Anthony wrote:
On 7/21/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
Steve Bennett wrote:
On 7/21/06, Bryan Derksen bryan.derksen@shaw.ca wrote:
For quite a while now I've been using Wikipedia first before IMDB when I want to know whether a movie or TV show is worth watching, a synopsis is rather important in that regard.
No one, but no one, is claiming that synopsises of TV shows are fancruft.
Anthony apparently does. Here's what he wrote in the email this was a response to:
I think summarizing something directly (e.g. using a Friends episode as a source for facts about itself) is, by its very definition, original research. The Friends episode isn't even a primary source in this case - the Friends episode is the subject, and the summary would be the primary source.
There are a number of reasons to do this. One is that it helps lessen the amount of "fancruft".
I was mainly disagreeing with the notion that the episode itself isn't an acceptable source for a description of the episode, but this other notion about the summary being fancruft seems implied as well.
*Some* synopses of TV shows are what I think Jimbo is referring to when he uses the term "fancruft". *Some* aren't. One (reasonable, in my opinion) way to draw the line is whether or not another respectable source has talked about the episode.
If we waited for these books to be published we would never be up to date. At best a book of the episodes will be published at the end of the season. One important question is what does the reader want. He may be sitting with a group of friends talking about a favorite TV programme, and as a result want to settle an argument about some particular episode. He's not looking for an academic thesis about the show; he just wants to check out some basic facts. He doesn't give a tinker's dam about where WE got the information from the episode itself or a book about it. If he feels that our information is accurate he's happy.
This goes for Shakespeare as well as for Sopranos (*). Both can be the subject of perfectly acceptable scholarly research. But Wikipedians shouldn't be the ones doing the research, Wikipedians should be making an article which organizes the research done by others.
(*) I doubt you'd find a published work of Shakespeare that *hasn't* been examined by multiple other sources, though.
That's because they've had 400 years to do it.
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