Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 07:34, 1 June 2005

This page documents an English Misplaced Pages guideline. Editors should generally follow it, though exceptions may apply. Substantive edits to this page should reflect consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on this guideline's talk page.

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Fiction in Misplaced Pages

1. Major characters (and places, concepts, etc.) in a work of fiction should be covered within the article on that work of fiction. If the article on the work itself becomes long, then giving major characters an article of their own is good practice.
2. Minor characters (and places, concepts, etc.) in a work of fiction should be merged with short descriptions into a "List of minor characters." This list should reside in the article relating to the work itself, unless either becomes long, in which case a separate article for the list is good practice.
3. Fictional characters which are cultural icons appearing in works of fiction not directly linked to themselves (e.g. as cameo or guest appearance), or who cannot be neatly tied to a particular work of fiction or fictional universe deserve articles of their own, regardless of other circumstances.
4. It would be useful to add redirects to the article page or list of minor characters, from anything that's listed in there.

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. This allows the information to become more organized and easier to access. However, if you should do so, do not delete meaningful content.

You should obviously remove redundant headers ('this is a fictional character from such-and-such book by such-and-such author'), but you should not summarize or otherwise reduce the articles in question.

Details

This guideline was created from strong consensus at Misplaced Pages:Deletion policy/Minor characters and other discussion at Misplaced Pages:Deletion policy/Middle-earth items. It is not official policy, but 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 possibly other sources.

Fanfiction, on the other hand may well be considered vanity (not by default, but often so), which is grounds for deletion. This includes anything self-published, put on fanfiction.net, or done by vanity press; information about a 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 per Misplaced Pages is not a crystal ball. This includes not-yet-released books, movies, games etc, unless there has already been substantial hype and press coverage about the to-be-released item.

See also Misplaced Pages:Guide to writing better articles#Check your fiction.

Examples

• Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter books is a major character, and has her own article because the main article would get too long otherwise.
• Prince Corwin from Nine Princes in Amber (and sequels) is a major character, and is covered in the main article.
• Lionel Hutz from The Simpsons is a minor character, and is covered in a list of minor characters.
• Superman is universally well known and transcending the original work he appeared in, so he has his own article.
• Horses of Middle-earth is an example of a list that was recently created from a group of short articles.

Related topics

• The proliferation of fictional-universe-related articles is considered in the article Fancruft and its talk page.