Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film/Archive 13

Archive 10

Archive 11

Archive 12

Archive 13

Archive 14

Archive 15

→

Archive 20

Applicability to "Foo in other media" sections of articles on fictional characters

A bunch of "interpretations in the form of labels" have been removed from articles on comic book characters as "blatant violations" of WP:ANTAGONIST, but the violations don't seem all that blatant to me, as the wording of WP:ANTAGONIST appears to refer primarily, or even exclusively, to (plot summary sections in) articles on films, not independent articles on the characters. Does anyone know when, why and by whom the current wording was written, and whether this edit summary is a fair interpretation of the guideline? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:25, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

Back in 2013, in a dispute at the Light Yagami article, I noticed that WP:ANTAGONIST was being used broadly. I don't have an issue with "main antagonist" and similar when it's well-supported by the literature on the character, and I have questioned WP:ANTAGONIST being used so broadly. Darkknight2149, since you are shown in the above link, any opinions on this? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:07, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

This, this and this edit show what I mean regarding the Light Yagami article. Those last two edits were made by Vashti. And the article currently says "protagonist." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:18, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

Hmm... if it's stuff like that that was the reason for the current wording of the guideline, then I think the guideline kind of missed the point, because the problem with the Light Yagami article is people thinking the word 'protagonist' means 'good guy' and 'antagonist' means 'bad guy', and inserting their own subjective interpretations and moral judgements into articles. This is covered under WP:NOR, so this guideline should be subordinate to NOR and simply summarize what it says on the matter; it should not be providing an overly elaborate interpretation of how said policy applies to articles peripherally related to film casts. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:02, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

• Comment I question whether MOS:FILM even applies to articles such as General Zod and Light Yagami since WP:FILM does not register an interest on the talk pages. Putting aside the technicality MOS:FILM is against OR labelling, not against specific terms. A character like Batman may be a protagonist, but isn't he also an antagonist too? And considering he is a vigilante who operates outside the law then labels such as "hero" and "villain" are subjective. I don't think MOS:FILM words this effectively (because it does indeed look like it is forbidding legitimate analytical terms) but I think the point is that we shouldn't be labelling someone an antagonist/villain etc unless the term is qualified i.e. it is used analytically rather than descriptively. Betty Logan (talk) 02:32, 3 August 2016 (UTC)

Clarify genre guidance

There has been a substantial increase in genre warring in recent months so some film project members would like to add clarification to WP:FILMLEAD. Where it states "At minimum, the opening sentence should identify the title of the film, the year of its public release, and the primary genre or sub-genre under which it is verifiably classified" it is proposed that an extra sentence is added to this to reconcile it with existing policies: At minimum, the opening sentence should identify the title of the film, the year of its public release, and the primary genre or sub-genre under which it is verifiably classified. Genre classifications need to comply with WP:WEIGHT and therefore should be representative of the majority of the sources that are regularly used to source film articles.

The intention of the revision is not to change the application of the guideline, but to reduce misinterpretation. The genre classifications should be representive of the sources i.e. editors should not be cherry-picking sources in order to add their preferred genres. The guideline as it stands should be applied in conjunction with WP:WEIGHT, but it would help to explicitly incorporate the WP:WEIGHT policy into the guideline so it is clear that this isn't just a case of sourcing, but also representation.

If anyone thinks they can improve on the wording feel free to propose alternatives Betty Logan (talk) 09:04, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Survey

• Support. Most of the problems come from genre warriors trying to put in their preferred sub-genres, usually from cherry-picked sources. When disputes arise, we should be able to point to the MoS and emphasize WP:WEIGHT. - Gothicfilm (talk) 09:44, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
• Support – Per Gothicfilm and nom, though I recommend shortening it a bit. Here's one idea: "Genre classifications should comply with WP:WEIGHT and represent what is specified by a majority of reliable sources". Not a deal-breaker if we keep it the same as nominated, but I thought I'd throw this out there. --GoneIn60 (talk) 13:31, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm happy to go with the shorter version, although I think we should stipulate "a majority of mainstream reliable sources". Part of the problem is editors digging up horror fanzines or niche sci-fi websites etc which will often claim films where horror or sci-fi is only a secondary genre. We want classifications to represent the mainstream view. Betty Logan (talk) 22:45, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Ah yes, I didn't think of that angle. Adding "mainstream" would likely be a good workaround. --GoneIn60 (talk) 17:00, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

• Support the clarification per nom and Gothicfilm and support the wording proposed by GoneIn60. I think GoneIn60's version is more concise yet still states the point Betty was saying. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 18:57, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
• Support Makes sense - good call. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 19:00, 29 July 2016 (UTC)
• Support - Though, questions...are we saying that a citation should be explicitly provided to demonstrate that the film has been "verifiably classified" as whichever genre? Should we provide guidance as to how disputes about genre should be handled (my personal favorite would be as soon as it's contested, remove genres pending a consensus)? DonIago (talk) 20:31, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Under WP:BRD, we should restore a disputed article to its pre-dispute condition. As to your first question, no one source will give WP:WEIGHT, so I would say no. When there's a dispute, someone should give a tally of the various sources on the Talk page. Betty has shown a talent for this, but others can do it as well. As to GoneIn60's wording, if others prefer it I'll go along, but let me point out a majority of sources don't really specify - we have to give a representation of the majority of the sources that are regularly used to source film articles. We should discourage using less-used sources. - Gothicfilm (talk) 22:31, 29 July 2016 (UTC)

Betty's suggestion above to add "mainstream" might fix that glitch. Good point though. --GoneIn60 (talk) 17:00, 30 July 2016 (UTC)

• Support. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 07:17, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
• Support. - I'd prefer the original wording since, to concur with Betty Logan, I believe fannish editors will go to horror niche sites and the like and just edit-war with that additional ammunition. --Tenebrae (talk) 13:37, 30 July 2016 (UTC)
• Support, but... I wonder if "representative of the majority of the sources that are regularly used to source film articles" wouldn't be better replaced with "representative of the way the film is generally described in {del>the reliable sources like the ones cited in the body of the article". My reasoning is that "sources that are regularly used to source film articles" is incredibly vague and broad. While I understand that the majority of the recent genre-warring is probably centered around recent large Hollywood films and these articles generally have a certain type of source that is used, this is not the case for old films, foreign films, films widely studied and discussed in academic circles, etc. I am also not a fan of using the word "source" as both a noun and a verb in the same clause. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:33, 1 August 2016 (UTC)

A lot of the edit warring was over older films, and there are no problems finding regular sources for them. We want the WP:WEIGHT of regularly used sources, not just the ones that happen to be cited on a certain page. No page uses all of them. And an edit warrior could change or add their preferred source. - Gothicfilm (talk) 03:30, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

@Gothicfilm: I know there are no problems finding regular sources for articles on older films. The problem is precisely because there are regular sources; with regular sources, "the majority of the sources that are regularly used to source film articles" is impossible to quantify, unless what is meant is "the kind of Hollywood trade publications and reviews by professional film critics that are typically the best sources available for new films that are not yet being discussed in scholarly literature". However, with older films that are discussed in scholarly literature, there are no "sources that are regularly used" to source them (or at least there shouldn't be). As for your concerns that my wording limits it to the sources cited in any one particular article, thank you for pointing that out. I did not notice this potential misunderstanding, and have altered my proposal accordingly. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:48, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

It seems to me you're going into detail not normally seen on guidance pages, and I don't see a problem with sources for older films. Sometimes things have to be worked out on a case-by-case basis. No progress here for five days, but everyone supported the proposal in some form. We should finalize the wording. I still believe Betty's original text works best, and most people supported it. - Gothicfilm (talk) 01:42, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Summary

Everybody seems to be in agreement with the general sentiment i.e. Wikipedia should present the general view as presented in mainstream sources (i..e authoritative/general film interest rather than fanzine/blog-ish/special genre interest). Some alternative wordings have been presented but I have decided to install my revision of GoneIn60's: Genre classifications should comply with WP:WEIGHT and represent what is specified by a majority of mainstream reliable sources. It is basic, concise and clear and I think will move the guideline closer to what we want. I have rejected my original wording because it occurs to me that a casual editor might not be familiar with the sources "regularly" used in film articles. Similarly, I think Hijiri 88's suggestion could run into problems if you are using niche sources to source an article. If a debate emerges down the line about what constitutes a "mainstream" source (both Hijiri 88 and I have attempted this and have come up with very different ways of saying the exact same thing) then we can attempt to define what we mean by "mainstream", but I don't think we should tighten the screws unless we need to. I don't see the point in waiting another week, so I am just going to install the new wording. If it is unacceptable or you don't think it reflects the general consensus of the discussion then feel free to revert and we'll take it from there. Betty Logan (talk) 11:01, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Looks good, reflects the general consensus and is consistent with the rest of the guideline. That should get the job done. - Gothicfilm (talk) 21:54, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

My stance on audience/critic scoring system

I think the current system is flawed because it limits the opinions to those of professional critics, and, people who saw the film on opening night. I think it would be more reliable if we were allowed to use audience scores from Imdb, Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, etc. While it is true that these scores can be subject to vote stacking and demographic skew, the same can be said of Cinemascore, and the sort. I think Cinemascore is even more prone to demographic skew, since most people seeing the film on opening night fall under the film's target demographic. Rickraptor707 (talk) 05:53, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

I think that's a bad idea. Just look at the Ghostbusters IMDB user score breakdown to see how much a poll without controlled sampling can be abused. Also, you can see that something like the IMDB score is far more skewed towards male voters (there are three times more male voters than female voters in the case of Ghostbusters) and I have had a hard time believing Cinemascore would be that biased. Cinemascore will have bias, but that bias will be intrinsically part of the audience demographic, where as IMDB's bias reflects the internet demographic i.e. youngish males. Betty Logan (talk) 12:33, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Betty that controlled sampling is needed. That is why CinemaScore is okay even though the opening weekend audience may skew toward those who want to see the film most. It's definitely skewed toward political documentaries. I think box office performance is another acceptable metric to use. Second weekend in box office performance is something that is looked at. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 14:15, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Well, yes there appear to be fewer guys voting on Imdb, but, it isn't necessarily guaranteed to be an equally mixed crowd. This applies to both the professional critics, and Cinemascore. I don't see how that makes Imdb, and the sort more biased, just because they're open to the general public.

Rickraptor707 (talk) 05:27, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Well the main argument for professional critics is not being unbiased but their traditionally greater cloud/influence in perception of a movie. The problem with audience opinions is that we don't seem to have any good assessment and the available approaches all have drawbacks and expecting a "true" unbiased representation of the audience is a misleading notion due not being available. It might be better to simply include various metrics and point out their caveats.

You probably could make an argument for imdb and rotten tomatoes audience scores, that is somewhat similar to the inclusion of critics. They can be included not for being an objective assessment but for their influence as it stand to reason that probably more people use IMDB oder RT audiences scores as orientation than professional critics.

I don't quite believe the "youngish male" bias of the internet that was referenced above, that is (pc b based) internet the of 10-15 years ago. Not the mobile and every day internet we have today. There might be "young (?) male" bias on the IMDB nevertheless, but it isn't based on any (non existant) young male bias of the current internet.--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:31, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

When it comes to the Database, the genders and ages of the registered users are also given in the voter demographics for any given film. In the case of Ghostbusters (2016), from what I can see on the chart,:

• 35431 male voters and 12751 female voters.
• 670 voters under 18. 463 of them are males, 198 are females.
• 17569 voters between 18 and 29 years-old. 12243 are males, 5121 are females.
• 19510 voters between 30 and 44 years-old. 15346 are males, 3884 are females.
• 4116 voters over 45. 3121 are males, 926 are females.

Not that young men perhaps, but female voters are actually under-represented in this poll.

While I would not actually mind including the Database's ratings of various films and while I have been one of its registered users for over a decade, I tend to take most of its ratings with a grain of salt. Ghostbusters (1984) with all its fame and popularity gets a score of 7.8, the groundbreaking serial killer film Psycho (1960) gets 8.5, the groundbreaking science fiction film Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) gets 8.7, Schindler's List (1993) and Pulp Fiction (1994) get 8.9, and the Top 250 list of the Database is headed by The Godfather (1972) and The Shawshank Redemption (1994) which each get 9.2. It is nearly impossible for most films to get a rating of at least 9. If I actually believed all the ratings were accurate, I would believe that more than a century of cinema has managed to produce only a few great films. I frankly doubt this is true for an art that keeps fascinating so many people. In the Internet negativity rules. Dimadick (talk) 22:14, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Speaking of the demographics, here's a decent article that provides some insight into gender-based skew, as well as some general thoughts on the value these ratings provide:

‘Ghostbusters’ Is A Perfect Example Of How Internet Movie Ratings Are Broken – FiveThirtyEight

Clearly, men tend to pummel the ratings of films with female-centric plot themes. As we see from Dimadick's post, men are outnumbering women practially 3 to 1. It's hard to put a lot of faith into those numbers. Also, I find it interesting that in the case of the new Ghostbusters film, there were over 12,000 votes submitted before the movie was even released! These are just some of the issues surrounding the inclusion of audience scores from non-scientific online polls, and we're just scratching the surface! It's get uglier the further you dig. --GoneIn60 (talk) 03:54, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Well you can game such voting systems via bots/ai and "fanboys" to a degree and some movies are leaked early, those aspects might explain those votes before publication.

As far as the ratio 3:1 and bias is concerned, this primarily only an issue if you expect the index to be representive for the population at large, which imho is an unreasonable expectation to begin with. Hence I see less of a problem here. As I said above the main argument for the inclusion of popular indices is their influence not their lack of bias (the same reason we include critics).--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:03, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

While I found the article on Internet Movie Ratings quite informative, there was one paragraph that might require further analysis. "Essentially, male users were more likely to rate television shows with a female-heavy audience lower than female users would rate male-centric television lower. Men were tanking the ratings of shows aimed at women."

The writer is speaking about television shows, not films. In this case, who is determining if the show is mainly aimed at a female audience, male audience, or both? I was under the impression that most shows try to appeal to the wider possible demographic (in order to get ratings) and do not have a specific gender as a target. Dimadick (talk) 12:22, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

I just found the article to be an interesting read that, like I said, is only scratching the surface. It's not meant to be a conclusive piece that we can base any real decision off of in this discussion. I think one of the takeaway points neither of you brought up, however, was the wide variance of results from site to site. Fandango audience scores skew the highest (much higher in fact) compared to the other sites for the same 146 films surveyed. But even between MC and RT user scores, there is a clear difference in the results. Notice the sharp peaks for user scores overall as opposed to a more distributed curve for critic scores. RT user scores are probably the most acceptable based on this data, but I still question the "value" of including audience scores in general, especially when there appears to be little variance from film to film within a given site (RT being the exception). --GoneIn60 (talk) 14:02, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

What do you mean by little variance? IMDB user scores tend to differ up to 8 points (out of 10).--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:07, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm referring to the normalized ratings in that chart. The tall, single peaks we see at IMDB, MC, and Fandango indicate that there is little variance in the "overall" rating for each film. For any given film at those sites, we can expect the rating to settle into a smaller range of values (at IMDB, this range is between 2.7 and 4.2 for the vast majority), as opposed to a much wider range in most professional critic and RT user scores (1.5 to 4.5) in which there are also multiple peaks. I'm just eyeballing numbers here, so let's not get caught up on exact measurements. The point is that this discrepancy is noticeably visible. --GoneIn60 (talk) 14:29, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

I see, actually i didn't look at the article before. One question what exactly the "normalisation" contains. Also i don't quite see why several peaks or greater variance is necessarily "better".--Kmhkmh (talk) 20:46, 12 August 2016 (UTC)

Normalization in this case is the process of taking measurements of different scales and combining them into one common scale. Since each site varies a bit (1 thru 10, 1 thru 5, etc.), it's easier to make the adjustment through normalization so they can be compared in one easy-to-read chart. As for "greater variance", having multiple peaks and a wider range is what you'd expect to happen as the number of films increases (the greater the chance you run into bad apples and critically-acclaimed on both ends of the spectrum). It seems that those three sites I mentioned earlier have a much narrower range than they should have for 146 films. Rarely does a film get a very bad or very positive overall rating, and most of the time, a film will settle on a better than average rating (on Fandango, it is more likely to settle even higher).

So what value do they add to an article, when the numbers aren't really telling us anything? They're likely padding bad films more often than they should. RT user scores appear to be reflect the kind of variance we see in critic scores, so if we are to include them, perhaps RT is the way to go. I just think if we open that can of worms, however, you're just begging for user scores from all over the net to start pouring in. --GoneIn60 (talk) 03:08, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

I don't see why you would expect a greater variance or multiple peaks, as the normalisation (if it not just scaling) compensates for that. In fact I'd probably argue that majority of films gets a somewhat similar score is probably you'd expect (the normal distribution assumption).

