On 6/26/07, SonOfYoungwood(a)aol.com <SonOfYoungwood(a)aol.com> wrote:
In a message dated 6/26/2007 1:52:30 PM Central Daylight Time,
cunctator(a)gmail.com writes:
Sometimes, but not always. The important thing to recognize is if a
work of fiction can be judged notable then it shouldn't be necessary
for every element to be discussed outside before its inclusion in
Wikipedia.
In other words, to write about Law and Order episodes you should have
to demonstrate that the series is notable. Then you can write about
individual episodes and characters as long as you cite the episodes
themselves.
That's a sufficient and reasonable notability policy that excludes
nonsense material from Wikipedia without unnecessarily removing useful
information from Wikipedia or burdening interested editors with the
fear that their work will be deleted by someone with an axe to grind
about how lame television, comic books, or video games are.
With those Law and Order episodes, however, there is probably sufficient
secondary sources (ratings, criticism/reviews, etc). The main problem at hand,
like Aldebaer said, are little articles on every aspect of fiction, and even
giant lists of minor characters or places - stuff that cannot even get a single
ounce of secondary coverage and is not necessary for a general understanding
otherwise.
There are certainly not sufficient secondary sources to support every
element of the episode / character entries which are based primarily
on the primary sources. For example, take a look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Goren.
Is this an irresponsible article of fancruft? I certainly don't think
so. As an infrequent viewer of the series, I found it profoundly
helpful. Note that the majority of the sources are from episodes. Some
are what may be considered secondary material (interviews on season
DVDs) but I could see people claiming that doesn't count as secondary
material either.