On 14/12/2007, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler(a)gmail.com> wrote: So I see. BIG WIN! That'll make me a fan :-) - d.

The article they display uses references. Anything wrong should draw plenty of feedback and subsequent corrections or clarifications. Fred

On Dec 14, 2007 4:38 PM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: Oh, I agree it shouldn't. But WP:V has the line "However, caution should be exercised when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else is likely to have done so", which clearly suggests we should try and avoid signed but self-published articles even by acknowledged experts. In effect, this is going to be similar to, for example, archives of unpublished 'working papers' or university websites' freely available lecture transcripts. They're around, accessible, free, and written by experts, but we don't like using them for some reason. RR

Mathias Schindler wrote: Oo, excellent! Once the GFDL becomes compatible with CC-BY (I'm assuming the "SA" is automatic these days) there can be free traffic between the two. I was a bit worried they'd be locked up behind some incompatible license.

On Dec 14, 2007 2:47 PM, Mathias Schindler &lt;mathias.schindler(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: The license is not the only difference -- in fact, I doubt that they'll force people to use CC-BY 3.0; the authors will probably have a choice. The major difference is the word "Google". One may ask: if I had to write on insomnia, I could create a page at Google Pages. How is Knol any different? * The knol on insomnia will appear on the first page when you Google for "insomnia" * The knol is written by a Stanford University faculty member (which means the schools might accept such a knol as a reference for term papers). * The author gets paid for writing the knol As Udi Manber mentions, Knol is meant to be "the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read." Remember what we tell people when they question reliability and accuracy of our articles? "Wikipedia is a starting point for research". That's what Knol is meant to be. If successful, it might rob Wikipedia of Google juice. Moreover, Knol will have a focus on authorship. From the blog, "The key idea behind the knol project is to highlight authors [...] We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content." In all probability, Manber was trying to highlight the difference between Wikipedia and knol. Google will hope that the best Knol articles will come from expert academics (the screenshot shows an article written by Rachel Manber of Stanford University). In most cases, the structure and content outline of a great Wikipedia article are decided by a single user or a very small group of users -- the others just fill in the gaps, correct typos, wikify the article, or crib about the article being biased. The Knol users will be "able to submit comments, questions, edits, additional content, and so on". By, "submit edits and additional content", they probably mean that an article can be written by a group of users, which is what happens at Wikipedia. And of course, the users can submit feedback in forms of comments and question, which will lead to a better, revised article (see the "revisions" tab in the screenshot). The temptation of getting paid and getting recognition through sole authorship might attract best contributors to Knol. At Knol, they won't have to bother about protecting their articles against trolls, cranks, vandals, and consensus of anonymous users. Also, Knol can be updated frequently, just like Wikipedia. Errors can be pointed out and corrected in a short time, just like Wikipedia. And when Google "opens" it up, it can grow very fast, just like Wikipedia. One might argue that Knol won't have unbiased articles on controversial topics like "Palestine" or "Kashmir", since the articles will be controlled by a single authors (or a set of authors). But then, the Wikipedia articles on such topics are hardly ever considered unbiased by everybody. Most of such articles are often tagged with {{pov}} or other ugly tags. A pro-Sri Lanka person will always crib about the existence of the article "Allegations of state terrorism in Sri Lanka", and an LTTE supporter will always complain about the article not being renamed to "State terrorism in Sri Lanka". Such articles on Wikipedia are mostly an "argument nexus" <http://www.wired.com/software/webservices/commentary/alttext/2006/04/70670> -- Knol will users to create an argument nexus by allowing writing reviews on articles, rating the articles, and posting comments on why the article is good or bad. Just like we highlight our best articles on the front page, Google will try their best to make sure that the best articles appear on top in the search results: "Our job in Search Quality will be to rank the knols appropriately when they appear in Google search results." There'll be bad knols, but then, there are bad articles on Wikipedia tool. It'll be interesting to see how Google deals with attack pages, notability issues and spam (blatant spam, "conflict of interest" or otherwise). Udi Manber says "the participation in knols will be completely open, and we cannot expect that all of them will be of high quality." So, I assume that they'll they won't bother, as long as they're earning good revenues (as with Blogger). Therefore, there'll be no complaints about cruel deletionist admins like me :) And unlike us Wikipedians, Google doesn't bother about criticism from Daniel Brandt and his ilk. I'm not trying to predict death of Wikipedia. I'm just trying to discuss a worst-case scenario: what happens if we stop getting Google juice, if our best contributors move on to Knol for money and recognition, if our readers (who are also our donors) leave Wikipedia and start patronizing knol. -- Utkarshraj Atmaram http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Utcursch

