User:Masem/rfc-tv

This is only a summary to date of what I believe I am reading from all the various comments on the RFC and how I think they fit in to fill a better approach to dealing with television episodes and notability. This should not be taken as the final consensus on the issue, but I would like to see if the approaches I describe are agreeable with others, or if we are radically missing something here.

Part of what makes this RFC difficult is that people have strong feelings against what TTN and others are doing to the episode articles, and I can certainly understand that point. However, for purposes of trying what we do with episode articles in the future, I ask that people try to ignore TTN's effect on this.

First, the answers to the specific questions on the RFC:
 * Are episodes of a notable TV show automatically notable? - This seems to be a strong "NO". (it's not unanimous however)
 * Is a plot + infobox sufficient for an episode article? - This also seems to be a "NO". (again, not unanimous)

Now, part of the people that have responded positively to these questions have pointed out that accurately, there are numerous articles that exist that are simply plot summaries, including those from popular shows. I am considering this as a systematic bias and have a suggested route for dealing with it, such that every TV series is given the same fair treatment based on the available sources to draw from. I know that won't satisfy everyone that is in this group but I'm trying to make a compromise here.

So, given this, we are back at saying that a television episode must demonstrate notability to have it's own article.

Now, there's three ideas here to consider:
 * 1) What is episode notability?  This is still a question that is being asked over at Television episodes/Proposed Objective Criteria.  While that discussion is still in progress, the summary here to date is that: notability for an episode is (as expected from WP:N) when an episode is discussed extensively in reliable third-party sources.  This likely is the case (aka "probably notable") when an episode has won a major award from a notable organization, has had some unusual impact in the real world (Pokemon seizure), or has a strong influence on subsequent works ("classics", as one editor put it), but in all these cases, these have to still be backed by reliable third-party sources.  Note that ratings and viewership, as well as having developer information, are argued to not be acceptable.  Again, these are not in stone, and discussion should continue on these. I also suggest making sure that with web-only sources, there is some identification of reliable sources from non-commercial entities that site somewhere between a personal blog and a magazine site (aka Television Without Pity is such an example).  Again we have yet to fully define episode notability so editors are still strongly encouraged to help with that process to make the distinction clearer.
 * 2) Based on discussions, it seems reasonable that we can allow for larger expansion of plot summary information within the episode list for a show, particularly if we break each season of a show onto its own page.  The season page does not have to demonstrate notability, being effectively, a list of episodes written as a summary style - however, there is a better likelihood that notable information may be found per season than per episode and thus, a better chance that notability can be demonstration, but for a list of episodes in a season notability is not required.  This doesn't mean we try to fit 1000 words of plot summary into an episode description, but we can add information that may not make the episode notable but that is sourced.  For example, being nominated, but not winning, an Emmy, a possible ratings impact, or the like.  Also, since the average show has plots that develop and are bookended by seasons, additional sections outside of the episode list can be added to describe the general plot trends, allowing the episodes to defer to those sections for the progression of such.  (eg "Bad Wolf" of the new Doctor Who, or the 3rd season of House MD where House is trying to select his new staff via a competition)   We can indicate guest stars as parenthetical additions after the character name, and so forth.  This allows us to bridge the issue of going into more detail than a typical current episode list allows over plot-summary only episode articles.  It was noted that The Enemy Within (Stargate SG-1) is an example of a larger, yet terse, plot summary that would be appropriate to fit into an episode list, but I would argue that even to help bridge the gap of this episode notability that a plot summary of the length in Deep Space Homer would be maybe the maximum limit.
 * 3) How to appropriately merge non-notable episode articles.  Obviously, not TTN's current approach, but we need something that clearly helps at each step of the way.  I propose that the following steps:
 * 4) * If you see a set of non-notable episode articles for a show, make sure to tag each one with notability and ideally leave a message on the show's page and likely existing "list of episodes" page. The editor that does this should judge how "active" the articles are and consider dropping a note at WP:TV if they are not very active.
 * 5) * After no less than a month, revisit the pages, and determine if progress has been made to improve notability:
 * 6) ** If it seems that there's a fair effort to improve all articles, do nothing
 * 7) ** If only a few articles seem to be improved, or no such efforts have been made, propose a merge request, again at each episode page, with a discussion on the main show main and list of episodes page (and WP:TV if not active). Merges do not have to be all or nothing: if a handful of articles are notable but others aren't, let those notable ones be and tackle only non-notable ones.
 * 8) *** If there is either clear consensus to merge, or no input at all (again, noting that WP:TV should be notified if the pages seem inactive), the merge can be performed. If there is no consensus, a larger audience should be brought in by asking for help at WP:TV to help decide.  If the consensus is against any merge, but you feel that they still need to be, you may consider other dispute resolutions processes such as the WP:MEDCAB to help ( I will note we are considering making a Fiction-related Noticeboard at WP:FICT to be an intermediate step between page/project level and WP-wide level, but at this time it is not set up).