I also don't see any good why the audience score should reflect the critic score. Imho that all of that is based on the imho problematic assumption that critic or audience is supposed to approximate some "true" value of the film, which imho is questionable. The reason from my perspective for WP to critic scores or audience scores is their influence/clout and not their approximation of a films "true" value. I.e. we should state an audience score if it is well known and often used by movie goers, i.e. it has influence and is of interest to readers. That also restricts/blocks the "user scores from all over the net" as we only include the very few most popular ones on net and not any other ones.--Kmhkmh (talk) 03:37, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

What should happen to the variance as the sample of films increases in number is debatable and would require a more in-depth study than we get in that article. Also, how much of an interest user scores are to most readers is not really a measurable stat. Obviously, we know they aren't reported anywhere near as often as critic scores, and when they are mentioned in a reliable source, it's usually to show a contrast with critic scores (like when they heavily disagree with one another). I think there are some situations where it might be appropriate to mention RT or MC user scores when a handful of reliable sources do, but I believe it should have proper in-text attribution when cited. If challenged, then it should be discussed on the talk page and handled on a case-by-case basis. --GoneIn60 (talk) 06:27, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Production Section Information Questions

Hello all, I just wanted to get some input on a few additions to the production section of The Departed. Right now, the final paragraph of the production section read:

The film got the official greenlight from Warners in early 2005, and began shooting in the spring of 2005.[8] Although some of the film was shot on location in Boston, for budgetary and logistical reasons many scenes, interiors in particular, were shot in locations and sets in New York City, which had tax incentives for filmmakers that Boston at the time did not.[14][15][16]

I would like to add a couple more lines after this, which are:

According to the New York City Film Office, the film shot at 26 different locations in the city over a period spanning from February 2005 to July 2006 and employed 200 cast and crew members. Over the course of production in Massachusetts, the studio spent $6 million of the film's $90 million budget in the state.

Both lines would have citations to both the NY Film Office site and The Hollywood Reporter. Another editor expressed concern that these lines would somehow violate NPOV, but they are just simple factual statements on a noncontroversial topic. That same editor also felt comments from both Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio, who both opined that they wanted the film to shoot more in Boston than it did, also violated NPOV. However, given the MOS guidelines that state "thoughts from the cast and crew can be interwoven into this section" provided they are "substantive", it seems to me like the thoughts from the film's two lead actors on where the film should have shot more (given the strong identity of place in the movie) are wholly appropriate for this section. Since I can't get that editor to engage further on the inclusion of this information on the talk page, I wanted to get input on whether others felt the two lines I proposed above are good to add to the article. And, while I am not proposing immediate inclusion of Damon & DiCaprio's "thoughts", I would like to get input on whether we can or should add them in as well. Depauldem (talk) 19:25, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Facts don't violate NPOV and actors opinions don't violate NPOV either. Someone should read the guidelines agian, WP:NPOV is about editors not bringing their own bias to an article, it isn't saying article cannot include points of view, only that they should properly and accurately represent the subject.

Selectively including quotes from the actors might give Undue weight to an opinion or give too much attention to a point that is not sufficiently notable and that is a different argument entirely. Once you are confident your aren't over emphasizing something unimportant I think your suggested edits should be fine. -- 109.77.182.110 (talk) 20:54, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Languages ordering in infobox and elsewhere

Curious what the community thinks about this. In Indian films, there has been an uptick of films that are filmed simultaneously in multiple languages (not dubbed). Baahubali: The Beginning was one that was filmed in both Telugu and Tamil. (They sometimes do this to avoid entertainment taxes in other regions.) 2.0 is another, slated to be filmed in Tamil, Hindi and Telugu. What I've also seen an uptick in, is people changing the ordering of the languages in a film's infobox and elsewhere, like here. Baahubali, for instance, is considered a Telugu film because it was produced by people in the Telugu film industry. I believe 2.0 would be considered a Tamil film. As you can assume, there is an issue of ethnic pride fueling some of these changes. People no doubt would prefer Tamil appeared in the list before Telugu or Hindi, because to them it's primarily a Tamil film. What's the most efficacious way to deal with this?

• Alphabetical order: Might be the most neutral way to present the information, but people are going to be pissed if their language appears last. May be hard for readers to figure out what ethnic film industry produced the film. (Of course, prose would be a fix for that.)
• "Primary" language first, with the rest alphabetically? So for 2.0: Tamil, Hindi, Telugu. The con here is that we are deciding what a film's primary language is. We might be able to find sourcing on that, though, with newspapers referring to the film as a "Tollywood" production or whatever.
• Some other order TBD?

Thanks as usual, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 01:07, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

• Can we take into consideration the industry through which the film is produced? For example, Baahubali is produced by a Telugu/Hyderabad-based production company. And 2.0 is being made by a Tamil/Chennai-based company. This can be used to address the issue of "ethnic pride". Views? Flaws? Best, Nairspecht (talk) (work) 11:43, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

  Even if you prioritise the langauge of the industry that produced the film that doesn't resolve the issue for the other languages. "Ethnic pride" is not a Wikipedia consideration anyway so we shouldn't pander to it, so I would order the languages alphabetically. If it is important to idenitfy which industry produced the film then this can be handled separately from the languages. Betty Logan (talk) 21:24, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

  As in this example made by Nirinsanity the changes aren't just limited to the Infobox. If a film was made by X ethnicity, there will be push back for any ordering that does not elevate X ethnicity to the front of the list. One emotional argument might be that Hindi is the language of the majority, and since it appears earlier in the alphabet, it will usually precede many of the other minority languages. I also know that similar issues have come up across the project. Are a film's nations of origin arranged alphabetically, or do we try to suss out which nation was the major player and then list them first? As Nirinsanity pointed out in a discussion at Talk:2.0 (film), should the languages at Inglourious Basterds be English, French, then German? Or are we applying a subjective evaluation that English is used more in the film, followed by German, then French? Would it be weird to find English listed last for an American film if, say, the film also contained Dutch and Basque? Cyphoidbomb (talk) 07:20, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

  I don't think the analogy is quite the same here. Inglorious Basterds is essentially an English-language film with some French and German dialogue. You can watch it and understand it if you only know English, but not if you only know French and German. IMO French and German should not even be included in the infobox. In fact, Template:Infobox_film states to only "Insert the language primarily used in the film." The BBFC makes a clear distinction between the English and the French (and doesn't acknowledge the German). If multiple language versions of the film existed i.e. Brad Pitt filmed his scenes in all three languages, then I would be in favor of ordering the languages alphabetically. Betty Logan (talk) 23:01, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

If we maintain alphabetical order and if a film is made both in Bengali and Hindi simultaneously, Bengali will come at the top even if the movie is based out of Hindi film industry. But Hindi film industry is almost 50 times bigger than Bengali industry if we consider gross revenue as parameter. It gives a false idea about Bengali industry if we include the revenue of both the versions. In such case, the gross revenue of the top movie in Bengali list will be 50 times greater than the second movie.

Otherwise, it is better to give a single language from which the movie has originated for at least Indian films instead of including all the languages. Since, it is easy to know from different sources about the primary language, we can maintain only that language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bhuvannalla (talk • contribs) 12:55, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

@Bhuvannalla: Thanks for your input. Where do you see this being an issue exactly? If such an film exists, the infobox in the article would indicate "Bengali / Hindi" because of alphabetization, but as Betty noted, the "industry" could be clarified somewhere else in the article for context. I suppose I could see an issue somewhere like List of highest-grossing Indian films. If a Hindi-industry film was produced bilingually in Bengali, and performed really well, it would appear in the top 15 as "Bengali, Hindi", which I guess you're saying would appear as though the Bengali film industry had a huge financial success. Where other non-Indians are going to be confused, is that this is an alien concept to them. The film community as a whole typically tends to focus on a nation's successes, not the success of ethnic or state sub-divisions within that nation. I'm hard-pressed to think of another nation with this issue. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 15:59, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

There won't be any issue with non-Indians regarding Indian films, the issue will arise only with Indians because of huge diversity in India.

Whenever people visit Wikipedia for films, they will have a first glance at infobox only. The reader may or may not read the content. So, if we maintain alphabetical order in infobox, it may confuse the reader.

I have just given an example of Bengali and Hindi films. You can see Indian multilingual films here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multilingual_Indian_films#Bengali_and_Hindi. It is very common for other language directors, who settled in Hindi film industry, try to make bilingual films, one in Hindi and the other in their mother tongue. Here, the conflict arises. Though the movie is based out of Hindi film industry, it will also be counted in the director's mother tongue language also and if that language comes first in alphabetical order, people will think that it is an original movie in that language. So, it is better to give priority to that industry language from which it has originated. Otherwise, it is better to maintain a single language. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bhuvannalla (talk • contribs) 17:08, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

(Bhuvannalla, please indent your responses to make them easier to read) I don't know that I agree with the idea of coddling readers on the assumption that they won't bother to read the rest of the article. That just sounds to me like we're being asked to support laziness. There might be other legitimate reasons to switch the order, but I reject that specific argument as flimsy. And it still doesn't tell us what we're supposed to do about trilingual films. You know how many times I've seen Telugu placed before Tamil, presumably because some reader has a grudge against Tamils? Or vice-versa? These ordering wars are exceptionally disruptive. Another possible solution is to create an infobox parameter for ethnic industry, but I don't think that would get support from the community. Another possibility might be to create a unique infobox for Indian film articles, but I worry that would further insulate Indian films from the rest of the Wikipedia film community. I don't agree with your solution to use a single language. If a film has been produced in multiple languages, the purpose of |language= is to indicate those multiple languages. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 20:43, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Cyphoidbomb Sorry, I was reluctant to start a discussion on this issue as I kept pondering over it and felt there isn't a practical solution. While alphabetical order is probably the most neutral way to solve the issue, it doesn't seem to be factually right. On the other hand, while it is easy to justify that 2.0 is primarily a Tamil film, it becomes harder to classify other multilingual films such as Mudinja Ivana Pudi / Kotigobba 2. These both are essentially the same film, but they have two different articles to satisfy the needs of Tamil/Kannada speakers respectively. I, being a Tamil myself, can't really point out if it's a Kannada production or a Tamil production. While the producer and lead actor work primarily in Kannada cinema, the director works in Tamil cinema. And I don't think there are sources which clarify the industry origins of a film, either. So, I can't really think of anything. If anyone arrives at an efficient solution, I'd be amazed. - Nirinsanity (talk) 13:05, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

I believe the best way to deal with this is problem is to give preference to the language of the film industry to which the main actors and producers belong. In the case of Baahubali: The Beginning, the main cast, director and producers work for Tollywood, hence Telugu is preferred. In the case of 2.0 the main cast, director and producers work for the Tamil film industry, which makes it essential to give preferrence to Tamil. ~~Rajan51 (talk) 13:30, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

I believe the majority of the cast hardly determines which industry the film belongs to. It is the production company that determines it. That is why Baahubali (both parts) gives preference to Telugu, even though the majority of the main cast are Tamil actors. Kailash29792 (talk) 18:05, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

@Kailash29792: Well, then according to this logic, 2.0 should give preference to Tamil, as Lyca Productions is a company that is headquartered at Chennai and it has mainly produced Tamil films.~~Rajan51 (talk) 04:21, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

I support your statement Rajan, and I don't deny it, since 2.0's predecessor is a Tamil film. Kailash29792 (talk) 04:38, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Good to know. It had been pointed earlier at Talk:2.0 (film). ~~Rajan51 (talk) 04:45, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Cyphoidbomb, Kailash29792, Rajan51 That makes sense, actually. We can order the languages of the film based on the location/production history of the production company. I'm for that. - Nirinsanity (talk) 04:57, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

How does this solve the problem? |language= should be used to indicate all the languages per the Infobox instructions. So how are the other two languages going to be presented? And what do we do when an ethnic warrior comes by to reorganize per his POV? Cyphoidbomb (talk) 05:06, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Cyphoidbomb I didn't say that there should only be the language of the production company. Preference should be given to the production company's primary language (determined by location/production history) followed by other languages, in alphabetical order, perhaps. I'm pretty certain there wouldn't be any conflict on the 2.0 (film) page if the order is Tamil, Hindi, Telugu or Tamil, Telugu, Hindi. No one really cares about the order of the secondary languages. Regarding your question about the ethnic warrior, how, in fact, does one solve any conflict on Wikipedia? By making him/her understand that these are the Wikipedia guidelines and those guidelines should be followed by every article on Wikipedia. - Nirinsanity (talk) 05:19, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Formalizing a consensus we've been operating under

Ever since January 2015, WP:FILM has been operating under a consensus reached at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Film/Archive 11#Awards organizations' notability for our "Accolades" section; as one editor put it, an awards organization "should have an article that demonstrates notability." This has led to our avoiding WP:INDISCRIMINATE "accolades" such as those of the Central Ohio Film Critics Association or the Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film, which had led to clutter, false equivalency and other problems.

As it's been over a year-and-a-half of us successfully operating under this consensus, I'd like to suggest adding a line to this effect in our MOS. Using User:NinjaRobotPirate's phrase, I would suggest under Accolades: "Awards included in lists should have a Wikipedia article to demonstrate notability." What do we think? --Tenebrae (talk) 00:04, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

• Support Makes sense to me. Lugnuts ^{Precious bodily fluids} 07:22, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
• Support This has been an informal "rule" for a while now. If it's not a notable award you've got to ask why we are including it. Betty Logan (talk) 08:12, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
• Support Works for me. DonIago (talk) 14:02, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
• Support. It'd be difficult for me to oppose this. The idea is to keep the minor IMDb-listed awards from being copy-pasted here indiscriminately, as happens occasionally. List of awards and nominations received by Vera Farmiga is basically just a hyperlinked version of her IMDb page. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 14:07, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

• Not sure. Partial support I guess. For larger films this is all very reasonable and sensible. I wouldn't want the guideline to make it too difficult to add awards for smaller films though, and if not carefully written the guidelines might be misunderstood as a reason to not allows smaller awards groups to be mentioned at all. For a smaller independent films or regional films that has only a few awards then it might be worth mentioning awards from groups that wouldn't necessarily be notable for a larger film. A film from Ohio winning an award from Ohio might actually be worth mentioning, it might be notable despite the group giving the awards not being notable in other contexts. I guess I'm asking you to be careful and mention WP:INDISCRIMINATE as it should also have the reverse effect of allowing the more minor awards to be mentioned in limited contexts, just that the editor needs to make an effort to provide context and show that a smaller award is notable in a particular case. -- 109.79.190.48 (talk) 18:13, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

These are good points, and the MOS currently does allow prose mentions of awards that require a specific context and explanation as to why they're being mentioned. That said, an Ohio film-critics group giving an Ohio-based film an award seems like simply hometown cheerleading. --Tenebrae (talk) 18:18, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

I was referencing back to the example of Ohio provided but I'm very skeptical of some of the awards international films from their own regions. -- 109.79.190.48 (talk) 00:46, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Sure, I include smaller awards sometimes. I'm not an absolutist. The problem is when you end up with a film festival like the Action On Film International Film Festival, which seems to hand out an award to every film that enters (this is their 2015 awards list). Or JoBlo.com, whose Golden Schmoes don't seem to be reported in any independent reliable sources ever. If nobody but the IMDb and Wikipedia report the JoBlo awards, maybe it's time to stop automatically including them just because they're listed on the IMDb awards page. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 22:28, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Seems reasonable, I'm just trying making it clear that something like an independent animated short might not even be nominated for very many Awards and actually winning even an obscure Award could still be notable in context. I'm sure there are plenty of great films that never got the awards and there's rarely a prize for second place. -- 109.79.190.48 (talk) 00:46, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

• Support This falls in that "we have a WP:CONSENSUS but we forget to update WP:FILMMOS" area. Anyone who wants to have a go at a proper wording for this has my full support as well. MarnetteD|Talk 22:34, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

I think MarnetteD hit the nail on the head. Seeing as how it's unanimous among longtime WP:FILM editors, and has support with thoughtful caveats by an anon IP, I'm proposing this wording:

Awards included in lists should have a Wikipedia article to demonstrate notability. Because of the proliferation of film festivals and "award mills", festival awards should be added with discretion, with inclusion subject to consensus. Awards bestowed by web-only entities are not included. [We then go into existing text that allows for cases requiring expanded context, as noted by 109.79.190.48 and NinjaRobotPirate. Here is the existing text:] The "Accolades" section can also mix prose and list. The section can list accolades and also use prose to provide context for some accolades, such as a general overview or a summary of controversy behind a given accolade.

