Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film/Archive 17

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Archive 15

"sharing continuity"

Several dozen of our articles appear to include the phrase is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), sharing continuity with the films of the franchise.[1] This has been feeling increasingly problematic for the following reasons:

The sources used to verify the claim do not usually mention the specific subject of each article using the phrase (most of which are individual episodes of TV series that were at some point stated in a press release or interview to take place within the Marvel Cinematic Universe);
The claim is only WP:TRUE in a certain loose sense, and has varying levels of truth between articles;
The claim, on rare occasions it is directly sourced, is almost always cited to WP:PRIMARY sources, and happens to tie in with the fan-produced marketing Marvel Studios and Marvel Television typically rely upon -- I personally don't think Wikipedia should be doing marketing for Marvel even if many Wikipedians (myself included) are fans of their films and television, and I suspect most Wikipedians outsode of the current WP:LOCALCONSENSUS would agree with me;
The actual story that has become increasingly well-established in the media over the last several years is that Marvel Television and Marvel Studios are run entirely separately, by parties who don't have the best relationship with each other, resulting in one-way influence from the films to the TV shows rather than what can fairly be called, by anyone but fan apologists and marketeers in the employ of one or both parties, "shared continuity".

Any ideas on how this should be dealt with? I kinda feel like until "official confirmation" comes at some point that the television shows (or some or most of them) are not considered canonical, we should just say that the producers of this or that project have stated that it takes place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, link that article, and let readers decide for themselves whether the "continuity" is actually "shared" if they so choose. So far the closest we seem to have to such official confirmation is vague statements that the TV shows are "doing their own thing" and one situation of a director of two of the films having said he doesn't consider the basic premise of one of the TV shows to be in continuity. (Said premise is that a character who was killed in one of the films was resurrected and formed his own team; the director said that as far as he is concerned the character is still dead; in ten movies since there has been no reference to said character having been resurrected.)

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:19, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

If this is a problem with the TV episodes then perhaps it is best addressed by the TV project, or perhaps the Marvel task force. I think your suggestion is fine btw. Continuity is always a complex relationship anyway that invites a ton of OR. The first two Superman films, for example, share a continuity because they were conceived as a creative entity, but do they share a continuity with Superman 3, a film that wasn't even conceived at the time? The continuity of Superman 3 obviously includes the first two films, but is the reverse true? The Superman franchise even exploited this idea once by making Superman Returns a sequel to the first two films, but excluding the third and fourth. The Halloween films also have multiple continuity strands. Ultimately, later entries in a franchise generally draw on elements established in earlier films, but if the entries weren't conceived as a creative whole it is simply speculation to say how much continuity applies. Betty Logan (talk) 12:50, 29 November 2017 (UTC)

I agree, these statements should definitely be qualified. Continuity is a messy web even in the best of cases, when there aren't dozens of producers, directors and screenwriters giving conflicting creative input. Daß Wölf 20:53, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

This is a silly discussion. Whether editors personally feel that the continuity is shared enough or is "loose" is irrelevant. If the producers say that the series is set in the same continuity then it is. - adamstom97 (talk) 22:28, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

So, what you are saying is that we should allow the claims of primary sources, with a vested financial interest in selling the product, to dictate how we cover the product, regardless of what third-party sources say? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:09, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Well arent they the ones with the creative control over their own products? Who else gets to decide where their products are set?—TriiipleThreat (talk) 00:28, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

The continuity is inherent to the work itself, rather than established through corporate mandate. Dallas and Knott's Landing shared a continuity for a while, and then they didn't after Bobby came back from the dead, but they still occupied the same "universe". This isn't really a Film project issue though if it affects mostly TV articles. Betty Logan (talk) 00:59, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) (this is a long response to TT, and was mostly written before Betty Logan posted her reply to the same; I have not read Betty Logan's reply)

Not really, no.

"the films of the franchise" are produced by Marvel Studios, which is under the direct stewardship of The Walt Disney Company, while the television shows are produced by Marvel Television, which is controlled by Marvel Entertainment. ME is (I think?) technically also owned by Disney but operated as a separate company for political reasons (specifically, the exec-prod of the films, whose initials are KF, and the businessman who maintains creative control over the TV branch, whose initials are IP, don't seem to like each other very much[2]). This situation effectively came about in 2014-2015 (?), before which time the content of the films was directed by ME and its powers-that-be, but after which Disney "emancipated" Marvel Studios (HR's word) to give KF more creative control. This is apparently what allowed several long-rumoured film projects to finally enter development, as ME had apparently been shooting them down, and it's also why Inhumans the film was cancelled and was replaced with a TV incarnation, as that was something ME wanted but KF apparently didn't like it. Claiming that KF has "creative control" over "[his] own product" in the Inhumans TV show, or conversely that ME has creative control over the announced 2019 Captain Marvel movie, given this background, is ridiculously naive.

This is, I would guess, why the first season of AOS appeared to be much more "in sync" with the films than later projects of Marvel Television, and on its original air dates in the United States was even able to spoil part of Captain America: The Winter Soldier before its official release date (something that has demonstrably not happened since, with continuity exclusively being one-way). Yes, lots of fans have been speculating for years that the Inhumans and the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Defenders would show up in 2017's Avengers: Infinity War because that would be when "the whole universe" finally comes together, but there really is no reason to believe that will happen next year, or will ever happen.

Then there's the fact that Joss Whedon, writer/director of the two highest-grossing films of the franchise and creative consultant on whole load more, has stated that pretty much every event of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is not "canon" to the film franchise, as the whole series is built on the assumption that its protagonist was resurrected. Yeah, it's a bit of a Schrodinger's Cat situation and one can assume that the two take place in parallel universes that split off from each other at some point but that are still in "commune" in a fashion after elderly time-travelling Spock Prime in the Abrams Star Trek films, but that kind of fan speculation is not for Wikipedia, and given that it's only that kind of fan speculation that can allow us to talk about "shared continuity" ... yeah, we shouldn't use that phrase.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:13, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Regardless of what you think is happening here (which itself comes with a healthy dose of WP:SPECULATION), the producers know what universe they have set the show in. We all have the right to ignore that decision, but that does not mean that any of us know better than they do. For instance, we have been told that Jessica Jones is set in the MCU. There was some discussion about that when it came out, because it feels very different from the rest of the MCU and has only minor references to other properties at best. But even if the series itself contained no reference to any other part of the universe, how would we know that it is not set in that universe anyway? Sharing continuity =/= crossovers. I know you are worried about aiding-and-abetting people who just want to make money, but this is not the place for you to express those opinions. In an encyclopaedic article about a television series, if the producers say they have set it in an existing fictional universe then that is something we should not leave out. - adamstom97 (talk) 20:43, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

You're cherry-picking a "street-level" story that is unlikely to directly conflict with the plots of any of the films (although if I worked really hard I could probably find some way that Jesica Jones doesn't fit in with the films and blame this on the producers of the films actively ignoring everything on the TV shows, as this is clearly what is happening). Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is the much better example -- every time anything happens in a film, AOS references it in attempt to get a ratings boost (as the films are much more popular than the TV shows), but the films have never referenced AOS, have presented their own alternative (and difficult to harmonize) narrative about the post-Winter Soldier revival of S.H.I.E.L.D., and the creative forces behind the films have directly stated that they do not consider AOS to be "canon" for the films. The show even pretended like Coulson and his team were the ones who located Strucker and sent the Avengers on their mission in the opening sequence of Age of Ultron, and not only did nothing in the film hint at this but it was heavily implied otherwise, the writer/director of the film directly stating in interviews that he doesn't consider AOS' core premise to be "canonical" to his film.

The simple fact is that "sharing continuity" is a fudgy marketing gimmick that is designed to make people think they need to pay for an inferior product (seasons 3 and 4, and the first half of 1, of AOS, season 2 of Agent Carter, Iron Fist, The Defenders...) in order to better appreciate the generally superior products that they were already paying for in the billions of USD before any of the TV shows were announced. Heck, technically they tried to do the same with inferior films like Iron Man 2 and The Incredible Hulk, which have both all but been ignored by subsequent films, but at least the title of Iron Man 3 assumes the existence of a previous film. I'm not saying this as someone who "hates" any "Marvel Cinematic Universe" property (I do hate Iron Fist overall, but I actually thought some of the stuff in Daredevil was worse than anything in Iron Fist but still liked both that series overall, and will continue to watch the crap just because it actually does share continuity with the other Netflix shows, even if not the films). Yes, primary sources with a financial interest in selling our readers as many of the products as they are willing to pay for will, necessarily, not be honest about the lack of legitimately "shared" continuity. We could "infer" from the silence of pretty much everyone involved in the films except, occasionally, Feige, but we really don't have to as Wikipedia policy already tells us to be careful when using primary sources.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:08, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if the film's reference the series. That has no bearing on the series being set in the same ficitonal universe as them at all. We don't say anywhere that the films acknowledge the series, in fact we discuss that they don't at Marvel Cinematic Universe, so we aren't misleading anybody. The films ignore the series, and the series acknowledge the films. I think our articles reflect that quite accurately. - adamstom97 (talk) 02:05, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Would you please read my comments before responding to them? At the very top of this thread I said that we should just say that the properties take place in the same fictional universe, link our article on that fictional universe, and let readers decide for themselves whether the continuity is really "shared". Your pointing out that in fact we discuss that [the films] don't [acknowledge Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.] [in the] Marvel Cinematic Universe [article] actually supports that argument. Telling readers one thing in several dozen articles and then writing something that contradicts that in one article, when readers of any one of the dozens of other articles probably won't read that one (242 kB) article, is misleading at best. The films ignore the series, and the series acknowledge the films. I think our articles reflect that quite accurately. No, the vast majority of our articles (thanks primarily to one or two users creating articles on every episode of AOS using the same problematic wording) do not say this; they say the films and series "share continuity", which is the opposite of saying one ignores the other. And even as this discussion carries on you are continuing to argue (here) for blatant OR in one of the articles by calling something that definitely was not a film-TV tie-in a tie-in. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:03, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

As far as the TV series are concerned, they share continuity with the films. We shouldn't pretend that is not the case because the film's don't reciprocate that relationship. That would be like a journalist writing an article about someone, and the latter not being aware of that article or ever acknowledging it. Does that then mean we should never mention that the journalist wrote the article? No. Relationships will not always be the same both ways, and if we are only discussing one end of that relationship, we need to focus on it from that perspective. - adamstom97 (talk) 22:51, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

I suspect at this point that this is less a "content dispute" than a difference of opinion over how words are to be interpreted. From where I stand, As far as the TV series are concerned, they share continuity with the films doesn't make sense as a jusitification for the current wording, but rather as a justification for claiming that the series (or, rather, episodes, as most of the articles are on individual episodes) are "set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, deriving continuity from the films of the franchise" or something similar. My problem with that, though, is that the primary sources used in some of the articles don't actually don't actually verify this claim. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:00, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

The gist: "set in the Foo universe" and "sharing continuity with" other things in the same fictional universe are not synonymous. Equating them is patently original research and not permissible. Numerous things set in a particular fictional universe have well-documented continuity forks, according to off-WP sources. We cannot second-guess these facts because we wish things were more tidy, or because we really just like writing the phrase "share[d|s|ing] continuity". — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 02:15, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

There is currently an RfC about this for one show; see Talk:Arrowverse#Should Supergirl be mentioned as being a part of Arrowverse?. A permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:36, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

So ... consensus?

Were commenters above biased by my opening question to agree with me? I honestly don't know. I'm considering boldly implementing my proposed amended wording on a bunch of the affected articles, but I don't want to do so only to be reverted with the claim that the above is not a mandate to do so. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:53, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Including fan reaction material at the Star Wars: The Last Jedi article

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Talk:Star Wars: The Last Jedi#Fan reaction. A permalink for it is here. The discussion concerns whether and how to include fan reception material on this film. Reports of the critical reception are generally positive, but sources are reporting differently on fan reaction. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:15, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

@Flyer22 Reborn: Why would you direct people to that particular section of the talk page? There are literally six threads on the same topic, and that was the fourth of them. I've been finding it kind of annoying how every time a new user decides the topic is "important enough to be mentioned" (or whatever refutation of the argument they think the rest of us are giving) they open a new section on the talk page and ignore what the rest of us took the time to write in the second section (the firsr having apparently been a malformed semi-protected edit request). Spreading he discussion out over multiple threads (one per day, it seems) makes it really difficult to establish consensus. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:49, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Whenever I come across a situation like this I group all sections under a super-heading. That way editors can avoid repeating themselves. Betty Logan (talk) 11:26, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Hijiri 88, because that is the current thread the matter is being discussed in, and I did not spot any other thread discussing the matter because I was not looking for any other thread discussing it. It is also the thread that is specifically about fan reaction (meaning it is not solely about user scores). We can't discuss the matter in multiple threads. Well, we can, but that would prove tedious. We have to choose one section to discuss the matter in. On a side note: Since I watch this page, there is no need to ping me to it. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:19, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

The matter is now an RfC issue: Talk:Star Wars: The Last Jedi#Should we include an Audience response section?. A permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:20, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

It's not "the current thread the matter is being discussed in"; it was the thread you had happened to notice immediately before posting about it here. Every one of the six threads was opened in the last six days, so all of them are still "current". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 20:26, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Must you argue over everything? I stand by what I stated above. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 03:43, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

By "argue", do you mean "disagree"? I don't disagree over everything, and I can't really control what I disagree over. I will argue over stuff I disagree over, normally, and most editors don't seem to have a problem with it. Can't we just agree to disagree, like I did, for example, with another user earlier today over how many viable solutions there are to the "My article passed GA; you aren't allowed edit it if I don't like what you do with it" problem? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:13, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

No, I meant argue. Your criticism for why I pointed to the section I did is invalid to me, but we can agree to disagree. We can keep debating it, but it is very trivial and we will be repeating ourselves. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:25, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Made for television movie - "Television" or "Film"?

In the article Fiona Gubelmann, there is a question (in my mind, anyway) as to whether a Hallmark made-for-TV movie should be listed in the "Film" table or in the "Television" table. The WikiProject Film Manual of Style seems not to cover this point - could someone here clarify what the norm is? Modify the MoS to cover that? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 05:11, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

I think most of us defer to WP:FILMOGRAPHY, which says they belong in the television table. 10:03, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

I agree with NinjaRobotPirate. Among the numerous reasons is the fact that they have planned commercial breaks written into the script. MarnetteD|Talk 16:29, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll follow this guidance in the future. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:14, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

An arts-and-media MoS proposal

FYI

– Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

At Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Proposal: Adopt WP:WikiProject Video games/Article guidelines into MoS, it's been suggested to merge that WP:PROJPAGE into MoS, as one of the last remaining genre/medium-specific style guide kinds of pages that isn't in MoS, especially since someone's already put a guideline tag on it, and given it a misleading MOS:VG shortcut.

Strangely, several people from the WP:VG wikiproject have shown up to make what appear to be WP:OWN-based arguments against the idea. I hope that people from other media and arts projects, all of which have MoS pages (largely authored and maintained by people from those projects, but without a claim of absolute control by them) can participate in this discussion and assuage the unreasonable fears of people in that particular project. Promotion of topical style advice pages into MoS has not proven any kind of problem for WP:VISUALARTS, WP:ARTS, WP:FILM, WP:TV, WP:COMICS, WP:ANIME, WP:NOVELS, WP:MUSIC, etc. Meanwhile, the continued fragmentation of such a page to an "un-MoS" page (while simultaneously claiming to be an MoS page, somehow), is misleading and a recipe for conflict.

Or, if you think there's is some kind of problem, feel free to give the opposite opinion. I'm not telling anyone how they should !vote. I'm pointing out that that all the arts-and-media projects and arts-and-media MoS pages share a common sort of history, as well as the same practicality of their advice being included in MoS or shunted to a wikiproject backwater where no one is apt to take "guideline" claims seriously; it's the same across all these projects and pages. So is the increased level to which they agree instead of conflict, by virtue of MoS maintainers ironing out WP:POLICYFORKs between them. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ< 23:40, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Audience response covered under the "Critical response" heading?

