take a side. Either:

A: TTN (for example, he is certainly not the only editor in this group) is completely right and should develop a bot to make this redirecting more efficient. He should ruthlessly redirect every television episode article on Wikipedia and AfD those that are disputed. He should be freed from the 3rr provision to allow enforcement of these redirects. Or:

B: TTN, et al, should be forced by threat of block to engage in discussion on each and every redirected article that is reverted. This discussion should include a reasonable effort to educate editors about current policies, a thorough look at any sources attempting to establish notability, a reasonable time period to allow for improvement, and an allowance for articles that show reasonable potential.

I think choice "A" will stop the edit wars and will lead to a massive exodus of editors from Wikipedia in favor of other venues. Our coverage of fiction will suffer and some of our readership will decrease. Choice "B" would most likely lead to the exit of TTN and, perhaps some other editors. However, if people were sent back to the discussion table, we might finally find a compromise the two ends of our community can live with.