Does this address the remaining concerns? Is there anything that can be tweaked? --Tenebrae (talk) 04:29, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

• Support - I agree with the proposal and the language generally proposed by Tenebrae. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 05:10, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Tenebrae's language as well. MarnetteD|Talk 18:49, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

We seem to have a consensus on language. Adding. --Tenebrae (talk) 01:00, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

Thanks folks. We also have a problem with long lists of screenings and festivals. And do we include nominations for notable awards? @Doniago, Tenebrae, and NinjaRobotPirate: please take a look at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film#Voices of Transition - non-notable awards and festivals. I've pinged the others already and can't ping an IP. Doug Weller talk 14:54, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

You are on a roll DW - heehee. This fix should get this ping to work Tenebrae. As to nominations for notable awards (Academy Awards, Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild etc) I think we allow them as they are limited to 5 (with a couple exceptions) if I am wrong I am sure another member of the project will fix my dusty memory banks. Cheers again. MarnetteD|Talk 15:12, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Ack now I messed the ping up. Let's try this one @Doniago, Tenebrae, and NinjaRobotPirate:. MarnetteD|Talk 15:14, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Lol. So that's what the preview button is for. Doug Weller talk 15:27, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

You got that right!! MarnetteD|Talk 15:37, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

(gasp) Now I have my own Template? Squee! :p But seriously, I'm crazy-busy right now but I'll try to take a look. Feel free to give me a poke at my Talk page if I don't speak up at the link in the next couple of days, assuming a strong consensus doesn't develop regardless. DonIago (talk) 16:30, 19 October 2016 (UTC)

Almost there, but can we get a rephrase with less negative connotations? "Because of the proliferation of film festivals and "award mills"" seems unnecessarily negative and I believe guidelines should be about telling editors about the best way and try not to say too much about the many bad ways to do things. Reminding editors about WP:UNDUE or WP:NOTABLE might be enough to achieve the same effect. (It is the reference to "award mills" in particular that seems excessively harsh and more POV than is necessary. -- 109.76.163.97 (talk) 00:39, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

And if you could change the recommended table heading to "Recipients" instead of "Recipient(s)" I'd be much obliged. You can say the column lists multiple Recipients, you can say "one or more" Recipients is implied and that there there is no need for pedantic punctuation but to me "Recipient(s)" is pedantic unnecessary and ugly, something only a lawyer getting paid by the letter could actually want. -- 109.76.163.97 (talk) 00:46, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

For the sake of clarity and organization, since this particular discussion has reached consensus, may I ask 109.76.163.97 to begin his posts above under a new heading? You can erase this after doing so. With thanks, --Tenebrae (talk) 00:13, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Sample layout?

Do we have a sample layout template for film articles? It's not presently clear which sections are subsections of other sections. Like, is Release an L2 heading, and Critical response is an L3 heading? Is the Accolades section an L3 under Release, or a stand-alone section? I think it would be useful to have a visual idea of layout that everyone agrees on. Kinda like what I see at File:Wikipedia_layout_sample_Notes_References.png. An image would work, but maybe a straight-up bare-bones template that users could copy/paste would be good? I dunno.

'''''Film Name''''' is a YYYY Tanzanian film directed by John Doe and written by Jane Doe.

==Plot==

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur...

==Cast==

• Jane Doe as Role Name

==Reception==
Summary of content expected in the L2 heading
===Critical response===
===Box office===
===Awards===

That sort of thing. Thoughts? Does it exist? For example here I see an L2 for Release, then an L2 on Music then an L2 on Box office, when Box office seems to intuitively be a subsection of Release. (At least to me.) Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:13, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

I created my own bare-bones template, and I use it for the articles that I create. You can see an example of my preferred layout in Leprechaun (film), a GA that I wrote a little while ago. It's not a very beefy article, though, and it's missing a few sections that are often found in GAs, such as info on the soundtrack and themes. For how I would do that, you can see Hellraiser III: Hell on Earth and Hellraiser: Bloodline, two articles that I've been improving off-and-on for the past few months. I prefer to put advertising, marketing, and box office data in the release section. Reviews go in the reception, a separate L2 header, that also includes awards. If they're brief, I write out the awards in prose; otherwise, it goes in a table, probably in a subsection. Many people like throwing everything under an L2 header titled "release", but it's not my preferred layout. In my mind, professional criticism is not part of the release any more than the release is part of the production. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 04:32, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

• Comment We could just add a link to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Film/Assessment#Film_grading_scheme which has sample articles listed at each level. As NinjaRobotPirate states, editors have different views on what should go under certain headings. I have my own views too but other layouts are perfectly acceptable to me provided there is some internal logic to it. Betty Logan (talk) 20:32, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Co-directors in infobox?

I've noticed in some film articles, the infobox includes co-directors in addition to the DGA credited one. Should co-directors be included if it's necessary? Thanks, Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 23:57, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Depends on how you define "necessary". If the film is properly co-directed like the Pixar films or a Wachowski film then more likely than not the DGA will acknowledge that collaboration, so the first thing I'd like to know is why didn't the DGA credit a particular person. If it's a situation where someone else just directed a handful of scenes I'd say no. Betty Logan (talk) 01:07, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

I would probably agree with this assessment. A brief discussion between Sjones23 and I, in relation to the animated film Hoodwinked!, prompted this question. I'm not an expert on the topic, but I would imagine that if a co-director is credited as such within a film's end credits, than that would indicate that they were also credited by the DGA - is that a correct understanding? In the case of Hoodwinked!, Cory Edwards is the film's "director", while Todd Edwards and Tony Leech are both credited co-directors. I'm inclined to think that all three should be credited within the infobox (as well as the article's lead). On the other hand, a mere second unit director, such as Andy Serkis on The Hobbit films, or a "guest" director, such as George Lucas creating a newspaper montage in the The Godfather, wouldn't merit special mention anywhere aside from the article's production section. --Jpcase (talk) 20:44, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Ideally, the topic of who directed what should be covered in the body of the article as well. In Popcorn (1991 film), an article on which I have worked, sources say that Alan Ormsby directed the three films-within-the film, while the rest of the film was directed by Mark Herrier. Which seems to be important as according to one of the sources: "the films-within-a-film [are] ... more interesting than the frame story."

Sometimes I worry that Wikipedia places too much importance on infoboxes instead of the main text. They are supposed to only summarize information, not to cover every important aspect of the topic. Dimadick (talk) 10:30, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

You're right, prose is preferable in an encyclopedia. Infoboxes are essentially a type of list and the information is well defined which makes it easier for machines to process and can be quite useful in other ways. Writing good prose takes more effort though. -- 109.79.55.62 (talk) 18:05, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

Place where a film was released

I am thinking of reverting this edit, however, I just want to know, should it say "American" or "American-Chinese", because it was an American production, but was also released and co-produced by China Film Group in China, the same goes for Kung Fu Panda 3. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Eric0928 (talk • contribs) 20:46, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

Article title of a classic film

Since this dovetails with WP:FILM MOS regarding proper titles of film, I'm posting a neutral notice of a title-change discussion regarding a film with the onscreen title Steamboat Bill, Jr., taking place at Talk:Steamboat Bill Jr.#Requested move 15 December 2016. The input of WP:FILM editors is requested. --Tenebrae (talk) 05:20, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Geographical box office information

I just made what I hope is a factual edit to the film style page, but want to flag it here as I suspect I should have done this first (sorry, my first time on a style page).

The way film box office information is generally being described on film pages - "North America" and "other territories" isn't correct - the 'North American' data isn't actually data from the whole of North America (as defined on Wikipedia and elsewhere) but almost always from US & Canada only. These latter are of course countries whereas North America is a continent; the term 'territory' doesn't happily apply to either of them and when applied to the other reporting units (using box office mojo as the gold standard source) the reporting units are all independent countries and, to someone who isn't North American, describing them as 'other territories' following on from either North America or US & Canada doesn't feel appropriate. "US & Canada" is the accurate description of what Mojo calls the 'domestic' box office and 'other countries' for its 'international'.

If any of the above of contentious please reverse my edit to the style page whilst we discuss. User:IanB2 7 December 2016 22:23 GMT IanB2 (talk) 22:24, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

The term "territories" is actually used quite a bit in box office coverage in the trade papers Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, which is why it is used here. This is also the case with Box Office Mojo articles. There is probably a reason for this, perhaps "territories" being a more appropriate catch-all than "countries". We can research the matter, but there is solid basis for using this term. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 22:59, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

It looks like the Los Angeles Times uses "countries" far more than "territories" (when I search either term with "box office"). Perhaps it is worth doing a wider search to see what the larger consensus is. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 23:01, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

They do also, however, use terms that assume a North American perspective, whereas here we don't. As a European it doesn't feel right for the other countries for which Mojo collects box office data to be tacked on after reference to 'North America' (which is being widely misused on film pages, in relation to box office data) or 'US and Canada' as "other territories". IanB2 (talk) 23:11, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I do not know if we have formalized it anywhere, but we do oppose using "North America" in film articles and instead endorse writing out "U.S. and Canada". These countries' box office grosses are combined, so perhaps that makes up a territory for reporting. I do not have time now, but perhaps someone could research to trace why "territories" in particular is used. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 23:20, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree U.S. and Canada is accurate, reflecting the descriptions on Mojo (if often as a definition of 'domestic'). Nevertheless having reviewed quite a few film pages, its use is surprising even where accurate (e.g. 'North American release', generally meaning U.S. release and often worldwide release, in a 'first' sense), and there is some shocking mis-use where for example Mexican box office data and commentary is included under an "other territory" sub-section following on from "North America".

The issue with the word 'territory' is that, in a geographical or national context, it is often used in situations where third party ownership is implied (French overseas territories, German occupied territory) and doesn't feel appropriate when it really means "countries that aren't the U.S. or Canada". See Territory IanB2 (talk) 23:33, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

The nomenclature is being used in an industry context because films are released into territories/markets/regions and the grosses for those markets are reported. In many cases those will correspond to countries, in others they will not. Most of us are aware of the US/Canada example, but the UK gross actually includes the UK, Republic of Ireland and Malta (so three countries to be exact). Since the purpose of the guideline is to try and help editors interpret the information then it is arguably more helpful to use the terminology they will regaularly encounter in various trade journals. I'm receptive to improving the guideline, but I think the key point to convey is that film distribution markets don't always have a one-to-one relationship with nation states. Betty Logan (talk) 11:20, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

I think that raises a couple of issues. Firstly, the word "territory" is usually encountered in the phrase "other territories" for which one aggregated box office figure is given for the lot. "Other countries" is an equally accurate description since the figures clearly come from countries other than the US and Canada - the fact that within the total some of the sub-totals cover two or more countries doesn't change this. Secondly, there are quite a few pages where the UK figure is given separately as the "UK gross", and I bet 99% of readers wouldn't expect this to be other than as described? So the terminology makes it more difficult to interpret - which is a shame, as there are a lot of editors who go to the trouble to update the box office figures daily, even to a change of $0.1m, yet we are really sloppy as to where these figures specifically apply! IanB2 (talk) 14:30, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Based on the article Box office, section "Related terminology": the source we are using for box office information, defines the "domestic" box office for North American releases, as only the box office figures from the United States and Canada. It defines the "foreign" box office as the available figures from every other country. They estimate the "worldwide" box office by combining the two figures.

The geographic definition Wikipedia uses for North America includes Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bermuda, Bonaire, the British Virgin Islands, Canada, the Cayman Islands, Clipperton Island, Costa Rica, Cuba, Curaçao, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Mexico, Montserrat, Navassa Island, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, Saba, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sint Eustatius, Sint Maarten, Trinidad and Tobago, the Turks and Caicos Islands, the United States, and the United States Virgin Islands. A combined area of 24,500,995 square kilometers, inhabited by 541,7 million people.

Equating North America with just two countries makes our articles rather misleading. It is an accuracy problem that also tends to turn up in other articles and categories relating to North America. Better yet, some of them seem to equate North America with just the United States.

Meanwhile, our article on the term "territory" and its multiple definitions, lacks sources and probably contains original research. Dimadick (talk) 06:33, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

I have updated the MOS to clarify not to use "North American" (and by extent, "North America"). As for "territories" vs. "countries", perhaps the easiest thing to do is to stick to the sources. I don't think it is appropriate to use the terms synonymously especially if it is reported that a film was released in x territories since it does not mean the film was released in x countries, and vice versa. I've also updated the MOS in this regard. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 16:05, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Pinging IanB2, Betty Logan, and Dimadick for feedback. Diff is here. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 16:08, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for this. The edit goes a long way to resolving. I still don't like the word 'territory' at all, because whilst the movie industry appears to think it means 'more than one country', its more common geographical usage is clear from our own page on the term (despite its general weakness as a page), and it doesn't feel right for a U.S. dominated industry to be referring to other countries in such a way. From this debate I have also learned that "UK box office" includes cinema tickets bought in Malta, which I would never have imagined! User:IanB2 9 December 2016

p.s. I would also observe that, if we do use 'territory' to mean 'more than one country', the information that a movie has been released in 'X territories' does not appear to be particularly useful or meaningful? User:IanB2

Neither would I. Malta was British from 1814 to 1964, but was then declared independent. It has been out of British control for 52 years. And while it has British citizens still living on the island, these were estimated to be about 4,700 people. Not a large part of the population. Why is the island still grouped with the U.K. ? Dimadick (talk) 16:51, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Erik, regarding this, this and this, how is it an improvement? You state "avoid these quoted terms," but then state "Since countries and territories may not precisely match in count, copy the term used by the source(s) being referenced for box office coverage." Huh? The current wording is confusing and one could take it to mean to avoid the "U.S. and Canada" title as well. Furthermore, the sources are not always consistent in the wording they use. Some sources might state "North America" and others might state "U.S. and Canada." But, really, I see "North America" used far more often. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:05, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

I do wonder whether, if these so-called 'territories' are really the markets into which films are sold (so pity the poor Maltese and Irish who just get shown whatever the British are buying!), the most accurate terminology for referring to the sub-sections of worldwide box office is indeed "markets". Whilst maintaining my view that "other countries" is both the best and a fully accurate term to use for the gross total for everything other than the U.S. & Canada. IanB2 (talk) 23:27, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Flyer22 Reborn, I am being literal when I say "quoted terms". I mean the terms used in quotation marks, which are: domestic, international, and North American. How should we clarify it to be clear it is these terms to be avoided? Italics or bold instead? Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 02:43, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Erik, I realized that soon after I commented. But it's still the case that the sources are not always consistent with the terminology. So how can we then state "copy the term used by the source(s) being referenced for box office coverage"? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 03:00, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Well, that "copy the term" sentence is in reference to countries vs. territories. We want to avoid the terms international, domestic, and North American because we editors can agree that it is US-centric, which is inappropriate for the English-language Wikipedia. I'm not sure if the US-centric argument apples to countries/territories, and I haven't really found anything to explain the distinction. I've preferred "territories" because of the trade papers using that when reporting counts, but it does not mean we can't call a country a country when we happen to focus on one. I think it is more of an issue if a number is involved. We can't convert 30 territories to mean 30 countries and vice versa since a source like one of the trade papers may not necessarily name them all. What do you think? Feel free to suggest a rewriting of the sentence to clear up the matter. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 03:42, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 04:23, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

I would suggest "such terms as these" as a replacement for "these quoted terms".

I also suggest that the instruction "specify the ... territories" doesn't really help editors, since doing so effectively means "specify the countries" anyway.

