TompaDompa
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Theme sections
editI think a lot of films, certainly the ones I've worked on, have some very broadly accepted basic themes, like fascism in this case, dreams vs reality in the case of Total Recall, but when I first started this I was often required to include sources that were just someone's university thesis and so may offer a very niche interpretation without broad support, while at the same time getting basic facts about the subect film wrong, for example getting the names of Ghostbusters wrong while discussing Ghostbusters. So I'm against including it just for the sake of including it, and don't believe coverage of the film, particularly its production, should ever be sacrificed for such a section. So while I will include it as required, I don't think it's fair to count that wordcount against the article as a whole. Se7en for instance, feedback suggested I had not gone deep enough and so I added that content but the section is now 2500 words, making the overall article 10801 words, so the content relating to, again, a film with a very interesting production like Se7en, is only about 8200, but the themes section content will be counted against it's overall size. So in general I just dislike that by having to include it, the word count goes up, and that is used as a criticism. If that wasn't the case I would not particularly care about including such a section, but I vehemently oppose having to cull the sections discussing the core of the film to make space for interpretations of the film. It's more frustrating because, for older films in particular, the industry, both behind and in front of the scenes was not as straightforward and so there is more to cover because it was just a very different world to modern filmmaking, and I don't think 10,000 words is a lot personally, as I'll often decide to randomly read one of the articles to learn things I've since forgotten and I find them generally interesting to read in full so I'm sure others do as well. If it was 11, 12, close to 15,000 I'd probably agree myself but that I'm generally averaging 8000-10000, I think that's just reasonable to cover the types of older films I am, which coincidentally have a lot of cultural impact. Compare it to something like Mission: Impossible – Fallout which is under 8000 words, I would say because it is modern, has a much more streamlined production where little goes wrong, and it's not had the chance to generate a substantial cultural or lasting influence. So in summary, I grew to dislike them because I was being asked to use student essays and other fringe theories in them for films which just did not seem very deep, I grew to hate them because their contributions to the overall word count were, not individually, but overall leading to complaints about size. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 18:06, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
- That sounds mainly like an implementation issue to me (WP:DUE and whatnot)? I mean, "what does it mean?" is arguably the single most important thing about any piece of art. I gather you are also much more fascinated by the production as such than I am, which may account for a substantial part of our differing views on appropriate length. TompaDompa (talk) 18:21, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
- That probably would be were we differ, the "how" of ghostbusters is infinitely more fascinating than "because of capitalism in the 80s", but even if we assign equal importance to both areas, 10000 words or less is not a lot for specific subject articles with so much to cover.Darkwarriorblake (talk) 18:29, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
- The "how" or the "why" indeed. I'm going to disagree on the overall length thing, however—10,000 words is rather lengthy for a Wikipedia article, even if there is a lot to say about certain subjects. Sometimes it is justified to go beyond that (there is probably some kind of correlation between when this is appropriate and WP:Vital articles, now that I think of it), but that's comparatively rare and usually WP:Summary style and/or judicious copyediting for length should be applied instead. That's my position, anyway, and it is more-or-less in line with what WP:LENGTH says so it would seem to reflect project-wide consensus fairly well. TompaDompa (talk) 21:34, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
- People quite readily quote SIZE or LENGTH, but my articles are always within or at the limit, the article very specifically says "A page of about 10,000 words takes between 30 and 40 minutes to read at average speed, which is close to the attention span of most readers." and that's assuming they're reading the whole thing in a single session, which they're not. Cleopatra is 13000 words long on top of the 20 or so sub articles it points to because someone is trying to be comprehensive. I wouldn't go that long, it's excessive to me, but the articles should be the whole picture, even if its production and analysis. Summary style refers to just taking the text and putting it somewhere else and leaving a summary behind, it's not about an overall style of writing. I'll also say that, anecdotally, the