User:Fallacies/Afd settings

1

Keep. I agree that much of the page is plot and "unsourced," but this is grounds for improvement, not hasty deletion. The present article text is predominantly confirmable against the content of the television series itself, and where canon does not extend, the article explicitly states so -- I would contest that since much of the present information may be independently confirmed by any viewer of the television series, the page content cannot be considered "independent research." Further, 3rd party citable sources for the present information exist; I will be obtaining said material hopefully in a few days. The intent of the article is primarily to familiarize a reader with the concepts and settings of the series that they may not comprehend immediately; it is a nonindiscriminate informational resource that is of use, and in this respect, it does what it is intended to do. On these grounds, I ask that you withdraw the request. -- Fallacies (talk) 20:58, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

2

For purposes of clarification and the improvement of the article, I ask that you please give explicit examples of text from the page that classifies as original research or personal opinion. From what I'm seeing, you are defining "themes" as anything based on interpretation by a particular viewer, but the present content of the page in fact consists primarily of information that is either directly stated in the series dialogue or textualized from an easy-to-understand diagram. If a region on a map in the series is marked in red and with a text-legend, "Britannian Empire," is it thus original research to state in the article that, "the American landmass is part of Britannian territory" ?

You state concern that the article content has very little to do with its title. It is possible that "themes" is a misnaming of the article, as based on content, there is very little that discusses "thematic" elements as per the standard definition in literature. Instead, the page content documents concepts and terminology for clarification; in a sense, the usage of "themes" on the page differs from both the standard and your understanding of it -- it implies recurring elements instead. On this note, I would propose that instead of deletion or merging, it may be beneficial to simply rename the page to something more appropriate, and then improve from there.

I note also that as of the time this posting, I've sourced a large portion of the page content to the six official novels thus far published for the series. The presence of the information in the books is confirmable by anyone with access to the materials. I'm not certain if this qualifies as providing a "source independant of the subject," but browsing through a large number of anime-related articles, I find that the majority utilize things like official settings guides, novels, and materials that are though in general put out by the same publisher but physically distinct from the series they describe.

I assume that this qualifies for independance, but if you are insisting on a source entirely without roots in the original production staff of the series, it may be impossible. Due to the way intellectual rights work in Japan in relation to anime productions, most extant resources pertaining to a given series that are regarded as "reliable" are created by staff directly related to the original production in some way. For example, Kadokawa Shoten is the publisher of the Code Geass novels, manga, and Newtype Magazine; Newtype features articles written by staff writers approved by Bandai-Namco, Kadokawa's partner in the publication and the owners of Sunrise -- the producers of Code Geass. Further, a similar relationship holds between Bandai-Namco and other magazines and publications that feature articles on the show. To commercially publish anything about an anime for purposes besides doujin work, one needs to establish a direct business affiliation with the primary owner of the rights, and usually obtain explicit approval before release is allowed.

If thus you indeed insist on a totally 3rd party source here, it would only be consistent to file afds on the vast majority of anime series documented on Wikipedia. Further, most of the information on the Bleach article you link in fact comes directly from the manga and materials published by the original author. Does that qualify as 3rd party? WP:N states that "Independent of the subject" excludes works produced by those affiliated with the subject including (but not limited to): self-publicity, advertising, self-published material by the subject, autobiographies, press releases, etc. Clearly, much of the much of the citation that exists for Wikipedia articles on anime fall into the categories that are excluded from independent resources.

It is a legitimate concern that the article goes into what you call "ridiculous detail," and thus transwiking may be a proper solution, but until clarification on the explicit failures that exist of WP:N, WP:FICT, WP:NOT#Plot, and WP:WAF that exist at this point in time, I would contest that your original justification for the deletion proposal was an overly hasty judgment. Should the article be simply renamed "Code Geass terminology and settings," there would be no need to delete at all.

-- Fallacies (talk) 10:58, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

3

After the opening song of every episode, in the section where they say, "this program was brought to you by ...", the TV show regularly lists a number of companies. BigGlobe and Pizza Hut happen to be two of them. Their logos and mascots later appear in the episodes proper, and their commercials broadcast during the commercial breaks. I do not understand how this is an OR interpretation of sponsorship. How do you get more explicit than that? Or better, how do you cite that?

I did not contribute significantly to the timeline section, so I do not know the source if there is one. Similarly, statements regarding the political preferences of the EU I do not know the source of.

The so-called declaration of non-canonicity is a line divider that's there primarily for purposes of organization; we could just as well title the sections, "Geass abilities that appear in the series proper," and then, "Geass abilities that do not appear in the series proper." I'll allow that what's there may be inaccurate, but on the other hand, anyone who has seen the relevant materials can confirm that the content of the named spinoffs do not coexist with the events, concepts, or situations of the TV series; if indeed there was ever an explicit act of judgement where somebody that asserted the non-canonicity of the spinoffs, it was probably made in the context of apparent obviousness. There is incidentally, an official Geass spinoff called Tales of an Alternate Shogunate, where Lelouch is a member of the Shinsengumi in the 1800's. There is nothing explicitly declares it to be non-canonical. Would you call it canon?

