Forum:SH:Notability of documentary segments

This page is an archive of a community-wide discussion. This page is no longer live. Further comments or questions on this topic should be made in a new Senate Hall page rather than here so that this page is preserved as a historic record. JocastaBot (talk) 22:22, 28 August 2022 (UTC)
Forums > Senate Hall archive > SH:Notability of documentary segments

On Wookieepedia we currently have pages for official documentaries such as Empire of Dreams and The Making of "The Empire Strikes Back".

One thing we don't currently have pages for are documentary segments within other programs. Here are some examples:

  • The French channel TF1's show Temps X had an episode in 1980 on the Empire Strikes Back with unique BTS footage
  • The German channel ZDF's show Bilder aus Amerika had an episode in 1983 where they traveled to the set of Return of the Jedi, and the episode is filled with unique BTS footage
  • The American channel Nickelodeon's show Standby... Lights! Camera! Action! had a behind-the-scenes segment in one episode in 1983 featuring Return of the Jedi with unique BTS footage
  • The American channel ABC's show 20/20 had a segment on John Williams in 1983 where they showed unique footage of the recording sessions for Return of the Jedi at Abbey Road Studios

The point of this discussion post is to determine whether or not segments like these are deserving of their own articles.

My Opinion

I think we can break down these segments into three types:

  1. Those with no new footage of any kind
  2. Those with no new bts footage (if any, only repurposed footage from other docs), but with unique cast/crew interviews
  3. Those with new/unique bts footage

In my opinion, I believe that the first type is not worthy of a page at all, it's no different from a youtube video compiling together footage from other documentaries.

I believe that the third type is worthy of its own page, the unique bts footage justifying its existence. I think these should get pages for the same reason that official documentaries get pages

As for the second type, I'm torn on whether they deserve pages. On the one hand, there is unique interview footage, and interviews can be useful as sources for OOU articles and for interesting trivia. But at the same time cast/crew go on interviews literally all the time and it might be overkill to try to document every single one

