Forum:CT:Revised notability policy

Forums > Consensus track archive > CT:Revised notability policy

This page is an archive of a community-wide discussion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made in the Senate Hall or new Consensus track pages rather than here so that this page is preserved as a historic record. The result of the debate was: Adopt new notability rules. Toprawa and Ralltiir 21:06, October 10, 2009 (UTC)

After a brief discussion at Forum:SH:Draft of new notability rules, I'd like to put a revised version of Wookieepedia:Notability of fan projects up for a vote.

Please see below for the new rules. In summary, the suggested criteria for notability have been changed to hard requirements. Official recognition in some form is not a requirement, but it counts for much more than mainstream or fandom recognition. The fan project or activity must be significant: gaming guilds, websites hosting play-by-post roleplaying, and almost all message boards are specifically listed as not significant in themselves. —Silly Dan (talk) 00:21, September 24, 2009 (UTC)

New Draft Rules

Articles on fan projects, such as websites, fan clubs, fan activities, fan films, or fan fiction, are allowed on Wookieepedia so long as they are sufficiently notable. Articles on non-notable fan projects will be deleted, either immediately with the {{Delete}} template, after being tagged with the {{Notability}} template for seven days without showing proof that the project passes these requirements, or after a discussion in Wookieepedia:Trash compactor.

Requirements

In order to show notability, an article on a fan project or activity must pass at least one of the "recognition" requirements as well as the "content" requirement.

  • Official recognition: A fan project which has received official recognition by Lucasfilm Ltd. or its licensees may be a suitable subject for an article.
    • Fan projects which have not been officially recognized may still be notable: however, the recognition in the mainstream media or within Star Wars fandom must be significant.
  • Mainstream recognition: A fan project which has received significant coverage in a major mainstream media outlet may have sufficient recognition, even if official recognition is absent or limited to brief mentions.
  • Fan recognition: A fan project which has not been mentioned in mainstream media or recognized by official sources may still be notable if it has widespread recognition within the Star Wars fan community. Note that this is the hardest form of recognition to substantiate, and the standards of evidence must be correspondingly high.
  • Content: A fan project must be non-trivial (i.e. a completed fan film, a large-scale video game mod, etc.) A website must have substantial content.
    • Due to the ease of setting up message boards on the web, and the multitude of message boards with very few members, a website must have substantial content beyond the message board to be considered notable. The only exceptions would be a handful of very large message boards with hundreds of users contributing daily.
    • "Guilds" or "teams" for cooperative video gaming, or web sites for online roleplaying, are not notable in themselves. If these groups have notable real-world activities beyond their gaming, or host a website with substantial content, they are more likely to be considered significant. However, the recognition requirements must still be passed.

Additional notes

  • Number of articles: Fan projects should get one and only one article.
    • If an article on a fan website can be merged with another article, it should. For instance, an author's personal blogs should simply be discussed in a section of his or her article or given as an external link at the end of the article. A message board popular with fans hosted on the official website of a Star Wars licensee (such as a publisher or a video game producer) should be discussed on that company's article.
    • Very large websites such as TheForce.Net can have more than one article: not so much because they are more important, but because they host several projects which would be notable on their own.
    • If a person is recognized purely for creating and/or maintaining a Star Wars website or other fan project, he or she is not considered notable enough to warrant an article. A redirect may be created to the project, however.
    • Likewise, articles on individual contributors to fan films should not be created (unless, like Kevin Rubio, they have also contributed to official Star Wars material.)
  • The Star Wars fan wiki may be a good place to put information on fan projects which do not pass these requirements. Websites may also be listed on List of fan sites.

Options for voting

Keep as is

This would leave the current notability policy unchanged.

Adopt new rules

This would replace the current notability rules with the new ones given above. All existing articles not showing sufficient notability may be tagged with {{Notability}} or {{Tc}}. Tagged articles which do not show the subject's notability will be deleted after a short interval and/or moved to the Star Wars fan wiki.

