In a message dated 6/26/2007 1:52:30 PM Central Daylight Time, cunctator@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.
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