feedback I get on the articles is always positive, it's only at FAC where people act like we're Geocities with a 10mb bandwidth limit and everyone only has 5 minutes to read. It's exhausting, I've got a bunch of other projects mostly ready to go and this happens every time despite the text, even as it is right now, being below 10000 AND comprehensive. If we're not going to be comprehensive then honestly what's the point in Wikipedia? Each article may as well be a list of books and websites where you can go to read about a topic instead because we're only an encyclo, no time for the pedia. The implication, I guess, is that the production section should just say "Development began in 1991 based on Heinlein's novel. They filmed in 1996. The end."Darkwarriorblake (talk) 22:40, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, Cleopatra—a level-3 WP:Vital article—seems like an article where it might plausibly be appropriate to significantly exceed the typical recommended length. Obviously a lot more has been written on that topic than about most topics we might write articles for. I know you're being facetious, but striking the right balance in terms of the appropriate level of detail, without getting either too granular or too broad-strokes about it, is a writing skill. Sometimes, less is indeed more and it might be necessary to kill one's darlings, as it were, by removing content one likes (in isolation, at least) but is detrimental to the overall impression—and in such cases, using WP:Summary style to preserve the "full story" in an article with a more narrow scope (assuming that's otherwise an appropriate topic for an article, of course) can be helpful. When people say an article is too long, it's likely that they think that the article quality (or indeed, writing quality) would be improved by copyediting for brevity. You don't have to agree with such assessments of course, but if you choose to interpret that kind of feedback in that manner, it might very well make it easier to collaborate productively with those editors even if you disagree. TompaDompa (talk) 23:11, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
- We self-determine what is a level 3 vita whatever, that doesn't make it more special than other articles or less subject to criticism or need to be less than the magic rule of, apparently, >6000 words. To put that into perspective, to reduce Scream from 9000 words to 6000 I had to delete basically the entire production section as seen here. How do you propose to cover a film in such minimal detail? I posted the nomination and 15 minutes later the first comment was about size, so are you saying that the comment related to writing quality throughout the article, which takes, as mentioned above, 40 minutes to read, or do we think "page size" was clicked and the figure presented was used as a point of criticism? It's easy to keep linking to summary style, even though again it says nothing about writing, but it's clear the comment and this subsequent discussion is based on the auto-generated figure and not the quality of the text. Anyway, this has become one of our customary roundabout discussions where we don't agree and I'm misquoted guidelines as gospel so you can imagine why I brought it over to your talk page instead of the nomination page. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 23:35, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
- I'm not particularly involved in the vital article process, but the articles that are selected at those levels tend to be articles that get a high number of pageviews, on topics where there is extensive secondary literature, and which exist as articles on many different-language versions of Wikipedia. Those characteristics make it more likely that a more extensive article length is appropriate. Like I said, there is probably a correlation.I'm not familiar with the Scream situation, but it seems likely that whoever that was used word count as a proxy measure/heuristic, yes. It's also possible that they had already formed an opinion prior to your nomination or that they formed their opinion based on a sample of the article they read, meaning they wouldn't have to read the entire article in 15 minutes.Speaking for myself, I have found some articles you have nominated to have been excessively detailed in places. If that's a pattern that affects large portions of an article, it leads to an inflated word count. I'm not suggesting that reaching a particular word count is an end in itself, but I view word count as a useful (if blunt) metric for some purposes—such as quantifying the extent of perceived issues or comparing the relative weight given to different parts of a topic. If you find it meaningless, you don't have to care about the precise figure—whatever people may think it reflects about the underlying text, it necessarily does so indirectly. I know other people have said that the number itself is the point.I'm also not saying that shorter is better, even when the same information is conveyed. Sometimes, a version (whether it's of a sentence, paragraph, or something even lengthier) that uses a larger number of words simply works better. I know I'm not terribly economical with words at all times. My writing habits are