The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Keep. Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 01:37, 17 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

History of For Better or For Worse[edit]

History of For Better or For Worse (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) (delete) – (View log)

One of the many things Wikipedia is not is a plot summary. This article, on the other hand, is one, and nothing more. I clicked on it expecting to find a real-world history of the development of the comic strip For Better or For Worse, but instead it's a synopsis of the major plot elements of the strip from 1979 to the present. Please delete as unencyclopedic. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 21:06, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete A serious real-world history page would certainly be acceptable. This overly detailed, in-universe plot summary is not. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells•Otter chirps)} 22:42, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Neutral The page, in its current state, is fan cruft, but heck, I trimmed the FoxTrot article from over 25K of cruft, so it can be done. Ten Pound Hammer and his otters • ^{(Broken clamshells•Otter chirps)} 01:14, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Um, this isn't the main For Better or For Worse article. This is an article containing absolutely nothing but plot summary. If the cruft were to be trimmed from this, it would be empty. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 06:46, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Oh, so it's cruft? --Pixelface (talk) 18:15, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • That's what User:TenPoundHammer said. What I say is it's a violation of WP:NOT#PLOT. Notice how WP:ITSCRUFT says, "Arguments that the nature of the subject is unencyclopedic (for example individual songs or episodes of a TV show) should also be avoided in the absence of clear policies or guidelines against articles on such subjects" (emphasis added). In this case, there is a clear policy against articles of this type. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 18:43, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • WP:NOT#PLOT is disputed and I fail to see how this article turns Wikipedia into an indiscriminate collection of information. You expected to find "a real-world history of the development of the comic strip" so why don't you make it one? --Pixelface (talk) 21:41, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep good arguments for enriching the article, not for deleting it. DGG (talk) 23:47, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • And what are those "good arguments"? —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 06:46, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep I think it could do with some cleanup and possibly merge back into the parent article, but a summary of major plot points that took place over the 26 years the characters have aged/changed seems relevant and useful. Sχeptomaniac^{χαιρετε} 23:53, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• KeepThe article was originally split from the main article due to its length. As Sxeptomaniac mentions, a summary of major plot points is useful. Cleanup would be a good idea, but I do not think it can be merged back into the original article.Vgranucci (talk) 05:00, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Cleanup how? Since there's no encyclopedic information anywhere in this article, there's nothing to clean up. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 06:46, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Fails WP:PLOT by design. Not only does the article contain nothing but plot with no real world context, that's all it could ever do. WP:SS is not an excuse to make an article that does not meet Wikipedia's inclusion criteria. Sometimes when articles grow long it's because there's material that shouldn't be there. Jay32183 (talk) 01:05, 15 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep, storylines are not unencyclopedic and this could actually be merged into the For Better or For Worse article per the editing policy. I think this is a fine sub-article of For Better or For Worse. --Pixelface (talk) 01:17, 15 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • If kept (and it's starting to look like it will be), this will pretty much have to merged into the main article, since as a standalone article, it's a blatant violation of Wikipedia policy. And yes, storylines are supremely unencyclopedic. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 01:47, 15 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • No, storylines are not unencyclopedic. If this is too long to merge into the main article per size constraints, it's fine to keep this as a sub-article. If the article needs something extra (like development information), put some cleanup tags on the article. --Pixelface (talk) 01:54, 15 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • It doesn't need cleanup. It needs deletion. It is not "fine to keep this as sub-article". There is nothing in the article that even remotely approaches encyclopedia-worthiness, although it may come close to being a copyright violation. Adding real-world development information would be fine, as long as everything that is currently in the article is removed first. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 01:59, 15 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • What makes you think this article may come close to being a copyright violation? --Pixelface (talk) 02:39, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
          • The fact that everything in it is the intellectual property of Lynn Johnston. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 08:43, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
            • Dude, this brief of a summary is so far inside of fair use it isn't worth discussing as even a theoretic problem. Hobit (talk) 13:55, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
              • If you're going to claim fair use, where's the fair use rationale? Does this article comply with the entirety of Wikipedia's fair use guidelines and policy? —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 17:07, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
