Wikipedia talk:Television episodes
Note: a year-old discussion of this very topic can be found here. The situation has changed a bit since then; certianly we probably have a few thousand more episodes than we did then, but much of it is still relevent. I guess if anyone wants to reiterate or address points from that discussion here, cutting and pasting parts might be the way to go. Also note several people involved in that discussion are no longer active wikipedians. -R. fiend 17:44, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
Arguments for a generally exclusionist stance towards television episodes
Arguments for a generally inclusionist stance towards television episodes
My default inclusion criteria is and always has been "If a full-length article could reasonably be written about a topic without resorting to trivial, unverifiable, or unencyclopedic information, then it should have an article." I have never written an article on a TV episode, but I do consider them to be encyclopedic. Things to consider:
- 1 Huge audience TV episodes are often watched by millions of people and, like 'em or not, are a part of our culture.
- 2 Movie precedent We generally keep all but the most obscure theatrical movies. Why should we allow a movie that's been seen by, say, 500,000 people but not a TV episode seen by 5 million?
- 3 Natural extension of show main articles Obviously, when writing a quality article about a TV series, episode-guide information is very likely to be included. However, unless a show has just a few episodes, keeping this in the main article is space-prohibitive. If we have 400 articles on Star Trek episides, can you imagine what it would look like if all those episodes had even just a paragraph each in the Star Trek article? It would be like a book!
- 4 Information value Unlike an article on a garage band or forum member, TV episode articles appeal to readers and are a source of information which is actually useful to a sizeable number of people. Imagine missing a favourite TV show and being able to find a synopsis almost instantly on WP, with nary a popup or Flash advert getting in the way. Also, this information makes WP accessable to a broader readership base, who might not otherwise think of looking at an online encyclopedia. Articles, ultimately, are for readers.
That sums up my feelings in the matter. Please note that I'm generally discussing fictional TV here. I don't necessarily think that game shows, newscasts, magazine shows, sportscasts, or shows like Trading Spaces should have per-episode articles. I welcome any and all feedback whether you agree or disagree with me. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 11:48, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
Hybrid arguments
Does it have to be all or nothing? My thought would be that for many programs it would be sufficient to have one article for each season, with a one paragraph or so summary of each episode within that season. So we would have, for example, Law and Order: Season One, Law and Order: Season Two, etc. If there is a particular episode of a particular series that is so notable that it would be included even if the rest of the series didn't exist, it might qualify for its own article. An example might be the "Who Shot J.R.?" season finale of Dallas. Brandon39 14:41, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
- I don't think it has to be "all or nothing"; in fact, I'm a little leery of developing "generally inclusionist" or "generally exclusionist" policies in absence of information on which programs we're talking about. I'm a believer of "granularity in proportion to influence" and also possibly "granularity in proportion to size", so to ask me whether I believe an article on a TV show episode should be kept without telling me if this is a) the latest episode of a soap opera that's aired every weekday for the past 15 years or b) one episode of The Prisoner, which had only 17 episodes but is a significant cultural reference even 35 years later is not giving me the information that, to me, should make the decision.