  1. —Silly Dan (talk) 00:21, September 24, 2009 (UTC)
  2. —Master Jonathan(Jedi Council Chambers) 00:24, September 24, 2009 (UTC)
  3. Grunny (Talk) 02:34, September 24, 2009 (UTC)
  4. MauserComlink 06:29, September 24, 2009 (UTC)
  5. Can't create articles about anything. --Michaeldsuarez (Talk) (Deeds) 14:51, September 24, 2009 (UTC)
  6. This is at least a step in the right direction. With the caveat that these apply to all Wikia-hosted fansites. -- AdmirableAckbar (Talk) 16:27, September 24, 2009 (UTC)
  7. Long overdue. Pranay Sobusk ~ Talk 18:56, September 24, 2009 (UTC)
  8. QuiGonJinn Senate seal(Talk) 19:59, September 24, 2009 (UTC)
  9. Jonjedigrandmaster (Jedi Beacon) 23:57, September 24, 2009 (UTC)
  10. Per Pranay. CC7567 (talk) 19:39, September 25, 2009 (UTC)
  11. Good enough for me. Havac 21:19, September 25, 2009 (UTC)
  12. I agree with SD 100%. Atarumaster88 Jedi Order (Talk page) 22:08, September 25, 2009 (UTC)
  13. Chack Jadson (Talk) 13:34, September 26, 2009 (UTC)
  14. I support on the grounds that this is a step in the right direction, and opposing this on principle won't get anyone anywhere. But I still find aspects of these new rules remarkably weak, since it would still probably allow for crap like this, which, I don't care how many girls associated with the site have appeared on E! or on SPIKE TV at ComicCon, it belongs on some kind of fan project wiki devoted to this sector of Star Wars mainstream, not Wookieepedia, where we deal in content completely disassociated. Moreover, "official recognition" should be something that has been recognized within the confines of something related to Star Wars canon, not just something that the site editors at StarWars.com decided to devote a blurb to in some news blog because they had nothing better to write about that day. Examples of officially recognized content associated with canon is something like this, where the guy's plea to have his content licensed by LFL was actually included and published in Dark Empire 1; or even something like this, where the site actually secured interviews with Star Wars "VIPs" and could potentially be linked/sourced to in one of our articles. That is the Wookieepedia definition of "notable." Toprawa and Ralltiir 16:38, September 26, 2009 (UTC)
  15. Per Tope. JangFett Talk 16:41, September 26, 2009 (UTC)
  16. JMAS Hey, it's me! 16:57, September 26, 2009 (UTC)
  17. Tope. —Milo Fett[Comlink] 18:54, September 26, 2009 (UTC)
  18. Grand Moff Tranner Imperial Department of Military Research (Comlink) 18:56, September 26, 2009 (UTC)
  19. Fanon is just concepts and ideas that do not find the right avenues to be published. Andykatib 08:04, October 1, 2009 (UTC)

Remove all fan project articles

This would require any article related solely to fan activity in Category:Star Wars culture -- especially the ones in the subcategories Category:Fan organizations and Category:Fan films -- and all unofficial sites in Category:Websites to be moved to the Star Wars fan wiki and/or deleted.

The only exception I would suggest if this option is implemented is the Wookieepedia article, which could be moved to the Wookieepedia: namespace (as "Wookieepedia:Site history", perhaps) to help explain the project and orient new users.

Wookieepedia is a Star Wars encyclopedia, not a place for fannish self-aggrandizement. And all pages about fan projects are, at best, vanity pages. -- Darth Culator (Talk) 15:02, September 24, 2009 (UTC)
[Redacted by administration] -- Darth Culator (Talk) 17:22, September 26, 2009 (UTC)
Per Culator. Also, how would you verify that it got official recognition if, say, a person just added that to their site and made an article? There are ways to get around the fan recognition and even the content requirements as well. NaruHina Talk Anakinsolo 16:01, September 25, 2009 (UTC) (Vote struck, reason: Per policy: user is blocked longer than the likely duration of this CT -- Darth Culator (Talk) 17:44, September 26, 2009 (UTC))
  • So some joker puts a false claim of official recognition on their personal fan site, then creates an article here for his fan site on the basis of it having "official recognition." Do you really think, with the plethora of active and highly resourceful individuals here at Wookieepedia, that Wookieepedians wouldn't be able to scour most (if not all) the official sources and delete the article as non-notable within a matter of hours? - JMAS Hey, it's me! 17:12, September 26, 2009 (UTC)
    • Wouldn't even have to go to the trouble and distract ourselves from our actual purpose if we banned fan projects entirely. But as usual, I'm the only one with any sense. -- Darth Culator (Talk) 17:22, September 26, 2009 (UTC)
  1. You guys can still snowball with my vote here, but I think all the fandom stuff on here is pure crap, mostly vanity pages and whatnot, that doesn't belong on what otherwise is a pretty damned impressive Star Wars encyclopedia that exceeds anything LFL could publish in its stead. Graestan(Talk) 11:37, October 1, 2009 (UTC)

Discussion

With three options, I don't think any more are necessary. If you want to discuss more possible options, discussing them here first would be best. Minor amendments to the draft policy above (such as fixes to my grammar) can go here too. —Silly Dan (talk) 00:21, September 24, 2009 (UTC)

The Wookieepedia article must stay, it is definitely notable. MauserComlink 06:29, September 24, 2009 (UTC)

  • For articles (read: articles that don't suck) that don't pass this new policy, if you'd like to directly import them to the Star Wars fan wiki, let me know and we can do that instead of a bunch of copies and pastes. - Brandon Rhea Alliance Starbird (talk) 17:55, September 26, 2009 (UTC)
  • Dan, do we really need a List of fan sites? Why not just delete it like the rest of them? MauserComlink 02:14, September 28, 2009 (UTC)
    • That was originally a stopgap measure when we first started in on the "notability" idea. I wouldn't object to deleting it from Wookieepedia, which would mean either removing it from our policy or replacing it with an equivalent link to a list or category on the fan wiki (which I can't help but think might develop its own notability policy on its own in the future.) —Silly Dan (talk) 03:00, September 28, 2009 (UTC)

There will eventually be a notability policy, but it'll be far more lax. If we wanted to go for notability on SWFW like Wookieepedia does, we'd probably have about four articles overall. - Brandon Rhea Alliance Starbird (talk) 03:02, September 28, 2009 (UTC)