In Dev articles in other categories[]
moved up from the below thread
I disagree with this rule. It makes it needlessly hard to find this content. Why shouldn't Fraggle Rock (movie) be in Category:Fraggle Rock? That's where I looked for it when I was trying to find the article. Powers 17:59, November 19, 2010 (UTC)
- Yeah, that makes sense -- I wouldn't want to make it harder to find content that folks are interested in reading.
- One of the reasons why we're keeping them separate is that many of these projects don't actually happen -- they slide into Unfinished Projects if they're abandoned. I think it's possible that the Fraggle Rock movie will be one of them. I don't think it makes sense to list cancelled projects alongside the real ones -- for example, putting Muppet Time Travel in the Muppet Movies category alongside The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper. That means our categories become a weird mix of things that exist and things that don't exist but were mentioned in a magazine once.
- That being said -- we might be too harsh in protecting the categories from In Dev stuff. A different guideline would be to put the In Dev stuff in the appropriate category, but take it out of those categories if the project stalls and the page moves into an Unfinished category. What do folks think? -- Danny (talk) 19:56, November 19, 2010 (UTC)
- I think it depends what it is. Books and CD's and movies usually appear on Amazon about 2 months before they're released, so they're pretty certain to happen. Some things might change like cover art or content, but we can always change that as we start to know more. But for the various movies, they seem to have been in development limbo for years, and none of them seem to be going anywhere, except for the new Muppet movie, which is finally in production. So I'm not sure. I know we've talked before about at what point things should become unfinished, but if we put the Fraggle Rock movie in the Fraggle category, it might stay there for years, and we should decide if that bothers us. -- Ken (talk) 03:15, November 20, 2010 (UTC)
- I think Ken has a good point, that we might vary it according to type or on a case by case basis. As far as Powers' concern over users being able to find something, that's reasonably legitimate re the Fraggle movie, though it would mean just plunking it in with the subcats (which is how it currently is with the main show article and the animated series, so it's not that big an issue). It's more of an issue with things like Power of the Dark Crystal, where a) it's easily linked from the main movie article and title by now almost infamous enough that it's easy to find (compared to "such and such the movie" formatting) and b) more importantly, it's really only stuck around in "development" because about once a year someone at Henson either says "it's still coming" or puts out a rather content-free press release. So I'd just as soon prefer to leave those as they are. Muppet Wiki is *not* primarily a news source, but I can easily see the categorization leading to further rumors (i.e. "Muppet Wiki put it in the main category, so they must know something!") That's obviously not a risk with books and Sesame DVDs where it's basically a matter of waiting for retail shipping or ticking off the exact date (and we have a tendency sometimes to forget to check back when it's out). Things like action figures, replica puppets, collector's busts and the like are far more of a middle ground (many do come out, but delays, cancellations, or companies going under have happened), and movies are always the riskiest. Sometimes in fact we recategorize or even remove (I saw we'd deleted The Happytime Murders, both because it's post-sale and at the time all there was was a press release from '08, but now it's back in the news so we may want to cover it in a little more detail on Henson Alternative beyond the).
- So, Fraggle Rock, where it is still a high search and there has been progress and enough of a history to be interesting, I'd say a tentative yes to moving to the main Fraggle category, and definitely on stuff like the books and other "reliable" merchandise which we tend to lose track of (cancellations of videos from Sesame Workshop almost never happen, of specials? Pretty common for both Sesame and the main Muppet group), but not on any "Henson options this/is shopping this project around" stuff or Dark Crystal and so on. Basically a kind of assessment combining likelihood, whether recategorization may in fact just further confusion, and frankly, how decent the article is on itself. Two to five sentence "This has been announced" or presskit cut and paste pages are always kind of sad anyway (if it progresses, they'll grow beyond that; if they don't, we tend to merge the pressline into the master Unfinished list anyway, not even a solo article). How's that? -- Andrew Leal (talk) 03:57, November 20, 2010 (UTC)
- I should point out that I agree some categories don't make sense for "in development" items. For example, Category:Muppet Movies implies "finished movies", obviously, although maybe a Category:Canceled Muppet movies as a subcategory might make sense. But even if the Fraggle movie is never made, I think its history and development is of interest to people reading about Fraggle Rock and it seems natural to so categorize it. Powers 17:55, November 20, 2010 (UTC)
- I think it depends on the category. For example: I don't think Silly Storytime (an upcoming Sesame Street DVD) should be in "Category: Sesame Street Video" yet (that's for finished, released, and actual home video releases). However I think it could be in "Category: In Development" and "Category: Fairy Tales" (whether finished, unfinished, abandoned, or in development it's still a fairy tale releated article). So I think the article we have on the Fraggle Rock movie should be somewhere in the Fraggle category (reguardless of if the film is finished, unfinished, abandoned, or still in development it's still a Fraggle Rock subject). -- Brad D. (talk) 17:18, November 24, 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure I understand the guidelines that have been proposed. It seems like the one thing we're agreeing on is that the Fraggle movie is interesting and we shouldn't hide it. Beyond that -- I don't understand the proposals.