Is this true? I'm not seeing anything on this page that actually supports that claim. This content is not necessarily intended to be a standalone section, or a subsection, in a film article seems to imply that it doesn't need to be given its own heading if it is not noteworthy enough to be specifically addressed, and it seems like covering [p]olls of the public carried out by a reliable source in an accredited manner under the heading "Critical response" is a misreading of that, and frankly makes no sense. may be used and placed in the appropriate release or reception-based section (emphasis added) would seem to directly contradict the claim that audience response should be placed under the critical response heading, but is that crazy old Hijiri in his tinfoil hut on a mountain? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:04, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Critical reception isn't intended to be "Critics", but critical commentary itself. The title is about what you would find in the section, not necessarily about "WHO" you would find in that section. Theoretically, you would either put audience response from like CinemaScore or PostTrak here, or you would put it at the start of the Box Office section because those scores are more directly correlated with box office performance longevity (e.g., A+ scores from CinemaScore have correlated to long shelf lives in the theaters for films, whereas D's usually mean they fizzle out after a week or so). I certainly wouldn't have an entire section about "fan reponse" unless there is a significant amount of content from reliable sources discussing fan response and not simply pages of fan responses. Typically, we let box office numbers and CinemaScore/PostTrak speak for the "fan response" because it allows us not to give undue weight to a vocal minority. Meaning, if fans hate the film so much, then why would it do so well at the box office? Then why are we highlighting it. If commentary exists from reliable, professional sources that are discussing it in depth and we need a section for that, then that's something different and out of the norm for what most pages do. If that happens, I would suggest renaming the section "Reception", with subsections "Professional Review", "Audience response", and "Box office", since they are all tied together. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 15:27, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

I have to disagree with the first part. "Critical reception" to me essentially means how the film has been received by critics. If it goes beyond that, e.g., summarizing social commentary about a film, then it should be presented distinctly from content that are recognized as film reviews. As for placement of audience response, I think it belongs with box office content because it directly stems from who shows up on opening weekend. While film reviews come out around opening weekend too, this is more incidental and more about capturing the contemporary critical reception. (And there is always room for retrospective critical reception if the film is popular enough to be revisited.) CinemaScore and PostTrak and box office endurance are all interrelated ways to measure how the general populace perceives of a film. If needed, such sections could be called "Theatrical run" as opposed to "Box office" to fit the scope beyond dollar figures. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 18:12, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Agreed with Bignole. And, Hijiri88, it is standard to include CinemaScore and similar in the Critical reception section when there is not enough audience material to create a standalone Audience response section. This is easily seen in many of our film articles, including the one you are currently working on. I'm watching that article, but I haven't been weighing in on the GA review and disputes. Anyway, some include the material in the Box office section. All of this was discussed on this talk page. The "may be used and placed in the appropriate release or reception-based section" part is to address the fact that the text can be validly placed in the Critical reception or the Box office section. I was not stating or implying that audience response should be placed under the Critical reception heading. I was challenging your assertion that it cannot go in the Critical reception section and needs its own section...when it is just one sentence. Editors have preferences (for example, Erik and i continue to disagree on where the CinemaScore stuff and similar should be placed), and we try not to have the guideline be strict since it is a guideline. And whether it's a film article or some other article, per MOS:Paragraphs, it usually is not ideal to have a section consist of a single sentence or otherwise very little material (not when it can be seamlessly covered in an existing section). Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:25, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

@Bignole: @Flyer22 Reborn: But the content that was being added was not "critical commentary"; it was quoting of statistics from audience surveys, which is not commentary. Additionally, I don't think "critical response" can carry the meaning of "critical commentary from unattributed members of the general public" to begin with; it looks like it refers to either (a) how the film was responded to by professional critics or (b) how the film was criticized (not commented on) by respondents. User:SNUGGUMS appears to agree with me (sorry to ping you again, but I'd rather not bloat that discussion any further with a clarification that what I meant was that we should grant due weight to something a lot of professional critics have been commenting on). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 20:29, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Another aspect of reception in general is that one cannot really compare film critics to film audiences. Film critics watch films whether they want to or not and write reviews accordingly. Film audiences go to the movies they want to see, so there is a positive bias. Bad grades happen when audiences anticipate seeing movies (on opening weekend, no less) and are disappointed when the movies don't meet or exceed their expectations. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 20:53, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Yeah we should just focus on critics' comments under a critical response section as I've stated before. The only audience opinions I could possibly think of that would be worth including are CinemaScore ratings (if anything at all). Snuggums (talk / edits) 21:06, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

Hijiri88, I don't see what else I can state on the matter other than what I stated above. It is standard to put that material in the Critical reception section unless there is a need for an Audience response section. Others opt to put the material in the Box office section. We discussed this matter on this talk page and the wording in the guideline is the result of standard practice and editors having a difference of opinion. I and a number of other editors prefer that the CinemaScore material and similar go in the Critical reception section, and we do not interpret "critical reception" to simply be about professional critics. Otherwise, it would not be so common to include CinemaScore and sometimes academic material (meaning material from scholars who are not professional critics) in our Critical reception sections. Others, like you, Erik and SNUGGUMS think otherwise, although I'm not clear on whether Erik thinks that academic material should not go in the Critical reception section either. We always get editors coming to this page trying to make the guideline into some kind of strict rule. It's just not. I will not always have the same idea for an article setup as others, whether it's film articles or otherwise.

Again, no need to ping me to this talk page. It's on my watchlist. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:21, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

For what it's worth, there's pages like Schindler's List and Lincoln (film) that divide types of commentary; the former goes by critics, other filmmakers, and Jewish community while the latter uses critical response and historian responses. In both cases, it's not hard to imagine why these other groups would be included given how the works pertain to them (except for perhaps other filmmakers). Snuggums (talk / edits) 21:43, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

It's kinda off-topic, but Lincoln (film) actually includes the text Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and his ministers discussed Spielberg's film, which several of them saw in Israeli cinemas. They debated whether the end of abolishing slavery justified the means used by Lincoln, and also compared Lincoln's predicament with their own complicated situation in the confused aftermath of the 2013 Israeli elections. under its "critical response", which is ... unusual. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:07, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm aware of the format of the Schindler's List article. I've cited that article in recent discussion above on the talk page. Anyway, since Hijiri88 pinged SNUGGUMS on this matter, I'll go ahead ping TenTonParasol, who stated, "I am absolutely a proponent of adding fan reaction coverage based on how third party sources cover it, and I don't think critical response is limited to only just critics (critical being, imo, more in the spirit of a generalized critique and media criticism sense)." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:14, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

F22RB, please stop assuming bad faith on my part as you have been doing. I pinged SNUGGUMS because his response to me on the article talk page seemed more relevant as a response to what I wrote here than what I wrote there. I did not ping him to get one more "vote" for my "side" of this "debate". This thread was not even supposed to be about the Star Wars discussion until you made it about that; I was asking if we should clarify in the MOS whether audience response polls should be cited under the "critical response" heading. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:22, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

You misinterpret everything, which is why, like I've told you before, it is frustrating trying to communicate with you. You even misinterpreted this, and my response can be seen here. I was not implying that you pinged SNUGGUMS in bad faith. I am a fan of pinging others to discussions when they are related to it. And I did not turn this discussion into a Star Wars discussion. You linked to a Star Wars matter twice in this section, and the discussion is not focused on Star Wars despite that, and yet I turned it into a Star Wars discussion? Are you this aggravating on purpose? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:32, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

I only linked to the Star Wars matter because the edit summary of the edit in which you removed part of a COMMENT I had penned (on an article that's seeing a flood of activity so that I am having a dog of a time trying to figure out when/why/by whom the rest was removed, so I actually would have appreciated a notification from you that it was you who removed the part you did) happened to be on that article, but cited this guideline as contradicting my COMMENT, which I don't read it as doing.

On a basically unrelated note, I apologize for the unnecessary pings; I usually ping people to show who I'm responding to, not because I think they don't have the page watchlisted (see my ping to Betty below, who has responded to virtually everything I've ever posted on this page and WT:FILM, but hardly interacted with me elsewhere, so I'm 100% certain she would see my reply even if I didn't ping her).

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:22, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

And I don't buy the I was not implying that you pinged SNUGGUMS in bad faith claim -- that would seem to rule out the only explanation for writing since Hijiri88 pinged SNUGGUMS on this matter; I can't thijk of any other reason you would write that. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:28, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Explaining why you linked to the Star Wars page doesn't negate the fact that you linked to it. And then to another. And then tried to state that I was making the the discussion about Star Wars. I removed your WP:Hidden note because it contradicted this guideline and and what WP:Hidden note states. I didn't need to post about why I removed it. With an edit summary, I made clear why I removed it. You brought the issue here. As for your "that would seem to rule out the only explanation for writing 'since Hijiri88 pinged SNUGGUMS on this matter' " argument, I'm not continuing this with you...per what I stated about your misinterpretations. As an aside, if you want people to assume good faith, you should do the same. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 03:04, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

I didn't need to post about why I removed it. If you make a habit of reverting other editors without an explanation, I would encourage you to familiarize yourself with the edit-warring policy: you do have to provide an explanation. I am not saying you didn't here (you did, and I already noted that above), merely that you are wrong to assert that you didn't have to. what WP:Hidden note states Nothing in WP:HIDDEN#Inappropriate uses for hidden text bears any resemblance to what I did, and actually the same page notes thay Reminding others of Wikipedia policies where they have been frequently broken [is an appropriate use] -- you seem to be completely ignoring the repeated, disruptive, counter-consensus edit-warring in of the text that most editors on the talk page are still against including; the WP:COMMENT was meant to prevent further such disruption. if you want people to assume good faith, you should do the same Could you please keep your comments focused on content rather than other editors? I've been responding to your off-topic remarks up to this point, but it makes me extremely uncomfortable doing so, especially on an MOS page that is subject to discretionary sanctions. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:55, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

I reverted your hidden note once and noted why in the edit summary and above. Your hidden note stated, in part, "and anything about the audience response should be covered in a separate section." The use of "should" did not belong there, per WP:Hidden note and MOS:FILM. It was wrong per my and others' comments in this section. Move on. As for "Could you please keep your comments focused on content rather than other editors?", I have to believe you are trolling sometimes. You are the one who focused on assume good faith, and took things in what you call an off-topic direction. And now that I mention "good-faith," I am focusing on the editor rather than the content? Move on. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:09, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

Comment The guidelines exist to help us write good articles, so the big question for me has always been what to include rather than where to include it. Personally I think you should include the material where it works best, and if the section-heading doesn't work well then change the section-heading! I tend to take a liberal view of what constitutes "critical reception". If you want to limit that to the opinions of critics then that is editorial prerogative within the confines of the article. If you want to take a broader view of the "critical" reception (i.e. anything that bestows a qualitative judgment on the film) then that is fine also, provided the logical structure of the article is consistent. Sometimes if you are just talking about opening weekends and grosses it can be quite jarring for a reader to suddenly come across a Cinemascore, and the information might sit better alongside Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic which are also qualitative stats, so I appreciate why editors advocate for placing it the critical reception section. Gone with the Wind and Schindler's List both take a narrow view of the "critical" response partly because there are so many angles to cover, so it's just more natural to break the response down by type at those articles. Once the "audience response" section existed at Gone with the Wind it was a no-brainer to put all the audience metrics in there. Basically, substance should dictate form, rather than the other way around. Betty Logan (talk) 22:35, 21 December 2017 (UTC)

@Betty Logan: That's fine, and your opinion is valid (if you think it applies to The Last Jedi feel free to chime in there :-) ), but what about renaming the "Critical response" subheading to something more appropriate when it cites audience survey statistics but not in a manner that could reasonably be taken as "critical" (except in the informal, non-NPOV, overtly negative sense of that word)? I kinda feel like, while taking an IAR approach to exceptional articles works (and whatever the outcome of the Last Jedi discussion it's gonna have enough discussion to theoretically be an exception to whatever the "rule" is), also stating explicitly in the guideline that The "Critical response" subheading can be changed to "Critical and audience response" or equivalent, as befits the article would be a good idea. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:22, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

I have a similar opinion to Betty Logan, though I don't think that the heading necessarily needs to be renamed. (If a particular article wants to, sure.) But similar to how media criticism isn't necessarily always by professional critics, but rather a broad category of analysis and reaction to media, I think audience reactions are not precluded from "critical reception". Any commentary that's broadly constructed as a criticism or analysis of the work. Like, if it's felt by the local consensus to be suitable to include, it ought to be. Though, I'm not sure it's a good idea to include RT and CinemaScore and other user percentage ratings and etc etc just to include them—rather include them if they're notable and the subject of outside commentary. But, anyway, I basically have the same option as Betty, but expressed less elegantly. I wouldn't argue if a single article or topic changed the section to "Critical and audience response" or if they created separate sections for "critical response" and "fan response" under a larger "reception" if the local consensus is more comfortable with that, but I wouldn't insist that "critical response" be renamed simply bc it includes coverage of audience reactions. ~Cheers, Ten Ton Parasol 22:31, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

I also agree that broad coverage of audience reaction (e.g., Cinemascore, PostTrak, etc.) that consists of a sentence or two mentioning a score statistic would not warrant a name change of the "Critical response" section in most cases. In situations where extensive coverage of audience reaction is needed, it would probably be best to have a standalone "audience" section under Reception. We shouldn't always mandate one, because frankly, I've never been too fond of short 2-3 sentence sections (or single paragraph sections) that are only there because a guideline encourages it. Like some of the others here, I do not read "Critical response" as pertaining only to professional commentary. It just so happens that most of what we do in this section is usually based on the work of professional critics, but I don't consider that a limiting factor – at least that's not how I would define the phrase. Retitle the section or create a new one only when it benefits the article's layout. --GoneIn60 (talk) 20:36, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

SurveyMonkey

The Star Wars: The Last Jedi article currently includes SurveyMonkey data. Thoughts on using this for our film articles? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:45, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Depends on how they polled. This says they got 4,441 responses from December 15 to 19. That seems like a controlled poll, but it seems different from what SurveyMonkey usually does, which is online uncontrolled polling (generally speaking). Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 02:07, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Use of Rotten Tomatoes for older foreign films with few English-language reviews

[3]

I can't imagine anyone would disagree with me that "This film currently holds a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes" is a useless piece of information for that particular film, but should we mention such cases here? There are a lot of (old, foreign-language) films that meet GNG but have received negligible coverage from the kind of reviews RT tends to analyze.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:25, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Not only is scant coverage a problem, but there is also the question of what that coverage represents due to aggregators tending to mix contemporary and modern reviews. There is a good essay at Wikipedia:Review aggregators which outlines the limitations of aggregators. Unfortunately there is a culture of adding aggregator scores when they serve no purpose, and personally I would not use them for any film that predates the aggregator or where there are not enough reviews. Betty Logan (talk) 12:50, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Proposed addition to MOS

Editors are advised that, for any film which receives one at least mediocre review, it is now compulsory to include the words "received critical acclaim" at least twice within the relevant article, in the lead section and under 'Reception'. Bonus WikiPoints will be awarded for additional inclusions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C5:5A4C:C400:C8FD:B372:ABFF:9F2E (talk) 13:05, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

If you think there is a problem, please provide some context. What article do you find problematic? Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 15:07, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

What are WikiPoints, and can they be converted into US Dollars? DonIago (talk) 16:44, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

Man, people here have no sense of humour. Granted, the above is clearly an experienced user who logged out of their account in order to satyrize whatever content dispute they are currently having on the MOS talk page without being noticed, rather than just someone engaged in good-faith ribbing, but I'm still surprised two users gave completely straight-faced "What are you talking about?" responses to this. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:45, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Oh, I know it is a satirical comment here. I'm responding in a cut-the-shit way and asking what the article is. I'm probably more cynical when it comes to these snarky grievances. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 13:29, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

I certainly wasn't responding seriously, though I am mildly amused that it was assumed that I was.DonIago (talk) 15:13, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Production sections and producers

I currently have a disagreement with another user who is insistant that when reporting on the announcement for Spiderman: Enter the Spiderverse, we include the name of the five attached producers along with it, which I feel is excessive. I feel we just changed the MOS to avoid this sort of buildup, so I thought I'd invite you all to join the discussion. You can find a link here. Thanks. --Deathawk (talk) 19:57, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Home media release info for older (foreign-language?) films

I get the impression that The film was released by [such-and-such DVD distributor] in [arbitrary year several decades after the original release] in [such-and-such territory]. It was also released by [some other company] in [somewhere else] the following year. It has not yet been released in [random country that some en.wiki editor comes from and is annoyed that they need to import the DVD] as of 2017. might be arbitrary and could come off as an advertisement. Yes, most articles on (recent, American) films don't have this problem, but for films whose original release was before home video became mainstream, especially foreign films, it's really a different matter.

