Wikipedia:Notability (serial works)

Wikipedia:Notability (serial works) covers the notability of individual episodes or publications of serial works, including but not limited to individual episodes of a television or radio show, issues of a magazine or newspaper, or volumes of a comic book; generally, any work which is distributed on a regular basis.

Defining notability for fiction
This guideline is a detailed extension of three excerpts:

From What Wikipedia is not: "Wikipedia is not a directory of everything that exists or has existed."

From What Wikipedia is not: "Wikipedia articles on published works (such as fictional stories) should contain real-world context and sourced analysis, offering detail on a work's development, impact or historical significance, not solely a detailed summary of that work's plot. A brief plot summary may be appropriate as an aspect of a larger topic."

From Notability: "A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject."

In general, the overall compilation of episodes or issues of a serial work itself is likely notable. However, individual episodes or issues of that work are not necessarily notable in of themselves; notability is not necessarily inherited from the parent articles. Individual episode or issue articles should strive to demonstrate their own notability, either completely independent of the larger serial work, or relying on dependent notability of the parent work in addition to additional notability aspects.

Based on this reasoning and the above excerpts, individual episodes or issues of a serialized work can be presumed notable if they have received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources.

This guideline describes how to determine notability for episodes or publications of serial works, and how to handle cases where such notability cannot be demonstrated.

General notability guidelines for serial works
In general, an episode or issue of a serial work is presumed to be notable if it has significant coverage in secondary sources.

Specific guidelines for serial works
The following guidelines describe criteria that may be used to judge the likelihood of determining notability for an episode or issue of a serial work, but satisfy these guidelines alone is not sufficient for notability; this information should still be backed with reliable secondary sources to describe how the episode or issue meets that criteria. These are also not the only possible methods of demonstrating notability for such works.

Television show episodes
An episode of a television series is likely to be notable if it has achieved one of the following conditions:
 * The episode has won a major award from a notable awards organization.
 * The episode has been critically reviewed from a reliable secondary source.
 * The episode has had significant cultural impact on works that have followed.

Dealing with non-notable episodes and issues
If you should encounter a series of episode of issue articles that fail to meet notability guidelines, you should discuss the issue on the talk pages of the article pages, or if part of a larger WikiProject, on that talk page, describing your concerns as to why the articles fail to meet notability guidelines.

If notability cannot be demonstrated for these, it is very common to merge these articles into a single or multiple list or summary page, which is then considered as a summary spinoff from the overall serial work's article. However, the exact form of this list or summary page likely depends on the nature and frequency of the serial work. One should consider the "natural" breakdown of the serial work. For weekly television shows, episode lists broken out by season are appropriate venues, while daily television shows may be better suited by describing overall plot and theme changes that occur during that season instead of describing each episode in detail. Some works can be broken down into large story arcs, such as found in comic books and manga. Other times, it may be reasonable to consider breaking out such works where there were major changes in the production of the serial work due to staff changes.

In some cases, it is likely not necessary to list every episode or issue, considering that Wikipedia is not a directory. However, editors are encouraged to refer to appropriate external sources, including other wiki, to provide these details. Content that has been merged from individual articles may be better suited to a GFDL-compatible wiki.