If we're using Andrew's probability guideline, then I would actually put Fraggle way low on the probability scale, even lower than Power of the Dark Crystal, if that's possible. Yes, we keep hearing little bits of news, but that news is always that the project is falling apart. I think the real problem here is that we have a separate article for the Fraggle movie, and we don't even mention it on the main Fraggle Rock page! What we should do is have a section on that page with a summary of the major developments. That way, people who are looking for that information will find it easily -- it's silly that we've forgotten to do that so far. -- Danny (talk) 18:20, November 24, 2010 (UTC)
- That honestly sounds like the best compromise to me. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 18:29, November 24, 2010 (UTC)
- I'd say it's a good idea regardless of what we do regarding categories. But it seems to me that a project that's been canceled or is in development limbo has enough information to support a whole article, it ought to be able to be found via the regular category structure, even if we keep it out of certain categories to avoid being misleading. It shouldn't have anything to do with probability of completion. Powers 20:51, November 29, 2010 (UTC)
- By the way, in a recent article on The Muppet Mindset, someboyd posted a personal correspondnece response from Corey Edwards regarding the currently known (to Edwards) progress on the movie, being that it's on indefinate hold. --Minor muppetz 13:43, December 2, 2010 (UTC)
Sourcing[]
I'm being strict about sources right now, because there are lots of articles in this category that don't attribute any sources. I think that's irresponsible.
Between message boards, fansites and blog posts, it's possible for information to get distorted in a game of telephone. We've just seen a good example of that on Talk:Fraggle Rock (movie), where we were citing a blog article that inaccurately described a Brian Henson interview.
The problem is that this wiki then becomes a source as well. If we join that game of telephone, then it feeds back on itself -- people on a message board think that a rumor has been confirmed, because they see it on the wiki.
As the wiki matures, I'd like to see us become more consistent about citing sources. We're not in a mad rush to add basic information anymore, so we can take the time to find quotes and add references.
That is especially true for In Development articles. I think we owe it to our readers to be sure about every sentence we post about upcoming projects. We should be sourcing everything, with links to websites and current press releases.
I would rather err on the side of not having information on a project, if we don't have a reliable source for it. If the project is actually moving forward, then more information will come up. We're not a news site -- and we're definitely not a site for posting every rumor that pops up on a message board. -- Danny (talk) 08:42, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
- Also, I don't think we should use other category tags for In Development pages. These aren't movies and toys and books yet; they're just ideas and plans. -- Danny (talk) 14:23, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
- Yeah, that was the original rule for the category, in fact. Somewhere along the line, it fell by the wayside. I'd agree with returning to that, and waiting to add any additional category tags until the actual product or production is out. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 17:44, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Fraggle Rock Figures[]
It's been announced weeks ago that there are plans for a collection of Fraggle Rock action figures, to be released by MINDstyle, but there isn't a page for these figures. I'd like to start a page (if nobody beats me to it), but should I cite The Muppet Newsflash for these? Or the recent Tough Pigs article about Toy Fare 2008, which has info on these and other upcoming Henson toys (some of which don't have articles yet, either)? Or should I cite somethign else? --Minor muppetz 22:31, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- I'd cite Tough Pigs, for I think there has been talk on this just recently somewhere else. I actually didn't know there was toy fair coverage at Tough Pigs, and just created a page for the Corgi International figures. If you are creating the pages, I'd try and dig up some information from a few sources, but that's just my opinion. -- Nate (talk) 22:49, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- Well, I don't know what other non-forum sites there are that includes info on these. --Minor muppetz 23:01, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
- That's the beauty of Google! You can find out information about the companies, and news sites that might have reviewed the merchandise. Just like a research paper, it just takes a little time and digging. -- Nate (talk) 00:09, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
- And if you're not sure about the sources, create the page anyway. When you make a page, it gets everybody involved in that research process. If you don't, then we don't know about it. So make the page, cite whatever sources you have, and then everybody gets to play. -- Danny (talk) 01:47, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
- That's the beauty of Google! You can find out information about the companies, and news sites that might have reviewed the merchandise. Just like a research paper, it just takes a little time and digging. -- Nate (talk) 00:09, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
- Well, I don't know what other non-forum sites there are that includes info on these. --Minor muppetz 23:01, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
from in development to unfinished[]
Do we have any kind of rule that determines when an "In Development" project becomes "Unfinished"? There have been many times when an upcomming production has been publicly announced as comming soon, but eventually there stops being any news. Should we have some sort of rule as to when to move something to "Unfinished", perhaps a certain period of months after the last official announcement of it being in the works (perhaps there could be an exception if a certain time period of release is announced and then it never gets produced or released)? --Minor muppetz 03:29, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
- I don't think we can or should try to assign any hard and fast rules to this. Rather, just common sense. Ernie and Bert Special, for example: announced in 2004, intended for 2005, no further news in 2006, so it was re-categorized. I don't think trying to assign a deadline of specific months helps; rather, if the project was announced but nothing at all presented (sketches, no cast announced, no trailers, etc.) after a year or two, then it's fair to remove it. Or likewise, if there's an official announcement that a project has been shelved (as with America's Next Muppet), but not just because there's been no news in two or three months or so on (as with the anonymous rumors centered on The Power of the Dark Crystal, which continued until an official press release debunked it). It's certainly possible that, at an estimate, anywhere from a quarter to half of the items currently in the category may not get made, but I don't see any reason to hasten the post-mortem unduly. Development is always a long period. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 03:45, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
"The" problem[]
Is there a way to change the alphabetizing so things like The Skrumps will show up under "S" in this category? — Joe (talk) 19:16, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Template[]
I was playing around and came up with [[:template:Development|this]], what do people think about [[:template:Development|something this template]] for the top of the "in development" pages (rather than the old template)? It matches to other templates we use (talk/attention...) a bit more than the current one (and it similar to wikipedia's future events templates). Plus it brings more attention to the fact the item is of the "upcoming", "in development", "in the works" variety. Thoughts? -- Brad D. (talk) 06:03, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
- I also expanded the category description to be a but more specific on what's here and how these articles should be treated. -- Brad D. (talk) 07:45, 17 November 2006 (UTC)