Todd Allen wrote:
On Wed, Mar 12, 2008 at 10:22 PM, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
in fact, there are usually review sources discussing each individual episode. True, only some of them are the conventional published sources that we use. What we need for both the conventional and the nonconventional is editors prepared to track these down, and add them to articles.
We should be writing an encyclopedia such that someone who is friends with a fan of a series, can learn enough from WP to be able to understand their interests and understand their conversation about the events and motivations of the individual episodes of the series--not the way a true fan would, but at least a casually interested other. that a parent, for example, could understand what a child was talking about without having to watch all the childrens' series. That's part of the very purpose of a general encyclopedia--the applicability to real life, not just background for the academic study of things.
And if such sourcing does exist, -and is reliable- (e.g., not fansites, blogs, forums, etc.), that's well and good. But let's make sure we don't lose sight of the reliability requirements here. What we should avoid is "I watched the series and saw that..." being used to support a full article. We can do some very basic, indisputable things from primary sources only, but the meat of an article should come from secondary, independent, reliable sources. If we can't do that, because such sources aren't in existence, we shouldn't have a full article, just a list entry. I applaud people who find sources, usual or unusual, so long as they're reliable.
There is no algorithm for determining the reliability of a source. David's example of a valid episode summary was good. We are not looking for a series of academic treatises about the significance of each episode of "Lost". If a viewer misses an episode he will feel quite lost himself. Having a good summary available will help keep him in the loop.
Ec