On Dec 14, 2007 6:27 AM, Utkarshraj Atmaram &lt;utcursch(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Good. Wikipedia needs to be shaken up a bit. :-) I suspect Google's software and interface will be orders of magnitude more usable that ours, and attract more non-technical users, which will in turn promote pressure to get more developers to fix up the site. Competition should be welcome. The temptation of getting paid and getting recognition through sole I wonder if the potential exists for a Wikipedia clone to make revenue from ads, and then distribute that revenue to the "best" editors based on trust networks and metrics of neutrality, etc. Reward people for making desirable edits that are neutral, reliably sourced, civil, and so on. If they set it up well and kept the open source licensing, I'd migrate. Hey, if they improve on Wikipedia, they deserve any user migration they get, and humanity will be better for it. On Dec 14, 2007 4:24 PM, Will Beback &lt;will.beback.1(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Step 1: Mirror Wikipedia Step 2: Surround it with ads and use search engine optimization Step 3: Profit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks

On 12/17/07, Bryan Derksen &lt;bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca&gt; wrote: We don't turn them away. Pop culture is a huge part of Wikipedia. Of course, the absolute most revoltingly bad parts of it we kill off. But your implication that we're slowly moving towards some state where there will be very little or no pop culture on Wikipedia is off the mark. I guess one nice thing about Knols is you don't need to reference your material, you just say that you *are* the reference. I understand why we insist on referencing everything...but there are times when you'd pray for any information at all, even if it's not referenced. Steve

Quoting Bryan Derksen &lt;bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca&gt;ca>: The relevant guidelines are WP:FICT and WP:EPISODE which are frankly being used to remove a tremendous amount of content. The sensible thing to do for all of this is to allow some minimum of inherited notability. But I doubt anyone is going to go for that. Almost every tv show on my watchlist is being wiped out. This isn't creating as much drama as the webcomics but it is far more pervasive. Many of the Stargate editors have left simply in disgust and I suspect this is true for other series as well.

Quoting phoebe ayers &lt;phoebe.wiki(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: Yes, at this point inclusionism is dead and eventualism is a heresy. If enough editors try and get WP:EPISODE's guideline status removed then one could go DRV all of these. I'm about to go on vacation and haven't been willing to attempt to do so in the past because of lack of success but if enough people actually agree with me there's no need not to try. This is really destroying a lot of content and the GFDL issue pointed out by Derksen doesn't help matters at all (although that's more easily corretable)

On Dec 20, 2007 12:14 PM, Bryan Derksen &lt;bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca&gt; wrote: The fuck? I find it absolutely crazy how some deletionists are taking deletionism far beyond what many original deletionists ever envisioned. I see no reason at all why we cannot have articles on episodes of notable television shows, provided they are referenced and contain more information than can be gleaned from a [[List of X episodes]]. This is completely insane and fucktarded - episodes of TV shows are not inherently non-notable. Johnleemk

On 20/12/2007, Ken Arromdee &lt;arromdee(a)rahul.net&gt; wrote: Yes, but will Knols with spoilers rate higher than ones without? - d.

On 12/20/07, geni &lt;geniice(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: People who do contribute there will do so mostly because it's something other than Wikipedia, rather than due to any favorable differences in structure or policy. The knol is always grassier on the other side of the motorcade. —C.W.

joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu wrote: I've chipped in too now, for folks who want a direct link it's at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Television_episodes#Is_there_any_actual_consensus_for_this_guideline_at_all.3F>. I'm of two minds here whether I should start actually reverting and restoring some of the more obviously wrong-headed deletions that have already been done; on the one hand of course revert-warring is bad, but on the other hand I'm worried about the fait accompli gambit that appears to be in play here. Really, this is a stupid overreach of notability-mongering. Any given random episode of a show like Scrubs has been seen by millions of people and is going to be available in DVD box-sets for years and years to come, that _alone_ puts it above 90% of the articles we have about books or wee little towns or dead congressmen or what have you. We've got articles on hundreds of asteroids that are known only by a few orbital parameters in a catalogue someplace and there's nary a complaint. I'm extremely annoyed.