such that if I don't make an active effort to avoid it, I can easily end up with articles that need significant copyediting for brevity. Conversely, the way I write leads can easily result in them ending up too short if I don't make a conscious effort to avoid it. I have at different times improved things I have written by variously making them longer or shorter—but there is a clear trend, namely that I tend to be too long-winded when not actively minding the length. If you have that same tendency—and I don't know whether that's the case—that could perhaps explain recurring prompts to cut down on length. If so, honestly engaging with those comments in good faith while trying to understand the reasoning behind why others think that would improve things is probably the best way forward both in the short and long term. I could be wrong, but I get the impression you view these comments as impositions, which is not an attitude that is likely to lead anywhere productive. TompaDompa (talk) 01:20, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
- Right, but as far as I can see from your edit history you work excluvely in the realm of space related articles relating to fiction, which is fine, but how does that mean your opinion is more valid than mine when it comes to what to include in an article on a film when that is the area I exclusively work in? You think something is trivia, I think it's interesting and other people will find it interesting, who wins that argument? Well it takes it to 6020 words, so let's remove it to hit that golden number and make sure the writing is super tight, dry, boring, and noone wants to read it. I've already been through the Starship Troopers article and removed and copyedited stuff before even bringing it to FAC because of the constant moaning of "What's the scouter say Vegeta?", "IT'S OVER TEN THOUSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND!" Now I've reduced it to under 10 thousand before we even started and FAR less not including the themes section and it's still the first fucking comment. It's an arbitrary GUIDELINE and yet it's still brought up each time in RECENT nominations because it was never an issue when I started these projects because we're not limited by size, page download speed, or reader's reading time. I can't read JW Rinzler's book on The Empire Strikes Back in 40 minutes, it's 300+ pages long, I don't see his editor saying "cut the interesting stuff, we've got a word count to hit!" The whole point is to be an encylopedia, people shouldn't have to go elsewhere to find information. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 13:19, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
- That's what I'm currently working on, but it's not the only area I have experience editing in. I have for instance edited film box office articles quite a bit and even written a full biographical article—George Griffith—and brought it to WP:Featured article status, though that was admittedly rather an aberration for me. Now on the one hand, being familiar with a topic and its sources puts one in a good position to evaluate what does and does not belong in an article—I have certainly pushed back against suggestions to focus more or less on particular aspects based on my assessments of the relevant literature and the relative weight given to different aspects therein. On the other hand, there is such a thing as becoming "homeblind" and not being able to recognize issues that are apparent to someone with an outside (or even just fresh) perspective. It takes humility to recognize that this might be the case. I have at times made changes to articles somewhat grudgingly at the suggestion of others and come to realize afterwards that they were actually significant improvements.You ask what viewpoint will prevail when editors disagree whether something should be included as pertinent or excluded as extraneous. Well, WP:CONSENSUS may end up on either side. My approach, regardless of whether I favour inclusion or exclusion, tends to be to look at it from a WP:PROPORTION perspective, i.e. assessing the relative weight given to that particular point by sources on the topic. That does not always result in me getting my way, nor does it always result in productive discussion, but I find it to be a very effective way of determining whether discussion can, in principle, be fruitful. When the editors who disagree with me respond to that specific point, discussion is highly likely to be very productive (and pleasant, usually), while editors who do not address that point are unlikely to be receptive to any kind of argument contrary to their viewpoint and thus unlikely to be swayed no matter what arguments are put forth. Still, sometimes disagreement remains despite our best efforts, and that can also be an acceptable outcome; I have had a couple of WP:Featured article nominations that were promoted with outstanding opposes.
The whole point is to be an encylopedia, people shouldn't have to go elsewhere to find information.
Articles should be complete, but that's not the same thing as exhaustive. See WP:NOTEVERYTHING:An article should not be a complete presentation of all possible details, but a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject.
