Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2013 September 29

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

September 29

Feature Films Notable for WP articles?

Is it true that all feature films are notable inherently for Wikipedia standards? It seems like all TV shows are deemed notable, no matter how unsuccessful and obscure. I can't find any info on whether feature films are subject to GNG or if there are whether feature films are inherently notable. Thanks. Herzlicheboy (talk) 01:45, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

It depends on what you mean by a feature film. You can see the guidelines at WP:NF##Other_evidence_of_notability I haven't found anything that says TV series are presumed notable. Do you have a link to that?RudolfRed (talk) 02:47, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

AFAIK, they're not. There are some films listed in IMDb that I would never accept. On the other hand, the guidelines RudolfRed has linked to are pretty stringent and are often not followed. Clarityfiend (talk) 05:15, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

• So long as one can show notability through discussion in multiple sources, obscure is fine. I doubt anyone living has seen Gagak Item, for instance. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 05:24, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I checked WP:NF and saw those guidelines are rather stringent. As far as "discussion in multiple sources," do film blogs or fan reviews count? I'm pretty sure that blogs and fan reviews don't count as sources for music, but they do for film? Herzlicheboy (talk) 17:43, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Heck no. Clarityfiend (talk) 19:07, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Even IMDB is only considered reliable for cast-and-crew, not for much anything else. Unless a blog was verifiably written by a notable film reviewer, it wouldn't be usable as a source. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:02, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

• Pretty much per Bugs. Newspaper reviews, coverage of the production in a newspaper, academic discussion in books... these all show notability. Blogs... no. They don't. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:15, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

• Ok, thanks for the answers. Your help has been great. Can I switch gears on the topic here for a bit and ask this: It's my impression that TV shows are inherently notable, is that true? Why or why not? My impression is that any TV show, no matter how short lived, will have something written about it in reliable periodicals. Am I right? Herzlicheboy (talk) 01:00, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Anyone can make a "feature film," but many have low budgets and essentially no distribution, so they wouldn't qualify for articles. However, not just anyone can make a "TV show," since the very name implies that it is broadcast on TV. A "TV show" that isn't would be called something else, like a web series maybe. And being broadcast on TV in any major country already implies a pretty high level of exposure, attention, and reviews, even on a fairly obscure channel. The only sort of "TV show" I can imagine that might not qualify would be series broadcast on public access TV, university/local TV channels, or something similar, and there are certainly many, many of them that don't have and don't deserve Wikipedia articles. -Elmer Clark (talk) 06:04, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

It occurs to me that infomercials would also fall into this category. Wikipedia could have an article on the general topics of infomercials, local access TV, etc. But individual shows would only be notable if they gained some acceptably broad level of coverage by reviewers. For a regular network TV series, that level of coverage is pretty much guaranteed up front. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:53, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

For scientific topics, we require "peer review" - that someone else who understands this stuff looks over the "product" (the scientific theory) and decides whether it's any good.

In this case, we have much the same rule. For TV shows, someone at the TV network had to have looked it over and decided that it's worth broadcasting. For movies, that's only true if the movie goes through conventional distribution channels...for those that don't, their notability is much more difficult to determine. SteveBaker (talk) 14:24, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

A question about restaurants and Pepsi

In my country at least, I've noticed that restaurants with Pepsi products seem to be quite upfront with the fact that they have Pepsi. For example, they show the Pepsi logo on tarps (in addition to the Pepsi logo on the sodas in pictures) and paper placemats. Also, in my country at least, Pepsi seems to sponsor more events than Coca-Cola. While a number of restaurants with Coke products also follow these practices, from my experiences in going to restaurants, in general restaurants with Pepsi products tend to advertise their use of Pepsi a lot, while those with Coke do not give the same amount of publicity to their use of Coke. But why is this the case? Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 03:37, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Confirmation bias, in the absence of any evidence that your observations are correct. You've just presented us with a perception of your local part of the world, which we may or may not live in. There's two problems with that. First, it's your perception, which means we have no idea if what your belief about the situation is is actually an objective representation of the situation or if it's just something you think you've observed, but you've reinforced because you believe it to be so (that's the confirmation bias thing). It's the simplest explanation for any question that begins "I've notice this thing about the world. Why is the world like that?" The first question shouldn't get farther than "I've noticed..." because from that point forward, we have nothing to answer. 100 people could come along and give off the cuff, made-up explanations for why your description of events could be true. But since we haven't even established that your perceptions of the world represent reality here, explanations of unconfirmed personal observations are equally as dubious. Secondly, and probably far less vital to answering your question than that, is that we don't live where you do, so we can't know what your little corner of the Earth is like vis-a-vis the marketing efforts of global soft-drink brands. But start with confirmation bias, and make that your reason for why anything you think is happening is happening, unless you can present us with some more concrete evidence of the phenomenon than "I've noticed..." --Jayron32 04:03, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to ask Narutolovehinata5 what 'Cola' they usually drink, Coca Cola or Pepsi (or 'other')? They don't have to say of course, but this may have a bearing on their perception. 220 of ^Borg 07:31, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

• In many cases a restaurant -- especially a fast-food chain -- will make a deal with a drink distributor in which they get a reduced price in return for advertising the product in specified ways and for sticking exclusively to one supplier. It just means that Pepsi is more aggressive than Coke in pursuing that strategy. Looie496 (talk) 15:05, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
  • That would be my assumption likewise. It's also possible that, although Coke is number one overall, Pepsi might have made greater inroads in certain markets. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:17, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

searching for a french wikipedia page

I didn't see a french link in Gender equality, is there anyone help me to find out a corresponding article or a article whose subject is similar to Gender equality? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 111.246.219.109 (talk) 14:19, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

The article fr:Égalité des genre is a redirect to Social Equality - and it's a pretty crappy article that doesn't really address the issue and constantly uses "Man" to refer to humans. I could find some articles that are related, but they were either too general or too specific. The best article I could find was Inégalités homme-femme but that's about gender gap. Arguably the link should be to Égalité des genres and hope that the Social Equality article improves or the redirect changes... Effovex (talk) 15:23, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

It might be an unknown concept in the French culture. You can start the article on the French wikipedia and see how that goes. Herzlicheboy (talk) 20:48, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

But they produced one of the founding mothers of feminism! --TammyMoet (talk) 14:47, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Trying the UN term (égalité entre les sexes) as a search term, I also found Condition feminine and Droits des femmes. Taknaran (talk) 13:32, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Are Turks Arabic at all?

Do the Turkish people have a significant amount of Arabic heritage, biologically speaking? --66.190.69.246 (talk) 23:27, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure at least one of them does. Maybe two. But culturally speaking, no. Turks come from Central Asia, historically. See Turkic migration. However, I'm sure you can find one person who is a citizen of the modern nation of Turkey who has at least one ancestor who is Arabic. Probably two or more. --Jayron32 00:13, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

One province of Turkey, Hatay, used to belong to Syria and its population is largely of Arabic descent, although the language is not much spoken there anymore. In addition, the Ottoman Empire was multinational, and people from all of its far-flung corners moved to the capital Istanbul as a result, and a number of Arabs did as well. There are of course a lot of Arabic words incorporated in the Turkish language, particularly abstract words and religious terms. --Xuxl (talk) 10:01, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Articles on Archaeogenetics of the Near East and Genetic history of the Turkish people shed some light on this. They say that "several studies have concluded that the historical (pre-Islamic) and indigenous Anatolian groups are the primary source of the present-day Turkish population". As in other parts of the world, it can be misleading to confuse genetic heritage with cultural heritage, such as language. Ghmyrtle (talk) 10:13, 30 September 2013 (UTC)