Not addressed at all, really, is the issue I raised originally of using the term "other territories" to refer to the world beyond the US and Canada. My reason should be obvious from our own page on 'territory'. I don't see the problem with "other countries", which is clearly accurate, but if we wish to retain the movie industry's fondness for lumping countries together, "other markets" is both accurate and non-perjorative? IanB2 (talk) 09:59, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

IanB2, stop mass-changing "territories" to "countries" right now. You have no consensus to perpetuate a change that is based on your own dislike. Pinging Betty Logan, Flyer22 Reborn, Dimadick. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 12:55, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Erik - I must express my concern that you appear to want to make this issue a personal one - you have just posted my username into the title of an item on Wikiprojects: Film. I did properly raise my concerns about both 'North America' (inarguably being used incorrectly on most of our movie pages) and 'territory' (which to me is just as bad - but with 'other countries' already accepted here as alternative to 'other territories') and, where I have been making edits, I have introduced my preferred (factually correct) terminology. If edits are not incorrect then it is within any editor's right to make them here, 'the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit'. If there is indeed a way to make a "mass edit" it would save a lot of work, since the phrasaeology used on our numerous movie sites is so similar that I wonder whether it is coming from a template somewhere? IanB2 (talk) 14:57, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

I think we should resolve this issue before initiating mass changes, and I think it is useful to consider the terminoloy that the MPAA uses in its annual market analysis. Here are some examples:

• In 2015, U.S./Canada box office was $11.1 billion
• Global box office for all films released in each country around the world reached $38.3 billion in 2015
• Both U.S./Canada ($11.1 billion) and international box office ($27.2 billion)
• In 2015, the Asia Pacific region ($14.1 billion) increased 13% compared to 2014
• Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) box office decreased 9% from 2014, with decreases in larger European markets such as France (-18%), Russia (-34%) and Spain (-8%).
• 2015 Top 20 International Box Office Markets –All Films (US$ Billions)

Ignoring the domestic/international nomenclature, the MPAA tends to favor "US/Canada", "countries", "regions" and "markets". When they are discussing the box office in global terms they tend to go with "countries", and when they are discussing specific areas such as the UK or China they go with "markets". They generally use "region" to denote a large area that contains several markets such as Europe or Asia-Pacific. They don't tend to use "territories" or "North America" so it wouldn't hurt to consider revising our position on this. Betty Logan (talk) 13:56, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

I assume that we can all agree about "North America" (which the MOS now says to avoid using). Regarding "territory" or "territories", despite IanB2's layperson disagreements with using that term at all, it is a valid term used in reliable sources. We should not replace "territories" with "countries" when exact numbers are involved. When it is more abstract, such as the writing of "other territories", "territories" is not inherently wrong (as evidenced by reliable sources) to force a replacement. Perhaps MOS:RETAIN should apply. I suppose a related issue to this is if we should accept a "Box office" section that uses both "territories" and "countries". Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 14:48, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't dispute the fact that is fairly standard terminology in trade journals such as Variety and The Hollywood Reporter (which is why I have never thought to challenge it) but I think Ian's point is worth considering: "territories" has a more general interpretation beyond the film business which could cause confusion for some readers. Betty Logan (talk) 15:02, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

The opening words of our own page on "territory" (which I have never edited) are: "A territory is a term for types of administrative division, usually an area that is under the jurisdiction of a state". As such I regard my challenge as an entirely legitimate one - within the open spirit of Wikipedia. Erik's posts have prompted me to take up the issue with the Hollywood industry and I await their responses. The phrase I am objecting to is "other territories" for which "other countries" is undeniably equally accurate and less confusing. I don't understand Erik's reference: "when exact numbers are involved", since the one thing obvious from this discussion is that no-one actually understand to which countries the figures being reported really apply. Which is our real problem - since our gnomes who diligently update the box office data every day are surely wasting their time if none of our readers can appreciate to which locations the data being cited refer?

I'll chime in here, having followed this discussion a bit. I agree with Erik that many publications use the word "territory" in reporting their box office information. I don't see this as being "wrong" in anyway, if you are using it based on reliable sources. Now if multiple sources are used in the article, and they all use different terminology, then we should maybe shy away from using "territory" and go with "market" or another. This should be taken to note going forward, but not necessarily one that should be changed in existing articles per WP:RETAIN unless it is very erroneous. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 17:23, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

To update here, I've reverted IanB2's changes per MOS:RETAIN, especially since the discussion is still pending. Unfortunately, in my research to get a handle in the use of different terms, the reality is a bit complicated. The Numbers states "the domestic box office, defined as the North American movie territory (consisting of the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico and Guam)". In contrast, Box Office Mojo says, "domestic earnings, i.e., United States and Canada". Forbes says, "Secondly, the U.S. is not actually the relevant territory for comparison, since film distributors count the U.S. and Canada together as a single united territory, North America (never mind that Mexico and the Caribbean are also parts of North America; for the purposes of box office calculations they’re counted separately)." So while we need to figure out how to properly address "North America" in articles, it is treated as a movie territory, which can be confused with other definitions of a territory. (This would make sense as to why box office coverage both in the U.S. and outside it have used this term; it is somewhat specialist language.) IanB2 is okay with the use of "market", and it has been advocated by Daß Wölf as well. So would this suffice as a high-level enough term to use generally? This way, it recognizes the combination of the U.S. and Canadian (and Puerto Rican and Guamanian, apparently) grosses and that other groupings exist. I still maintain that "territories" should be kept when specific numbers are cited since they are not readily convertible (and have not seen specific disagreement on this point). Thoughts from others? Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 17:39, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

Like Erik, I am interested to hear others' views. The only point I would make meanwhile is to observe that much of the issue here is the tendency of an American-dominated industry to be careless about how it refers to the world - a mindset that can treat "US and Canada" as the whole of "North America" is basically the same as describing the rest of the world as "other territories". Therefore I hope you will understand why I suggest that evidence drawn from terminology used on Californian movie-industry websites should not necessarily be definitive, or a precedent for Wikipedia as an international encyclopedia.IanB2 (talk) 17:55, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

I want to note that in my research, "territory" or "territories" appears in UK-based publications including BBC and The Guardian. It is also used in The Age. To some degree, it also appears in China Daily. In essence, it is a valid term used in box office coverage around the world. We have consensus to avoid using "North America" because the general definition is the continent, where the box-office definition is select countries from that continent. There is a similar issue with "territory" having a general definition and a box-office definition. While we can sidestep the issue in general use with "markets" (not likely to be confused with bazaars, I hope), for specific numbers (e.g., 62 territories), we have to leave well alone. I'm still mulling what approaches can be taken, but in the meantime, I've started Draft:Box office territory with some research I've collected. The terms "movie territory" and "cinema territory" are also synonymous with that. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 18:14, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

As far as I can see, of the major reporting units (the top fifteen or so), there are only two I have found that do not represent discrete individual countries, these being the US (which also includes Canada, and possibly some other actual US territories) and the UK (which also includes Ireland and Malta). All the others are countries. Further, we are dealing with hard data (tickets sold) here, which a lot of our editors take trouble to update daily. Thus, a country is either included or excluded from the data - phrases such as "Malta has also been considered to be part of this territory" are unhelpful, since either tickets sold in Malta are included witin the quoted data, or they are not.IanB2 (talk) 19:29, 14 December 2016 (UTC)

I created box office territory with some feedback from IanB2. Other editors are invited to read the article to understand what "territory" means in context of the box office. For what it is worth, I could not find any more evidence beyond The Numbers to include Puerto Rico and Guam clearly being included in the "North America". Another source mentions that each country's respective territories are included, but beyond that, most sources repeat "North America" = "U.S. and Canada" ad nauseum. So I would say that it is fine to change "North America" to "U.S. and Canada" across Wikipedia articles. I do not find it a systemic-bias concern since this territory label is used in non-US box office coverage, but it is more about "North America" being specialist language that should be more clear-cut for readers. (An issue like "domestic"/"international" is US-centric for the most part and should be addressed as well to eliminate the relativity of such terms.)

To return to the heart of the matter, what term or terms should we use when having a summary sentence reporting on box office in "North America" and elsewhere? "Territories" is considered too confusing because it generally understood to mean dependent territories rather than box office territories. "Countries" is an alternative, but my qualm with this is that the U.S. and Canada's gross is reported as one sum, which reflects a singular market (e.g., box office territory), and what remains should be other "markets", which I hope is clear enough to laypersons. "Regions" was another suggestion, but I think this has the same issue as "territories" in having a more common geographical definition. So what do editors think should be used in the summary sentence? IanB2, do you also want to talk about use of "territories" in more detailed prose? I suggest that we could write "box office territories" instead of just "territories" on the first use, link to the Wikipedia article, and then use "territories" afterward when sources talk about specific numbers. A country can be called a country. Pinging editors who have weighed in so far: Betty Logan, Dimadick, Flyer22 Reborn. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 15:45, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

The new article is a good effort to define "territory" in this context. However when the source just says "x territories", it is not easy to decipher what geographical areas are the ones intended. Dimadick (talk) 15:52, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

We do not need to decipher, though. From what I've seen in box office coverage, a source may state "x territories" and then provide highlights from certain countries. We would reference and summarize that report and not try to deduce anything on our own. In my experience, coverage needs to be based on prose that establishes noteworthiness. Editors should not plumb raw data (e.g., looking at Box Office Mojo's tables) and provide their own highlights. What difficulty are you envisioning with "x territories"? Do you have an example in mind? Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 16:44, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

I would rather go with "box office market". I'm getting a lot more results for market in Google vs. territory, and it is also a more intuitively understood term. Daß Wölf 00:27, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

I have a preference for "markets" too. It is unambiguous in its application. If it's good enough for the MPAA it should be good enough for us. Betty Logan (talk) 00:55, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm okay with "market" too, but I still think if all or the vast majority of sources used in an article for the box office information use "territory", that should stay. However, now with the article Erik created, the first instance in the section should state and link to "box office territory" with "territory/territories" used subsequently if needed. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 02:24, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

A few things have become clearer from the work Erik and I have been doing on the dedicated page:

• use of the word 'territory' is widespread in the industry, although there are alternatives in use also
• there is no one standard set of national groupings in use - for example if you look up "UK box office" on Box Office Mojo, the figures you will get include ticket sales in Malta; if you look elsewhere, you will likely get just UK and Ireland. This will mean (small) differences in data quoted for UK Box office (noting that many Irish people would object to such a description anyway) depending on where you get the data.
• the source data appears actually to be collected by country (as you would expect) - if you want the Canadian or Irish ticket sales for a movie, the figures are there, if you hunt hard enough.
• it appears decisions on which data to collect, and how to add them together for presentation, are being made by the agencies who collect the figures, each of whom pitches its info to the industry; the coverage of data available isn't particularly logical (e.g. comsource collects Moldovan but none from any Scandinavian country) and probably reflects practical constraints, or the connections each agency has.
• the implication of this is that it's a data gathering/presentation issue rather than about how the film industry is structured (Q: are Canadian theaters, or their offering, managed from the US?).. The Malta issue is a good test in this regard.

my own view based on the above is that the industry is using this term fuzzily, probably because the US and Canada are almost always combined, hence cannot be described as a country (noting however that if you spell out 'US and Canada' then 'other countries' is both an accurate and reasonable phrase). And therefore that it cannot really be "defined" in any meaningful sense and doesn't merit its own page. In terms of descriptors, IMHO 'other countries' remains the most accurate when discussing ROW (world-US-Canada-uncollected) box office, and 'markets' when discussing box office data generically, reflecting the mix of single- and multi-country data. Apols for length IanB2 (talk) 07:39, 16 December 2016 (UTC)

Deaths section's two film limit

Why is this limited to only two films? What if the individual has a significant amount of notable works that surpasses that limit?

Take John Williams: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter, Jaws. Saving Private Ryan, E.T. the Extra Terrestrial. Listing only two for him invites editors to squabble over which get added in. At the very least the limit should be five. Rusted AutoParts 22:53, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Gross 3 sig fig

I vaguely recall discussions about rounding box office figures (FWIW I was in favor of the infobox containing the specific figure from the source, and the article body including the rounded figures because it made for better readability but that wasn't the consensus and we've rounded figures in both places now). The discussion linked from Template:Infobox film leads me to believe that the idea was to provide 3 significant figures and that the intention behind it was to provide figures with an appropriate amount of detail in proportion to the budget (because people basically want to see if film more than doubled the budget).

I'd just like clarification that I'm interpreting that discussion fairly and that 3 significant figures is plenty, because it seems very strange to me to keep seeing $100 million dollar budget films, and the gross then given as $675.4 million. It just seems like an odd level of precision I think editors saw so many article that provided that 1 extra place of precision for films with a gross of under $100 million (i.e. 3 significant figures) that they misunderstood the intention and thought the rule was always to give 1 decimal place of precision when there's really no need for it when the figures are in excess of $100 million. If the guidelines here and on Template:Infobox film could be updated to be a bit more specific that would help too. -- 109.77.139.50 (talk) 15:48, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

It does not appear that the related discussion involved significant figures, but I have written 1 decimal place because reliable sources writing about box office grosses report it this way. This is a recent example. I'm open to discussing this, though. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 17:03, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Variety isn't exactly consistent but they do seem wiling to go to 4 figures. In their weekly news Box Office Mojo it looks more like they use 3 sig. figs.

Even so those are industry journals posting week by week box office news, they aren't trying to be an encyclopedia. Rounding to 4 figures seems weird to me is all. -- 109.77.139.50 (talk) 17:49, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I don't think different levels of precision for grosses and budgets are a huge problem i.e. Rocky cost $1.1 million and grossed $225 million and you don't need an identical level of precision to get a sense of scale there. All that is required is a sensible application of MOS:LARGENUM and I am certainly not going to get on an editor's case simply because they are using four significant figures rather than three. There are several reasons where we may opt for more or less though. For example, many sources for older films may only give a figure to two or even one significant figures (e.g. $5 million) so the source itself could be a limiting factor. Alternatively, if a gross is on the cusp of a milestone an editor may wish to avoid implying the film reached said milestone i.e. $999.9 million rather than $1 billion. Some articles may opt for more precision in a table than they do in prose and so on. As long as readers can get a sense of scale and we don't have numbers trailing off to extreme levels of precision then that would seem to comply with LARGENUM. Betty Logan (talk) 19:00, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm looking at 4 digit levels of precision on the big tentpole releases that are still in cinemas now and that extra digit seems weird to me. I'm not looking at older cases and I'm not suggesting we should use LARGENUM to push a total over the billion mark. As someone who would have written the full number in the past I'm struggling to understand why if the consensus was to round the figures, then why are so many articles including 4 significant figures worth of information for the box office grosses in excess of $100 million. It seems like we are getting the worst of both, no real precision and none of the elegant simplicity or clarity of a number rounded to 3 significant figures. Erik provided a good suggestion as to why people might be following that habit but it doesn't seem like the right choice for the encyclopedia.

My first reading of the policies made me think 3 significant figures was what was intended (with a few limited exceptions) but rereading it I unfortunately saw no such clarity. -- 109.77.139.50 (talk) 20:24, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

P.S. I guess I should also clarify that I'm recommending more rounding not less. On gross figures over 100 million I'm recommending 3 sig figs. I'm not recommending any other changes, and I'm definitely not suggesting editors should force three significant figures when 2 sig figs is enough (eg when the gross has been rounded to 1.1 million, I'm not suggesting any more detail that that. Also if the gross is under $1 million I think it is totally reasonable to specify the full amount, eg 42,000 or 42,123). So I'm recommending 3 significant figures or less if appropriate with room for editors to make exceptions but hoping that people might agree that for an encyclopedia 3 sig figs should be enough in most cases. -- 109.79.173.124 (talk) 14:55, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

I was hoping for greater clarity but no joy, I think this discussion is about done. I think the WP:LARGENUM guidelines support rounding to 3 significant figures but then again it isn't worth fighting against all those people who revert without any kind of explanation and most people will just keep doing what they've been doing. I hope you'll consider that 3 significant figures is more than enough precision and going forward I'll be trying to do that but I'm not going to get into revert wars over it. I think it all comes down to no consensus yet but I for one would like to see rounding to 3 significant figures (with room for people to make exceptions, such as those Betty mentioned). -- 109.77.139.50 (talk) 22:44, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I think you are expecting too quick of a response here. Discussions like this need to be open for more than a day, so I encourage you not to expect a fast turnaround. For what it is worth, I notified WT:FILM of this discussion. Perhaps let a week go by, especially considering that it is a holiday time frame for many, and comment requesting feedback so this page shows up on others' watchlists. We can also add such a comment at the WT:FILM notification thread. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 22:58, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm weakly in favour of 3 significant figures, even though the sources seem adamant on keeping the hundred-thousand digit. I agree with 109.77, it's a bit clunky if you're looking for a ballpark estimate, and not enough if you're looking for an exact number. Daß Wölf 23:13, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I am in favor of not limiting grosses to 3 sig figs as the IP is suggesting, per Erik's initial response as well as Betty Logan's. 3 may be appropriate in certain cases (mainly older films perhaps), but with newer films, and the exact precision that is generally reported on box office grosses, 4 sig figs for an under $1 billion earning is appropriate and give a proper amount of precision (ie $567.5 million is a better representation of $567,482,114 than $567 million). - Favre1fan93 (talk) 05:21, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

That also makes me realize, if a source reports a box office figure with three sig figs and the decimal 0.5, we do not know if we should round down or up if we wanted to do only three sig figs, right? We may be stuck with how the sources do it. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 15:08, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Yes, ultimately the sources will dictate how much discretion we have over the precision but this is becoming too prescriptive for my liking. In the case of something like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King anything between $1,119.9 million and $1.1 billion is a perfectly acceptable level of precision in the infobox, as far as the guideline is concerned (ironically the $1.119 billion is incorrectly rounded!). This is really a solution looking for a problem. Betty Logan (talk) 16:30, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

That's a weird hypothetical, we almost never have have problems like that with box office grosses rounding point 0.5 and even if we did that would be an obviously reasonable case to report the figures directly as provided in the source. Nearly all box office grosses (especially the recent ones) are sourced from Box Office Mojo or The Numbers, and we actually have the precise figures and could easily have continue including the full figures in the Infobox and rounding them down only in the text to improve readability but the consensus was the round them down in both places.