                • Are you Lynn Johnston? Are you a lawyer? Plot summaries don't need a fair use rationale. WP:FAIR says "Copyright law only governs creative expressions that are "fixed in a tangible medium of expression," not the ideas or information behind the works. It is legal to reformulate ideas based on written texts, or create images or recordings inspired by others, as long as there is no copying (see plagiarism for how much reformulation is necessary)." And Mike Godwin, general counsel of the Wikimedia Foundation, said "plot summaries, in general, are not taken to be copyright infringement so long as they do not include any great degree of the original creative expression."[1] --Pixelface (talk) 18:10, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Comics and animation-related deletion discussions. —Pixelface (talk) 01:18, 15 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete per WP:PLOT: "Wikipedia articles on published works (such as fictional stories) should contain real-world context and sourced analysis, offering detail on a work's development and historical significance, not solely a detailed summary of that work's plot." Just because the topic is notable does not mean that it's appropriate to write in-universe information at length in an encyclopedia with no secondary sources to analyze such a history. —Erik (talk • contrib) - 01:55, 15 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep per WP:SIZE. This comes back to "can a page rely on its parent for notability?". And my reading of WP:SIZE is yes, but the notability of the topic as a whole better justify it. This clearly is well past that justification as this comic is hugely notable. Hobit (talk) 02:11, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • WP:SIZE actually says not to do this. When a plot section grows trivially long, you trim it, you don't split it. Neither WP:SIZE nor WP:SS encourage ignoring WP:NOT or WP:N. Jay32183 (talk) 03:45, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Partly correct. So the base article meets all WP standards and the split article is viewed as a part of the whole. Neither NOT nor N is violated. Is the plot section of something that has been running daily for ~30 years likely to _need_ to be that long? Is it "concise"? I'd say yes (the last 2 years probably not actually). Taking the articles as a whole they meet WP:PLOT easily. Hobit (talk) 11:17, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • No, the split article is not "viewed as a part of the whole". The split article is an article unto itself and must meet WP:NOT and WP:N independently. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 12:03, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • And there we disagree. The organization of the topic (For Better or for Worse in this case) may break into many different pages, but logically one article. The first goal should be to break the article up as makes sense editorially. If that is into sections or even different pages, that is what we should do. Trying to meet different standards for each part is a secondary goal no matter if the parts are on separate pages or just different sections. Hobit (talk) 13:54, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
          • Well, editorially it makes no sense to put all of the non-encyclopedic plot summary into a separate article. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 17:07, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
            • It does make sense if article size is a concern — or you can try to cram nearly 30 years of events into the main article. --Pixelface (talk) 20:32, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
              • Better yet, you omit the 30 years of fictional events from an encyclopedia whose focus is the real world. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 21:09, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
                • Those fictional events were published in the real world so I don't see what you mean. Do you want to know what Lynn Johnston ate for breakfast before she drew the strip every day? --Pixelface (talk) 21:27, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete this trivia per WP:PLOT. We already have For_Better_or_For_Worse#Key_storylines for the important stories. This trivia ("Lawrence breaks his leg in a bicycle accident ... Farley goes to obedience classes") can go. --Dragonfiend (talk) 20:06, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is actually a sub-article of the #Key storylines section in that article. It got too long and was spunout per summary style. --Pixelface (talk) 20:26, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • Stop trying to game WP:SS against the inclusion criteria. The guidelines you're trying to use do not suggest ignoring other policies just to maintain a certain article length. WP:SIZE says not to do this. Try actually reading the part of WP:PLOT that says Wikipedia articles should not consist only of plot. This is an article consisting entirely of plot. There is absolutely no one to logically claim this article doesn't fail that policy. Maybe what you need to read is Wikipedia:What is an article?. The part that says "a page" not "a series of pages" may be of particular interest to you. Jay32183 (talk) 21:23, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • The criteria for inclusion on Wikipedia is verifiability. If you took the time to look through the history of this article, you'd see it was created on October 12, 2006 by JenKilmer[2], who spun it out from the main article.[3] I don't care what WP:PLOT says. If this article needs something more than plot, add it yourself. Maybe you need to read WP:NOT#BUREAUCRACY and WP:IAR. --Pixelface (talk) 21:37, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. and clean-up per AfD. Useful information that would be trimmed down for the main article which seems HUGE so a spin-off article seems fine and can be improved to wikipedia standards. If plot-only is an issue then fix it; numerous ways to do so and suggestions on how to do so would be most helpful. One suggest is delete which doesn't seem to have consensus, any other ideas? Benjiboi 23:43, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I think this section from the manual of style speaks to spun-off plot summarizes and other suggestions for writing this article. Benjiboi 23:47, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.