On 12/21/07, Nathan Awrich &lt;nawrich(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Well, that's about the worst example you could give, because Buffy *does* get scholarly treatment. But anyway. There's something very misguided going on here, perhaps as the result of rather ugly notability guidelines being treated as axioms on which to construct further guidelines. Does anyone really think it's a good idea that *some* episodes of a given series have articles but not *all* of them? Do we really think that it's smart to have articles about the "notable" episodes 3, 4, 8, and 11 of season 2 of whatever series, but not the rest? Would any "real" encyclopaedia do this? Personally, I think we have often gone too far with details on individual episodes of shows (particularly unscripted shows, such as big brother, or game shows). But the answer isn't to chop all the information altogether. The answer is restraint: a short article (or paragraph in a list article) with the key information about the episode, without the cruft. Summarise the plot. Don't give us a blow-by-blow description. Tell us what makes it different from other episodes. Don't give us pointless trivia. But no, restraint, judgment and good taste don't often figure in discussions of our treatment of popular culture. Steve

Nathan Awrich wrote: You're holding the subject area to ludicrously inappropriate standards. "Reliable sources" are not one-size-fits-all; what's a "reliable source" for an article about a blood protein is completely different from what's a "reliable source" for a sports figure or a TV show or a medieval monk. This sort of robotic following of guidelines outside their areas of applicability as if they were rigid laws is the basic cause of the problem here. This is a fully volunteer project. If you tell people they aren't allowed to work on the areas that interest them, they're just going to go away. If you don't want to write more than one article on a show, then don't - choose some subject that you're more interested in. But don't tell other people where they should be putting their own efforts. There's an article for every named crater on the Moon. How do you think it would go over if I went to WikiProject Moon and told them "I'm not a selenologist or anything but I've decided this subject's only worth one article of coverage, I'm going to merge these all into [[Craters on the Moon]] per the WP:CRATERSARENTINTERESTING guideline you've never heard of before. You're not allowed to revert me until you can overturn it"? More importantly, why on Earth would I do that in the first place? How does it _hurt_ Wikipedia to have such extensive coverage?

On 21/12/2007, Todd Allen &lt;toddmallen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: However. When it is possible to have a complete set, completing the set has value. We have EVERY census location in the US. EVERY SINGLE ONE. The "encyclo-" bit means covering the lot. When simplifying as much as possible, take care not to go simpler. - d.

On Dec 21, 2007 2:04 PM, Andrew Gray &lt;shimgray(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: For some reason this reminds me a lot of the [[interesting number]] paradox - let's say certain numbers are interesting (whatever that means - you could use "notable" too!), and certain numbers aren't. But in that case, is it not the case that one interesting aspect of the uninteresting numbers is that they are uninteresting? Johnleemk

It's not just having a complete set--though that surely matters. (We can have a complete set by other means too, such as combination articles with enough information about the individual parts). It's also about consistency--the particular items kept are not necessarily the most important of them--our precision of deciding at AfD is nowhere near that good, and will never be while we refuse to recognize precedent. Lack of consistency makes us look incompetent to do the real work of building a good encyclopedia. Even more, it's about the practical operation of WP. The work of arguing each individual article is excessive. It's particularly hard to defend under the current system, for it's much easier to nominate and say all of this needs to be sourced, than to defend, and source all of it, while indefinitely repeated AfDs are accepted until an article is finally deleted. We could save all this trouble, and all this conflict, and have time for writing and improving articles, and stay on better terms with each other, if we accepted the notability of these sorts of articles. But as we do that, we should also accept the lack of nobility of other sorts of articles. (baring special individual circumstances). We do that with such things as bus stations, and elementary schools. Think if we had to delete each article on an elementary school at AfD rather than Prod! What we did is simple clear distinctions, adopted by true gneral consensus, not vague general rules that have to be individually interpreted for each of the 2 or 3 thousand articles a day. That, and mutual tolerance. I'll accept your computer games, if you accept my theologians. On 12/21/07, Steve Bennett &lt;stevagewp(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.

On Fri, 21 Dec 2007, David Goodman wrote: You know, I could say the same about spoiler tags--spoiler tagging all spoilers for consistency is better even if it does tag some plot sections that you can already tell contain spoilers. In fact, I did say that. Nobody cared. I could say that about spoiler tags too. I think this episode deletionism pretty much proves that removal of spoiler tags--and the particular ways the system was gamed in order to do it--was far from unique. Of course you need to look back further than spoiler tags for this. Webcomic deletion has a lot in common with episode deletion too. Sure, a lot of those webcomic articles did deserve deletion, but that was simply because indiscriminate deletion will always catch some that really deserve it.

Andrew Gray wrote: The trouble is deciding which way to tip. In the Farscape case, we had articles on every fictional species that appeared in more than one or two episodes. Then a low-profile AfD managed to slip in and delete the article on one of the more prominent members, and after that it was a case of "why do we have articles on all these minor species when we don't have this prominent one?" We went from 95% to 0. That's the wrong direction for an encyclopedia whose goal is comprehensiveness to be going in.