So when the consensus was to round down and follow WP:LARGENUM I'm unimpressed by odd choice to not actually follow that policy and round them as appropriate ($1.1 billion, is best for readability) and it is an odd assertion that because NEWS sources only round their week by week figures down to four figures, that then this supposed to be an encyclopedia should provide that arbitrary level of precision for the total gross. It feels like yet another very odd very selective interpretation of a policy but then if I didn't think Wikipedia was wildly inconsistent with weird interpretations of the rules, and full of deletionists, I might still have a named user account. -- 109.77.138.70 (talk) 19:39, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Adding one word to an MOS passage

Based on this discussion, WP:FILM editors added a passage to WP:FILMMOS reading, "Do not add critics' top-ten lists on which a film appears, except on a case-by-case basis subject to consensus. With a film largely overlooked for awards, a prose summary of it appearing on such lists may be appropriate; likewise with films nominated for awards yet appearing on few such lists."

The language indicates that mentions of top-lists, if editors agree on including such a mention, be within "a prose summary".

Based on another discussion, an editor added: "per Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film/Archive 61#American Film Institute recognition, American Film Institute mentions should only include those films that made a given list — not those that were nominated."

Because the main paragraph specifies prose, not list, I think the average editor will deduce that any AFI mention should be in prose as well. However, I'm running into a situation where that may not be understood, and it's causing friction. While I'm no fan of redundancy, I'm wondering if it would help make things "idiot-proof", to use a common colloquialism not directed any anyone, to tweak that phrase with one more word so that it reads: "...American Film Institute prose mentions should only include..." --Tenebrae (talk) 02:53, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Top-ten-list bloat?

Related to the above, WP:FILM made an exception for American Film Institute lists. A good and responsible editor has begun adding National Board of Review top-ten mentions. I'm concerned that this will lead back to the egregious top-ten-list bloat we reached consensus against. Should we make a second exception, or should National Board of Review's top-10 lists be subject to discussion and consensus at the article level? --Tenebrae (talk) 22:14, 11 January 2017 (UTC)

In my view, there's a clear distinction between critics' top ten lists and those of very notable film organizations such as AFI and NBR. It's very ahrd to justify the inclusion of AFI top ten lists while excluding NBR. I can't think of any other film organizations of that stature that do top ten lists offhand though, so I don't think there's a reason for concern. Jaoakley (talk) 21:05, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

"Lists" vs. prose about lists

Resolved.

The issue of vote-stack canvassing is being discussed at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Admin-opinion request on canvassing issue. This should be resolved before discussion can continue here. --Tenebrae (talk) 20:02, 22 January 2017 (UTC) The consensus is that not enough evidence exists to confirm vote-stacking. --Tenebrae (talk) 22:25, 26 January 2017 (UTC) ₪ The phrase "not enough evidence" implies the existence of some kind of evidence. No evidence can ever be found because there were no underhanded shenanigans at play. Suspicions are not evidence. There was no evidence. Please see: 04:02, January 27, 2017 00:13, January 28, 2017 --— Preceding unsigned comment added by Pyxis Solitary (talk • contribs) 00:33, 28 January 2017 *Sigh* Anyone can go to the ANI here and see an editor besides myself ask this editor for the same criteria I asked for. The response: "I looked at the revision history of the Carol article as far back as 3 June 2013‎ -- and invited many of the editors in its editing history to the discussion." No criteria is given. "Invited many of the editors" was never in question — it was clear many editors were invited. The question was "how were they selected", i.e. cherry-picked. No answer to that was given. --Tenebrae (talk) 20:22, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

[The following discussion began in WT:FILM @ Re "Top ten" vs. "Top ten list" in Carol and List of accolades received by Carol (film) and was shifted to the MOS:FILM Talk page. (This is the first time I have initiated a discussion for the purpose of reaching consensus and because it regards interpretation and application of MOS:FILM guidelines, I thought that page was the correct forum. Please accept my apologies for any confusion. – Pyxis Solitary.)]

One editor has persistently deleted summary prose about critics lists from the main article's critical response section and the list of accolades article, using MOS:FILM as the basis for these deletions. I've requested that guidelines about critics lists vs. prose about critics lists be made plain and crystal clear in MOS:FILM.

The crux:

• Is a summary sentence about critics list/s (e.g. "Carol was named one of the best films of 2015 by numerous critics and publications, appearing in over 130 critics' Top Ten lists.") the same as adding a top-ten list of critics names and publications?

If you think the answer is obvious, it obviously is not. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 07:43, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

Here's something I thought was so obvious it didn't need to be explained, but I guess that's not so: One reason WP:FILM consensus is not to include top-10 lists is that so many of them are non-notable and meaningless. You say Carol is on 130 top-10 lists — but how many of those are from non-notable groups, such as the film club Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film, or the Central Ohio Film Critics Association, or the North Texas Film Critics Association, or any number of others that were deleted from Wikipedia as minor, non-notable organizations? Top-10 lists from non-notable groups are meaningless, and WP:FILM disallows them as WP:INDISCRIMINATE. So it's on 130 lists? So what, if half of them are from non-notable groups. And we really can't footnote every one of, say, the other 65 claims.--Tenebrae (talk) 15:14, 14 January 2017 (UTC)

1. "how many of those are from non-notable groups, such as the film club Chlotrudis Society for Independent Film, or the Central Ohio Film Critics Association, or the North Texas Film Critics Association, or any number of others that were deleted from Wikipedia as minor, non-notable organizations? - based on this logic, then MOS:FILM should also not allow the inclusion of review aggregators. Rotten Tomatoes states that 250 reviews are counted for Carol. If you look at "All Critics" in the reviews page, you see that the 250 reviews includes reviews (for example) from "The Mary Sue", "Grantland", "Antagony & Ecstasy", "Correcámara", "AARP Movies for Grownups", "Fan The Fire", "Cinegarage", "Butaca Ancha", "Seven Days", "Junkee", "Impulse Gamer", "Student Edge", "One Guy's Opinion", "The Popcorn Junkie", "Tiny Mix Tapes", "Spirituality and Practice", "Truthdig", "Playboy Online", "Nerd Report", "Film Freak Central", "HeyUGuys". Why should MOS:FILM accept a review aggregator that includes these sources for its ratings and rankings? Are they in any way superior compared to a review from the "North Texas Film Critics Association"?

And this also applies to the results from Metacritic. Why should MOS:FILM accept Metacritic as a source?

2. If you've read all the comments regarding your deletion of summary sentences and any mention of a "top" list (e.g. Rotten Tomatoes' "Top 100 Movies of 2015"), then you know by now that the summary sentence about "130 critics' Top Ten lists" is based on the *Top ten lists* section that was removed from the main article (Revision as of 09:11, 9 February 2016). If you look at that "Top ten list", you will see that it is a list composed of legitimate, film industry sources (some of them are sources used by Rotten Tomatoes).

3. You are mixing apples with oranges. A "list" is not a "prose". If you want to argue that a list = prose ... do it in the Re "Top ten" vs. "Top ten list" in Carol and List of accolades received by Carol (film) discussion @ WT:FILM. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 00:29, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't have an answer but here is my fruit for the pie: Firstly, trying to make a quantitative statistic out of qualitative information is not easy to do in an objective and reliable way. Being on "130 lists" appears to be data, but really just saying "many commentators rate it highly", and personally I would rather see the latter since the subjectivity is up front. The aggregators attempt to tackle this (having turned each review into a score in the first place) by identifying a panel of reviewers, screening out the least notable, and then weighting toward the sources considered most authoritative. Secondly, what do people expect from an encyclopaedia page about reaction to a film? I suggest an indication of how the film was received and is regarded in general (i.e. the 'consensus') and, where there is a divergence of views, enough information about the minority perspectives to appreciate the debate. Or, if it's a 'marmite' (love it or hate it) film, the sides of the debate set out dispassionately. Any editor who chooses a quote to add to a page is making subjective judgement that the comment is representative of a broader strand of opinion, and referring to someone's top ten list is IMO no different (although as a reader I am more interested in why the reviewer rates it enough to be in the list, rather than the fact of being in a list per se) but I don't think we should be trying to make 'fake data' out of it IanB2 (talk) 11:48, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Exactly what are you saying? Is it okay to add a summary sentence that says (for example) "Numerous critics rated Carol a Top-ten 2015 film"? Or not? Is it okay to add the info "Rotten Tomatoes named Carol one of the Top 100 Movies of 2015? Or not? Pyxis Solitary (talk) 12:00, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

I am neither an expert nor pretending to have the answer (as I said). Personally I don't have any difficulty with either of your formulations, although feel the former would be better as "as one of several reviews that rated "Carol" in 2016's top ten, reviewer X said.....", with the usual criteria used to select the quote from X. That makes the list supporting information for the quote rather than getting dragged into some sort of list war. For you might add afterwards "other critics did not include "Carol" in their top ten lists", and such trading of empty facts would quickly become boring to read. IanB2 (talk) 12:37, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

I see nothing wrong with the controversial sentence. There is a large difference, as you have pointed out, between a section full of rankings on critics' lists (which has been abandoned for good reason) and a single sentence summarizing year-end critical opinion. Erik earlier suggested that the sentence could be improved by indicating how many top 10 lists in total were counted by Metacritic. I agree. If this number isn't available, however, I still do not know of any way the inclusion of the sentence violates MOS:FILM.

Tenebrae wrote in an earlier discussion that top 10 lists serve no encyclopedic purpose, and are unnecessary due to the availability of aggregators. I disagree. A film's score on one of the two major aggregators is not a perfect indicator of year-end placements. Look at The Tree of Life, for example. It was not the most unanimously praised film of 2011, but according to the tabulations of both Metacritic and the British Film Institute, it was handily the year's most acclaimed film with regards to list inclusion. Also, the same year's Margaret garnered a mild 61/100 on Metacritic but later proved to be 11th of its year by list inclusion. This information is not irrelevant. AndrewOne (talk) 16:34, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

We still have the issue of "130 lists," which, aside from involving an SPA gilding the lily when we already have a long list of awards, is inappropriate since some percentage of that list will be from trivial, non-notable sources. Some may be from audience polls, which are disallowed. Additionally, User:Pyxis Solitary is conflating two different things: "reviews," which have their own FILMMOS guidelines, and "accolades," for which FILMMOS disallows non-notables.

FILMMOS already makes allowances for cases such as Margaret. --Tenebrae (talk) 19:17, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

The tabulation, according to Metacritic, is the result of lists from "the film critics regularly included in Metacritic's score calculations, as well as a few extra lists from additional prominent film sources." If a long-standing and reliable review aggregator factors those sources in, what makes them indiscriminate? Why assume that a notable percentage will be audience polls or otherwise "trivial" lists when the source claims to be aggregating critics' lists? Pyxis Solitary makes a valid point when asserting that under this logic the use of aggregators themselves would have to be discontinued. (Also, a note for both sides: the film appeared in 126 of the lists counted by Metacritic, not "over 130".) AndrewOne (talk) 23:39, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

You ask reasonably enough, "Why assume that a notable percentage will be audience polls or otherwise "trivial" lists when the source claims to be aggregating critics' lists?" I would answer that, by your use of the term "claims", that we aren't ascertaining MC's claim and so you're making an assumption the other way. I'm saying we shouldn't make assumptions either way but get the facts, which we don't have. Who are these 126 critics? Are there really 126 notable critics whose periodicals and websites all have Wikipedia articles?

And with all due respect, this logic does not mean aggregators have to be discontinued. Let's not conflate WP:FILMMOS standards for reviews with its standards for accolades. There's nothing in FILMMOS that says every single review aggregated has to be from a notable site or periodical. However, FILMMOS does say that no awards be listed from non-notable sources. Reviews and accolades. Apples and oranges. The listing of awards is held, as it should be, to a higher standard.

And all these points aside, the spirit of the consensus is clearly that WikiProject Film, for well-discussed reasons, does not to include top-10 lists. Wikilawyering to find loopholes in order to shoehorn in top-10 lists for one's favorite film means anyone could do it for any film. --Tenebrae (talk) 23:58, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

is this really different in principle from a big fan (or critic) of a film looking for good quotes to add into its article, which happens all the time? On film and TV pages many editors are clearly fans, and the risk goes with the territory, tempered by appropriate self-control and community moderation. Banning any reference to an authoritative commentator's best film selection seems a sledgehammer solution? IanB2 (talk) 09:05, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

I understand that the guidelines concerning accolades reviews are different from those concerning accolades. My issue is with what appears to be the assumption on your part that certain lists factored in by Metacritic are guaranteed to be trivial and non-notable. Once again, why this assumption? If this list or that list is trivial, what makes it so? Since Wikipedia is not a source, one cannot argue lack of reliability from lack of a Wikipedia page. I would agree with you if what we had on our hands was something like a user scouring the web and counting on their own how many lists Carol appeared on – but if this is from an established aggregator stating that its tabulation is one of critics' lists, I once again fail to see how any sort of dishonest gaming is occurring here. AndrewOne (talk) 00:29, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

RE "one cannot argue lack of reliability from lack of a Wikipedia page": Actually, WP:FILMMOS explicitly states that we don't include awards from non-notables as defined by lack of a Wikipedia page. And from having gone to the Metacritc tabulation at here, I can certainly say that CinemaDope and Cinephiled, to name two from a quick perusal, are non-notable under that definition. Also, many of the sources have multiple lists — The A.V. Club has seven and Indiewire's "The Playlist" has nine, in addition to Indiewire's own five. This kind of indiscriminate clutter is exactly why WP:FILM decided not to include top-10 lists. Because y'know, we're not just talking about Carol — we're talking about every single movie on somebody's list. So what you call "dishonest gaming" is what I call, I believe very accurately, as going against the spirt of the consensus by Wikilawyering to find loopholes. I don't know how much clearer it can be: "Do not add critics' top-ten lists on which a film appears, except on a case-by-case basis subject to consensus." --Tenebrae (talk) 02:01, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Based on the comments \*/ so far in response to a summary "prose" about lists being acceptable in a film article [for example, "XYZ was named one of the Top Ten films of 2015 by numerous critics" / "XYZ was named one of the Top 100 movies of 2015 by Rotten Tomatoes" / etc.]:

Acceptable:

• Pyxis Solitary
• @Erik:
• @IanB2:
• @AndrewOne:
• @Anachronist:
• @Loggednotlogged:

Not acceptable:

• @Tenebrae:

\*/ In this discussion and similar discussion @ WT:FILM: Re "Top ten" vs. "Top ten list" in Carol and List of accolades received by Carol (film). Pyxis Solitary (talk) 07:16, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Aside from the mischaracterization noted by Anachronist below, and aside from suspicious redlink editor User:Loggednotlogged, who has no other edits except his comment here, I'd like to remind Pyxis Solitary that these discussion are not vote-based. They're policy based. And as this editor appears unwilling to accept, WP:FILMMOS disallows including top-10 lists in film articles, for very good reasons that editors spent a fair of time debating.--Tenebrae (talk) 22:13, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Um, that characterization above isn't quite right. My main objection was that the "130 lists" claim constituted original research and isn't relevant. I don't really object to mentioning a notable list, as was with the AFI top 10 in accordance with the "case by case basis" requirement of WP:FILM. I do, however, object to introducing WP:WEASEL words such as "numerous critics" into the prose. ~Anachronist (talk) 08:04, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

I apologize for the misinterpretation of your position. How a summary prose is worded can be worked out. We don't need to say that a film was included in more than "X Top-ten lists". We don't need to specify a numerical figure. The summary can be composed to state that it was well received by many film critics and publications and, to support the statement, add a few reference citations where Wikipedia readers can see a sample as verification. It's simply my position that if a film becomes highly regarded, providing information about the widespread critical acclaim is important. Out of hundreds of films released in 2015, only 100 made "Top 100" of the year -- including this fact about a film is also important. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 08:39, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

tbo I would be more interested in knowing a film is in an authoritative critic's top ten of the year or top hundred of all time; top hundred made in a particular year doesn't seem hugely noteworthy for a mainstream film? IanB2 (talk) 09:05, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

With all due respect, what we are each personally interested in knowing should take a back seat to what we help Wikipedia provide the general public, scholars, and researchers, now and in the future.

"top hundred of all time". Is applying this limitation fair to a film released in, say, the last 3 years?