My contributions are mostly related to terminology found on the official Japanese website, the novelization, and other text sources that I have listed; these additions are provided with the intent to hopefully give readers a quick and easy answer to questions like "what is does this term mean?" -- questions that I had when I was unfamiliar with the series. You'll find that if there's plot summary in my contributions, it's limited to about a sentence or two per entry.

The "accuracy" of the cited sources have very little to do with specification of the written citation; they are materials provided directly by the creator, and are thus accurate. The fact that I have not gone through the trouble of listing page numbers does not change that. Further, even if I provided the page numbers, they would still not be confirmable by somebody who understands only English; conversely, to somebody who knows Japanese and can access the source, the validity is obvious. Does the readership's not knowing Japanese necessarily invalidate a Japanese source?

That I don't give page numbers is more an issue of style than anything else -- each of the novels document quite a number of concepts and terms, and thus providing a paginated citation for every one would result in a ridiculously long references section that English-only readers wouldn't bother using anyhow. Further, there is no explicit policy on WP I can find that requires page numbers to be provided for everything.

I understand that the present content does not comply fully with WP:NONENG, but asserting that the only allowable citations are reliable, completely 3rd party English sources in the understanding that nothing of the sort exists is somewhat unreasonable, no? Newtype press releases are not 3rd party, and neither are setting manuals, material from the official web, etc. No such resource exists in English obviously. If you do not understand Japanese, you may legitimately suspect that my citations are in fact fancruft, and no amount of argument or "evidence" on my part would convince you otherwise. Thus, I'm not going to bother.

It's fairly clear now that to begin with, there never was any resource that I could to make you turn this judgment around, despite the fact that the B-rated Bleach page has out of 47 citations 31 distinct nonindependent cites (establishing the majority of the settings content in the article), 9 newsblog-type source entries and 2 press releases from a publisher (establishing mostly airing and release details), and 5 viewer reception ranking cites (versus, in the Geass settings page, 32 distinct nonindependent cites and 2 wiki-like resources); and the start-class Bleach character listing has only one manga source. By typical standards, what's there in this article for references is enough to ground it, if not sufficiently specific or translated -- in other words, grounds for improvement, not deletion.

I already recognized your point regarding the improperness of the content in the previous posting and acknowledged that transwikiing the material would be the most suitable course of action, but I'm not finding that your treatment of the issue is particularly helpful. Even if much of the material can and should be snipped, deletion doesn't help anything.

-- Fallacies (talk) 15:00, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

4

I'm afraid I don't understand. As per WP:N, you have disqualified the series itself as a valid source of information regarding the settings of the series, and then when I painstakingly provide 30+ secondary sources that explicitly document in text the same information I could have cited the series proper for, you turn around and say that I'm giving these alternate sources undue weight?

To lay it on the table: This article exists as spinout of the Code Geass main article, as described in WP:WAF. Besides the point about WP:PLOT, the advisory in the Summary Style Approach section of WP:WAF is largely adhered to.

Where this article stands with WP:PLOT -- It is not, in fact, an indiscriminate collection of information. It is further (at least for sections I have contributed to significantly) not one big in-depth plot summary, and what's included is fairly concise; giving something within the plot a mere mention is not giving details overmuch. To point, there are hundreds of other things that could be included, and multiple ways to bloat the text. These have been avoided where possible without detracting significantly from valid information; and the terminology listed as, as above, selected for purposes of clarification on the basis of usefulness to reader. The article is not a directory or repository of every vaguely related term that could be listed and defined; just items that help to clarify series content. Obviously, whether such clarification is useful to a reader is highly subjective; there are no explicit guidelines for when something becomes excessive, but there are articles

Where this article stands with WP:N -- The sources I have cited qualify as Primary Information, and as I am for the most part simply paraphrasing, WP:NPOV is adhered to; further, as per the discussion above, the sources adhere to WP:V. Assuming that the topic of the article is Code Geass terminology, it has recieved significant coverage in a great volume of reliable sources listed and is demonstrated where cited not to be WP:OR on the part of a particular editor. As above, in an article discussing the specific content of an anime series, truly 3rd sources are highly difficult to come by. The only critical criterion it fails for notability is the require sources independent from the original subject matter, which as per the above discussion cannot be found for most anime anyways. Quote from WP:N, "Verifiable facts and content not supported by multiple independent sources may be appropriate for inclusion within another article." WP:FICT advises "Nevertheless, the lack of demonstrated notability is not one of the criteria for speedy deletion, and good faith improvements are expected as part of the editing process." In WP:EP, WP:PRESERVE advises much the same.