On 21/12/2007, Todd Allen &lt;toddmallen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: You have mischaracterised this issue as binary: your standards or no standards at all. No one has suggested we have an article on every living person in the world (a problem for reliable sources, surely?) To use All Music Guide or tv.com as a source in a band or television episode article would not be replication - the information presented by those sites and the information presented by Wikipedia is completely different. Some information those sites contain will necessarily be excluded from Wikipedia and some information we contain will be excluded from their sites. The information shared between both will be presented in a different ways. -- Oldak Quill (oldakquill(a)gmail.com)

On 12/21/07, Steve Bennett &lt;stevagewp(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I think it is a clear problem with some of the people merging/redirecting articles that they do *not* have any requisite ability to judge accurately whether a good article could be written about that particular episode. In this they are not infact accurately reflecting the guideline, but infact fail to do so miserably. -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]

Nathan Awrich wrote: Excuse me, but "glazed-over eyeballs?" These are our readers and our editors we're talking about. Please refrain from dismissing their interests as unimportant because you don't share them. It would be just as inappropriate to refer to the authors and users of our sports-related articles as "overmuscled jocks", or our politician-related articles as "politics weenies", or whatever other derogatory characterization one might come up with. If you don't find a subject area interesting to you, just _leave it alone_. I expect every one of them has a DVD with a commentary track available, for starters. A quick Google search also turns up <http://www.tv.com/buffy-the-vampire-slayer/show/10/summary.html>, <http://www.buffyguide.com/>, <http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/buffy/>, <http://www.buffyworld.com/>, and <http://chosentwo.com/buffy/> on the first page of results. Some of these may not be as useful as others but I have a hard time believing that _none_ of them are reliable sources. Unless you meant perhaps peer-reviewed journal articles? That doesn't seem to be the case over on the talk page of WP:EPISODE. So if the community in general hasn't approving of the guideline that was used as justification for deleting them, they can be deleted, but they can't be undeleted until everyone agrees? Double standard, no thanks. The "default" position should be to refrain from deleting when in doubt.

All right. I'm sorry if the 'glazed over eyeballs' came across as insulting to TV-watchers. I used to watch Buffy, and my eyeballs glazed over :-P On the subject: You both make a persuasive argument. I don't think every episode of every TV show is de facto notable for inclusion, and I also don't think we can base a guideline of notability on something like Nielsen ratings (i.e. this show is more popular than X, therefore it should be included). The top of that notability guideline is definitely in need of some rehabilitation, but lower down there is a link to a great essay from Uncle G: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Uncle_G/On_notability If the core of notability is non-trivial coverage in reliable secondary sources (not just peer reviewed journals) then most episodes of most TV shows will fail that guideline, as will most movies and most novels. And yet, even the most obscure TV shows and episodes have fans who will want to have articles about their favorite characters, shows and episodes. There is an argument to preserving the totality of the output of popular culture for research or other posterity-related purposes, but that conflicts directly with Wikipedia's notability guideline. Holding on to an enormous collection of NN data is not the mission. Maybe the solution is a WikiTV project, and listification of all episodes with wikilinks to related WikiTV articles? Then the project can have its own inclusion mission and guidelines, perhaps along the lines of all plot summaries are presumed to be accurate unless contradicted by a secondary source and all episodes of all TV shows are allowed. Hopefully less 'radically off-base', Nathan

On Dec 21, 2007 1:07 PM, David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Wholly agreed. Additionally, most such articles exist as break-outs from an article that nobody is arguing should be deleted. Breaking out detail that would make the primary article unwieldy is a long accepted Wikipedia practise. Notability is the attempt to provide solid rules for deletion because of the criticism that 'non-notable' is subjective. However, consistent subjectivity is still subjective, no matter how consistent it is. Notability is also not well derived from core policy, IMO. -Matt

On 21/12/2007, Nathan Awrich &lt;nawrich(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: If by "technical reason" you mean something to do with the code behind the site, no, not at all. Subpages work, we just made the choice a long time ago not to use them. A subpage is really just a page with a slash in the title, the fact that's it's a subpage only causes a few very minor changes in how things work. If a subject is worth a subarticle, it's worth an article, IMHO, I don't really see how having a slash in the name makes a big enough difference.