Tenebrae deleted the following citations and summary prose from the Carol article's critical reception (aka critical response) section:

• Top 100 Movies of 2015 / http://www.rottentomatoes.com/top/bestofrt/?year=2015

• Best of 2015: Film Critic Top Ten Lists / http://www.metacritic.com/feature/film-critics-list-the-top-10-movies-of-2015

• The 20 Best Films Of 2015 / http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/the-20-best-films-of-2015-20151210?page=4

• The 50 best films of 2015 in the UK: the full list / https://www.theguardian.com/film/ng-interactive/2015/dec/04/best-films-of-2015-uk

• The 10 best films of 2015 / http://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/story/20151218-the-10-best-films-of-2015

• Film Comment ranked Carol the best film of 2015 based on its year-end poll of over 100 film critics. <ref>

• The film topped Variety film critics' Best Films of 2015 poll. <ref>

• Carol was ranked second on 'Sight & Sound Best Films of 2015 critics' poll, voted on by 168 film critics. <ref>

• The film also came in second place on the Village Voice Film Critics' Poll, voted on by over 125 film critics, and IndieWire's critics' poll of best films, voted on by over 200 film critics. <ref> <ref>

(see: Revision 22:17, 11 January 2017)

Should a film article be cut to the bone? Is this the purpose of MOS:FILM? Pyxis Solitary (talk) 10:11, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

^ That was deleted? How does restricting these facts about a movie serve the purpose of Wikipedia?

Other than an actual list I dont find anything in mos about excluding statements of how a movie was received by critics. I don't see in mos where citing pertinent sources that reinforce such statements are also not permitted. I don't see anything wrong in providing this kind of material. These particulars are important in that they enhance the accuracy about a movie's critical reception. As someone who has used and continues to use Wikipedia as an information source I think suppressing material about how a movie was received by critics would be an unfortunate decision. I also agree that a list showing the critics and staff that included a movie as a top ten movie of the year is not equivalent to statements about a movie being considered one of the best movies of a year, with reliable sources bolstering the statements. If mos guidelines for critical response need to be amended, it should be done. The sooner the better.

I've been editing anonymously for over a year and created an account so that my opinion would be taken seriously. Please add me to the list of those who consider summary sentences about critical reception acceptable. Loggednotlogged (talk) 06:41, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

I think anyone monitoring this discussion needs to know that Loggednotlogged is someone with exactly one edit: this comment. Going through WP:SOCK is time-consuming, but perhaps that's necessary. --Tenebrae (talk) 22:03, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

This is childish. You don't like what I had to say so you accuse me of being a sock. Every editor, including you, should read: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/bitwise/2014/12/wikipedia_editing_disputes_the_crowdsourced_encyclopedia_has_become_a_rancorous.html. Loggednotlogged (talk) 05:11, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

RE: "Should a film article be cut to the bone?" That's a completely false dichotomy, which is a standard high-school debate trick. The two Carol articles are by no means "cut to the bone" without this laundry list of top-10 and top-100 polls and lists. Anyone looking at these articles will see scads of awards and other accolades, not to mention the main article's substantial sections on Development, Pre-production, Filming, Post-production and much more. If we're going to have a discussion, let's please be honest.

Second, you mischaracterize some editors' ambivalent stances or comments designed to add perspective as supporting your position. Coupled with this, these discussions are not vote-based: They're based on whether we're following guidelines and policies. And WP:FILM is clear: : "Do not add critics' top-ten lists on which a film appears, except on a case-by-case basis subject to consensus." If you want to change a Project-wide guideline, that's a completely different discussion that one that's centered solely on one editor's favorite film that one wants to promote.--Tenebrae (talk) 12:18, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

Any editor who has commented and thinks I mischaracterized his or her stance or comments has the opportunity to remove any doubt. There is nothing preventing any editor from doing so. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 21:12, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

Unconstructive

I would also note that Pyxis Solitary has posted notice about the discussion on several editors' talk pages. That's fine, of course, but she needs to disclose if she's cherrypicking sympathetic editors or if she has some objective criteria, such as "every registered editor over the last six months" or "a year". If she has no such criteria, she may be WP:CANVASSING. If she considers what she is doing not canvassing, then it would follow that any of us in this discussion is free to do as she did. --Tenebrae (talk) 02:43, 16 January 2017 (UTC) Per WP:CAN: "it is perfectly acceptable to notify other editors of ongoing discussions, provided that it be done with the intent to improve the quality of the discussion by broadening participation to more fully achieve consensus." "An editor who may wish to draw a wider range of informed, but uninvolved, editors to a discussion can place a message at any of the following: On the user talk pages of concerned editors. "The {Please see} template may help in notifying people in a quick, simple, and neutral manner." That's what WP:CAN suggests. That's what this editor did. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 06:27, 16 January 2017 (UTC) So you avoided answering the question of just how you cherrypicked these particular editors. Interesting. Here's what WP:CAN also says: "[E]ditors to a discussion can place a message at any of the following," including examples not applicable here, such noticeboards or the Village Pump, and: Editors who have made substantial edits to the topic or article Editors who have participated in previous discussions on the same topic (or closely related topics) Editors known for expertise in the field Editors who have asked to be kept informed Which of these criteria did you use? And please back up your claim. --Tenebrae (talk) 12:07, 16 January 2017 (UTC) After two days, I'm still awaiting a response from Pyxis Solitary as to which of the above criteria that editor may have used for the notifications, or if editors were cherrypicked because they were considered sympathetic to the editor's position. Which would be canvassiong. --Tenebrae (talk) 22:17, 18 January 2017 (UTC) You may continue to wait since there is nothing in WP:CAN that requires an explanation from an editor that used the neutral {Please see} template. If you weren't so wrapped-up in your combative antagonism, you could figure it out for yourself. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 05:33, 19 January 2017 (UTC) OK, so you had none of the specified criteria above. That means you cherrypicked editors you thought would support your position. That absolutely is canvassing. And since you can see from my Contributions list that i work to improve articles of all types, while you are an WP:SPA devoted almost solely to puffing up your favorite film and doing nothing else for this altruistic free encyclopedia, which one of is being combative? I'm going to ask for an admin opinion on this. You can't just cherrypick any editors you want. Your canvassing has nulled this entire discussion. --Tenebrae (talk) 20:47, 19 January 2017 (UTC) In short: You are questioning the honesty of @Erik:, @IanB2:, @AndrewOne:, and @Anachronist:, and dismissing their opinions because they are biased in my favor. Because they responded to a "cherrypicked" canvass. And of course, lest we forget, @Loggednotlogged: is a sock puppet. Because you say so. Go right ahead and indulge your paranoia. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 09:27, 20 January 2017 (UTC) More name-calling from Pyxis Solitary. I find that people resort to name-calling when they're insecure about their position and so try to divert, distract and insult as a way of smokescreening. In any event, Pyxis Solitary committed a textbook case of vote-stacking, which is cherrypicking editors without objective criteria. Are you denying you did this? Because I asked twice for criteria and you couldn't give me any. So this entire discussion is void. I've asked an admin to either make it official or say differently. --Tenebrae (talk) 18:34, 22 January 2017 (UTC) I assumed I was pinged because I had been posting recently in both talk/tv and talk/film. I have a lot of time for Tenebrae's editing so do not think there is any reason to imagine I would be biased one way or the other IanB2 (talk) 09:54, 20 January 2017 (UTC) I wouldn't say my opinion is in favor of Pyxis Solitary's position, judging by my third opinion written at Talk:List of accolades received by Carol (film)#Gushy tone and other vios. As I have already stated, I have no objection to mentioning specific top 10 lists on a case by case basis, in accordance with MOS:FILM, but I do object to the WP:OR of the "130 lists" claim, as well as the irrelevancy of some of the lists included in that 130. And I have zero interest in this canvassing discussion, to me it's a non-issue. I'm replying only because I was pinged. ~Anachronist (talk) 22:24, 20 January 2017 (UTC) As I responded to your previous comment re "130 lists" ... How a summary prose is worded can be worked out. We don't need to say that a film was included in more than "X Top-ten lists". We don't need to specify a numerical figure. All a summary sentence can state is (for example only) "XYZ film was included in many best of films year-end lists." and provide several reliable (and well-regarded) source citations that support the summary statement [sources such as (for example) Film Comment, Sight & Sound, IndieWire, Variety, BBC]. My pinging you was not an intent to drag you or anyone else into the drama about canvassing. You know that the only interaction you and I have had until this discussion was in the recent third opinion comments in the List of accolades received by Carol (film) Talk page. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 00:49, 21 January 2017 (UTC)

The statement by Tenebrae regarding the guideline in MOS:FILM that awards "should have a Wikipedia page to demonstrate notability" is not applicable here, as the guideline refers to particular awards (e.g. Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay), not year-end lists. The sentence informing editors not to "add critics' top-ten lists on which a film appears, except on a case-by-case basis subject to consensus" intends presumably to ban the inclusion of rankings on lists, but does not explicitly prohibit the inclusion of a single sentence summarizing the extent of a film's presence on year-end lists. Therefore, there is no uncontroversial basis in the manual of style for the removal of the sentence that Pyxis Solitary wants, but only an arguable and highly disputed basis – which is a sign that the manual's wording could be improved. When the noun of the guideline is not rankings on lists or summaries of how frequently a work appears on lists but lists themselves, the only thing that the guideline is explicitly barring, realistically speaking, is the inclusion of lists themselves. If the intent of the guideline is to ban virtually any mentioning of top 10 lists, the manual must state this in a more unambiguous way than it currently does.

If MOS:FILM ultimately is changed because of this disagreement, I would also support a change to the aforementioned other guideline (on awards), as it once again falsely implies that having a Wikipedia article is sufficient evidence of something's notability. AndrewOne (talk) 16:55, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

FILMMOS says no top-10 lists, with the case-by-case exception. It doesn't have to say "no top-10 lists here, but over here it's OK." It says no top-10 lists. Petition to change the MOS if you want. But please don't read into it claims that support your position but are factually not there. --Tenebrae (talk) 18:32, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

WP:CIRCULAR, which you linked above, is about verifiability, not notability. Having a long-standing Wikipedia article is a reasonable litmus test for notability of a subject, for the purpose of linking in lists and what not, particularly if the article demonstrates that the subject meets WP:GNG criteria. ~Anachronist (talk) 22:32, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

I always took it as a golden rule of WP that inclusion or otherwise on WP was never material to deciding issues relating to what else should or should not be included? Because WP is not an authoritative source IanB2 (talk) 06:27, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

The guideline reads, "Do not add critics' top-ten lists on which a film appears, except on a case-by-case basis subject to consensus." This statement addresses the inclusion of a list itself, not of a single sentence reporting how many lists a film made. As I posted in my previous comment, "there is no uncontroversial basis in the manual of style for the removal of the sentence that Pyxis Solitary wants, but only an arguable and highly disputed basis – which is a sign that the manual's wording could be improved. When the noun of the guideline is not rankings on lists or summaries of how frequently a work appears on lists but lists themselves, the only thing that the guideline is explicitly barring, realistically speaking, is the inclusion of lists themselves. If the intent of the guideline is to ban virtually any mentioning of top 10 lists, the manual must state this in a more unambiguous way than it currently does." AndrewOne (talk) 19:05, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

RE: "which is a sign that the manual's wording could be improved" — That may be true, and I'm all for improving WIkipedia however we can. But "Do not add critics' top-ten lists on which a film appears" certainly reads unambiguously. I'm not sure arguing that it says something that one wants it to say, rather than what it flatly states, is supportable. RE: "[T]he manual must state this in a more unambiguous way than it currently does" — First, as noted, "Do not add critics' top-ten lists on which a film appears" doesn't seem ambiguous to me in the least. Second, I don't believe we can say that we won't follow the manual unless it states something the way we prefer it be stated. --Tenebrae (talk) 19:59, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Unconstructive

In any event, this discussion needs to be put on hold until an admin can address the issue of vote-stacking. An editor can cherrypick which editor to notify, without using an objective criteria. Please see the blue-linked guideline. --Tenebrae (talk) 19:59, 22 January 2017 (UTC) I think you two Tenebrae and Pyxis Solitary are clearly engaged in an acrimonious and unconstructive edit war, and bringing in outside editors like me in your private war shows only poor taste. Kindly leave me out of this, and consider that perhaps the winner will be the first one of you that comes to his or her senses and just walks away. Thank you and good night CapnZapp (talk) 00:42, 23 January 2017 (UTC) @CapnZapp: I'm sorry that you took it as being dragged into a "private war". Whatever disagreement and argument transpired between User:Pyxis Solitary and User:Tenebrae in the Carol and List of accolades received by Carol (film) articles, THIS discussion was created and is intended to find a solution regarding difference between an actual top-ten "list" of critics and publications vs. a summary "prose" (i.e. sentence, statement) about a film's inclusion in top-ten or best of lists. I, along with two other editors who have offered their opinions here, believe that the guidelines for the *Critical response* section do not exclude a summary prose. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 02:06, 23 January 2017 (UTC) Some advice for you, PS: Don't edit other editors when you are the main party of a controversy, assuming you're the one changing my indentation level Don't section off the talk page when you are the main party of a controversy, assuming you're behind the collapsed section Absolutely do not present voting lists ("N people are with me, you are alone") since it only makes your arguments look weak and insincere Don't refer to yourself in the third person. "argument transpired between User:Pyxis Solitary and User:Tenebrae" reads as absurd Don't respond to an editor that tells you to leave him out of it, in a clearly irritated voice. I'm definitely not impressed with the way you're handling this, and any credibility you might have had with me is shot to pieces. Now listen when I say AGAIN that perhaps you will do yourself a great favor by staying away from the topic entirely and completely for at least a week. #wargames #theonlywaytowinistonotplay Now, as my last transmission I specifically ask that you do not respond to me regarding this and related issues. Not here, not thru pings, not on my talk page. Thank you CapnZapp (talk) 18:42, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

It's really not clear to me from reading the main page that top ten lists from AFI (or other similarly notable organizations such as NBR) should be in prose but not in a wikitable. It also makes no sense to me, because based on media attention and the awards emphasized by the studios in their FYC campaigns, the AFI and NBR top ten lists are more notable than the vast majority of critics' awards.Jaoakley (talk) 21:32, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

It makes sense to others since the AFI list is not a competition where we can accurately put "Win" in the end column. (On a secondary note, it is factually not called "Top Ten Movies of the Year." It's only called "Movies of the Year" and there has been at least one year where the AFI chose 11.) --Tenebrae (talk) 21:28, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

This is what the American Film Institute says about its AFI Awards:

Each year, AFI AWARDS honors 10 outstanding films and 10 outstanding television programs deemed culturally and artistically representative of the year's most significant achievements in the art of the moving image....AFI AWARDS selections are made through AFI's unique jury process — in which scholars, film and television artists, critics and AFI Trustees determine the most outstanding achievements of the year. – AFI Awards

In other words, these are 10 films out of all the films for the year that AFI considers the best and most important. And they are chosen by a group of 13 scholars, film and tv artists, film critics, and AFI trustees: 2015 film Jury. In 2015, Peter Travers (Rolling Stone), Lisa Kennedy (The Denver Post), and Carrie Rickey (The Philadelphia Inquirer) represented the critics group. Film critics Leonard Maltin, Molly Haskell, Mark Harris served as historians.

Why is AFI's annual vote superior to:

• The 20 best films of the year based on a poll of 168 film critics by the British Film Institute.

Why does Wikipedia consider the decision by three critics for AFI to be more influential than:

• The best films of the year based on a year-end poll of over 100 film critics, journalists, editors, and contributors by Film Comment/Film Society of Lincoln Center.
• The 10 best films of 2015 by the BBC.
• The best films of the year as voted by more than 200 film critics: IndieWire. (This poll has existed since 2006.)
• The best films of the year by over 125 film critics: The Village Voice. (This poll has existed since 2000.)

AFI (USA) and BFI (UK) are institutions of equal importance. They both exist for the purpose of film preservation, education, and exhibition. AFI was founded in 1967. BFI was founded in 1933. Why is the American AFI more important than the British BFI? Pyxis Solitary (talk) 04:54, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Believe it or not, we agree somewhat in debating the weight of AFI v. other lists since I don't believe we should include any top-10 lists at all: Virtually any film on a top-10 list has won or been nominated for notable awards, which we list — so adding top-10 lists seems like redundant gilding-the-lily. Consensus was to include AFI lists, so I go along with consensus, completely and without hesitation. But adding five or six or ten more lists seems like just over-congratulatory bloat.--Tenebrae (talk) 18:14, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I am a strong believer in making information available. The passage of time pushes all news and facts to the rear of an information line that grows exponentially on a daily basis until it is forgotten or becomes inaccessible. One sentence with a handful of reliable sources does not bloat an article.