Wikipedia is not supposed to replace all other outlets—IMDb, Rotten Tomatoes, and Box Office Mojo are all expected to contain details not found in a Wikipedia article about a particular film. Even sources that are not reliable, e.g. Wikia/Fandom and TV Tropes, are valuable complements in addition to Wikipedia to readers.I'm guessing your position on the issue is a bit more moderate thanpeople shouldn't have to go elsewhere to find information
might seem to suggest, but if you are truly of the opinion that Wikipedia should present at least certain types of information in full detail like that, I understand that it must be frustrating when people say that something should be trimmed and I can see why such comments might feel like impositions. Still, if that's your goal you will continually be working at cross-purposes with other editors. TompaDompa (talk) 18:11, 13 July 2024 (UTC)- I can deal with specific feedback, just saying "too long" is neither useful or fair because it's not possible the person has read the article from start to finish. It could mean a single paragraph needs to go or it could mean the whole thing needs reworking, ut's not a helpful comment and ultimately, yes, it's within guideline and isn't an acceptable reason to block a nomination, yet, despite your own experiences, my experience is that an unfulfilled comment discourages others from reviewing and so the nomination dies. Fulfilled comments always seem to attract a follow up reviewer. So it's like throwing a bomb right into the middle of a hard worked nomination, and I've spent the last month uplifting Starship Troopers specifically for this nomination, not because it wasn't good but I knew the comment would be made like clockwork. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 21:39, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
- Fair enough. TompaDompa (talk) 03:34, 14 July 2024 (UTC)
- I can deal with specific feedback, just saying "too long" is neither useful or fair because it's not possible the person has read the article from start to finish. It could mean a single paragraph needs to go or it could mean the whole thing needs reworking, ut's not a helpful comment and ultimately, yes, it's within guideline and isn't an acceptable reason to block a nomination, yet, despite your own experiences, my experience is that an unfulfilled comment discourages others from reviewing and so the nomination dies. Fulfilled comments always seem to attract a follow up reviewer. So it's like throwing a bomb right into the middle of a hard worked nomination, and I've spent the last month uplifting Starship Troopers specifically for this nomination, not because it wasn't good but I knew the comment would be made like clockwork. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 21:39, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
- That's what I'm currently working on, but it's not the only area I have experience editing in. I have for instance edited film box office articles quite a bit and even written a full biographical article—George Griffith—and brought it to WP:Featured article status, though that was admittedly rather an aberration for me. Now on the one hand, being familiar with a topic and its sources puts one in a good position to evaluate what does and does not belong in an article—I have certainly pushed back against suggestions to focus more or less on particular aspects based on my assessments of the relevant literature and the relative weight given to different aspects therein. On the other hand, there is such a thing as becoming "homeblind" and not being able to recognize issues that are apparent to someone with an outside (or even just fresh) perspective. It takes humility to recognize that this might be the case. I have at times made changes to articles somewhat grudgingly at the suggestion of others and come to realize afterwards that they were actually significant improvements.You ask what viewpoint will prevail when editors disagree whether something should be included as pertinent or excluded as extraneous. Well, WP:CONSENSUS may end up on either side. My approach, regardless of whether I favour inclusion or exclusion, tends to be to look at it from a WP:PROPORTION perspective, i.e. assessing the relative weight given to that particular point by sources on the topic. That does not always result in me getting my way, nor does it always result in productive discussion, but I find it to be a very effective way of determining whether discussion can, in principle, be fruitful. When the editors who disagree with me respond to that specific point, discussion is highly likely to be very productive (and pleasant, usually), while editors who do not address that point are unlikely to be receptive to any kind of argument contrary to their viewpoint and thus unlikely to be swayed no matter what arguments are put forth. Still, sometimes disagreement remains despite our best efforts, and that can also be an acceptable outcome; I have had a couple of WP:Featured article nominations that were promoted with outstanding opposes.
