User:Percy Snoodle/RFC statement

Statement by User:Percy Snoodle
Are spinouts of fictional elements that lack any real-world, secondary sources, appropriate for Wikipedia? No.

WP:PAPER states that "Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia; there is no practical limit to the number of topics it can cover, or the total amount of content, other than verifiability and the other points presented on this page. However, there is an important distinction between what technically can be done, and what reasonably should be done, which is covered in the Content section below." The "Content section below" includes WP:PLOT: "Wikipedia articles on published works (such as fictional stories) should contain real-world context and sourced analysis, offering detail on a work's development and historical significance, not solely a detailed summary of that work's plot."

WP:V states that "Material challenged or likely to be challenged, and all quotations, must be attributed to a reliable, published source." WP:PSTS states that "Secondary sources are accounts at least one step removed from an event. Secondary sources may draw on primary sources and other secondary sources to create a general overview; or to make analytic or synthetic claims" - sources real-world context and analysis are therefore secondary sources.

WP:PLOT refers to articles, not topics, so the often-used and incorrect argument that a spinout article is an article on the parent topic, not the spinout topic, is irrelevant. It is also argued that consensus supports the inclusion of some spinouts that the bare notability guidelines fail to include. I do not dispute that, but I do dispute that real-world, secondary sources cannot be found for those articles. I have suggested two guidelines which use real-world, secondary sources to demonstrate that some spinout articles are acceptable.

If an article is to contain verifiable "real-world context and sourced analysis", it must logically contain real-world sources. Spinouts that lack any real-world, secondary sources, cannot contain verifiable real-world context and sourced analysis. By policy, it is not appropriate. There is no reason within those policies that we cannot meet the consensus for inclusion of fictional articles without including these inappropriate ones.