Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)

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This page is a notability criteria guideline for Wikipedia, reflecting how authors of this encyclopedia address certain issues. This guideline is intended to help you improve Wikipedia content. Feel free to update this page as needed, but please use the discussion page to propose major changes.

Shortcut: WP:FICT

Notability and inclusion guidelines
Notability guidelines
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Common deletion outcomes

For the fiction style guidelines, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction).

From WP:NOT#IINFO:

Plot summaries. Wikipedia articles on works of fiction should contain real-world context and sourced analysis, offering detail on a work's achievements, impact or historical significance, not solely a summary of that work's plot. A plot summary may be appropriate as an aspect of a larger topic.

1 Fiction in Wikipedia
- 1.1 Examples
2 Being bold
3 Details
4 Making good use of Wikibooks and Wikisource
- 4.1 Examples
5 Related topics

[edit] Fiction in Wikipedia

Major characters (and places, concepts, etc.) in a work of fiction should be covered within the article on that work of fiction. If an encyclopedic treatment of such a character causes the article on the work itself to become long, then that character can be given a separate article.
Minor characters (and places, concepts, etc.) in a work of fiction should be merged with short descriptions into a "List of characters." This list should reside in the article relating to the work itself, unless it becomes long, in which case a separate article for the list is good practice.

The difference between 'major' and 'minor' characters is intentionally vague; the main criterion is how much non-trivial information is available on the character. Some works could plausibly have multiple major characters.
It is useful to add redirects to the article page or list of minor characters, from anything that's listed in there.
Plot summaries should be kept reasonably short, as the point of Wikipedia is to describe the works, not simply summarize them. It is generally appropriate for a plot summary to remain part of the main article, not a lengthy page of its own. In some cases, sub-articles and lists are created when the potential for an encyclopedic coverage is hindered by the recommended length guidelines of one article. Please see the Making good use of Wikibooks and Wikisource section below for guidance and examples.

[edit] Examples

Anakin Skywalker is a major character in the Star Wars films. He is discussed briefly in the Star Wars article, but his own article contains much more detailed information.
Harry Potter (character) is a major character in the Harry Potter series of novels. His own article was created in order to prevent the main Harry Potter article from becoming too long, though it still retains a short summary of his character.
Alyosha Karamazov is a major character from the novel The Brothers Karamazov. He is covered comprehensively in the Brothers Karamazov article, and the Alyosha Karamazov link redirects there for convenience.
Superman is universally well known and transcends the original work he appeared in, so he has his own article.
Horses of Middle-earth creates a single, substantial article out of a list of characters otherwise too insignificant for their own individual articles.
List of Mavericks provides information on minor characters in the Mega Man X series of video games who have some background, but lack sufficient relevance to the overall plot.
Noonien Soong is a minor—but still notable—character in Star Trek: The Next Generation, who has sufficient depth to sustain an independent article.
The 1st Battle of Sarapin was an article that summarized a portion of the plot for the game Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. Relevant information was merged into the plot synopsis of the Galactic Battlegrounds article, and the 1st Battle of Sarapin link now redirects there.
Spira (Final Fantasy X), Characters of Final Fantasy VIII and Clone Wars (Star Wars) were evoloved from lists of terms, events and concepts into general encyclopedia articles.

[edit] Being bold

If you find articles (particularly stubs) on fictional characters (and places, concepts, etc.) you may want to be bold and merge them into an appropriate article or list. This allows the information to become more organized and easier to access, with a future option of compressing and trimming excess information. However, if you should do so, be careful not to delete meaningful out-of-universe content.

You should obviously remove redundant headers ('this is a fictional character from such-and-such book by such-and-such author') and original research, but you should not summarize or otherwise reduce the articles in question unless the information can be compressed in a succinct manner.

[edit] Details

This guideline was initially created from strong consensus at Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Minor characters and other discussion at Wikipedia:Deletion policy/Middle-earth items. It should be helpful for making a decision on keeping, merging or deleting of fiction-related articles.

If you are unfamiliar with a certain field or are unsure whether some character (concept, place, etc.) should be considered minor or major, please ask around on the relevant talk pages before making radical changes.

Fiction includes books, TV series, films, computer games and roleplaying games, and so forth.

Fanfiction, on the other hand, may well be considered vanity (not by default, but often so), which is grounds for deletion. This includes, for example: anything self-published, put on fanfiction.net, or done by vanity press; information about a player's character in roleplaying or MMORPGs; and computer game mods or custom maps.

Fiction not yet written may be considered speculation (again, not by default, but often so) which is grounds for deletion because Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. This includes not-yet-released books, movies, games, etc., unless there has already been substantial press coverage about the to-be-released item.

[edit] Making good use of Wikibooks and Wikisource

Wikibooks, Wikipedia's sibling project, contains instructional and educational texts. These include annotated works of fiction (on the Wikibooks:annotated texts bookshelf) for classroom or private study use. Wikisource, similarly, holds original public domain and GFDL source texts. See Wikisource:Wikisource and Wikibooks.

One possible course of action to consider, which has already been successfully employed for several works of fiction, is to make use of all of the projects combined: to have an encyclopaedia article about the work of fiction on Wikipedia giving a brief outline, a chapter-by-chapter annotation on Wikibooks, the full source text on Wikisource (if the work is in the public domain), and interwiki links joining them all together into a whole.