On Dec 22, 2007 12:13 AM, David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Indeed. What we didn't have in those days though, was transclusion. An interesting idea would perhaps be to transclude smaller grain portions of an agglomerated article into it. Not sure if that is a wise idea or not. -- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]

On 21/12/2007, Nathan Awrich &lt;nawrich(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I think the infoboxes help a lot there. A lot of them include episode numbers, links to previous and next episodes, etc, which make it quite clear that they are just one of many.

On Fri, 21 Dec 2007, Bryan Derksen wrote: These weren't deletes, they were merges. Perhaps we should recognize that merges can be de-facto deletes and start treating them as such.

On Dec 22, 2007 1:57 PM, Ken Arromdee &lt;arromdee(a)rahul.net&gt; wrote: Merges *cannot* be de-facto deletes very easily. There's a significant question as to whether these can be done without violating the GFDL. -- Sincerely, Ral315 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ral315

As an update for anyone who still cares, there is substantial agreement on the talk page of the guideline that it's perfectly fine. I think the subject of notability for episode articles is well worth discussing, but I lack the interest or energy to be the one doing the brunt of discussion (it's why I burnt out in the first place). If we're ever going to achieve a new consensus on this, now seems as good a time as any. Johnleemk

Bryan Derksen wrote: The purpose of this campaign is great, and I support it whoheartedly, but the timing at the beginning of a holiday period may have been a strategic error. Ec

On 12/24/07, Bryan Derksen &lt;bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca&gt; wrote: Not really. Consensus is a very loose concept. Previous "consensuses" have been struck down on the basis that not enough people were involved (notably, the merger of WP:V, WP:RS etc) It wouldn't be unreasonable to challenge the consensus later on, if indeed not many people were involved. Steve

That is actually not all that uncommon for these types of situations - similar things happen in nationalism disputes. Rather than making the difficult content dispute decisions (which isn't their place) they admonish editors to work constructively and sometimes address conduct issues if necessary. They didn't accept this case to deal with the underlying content dispute, and the decision principles cover the conduct that was objectionable which was the basis of 'cert' here. Generally, there is no need to pause attempts to build consensus in a content dispute during an ArbCom case, as long as it is done without exacerbating the conduct and policy issues being addressed by Arbs. On Dec 28, 2007 12:28 PM, Majdan, Nik &lt;nmajdan(a)aplmc.com&gt; wrote:

On Dec 28, 2007 9:49 AM, Majdan, Nik &lt;nmajdan(a)aplmc.com&gt; wrote: Well, we're not (although some parallels have been drawn). We're essentially the replacement for Jimbo's former role as the final arbiter of user conduct, especially when it comes to blocking/banning. Speaking personally, I feel we are not equipped to make such decisions, both in terms of manpower and in terms of expertise. While I obviously can't breach the confidentiality of our internal deliberations nor speak for other arbitrators, if an arbcom decision isn't as decisive as hoped, good odds are that either a) We believe we do not have jurisdiction over the issue (either unanimously or by majority), or b) No decisive action had a majority (i.e. we disagreed too much to come to a resolution), or c) We had absolutely no idea what to do about the situation. Arbcom is a committee, and committees by their very nature are not very decisive bodies, since a majority of the committee has to agree on any decision made. Furthermore, even though our rules say that a bare majority is sufficient, in practise we have preferred rough consensus over majority; very few rulings have been reached that are strongly opposed by a substantial minority of the arbcom. I hope this helps a little, -Matt

It's really not fair to say that such users are unable to work together. TTN, everyone, and myself, have continued to follow advice about making more time for discussion and trying to help users understand why these articles are being removed, rather than just forcing the issue. This is one reason I didn't think the case needed to be accepted. The real reason this was an arbcom case was because of the very large amount of articles that were being redirected, and that resulting in a lot of different people getting mad. That's very different than trying different means of resolving the dispute. This situation is far from hopeless, and despite the impressions you might have gotten, no one wants to be at each other's throats. -- Ned Scott On Dec 28, 2007, at 10:28 AM, Majdan, Nik wrote:

I do not believe arbcom has truly contributed to the resolution of this dispute. All they are willing to say is wishing the people work together - of which a lack of it was the complaint. You are right Arbcom wont rule on actual content but surely taking action against speedy mass removal of content would only be sane. By reviewing 20 December contribution of TTN: I see TTN revert waring to remove content: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kracko&action=history I see TTN, Jack Merridew, sgeureka and perhaps other faces that participated in the RFAR (I didn't look) piling up their vote on the AfD: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Recurring_weap… I see a problem there! Disruption! Arbcom isn't willing to say a thing. Failing to contribute to dispute resolution is a failure of Arbcom in this case. Arbcom hasn't even taken measures compelling people to work together. I'll just watch the fire works now on. The community has continued to ignore the problem. - White Cat On Dec 29, 2007 2:37 AM, David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

While I am hopping that it is possible to better explain the rationale for those who want to trim some of these articles down, I'm also saying when we fail to do that we can't enforce the view by edit waring or by force. --Ned Scott On Dec 29, 2007, at 4:19 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

On Sat, 29 Dec 2007, David Goodman wrote: Making thousands of de-facto deletions, though, means it has *already* escalated out of control.