There are otherwise no explicit failures that cannot be resolved with improvement. As per the explicit text of the guidelines and regulations, there is no objectively identifiable basis for deletion that I can find; all supposed failures are on grounds of subjective judgment of excessiveness, which I have acknowledged multiple times in this discussion. However, as per the advisory provided in Summary Style and other places, deletion is disencouraged; by one particular one reading of the text of Summary Style/Spinout (which I am not personally favoring), there isn't any reason to modify the article at all. What I am saying is that the original justification for your proposed deletion cannot be held to stand at this time.

-- Fallacies (talk) 17:55, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

5

There seems to be no way to reach a compromise. On the note of revisions, most of the "after they've been replied to" situations come from my editting before seeing you post. If it seems as if my statements have changed drastically, I apologize. I'm retiring from this discussion for the time being.

One final edit -- a request for clarification before I leave: I infer from what you say that my statements above are simply equivocations made without correct understanding of Japanese law because of a personal inability to locate sources? I don't mean to be uncivil, but if a true and reliable 3rd party resource written by somebody completely without business affiliations with a series creator does in fact exist in Japanese for the terminology and settings of a given anime series, I would like to see it. I have never encountered such a thing.

-- Fallacies (talk) 18:25, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

6

Er, sorry? When have I done this? A large portion of my contributions are direct translations from Japanese sources with no prior documentation in English; further, they are predominantly confirmed by subsequent English translations. I'll leave it to you to guess what that means.

I would hazard conversely that your statement regarding corporate sponsorship betrays your lack of familiarity with the series itself -- because you are pushing for this Afd as a completely disinterested party, possibly? That's commendable, but please do not make presumptions of me.

And you're right. I haven't checked every article, but magazine publications like Animage, Megami, and Newtype do in fact obtain direct license for everything they include; else they would be committing copyright violations for visual content and other materials. I have never encountered a completely unaffiliated third party resource pertaining to terminology and settings in Japanese; and in this instance none exist in English. If you know of such a thing, please provide an example.

The sources I have provided may not comply with notability guidelines, but they are all that I can give on short notice -- this Afd has existed only for about a day or two. You have attempted to discredit them for unverifiability due to Japanese language and nonspecificity despite the allowances of WP:NONENG and the absence of any guideline that explicitly requires page numbers in cites. Please note that lack of independence does not disqualify the sources themselves as valid.

-- Fallacies (talk) 19:01, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

7

Read through my posts. Did I at any point disagree with your assertion that notability was lacking? No. Let's review this discussion:

a) Your original objection was made in assertion that "themes" are interpretive, and thus without 3rd party sources the article can only be OR. However, because the "themes" used are semantically simply recurring elements and not literary themes, the actual content of the page is not interpretive and may be backed up. At this point in time 1st party sources have been used to do so. Clearly, this particular point from your original proposal no longer stands, but to preemptively resolve future misunderstandings of the article title, I suggested a more appropriate name. You stated that it wouldn't help, but for reasons entirely unrelated to the meaning of the word "theme."

b) You assert that the material is predominantly personal opinion or original research. I give that parts of the page that I have not contributed significantly to may contain such content, but what I have sourced and backed up clearly is not -- at this point in time, sourced material comprises the majority of the page, despite not fulfilling the notability requirement. Said requirement is a seperate issue from whether OR comprises the majority of the article. Clearly, this particular point from your original proposal no longer stands.

c) You assert that other than WP:N the article fails the guidelines at WP:FICT and WP:WAF. However, explicit against-the-written-word-of-the-regulation failures of these occur only where they mention WP:N; regardless of how important WP:N is, these supposed multiple violations are in fact all one and the same. Other "failures" are based on judgment of excessiveness and indiscriminate inclusion, which is highly subjective. Also, WP:WAF is a style guideline whose failure neccessitates only improvement, not deletion; at this time, I note also that WAF is largely adhered to within the article where out-of-universe guidelines are concerned.

d) You assert that the majority of the page is primarily a plot summary and thus a violation of WP:PLOT. I don't know what article you're reading, but by my estimation, actual plot summary takes up less than 20% or 25% of the page. Though I see how the other content may seem to be plot summary to a reader unfamiliar to the material, it is clearly not; it is meant to establish familiarity with series background, and is explicitly unconcerned with retelling the specific storyline of the television series.

d) I have at no point said, "oh well, there are no sources, but I still say its notable because I say so." I have said that at this time there are cited sources, but that they don't establish notability. There's a difference. I note also that WP:N states, "If an article currently does not cite reliable secondary sources, that does not necessarily mean that its topic is not notable." The most contrary solution to your proposal I have thus far posed is preservation of the article by renaming and then attempting to more slowly establish notability.

e) I continue to challenge you to find reliable 3rd party Japanese material that explicitly discusses or reviews for the specific subject matter of the terminology and settings of any series, which I have never seen and do not believe to exist.

In conclusion, many of the elements of your initial proposal do not in fact hold up, despite the core argument of lack of notability being valid. My argument against you has been thus far motivated by the opinion that your deletion nom was overhasty; from my view without due warning, as during the time I've worked on the page, I didn't even see a notability tag appear. Please acknowledge this.

-- Fallacies (talk) 05:35, 1 July 2008 (UTC)