Wikipedia:Television article review process

This is an essay.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

Wikipedia articles are expected to conform with the notability guideline, which states that: one way in which articles can be presumed notable is that A topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject. There is no guideline that this is required for notability, other arguments are possible, and it is policy that guidelines are to be interpreted flexibly. Articles must also conform to Wikipedia content policies, including but not limited to Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:No original research.

Television-related articles are governed by specific guidelines laid out at Wikipedia:Notability (television) and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Television, to the extent there is consensus on them. Accordingly, independent assessment of new articles is often needed to determine notability or to highlight areas of potential concern. Similarly, older articles may require periodic review to ensure continued compliance.

Review process

Identifying problem articles

New and existing articles should be regularly assessed by editors. Articles which lack references independent of the episode should be tagged with {{Notability|episode}}.
If you have tagged more than one episode of a show as above, then consider adding {{subst:TVreview1}}, which results in {{TVreview1}}, to the parent article's talk page (i.e. "List of episodes", Season page and/or main programme page), so that contributors are made aware of the problem.
Tagged articles are automatically added to Category:Articles with topics of unclear notability.

Listing for review

Editors should use the above category to find articles that are now due for review.
On the talk page of the article the articles would be redirected to, preferable a List of Episodes pages, create a list of problem articles, and make a suggestion as to what should be done.
Once a review section is created on the talk page, the talk page of the article on the programme should be notified that a review is taking place. In addition, any applicable WikiProjects should also be notified.

Reviewing the episodes

All interested editors and contributors are invited to comment on the episodes and provide suggestions on what should be done with the article.
If more than one episode from a programme is listed, do not assume they are all in the same state: each needs to be assessed and they may need reviewing separately.
If the discussion has been open for a week, and consensus seems to be reached, then any editor may close the discussion by confirming the actions agreed, and enacting them.
Leave the discussion open for longer than a week if consensus is not reached, or discussion is still in full flow. There is no deadline.

Actions following review

Merge/Redirection: If consensus is reached that the article clearly fails the guidelines, and displays no improvement, or potential for improvement, then the article should be redirected to the appropriate parent article. Some of the content may be suitable for merging to the parent page(s).
- Placing a {{R from merge}} template after the redirect instructions will ensure the page is not deleted in the future, resulting in the loss of the history.
- The talk page should be checked for and cleared of any templates that might otherwise continue to list the page for assessment.
- Leave a message on the parent talk page to inform editors of what has occurred. It is helpful to provide links to the old articles.
- Any circular links on the parent pages should be removed.
Clean-up: Articles which have established their notability but still require work should receive the appropriate clean-up tags or comments left on the talk page, according to decision made at review.
Deletion: This review process is not about deletion. However, this process might discover articles which policy dictates must be deleted. Such articles might be copyright violations, hoaxes or blatant advertisements. In which case, use the appropriate deletion process.

Frequently asked questions

My article has just been tagged. Does this mean I only have fourteen more days to work on it?

Don't panic; the fourteen days is just until it comes up for review. Use this time to make improvements to the articles, or discuss on the talk page what you intend to do. Have a look around to see what sorts of secondary sources and out-of-universe context is available for your episodes. You can mention this at the review, even if you haven't had time to add it to the articles.

What do I do if my page has been redirected?

Do not worry; the content is not lost. It can be retrieved from the edit history of the redirect page, but it must be improved before posting in a new article. If you feel it has been unjustly redirected, post for re-review.

Why should these articles not stay? After all, Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia

True, but there is a distinction between what technically can be done, and what reasonably should be done. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and has official policies about what should and should not be included.

WP:EPISODE and WP:NOTABILITY are only guidelines, and it is not obligatory to follow them.

Guidelines are not set in stone and should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception. However, guidelines are based on policy, which usually should be followed.

My article is a stub, and stubs are allowed on Wikipedia.

Yes, but only if they conform to WP:NOTABILITY (that is, they have the potential to become well-referenced articles with real-world importance).

It doesn't matter if these articles don't conform to guidelines yet. There is no deadline

Wikipedia operates by consensus. There is a general consensus that articles should have references independent of the subject matter.

Who can assess and review articles?

Anyone.

The place of WikiProjects

Individual WikiProjects should take responsibility for managing this review of their own articles. Any editor may tag their articles for review, but should encourage the WikiProject to perform the reviews and assessments. If this is not occurring on a regular basis, the article review should be started.