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Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of box office records set by Star Wars: The Force Awakens/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was archived by Giants2008 via FACBot (talk) 00:25, 29 October 2018 (UTC) [1].[reply]

List of box office records set by Star Wars: The Force Awakens edit

List of box office records set by Star Wars: The Force Awakens (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): TompaDompa (talk) 12:17, 28 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm nominating this for featured list after some extensive cleanup since it was noted in the (ultimately unsuccessful) Featured list nomination for the corresponding Deadpool list that there are currently no featured lists for box office records and I can frankly say that none of the five such lists were in any shape to be featured. I think this is something that should be remedied considering that there are numerous WP:Featured lists for accolades received by films, and going by the WP:Featured list criteria I believe this list is now ready to be nominated. TompaDompa (talk) 12:17, 28 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Quick comment on a section heading: "United Kingdom, Ireland and Malta" - why on earth are these three countries bundled together? It makes about as much sense as having "US, Canada and Portugal"....... -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 09:04, 30 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@ChrisTheDude: I agree that it is somewhat odd (though not as odd as your comparison would make it seem – Malta only gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1964). However, for box office purposes these three countries are regarded as a single market in much the same way as the United States and Canada are (see Box Office Mojo). TompaDompa (talk) 13:19, 30 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I looked through the sources cited in that section and didn't see Malta mentioned, so I removed it. TompaDompa (talk) 00:52, 5 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I had missed the FLC for the article mentioned (I never watched Deadpool) but agree with them and may even want to nominate these for AFD. "Highest non-opening week Tuesday gross"? This is as trivial as it gets. "Highest December opening day gross": This is pretty granular, not really a record. Sure, boxofficemojo compiles these trivial statistics and Deadline Hollywood reports them but we get it, the movie sold a lot of tickets everywhere. I suppose you could put a bit more in the Box Office section of the main article but I do not believe this is an encyclopedic topic and oppose. Reywas92Talk 04:12, 3 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Reywas92: If the problem is that individual entries are trivial or too granular, that can be fixed by removing those entries – the problem with the Deadpool list was that there would barely be anything left after doing so. If the problem is that the topic is WP:UNENCYCLOPEDIC, you should be able to be more specific than that – does it fail WP:NOT? Is box office performance inherently unencyclopedic? Is a film's box office reception less encyclopedic than its critical reception? TompaDompa (talk) 05:15, 3 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I would say a separate article of these statistics is as unencyclopedic as a separate article for its reviews. We can leave details about specific reviews to Rotten Tomatoes and details about specific box office records to Box Office Mojo, and summarize the highlights in the main article. If we get rid of the granular stats, Star_Wars:_The_Force_Awakens#Box_office has more than enough details that cover/duplicate the rest and to have a fork of all these records is purely trivia. Reywas92Talk 05:33, 3 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The proper analogy here is not individual reviews for the film, but accolades received by it (of which there are—as noted above—numerous WP:Featured lists). Reviews would be analogous to markets, or perhaps weekends. TompaDompa (talk) 06:29, 3 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by Gonzo_fan2007

Resolved comments from « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 15:20, 6 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
*The "Record Grosses" table has accessibility issues. You need to use symbols and colors to highlight specific pieces of data. You also need to explain what "Sa" "Wknd" "m" mean. Maybe try the {{Abbr}} template. I also am not a fan of the legend for the table being hidden in a footnote.
  • I personally feel the "Notes" section is overkill. If you absolutely think this is necessary, the data could be better visualized in a table so the reader doesn't have to jump back and forth from the article to the notes section.
  • Your Box Office Mojo references need to be standardized across the whole article. The website= value in your references changes from Box Office Mojo, Box Office Mojo, boxofficemojo.com, etc.
  • A significant amount of your sources say they were accessed back in 2015. Can I presume you visited all the websites a little more recently than that? The access date is key because it provides a reference to when the web site was last verified.
  • Personally, I feel the external links section is unnecessary.
  • I would challenge File:Star Wars The Force Awakens.jpg is improperly tagged and a copyvio problem. The license asserts that the "threshold of originality" is not met by the image, however the style, color scheme, and the actual name of the movie being added throw it over the threshold in my opinion.
  • I find the lead lacking significantly:
    • There is no explanation of why this film broke all these records. Context should be added that explains how it was the first Star Wars film in so many years, has a new cast but keeps some of the old characters, Abrams as director, etc.
    • There are no inline citations in the lead. With how long the list is, it is difficult to find the specific citation for the assertions in the lead, which can be fixed by adding inline citations.
    • "first through third weekend" needs an "s" at the end of "weekend".