Ugetsu#Home media and other similar articles have this problem; that film was readily available, subtitled in English, in the UK long before 2008 on VHS (I believe from the British Film Institute, although I may be misremembering), but then between when VHS became effectively outdated and the film got an "official" DVD release it was briefly "out of print". This is all OR, and I doubt I could find any reliable sources to back most of it up without synthesizing several sources to draw a conclusion none of them make individually, but without doing so we are giving an incomplete and quite misleading picture, for no encyclopedic purpose other than to say "It is available on DVD in both the United States and the United Kingdom". ("The DVDs come with all these cool extras" is not encyclopedic, and for older foreign films the fact that such-and-such film got such treatment is usually arbitrary and has nothing to do with the films or filmmakers themselves.)

Should this be noted in MOS?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:52, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

There's usually a bit of cruft in these sections. I typically rewrite them to keep the sourced elements and remove everything else, though I may look for citations if I'm not busy. Sometimes there are interesting stories to tell about this sort of thing. Battle Royale for a while had trouble finding an American home video distributor. Fans turned this into an urban legend that the film was so controversial that it had been banned in the US, feeding into its reputation as a cult film. Marketing can play into this sort of thing, trying to turn a mainstream film into something special. Or maybe the dumbed-down marketing of the home video release will cause reliable sources to comment on it, like Night of the Comet. It takes a little digging, but you can sometimes turn up interesting commentary like this in the more thoughtful sources. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 04:28, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

We have a "Home media" section at MOS:FILM#Home media. Maybe we can update the first sentence to require that the core content be based on secondary sources that are not shopping websites? This way we can ensure meaningful coverage. We could crib some language from WP:FILMMARKETING since we also deal with similar irrelevant detail. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 22:07, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Lengthy adjective strings in the lead sentence

The standard content in a film's opening lead sentence will contain the release year, nationality, and primary genre per the recommendation laid out in WP:FILMLEAD. This often leads to a mashing of adjectives and poor sentence structure along the lines of "2017 American epic space opera film" (currently on display at Star Wars: The Last Jedi). A lack of commas here presents a problem when you have multiple coordinate and cumulative adjectives in play, not to mention the occasional attributive noun (or lack of one to be more precise).

Antinoos69 and I had a discussion almost a year ago at User talk:GoneIn60/Archive 4#Moonlight opening line. I suggest anyone with an interest here to read that if they have time. While the example I listed above has obvious issues, I had a tendency to defend the simpler constructs I've come across, such as "2017 American drama film". Even that has issues in Antinoos69's view, and the more I think about it with the year in the mix, the more I'd have to agree, though my primary focus is on the glaringly obvious violations. It's become particularly frustrating the more I see complex genre-pairings making their way into the lead sentence. We should probably find a way to address this in the MOS. There are probably a lot of WTF moments by casual Wikipedia readers when they come across one! --GoneIn60 (talk) 09:08, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

You should see what people come up with for kids' films:

Happy Feet: "2006 Australian-American computer-animated musical family comedy film"
Lady and the Tramp: "a 1955 American animated romantic musical comedy-drama film"
Surf's Up 2: WaveMania: "a 2017 American direct-to-video 3D computer-animated mockumentary comedy film"

It can get pretty crufty. WP:FILMLEAD doesn't really say that we should keep the opening sentence concise, but some people interpret the "primary genre" wording that way. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 10:52, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

I respect the point made here, and I particularly hate the genre pileups you tend to get in the lead lines. But:

I actually don't think "2017 American epic space opera film" is that bad. I'd probably cut "epic"

You can't put commas in "2017 American epic space opera film". The way to test if commas work in strings of adjectives is to see if they still make sense if you replace them with "and". For example, "big and expensive birthday cake" works, so "big, expensive birthday cake" does too. "A 2017 American and epic space opera film" plainly doesn't. Popcornduff (talk) 11:48, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

GoneIn60, the genre matter is already covered in WP:FILMLEAD, necessitating that the nationality to be singular, otherwise a film with multiple nationalities needs further context and should delay explanation until later in the lead section. Also, the same guideline requires for the genre to be "the primary genre or sub-genre under which it is verifiably classified". A recent example I've encouraged is The Shape of Water (film) which has "fantasy drama film" as backed by Box Office Mojo and BFI. What was it before? "Romantic fantasy horror drama film". As for too many different elements in the opening sentence, I'm not sure what can be done if they're all appropriate. Sometimes we drop the genre if sources can't agree on it. Sometimes we drop the nationality (if there is more than one). But these are exceptions. Not sure what a better way to re-arrange different elements if they're all guideline-appropriate. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 12:31, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Taking the example of animated films given by NinjaRobotPirate, I think the MOS could include a couple of seemingly "genre" descriptors that should never be used as a description in the lede sentence. "Direct-to-video" is a description of its release, and should be put around the release date. "3D/2D/computer-generation" is a production aspect and should be lede information but not in the first sentence. "Family film" and "children's film" are also those that I don't think are thematic genres but describe the target audience, which may or may not be necessary for a lede. There's probably a bunch of other such terms that should be evicted from the lede sentence describing the film that can be outlined further. --Masem (t) 16:26, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Honestly I feel like even included "animated" in that opening bit is unnecessary. Like you said with 3D and computer-generated, these are production elements. We don't say "live-action" film for every film that isn't animated, so I see no reason to specify the opposite. Sock (~~tock~~ talk) 17:47, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

The bulk of films released are live-action, so it is unnecessary to say that. I do think "animated" (but not detailing the type) helps as a key distinguisher, since, for example the Oscars also make that. That said: I'm seeing waaaay too many people call films that rely on a lot of CGI but otherwise are live actors try to squeeze "animated" into it - that's just not appropriate. --Masem (t) 04:20, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I would definitely prefer simpler opening lines. Many people really seem to love front-loading and there's a particular type of editor who I will refer to as a "kitchen sink" editor who loves to pack in every possible genre a film could be, and every nationality, all at the expense of readability. —Joeyconnick (talk) 21:32, 16 January 2018 (UTC)
If the opening sentence is the type of sentence that you would only ever get on Wikipedia (as demonstrated by NRP above) then it needs to be addressed. The problem though is that it is next to impossible to prescribe good writing through a MOS. It's a very difficult problem to get on top of. Betty Logan (talk) 00:39, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

I think a better solution than excluding a whole group of words, would be to limit the lead sentence to one or two adjectives to describe the film. That way the article would somewhat police itself, without us figuring out now what a list of appropriate genres would include. --Deathawk (talk) 07:46, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Thing is, "one or two adjectives" would, by necessity of their being the most noteworthy, mean "2017 American film", removing all mention of genre from the opening sentence. I personally would support that, but that's getting into the genre wars; is that really something we want to (or cam) do here? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:57, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, to split hairs, genres aren't adjectives. "Horror film", for example, is a compound noun. edit: I see that's actually the point you were making and I totally misread your comment. Sorry! edit 2: Wait. On second thoughts, maybe I was right the first time? Popcornduff (talk) 09:59, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

BTW, it's a little local (specifically for the article linked by the OP), but I would say that article should be allowed to settle until the controversy has died down (and perhaps until a large body of serious academic sources have addressed said controversy); the adjective string in the opening sentence is the least of its problems, and looks set to remain so until at least Solo comes out. If anyone nominates it for GA or FA before these problems are addressed, that would be a problem, but it's not technically a superhero film so I am not certain that will happen. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:20, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

I'd like to see a MOS rule to explicitly limit the lead sentence to one genre, personally. TropicAces and I disagree about the lead sentence of I, Tonya, which currently begins "I, Tonya is a 2017 American biographical black comedy film...". I changed this to leave only the primary genre (autobiographical film), citing the MOS as the reason, but TropicAces reasonably points out that the MOS only says "primary genre or sub-genre under which it is verifiably classified". Popcornduff (talk) 04:14, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

What sources are calling it "biographical black comedy", though? There are just three results in Google News Search. There are many more for "biographical film" or "biopic" (which I consider interchangeable). Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 04:37, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

"Black comedy" certainly isn't the primary sub-genre coming up in my searches. There is quite a bit of disagreement over the genre, with some sources calling it a comedy, a comedy drama or a sports drama, but the dominant genre from the sources we often use is simply "drama" (see Allmovie, Rotten Tomatoes, BBFC, Entertainment Weekly, New York Times). There is no dominant sub-genre. On that basis I would simply go with "biographical drama film". I think a single genre could be too limiting in some cases. There are horror comedies and romantic comedies, for example, where there is a legitimate use for two genres. Betty Logan (talk) 05:35, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Betty! Yes, that is the kind of quick research that can be done. We have to remember that we have the rest of the lead section (even just the first paragraph) to describe the film a little further. We just need to follow sources for the opening sentence because the possibilities are way too many otherwise. An example I recall is that Edge of Tomorrow kept getting called a "military science fiction film" even though not many sources even say that. It's simpler to call it a science fiction film (per sources) and to describe the military-related premise later in the paragraph. That could be done with I, Tonya, perhaps, to report the tone of the film in a later sentence. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 13:21, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Any of you guys want to go to the article and make that argument, be my guest. TropicAces isn't buying it. Popcornduff (talk) 17:20, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Actually, maybe I spoke too soon. I assumed based on the edit summary that TropicAces had restored multiple genres but instead they've just put the single genre "drama". Not sure why that would be better than the more specific "biographical film", considering biopics overwhelmingly tend to be dramas...? Popcornduff (talk) 17:26, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

I think the I,Tonya thing speaks to the larger problem at hand. In my opinion in the lead sentence the genre should never be questionable, as it often is. It should merely be what the majority of sources are saying. To go back to the Lady and the Tramp example who exactly is calling it a "romantic drama" outside of Wikipedia. The primary genre is animated romance, there's really no good reason to stick in more questionable descriptions. Similarly if "black comedy" doesn't immediately string to mind when one thinks about I, Tonya, it probably shouldn't be there. --Deathawk (talk) 23:01, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Album infoboxes in soundtrack sections

Hello, I'm new to Wikipedia...I just wanted to bring up an important situation involving album covers in soundtrack sections. I have recently removed an album infobox from the page The Good Son (film) because when there's no cover in the infobox, thousands of movie articles continue to clog up Category:Album infoboxes lacking a cover!! Because of this, I can't find any notable individual album pages needing covers!! I think album infoboxes should be banned from movie articles. Who agrees? 96.240.4.127 (talk) 00:31, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

WP:FILMMUSIC says something about this. Apparently, consensus is that we shouldn't include album covers. Personally, I would go a step beyond this and discourage infoboxes entirely. I think if there's anything worthwhile to say, it can be said in prose – like every other section. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 02:02, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks. I agree with you. 96.240.4.127 (talk) 03:13, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

That category does seem to conflict with the current consensus, and perhaps should be deleted as a consequence...or even inverted to look for album infoboxes that include covers. As for the infoboxes themselves, I don't currently have a strong opinion either way, though they do occasionally make the article layout a little awkward. DonIago (talk) 10:26, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Language V Location

I think a movie is better described by the language it's in rather the location it's made. The place the studios were located has more to do with economics then the director's imagination, but the language the viewer shares with the movie helps him/her comprehend the action. Mostly I don't think the studio's location has any bearing on the film's content, unless there's evidence that it does. Specifically The Land Before Time is better described as "English language" as opposed to "American-Irish". While one studio was located in Ireland and three were located in America there is no evidence that the content in the movie is American, Irish, Irish-American, or anything else. It's a prehistoric story that crosses national boundaries. Really neither "English language" nor "Irish-American" adds to the reader's comprehension about the movie's content. What do you think? Liberty5651 (talk) 20:40, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

We actually discourage more than one country in the opening sentence per WP:FILMLEAD, so you can remove that unnecessary pairing and explain it in context later in the lead section. Generally, I think that if we state a single "obvious" nationality, the film's language is implied (barring unconventional or more complex matters). Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 21:05, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Note, Erik, Liberty's argument seems to be that it shouldn't say "Irish" or "American" since it's a prehistorical fantasy setting. See the discussion at Talk:The Land Before Time#Movie language. and User talk:JesseRafe#The Land Before Time page. It is not clear that they understand the article is about the film as a film made by humans and not from the perspective of the setting where cartoon dinosaurs speak English. JesseRafe (talk) 21:32, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Ah, I get that now. I was thinking more generally. Yeah, if The Land Before Time was just American, then I would say "American film". I don't think there is any risk of confusion, especially since the first few sentences pretty much define the film in different ways, including the premise (especially if it is unconventional, e.g., being about dinosaurs). Still, I would drop "Irish-American" per WP:FILMLEAD. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 21:37, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

To clarify, I'm not concerned with the film's setting. I'm concerned in situations when the ethnicity of the place a movie's made is intrinsic to the movie's presentation and context. That is not the case here. It is the case with movies like: Akira, Amer, Amélie, Run Lola Run, In Order of Disappearance. This group is very influenced by place or language. You can comprehend a bit more about Japanease, Belgian, French, German, or Norwegian ethnicity from these movies. I wondered if the movie's language was a better descriptor if the place that it was made was not important to the movie's presentation and context, but (as was pointed out on The Land Before Time's talk page) since this (and other) movie(s) are translated to many different languages I think that's not the case, too. I'm hopeful sometimes that science fiction and fantasy movies can transcend nationalism. I know everything has to be made somewhere.Liberty5651 (talk) 22:31, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Non-notable awards

Extensive discussion at Talk:Beauty_and_the_Beast_(2017_film)#Non-notable_awards arrived at two conclusions, seemingly supported here. Carrying that over to other articles has proven contentious.

This guideline says, "Awards included in lists should have a Wikipedia article to demonstrate notability. Because of the proliferation of film festivals and "award mills", festival awards should be added with discretion, with inclusion subject to consensus. Awards bestowed by web-only entities are not included."

At B&tB, we determined that awards that are not blue-link, non-redirect notable may be included. Two issues:

1) Notable organizations (e.g. AARP) are often behind non-notable awards (e.g., "AARP's Movies for Grownups Awards"). While various interest groups (AARP, NRA, etc.), labor unions, blogs, etc. may be notable, we felt that this notability is not inherited. Without this, AARP's award would appear in a list of awards immediately before the Academy Awards. "Academy Award nominee" is a widely used badge of honor. "AARP's Movies for Grownups Awards nominee" is a publicist trying too hard.

2) We decided they may be included, though it is possible that it would make sense not to.