Well, speaking as devil's advocate - what you're really saying is that they should be recreated. And perhaps before taking the step of recreation, it should established that these articles ought to exist in the first place.

You're welcome to try, but I'm not sure how successful that will be for -all- of them. You can't blindly defend all episode articles and expect them to all have the same conditions. Personally, I do think we are in a time where real-world information is growing about entertainment, and we will get more real-world information about TV shows. But even then, it doesn't always mean that information is best represented in a per-episode format. For example, if that information can apply to more than one episode, or is more about a character than a specific episode, etc. Still, that's not to say that it isn't possible. The series of The Simpsons episode articles continue to surprise me. I think they have something like 60 GA articles, and a hand full of FAs. However, even if every episode of a show has shown reasonable potential, that doesn't always mean that the existing summary is even worth saving. Some of them are nothing more than a few sentences that are copied off the List_of article. Recently, since I've become more familiar with moving stuff over to external wikis (mainly Wikia), I've realized there should be extra care taken when you have something that people have worked on for a while. There really isn't any reason why we can't have a place for everything. (and in a perfect world, the Wikimedia Foundation would have some kind of fiction-wiki, given how high-traffic those articles are.) When I come across articles that have a reasonable number of edits, and good quality summaries, I myself will not take those to AfD (unless a total transwiki, with article history, is possible and done). If you want to establish that a group of articles should remain, then the best way to do that is to show reasonable potential for real-world information that would justify those articles. The "cabal" is only trying to improve our coverage on fiction, rather than being buried under a sea of summary that does a poor job compared to the show itself. -- Ned Scott On Dec 29, 2007, at 8:27 PM, David Goodman wrote:

Considering our recent pleasant interactions, I'm not sure what has caused you to become so harsh. For starters, I am not "advertising" anything, I'm noting another GFDL wiki site that the community can use as a tool. Right now I'm formatting a WikiProject page for transwiki'ing articles to wikis outside of the Foundation wikis, and we just learned on [[WT:FICT]] that http://annex.wikia.com now allows any user to import articles, not just admins (this means full article histories can easily be copied off-wiki). These are great resources, and I won't hesitate to tell everyone I can about them. And this isn't just limited to Wikia; there's a ton of wikis and wiki farms out there that are also great resources. If you wish to make nothing but bad-faith assumptions about TTN, that's between you and him. If his behavior needs further evaluation, then so be it, but everyone involved is making an effort to not use strong-arm tactics, and instead use discussion. People are redirecting/merging/deleting pages because the community at large does not believe the content to be encyclopedic. I know you disagree with that, but that is the way things currently are. How we handle the situation is what is being discussed, and what amount of plot summary we should include, and how we organize that information, etc. Some episode articles are justified, others are not, but there is no blanket "all episodes should be kept/deleted". If you want to be pessimistic about this, and treat it like a war to be fought, then we will just be repeating the past. -- Ned Scott On Dec 29, 2007, at 10:47 PM, White Cat wrote:

I have never defended "all" episode articles. Don't know anyone who has. Some of them are really minor and well worth merging; one of the factors is the importance of t he show. I usually word it as defending the defensible ones, I see I forgot he adjective this time. And I agree with you that they do not necessarily need separate articles. It depends on the importance and the amount of material available; both real-world, and plot worth summarizing. And I agree with including as much important real-world information as we can get, and, like you, I do expect to see more--though it typically takes a year or two for academic work to be published. But the plot and character and setting content is equally important. Why should we look for another wiki? fiction is important, and plot is after all the basis of it. A fiction is fundamentally a story. I think in wanting appropriately full inclusion of this material I share the consensus of ordinary wpedians, as will be confirmed when we get a broad enough forum. But if not, not. DGG On 12/30/07, Ned Scott &lt;ned(a)nedscott.com&gt; wrote: -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG

I think the disagreement is where appropriate ends. Do we toss out our notability and reliable sourcing guidelines in order to have complete sets of articles? This morning I thought about it this way: When you hear of a project that has a complete description of every episode of every TV show, all significant (and most insignificant) characters, as well as all associated trivia - do you think Wikipedia, or something else? If that vision brings to mind Wikipedia for you, then you have a very different idea of accumulating the knowledge of humanity for open access than I do. Maybe I'm way out in left field about this, but I think at the most we should include general descriptions of the most popular shows (if we have to, and if it meets all of our other guidelines). If people want to elaborate on individual episodes of merit (argh) then they should do it like this: [[24_(TV_Show)/Episodes/The_World_is_Saved_part_909349]] so each episode does not get its individual article, and can not be separated from the main show. This also makes it easier to manage each show because you can just do an index of the directory 24_TV_show/Episodes/ rather than searching and making sure the same episodes aren't listed under different names, etc. Nathan

So if we toss out notability, I can have a bio if I can prove I exist through a reliable source? On Dec 30, 2007 3:28 PM, David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

Sure, I get a few hits. But I think my bio will say I am superman and Darth Vader, because with 100 million new frivolous articles - who would notice? On Dec 30, 2007 3:40 PM, David Gerard &lt;dgerard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

You've just made a huge load of strawman arguments and misleading statements that border on outright lies of what actually has happened. I recall you arguing passionately to save a recap episode that would never have any information to say about it. I remember you insisting that we have separate articles for -the same character- of that same show. I remember those of us on the talk page continually disproving your highly illogical and flawed viewpoint regarding notability, organization, and the amount of reasonable plot summary. You haven't changed in almost two years since then. If someone ever cited a guideline, you would attack that guideline. If we established a consensus, you would ignore the arguments and instead try to mislead others into joining the debate with strawman arguments. How can you expect anyone, on either side of this debate, to have any respect for your views when you disrespect us with this rubbish? --Ned Scott On Dec 31, 2007, at 5:41 AM, White Cat wrote:

On Sunday 30 December 2007 14:35, Nathan wrote: Certainly. Everything that has a verifiable existence is article-worthy. -- Kurt Weber &lt;kmw(a)armory.com&gt;

On Monday 31 December 2007 01:35, Todd Allen wrote: Of course. I don't see why not. The whole point of an encyclopedia is to include the sum of all human knowledge; while that goal may not be completely attainable, that's no reason to try to come as close as possible. Ya gotta try! -- Kurt Weber &lt;kmw(a)armory.com&gt;

On 12/31/07, Todd Allen &lt;toddmallen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: By a simple cost/benefit analysis, no. The benefit is minute. The cost is small, but real, and there is a risk of misuse of these types of articles. Steve

On Sun, 2008-01-06 at 21:21 -0600, Kurt Maxwell Weber wrote: I think he meant his own personal car, not the type/model. Ian [[User:Poeloq]]

That was the old structure of wikipedia. in 2002 I think. Bad idea. - White Cat On Dec 30, 2007 10:25 PM, Nathan &lt;nawrich(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions..." How true, how true. - White Cat On Dec 31, 2007 6:51 PM, Ken Arromdee &lt;arromdee(a)rahul.net&gt; wrote:

(Ignore this - test email) -----Original Message----- From: wikien-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ned Scott Sent: Friday, December 28, 2007 11:19 PM To: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WP:EPISODE It's really not fair to say that such users are unable to work together. TTN, everyone, and myself, have continued to follow advice about making more time for discussion and trying to help users understand why these articles are being removed, rather than just forcing the issue. This is one reason I didn't think the case needed to be accepted. The real reason this was an arbcom case was because of the very large amount of articles that were being redirected, and that resulting in a lot of different people getting mad. That's very different than trying different means of resolving the dispute. This situation is far from hopeless, and despite the impressions you might have gotten, no one wants to be at each other's throats. -- Ned Scott On Dec 28, 2007, at 10:28 AM, Majdan, Nik wrote: _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On 21/12/2007, Andrew Gray &lt;shimgray(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Yeah, their templates got zapped. Templates that pretend to be body text are rather susceptible to abuse and off-watchlist article changing, and have been used that way in the past. There's as yet no way to say "this template can only go in these articles." - d.

The great value of these articles to me is hat I will typically not have seen a show, but it will be discussed in something I read or in conversation. To avoid appearing like a totally out-of-touch archaic idiot, I then want to find out something. (Thought the specific topics will vary, this is one key reason why people read encyclopedias, to find out the basics about things they are not familiar with. I want to find out about the basics; the plot, the characters, the setting, what films or whatever which I might have seen that do refer to it, what it might refer to that I do know about, the sort of basically trivial details or gags that people talk about. These are all things that the guidelines cut back on sharply. Of course, I do want to find out about them in a manner I can understand--if the article on a episode goes frame by frame by line through every detail, assuming that I can put everything in place, I generally can't follow it. That's the difference between a general encyclopedia like WP and a specialized fan site--but I need much more than the sentence or two about each episode that the plot summaries are now being reduced to. And I usually can follow complicated series plots better from articles about the characters than about each episode in sequence--but those article are usually now rejected. And all of this will hold with respect to each form of art to those who are not experts in it. On 12/21/07, Bryan Derksen &lt;bryan.derksen(a)shaw.ca&gt; wrote: -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.