- Right, but as far as I can see from your edit history you work excluvely in the realm of space related articles relating to fiction, which is fine, but how does that mean your opinion is more valid than mine when it comes to what to include in an article on a film when that is the area I exclusively work in? You think something is trivia, I think it's interesting and other people will find it interesting, who wins that argument? Well it takes it to 6020 words, so let's remove it to hit that golden number and make sure the writing is super tight, dry, boring, and noone wants to read it. I've already been through the Starship Troopers article and removed and copyedited stuff before even bringing it to FAC because of the constant moaning of "What's the scouter say Vegeta?", "IT'S OVER TEN THOUSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND!" Now I've reduced it to under 10 thousand before we even started and FAR less not including the themes section and it's still the first fucking comment. It's an arbitrary GUIDELINE and yet it's still brought up each time in RECENT nominations because it was never an issue when I started these projects because we're not limited by size, page download speed, or reader's reading time. I can't read JW Rinzler's book on The Empire Strikes Back in 40 minutes, it's 300+ pages long, I don't see his editor saying "cut the interesting stuff, we've got a word count to hit!" The whole point is to be an encylopedia, people shouldn't have to go elsewhere to find information. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 13:19, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
- I'm not particularly involved in the vital article process, but the articles that are selected at those levels tend to be articles that get a high number of pageviews, on topics where there is extensive secondary literature, and which exist as articles on many different-language versions of Wikipedia. Those characteristics make it more likely that a more extensive article length is appropriate. Like I said, there is probably a correlation.I'm not familiar with the Scream situation, but it seems likely that whoever that was used word count as a proxy measure/heuristic, yes. It's also possible that they had already formed an opinion prior to your nomination or that they formed their opinion based on a sample of the article they read, meaning they wouldn't have to read the entire article in 15 minutes.Speaking for myself, I have found some articles you have nominated to have been excessively detailed in places. If that's a pattern that affects large portions of an article, it leads to an inflated word count. I'm not suggesting that reaching a particular word count is an end in itself, but I view word count as a useful (if blunt) metric for some purposes—such as quantifying the extent of perceived issues or comparing the relative weight given to different parts of a topic. If you find it meaningless, you don't have to care about the precise figure—whatever people may think it reflects about the underlying text, it necessarily does so indirectly. I know other people have said that the number itself is the point.I'm also not saying that shorter is better, even when the same information is conveyed. Sometimes, a version (whether it's of a sentence, paragraph, or something even lengthier) that uses a larger number of words simply works better. I know I'm not terribly economical with words at all times. My writing habits are such that if I don't make an active effort to avoid it, I can easily end up with articles that need significant copyediting for brevity. Conversely, the way I write leads can easily result in them ending up too short if I don't make a conscious effort to avoid it. I have at different times improved things I have written by variously making them longer or shorter—but there is a clear trend, namely that I tend to be too long-winded when not actively minding the length. If you have that same tendency—and I don't know whether that's the case—that could perhaps explain recurring prompts to cut down on length. If so, honestly engaging with those comments in good faith while trying to understand the reasoning behind why others think that would improve things is probably the best way forward both in the short and long term. I could be wrong, but I get the impression you view these comments as impositions, which is not an attitude that is likely to lead anywhere productive. TompaDompa (talk) 01:20, 13 July 2024 (UTC)
- We self-determine what is a level 3 vita whatever, that doesn't make it more special than other articles or less subject to criticism or need to be less than the magic rule of, apparently, >6000 words. To put that into perspective, to reduce Scream from 9000 words to 6000 I had to delete basically the entire production section as seen here. How do you propose to cover a film in such minimal detail? I posted the nomination and 15 minutes later the first comment was about size, so are you saying that the comment related to writing quality throughout the article, which takes, as mentioned above, 40 minutes to read, or do we think "page size" was clicked and the figure presented was used as a point of criticism? It's easy to keep linking to summary style, even though again it says nothing about writing, but it's clear the comment and this subsequent discussion is based on the auto-generated figure and not the quality of the text. Anyway, this has become one of our customary roundabout discussions where we don't agree and I'm misquoted guidelines as gospel so you can imagine why I brought it over to your talk page instead of the nomination page. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 23:35, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
