User:Ned Scott/FICT/Aug07


 * For the fiction style guidelines, see Manual of Style (writing about fiction).

From WP:NOT#IINFO:
 * Plot summaries. Wikipedia articles on works of fiction should contain real-world context and sourced analysis, offering detail on a work's achievements, impact or historical significance; such articles are not solely or overwhelmingly a summary of a work's plot. A plot summary may be appropriate as an aspect of a larger topic.

Fiction in Wikipedia

 * 1) Major characters and major treatments of such matters as places and concepts in a work of fiction are covered in the article on that work. If an encyclopedic treatment (a real world perspective backed by sources independent of the work) of a character causes the article on the work itself to become long, that character is given a main article.
 * 2) Minor characters and minor treatments of such matters as places and concepts in a work of fiction are merged with short descriptions into a "List of characters." This list resides in the article relating to the work itself, unless it becomes long, in which case a separate article for the list is created.
 * The difference between major and minor characters is intentionally vague; the main distinguishing criterion is how much nontrivial information is available on the character. Some works could plausibly have multiple major characters.
 * 1) It is useful to add redirects to the article page or list of minor characters, from listed items.
 * 2) Plot summaries are kept reasonably short, as the point of Wikipedia is to describe the works, not simply to summarize them. It is generally appropriate for a plot summary to remain part of the main article rather than standing alone as an article. In some cases, sub-articles and lists are created when the potential for an encyclopedic coverage is hindered by the recommended length guidelines for articles. Guidance and exercises appear below.

Examples
For examples of what Wikipedians consider "high quality" fiction articles, please see the lists of articles that have been rated as Good and Featureable quality. Other specific examples include:
 * Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala are major characters in the Star Wars films. They are discussed briefly in the Star Wars articles, but their own articles contain much more detailed information.
 * Harry Potter (character) is a major character in the Harry Potter series of novels. His own article was created in order to prevent the main Harry Potter article from becoming too long, though it still retains a short summary of his character.
 * Alyosha Karamazov is a major character from the novel The Brothers Karamazov. He is covered comprehensively in the Brothers Karamazov article, and the Alyosha Karamazov link redirects there for convenience.
 * Superman is universally well known and transcends the original work he appeared in, so he has his own article.
 * Horses of Middle-earth creates a single, substantial article out of a list of characters otherwise too insignificant for their own individual articles.
 * List of Mavericks provides information on minor characters in the Mega Man X series of video games who have some background, but lack sufficient relevance to the overall plot.
 * The 1st Battle of Sarapin was an article that summarized a portion of the plot for the game Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. Relevant information was merged into the plot synopsis of the Galactic Battlegrounds article, and the 1st Battle of Sarapin link now redirects there.
 * World of Final Fantasy VIII, Characters of Final Fantasy VIII and Clone Wars (Star Wars) were evolved from lists of terms, events and concepts into general encyclopedia articles.

Being bold
If you find articles (particularly stubs) on fictional characters (and places, concepts, etc.) you may want to be bold and merge them into an appropriate article or list. This allows the information to become more organized and easier to access, with a future option of compressing and trimming excess information. However, if you should do so, be careful not to delete meaningful out-of-universe content.

You should obviously remove redundant headers ('this is a fictional character from such-and-such book by such-and-such author') and original research, but you should not summarize or otherwise reduce the articles in question unless the information can be compressed in a succinct manner.

Details
This guideline was created from strong consensus at Deletion policy/Minor characters and other discussion at Deletion policy/Middle-earth items. It should be helpful for making a decision on keeping, merging or deleting of fiction-related articles.

If you are unfamiliar with a certain field or are unsure whether some character (concept, place, etc.) should be considered minor or major, please ask around on the relevant talk pages before making radical changes.

Fiction includes books, TV series, films, computer games and roleplaying games, and so forth.

Fanfiction, on the other hand, may well be considered vanity (not by default, but often so), which is grounds for deletion. This includes, for example: anything self-published, put on fanfiction.net, or done by vanity press; information about a player's character in roleplaying or MMORPGs; and computer game mods or custom maps.

Fiction not yet written may be considered speculation (again, not by default, but often so) which is grounds for deletion because Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. This includes not-yet-released books, movies, games, etc., unless there has already been substantial press coverage about the to-be-released item.

See also Guide to writing better articles and Manual of Style (writing about fiction).

Making good use of Wikibooks and Wikisource
Wikibooks, Wikipedia's sibling project, contains instructional and educational texts. These include annotated works of fiction (on the Wikibooks:annotated texts bookshelf) for classroom or private study use. Wikisource, similarly, holds original public domain and GFDL source texts. See Wikisource:Wikisource and Wikibooks.

One possible course of action to consider, which has already been successfully employed for several works of fiction, is to make use of all of the projects combined: to have an encyclopaedia article about the work of fiction on Wikipedia giving a brief outline, a chapter-by-chapter annotation on Wikibooks, the full source text on Wikisource (if the work is in the public domain), and interwiki links joining them all together into a whole.

Examples

 * Atlas Shrugged has a Wikipedia article and a chapter-by-chapter detailed annotation of the work on Wikibooks.
 * Lord of the Flies has a Wikipedia article and a chapter-by-chapter detailed annotation on Wikibooks.
 * Of Mice and Men has a Wikipedia article and a detailed analysis on Wikibooks.
 * The Harry Potter series of novels has articles on the individual novels on Wikipedia (such as Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) and a Muggles' Guide to Harry Potter on Wikibooks, comprising a detailed book-by-book chapter-by-chapter annotation of the whole series, including a topical index to link each topic in Harry Potter to the chapters in which it appears.

Related topics

 * Manual of Style (writing about fiction)
 * Guide to writing better articles
 * Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information (#7, Plot summaries)
 * Centralized discussion/Television episodes
 * Naming conventions: TV | Books | Films
 * Possible proliferation of fictional-universe-related articles is discussed in the essay Fancruft and its talk page.
 * WikiProject Novels guidelines on plot summaries
 * WikiProject Films guidelines on plot summaries
 * WikiProject Soap Operas guidelines on character articles