On Dec 21, 2007 11:51 AM, Todd Allen &lt;toddmallen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Asteroids have excellent secondary sources - there's just usally not a ton of information on them, although for any number'd asteroid most of the important information is generally known. I mean, please don't pick on asteroids - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/WilyD :( WilyD

Bryan Derksen wrote: I believe you misunderstood "secondary sources or not". That's likely my fault for failing to word my point clearly. What I mean is, whether an article is standalone, merged, or removed should hinge on one question-"How much secondary source material is available on this subject?" If the answer is "plenty", we can write a comprehensive article, and should have one. If the answer is "a little", we should find a suitable parent article. If the answer is "none or namedrops/entries in directories only", it may or may not merit mention in a parent article, but definitely shouldn't be standalone.

joshua.zelinsky(a)yale.edu wrote: The majority of us are not interested enough in these comics or TV series to become involved in the disputes. We will happily refer to the articles to give us background when an allusion arises elsewhere, but we are not about to edit there when we have nothing to offer but our ignorance. And spending my time there to engage in dramatic battle with others who are even more ignorant about the subject seems like an awful waste of that time. The silent majority (to use a familiar cliché) is content to let those interested in comics and TV to go ahead and write about their favorite subjects. At least that means they are wasting somebody else's time. ;-) In my moments of despair, I go so far as to speculate that we may be lacking good leadership. Ec

Victory goes to the watchful and persistent. The rule about Canvassing prohibits notifying people who are likely to share one's views,so the AfD process can easily be manipulated by even small cabals. It applies off-WP too, so , to avoid violating it, i will simply mention there are multiple discussions at AFD, as well as WP:FICTION, WP:EPISODE, and every other possibly relevant policy page, without explicitly saying which way I think the debate should go. Obviously, if only the Farscape people turn out for Farscape, and similarly others for their own favorites only, those who dislike all comics pages will likely be in the majority. If people realise that WP is made up of many small groups of hobbyists, then those who like one type of specialised article may realise they should support others as well. Its not just comics. Similar attacks have been made on video games and even conventional novels. Similar ones are made for detailed articles about non-fiction also: hadith, verses of the bible, members of royal families. None of us cares about every one of them. But it does not take much effort to give support at AfD for things that look support-worthy. If everyone who cares about the sort of detailed content which is at the heart of WP were to show up there occasionally, and join some discussions about things where they can be a truly neutral party, those who want to delete all such content--and it's much the same group for all of these sorts of articles--might find they do not represent the consensus. Or they still might. It's not my decision. On 12/20/07, Ray Saintonge &lt;saintonge(a)telus.net&gt; wrote: -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.

On 12/17/07, Omegatron &lt;omegatron+wikienl(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: The idea of paid editing has been discussed several times, and there is a good argument that it's not desirable to pay editors to write for Wikipedia, even if it were possible. People approach tasks very differently if they are rewarded than if they are not. And then of course, every system that uses metrics to determine rewards can, and most certainly will, be gamed. Then the game will overwhelm the original goal. Steve

On 14/12/2007, Will Beback &lt;will.beback.1(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: The text from the knol could then be copied back into Wikipedia (assuming licences still compatiable) and become a viscous circle. Stwalkerster

On 16/12/2007, Omegatron &lt;omegatron+wikienl(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Referencing circles, however, are not, and lead to slight embarrassment all around when we find a Wikipedia article references a newspaper article that got its info from an earlier version of the same Wikipedia article ;-) - d.

On 12/14/07, Simon Walker &lt;stwalkerster(a)googlemail.com&gt; wrote: This is how fiction become ubiquitous fact. Which crossed the road first, the chicken or the egg? —C.W.

That's the real world. On any subject about which contradictory views are possible, they are present. There will be a place for those information sources attempting to provide a reliable synthesis. The goal is to make WP the source which can be shown to be the most reliable at it, and the WP hypothesis is that this can be done by collaborative editing. On 12/14/07, cohesion &lt;cohesion(a)sleepyhead.org&gt; wrote: -- David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.