While this is "only" a guideline and we aren't etching commandments in stone, I'd like to clarify the section in question. Blue-link notable organization or blue-link notable award? "May" be included or "should" be? - SummerPhD^v2.0 01:44, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

My impression is that the guideline was written to require for a film-based organization to be notable for its awards to be listed elsewhere on Wikipedia. Meaning that the organization and its awards are kind of a package deal. The AARP is not a film-based organization, but I am seeing sources like this, this, and this that lend credence to the award. It is merely happenstance that it is above Academy Awards in an alphabetical listing of awards, and I am hard-pressed to see it as being portrayed as more prominent. It would warrant a separate discussion to determine how to approach prioritizing key awards over the other awards. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 02:01, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

This is not a question of how prominently we display them. This is the question of listing trivial awards at all. There is clearly a continuum between the Best Picture Oscar and "Jimmy's Slasher Film Blog's Best Gore Scene Award". We need to draw a line between the awards where the nominations alone show up prominently in biographies ("Academy Award nominee, Jane Smith...") and are discussed months in advance from those that few people have ever heard of, much less care about. Prior to a month ago, I had no idea AARP, the Las Vegas Online Film Critics, the Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild and the Hollywood Post Alliance had awards. I find no reason to pay any attention to a special interest group, a coalition of bloggers and two trade unions' opinions on movies. IMO, they are all below that line. I'm seeking a consensus to clarify the line. The solid consensus at Talk:Beauty_and_the_Beast_(2017_film)#Non-notable_awards was blue-link, non-redirect awards. - SummerPhD^v2.0 05:13, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

I'd have to agree with User:SummerPhDv2.0. When there are sooooo many significant awards, as well as pertinent industry-based awards, I'm not sure how much encyclopedic benefit there is in including some unrelated organization's little-known award. It seems the very kind of thing the MOS is designed to filter out. --Tenebrae (talk) 19:20, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

What new criteria is being suggested beyond what we already have? Most organizations that give awards are film-based and perhaps exist to watch movies and give awards (critics' circles, I suppose). I find it to be splitting hairs to say that "Awards included in lists should have a Wikipedia article to demonstrate notability" means that not only does the organization itself needs an article, but that the awards given out by the organization needs their own article. Organization and award sub-articles simply exist as a matter of arranging content. The real focus should be on if an organization is noteworthy (not Wikipedia's notability criteria) for reporting what awards it gives out. The criteria for this is if an organization is notable enough for its own Wikipedia article (one that has earned its place, of course), then its awards are noteworthy for listing. In the case of an organization like AARP, it is obviously notable on its own, but it is also not a film-based organization. So in this case, criteria should be discussed about what to do with such organizations. For something like Make-Up Artists and Hair Stylists Guild, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety report on these (and The New York Times apparently here), so how can it be claimed that they're "below the line"? We can all have our own perceptions, but we can't apply them here. We need a specific process to apply. in other words, even though reliable sources write about the AARP and makeup awards, which is generally a green flag in other wiki-discussions, what is the red flag that "disqualifies" them from inclusion here? Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 19:56, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Completely agree that professional guilds' awards are appropriate, as I'd mentioned in my earlier post. --Tenebrae (talk) 20:05, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

That is not the New York Times discussing the award. That is an "awards season blog" giving the winners in one sentence as part of a list. Without looking, I'd be willing to bet we can find the New York Times discussing the Academy Awards, speculating on the then upcoming nominations for the 2017 awards, discussing the 2017 nominations, discussing issues of race/ethnicity/sex/gender/etc. as they relate to the 2017 awards, discussing where they will be presented, who the presenters will be, etc. The hair we're splitting here is the difference between the largely ignored guild award and the largely ignored AARP award. The difference between them and a blue-link notable award is substantial. - SummerPhD^v2.0 21:01, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Discussion of crediting at Halloween page

There is a discussion at Talk: Halloween (2018 film) regarding whether Nick Castle and another actor should be listed as "The Shape/Michael Myers", or simply "Michael Myers". It could use more than 2 people going back and forth and making no movement. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 23:39, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Navboxes in filmography sections on actor articles

Somebody added a navbox in the filmography section of Tom Cruise and put the films he appeared in that navbox. I added the same thing the filmography section of Sylvester Stallone. Do you think we should have those navboxes in filmography sections in actor articles? BattleshipMan (talk) 20:54, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

The consensus is to not have navboxes for actors because they are supposed to be WP:BIDIRECTIONAL and they would clutter up the film pages. Since the navbox in the Tom Cruise article is not bidrectional there really is no reason for it to exist. To add to that, navboxes are not a substitute for lists, in the manner you implemented here. Betty Logan (talk) 21:01, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Whatever you say. Like I said, someone else that navbox in Tom Cruise's filmography. Also, do you think we should remove the navbox on that filmography section? BattleshipMan (talk) 21:10, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

I have restored the old list. The template was added some time last year. Betty Logan (talk) 21:25, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Marketing

Regarding Black Panther (film), there was a problem with finding release information because the Table of Contents showed a "Release" section with a "Marketing" sub-section under it, then a "Reception" section with several sub-sections, as seen here. As a reader, it was not clear to me where the latest theatrical release and/or box office information was, especially with no heading talking about the theatrical run or box office performance. It turned out that the release details were before the "Marketing" sub-section. It appears to be claimed that WP:FILMMARKETING "supports" this approach because it says marketing information can be in a "Marketing" sub-section within a "Release" section. While this is true, the thinking behind this wording is that in a "Release" section, one would have "Marketing" followed by "Theatrical run" or "Box office". While there are several ways to present all this content, it is antithetical to put release details before a "Marketing" sub-section. It makes no sense in terms of content flow within a section. The MOS should be amended to be clear that the "Marketing" sub-section should come first in a more general "Release" section, followed by theatrical release and box office sections. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 02:28, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Not to mention that it is probably bad practice to have one sub-section under a section. It implies that there is just one sub-topic under a topic, hence why it hides the release details unnecessarily. Here is what I mean: Help:Wikipedia: The Missing Manual/Formatting and illustrating articles/Article sections and tables of contents#Single subsections. Thanks, Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 02:34, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

I have no objections to having a "marketing" section under the "Release" heading but it is a bit more intuitive to preserve the chronological order when the rest of the article is structured that way. The ammendment seems reasonable to me so I support it, unless somebody can convince me that good reasons exist for having the "marketing" section after the "release" content. Betty Logan (talk) 04:32, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Our Marketing section seems to be very clear that there can be multiple approaches to the issue, and that it could change on a per film basis. I'm not really getting why someone would not understand that or insist that it could only go one way. I'm not really thrilled with making a change based on a misunderstanding that would likely not be made again. I think that there are smaller movies where a subsection makes sense, so that also makes me uneasy about the change. --Deathawk (talk) 08:37, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Actually, this problem pervades many comic book movie articles controlled by a few editors because there is a cookie-cutter approach being carried out. For example, Venom (2018 film) had this problem in its infancy here. I've improved it to this, but the editors are justifying the older approach with WP:FILMMARKETING. Like I said above, there are several possible approaches, and I have no problem with a "Marketing" sub-section within a "Release" section, but it should not come after release content. See Fight Club as an example where it doesn't. If the editors in charge point to the guidelines to justify a bad flow of content, it needs to be fixed. The wording certainly does not tell us to put release content before a marketing subsection. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 12:42, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

As it stand now, I don't mind having "Marketing" as a stand alone section at Black Panther but this is mostly due to the fact that I detest single sub-sections. This might change when the "Home Media" section is eventually added. I think most understand readers that marketing precedes the film's release just as they understand that there is correlation between release and marketing.--TriiipleThreat (talk) 13:04, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

"I think most understand readers that marketing precedes the film's release..."' Exactly! As a reader, it was not clear to me from the TOC where the specific release information was. It looked like it could be in "Reception", but I couldn't find anything there. A paragraph in a section that precedes multiple subsections could at least relate to the subsections, i.e., provide a high-level summary of what follows. That is not what is happening here. For appropriate content grouping, we would want a "Release" section, a "Theatrical release" subsection, a "Marketing" subsection, etc. With that done, a chronological flow makes sense to discuss marketing then the theatrical release (and then the home media if applicable). That was the goal of WP:FILMMARKETING in discussing a "Marketing" subsection. And honestly, considering the commonly large size of "Marketing" subsections under "Release" sections compared to the one medium-sized release-content paragraph, it is poor structuring and labeling. In such cases, "Marketing" really can stand alone. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 13:15, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

While I don't think this is a major issue at all, I would support a move towards having a "Theatrical run" subsection, which would be placed chronologically after the marketing subsection. - adamstom97 (talk) 21:24, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

I love the subsection chronology for release, since that could help us expand information on when films released in countries outside of the U.S. and UK, as we tend to be very geocentric on those two areas (I know this is the English Wikipedia, but still). And having the release information under a subsection would certainly help, as I've never been a fan of sections that have some information under the main section header but also have subsections. Sock (~~tock~~ talk) 21:29, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

This is just a notice that two additional discussions have been taking place regarding this (albeit between myself and Erik) at my talk and the Black Panther article talk. Perma links for both those discussions are here and here, with the hopes that any further discussion will be centralized here. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 06:26, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

I've reviewed Wikipedia's guidelines for guidance on structuring sections and have not found anything relevant to apply here other than that old page saying that single subsections are a bad idea. (Apparently the Chicago Manual of Style also discourages it.) To back up a bit, if we have a section with two subsections, it seems to me that in any piece of writing outside Wikipedia, we should want any potential text before the subsections to at least relate to or summarize the subsections. For example, for such an approach with box office content, we would have text preceding subsections that summarize the overall numbers. Here with Release >> Marketing, it is technically two subsections with the first one being unlabeled (for fear of redundancy, perhaps) and the second one being marketing. And I think these groupings are out of order. In a production section, we would have a pre-production section come first. And we would follow such a pre-production or pre-release subsection with actual production/release subsection(s). Don't get me wrong, these articles have good content and overall structuring, but I think its particular presentation could be refined. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 13:01, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

The way I'm viewing it is as follows. I'm associating marketing with release, so in my logic, you have a level 2 heading for "Release", and then within that a level 3 heading for "Marketing" (in this example there is enough info to warrant a marketing subsection). I don't see this as being out of order per se. Beyond this, if a "Theatrical run" subheading was added, that to me feels redundant since we already have "Release", and the text for a film's release can exist in between the two headings. Regarding the single subsection link, in my understanding of it, it was more to prevent a situation where you have no text between the headings. So a level 2 "Release" followed immediately by a level 3 "Marketing". In that instance, you wouldn't need the level 2 heading. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 17:21, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

I think this goes a little deeper in how content has been distributed in your articles. The box office content is completely severed from release content, where it is more pertinent for a "Release" section than marketing content would be. "Marketing" can generally stand alone anyway, but if it is to be in a "Release" section, it is a lead-in type of subsection where we would follow with actual release-based subsections (forecasting, box office performance -- which have been pushed out of "Release" elsewhere). If you have a hundred words devoted to actual release but hundreds of words devoted to marketing (which is technically pre-release), is it really a "Release" section after all? Maybe we shouldn't bother with "Marketing" subsections at all. Is there any reason that the marketing content can't just stand alone, considering that it is easily a distinct sub-topic between production and release? We've always had a general chronological flow in the articles. On a section level, we would never put the production section below the release section. Within a production section, we would never put pre-production below other content. Within a box office section, we would never put forecasting below actual performance. Why are we putting marketing below release here? Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 14:24, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Erik, the placement of the marketing section makes sense if the release information does not have its own subheading, because then it is a release section with a marketing subsection added which would naturally come after the non-subheadingd info. And it is still a release section if we include marketing, because the marketing is part of the release strategy. The bigger question that I think you should focus on is whether the actual release information should get its own subheading or not. I could go either way on that. Also, the box office information is where it should be. It does not make sense to have it with the release information. - adamstom97 (talk) 22:02, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

"Also, the box office information is where it should be. It does not make sense to have it with the release information." Completely ridiculous statement. A film's theatrical run and the outcome of that run are obviously related. There are different ways to organize content, but to imply that you would oppose writing about a theatrical run and the resulting box office performance in the same section is appalling. That approach is acceptable and has been done elsewhere. Going back to section and subsection structuring, if we had a subsection for the "actual" release information, then we would put it in rough chronological order like we do elsewhere. Meaning if we had a "Release" section, then we'd have "Marketing" then "Theatrical run" or whatever. That's why the release information before a "Marketing" subsection does not work. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 22:12, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

How a film is released is very much separate how it was received. By your logic, we would also be fine with critical reception info in the production section since the critics are responding directly to the film and how it was made. But we don't do that because, even though there are inherent connections, the production and reception are two very different things and depend on different groups of people. Frankly, your statements on this particular element are just nonsense, based in what you have been doing previously rather than common sense. Anyway, I stand by my statement on the marketing order—if the actual release information has a subheading, it goes after the marketing subsection. If not, it goes before. You just need to convince us that we should always be giving it a subheading if you want the practice to change. - adamstom97 (talk) 22:25, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Please see MOS:FILM#Release, which discusses a film's release and its reception, so no, it is incorrect to claim that they should be separate. See how other articles, especially Featured, take a different yet acceptable approach: American Beauty (1999 film), Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, The Fifth Element, Greed (film).

And yes, I agree that the release content should have a subsection heading and come after the "Marketing" subsection, or the marketing section can stand alone. Why not support the latter, anyway? There is often so much marketing content compared to release content, and WP:FILMMARKETING says, "...a stand-alone 'Marketing' section, depending on the amount of coverage available." For something like Fight Club, "Marketing" is a subsection of similar size to the other two. For something like Black Panther (film), there is so much more marketing coverage available for it than anything else in the "Release" section and warrants separating-out. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 13:04, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

I think the way that release section in the MOS is worded is confusing and follows fundamentally flawed logic. And I wouldn't be against standalone marketing sections, but like I said earlier I still see no issue with the current formatting so I'm not going out of my way to have everything changed. - adamstom97 (talk) 22:03, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Proposed wording

Regarding how to include a "Marketing" subsection, I think the simplest change is to say that if there is such a subsection, there should be other subsections too. Here are a couple of sources supporting this approach:

Modern Language Association: "Balance: No internal heading level should have only one instance. For example, if you have one level 1 heading, you need to have a second level 1 heading."
APA Style: "For subsections, we recommend that if you are going to have them at all, you should aim for at least two."

WP:FILMMARKETING currently states, "Details may be contained in a 'Release' section, a 'Marketing' subsection within it, or a stand-alone 'Marketing' section..." I propose simply adding a few more words, "Details may be contained in a 'Release' section, a 'Marketing' subsection within it among other subsections, or a stand-alone 'Marketing' section..." I believe that establishing a rough chronological order to subsections will naturally follow like it would in a "Production" section.

Pinging those who have been involved with this discussion so far: Betty Logan, Deathawk, TriiipleThreat, Sock, Favre1fan93, Adamstom.97. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 15:00, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I'm fine with this because it doesn't refute your idea of layout, nor my idea of layout. Because going back to the original issue with Black Panther, that formatting will ultimately be:

Release
- Marketing
- Home media

which is within this wording (a marketing subsection within release with other subsections). - Favre1fan93 (talk) 21:12, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

No, I'm sorry I can't support this. Subheadings on Wikipedia seek to narrow the focus and there isn't always going to be something to narrow. For instance you couldn't really sum up the first three paragraphs of the production section of Get Out, unless you were really reaching, it just discusses too many things. The MLA is good, but it doesn't work when we already have a house style that works fairly well. --Deathawk (talk) 06:44, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

WP:FILMCAST – Names per credits?...