As for AFI: if Wikipedia includes what AFI decides about a film year -- it should include BFI. Each organization goes about it differently, but each organization has equal status in the film industry. Why should the American organization have the only important voice when it comes to a British film? Carol, for example, was made possible because of Brits: Tessa Ross kept the project alive for a decade, Film4 Productions financed the development, and Number 9 Films got the project completed with support from Film4, BFI Film Fund, HanWay Films, and Goldcrest Films. The first official image for the film appeared in the London Evening Standard in 2014. Carol was British from scratch. StudioCanal became its distributor. The Weinstein Company then bought the rights to U.S. distribution -- and that's when it became a "British-American" film (the TWC logo isn't even included in the official production notes). What the BFI says about Carol is more relevant to the importance of the film than a decision by an AFI jury of 13 people. When the BFI has 168 film critics concluding the 20 best films of a year ... that is valuable information. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 02:37, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Comment: Since what Snow wrote over at WP:ANI is such good advice, I will take the liberty of repeating it here:

"I have previously offered to administer an RfC on the content issue as a neutral third party and that offer stands. Said RfC will be broadly promoted in appropriate community spaces by me, to attempt a large turn-out to offset any lingering canvassing concerns and to keep as much of a buffer between Tenebrae and Pyxis Solitary as may be managed as the issue is debated. Both parties are advised to do their best to avoid eachother and, if they absolutely must communicate, to keep their commentary focused on the content issue, to avoid talking about eachother, and to be scrupulously civil. This is the best way forward, I feel, and maybe the only option that doesn't end in a sanction for someone.

I sincerely hope that the parties will take this to heart. Thank you CapnZapp (talk) 10:17, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Update for interested editors

I'm posting this to inform all interested parties that this discussion was not concluded and is awaiting an RfC about the subject. The RfC is being created by a neutral editor and will be posted by same. Pyxis Solitary (talk) 06:28, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

How many genres mentioned in the lead?

Check out this from WP:FILMLEAD:

At minimum, the opening sentence should identify the title of the film, the year of its public release, and the primary genre or sub-genre under which it is verifiably classified. Genre classifications should comply with WP:WEIGHT and represent what is specified by a majority of mainstream reliable sources.

I have long interpreted this to mean "only mention one genre or one subgenre", which I learnt from seeing how other editors use the policy. But after having disagreements on two different articles recently, I've realised this is ambiguous, and possibly I've been misinterpreting it all this time.

• "at a minimum, the opening sentence should identify ... the primary genre or sub-genre" - does this mean more genres are OK, since this is only a minimum?
• "primary genre or sub-genre" - I took this took mean either one genre (eg horror) or one subgenre (eg romantic comedy). But other editors have interpreted this to mean they can combine two genres and package them as a subgenre (eg scifi horror). Assume for the sake of the argument that they have at least a few good sources describing the film the same way - though I am cautious of inviting editors to add whatever genres they can source, because we might end up with dozens of genres.

Help please? Popcornduff (talk) 13:54, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

I agree that this needs clarification. I've seen multiple articles now that list multiple genres/sub-genres, and while I'll tend to edit anything more than three (and request sources), even three seems excessive to me, but I've felt I lacked any backup for that.

If we wanted to take a hard-line approach to this, we could stipulate that the genres in the lead require sourcing, but that would conflict with general lead guidelines. DonIago (talk) 14:33, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) "At minimum" here only means the set of elements that should be in the opening sentence. It does not permit going beyond the "primary genre or sub-genre under which [the film] is verifiably classified". Basically, something like "Arrival is a 2016 science fiction film" would be a minimum. In this case, the article writes, "Arrival is a 2016 American science fiction thriller film directed by Denis Villeneuve and written by Eric Heisserer, based on the short story 'Story of Your Life' by author Ted Chiang." No comment on whether or not "science fiction thriller" is the appropriate sub-genre here (should depend on if sources say that), but that shows the minimum satisified, plus whatever detail helps identify the film for the reader. I tend to add elements by recognizability, like I would not add the short-story element because it doesn't help readers understand the film better. It's better saved for later in the lead section. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 14:36, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

I would support some standardization of the genre presentation. Problems:

Rangoon: "action period romance drama film"

Abhimaan: "Romantic action Comedy and drama film"

And one from the world of TV articles, Sharknado: "comedy disaster science fiction horror television film"

Wow! I, along with most casual editors, don't particularly know what all the appropriate genres and sub-genres are. Is "Family" a genre? Is "Children's" a genre? The biggest pain in the ass is that even when you do find someone who is willing to provide a reference for a genre, they often wind up synthesizing these weird genre chains from multiple sources. Rotten Tomatoes calls film X a comedy, but Amazon's genre keywords indicate "Musical, Fantasy", so it must be a musical fantasy comedy. So I think:

• Require sources for genres
• Clarify that we want a primary and maybe a sub-genre
• Clarify that we not synthesize genres, to the effect of "Primary and sub-genre should come from a single source or from multiple sources that are in agreement" and "where there is a conflict over sub-genre, i.e. 'comedy coming-of-age film' vs 'comedy slice-of-life film' the genre present in both (i.e. 'comedy') prevails until consensus is reached." Or whatever the right examples/phrasing might be.

To Doniago's point that sourcing in the lead would conflict with the general lead guidelines, the lead guidelines don't prohibit sourcing, and since genre will almost always only appear in the lead, it is reasonable to demand a source. From WP:LEADCITE: "The necessity for citations in a lead should be determined on a case-by-case basis by editorial consensus" ... "The presence of citations in the introduction is neither required in every article nor prohibited in any article." If we decide that sourcing is necessary (and we should) then that prevails. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 19:34, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

• Comment I think once you go beyond one sub-genre (e.g. psychological thriller) or two primary genres (sci-fi horror film) the information starts to become less useful. If you depend entirely on sourcing then in theory you could have half a dozen genres in the lead so it should rely on the most cited genre (per WP:WEIGHT) or the most applicable sub-genre. Betty Logan (talk) 20:25, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

If the requirement is that the genre can't be Frankensteined from multiple sources, then I doubt we'd have much occasion to see half a dozen genres. This tends to be an issue when people combine genres from multiple sources. One says comedy, one says fantasy, one says comedy adventure, so the result becomes comedy fantasy adventure. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 07:33, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

While I agree, I'd also say sometimes a rather lengthy-looking set of genres can be necessary. Take the article for Pixar's Up for instance, which lists it as a "computer-animated comedy-drama adventure film", or the Ratchet & Clank, film adaptation, a "computer-animated science-fiction action comedy film". I also agree that reliable sourcing for the genres is an important factor. –Matthew - (talk) 01:18, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't think all of "comedy-drama adventure" is necessary in the first sentence of 'Up'. I'd say "adventure" in the first sentence and "has elements of both comedy and drama" somewhere else. Siuenti (씨유엔티) 22:12, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Cast in plot section

I find it intensely frustrating, as a reader of Wikipedia, when the plot summary does not include actors' names in parentheses when characters are introduced. This is both completely standard for non-wikipedia movie plot summaries, and does no harm to anything that I'm aware of. I tend to add them when I come upon articles that don't include them. Just got reverted on that for Schindler's List, on grounds that the cast is already listed in another part of the article. This is true! I don't see why it is at all relevant. There's tons of information that gets repeated in articles - infoboxes and succession boxes and article text, for instance, often give the same information. It seems to me that including the actor names in the plot summary is useful and has no drawbacks whatever. It should be recommended by the Manual of Style. What are the arguments against this? john k (talk) 03:51, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

My view is that the reversion was justified. There has been a similar discussion regarding television pages as part of the ongoing review of TVMOS. The purpose of the cast section is to list the main characters and the actors who played them. The purpose of the plot section is to summarise the storyline. If you are reading the storyline it is a distraction having it littered with actors' names in brackets every time a character is mentioned, and from an encyclopediec perspective this would be a duplication of data that is already set out elsewhere, where it belongs. MapReader (talk) 04:03, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

How is it a distraction to be able to put a face to a character name? I can see the argument for TV shows, where the character is often better known than the actor, or the actor is largely known for playing that character. It seems less necessary. For movies, I fail to see the argument. Again, this is perfectly standard, and it's irritating, if I am reading a plot description and want to know who is who, to have to scroll down to an entirely new section of the article to find out. I don't see why duplication is an issue - there's an enormous amount of duplication in Wikipedia as it is - beyond infoboxes, you have things like links to stubby articles that simply repeat the exact same text that is in the article you were sent from, and all kinds of other things. The cast info is useful as its own section, and it's also useful in the plot synopsis. Why can't it be in both. The idea that it is "distracting" to have a plot summary that is exactly like every non-wikipedia movie plot summary in existence is ridiculous. john k (talk) 04:15, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

I recommend going through the archives on this page and at WT:FILM, as this has been discussed before and there has been a consensus that including the cast names in the plot summary is redundant in cases where there is a standalone Cast section. If you're going to bring this up (again), I believe it would benefit you to familiarize yourself with those discussions.

To me, the Plot section should be concise and avoid duplicating information that comes up elsewhere; that means eliminating the actor names if they're provided elsewhere. I find it a minimal inconvenience to scroll down, and if it's a serious irritation for you, I'd frankly like to know hw you're viewing WP articles that you consider it to be such a hassle.

As for the argument that WP is somehow unique in this regard...if it's solely the plot summary and actor names you're concerned with in any case, why not read the summaries at those other sites in such instances? It sounds like this may be a case where WP is not the best resource for your particular needs. DonIago (talk) 05:15, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Also, speaking as the editor who reverted you (though I didn't realize that at first), it would have been courteous of you to have notified me of this discussion rather than leaving me to happen upon it, especially as you not only made no effort to ask me about the reversion but also restored your own edit. While WP:BRD is only an essay, in my experience it is widely considered best practice to initiate a discussion when your changes are reverted before re-inserting your edits. Thank you. DonIago (talk) 05:22, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

I am inclined to agree with DonIago. While it may be helpful in big star-cast ensemble films, these are the exceptions rather than the rule. I doubt most readers would be able to identify more than a couple of cast members from the majority of films we have articles about. Betty Logan (talk) 06:35, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

There is of course a matter of preference here as well. Speaking personally, I do find it irritating having a narrative about a story or plot being broken up by references to real people in brackets. I don't find it at all irritating having to press page down if I happen to wonder who played the part in the film. The purpose of the plot section is to describe what happens, simply and clearly, and it isn't necessary or helpful to add in information about the cast in order to do this. If we did add the cast, surely you might equally ask why location, production or music information shouldn't also be added into a plot section? And you would finish with a general essay about the film, rather than an article intended to deliver information about the film broken down into clear and logical subsections. MapReader (talk) 09:00, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

It really doesn't bother me too much if the names are there. I think there is something to be said for the convenience of not having to scroll down, but I think that convenience is in very limited supply for the average reader. If you take John's edit at Schindler's List for example, three of the names (Neeson, Kingsley & Fiennes) are probably known to a typical movie-goer, the other two are not so the advantage is borderline. In the case of Casablanca I wonder how many typical readers (non-film buffs, non-editors) could honestly identify those people beyond Bogart and Bergman? So while I think it might be helpful in the odd case I think mainly it would just clutter up the plot summary and not be very helpful for the vast majority of readers. Betty Logan (talk) 10:14, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

It's clutter that comes from the urge for "completeness" at the expense of readability or usefulness. Popcornduff (talk) 10:33, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

I agree that there are cases where it would create clutter. I looked at doing it for The Godfather (film), but there were so many characters, most played by actors where that is the only movie I'm familiar with them in, that it seemed absurd to do it for all of them. I'd be happy with the idea that this is a judgment call. With respect to the individual cases: I agree that there's no need to give it for the actor who played Höß, but I think Embeth Davidtz is well known enough that giving her could potentially be helpful to some users. For Casablanca, I think all the characters mentioned in the plot summary are played by actors well known enough to the sort of people who would be reading the article about Casablanca for it to be helpful. Maybe a "first billed" distinction of some sort would be useful. I also think that maybe looking at very famous movies like Schindler's List, Casablanca, etc., may not be the best case study for this. I think in previous iterations of this discussion I've pointed to Horrible Bosses. That movie has a bunch of characters with names that even people who've watched the film probably don't actually remember, played by well known actors. Nobody thinks about that movie as "Dale Arbus is sexually harrassed by his boss Julia Harris." It's "Charlie Day is sexually harassed by his boss Jennifer Aniston." Not including that information is confusing to readers. john k (talk) 12:27, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm with most of the others here in that I think it disrupts the flow of the prose to interrupt with actors' names, especially for films with a huge cast. Given the binary choice, I'd avoid them every time. But it doesn't have to be that, and I do think that it can be useful to our readers to have that information to hand when looking at the plot, which is why I went with a compromise at American Beauty and Tenebrae, using a table within the section and eliminating the cast list section entirely. Might that be worth consideration? Steve ^T • C 19:46, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Funny you should mention Tenebrae! I'm with DonIago, Betty Logan, Popcornduff and others who agree that names in the plot section is redundant, and it also takes away from valuable word count, since we keep plots at 700 words or less. --Tenebrae (talk) 21:07, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Comment. I would like everybody to consider these arguments put forth here:

"I recommend going through the archives" This is exactly the kind of information threshold that keeps newcomers off our site. Please don't ask editors to do research in order to make simple straight-forward suggestions. Furthermore, what good will it do? The purpose is to change consensus - reading up on pages and pages of why not do it is irrelevant. This is not a case where facts change. The situation remains the same - should we change our course? That is the question, and old discussions are not relevant.

"In the case of Casablanca" and " it seemed absurd to do it for all of them". Nobody suggests we do this for every character of every film. There are plenty of items in the guidelines that allow for editor discretion. To me it's obvious the OP's focus on mainstream movies, for major characters played by star actors.

The suggestion is to write the MoS in such a way that editors aren't shot down using the MoS as a weapon. (An epidemic on Wikipedia and a very effective way to keep out newcomers!) The suggestion doesn't require a wholesale rewrite of all existing articles.

Myself I agree with the original poster. There is a reason why other sites connect the character name with the actor name the first time it is mentioned. We should write the MoS in such a way that it opens up a window for the practice, but puts the usual emphasis on editor discretion. I too am aware there are film articles where every single goddamn actor from IMDB is included, and nobody wants that.

Finally, the "twitter argument" that Plot sections are limited in length. So? If you find you cannot summarize the plot in the alloted space, then remove some or all of the actor names! Again, this shouldn't be used as an argument for all the other film articles, where it isn't a pressing concern! CapnZapp (talk) 17:00, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

I think it is entirely reasonable to discuss this in relation to Casablanca, considering it is one of the articles at the centre of the dispute. Moreover, John does not state anything about limiting it to major stars of mainstream movies; in fact his edits suggest he wants it to be more encompassing than that, and the issue is being discussed in the context it was raised. Betty Logan (talk) 17:10, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

As a note, I have never considered the inclusion of actors' names or the necessary additional wikitext as counting towards word count. Mind you, this does relate to the next point.