- Yes, Cleopatra—a level-3 WP:Vital article—seems like an article where it might plausibly be appropriate to significantly exceed the typical recommended length. Obviously a lot more has been written on that topic than about most topics we might write articles for. I know you're being facetious, but striking the right balance in terms of the appropriate level of detail, without getting either too granular or too broad-strokes about it, is a writing skill. Sometimes, less is indeed more and it might be necessary to kill one's darlings, as it were, by removing content one likes (in isolation, at least) but is detrimental to the overall impression—and in such cases, using WP:Summary style to preserve the "full story" in an article with a more narrow scope (assuming that's otherwise an appropriate topic for an article, of course) can be helpful. When people say an article is too long, it's likely that they think that the article quality (or indeed, writing quality) would be improved by copyediting for brevity. You don't have to agree with such assessments of course, but if you choose to interpret that kind of feedback in that manner, it might very well make it easier to collaborate productively with those editors even if you disagree. TompaDompa (talk) 23:11, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
- People quite readily quote SIZE or LENGTH, but my articles are always within or at the limit, the article very specifically says "A page of about 10,000 words takes between 30 and 40 minutes to read at average speed, which is close to the attention span of most readers." and that's assuming they're reading the whole thing in a single session, which they're not. Cleopatra is 13000 words long on top of the 20 or so sub articles it points to because someone is trying to be comprehensive. I wouldn't go that long, it's excessive to me, but the articles should be the whole picture, even if its production and analysis. Summary style refers to just taking the text and putting it somewhere else and leaving a summary behind, it's not about an overall style of writing. I'll also say that, anecdotally, the feedback I get on the articles is always positive, it's only at FAC where people act like we're Geocities with a 10mb bandwidth limit and everyone only has 5 minutes to read. It's exhausting, I've got a bunch of other projects mostly ready to go and this happens every time despite the text, even as it is right now, being below 10000 AND comprehensive. If we're not going to be comprehensive then honestly what's the point in Wikipedia? Each article may as well be a list of books and websites where you can go to read about a topic instead because we're only an encyclo, no time for the pedia. The implication, I guess, is that the production section should just say "Development began in 1991 based on Heinlein's novel. They filmed in 1996. The end."Darkwarriorblake (talk) 22:40, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
- The "how" or the "why" indeed. I'm going to disagree on the overall length thing, however—10,000 words is rather lengthy for a Wikipedia article, even if there is a lot to say about certain subjects. Sometimes it is justified to go beyond that (there is probably some kind of correlation between when this is appropriate and WP:Vital articles, now that I think of it), but that's comparatively rare and usually WP:Summary style and/or judicious copyediting for length should be applied instead. That's my position, anyway, and it is more-or-less in line with what WP:LENGTH says so it would seem to reflect project-wide consensus fairly well. TompaDompa (talk) 21:34, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
- That probably would be were we differ, the "how" of ghostbusters is infinitely more fascinating than "because of capitalism in the 80s", but even if we assign equal importance to both areas, 10000 words or less is not a lot for specific subject articles with so much to cover.Darkwarriorblake (talk) 18:29, 12 July 2024 (UTC)
Regarding Supernovae in fiction
editHi, I saw that you reverted this edit with the rationale of it being overly detailed. I made that addition because the term "massive star" is potentially subjective without quantification. While I agree that this article shouldn't delve too deeply into technical details, it doesn't strike me as extraneous detail to clarify what a massive star is and I believe a comparison to the Sun should be understandable to a broad audience (although perhaps worded slightly differently). Thanks, Complex/Rational 14:53, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
- I understand your point of view, but on the other hand the sources we have that discuss the specific topic of supernovae in fiction don't go into this level of detail, and we should follow their lead. Linking to Stellar evolution#Massive stars is sufficient. Nevertheless, I added an explanatory footnote about why the Sun cannot turn into a supernova. TompaDompa (talk) 15:45, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
- Fair enough. That wikilink is still an improvement over before and addresses the technical details adequately. Complex/Rational 19:47, 16 July 2024 (UTC)
Help needed
editHey Tompa, I could use your help, or at least your advice. Another editor is being abusive and I'm wondering if I should go straight to dispute resolution or if I should try other approaches first. We had a long conversation that ended in a stalemate, but then I finally realized their point of view and changed my editing based on their feedback. Now they are getting upset and making threats based on small and harmless edits I'm making (adding a photo, adding a source, removing redundant wikilinks, etc). You can view the latest conversation on my talk page. Wafflewombat (talk) 20:53, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
- Having looked into this specific situation extremely little, I'll give you advice I should probably follow more often myself: try disengaging for a while and edit elsewhere in the meantime. You can always restart the conversation at a later point, when things have likely cooled down a bit. TompaDompa (talk) 21:07, 15 July 2024 (UTC)
- That is great advice, thank you. Wafflewombat (talk) 21:12, 15 July 2024 (UTC)