Is there any compelling reason why WP:FILMCAST does not contain the phrase "Names [and cast order] as per film credits." somewhere in there?! We've recently added that to WP:TVCAST, as it avoids a lot of issues (esp. of the WP:OR kind), and I'm wondering why FILMCAST doesn't just include this phrase as well... Is there a reason? Would anyone object to adding this to WP:FILMCAST? --IJBall (contribs • talk) 21:37, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

TV cast typically have main, recurrence, guest, and one-shots; this nearly always identify the recurring cast front and center. Films do not have the regularity to that. There are films that provide the cast in order of appearance, but this would put the key stars down several slots, and would be oddly presented. --Masem (t) 21:41, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

@Masem: I actually (prob. foolishly) included two issues in my posting: 1) actor and character names as per credits, and 2) cast order listing as per credits. Issue #1 is a much more important issue than issue #2. Generally, films have in the end credits a list of actor and character names (often in order of appearance) – my point is that we should generally follow these credits for actor and character names in film 'Cast' section listings, and that this should be included in WP:FILMCAST. The exact wording we use in WP:TVCAST is "All names should be referred to as credited, or by common name supported by a reliable source." I think that wording could pretty much be lifted as is, and put into WP:FILMCAST, without any problem.
The cast order listing question is much more complex as most films often have separate opening credits (generally actor names only) and/or "main" end-credits listings (again, often just actor names), and then a final end-credits listing (often in order of appearance) which generally includes actor names and character names, and sometimes all three! This "muddies" what the proper cast ordering should be. So this issue likely requires a more "nuanced" solution... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 21:53, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Actor and character names are reasonable to go off "as credited". It's just the order question that I think throws a problem into how one does a film's cast over a TV show. --Masem (t) 02:07, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

@Masem: So, to be clear – you wouldn't object to the wording from WP:TVCAST above being added to WP:FILMCAST?... (FTR, I agree that the cast ordering issue is more complicated, and don't intend to tackle that one right now...) --IJBall (contribs • talk) 03:53, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes, just avoid the order issue. --Masem (t) 04:10, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

OK, nice. I will wait to see if there are any other comments or objections from other editors. But if there are no further comments here, I'll plan on adding "All names should be referred to as credited, or by common name supported by a reliable source." to WP:FILMCAST in the next several days... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 04:35, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Whereas TVCAST has some structure such as following the opening credits order of the first episode, and adding characters afterwards, it's not as straightforward for film cast. For infobox, the poster billing block is used, but for the Cast section, it is very contentious which one to go by and will usually be decided by the person who edits there first or screams the most: it could be poster billing block, opening title card credits / closing title card credits, or the closing credits if they show some level of hierarchy and not order of appearance, or a credits list from the film's official website. I tried to reorganize the cast list by poster billing block and title card credits order on Star Trek: Beyond but the editor there was very upset, insisting that it be closing credits order. As for names of characters, you can use the common name of the character as shown in production notes but also how they are billed in the closing credits if the closing credits are not abbreviated names. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 05:46, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Again, I don't intent to touch cast ordering right now, just the "names per credits" issue. The current wording also allows for "common name supported by a reliable source", so your last point shouldn't be a problem. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 13:51, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Sometimes editors want to list out the character's real name, full name and/or military title, or working title names, which is okay for follow-up character description, but not for the Actor as Character listing part. But it doesn't hurt to add footnotes when there are conflicting credits as with Jake Johnson's character in The Mummy (2017 film). AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 18:31, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

This is rather the whole point – they shouldn't list out full names or titles if they're not in the credits in the 'Cast' listing, unless it can be sourced to a WP:RS. Otherwise, it's pretty much WP:OR... The note at The Mummy (2017 film) is fine, but frankly based on that, the character should be listed as just "Veil" in the Cast listing, not "Chris Veil". The proposed additional wording is designed to deal with situations exactly like this... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 18:45, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

I would be careful with the notion of "common place" names "if reliably sourced" when it goes against the actual credits. For example. Harvey Dent is never called "Two-Face" in The Dark Knight. They joke that it was his nickname when he was in internal affairs, but he isn't directly called that, nor is he credited as such in the film. He's credited as just Harvey Dent. If we go common place and reliable sources, then tons of reviewers refer to him as Two-Face, because they know who the character is. I wouldn't support crediting him as such, regardless of the source. It's one thing to point out that this is "Two-Face", and it's another thing to add that as if the film credited him that. Just like Gal Gadot is only "Diana" in Wonder Woman, not "Diana Prince", which they used once and is her associated name throughout the comics and the film universe. But for the purposes of that movie, she's only credited as "Diana" (not even "Wonder WOman"). We shouldn't add something into those section and pass it off as though that's what happened in production crediting, just because other people use different names to describe them. Just to go back further, Clint Eastwood's "Man with no Name" actually has credited names in those films. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 19:06, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't see a way around reusing the wording from WP:TVCAST for this at WP:FILMCAST. If editors want to argue about the credited "Diana" vs. the sourced "Wonder Woman" for the character name in the 'Cast' section at the Wonder Woman article, that's up to them (and is probably unavoidable!). What I am trying to avoid is situations where editors use WP:OR to just put down any old character (or actor) name they see fit. The proposed language will at least narrow this down to either the name from the credits, or a name from a WP:RS... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 20:43, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Are you running into issues where people are putting "any old name they see fit", and it's not simple trolling or vandalism? BIGNOLE (Contact me) 21:02, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Yes. I've been doing more film cast edits lately, as I'm watching movies on Netflix, Hulu, HBO, etc. and can "freeze" the end-credits using apps on my iPhone, and I'm running into this issue quite a bit. Most recent example – listing Josh Stewart as "Arkin O'Brien" (not sourced) in the 'Cast' sections at both The Collector (2009 film) and The Collection (film), when he's clearly credited as just "Arkin" for both films (esp. The Collection which actually has "main" end-credits sequence). IOW, there is zero indication that the character's WP:COMMONNAME is "Arkin O'Brien" (in fact, the full name is mentioned only in passing in both films...) But this was just one of a number of recent examples of this that I've seen over the past month or so. I strongly believe that WP:FILMCAST needs to be "tightened up" with the language from WP:TVCAST, so this no longer becomes an issue and "names as per credits" becomes the norm at WP:FILM articles... FWIW. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 22:49, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

I think the credits should definitely be the starting point for cast listed, but then if a character is referred to by another (or more complete) name in the film, that can also be used. Especially if such naming is mentioned in our plot summaries, not seeing consistencies in the plot and cast lists can lead to some confusion. So in the example you provided, I don't see an issue of listing "Arkin O'Brien" over simply "Arkin" because of the mention within the film. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 03:31, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

In the case of Baywatch (film), David Hasselhoff's character is credited as "The Mentor" and Pamela Anderson's character is "Casey Jean Parker" even though there are other actors who portray Mitch Buchannon and C.J. Parker respectively. So this is where the credits are helpful. The links of Casey Jean Parker and C.J. Parker can go to the same character article, although it would be overlinking. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 03:56, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Fuller names can be used in the 'Plot' section, but should not be used in the 'Cast' section (unless it's sourced to a WP:RS). We are an encyclopedia, and for the 'Cast' section we should only be going off the film's credits (as per WP:PRIMARY), or in a few cases off a secondary WP:RS. For the 'Cast' section, we should generally be following the cast listing in the film's credits, just as something like Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide, etc. would. This is really no different that it is in a TV series – even though full character names are often mentioned in passing over the course of a TV series, we generally should list only the credited character name (presuming there is one) in the 'Cast' listing. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 04:13, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

For superhero films and shows it is helpful to go by the closing credits, like with Avengers Assemble just use "Iron Man" [4] and for Ultimate Spider-Man (TV series) list "Tony Stark a.k.a. Iron Man" [5] AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 04:40, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

I would say some tightening needs to be done. I think that TV has bigger issues with this than film, simply because of the amount of episodes versus films. Usually, but not always, what is said in the film is what is credited at the end. Obvious examples of that not happening, but statistically that isn't the case. In TV, they can be credited one way the entire time, but frequently referred to by another name or you have to deal with the "this episode revealed their full name, so we need to include their full name as well" regardless of credit. For film, I would say that it should stick to the credit. Otherwise, you're really using in-universe information to source something out-of-universe, which is kind of backwards to what we want. BIGNOLE (Contact me) 18:58, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Pre-production films in filmographies

I'm virtually certain the FILMMOS specifies that filmographies and similar lists of films not include films in pre-production since in many cases that's WP:CRYSTAL and the film might never go into production. But for the life of me I can't where it says that. Has this changed? Thank you for any help. --Tenebrae (talk) 20:51, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

It's simply from WP:CRYSTAL – it's doesn't need to be in MOS:FILM. Any film that hasn't actually started filming yet could be "cancelled" at the last minute and become a "vaporware" project, and thus shouldn't be listed in Filmographies – there are definitely real-world examples of this (heck, there are even examples of films that got cancelled in the middle of filming, though there aren't nearly as many of those!). So simply referring to WP:CRYSTAL should be good enough. If anyone starts reverting you over this, you can probably find backup by reporting the situation to WT:FILMBIO... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 22:58, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

But, it might be worth a discussion at WT:FILMBIO as to whether language about this should be added to WP:FILMOGRAPHY. It may seem "obvious", but adding language to that effect probably wouldn't hurt... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 23:00, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, that's helpful. I did just find something at WP:NFF ("No Future Films"?), but that's about not creating articles for films said to be in pre-production. Maybe this is what I was thinking of? Anyone remember if we applied this to filmographies? --Tenebrae (talk) 01:30, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Good idea about WT:FILMBIO, by the way.--Tenebrae (talk) 01:35, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

Even if it is not in the guidelines, I think it is a good practice to hold off on listing films until they are at least in production. What I've done in the past is to put prose after the filmography saying that a certain project is in development with this person involved. If filming commences, that prose can "graduate" to be the newest listing in the prose (with a blue link or a red link that should be turn blue soon). Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 19:02, 27 February 2018 (UTC)

RfC: References for key or complex plot points in plot sections

Opinions are needed on the following: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Writing about fiction#RfC: Is it encouraged to have references for key or complex plot points in plot sections?. A permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 08:17, 11 March 2018 (UTC)

We really do need to get something done about production section cleanup

The guidelines for production section were changed in December 2017, but we still have a massive backlog of production sections to clean up. These problematic sections generally consists of lots of proseline and usually only feature contextless announcements usually pretaining to casting. We need to do something about this as we don't want these sections laying around. I see two possible solutions.

A) We create a cleanup template specifically related to production sections, and then we could list that under it under the Category:Film articles needing attention"

B) We could create a section detailing the problem in the "cleanup syle" of the Film:MOS itself. I do not necessarily know what to say, but we could come up with the wording together.

We also should probably contact the Assessment department somehow and let them know that these are problematic and that "good articles" should not contain such things, but I'm kinda unsure how that would go.

Thoughts? --Deathawk (talk) 18:44, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Production Section and introduction section

I have started a discussion about a trend that worries me with some film articles regarding "introduction" sentences. I would very much like some more eyes on it. You can find the link here --Deathawk (talk) 04:14, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:X-Men (film series)#Release table

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:X-Men (film series)#Release table. -- Alex^TW 13:01, 10 April 2018 (UTC)

Die Hard

There is a discussion in the talk page of Die Hard, regarding the cast section and plot summary of that movie. It's tied three-to-three. Me, Darkwarriorblake and Ducktech89 are in favor of keeping the plot summary and cast section as is while TheOldJacobite, Masem and Doniago are in favoring of removing the named henchmen on that movie. BattleshipMan (talk) 15:57, 17 April 2018 (UTC)

Hotel Artemis

There is a discussion on the Talk:Hotel Artemis regarding the production section. Much of it seems to be a discussion about whether or not to include casting news, which I thought was an over and done with debate, regardless you are invited to join us here --Deathawk (talk) 23:27, 22 April 2018 (UTC)

Guideline needed for film festival articles

Some kind of guideline is needed for writing and then updating and cleaning up film festival articles. Here is an example of what can be left behind after all the excitement of speculations and predictions moves on to other events: 65th Venice International Film Festival. Of course one can place all kinds of maintenance templates, but this won't improve the non-encyclopedic content. It would be a grammatical tongue twister to try to fix the tenses to retain all these claims. Then it would be a political jaw breaker to see whose press it is that is reporting what and try to take the cultural bias out, or to put it in due weight with some translated articles from the non English talking world. At best we should have some guidelines to avoid such buildup in upcoming film festivals. Hoverfish Talk 01:30, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

I tried to do some of this with the FF task force, but that's been long forgotten. I guess go with what feels right and be bold. If someone objects to a certain styling, etc, then move that to the talkpage and notify WT:FILM for more input. Outside of adding film titles and award tables, there's really very little input from the community to flesh out these type of articles. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 08:17, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Production section and the MOS

This has been discussed in a couple places but because ultimatly it's an MOS issue, I wanted to put it here.

In December we changed the wording on the production section of the MOS to discourage casting news, announcements to to the public and general minutia(link to the RFC) Recently I had and issue over at the Hotel Artemis page where I found the production section to be nothing but this type of thing so I deleted it. Rusted AutoParts (talk · contribs) came along, reverted me and wrote that "The MOS wording doesn’t outright prohibit this" (diff) he also worried about it failing notabillity requirements for some reason because the cast list was now unsourced. To the later point I opened a discussion page on Wikiproject film to ask whether or not this would be the case. During that discussion I got pushback from Masem (talk · contribs) who seemed to believe that we should keep the production section as is, despite it not being up to quality standards in case it could be fleshed out at a further date. I also got pushback from Erik (talk · contribs) who seems to believe that such context less casting news is appropriate despite being explicitly discouraged by the MOS.

I find Masem's suggestion an solution unacceptable as it leads to us knowingly leaving sloppy production sections in the public eye, in the off chance that something comes (which he openly admits is unlikely) and I find that Erik is ignoring what the MOS says entirely.

Am I wrong here? --Deathawk (talk) 21:43, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

There is nothing in the language that says, "Do not include casting news." These are guidelines to encourage streamlining production coverage. Hotel Artemis could use improvement in writing, but it was already streamlined in regard to casting news. It also does not explain the section-blanking that also removed the details of the development start and of Lion's backing. Why was this deleted too, and not just the casting sentence? Do you even want "Production" sections at all? Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 22:13, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes I do want them, but only if they're quality and contain useful information of substance which the page in question largely did not contain.. If you stand back and look at the info included you will notice that it really does not say anything important about the production process which is the purpose of these. It includes A) When the film was announced to the public ("A public announcement" not the start of production) When it was aquired by the distributor (which due to lack of any other context I would define as a "day-to-day operation) the casting (Which the MOS explitly states should talk about the "how the actors were found and what creative choices were made during casting," as opposed to a specific timeline) and the date the film started shooting. I have already explained that the removing the last part was a mistake, however all the other points are specificly discouraged by the MOS. You're right, in that there is no language explicitly stating "Do not do this" however that is because we do not use that type of language often when writing policy. However these guidelines were written by the Wikipedia community specifically to curb these bad practices. --Deathawk (talk) 22:38, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

While I agree that if this was all we ever could write about the production, it's not really helpful and should be removed, but my argument is based on the fact that we have no deadline and WP articles are not expected to always be in a final state. Having information that has the potential to be integrated when more information comes along is not unreasonable particularly for an unreleased work. MOS is importance once we're looking to bring the article to GA/FA standards, and that can only happen after a film's release, and while there are other parts of MOS (importantly, the style elements) that should be kept to spec throughout, parts related to content should be flexible as an article develops. --Masem (t) 23:22, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

Part of the issue as I see it is that there's not really much to preserve. I don't think it really improves the understanding of anything by stating "X was announced on Y date" We can massage it by then including relevant details about how the casting process happened, but realistically it's not going to harm the article in anyway if we lose the announcement date. This is of course not even going into the issue that the material will always be there in the article's history and if one were so inclined they could simply dig it out when there was relevant info. Regardless though, I do not think it's proper to have a sloppy article just in the off chance that something will become relevant. --Deathawk (talk) 23:44, 23 April 2018 (UTC)