To merge once determined the appropriate action.
 * 1) If the merge is a result of consensus, allow those involved in the articles to move content appropriately from the articles to be merge to the episode lists before performing redirection.
 * 2) Otherwise (or even in addition) Transwiki all pages to be merged to the Annex/Wikia (someone suggested creating a straight-forward television portal there for this purpose) so that their information is lost.
 * 3) As a courtesy to editors, provide a list on the talk page of the episode guide of versions of the last non-redirected edits of the TV show for each of the articles that are to be merged.
 * 4) Use the new ER to list entry redirection tag as to help identify the redirection as an episode-related one.  Note that within the episode list, the anchor element should be used to identify episode names so that the redirection can jump right to its entry in the episode list.

What this allows is that if a user feels they can add notability to an article, they have a way to resurrect the text without admin assistance and not necessarily having to understand how to access redirection text, and can work on improving it in their user space or where the article is located.

Now, assuming we can come to agreement on these aspects (notability, expanding episode coverage in episode lists, and how to merge episode articles appropriately), I suggest that we reactive the Episode Coverage task force of the WP:TV project to set out to review every television episode article to determine if it should be merged or not to episode lists, once these are established. Basically, if we are to do this, then:
 * 1) Given a certain date after all above conditions are met, we start a 3 month period during which we strongly encourage editors to bring episode articles in line with the established notability guidelines; during this time, no episode article should be put up for AfD, and discussions of merging from an editor not involved with a page should not happen (however, if editors want to voluntarily merge pages, great, let them do that).  This period will be announced as far as it can be so that people are aware of this grace period and the process that is occurring.
 * 2) In the 3rd month as part of this grace period, we will have editors voluntarily run through a series they are not involved with and, if any episode is deemed to fail notability, it should be tagged as such, with the series page and episode list page notified, and marked as such on the WP:TVE page.  This probably will take about a month to complete, such as to time with the end of the grace period.   (Dates when sweeping is completed for a series will be noted).
 * 3) In the 4th month and no less than a month after a series has been swept, any remaining non-notable episodes will be merged into an appropriate episode list, if they haven't already been done.  This will follow the same merge process outlined above (transwiki info, appropriate redirection, and a courtesy list of old articles) so that no information is deleted.  Any episode article that is not merged should be tagged with a special category (for the next step) to indicate they've been checked as such.
 * 4) Following this step, we should then have all episode articles either showing notability or merged into a list.  We can track new episode articles as they are created (they will lack the category above), and if they appear to have notability problems, we can then tag them that way and give them the time to develop the article further before worrying about merging it again.  This basically helps to keep things in check as we progress beyond this period, sort of a managed peer review with respect to notability.

I know this seems like a lot of work, but I think that once we complete this to bring all episode-related articles to the same level, maintenance will be much easier and we will likely never run into the same situation as TTN's edits has lead us to, at least with respect to television articles.

These solutions, I believe, help to compromise the many positions that I've seen taken on this page: we avoid deletion of content, help to maintain encyclopedic coverage of episodes, and yet still allow for a bit more expanded coverage of plot information and non-notable details when episodes aren't notable.