Wikipedia's Treatment of Fictional Topics

Wikipedia is an excellent source for the informative, the questionable and the quixotic. It's also the place where many find information on fictional characters, devices, factions and organizations inhabiting their favorite novels, films, games and television shows.

But just how much of this content should actually be on Wikipedia is the subject of some debate. Contrary to what many people automatically assume, Wikipedia has rules governing what kind of content is suitable for inclusion. A topic is presumed "notable" for inclusion under the General Notability Guideline or GNG, which says that topics are notable if they are covered by multiple, significant sources that are reliable and independent of the subject. But the GNG is a guideline, not an official policy that must be adhered to; as such, there is wiggle room. Articles that editors believe do not meet notability or have other issues, such as copyright violations, are either expressly deleted or debated at a venue known as AfD, or "Articles for Deletion"; hundreds of articles are deleted (or in some cases, saved) every month. But despite watchful editors, some content that may not be suitable for inclusion is not recognized and goes unnoticed.

What should be done about articles covering fictional topics, however, is a different matter. As the GNG is a guideline editors who argue for inclusion--generally, better to keep an article than delete it--say that Wikipedia benefits from having a list of characters in a media franchise or an article about a fictional weapon, even if the article itself doesn't have the sort of coverage the GNG requires. On the other side are those who believe that the GNG should become policy to enforce Wikipedia's notability requirements; these editors are often called "deletionists", although both monikers are rather misleading.

The motivations behind the editors that compose each camp are varied. Inclusionists might feel that since Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, said that the mission of Wikipedia is to be the sum of all human knowledge, that includes even minor things like fictional characters and objects, as well as articles that contain little else besides plot (for example, television episodes.) They might also argue that just because the topic isn't notable now doesn't mean it won't be at some point; this belief that articles will get better over time is called "eventualism". On the other hand, deletionists may argue that having such haphazard articles on minor topics decreases the quality of the topic as a whole, distracts from the writing and improvement of more important articles, and leads to the creation of "walled gardens", where fans write articles that are meaningless to those not accquainted with the book, series, or franchise in question. Deletionists often cite policies such as "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of info" or "Wikipedia is not a directory", but there is very little in the way of uniformity in how these topics are dealt with; while AfD is technically a discussion grounded in policy and guideline, in practice is can often serve as a vote, and in that case fans can votestack so that their articles remain untouched.

What many editors hope to do to change this is make a notability criterion for fiction; FICT, as its shorthand name goes, was once a guideline that was eventually rejected by the community. Recently, editors have been working to draft a new version that might satisfy both sides of the community; it's a tricky balance to attain.

In its current state, FICT proposes an alternate way that fictionnal topics not meeting the GNG can still satisfy the notability criterion. This is handled in the form of three "prongs"; all three must be meet for the article to meet FICT's requirements. The prongs are as follows:

*The importance of the fictional work: the work as a whole that the fictional element is part of must have significant impact. In short, there must be information from reliable sources that the work has cultural or historical signficance.

*Role within the fictional work: the element must be central to the understanding of the fictional work as a whole; thus, side characters who appear for only a few pages and who could be omitted from a summary without affecting the story do not meet this prong.

*Real-world coverage: Information on how the fictional element relates to the real world must be presented. This includes developer commentary on how a character was envisioned or designed, its influences, and its critical or commercial impact. Most crucially, the sources used to meet this prong do not have to be independent of the subject; that is, developer commentary on a DVD, though tied to the DVD's producers, is still acceptable.

Overall, the prongs are somewhat subjective, requiring a very small amount of reliable sources in the case of the first prong and none in the second and third. While some editors are worried that they are too permissive, the proposal's proponents argue that combined, the prongs will help weed out pages that could not be deleted or merged before, while allowing the "useful" content Inclusionists wanted to remain on the Wiki. If the guideline passes, it could have a big effect on the pages you read, be it relating to Star Wars, Star Trek, Gundam, Lost or The Lord of the Rings. How big? Only time will tell.

For the page in question, see Wikipedia:Notability (fiction).