I think Masem has a fair point. It should be a cycle of reworking. Reworking can mean avoiding proseline and including and/or excluding certain detail. I agree that proseline is a problem to be addressed right away, but my concern is the judgment involved in including and/or excluding detail. The guidelines suggest elements of production that are important, but that does not mean the inverse is true, that if it has not been highlighted, we should not include it. It should be a matter of local consensus how pertinent details are to a film's production. In regard to Hotel Artemis, this is an even earlier article that contextualizes the development better than the piece that says that Jodie Foster joined. That helps lay the groundwork for how the film came to be. The trade papers Variety and The Hollywood Reporter have a lot of detail that we do not include -- puffery, executive producers, bland business information. We have to distill the detail into a tangible timeline that could be fleshed out as we get more coverage. Like maybe the story was written in the 1990s, and it took until 2016 for it to get developed, and we'll have the foundation for that fuller timeline. (As an aside, regarding Lionsgate, that could be moved to a "Release" section where the distributor and the release date are also named.) Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 14:11, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

The inverse is true because it's explicitly spelled out in the MOS which states that we should be "only including the casting date (month and year is normally sufficient) where it is notably relevant to the overall production history."There is no wiggle room, it's stating "Do not do this" As for you variety link which provides more context, it's probably worthwhile but it's useless to bring up here because that information was not included in the article." --Deathawk (talk) 21:32, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

In order for us to avoid going round and round in a circle with just the three of us, I'm going to attempt to bring in some new voices. We're debating a lot about interpretations of the MOS so I'm going to bring in SMcCandlish (talk · contribs) and MapReader (talk · contribs) who were both instrumental in helping to create this itteration of the production section. I believe Map has already chimed in somewhat in the debate when it was previously in Wiproject:Film but I still thinks he's one of the better people to ask about the meaning of the wording. I'm also putting a seperate notice on Wikiproject film to this discussion.--Deathawk (talk) 21:41, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

Without checking back, my recollection of the discussion was that I joined to support others concerned at a tendency to fill film pages with trivia that didn't serve to enlighten the reader about the film. The timetable for casting might be relevant and informative if, for example, a particular actor is cast early and the rest of the cast assembled around them, or if a particular role proved difficult to fill until the last minute, or if someone is cast and later drops out. But, otherwise, knowing that actor X was cast on 1 May and actor Y on 10 June is no more informative than that the battle scene was filmed on 1 May and the love scene filmed on 10 June - details that no sensible editor would put into an article. My personal view was and is that a simple list of dates when things happened isn't encyclopaedic information unless there is special context that makes it relevant to understanding how the film came to be made. The consensus was along similar lines and - remembering that the MoS is guidelines not rules - the final wording both discourages inclusion of such detail and, where it is justified, says that month and year is normally sufficient.MapReader (talk) 22:03, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

I have had a similar issue with Deathawk, and I believe this all comes down to a pretty simple point: the MOS change was widely supported because most editors agree that production sections can fill with minutiae and trivia which is something we want to stop, but Deathawk's idea of trivia is actually different from the majority opinion leading to lots of issues now. I haven't checked out this specific issue yet, but I'll use Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse as an example as that is where I had my issue. Deathawk was trying to remove announcements of notable things such as the producers of the film (the people who literally make it) as well as supporting details that provided context to pertinent information and showed the development of the project through time. It was stripping the article down to its bare bones and left important details like the producers out of the production section completely. I don't know about you guys, but when I read about a film on Wikipedia I want to know everything about it, not just a couple noteworthy people and how they were involved.

Do I think we need to tighten up these sections in places and be careful that we aren't only listing dates of announcements? I do, and I think the MOS change helps encourage that. But we shouldn't be going from one extreme to another, and we shouldn't be acting like all announcements are evil. If you find a production section that notes something irrelevant to the film, remove that bit. If there is a casting section just listing casting announcements, look for other details on the casting process to put the focus on. But don't go around blanking whole sections because you personally feel they aren't important.

On the issue of leaving articles to be fixed later, I am very much against deleting content because we don't know more info yet, particularly before a film is released. We are in WP:NORUSH and the article will reach a desirable state in due time. Don't include irrelevant information in case it becomes relevant later on, but we shouldn't leave out the writer's name because we haven't learned about the writing process yet, for example, either. A film article will always be changing and improving, especially until after the film is released.

This has ended up being quite a long comment, so apologies for that, but I really just wanted to be clear that we shouldn't be overeacting to these things or rushing into mass deletion. - adamstom97 (talk) 03:42, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Without going into this specific case, in the Spiderman example. I believe the issue was that there were five producers attached with Adamstorm wanting to list them all as well as a statement that sounded very promotional in nature. I worried specifically about how relevant including all five in fact actually were, as it seemed to clutter up the page. I don't really want to go into it, but it wasn't as straightforward as an "include vs exclude" type situation. --Deathawk (talk) 04:36, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

My basic position is this, we have done a really poor job in the last few years of enforcing relevant production sections. I feel that they are rapidly being devalued to our readers: readers read three or four film production sections think that they're all trash and then walk away from these sections forever. As someone who mainly edits in production sections I do not want that to happen. Erik (talk · contribs) earlier seemed to imply that I might be against production sections in general which is the furthest thing from the truth and the exact opposite of my intention I am trying to encourage more readers to these sections by cleaning out bad content.

There seems to be a lot of leeway given to this page since it's a "work in progress" and the idea is that people are not actively viewing the page yet. I do sympathize with that to some extent however the fact is the trailer was released on the 16th, That same day our page view shot up to 1,391 views to 20.457 (Source) The time for waiting on the production section is over: People are actively viewing the content. --Deathawk (talk) 04:18, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

I also find a lot of the advice here about how one should build a production section contradictory. Adamstorm stated "Don't include irrelevant information in case it becomes relevant later on, but we shouldn't leave out the writer's name because we haven't learned about the writing process yet" well isn't including the writer in that case irrelevant, and something that shouldn't be done. It's like a riddle and we are creating a situation where it's impossible to clean up articles because something might be useful down the road. --Deathawk (talk) 04:31, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

This comes back to the idea that you seem to have a strange idea of what is irrelevant trivia. Saying who the writer is is not trivia. - adamstom97 (talk) 23:38, 26 April 2018 (UTC)

I was speaking more toward the general idea of what to write vs "hey let's not delete that" rather than speaking about the position of the scriptwriter in general. Also, despite mentioning your name, I was not trying to single you out, I was just using your example. I'm seeing a lot of replies that seem to indicate that the RFC is good policy and that there is a lot of production cruft, but that we shouldn't delete that cruft just in case, which seems like just a way to run around in circles. If something is bad than obviously it should be removed. We can bring it back later if it's relevant but we shouldn't be just keeping it around just to have it stockpiled. --Deathawk (talk) 05:03, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

This is what I was trying to get at with my comment above: editors do seem to agree with you about cleaning up production sections, but don't necessarily agree with the specifics of each article. That just means that you should feel free to clean up articles as you see fit, but be prepared to have to deal with BRD and defend your actions at the talk page because you may think something is bad and needs to be removed, but not everyone is going to agree with you. - adamstom97 (talk) 05:58, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

I mean I'm trying too. I've explained multiple times, within the past few days my reasoning but it seems like all I'm getting are arguments that are WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT,in nature. Erik and Rusted have expressed beliefs that the MOS doesn't explicitly prohibit the offending content (which I have argued to the contrary) , and Masem's main argument seems to be a "wait and seee" aproach. Nobody in the multiple discussions regarding this has actually defend the productions sections content or said that it was good, which makes it hard to debate. I'm also worried that this will interfere with cleaning up similar articles in the future and that it will just take us back to the days of poor production sections. --Deathawk (talk) 08:41, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

I think you had a different outlook than me and Adam and Masem about dealing with production sections. I think that many films will need to have their production sections built up in a piecemeal manner, and it is always going to be a judgment call about what pieces to use. I don't mind pieces that are not that interesting to me personally as a reader if it may interest others, as long as it is conveyed succinctly. I don't know if you have any interest in diving into a different example? Like find an especially bad production section in an undeveloped article of an already-released film, and each of us can rewrite the section in the sandbox and compare notes? Like Mother's Day (2016 film). :) Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 13:31, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Another factor to keep in mind is that because WP is open and we want to encourage editing, hard enforcement of the MOS on an article clearly in development (a film yet released) is against that spirit. I'd rather see new editors, otherwise uncomfortable with WP, adding WP:PROSELINE-type details with sources than nothing at all. We can clean that up later, remove the information that becomes trivial once the film's out and more production details are seen, and the like. That's a part of the collaborative editing environment. --Masem (t) 13:44, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

I understand what you are getting at but the vast majority of these problematic production sections come from a handful of advanced users, all of who'm were invited to comment on the various RFC's leading to this change. Furthermore we need to strike a balance between meaningful content and being an open platform. I almost always explain the reasoning behind my edits so there should never be a question as to why something was removed. The TLDR is that I do not really see this a reason to stifle cleanup

As for building up the content piecemeal like, I agree with it in the sense that an article should be better tommorrow than it is today and that early on film developments substantial content will be harder to come by. However what I object to is stockpiling content that is almost certainly not going to be important in the future. Casting announcements in general are rarely useful, as are giving timetables for when announcements to the genreal public happened. My thinking is that when one of these happen you know it's going to be big. The idea I keep coming back to in these debates is Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man, when that announcement happened, it was news in of itself and there was no denying it. The announcement of when the stars of Step Brothers however was much less eventful, and it's silly to think that it would be in any way encyclopedic. --Deathawk (talk) 06:10, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Per Eric's request I put together a rough draft of how I would picture a Mother's Day production section you can find it here. Of particular note is how the production section give adequate details about both Juliet Robert and Hillary Duff but does not list a date for when either of them were announced to join. Despite this. I feel it adequately expresses the info needed. This was not a constraint on my part, but rather how I'd write the article normally. --Deathawk (talk) 23:45, 28 April 2018 (UTC)

Rusted AutoParts (talk · contribs) Masem (talk · contribs) Erik (talk · contribs) can we resume this conversation? it's been a about a week now and I don't really feel comfortable working on film articles until we've got this sorted out. --Deathawk (talk) 08:09, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, I've been busy IRL lately and have only edited sporadically. I did come across an atrocious example today: Robin Hood (2018 film). I can show my draft of Mother's Day and perhaps Robin Hood next week. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 16:23, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

Agreed that article is atrocious, and I'm glad we can agree on that. There's hundreds of articles like that which I'm trying to clean up. The interesting thing here, is that a lot of the elements in the Hotel Artemous page are the same ones at the Robin Hood page just on a much worse scale. This leads me to thinking that you might be arguing with me on the principal alone rather than the content. My goal is not to delete production sections, I just do so when they're isn't any real content in there. Some of the production sections I've reformed are Tomb Radier, Blair Witch, Rampage, The Meg, as you can see I/m passionate about production sections and wish for them to continue, I simply think that if we have a production section without any content it looks bad for us. --Deathawk (talk) 21:55, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

I agree most or all of the "production" material in that article should go. It's blathering, non-encyclopedic trivia. If the cast section would be left unsourced, move the citations to that section (But published works are their own primary sources, so the cast list that appears in the work itself is sufficient sourcing for the cast anyway, since that's something we can use a primary source for, per WP:PRIMARY and WP:ABOUTSELF.) There is surely going to be pushback against the MOS:FILM changes, because their purpose is to address fannish over-inclusion of trivia, most film-related articles are written by fans, and they are the source of the problem. "There's no formal policy against this" isn't a rationale, or we would have no guidelines at all, and even if we did no one would follow them. It's just invalid reasoning at Wikipedia. See WP:P&G: We are expected to follow guidelines, absent at WP:IAR-level reason to not follow a particular one in a particular case. "Someone might expand the trivia later" isn't such a reason. Nor is failure to understand that a citation in one place for something in that place and for something in another place can be moved to the other place when deleting the material from the first place. Nor is "it's interesting" (see WP:NOT and WP:AADD). — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:28, 8 May 2018 (UTC)

Tables in Cast Section

Just a quick question about using tables in the cast member section. Would it be appropriate to use a table for a film if there were a max of 4 actors with singular roles or would the standard bullet point be best? From my understanding of the cast section tables are more useful for films with actors who engage in multiple roles or for showing voice dub actors for foreign films translated into english and vice versa. Brocicle (talk) 16:10, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

It's worth noting that bulleted lists are generally better than tables when the cast list is likely to fluctuate in the editing process. Table code can be complex to work with. However, in situations where either editing activity is low or if there is a clear and unchanging set of actors, there is no reason not to use tables. If anything, tables are more appropriate than bulleted lists in spacing out content better. A bulleted item has everything collapsed into running prose. But if the community wants to ban cast tables, feel free to establish that here. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 16:21, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

As a matter of personal preference and judgment, when I see a simple cast section that could serve its purpose with a simple bulleted list using a table, I feel that either someone is being overly playful with tables, or (given the justification of "easier to locate the information") that the reader's ability to read a list item is largely underestimated. Hoverfish Talk 18:12, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

A bulleted item containing the actor, the role, and running-prose description all combined together is becoming less common. There is more often now a line break between the actor/role and the running prose as indicated by use of the {{cast list break}} template. That says to me that there is an acknowledgement that such details are not quite easily read with that combined approach. Even looking at Black Panther (film), is it really that easy to identify an actor and role with various amounts of running prose between each line? If the prose were tabled to be next to the actor and the role, such details would be easier to discern, surely? Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 19:00, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

I was talking about "simple" cases, like actor-role-2/3 word description. And I say this because I come across quite a few at times. But I see now that the cast in question is that of A Quiet Place (film) (no link given in the above discussion). Now this is surely not a "simple" one, neither that of Black Panther (film), nor some of the what-links-here of Template:Cast list break that I checked. Depending on what screen resolution one is using, either the template or the table could be the best choice. For narrower screens the actor-role cells would take up a considerable part of the width, squeezing all the text in the rightmost cell. For wider screens of course the table makes things easier to see. Hoverfish Talk 20:00, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

I contest Erik's notion that bulleted lists are becoming less common. The existence of {{cast list break}} is not at all proof that lists are hard to read: it exists because some people are trying to back-door table-like style into bulleted lists that don't need it (and usually for entries that should never be as long as they are). My favourite part of that template is that it is applied completely arbitrarily—if people are going to insist on its use, at least apply it uniformly. But it is regularly only applied to list entries that are subjectively deemed "too long" and there are zero guidelines as to what constitutes "too long".

