User:Masem/1

RFCpolicy | section=RfC: Are non-notable spinouts of fictional elements appropriate !! reason=Are non-notable spinouts of fictional elements from an article on a work of fictional appropriate !! time=14:33, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

There is currently strong debate over the concept of spinouts (per WP:SPINOUT) from articles on works of fiction that describe one or more fictional elements (characters, setting, etc.) without having secondary sources. This is likely a crux of the "inclusionist vs deletionist" issue that has been going on for some time, and achieving some consensus on it may help to defuse this a bit.

It is clear that there is a push to limit large, non-notable coverage of works of fiction, but there is a balance between having no coverage at all and some coverage without going into the excessive details. See, for example, the reduction of the Pokemon lists, the general results from the recent ARbCom cases on Episodes and Characters, and the like. It should be noted that encouraged use of GFDL wikis can help offset these issues.

There are several relevant policies:
 * Notability states that significant coverage in secondary sources should be present for a topic to be notable. One can argue the topic refers to the fictional element or grouping directly, one can argue the topic is the work of fiction.  Also, Notability does distinguish between topic and article, but does not explicitly state notability applies to each article.
 * WP is not plot summaries states that articles that are only plot summaries are discouraged; they should have real-world coverage along with concise plot details
 * WP is not paper states that WP is not bound by usual limits of paper encyclopedias