For myself, if there are only a few principle actors that need to be brought up in a plot summary, say no more than 4 or 5, then inclusion of actors names are fine since usually such films focus heavily on these actors (eg Planes, Trains and Automobiles where it is primarily Martin and Candy in the spotlight). As soon as you go above that, then you start getting excessive name kudzo. An example that has been a problem in the past and still has problems is Die Hard; while there's maybe 7-8 principle actors, editors want to name every one of the mercs (which are named without OR) which makes the plot super super length, and then you add cast names to that, and that just makes the situation worse. I'd rather editors avoid cast names if it is not a minimal cast as to avoid giving any specific actor more importance than others just be plot summary alone. --MASEM (t) 17:22, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

I hear you, and I understand that you don't personally consider actors' names as part of the word count. That's your opinion and you're entitled to it. Factually speaking, however, nothing in the MOS carves out an exception for actors' names in the word-count.--Tenebrae (talk) 11:50, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Why shouldn't we give actors more importance than others? The posters for Casablanca, for instance, clearly give us a hierarchy of actors, with first billed (Bogart, Bergman, Henreid, in that order), second billed (Rains, Veidt, Greenstreet, and Lorre), and then the other credited actors. The Sleepless in Seattle poster gives us Hanks and Ryan as first-billed, and then Pullman, Mallinger, Hoffmann, and Reiner as second-billed. Which are the most important cast members is not usually a judgement call. That being said, I agree that we don't want excessive name kudzu, but I think that it would usually make sense to include at least the first-billed actors' names in the plot summary. john k (talk) 02:02, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

We can't start making subjective judgment calls about which actors are "important" enough to be mentioned in the plot. That's POV. It's also redundant, since we have a cast section that identifies everyone. --Tenebrae (talk) 11:48, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

That is absurd. In the first place, my whole point was that this is not a subjective judgment - the producers of films makes these judgments for us by first billing/second billing/other credited cast/uncredited cast. In the second place, every single article on Wikipedia is full of subjective judgments. The idea that we can't make subjective judgments is ridiculous. When possible, though, we should support those judgments based on reliable sources. In this case, the credits for the film itself are a perfectly reliable source on which characters are most important. And, of course, we already make this "subjective judgment" all the time in other sections of film articles - both the lede and the infobox contain selective lists. john k (talk) 03:01, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

With regards to my suggestion that john k go through the archives, my feeling was that it would behoove him to review the arguments previously made both for and against his suggestion so that he could present a more informed argument here and potentially avoid rehashing points that had been firmly shot down in the past...or that he might even feel based on prior arguments were no longer worth reiterating. To my mind, any editor who is going to be driven away by encouragement to review a prior discussion probably isn't cut out for long-term editing here in any case. A recommendation is, I think obviously, not a requirement. Personally, I like knowing when something's been discussed before, because I think it's useful to know what the prior arguments for or against a change were. DonIago (talk) 17:47, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Obviously there is no problem with discussing the issue again; indeed this thread is already quite long from our doing so! I think the point being made however is that this is a long-established principle - and as I mentioned above exactly the same policy has recently been debated and reconfirmed in relation to television series pages. From this discussion there does appear to be an emerging consensus supporting the current approach; if the contrary argument is simply that some people may find it irritating to scroll down, there are probably more people that would find lots of bracketed names interrupting a prose plot summary equally irritating? That's why we have a cast section MapReader (talk) 19:18, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Don't worry about scaring me off, guys - I've actually been here longer than any of you, though I'm not so active as I once was. I think I've actually tried to bring up this issue in the past, although it's hard to remember at this point. Anyway, this argument is pretty much entirely aesthetic, right? It's between "cast names clutter the plot summary" and "if I'm reading the plot summary, it's irritating to have to scroll down to find out/be reminded of whether Bradley Cooper or Ed Helms places "Phil Wenneck" in The Hangover. There's no correct answer here. john k (talk) 02:08, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

imho it seems 'correct' to set out the cast in a section titled 'cast' and to describe the plot in a section titled 'plot'. But of course there may be other views ;) MapReader (talk) 05:31, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Agree. Also, the main concern actually is not a matter of aesthetics but of redundancy. Unlike a newspaper film review, where there's no separate cast list, there's simply no need for character names in a Wikipedia plot section.--Tenebrae (talk) 11:52, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia is full of redundancy, to the point, as I noted before, of using the same text in multiple articles about related subjects. In terms of what we're talking about here, actor names are already given in the lede, in the infobox, and in the cast list section of the article, so I'm not sure why there's so much objection to also including the names of some cast members in the plot secction. john k (talk) 03:04, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you meant to say actor names. :p DonIago (talk) 16:55, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

How would people reading Casablanca find out who Ilsa Lund is? Siuenti (씨유엔티) 19:56, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Can't tell whether you're being tongue-in-cheek here...if they're curious about the character, the Plot section has that covered. If they're curious about who played Ilsa, the Cast section has their back. DonIago (talk) 20:32, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

So people who like reading plots will read that and then scroll down and see Ilsa and scroll back up and continue reading. Each time they come to a new name they will scroll down to see if it's someone they recognize and scroll back up. Do you want to tell me what the people who don't like reading plots will do? Siuenti (씨유엔티) 20:47, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

So yeah, if you put all the names in the plot section it will clutter it up, and if you put none it will make people scroll up and down for no particularly good reason. The best thing is to put the main cast members, which gives me the clue that they are indeed main cast members and I should look them up if I want to. I believe this is the clearly the optimal solution in terms of avoiding most scrolling and avoiding most skipping over words. Siuenti (씨유엔티) 02:11, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

This would be my feeling - first billed actors should be included in paraentheses; second billed could be a judgment call depending on the number of actors we're talking about. Everyone else should probably not be. john k (talk) 03:01, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

I am concerned that once we open the door to cast names in Plot uninformed editors will regularly be adding what they perceive to be "main" cast regardless of the reality of the situation, which will then spawn debates over who constitutes "main" cast...and let's not even get started on second-billed at that point. We'll also increase the likelihood of ignorant or ill-meaning editors inserting or updating with erroneous actor names.

To me, scrolling simply isn't a big deal. It's 1-2 taps of the Page Down key, less than a full rotation of my mouse's scroll wheel, a swipe on my phone's screen, etc. I read the plot for the plot, and if I want to know who plays the roles I look at Cast. If anything this seems to be an argument for making sure film articles are adhering to WP:FILMPLOT so that getting to the Cast section is straightforward. But I think in the end this entire discussion hinges on personal preference. DonIago (talk) 05:39, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

If possible decisions on wikipedia should be based on reader benefit not editor benefit. Having to scroll means you can't just read in a straight line. Why is having to skip over a few names such a big deal for you? Siuenti (씨유엔티) 07:10, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I'm not having any argument based on what's annoying to editors. john k (talk) 17:29, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

If you're assuming I'm speaking as an editor rather than a reader...why are you assuming that? Why is needing to scroll slightly such a big deal for you? It goes both ways.

I appreciate that you feel you're speaking on what's best for readers, but I'm having a hard time seeing how this amounts to more than an WP:IDONTLIKEIT dispute. DonIago (talk) 19:30, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

You said "I am concerned that once we open the door to cast names in Plot uninformed editors will regularly be adding what they perceive to be "main" cast regardless of the reality of the situation, which will then spawn debates over who constitutes "main" cast...and let's not even get started on second-billed at that point. We'll also increase the likelihood of ignorant or ill-meaning editors inserting or updating with erroneous actor names" which appears to be an argument based on the interests of editors. The problem with scrolling is it that most importantly it stops you reading, and also it forces you to use your hands. As far as I can see the only problem with extra word is you have to move your eyes past them, which doesn't interrupt your reading. Siuenti (씨유엔티) 21:45, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

I grant that the part about how we define actors appropriate for inclusion was speaking from the editor role, because it wouldn't make any sense to bring that up from a reader perspective. Readers don't (usually) have to worry about the drama that ensues because of differing views of policies and guidelines.

Are you really arguing that "forces you to use your hands" is a significant concern? Have editors without hands complained about our Plot summaries? In any case, I am not the only editor who feels that having the cast names inline with the Plot is just as arguably disruptive as having them outside the Plot, and I think I've raised a legitimate concern. While ease of reading should be a priority, I'm not convinced that it always must be the primary priority, and I don't relish the discussions that would come if we open this door.

What I would like to see, if the goal is to sway me in any way on this issue (and why should it be? we're looking for a consensus broad enough to overturn the original, not my particular opinion) is a recap of the factors that led to the original consensus and why the arguments favoring that consensus are flawed that go beyond personal preference. DonIago (talk) 01:27, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

WP is an encyclopaedia, which people refer to for information. It is most useful if the information is logically structured, clearly presented, and uncluttered by other superfluous material (and of course accurate!). If we can achieve all of these, people will find what they are looking for with maximum utility and minimum effort, and the popularity of WP will grow as the go-to place for finding out stuff. Listing out the cast of a film in a section headed 'cast list' and summarising its plot in a section headed 'plot' is the simplest and most sensible way to do this. We don't need to do any more, and I see no argument for mixing up the material. MapReader (talk) 08:02, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Why is this redundancy so bad? I find it very jarring to have to scroll down and hunt in the cast list every time I encounter a new name. Surely I can't be the only one who reads like that. Are the two words in parentheses really so inconveniencing to you guys? Daß Wölf 16:27, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Because the point you are seeking to push is not unique to readers who might curious about the cast (but are too lazy to read that section first, or press the page down button); it could equally be made by people wanting to know where a scene was actually filmed, the extent to which the events portrayed really happened, who was the producer or director, or what was the incidental music for that scene. None of these have anything to do with the actual plot. If you want to read a general article all about the film, maybe WP isn't for you? MapReader (talk) 16:53, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Asking "why is redundancy bad to have" is like asking why "why is poor writing bad to have." As for "Wikipedia has redundancies elsewhere": First of all, having, say, an identical sentence in two articles about a married couple, each of whom is notable, saying, "They had a son in April 2017" isn't a redundancy but a consistency. Second, saying "Well, other Wikipedia articles are repetitious or have redundancies so we should, too" is not a logical or reasonable argument. --Tenebrae (talk) 19:15, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

For example, if Featured Articles contain redundancy that's probably because no-one noticed yet, or they haven't got round to fixing it. Siuenti (씨유엔티) 19:18, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Is this where we name-drop WP:OTHERSTUFF? While that's deletion-focused, the same principle applies. DonIago (talk) 02:21, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

The principal being "Other stuff sometimes exists according to consensus or Policies and guidelines" Siuenti (씨유엔티) 13:42, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for anticipating the common arguments, but you're incorrect about repetitions. There are countless repetitions in our language, some forms of which are discussed in our article on redundancy (linguistics). A certain level of redundancy is proven to improve our comprehension, as man doesn't perceive everything he sees and doesn't remember everything he perceives. For instance, in military communications messages are often repeated once immediately. They are not repeated nine times since that would be an obvious waste of airwaves, but repeating once has been proven to work better than not repeating at all. I presume the exceptions we use for repeating links exist for the same reason, not to mention cases TOC, infoboxes, navboxes... Thus, often, aiding comprehesion outweighs the break in the flow.

I'd say the same applies to the cast list. The marketing for most notable films has been cast-driven, and for that reason I find that in many films, unless the role is particularly memorable (e.g. Tyler Durden or Spiderman), most viewers think of the characters in terms of actors'/actresses' names (name one character played by Steven Seagal!), and they're going to extend that to reading the plot summary. For instance, some months ago I added actor names to our article about Con Air and was reverted. But really, who could watch that film and remember the characters' names? I could tell you today at least 5-6 actors from heart and only one character name (Cyrus the Virus, of course). I read the article because I missed the middle part of the film a few days ago and I still had to bounce up and down after each new name. I suppose this is just WP:USEFUL, but in that case your arguments are also just WP:IDONTLIKEIT. (Neither WP:REDUNDANT nor WP:REDUNDANCY cover this situation FWIW). Daß Wölf 03:21, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

However, Con Air's an example where if you start naming every plot-critical role, of which there around 15 or so for that film, the addition of cast names flood the plot summary and makes it hard to read. Further, that's a case where there's clearly a few recognized actors names (Cage, Malcovich) but many of the plot-centric characters have far less memorable actor names which fails the logic that we'll remember the roles by actor names rather than character names. This is why I feel the only case where cast names should be used in a plot summary is when the number of main plot-central characters is 3-4 or less. For example, Seven makes for a good case to include the names, since there are only 4 principle characters (even though there are other actors in that film too). --MASEM (t) 05:24, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, some roles will be remembered by actors' names and some by characters' names. I'd say that actors' names in plot are clearly being useful here. Consider that there are many A-list actors there: Cage, Malkovich, Cusack, Trejo, Steve Buscemi, Ving Rhames, Dave Chappelle... Even if you can't connect the names to faces, you've certainly heard of them. Seven names means at least 2-3 trips down to the cast section, and probably more because when reading the cast section in Con Air it isn't obvious who's going to play a major role and who's just going to have a cameo. And if you're not interested in that sort of thing, what's stopping you from just glossing over the links in parentheses? Most people are not going to read the rest of the page top to bottom anyway, especially such a familiar and rigidly structured page as a Wikipedia film article. I get that it doesn't look as smooth as an IMDb plot summary, but it's information people are looking for. Daß Wölf 16:50, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Apples and oranges. Repetition in spoken-word instruction is completely different from repetition in prose writing, where it is unnecessary: All anyone has to do is look at a list or another piece of prose twice. So that's an invalid comparison. As for infoboxes, those serve the specific, long-vetted purpose of letting a reader get a few pieces of very basic information without having to read the article. If you're not reading the article, the infobox data is not redundant. So, this also doesn't apply. --Tenebrae (talk) 17:56, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Cast names in plot also serve the purpose of letting the reader get a few pieces of basic information about the main actors without having to read the entire cast section. How is this different? In fact, I'd add that TOC functions much like the cast section -- it summarises the major and minor sections of the article, whose names are then repeated at the beginning of the corresponding section. Now, which would be harder to navigate: an article without a TOC, or an article with a TOC but without repeated section names? And if repetition is indeed unnecessary in prose writing, why do we devote a whole section to it in each of our articles? Daß Wölf 19:39, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

I'm guessing by your questions and comments that you're not a professional writer or editor. Which is fine — most people in Wikipedia are not. You're again making an apples and oranges comparison. The lead, similarly to the infobox, serves as the article's highlights, like an abstract. No one would ever say an abstract is a redundancy. But if a writer puts redundancies into the accompanying article, those redundancies get removed. That's just basic editing. (And before you quibble, a magazine or newspaper article might have a brief summation at the end, but encyclopedia articles do not.)

Adding redundancy, repetition and wordiness is needless when there's a cast section immediately below the plot.--Tenebrae (talk) 21:02, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Wow, that first sentence is incredibly patronizing. john k (talk) 13:20, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Tenebrae, I get your point -- this is not how things are done in professional circles. However, we're not catering to that audience. The people who read our film articles mostly don't peruse journals where articles come with abstracts. Thus, I think it helps to be accessible, despite how we may appear in comparison with other enyclopedias (which are not really relevant here, since they're either print-based and made with a different set of issues in mind, or online and probably already taking after us in many respects). Heck, we're hardly the only ones to be doing this. Daß Wölf 16:57, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

I think there's a misunderstanding here. Things are done editorially a certain way "in professional circles" because decades upon decades of experience have created a body of grammatical and syntactical rules and tools to make writing the best, simplest and most well-communicated to readers. It's not done for its own sake.--Tenebrae (talk) 22:19, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

What I meant to say is that that is the approach that works there, and this is the approach that works here. Wikipedia and print-based media are fundamentally different things vis-a-vis the way the content is processed by readers, so some degree of tweaking the way it is delivered is likely to prove very useful. And that's not even mentioning the different audiences and the strict size constraints particular to print-based media. Daß Wölf 17:36, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

The lede should be doing a sufficient job of describing the key actors and their principles roles in film as to give the reader the flavor of what is coming in the plot summary, in one or two sentence - not a full plot summary but enough to establish the importance of the leading characters. --MASEM (t) 13:34, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

How would you write those one or two sentences for Con Air, for example? Daß Wölf 16:57, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

"The film stars Cage as Poe, an imprisoned former Army Ranger just released on parole as he tries to stop the hijacking of a prisoner transfer aircraft by criminal mastermind Grissom, played by Malkovich, with support provided by Larkin, the US Marshall overseeing the transfer, played by Cusack." (keeping in mind we have identified Cage Malkovich, and Cusack in full earlier) --MASEM (t) 17:42, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

I admit I've seen enough leads for films where there isn't a role identification of the primary actors, but especially if the actors are being identified in the lead, the infobox and the Cast section, I really don't see the argument for also listing them in Plot. DonIago (talk) 04:26, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

That still leaves the problem of identifying the other half-dozen A-listers in the film. In films with ensemble casts like this that would probably take another 2-3 sentences. Technically, you could just write "and Steve Buscemi as serial killer Garland Greene, Colm Meaney as DEA agent Duncan Malloy"..., but that's just moving the "clutter" from one section to another, and description of every supporting role is not what the lead is for.

FWIW, I agree that this sort of thing is unnecessary for films with a small cast, as readers will conceivably remember 3-4 main names, but the more actors there are, the more cast section hunting is bound to happen. Daß Wölf 21:39, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

These kinds of subjective judgments, as we all know if we've been editing here long enough, will lead to countless, endless arguments over which actors "deserve" to be in the plot. Aside from the fact that it's redundant and unnecessary to list actors in the plot when we have a cast section immediately below, having them in the plot will create time-consuming conflict that is not in any encyclopedia's best interest. --Tenebrae (talk) 22:19, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Isn't that a case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater? In fact I tend to see far more warring over additions of cameos and such nonsense in the cast section. I surmise that articles I edit are probably quieter than average, but either way I don't think we should make such concessions to troublemakers. Daß Wölf 22:48, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

There is no baby. It's about keeping the bath water reasonably clear, rather than dumping a load of mud into it. MapReader (talk) 06:09, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

And God knows there's constant warfare over stars' names in the infobox even when the MOS specifically states we use credit-block billing. --Tenebrae (talk) 22:57, 13 April 2017 (UTC)

So? This is a far smaller problem here than in the cast section and the infobox, and we aren't throwing out the names from those two. Daß Wölf 17:36, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

If we have reached the point where removing names from a cast section is supposed to be a serious suggestion (even as a straw person) then this debate appears to have run out of road? MapReader (talk) 18:38, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

I considered suggesting that editors wishing to revisit the consensus open an RfC, but had held my tongue hoping this would peter out on its own. DonIago (talk) 20:15, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it doesn't seem likely we'll agree on this one way or another. Anyway, I'm fine with the status quo; some pages benefit from this, others don't. I'm just worried that we will create a blanket rule whose damage to articles outweighs the conflicts it solves.

BTW I didn't mean to suggest that the cast section should be removed, I was simply trying to point out that more edit warring happens elsewhere and we just roll up our sleeves and get on with it. Daß Wölf 22:54, 14 April 2017 (UTC)