The cast list table at A Quiet Place (film) is ridiculous overkill. On top of all this, tables should always be avoided whenever possible as they pose significant WP:ACCESS issues. —Joeyconnick (talk) 00:13, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

I didn't say that bulleted lists are becoming less common. I'm talking about such lists where {{cast list break}} are being used. Obviously it exists to break up the condensed packaging of actor, role, and running prose in part. A table breaks up that packaging to its fullest. Also nothing in WP:ACCESS says that tables should be avoided. Table code can be complex, and we would avoid it if we see the set of actors and roles change too much. But they aren't, so it is not a reason to avoid it. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 01:06, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Whenever I mention issues of rendering pages for smaller screens I get no reaction, as if it doesn't matter. Myself I use only big screens, but smaller devices are being used to browse Wikipedia in considerably large numbers lately. So if your browser has a Responsive design view, do give it a try to see the table at A Quiet Place with Nexus 4 (640x384) resolution, even at landscape orientation, and then try Black Panther. Then please try to imagine how Black Panther would render in table format. You will see I have a point and a very serious one, given the trends of our days. Of course we can keep ignoring the smaller screen trends and hope the Wikipedia app will resolve the issues for these screens in the future. Hoverfish Talk 02:25, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Editors should take a bit more care when designing layout; it is a common editorial fault for editors to opt for a layout that looks best in their browser. The most common laptop resolution is 1366x768 and the most common desktop is 1920x1080 so the layout should always work on these resolutions. However, the lowest resolution that is supported on Wikipedia according to WP:RESOL is 1024x768, so we really don't need to cater to ultra-low resolutions (I suppose that's what the mobile version of Wikipedia is for). I always use http://www.responsinator.com/ to check any layout changes I initiate. Betty Logan (talk) 03:06, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

If it is any consolation I use my phone on the mobile website for majority of my editing and article browsing. The table in the mobile format requires scrolling back and fourth to read the prose whereas having it as bullet form does not. The article format should cater to all resolutions, not just one editors preferred preference. Brocicle (talk) 06:02, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

Pages on m.wikipedia already render differently than standard Wikipedia. For example, infoboxes used to render before the first paragraph but at some point the programmers started to make them render between the first and second paragraph. For that reason (not regarding the usefulness of this table per se) I don't think it's our (the editors') job to make things look better on m.wikipedia, especially at the expense of the main site. Daß Wölf 19:56, 8 April 2018 (UTC)

The fact is there are limits when you are designing layout i.e. infoboxes have minimum widths, there is a default size for images, tables often have a prescribed width etc, so it is impossible to cater to all resolutions. If readers and editors choose to access Wikipedia on small resolution displays then that is their choice, but it shouldn't dictate design to the extent that it becomes detrminental for resolutions we are obliged to cater for. Betty Logan (talk) 06:34, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

While that is true this isn't about tables as a whole, it's about having a table where it really isn't necessary. Having a table for four actors with singular roles isnt necessary at all, not to mention 10 separate editors in the past month have tried to change it to the standard bullet list and have been reverted every time by the same editor. Also four editors including myself have gone to the talk page about it considering the editor claims changing it to a bullet list is unhelpful, doesn't meet guidelines, is unnecessary, or claims the reasons given by editors are not good enough excuses/reasons to change. This is why I came here to ask the question in the first place. Brocicle (talk) 07:57, 7 April 2018 (UTC)

@Daß Wölf:: Point taken. I wouldn't like to see the main site limited or modified to cater for mobiles. I am a PC user almost exclusively, but there are things we have to keep in mind for tablet and mobile users. - Answer to all: The MOSFILM section on Tables is empty. Earlier I had made a suggestion: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film/Archive 14#Section tables / expansion - suggestions, but no one reacted, so I dropped it. Meanwhile I have given it more thought, tested tables with more devices and followed various discussions on the issue of how Wikipedia gets served via apps. Some problems can indeed be solved. To solve the table problem is not about to happen though. What happens is that tables get collapsed and you have to click on "More information" and then you get the table squeezed in width and elongated in height. In film awards, each cell contains relatively few words, so such tables are more or less readable. If however a lot of text is placed in a cell in a same row with one or two cells containing actor name and role, the result is very bad. I would say that at least the WP:WHENTABLE phrase "If the information you are editing is not tabular in nature, it probably does not belong in a table", would be good to have in this MOS page. Hoverfish Talk 01:22, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

I've found it useful for foreign language films that have a prominent English dub and where it simply lists the character name and the two actors. Otherwise the bullet list of "Actor as Character, description" would seem to work fine. The verbiage in the MOS currently states this example. AngusWOOF (bark • sniff) 16:28, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

One issue that should be noted with tables is that programming-savvy editors can't resist rowspanning, which is daunting to less technical people and presents another barrier to welcoming new editors. I've heard over and over how people would like to edit something on Wikipedia but are too overwhelmed. And that's for basic stuff — rowspans really throw them.

Even if, let's say, rowspans would not be an issue here, a simple bulleted list is much easier for the average person to edit. I can handle tables, including rowspans, just fine. But making editing harder rather than easier for the general public seems counterintuitive to me. --Tenebrae (talk) 17:35, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Does anyone know of examples of pages that use tables or infoboxes for cast lists? Just looking at random it doesn't seem to be that common, and it seems like it would be a little odd to encourage not having a "cast" listing in the contents section and have to go looking for it in an infobox in the plot section. --tronvillain (talk) 16:43, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Fight Club and Jaws (film) are two from the top of my head, both of which look pretty good to me. They generally work best when the cast is comparatively small so that you avoid having lots of whitespace. Betty Logan (talk) 19:16, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. Of course, those are at least in a "casting" section. Allowing it to be an infobox in the plot section seems a little odd. --tronvillain (talk) 19:32, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Proposed addition to plot guideline

I know this is understood by most but can we include the phrase, "Plot summaries should not be anymore verbose as necessary to accurately convey the film's plot"?--TriiipleThreat (talk) 13:40, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

I'd oppose that wording as I don't believe it's grammatically correct. I might be amenable to "Plot summaries should only be as verbose as necessary to accurately convey the film's plot." or "Plot summaries should not be more verbose than necessary to accurately convey the film's plot." I have two questions though: 1) Where in the guideline would you wish this to be included? 2) What do you feel this will address that the guideline as-written doesn't cover? I would specifically note that the guideline already says "basic descriptions of their plots are acceptable" (emphasis mine). Cheers. DonIago (talk) 14:49, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to either of your grammatical corrections. Again, I think this is already implied but it would be beneficial if it were explicitly stated.

Plot summaries for feature films should be between 400 and 700 words. The summary should not exceed the range unless the film's structure is unconventional, such as Pulp Fiction or Memento's non-linear storylines, or unless the plot is too complicated to summarize in this range. (Discuss with other editors to determine if a summary cannot be contained within the proper range.) Plot summaries should only be as verbose as necessary to accurately convey the film's plot. Complicated plots may occasionally require clarifications from secondary sources, so cite these sources in the section. If there are differing perspectives of a film's events from secondary sources, simply describe the events on screen as basically as possible in the plot summary and report interpretations in another section of the article. Lastly, events in the film do not have to be written in the order in which they appear on screen. If necessary, reorder the film's events to improve understanding of the plot. See how to write a plot summary and copyediting essentials for more in-depth suggestions. The plot summary is an overview of the film's main events, so avoid minutiae like dialogue, scene-by-scene breakdowns, individual jokes, and technical detail.

or alternatively:

Plot summaries for feature films should be between 400 and 700 words. The summary should not exceed the range unless the film's structure is unconventional, such as Pulp Fiction or Memento's non-linear storylines, or unless the plot is too complicated to summarize in this range. (Discuss with other editors to determine if a summary cannot be contained within the proper range.) Complicated plots may occasionally require clarifications from secondary sources, so cite these sources in the section. If there are differing perspectives of a film's events from secondary sources, simply describe the events on screen as basically as possible in the plot summary and report interpretations in another section of the article. Lastly, events in the film do not have to be written in the order in which they appear on screen. If necessary, reorder the film's events to improve understanding of the plot. See how to write a plot summary and copyediting essentials for more in-depth suggestions. The plot summary is an overview of the film's main events, so avoid minutiae like dialogue, scene-by-scene breakdowns, individual jokes, and technical detail. Plot summaries should only be as verbose as necessary to accurately convey the film's plot.

--TriiipleThreat (talk) 15:01, 3 May 2018 (UTC)

@Doniago: I've been thinking about your note "basic descriptions of their plots are acceptable" and not wanting to include any conflicting statements. So I am now wondering if we should keep the word "accurately", replace it with "generally", or just remove any adjective and say "to convey the film's plot". Thoughts?--TriiipleThreat (talk) 17:53, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

I thought about removing the word "accurately" on the grounds that I'd hope it's obvious we're not trying to describe the plot inaccurately, heh. Otherwise, I'd rather like to hear what other editors think at this point. DonIago (talk) 18:35, 4 May 2018 (UTC)

How about Plot summaries should be only as verbose as is necessary to comprehensively describe the film's plot.? Moreover, I'd have it at the end of the first sentence (i.e., Plot summaries for feature films should be between 400 and 700 words, and should be only as verbose as is necessary to comprehensively describe the film's plot. Summaries should not…—note the fix for consistency to the second sentence). — Hugh (talk) 01:30, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

What does "as verbose as necessary" even mean? Plot summaries have to be be 400–700 words because this is roughly the level of detail that we want, not because it is inherently impossible to have a comprehensive plot summary outside of these limits. We could either halve or double the word count and still comprehensively summarise the plot of the film. It is not the comprehensiveness that determines the word count, it is the level of detail, and this is granular based on the level of detail that you want. Betty Logan (talk) 04:49, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

I would be worried if anyone thought that we wanted or needed any "verbosity" at all? Go look it up ;)! The idea of a target length is to give people something to aim for, and to reduce the scope for arguments as to how many words are necessary; the idea of the range is to recognise that some plots are easier to summarise than others. The suggested added words (assuming that verbose is replaced by 'long', which is what is really meant) don't bring anything extra to the table - it is already a fundamental principle of copyediting that superfluous words should be avoided. Indeed the high level editing guidance that applies to all articles already says this. The suggested comment could be applied to any section of any guidance, and has no particular reference to film plots. On a lighter note, it is unusual to see a proposed addition to an MoS that actually fails its own test: what it actually means is: "don't use unnecessary words"... (and of course because all of it is unecessary) MapReader (talk) 05:11, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Discussion at MOSTV: referencing nationality

Film editors might be interested in this discussion at the talk page of MOS:TV, about a proposed change to the television project's MoS concerning the nationality of TV series? MapReader (talk) 16:33, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Nationality of production companies in the lead

I've noticed that in WP:FILMLEAD, it states If the nationality is not singular, cover the different national interests later in the lead section. I understand that including too many countries who produced a film in the lead would be overwhelming but what if there's only two? For WP:FILMDIST, it states If there are only two distributors in total (a domestic and foreign) then include both of them. So there is some level of precedent that including two things is not considered overkill. Why can't we extent this rule to the nationalities in the lead if only two exist? I've found other film articles that seem to adopt this extension such as Atlantic City (1980 film), Blade Runner, and Enter the Dragon. The leads for Blade Runner and Enter the Dragon begin with "...is an American-Hong Kong film" etc. I think the rule for less nationalities in the lead was likely meant for film articles like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider or Dunkirk (2017 film) where they have 5 or more production countries, too bloated to include in the lead but two seems sensible and not exactly overkill. Thoughts? If you're wondering what prompted this discussion, it was this recent edit that sparked my curiosity. Armegon (talk) 23:05, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

If there are two, it can be false equivalence. Blade Runner is a perfect example. Calling it an "American Hong-Kong... film" upfront is undue weight. Even if it is true from a production standpoint, this characteristic in the opening sentence exaggerates the relative importance of this detail. The point of using nationality if it is singular is that it is simple and uncontroversial enough, as would be the case for most twentieth-century films. In the 21st century, though, it is less straightforward to label a film a particular nationality. I'd rather have language as a predominant characteristic, or another option is to not bother with nationality in the opening even if it is singular. Just say "the American studio/production company" later in the lead section and avoid playing up national roots. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 23:31, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Also note that references to nationality should be referenced, as per MOSFILM. If there are production companies from America and from Hong Kong, this information can be referenced in the article. This is not the same as saying it is an "American-Hong Kong" film, which as a statement would also need to be referenced directly from a reliable source. Editors should avoid drawing own conclusions by extrapolating from indirect references; the MoS is clear that nationality should be referenced directly, as with any other statement per Verifiability. MapReader (talk) 06:47, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Addition to forbid treating IMDB as an "inter-wiki" rather than an external link

As mentioned in this thread, I suggest we add a point (possibly under Clean-up) to forbid or discourage strongly the practice of using in-text external links to IMDb. One such method uses the [[imdbname:####|name]] or [[imdbtitle:####|title]] tweeks that convert a normal wikilink to an external one. Hoverfish Talk 01:09, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Support As I understand it external links in articles are discouraged anyway so this would fall inline with that. MarnetteD|Talk 04:58, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Support There is no reason whatsoever as far as I can see why IMDB should be treated as an "inter-wiki" rather than an external link. Betty Logan (talk) 15:42, 23 March 2018 (UTC)
Support – This is actually already covered under WP:ELPOINTS #2. But it definitely wouldn't hurt to add it to MOS:FILM (and/or WP:FILMOGRAPHY) somewhere... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 01:30, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
Support, but isn't this a given? Memory Alpha is a much better interwiki (in that it's actually a wiki) and no one came to that's defense when I brought it up on ELN about a month back. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:34, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
Yes, and link to ELPOINTS as the basis. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 18:14, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Film Ratings

It should be noted that while film ratings were eliminated from the Infobox for Film because of the challenges in including the 7 English-speaking nations in the world, that nearly every single Wikipedia article on films produced in America, excludes any mention of MPAA ratings at all, unless there was a tremendous controversy surrounding the ratings. In effect, Wikipedia has defeated itself and its purpose of providing information as either a quick reference, let alone in-depth coverage of film topics. The bottom line, is that if it is out-of-sight, it is out-of-mind in its coverage, which was probably not the original intent, as its consequence... Stevenmitchell (talk) 11:34, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

A perfectly good quick reference guide called IMDb already exists and I don't think there is much to gain from trying to compete with it. Betty Logan (talk) 11:49, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

And also see WP:FILMRATING for a further explanation. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 13:00, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Transposing a particularly relevant passage: "Since this is the English-language Wikipedia and not the American Wikipedia, avoid mere identification of ratings issued by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to counter systemic bias (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias for more information). Provide global coverage of how different territories rate individual films if substantial coverage exists" (emphasis mine). Your viewpoint is certainly understandable Steven, but it's been discussed at length not to give undue weight to the US just because this Wikipedia is in English. Sock (~~tock~~ talk) 15:10, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

And there are way more than "7 English-speaking nations in the world". It's a pandora's worm can. Especially when you factor in different ratings on different versions. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 18:16, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Uncredited performances

Aside from pointing to WP:INDISCRIMINATE, WP:CASTLIST doesn't really say anything about not listing uncredited roles, which on some films can number in the dozens, if IMDb is to be believed (don't worry, I know it's not). I've recently come across some at Suspiria § Cast. Should this MOS entry be adjusted to say something about whether to include such credits? At the very least I'd say we should ask for a reliable source.

p.s. Does the number of frivolous shortcuts to this section strike anyone else as weird? ("WP:DEUTERAGONIST"? Come on.) — Hugh (talk) 02:51, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Something like "Only include if especially notable"? --tronvillain (talk) 03:08, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

I fear that would just lay the groundwork for arguments over whether someone was "especially notable", but I'd be okay with saying if they're bluelinked that that passes the bar. Also, no uncredited role should be added without a citation. DonIago (talk) 03:11, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

And IMDb isn't an RS for a citation. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:52, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Excessive use (and often misuse) of film-reviewer jargon

This is something I've been meaning to bring up for about a decade: the peculiar, annoying, pointless essentially undocumented secret lingo that film reviewers lean on like a crutch needs to be washed out of our mainspace. WP:MOSFILM needs to strongly advise against this stuff, a highly specialized form of journalese / headlinese. A large number of articles on films and their personnel (it often also bleeds over into writing about TV, theatre, and video games) reads like it was written by high-school or junior-college level infotainment journalist wannabes. Just line after line of unnatural prose like "alongside" and "opposite". Even "star[ring]" and related words are overused and misused. "Opposite" is probably the worst offender. If it should ever be used in this way here at all (which is dubious), it only properly applies to the two lead characters, iff they are actually in opposition to each other throughout the bulk of the plot. There's lots of other reviewer-twaddle I could pick on; this is just some examples.

I'm not sure what MoS approach to take. With the topical subpages, we're often more willing to get into terminology than at the more general MoS pages (and it's sure more appropriate that we do so in these, because they're far more specific/focused/narrow). But it's also not the job of an MoS page to provide a glossary article (and the goal isn't to define, or worse to provide WP:BEANS, but to restrain wretched and pretentious excess; it's more like we need common bad examples rather than a comprehensive list.

The gist is this: We do not permit our sports-related articles to read like the local newspaper's sports page. We do not permit articles on genetics to read like papers from Nucleic Acids Research. We do not permit articles on legal topics to be written in a style like "The Party of the First Part (hereinafter the Plaintiff ...)". It has to stop in this space, too. But the "I wish I was Leonard Maltin [without bobbing my head around so much]" sickness has already infected a tremendous number of our articles.

On the up side, of the times I've just grit my teeth and totally stripped that blather out of an article, I have never been reverted. So the community and the individual serious editors who work on these articles seem to understand it needs to be done (unless I just got blindly lucky); it's likely to be shortterm "drive-by" editors who're adding that stuff for the most part.

— SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 04:32, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

I think this is pretty much handled by WP:TONE. If you think specifics need to be highlighted, you could write an essay like what I did with Wikipedia:How to streamline a plot summary. It will make you feel better. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 06:23, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

Maybe a sub-page along the lines of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch which focuses on Hollywood lingo would be better? Generally guidelines are very much open to interpretation. If a word or a phrase is a journalistic pet term or industry lingo it is better just to say "don't write this", unless of course we are directly quoting somebody. Betty Logan (talk) 08:29, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

We don't do guideline pages that specific. Just a generalized advice "rule" that could be kept to a sentence or two and some examples should be sufficient. Would also be of use at MOS:TV, and MOS:VG, so probably MOS:FICT is the place it should "live", and just be cross-referenced from there.

On the flip side, you can write and re-write all the MOS guidelines you want, but if an editor is volunteering their free-time to add plots, reviews, etc, they probably won't want to get bogged-down in pettifoggery and comply with the letter of said MOS. As long as it's not a WP:COPYVIO plot, or poorly translated, it's not that big an issue. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 13:37, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Wait, why should "opposite" and "alongside" be considered "unnatural prose" or jargon? I mean, it would make sense to only apply it to leads in opposition to each other throughout the movie, I just haven't seen where or how it's misapplied. --tronvillain (talk) 17:16, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

Exactly, we shouldn't be banning people from using normal words like "opposite" and "alongside", just making sure that they aren't using them in an incorrect way, which is not something I have seen. - adamstom97 (talk) 23:01, 7 June 2018 (UTC)

It's not the words in and of themselves, it's a WP:JARGONish practice of using them to imply special signfication to the relationship between a particular actor/character and one or more other ones, and formulaic over-application of these expressions over and over again, by people who don't really understand what they mean, but just inject them because they think "we should write in a really filmy way at an article about a film" (and without really understanding how to do so even if that were a good idea, which it's not). It isn't appreciably different from writing in gamer slang like fragged and pwn on an article about a video game, or adoption of pedagogical wording like "We see that ..." in science articles, or using bombastic sportswriter lingo ("a crushing defeat", "trounced the opposition" "clinched an upset") in our sports articles. The typical formula is "stars X opposite Y, alongside A, B and C".

First off, "opposite" doesn't apply unless there are two main characters of about equal importance and they are antagonists to each other throughout most or all of the story. Even then, there is no reason to use this in encyclopedic writing. Relationships between characters are something to cover in the plot section, and this "special signification" use of "oppose", even when used correctly (which is rarely here) is meaningful only to "filmy" people; it's lost on the average reader and editors who are filmy are apt to consider the relationship already explained by such a term then fail to explain it in plain English.
Second, "alongside" in this context is just a pointlessly tumid synonym of "with", used by reviewers to try to sound more intellectual. WP doesn't write that way. The word "alongside" has specific implications in everyday English, about position relationships between physical objects, like when a dinghy pulls up alongside a yacht. It should not be abused as way to say "with" in more than twice as many letters.
Third, neither of these terms can be found in any glossary of filmmaking or film studies or journalism that I can find. They are not standardized academic or industry terms of art. They're entertainment-writer journalese / headlinese, not recommended in any style guide anywhere, and they do not belong to (or in) an encyclopedic register. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:35, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

I've just tidied some of this stuff out of Suspiria. I haven't noticed it much, but it really grinds my gears when I see it (and I've been a professional film critic). — Hugh (talk) 02:44, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

@Hl: Is there some kind "Professional Film Critics' Association Stylebook" we're missing? If some of this jargon were formally codified, we could create a glossary article and use links to it. Otherwise I just think they should be excised as journalese / headlinese, just like describing things as a "bid" for re-election, a political "gambit" at city hall, a "gala" party, a "zany" song, a "nabbed" criminal, a "marathon" trade-sanctions "parley", a Justice Department "probe", a new book "penned" by Stephen King, etc. People don't really talk or write this way, outside of low-end journalism. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:45, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

Plot summaries based on unspecified subtitle tracks for foreign films?

It came up a few months back (don't want to link the diff for reasons) that an article's plot summary made a statement about a film's setting that seemed counter-intuitive to me (it appeared to be contradicted by the film itself, as I viewed it), so I requested a citation; the tag was removed with me being told that citations don't go in the plot summary. I suspect the content actually came from the specific subtitles the other editor had read, not the film itself, which would seem to technically contradict the letter of this guideline as already written. But I'm wondering if including a caution in WP:FILMPLOT that it only applies to the film itself, and that if there is any conflict between the film and any of its (presumably various) translations the translations can be used with caution but should not be treated as though their contents were a part of the film itself.

I've never translated subtitles professionally or done extensive research, but I did study under both of these women, the former of whom (O'Hagan) told me a whole lot about how professional subtitles are almost always highly truncated to allow for comfortable and speedy reading, and occasionally there are infamous travesties like the Japanese theatrical release of Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring. (I can't seem to find a reliable source for that at the moment, but it's peripheral anyway, since I can always point to the UK DVD release of the "Samurai Trilogy", which despite being sold in a box set assumed viewers of the second film had not seen the first and brazenly added a "prologue" where no Japanese text appeared on the screen.)

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:05, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

This is a problem, but is it widespread enough to be specifically mentioned? If it is too specific, is there a small adjustment in wording that could be made to help here? Because it sounds like you were following the spirit of the guideline at least by challenging something that not all viewers of the film can verify. - adamstom97 (talk) 20:58, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

I would assume it's as widespread as are English Wikipedia articles on films in languages other than English. Category:Japanese-language films alone includes upwards of 3,500 articles, and what I'm saying would apply to all but the rare exceptions like miscategorized English-language films that include some unsubtitled Japanese dialogue thrown in for flavour like Lost in Translation (film) and films where the English subtitles are actually a part of the film itself and the spoken dialogue is a translation, like ... I can't think of a Japanese example, but The Raid (2011 film) fits the bill.

We generally assume a lack of knowledge of foreign languages on the part of our editors, which means writers of film articles are assumed to be reliant on subtitles, and most film plot summaries I've seen include a lot more detail than can safely be assumed to be identical between the film itself and the truncated translations included in commercial subtitle tracks. The guideline as currently written clearly emphasizes that it is only basic details that are self-evident from the film itself that can be implicitly attributed to the film itself (without citations), which is why this concerns all articles on non-English films, even if most of them do not have such serious problems as, say, placing the setting of the film in the wrong decade or century (the example alluded to above, which I still would rather not link to).

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:09, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

MOS:VIDEO, MOS:AUDIO

I created a WP:Manual of Style/Video (MOS:VIDEO) disambiguation page, and a WP:Manual of Style/Audio (MOS:AUDIO, MOS:SOUND) one to match, with what I could find. Anything missing? — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 07:27, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

Category: Foo in film

How would folks feel about adding something along the lines of the following to the Categorization section here?

Categories such as 'Foo in film' are generally discouraged if the intention is to refer to an element within the film itself. Rather, consider a category such as 'Films featuring Foo', which will be more clear in its intention that it only be applied to films in which Foo is a primary aspect of the film.

I've been troubled by the existence of "Foo in film" categories, when used to refer to elements within the film. They often aren't speaking to anything that's necessarily a defining category for the film, per WP:DEFCAT, and make it rather too easy to include categories in films that don't explicitly require verifiable discussion within the article, per WP:CATVER, on the grounds of "well, it's in the film". Pulling one at random, we have Category:Moon in film. Of course, it's unlikely this category is intended to be applied to every film in which the moon appears (actually, I would suggest renaming this specific category to Category:Films set on the moon based on the description), but I nevertheless feel Category:Films featuring the moon would be more appropriate and less prone to being abused as a "catch-all" category.

Thanks for your thoughts! DonIago (talk) 17:20, 15 June 2018 (UTC)

Well, last we talked about this issue in Category talk:Police misconduct in fiction, myself and @Betty Logan: were all for "Films about Foo", and (if I got it right) I think @TheOldJacobite: and @MarnetteD: leaned against the "in" type. However, IMO "Films featuring Foo" is equivalent to "Foo in films", so I think it wouldn't solve the primary aspect of the film issue. I would support the addition to the MOS guideline (and also to Film Categorization) if instead of "featuring" we place "about". From the example you give, the whole thing comes to: do we really need a "moon" category for 2001: A Space Odyssey (film)? If we do, whether "in" or "featuring" leave the category open to any moon event. Instead we would need a category like "Foo as a primary aspect (or feature) in films". Hoverfish Talk 17:56, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

If I wasn't clear before, I fear the "in films" opens up categories, strictly speaking, to any instance in which something occurs in the film, without regard for whether it's a primary element. Now maybe we can make it clear in the category descriptions that that's not how the cats are intended to be applied, but I think it would be preferable to use more precise category naming.

That said, I don't have an opinion on "about" versus "featuring", though I think the former is a more narrow interpretation. For instance, Dumbledore's death is a "feature" of HBP, but I wouldn't say the film is about it. DonIago (talk) 01:43, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

As a recent instance, "Suicide in films" was just added to Mission to Mars], a film in which a suicide does occur, but which has very little to do with the overall plot of the film. There hasn't been as much participation here as I was hoping for, but is anyone opposed to "Foo in film" categories being explicitly discouraged? DonIago (talk) 02:34, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, that's clearly not appropriate categorization. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 15:14, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

Concur, these categories are bad news. The 'about' wording seems more definitive. --SubSeven (talk) 20:42, 25 June 2018 (UTC)

As a test case, I've nominated Category:Suicide in films for renaming here. DonIago (talk) 16:34, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

Comment The reason I have not commented here so far is because in truth I am unsure of how to address this problem. I am not convinced the problem can be solved by renaming the category alone. Personally I think Films featuring foo will end up having the same problems as Foo in films, because semantically there isn't much difference and we are still encouraging editors to categorise subjectively. What we want editors to do is evaluate the applicability of a category objectively i.e. application of the category should be consistent with WP:CATDEF and WP:CATVER. Maybe the only way forward here is better policing and more stringent enforcement of these guidelines. Betty Logan (talk) 12:22, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

If the discussion I liked to above is any indication, there may be a fair number of editors who feel that only about categories should even exist. If you feel otherwise, I'd encourage you to review that discussion. Personally I'm okay with categorizing a film article based on plot elements that are not central to the plot but have received significant attention from other sources, but if the consensus is that that's not good enough...

Renaming categories won't solve the problem, but may at least be a deterrent. I mean, we can't block people from creating and populating categories, but we can at least establish more clear guidelines. DonIago (talk) 15:00, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

I touched on this a related CfD, the obvious solution is "Films about foo", with an explicit inclusion criterion that RS identify that foo as a central premise, motif, subject, etc., of the film in question. There's probably a better way to word-smith that, and we might look to whether the other fiction-related MoS pages, wikiprojects, etc., have already wrestled with this and produced something useful. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 18:12, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, what it boils down to is that only one category is needed. Having two encourages the perception that one is a "catch all". Betty Logan (talk) 18:17, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

But I think it's valid to feel that there should be one category for films where foo occurs but isn't the central focus of the film (but attracts notable coverage from sources), and a sub-category for films where foo is the central focus of the film as well. I'm not saying I feel that way...I haven't made up my mind on that aspect of this yet...but I think it's an understandable perspective. For instance, if there's a horror film in which a lot of people commit suicide, that's a film "featuring" suicide, but not necessarily a film "about" suicide. DonIago (talk) 18:25, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Except there shouldn't be such categories, per WP:OVERCAT. Similarly we don't have "Category:American men who own pickup trucks" or "Category:Japanese companies with an employee gym on the premises" or "Category:Novels that feature someone being stabbed through the ear". These are not defining characteristics. That's the criterion for categories; if you create one for indiscriminate trivia, it will get deleted at WP:CFD. This is completely necessary, or we'd have an unmaintainable morass of millions of categories instead of tens of thousands of them. We just do not need "Category:Fistfights in films", "Category:Green dresses in films", "Category:Old women in films", "Category:Barking dogs in films", yadda yadda. It's unencyclopedic. WP is not a content-tagging index site. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 03:44, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

If that's the general feeling (and I'll assume it is if nobody says anything to the contrary), then I would modify my suggested text to instead read:

Categories such as 'Foo in film' or 'Films featuring foo' are discouraged if the intention is to refer to an element within the film itself. Rather, a category such as 'Films about Foo' should be used, which will be more clear in its intention that it only be applied to films in which Foo is a central aspect.

DonIago (talk) 13:00, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Works for me. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 20:22, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Me too. I like it. The same could be said for similar categories if they exist, such as "...in literature", "...in media", "...in music", "...in video games" etc. The cleanup is another matter though. ~Anachronist (talk) 20:49, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

I repeat that we should look at the TV, lit, music, etc. stuff and see what's being done there. Maybe it "focused on", or "with a central theme of", for all we know. Just want to make sure "about" is the right choice. "X in film" clearly isn't it, nor is "Films featuring X", because they're indiscriminate, non-defining. Is "about" our best choice for discriminate and defining? — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 07:01, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

MOS:NOVELS and MOS:TV don't appear to me to touch on the subject. I didn't see anything about categorization by plot elements at either. There's some implication that novels and tv shows simply don't have these kinds of categories, but my search wasn't exhaustive, though the few articles I checked didn't have these kinds of categories in place. That said, Carrie (1976 film) has a whole bunch of "in film" categories. Would you support a CfD to have those renamed to "about"? DonIago (talk) 15:04, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Yes, they seem to beg for it. Half the American films about teenagers have a prom in them somewhere; it's not a defining characteristic. But Carrie is very much about a prom and prom-queen popularity contest involved in it. (Not sure I'd put the mass-murder cat. on this one though. I guess, technically it could qualify, but a supernatural bloodbath (after a blood shower!) isn't what any reader is likely to be thinking.) — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 16:05, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

@Doniago, not sure if you meant that the categories aren't mentioned in the MoS or if they don't exist, but if you meant they don't exist then: Category:Novels by topic, Category:Television series by topic. --Gonnym (talk) 16:14, 17 July 2018 (UTC) Edit: Unless you were strictly speaking about the phrase "in ...", got a bit lost in the discussion so might have misunderstood you. --Gonnym (talk) 16:19, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

I meant that there's no guidance at the respective MoSes regarding how to name the cats. Thanks for digging those up though. Based on your findings I'd say advising here to use "about" is a reasonable approach. SMcCandlish, I agree that the "mass murder" cat is probably inappropriate on Carrie, but I figured best to try to resolve the root issue first. DonIago (talk) 16:34, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

Yarp. — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼 01:18, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

I've set up a CfD to get the egregious categories at Carrie (1976 film) sorted out. Opinions welcome here. I'm not sure how kosher it would be for other editors to add additional cats of this ilk, but if you want to throw me suggestions I'll be happy to look at them and add them if they seem to be in scope. DonIago (talk) 15:49, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

horrorpedia.com

Can you tell me if horrorpedia.com is a reliable source to use in editing horror film articles?68.129.15.71 (talk) 22:51, 22 July 2018 (UTC)

I have never even heard of it but going by https://horrorpedia.com/about-website-contact-stats-frequently-asked-questions/ it has some reputable writers on its roster. They invite contributions from their readers but ask for examples of your work so there seems to be some editorial oversight which is probably the most important criterion. I can't fully endorse a publication I know nothing about but based on what I have found I can't see any reason why it would not meet WP:RS status. Personally I would go ahead and use it if you want to. Betty Logan (talk) 10:11, 23 July 2018 (UTC)

On my quick browse it does credit those authors, but looking at the articles it just seems to pull from their own reviews as a source and has no real editorial oversight otherwise. Unless there are some articles that suggest otherwise, it appears that its credited co-writers just pull information from other websites like an aggregator does. I'm not sure how useful this site is in comparison to using the original source. Andrzejbanas (talk) 12:12, 23 July 2018 (UTC)