User:Nifboy/Organizing articles on fiction

This page gives some rough guidelines on how to organize articles on fiction. In particular, this page discusses when and how to organize all the information about a single series or work across multiple articles.

For how to actually write such an article, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction).

General Principles

The big picture, abridged. Don't get too focused in on the creation or deletion of one article.

Ideally, all individual articles will pass the general notability guideline (GNG) and be written according to our standards on writing about fiction. That's the goal, or at least a sub-goal of getting all our articles up to featured article status.

However, the GNG and articles for deletion process only generate a pass/fail result for a single article, without taking into consideration the often intertwined nature of related articles. When a single article in a set is listed on AfD, it is sometimes opposed for the reason that it will create a gap in what is otherwise complete coverage; thus, merging is a common suggestion at AfDs on fiction. Batch AfDs, where the entire set is listed at once, is often contentious, especially if the set contains articles that stand out from the others. When working with such a set, a holistic approach can be desirable. Such an approach asks two questions:

• What can we write with the sources we have, both in-universe and out-of-universe?
• What is the best way to organize that information into meaningful articles?

An article not meeting the GNG is a symptom indicating there may be too much in-universe content relative to the out-of-universe content. This imbalance can exist even for articles that do meet the GNG; it is up to editors to judge how much is "too much". This can be corrected either by researching and adding out-of-universe content, or trimming back the in-universe content.

How much to write

Generally speaking, the quantity of prose, especially in-universe detail, that we devote to a given fictional element is a question of due weight. That is to say, the more we write about a character, the more important that character seems, and so we should write more about important characters and less about minor or bit characters, in order to maintain a neutral point of view. "Importance", separate from the Wikipedia-specific "notability", can broadly be measured three ways:

1. Real-world coverage: To establish real-world importance, or to provide appropriate context for understanding real-world importance, rather than detail the fictional adventures of imaginary characters. Articles writen in the appropriate style, which expand upon relevant points of a main topic to further the reader's understanding, are more likely to find acceptance among the Wikipedia community;
2. Importance of the fictional work: Consensus tends to favor coverage of fiction when the fictional work has had an artistic impact, cultural impact, or general popularity as described in a secondary source.
3. Role within the fictional work: Major elements generally get more coverage where minor or bit elements get little or none at all. Conversely, if a work places little or no emphasis on plot or characters, it may not be necessary to describe even the main protagonist (such as the nameless faceless protagonist in a video game).

These criteria are not exhaustive, nor agreed by all, but can help to concentrate editorial discussion regarding whether a character or other element gets its own article, its own profile within a list, or no coverage at all beyond what's in the plot summary.

How to organize articles

There are a lot of options, and what's ideal for the current amount of content may not be so ideal after months or years of editing. This is not a comprehensive list of options, nor reasons for using each option.

Individual articles on works

The most common start for most series is to have an individual article on each work in the series (e.g. each video game, each novel, etc), and to treat them as if they were separate entities. Consult your local Wikiproject for advice on how to write these.

Series article

The purpose and format of a series or franchise article varies depending on whether there are articles for each entry in the series or not.

With individual articles, the series article is designed to provide a birds-eye view of the entire series. Its contents should be relevant to the series as a whole. It should not simply list and describe each work one at a time, as that would be wholly redundant (a content fork) with the existing articles.

Sometimes, a series article acts as a list of related works, where the individual works may or may not be notable, but nevertheless do not have their own articles. This is often the case when the individual works have been merged to the series article, and so there is no duplication of content. The same basic concept is described at WP:PRODUCT.

Articles on fictional elements or lists thereof

Individual articles, most often articles on characters, and prose lists, most often lists of characters, are typically created for article size reasons. Often the list or element will be cut from its parent article and pasted directly into its own article, possibly leaving a short summary behind, other times simply a hatnote directing readers to that page. That does not excuse the new article from our guidelines on writing about fiction; if there is out-of-universe content related to the subject(s), it should be brought along also. If there is no out-of-universe content related to the characters, it may be giving them undue weight to give them their own article.