I also have to agree with Reywas92 above that I harbor some concerns about the article in general. I don't know that I would AFD it, but I can see this as being almost impossible to keep up to date as other movies set these records. Also, as I mentioned above, the readability of the article is difficult with all the footnotes. As was mentioned above, half of these records I was completely unaware were actually records. I think something that is tightened up in scope (not every single record ever), has more prose to set the context, and the removal or conversion to prose/table of most of the notes section would serve this list well. Hope this helps. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 16:05, 4 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Gonzo fan2007:
  • I added symbols, explained abbreviations, and moved the legend to the bottom of the table.
  • I converted the list to a table.
  • The Box Office Mojo references have been standardized.
  • I had visited all the sources during this year without updating the access dates, and have gone through them again and updated the access dates to 2018.
  • The external links section has been removed.
  • I removed the image.
  • The WP:LEAD has been expanded, inline citations have been added, and a plural "s" has been added.
I don't think it will be all that difficult to keep up to date. Each record will only need to be updated once, when it is surpassed. The biggest problem in that regard is that there aren't really any serious trackers that keep track of records like Box Office Mojo or The Numbers for markets other than the US/Canada one (i.e. the problem lies in the Americentrism of the field). As for the footnotes, I personally thought they improved readability because they made it possible to keep the entries much briefer. I never had a problem with having to jump back and forth since my desktop browser reveals the contents of the notes when hovering the cursor—and on mobile clicking the notes does the same thing—but perhaps that is not true of all devices and browsers? It's changed now, anyway. As for tightening up the scope, I have to admit I'm not quite sure what entries you think don't belong. I removed a number of month-specific records which I thought might be overly narrow, but could you perhaps give me some pointers in that regard? TompaDompa (talk) 10:32, 6 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support I think this looks much better. I may give it a quick copyedit if I have time, but for now I am comfortable with the list. I believe it meets all the criteria. Nice work! « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 15:17, 6 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your input! TompaDompa (talk) 15:30, 6 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comment how many of these records have reliable source coverage outside the The Numbers website and Box Office Mojo website? I mean, how many of them are really truly notable, e.g. coverage in things like The New York Times, The Guardian or even Empire? Movie fansites will make up all kinds of intersections for the purpose of trivia, e.g. "Highest non-opening week Wednesday gross", why would anyone ever consider that to be of any encyclopedic value? The Rambling Man (talk) 19:44, 30 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Quite a few[a] (and even more if you also include Deadline Hollywood). Those sources aren't always that good at quantifying the records however, which is why most of the list is sourced to Box Office Mojo, The Numbers, and the like.
I agree that trivial entries such as overly narrow intersections have no place on these types of lists (as my track record at for instance Talk:List of box office records set by Deadpool and Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of Black Panther box office achievements/archive1 shows), and I have removed a number of such entries already as part of my cleanup effort to get this up to WP:FL standards. If you think that some of the remaining entries should be removed for the same reason, I would be open to your suggestions. TompaDompa (talk) 22:45, 30 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure you answered my question. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:54, 30 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps I misunderstood what you were asking. I took your question to mean roughly "Are these records only covered by box office trackers (BOM, The Numbers) or by other (news) sources as well?", and my answer was "The latter." TompaDompa (talk) 23:15, 30 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

  1. ^ A sample:
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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