- Enderdrag64 (talk) 17:55, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

  • It'd be impossible for us to document point two, since the number of examples is likely uncountable. As written it would cover everything from cable news to Youtube videos, so logistically it just wouldn't work. As for the third point, I'm not quite convinced it's necessary to document third party stuff like that, especially without a specific definition of "documentary." Let's say, for instance, at one of the Academy Awards they showed a previously unreleased BTS clip (I seem to remember this actually happening at one point, but I can't be sure). Do we then make a page for that awards show? I wouldn't be in favor of something like that. I'm curious to hear other opinions though. RattsT (talk) 18:15, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
  • Well, like I said on Discord, I'm quite unsure about what to do, as I don't see any reason to reject the idea outright, but a lot of ramifications are involved. There is so much content that fall under this discussion that we really need to think it through before doing anything and setting precedents, etc. In fact, it's the perfect occasion to discuss some unclear points in our policies. Sorry if I highjack the thread a little, but I don't think we'll be able to resolve the issue of documentaries if we don't consider a few things along the way.
    First, about the spirit of the proposal: does it fit the mission of wookieepedia? This mission is to cover the Star Wars universe (IU) and how it is created (OOU). In terms of IU, we don't allow articles about fanon/fan-creations, or fandom-focused topics (with some exceptions covered by the Notability of fan projects policy (even if some articles, like the 501st Legion (fan organization), were a wild west before they were subjected to a thorough cleanup in recent years...). In terms of OOU, this means that while we accept all source of information (except for leaks/rumors for incoming releases), we usually only accept article creation about documents originating from either Lucasfilm internal publishing process or one of it's publishing partners. Documents like The Making of "The Empire Strikes Back" (an outside production), I Am C-3PO: The Inside Story (an autobiography) or George Lucas: The Creative Impulse (non-SW focused book), all made the cut because they are copyrighted by Lucasfilm. Same with Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas, even if the copyright only applies to specific sub-documents presented in the book. However, books like Bob Iger's The Ride of a Lifetime, Carrie Fisher's The Princess Diarist, Bill Slavicsek's Defining a Galaxy (and a handful of other autobiographies), or the highly non-official The Secret History of Star Wars have not been "approved" for articles. The frontier isn't as clear as we would like it, since we do have articles like George Lucas: A Life, Empire Building: The Remarkable Real Life Story of Star Wars, Saturday Night Live and Starlog out there which have never been subjected to a TC as of yet.
    In all honesty... I'm really not opposed to the idea of having articles for unauthorized works. It's nothing like with fanon were we want absolutely nothing to do with them, since we're constantly using those documents to sources OOU information. In fact, I've argued in another Senate Hall that I would consider the prospect of creating an article for a fansite if we use it on multiple occasion as a source, such as JediNews. If we look at Starlog (a major publication a the time), it aims at providing a listing of Star Wars-focused articles for each issues. It's something we could very much do for Vanity Fair, which has a long history of publishing Star Wars-focused articles and covers (with the full support of Lucasfilm), which are often essential for us covering the production of recent films and series. The issue would be: where to draw the line? I'm not really seeing any sane, "clear cut" way to include in our policies, but I have this idea for a while (along with Immi and Ayrehead) of a way to make sources goes through a Wookieepedia's approval system. Maybe something like a panel of elected users? This would allow things like George Lucas: A Life or Empire Building: The Remarkable Real Life Story of Star Wars to survive (otherwise, they very much should not, IMO), while allowing us to say, we don't want unauthorized sources such as books drawing wild parallel between Star Wars and philosophy, spychology, or whatever. It would certainly allow for a more fluid way to handle source articles.
    On the two others issues, already presented by Enderdrag, about content selection and content formatting, I think we should dismiss non-originals segments (1), but absolutely should cover original behind-the-scenes footage (3), as they couldn't exist without the explicit authorization of Lucasfilm (allowing a filming crew on set, all that). However, interviews (2) are another matters entirely as they can be either be authorized (ex: during promotion) or unauthorized (ex: cast/crew doing a interview years after a release, without any input from Lucasfilm). Again, where and how to do we draw a line? That's when the question of content formatting comes up: I really like what Starlog tries to do, by listing on a single place all relevant documents from a publisher. We could do the same with ABC, Temps X, the Academy Awards (so yes, Ratts, I'm not opposed to this, so long as a selection panel has a hand in it), etc. I fear that doing one documentary/segment equal an article would be hard to manage, and the naming convention involved are sure to make me grimace.
    Also, reacting to what you said here: "there is unique interview footage, and interviews can be useful as sources for OOU articles", please keep in mind that a media don't need to have an article for it to be used as a source. NanoLuukeCloning facility 12:24, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
    • I think you raised some very good points here. The selection panel doesn't seem like the worst idea ever, but we'd need to figure out a very clear cut set of rules for them to follow, or else that could become a disaster very quickly where people allow or disallow sources just because they do or don't like them instead of based on their merit. I just recently learned something as well that might make this job simpler. Lucasfilm releases (or used to release anyway) Press Kits to the media which contained at the time unique b-roll bts footage and interviews for news stations and shows to cut up and use in their programs. Here's an example of one from AOTC with unique recording sessions footage (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMh7DDMiiUI). Many of these have leaked to the public via ebay and youtube. If we can find some of these Press Kits and make articles on them, that would eliminate the need to cover any media that only uses footage from the press kits (which I would imagine would be a lot except for the biggest documentaries). This wouldn't knock out everything, like the shows I mentioned that visited the ROTJ set (Bilder aus Amerika and the Nickelodeon show) would still remain, but it would probably knock out a lot of mainstream and local channel news coverage, provided we can find a Press Kit as a source of the footage. Enderdrag64 (talk) 15:12, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Frankly, I think that if something is not an officially licensed work released by Lucasfilm or an affiliate, it should not get an article. However, using the information contained within them seems perfectly reasonable to me. VergenceScatter (talk) 18:25, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Echoing what other people have said: while I don't think these unofficialy documentaries should have their own articles, they're fantastic material for our BTS sections and are acceptable to cite. Immi Thrax RainbowRebellion2 (she/her) (talk) 02:42, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
  • I have discovered some third party magazines which include film adaptations, and have contradictions, no different than many of the film adaptations. I would lean on those not being sources, as they're not licensed, so it makes me wonder if the contradicting information should be noted no differently than our licensed adaptations or non-canon media. I would certainly hope not. Hanzo Hasashi (talk) 21:19, 21 July 2022 (UTC)