- I would like to propose one policy, however, to combat the tendency towards recentism: that individual episode articles for a series not be accepted until a set period of time after the season finishes airing. If, six months or a year after Season One of The O.C. has aired, people still think it makes sense to describe the season in a series of episode articles rather than in one article on the season, the decision can be made then. -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:34, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
- The problem with "granularity in proportion to influence" is that influence is very difficult to define, and thus usually subjective. We tend to associate influence with quality, which is sometimes but not always the case. Shows like One Man's Family and Captain Video were enormously influential, but probably less than a tenth of a percent of people are familiar with them today. I also find the part about waiting a year after an episode aired to write about it illogical. Clearly, it's at its highest level of interest around its air date (not to mention that media sources will be much easier to find if one strikes when the iron is hot). Why stifle an article when its at the very peak of its value as information? Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 23:25, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
- Well, if you look again, a waiting period was not suggested as the determiner of when people would first be able to write about the episode -- only when individual articles for every episode of the season would be considered as more appropriate than an article for each season. The reason for "stifling" the article at "the very peak of its value as information" is that, well, quite frankly, not all information is meaningful. Sure, it may be more difficult to determine a year from now that Greg Fulton-Puller was a key grip on episode 1.6, but is that a level of detail that Wikipedia exists to go into? That's the kind of detail we'll get if we say "Sure! Create an article for this episode! No one knows whether anyone will care a year from now, but now when it's still vivid in people's minds everyone will think everything connected to it is worth preserving!" The selectivity about information that will result from having to start in a combined-season article will be beneficial, I believe. -- Antaeus Feldspar 17:25, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
Seems to me, Antaeus, that this isn't really a hybrid approach at all, but a generally exclusionary one (and the one I'm currently in support of, at that). After all, a "generally exclusionary" policy doesn't say "No articles about individual episodes," but says instead "Articles about extraordinary episodes only"', using criteria such as those listed below to establish extraordinarity. The Literate Engineer 17:59, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
- I'm sick to death of people trying to classify my judgements into an artificial mold of "inclusionist"/"deletionist", "generally inclusionary"/"generally exclusionary", etc. It leads people to infer things in my arguments that were never in them. I never said that only extraordinary episodes would end up being worth noting individually. My view is that some series will deserve just one article for themselves; some series will deserve an article for the series and one or more articles for individual extraordinary episodes; some series will deserve an article for the series and articles for each season; some series will deserve an article for the series and an article for each episode. Which series is which? I'm not going to even try to make judgements with no knowledge of what series we're discussing. What I am saying is that there is a tendency for people to incorrectly guess which series will be of lasting impact and lasting interest and that setting a policy of not being able to assign it the highest possible level of coverage immediately will in some degree counteract this tendency. -- Antaeus Feldspar 16:18, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
Criteria to determine which episodes are notable enough for inclusion
Okay, I'll start this one. Some reasons that I would consider as indications that a single episode might be notable enough for its own article (most or all of these are subjective, and would depend on consensus of editors):
- People who do not regularly follow the series are aware of the episode. (e.g., "Who Shot J.R.?"
- The episode remains highly controversial among fans of the show after an extended period (years, probably) (e.g. Never Again on The X-files).
- The episode is controversial outside the show's fan base for some reason (e.g. Murphy Brown vs. Dan Quayle).
- The episode is widely remembered as an exemplar of the show, or as a particular high point or low point, years after it first aired, and preferably including people who are not part of the show's regular fan base (e.g., the death of Chuckles the Clown on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
- The series had a very limited run (probably less than one year), but continues to have a significant cult following long after it left the air. (On the other hand, in that situation it might be reasonable simply to include episode summaries within the main series article.)
Those are off the top of my head. Brandon39 00:18, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
- I'd like to throw in a redundancy avoidance factor - if all of the material on episodes from a particular season are currently in separate articles, but could be combined into a single article of reasonable length (with repeated material reduced to one instance), then this should be done. As with articles on many other topics, subarticles should not be broken out until the length of the main article requires it. BDAbramson talk 22:04, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
The Problem with merging
Merging has already come up as an option. And I have seen merge articles work better than seperate articles in the past. However, I experimented merging all articles from Season Two of The Simpsons into one article, and this was the result:
User:Sonic Mew/The Simpsons Season Two
It is probably safe to ignore the positioning of the infoboxes, as some of the episodes need additions to them to be made. However, the fact is that that is just too long for an article. When you have a lot of episodes for each season, it can be too much to handle in the one article. Sonic Mew | talk to me 23:09, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
- Of course they're too long if every single detail is left in the article. The problem with so many TV show articles is they lose their sense of proportion so easily. The Simpsons is a case in point. It seems these articles are trying to serve as a replacement for watching the show. That never works, particularly for comedies. You know how whenever someone explains something to you that was funny on whatever show they watched, they invariably don't do it justice, and it actually ruins the joke for when you do actually see it? There's alot of that going on at wikipedia. -R. fiend 23:15, 21 October 2005 (UTC)
- So what sections do you propose we lose then? Sonic Mew | talk to me 20:08, 22 October 2005 (UTC)