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 bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Nathan Awrich wrote:
I think there is a specific standard for the notability of fiction for good reason. I'm not sure that having been seen by millions of glazer over eyeballs is necessarily enough for something to be notable
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_.
- it
may be, but I would argue that there have been tons of episodes of tons of TV shows and in 5 years no one will remember 99 percent of them, let alone cite them for anything. Additionally, they present clear RS problems - how often do reliable sources publish a treatment of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode?
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?
I wouldn't go undeleting them unless you first get approval on policy changes. I'm sure the fan-types will support you, but the community in general seems to be leaning away from your position.
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.
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