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*'''Keep'''. "reported on in the mainstream media." as noted earlier.--[[User:Connection|Connection]] 00:03, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
*'''Keep'''. "reported on in the mainstream media." as noted earlier.--[[User:Connection|Connection]] 00:03, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
*'''Delete'''. [[WP:OR]] — [[User:Ultor_Solis|Ultor_Solis]] • [[User_talk:Ultor_Solis|T]] 15:26, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
*'''Delete'''. [[WP:OR]] — [[User:Ultor_Solis|Ultor_Solis]] • [[User_talk:Ultor_Solis|T]] 15:26, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
*'''Keep'''[[User:Gnrlotto|Gnrlotto]] 06:55, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Revision as of 06:55, 7 January 2007

List of films with similar themes and release dates (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Here is the first nomination. This article consists pretty much of subjective comparisons of movies. There are exactly zero citations, and two shakey (at best) links at the bottom- a "discussion" and a "blog discussion." Obviously some movies will bear a striking resemblance to each other via ripoffs and such, but how do we draw the line? Are they similar because of genres? Actors? Plots? How do we define "similar release dates"? What critics and sources would we consider notable or numerous enough for movies to be "similar". This list is just too vague abd subjective. I think this fails original research and What Wikipedia is not. Wafulz 03:37, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete I've read about this in Entertainment Weekly, but don't have that article anymore, and from what I see here (and looking at random revisions in the edit history), this is completely unsourced, and both links are blogs. CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 03:46, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Seems like we're having a hard time coming up with an apt title for this article, and yes it is open to subjectivity, but I find the article very interesting and valuable for anybody interested in the film studio system. It's not as if it's a list of movies that make you feel good or something subjective by nature; it's a list of movies that seem to be made just to compete with another. Additions need to be moderated or the text should be changed so people better understand the purpose, though (having Master & Commander and Pirates of the Caribbean listed together is just silly) -Asriel 04:25, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom. Danny Lilithborne 05:28, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong delete. To compare to movies on Wikipedia without an independent source discussing it first is the very definition of original research: An editor went out and saw (ie researched) both movies and made his/her own decision about their relatedness and then decided, "I want to feel smart and tell the world about my discovery on Wikipedia!" Unfortunately, that's not the way this place works. I'm surprised that it survived the first nomination with people basically saying "Keep, it's an interesting subject". Axem Titanium 05:48, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep Lots of these similarities have been noted in major media. I grabbed three bullet points from the 1990s and easily found New York Times and Toronto Star articles noting the similarities. I've added the references to the article: [1]. Let's prune out the silly Original Research from this article and keep the good stuff. Cas510 05:54, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. The subjective nature of the list, and the almost total lack of external sources, makes this a clear cut case of original research. Reyk YO! 05:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. It already passed an AFD. Perhaps the nominator should have done his/her resaerch and noted that we want to keep this article. Calicore 06:42, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete indiscriminate list, highly subjective - ie: Flushed Away and Ratatouille (film) being considered similar because the protagonists are rats? Nevermind that the actual themes are wildly different. Possibly WP:OR. Concerns about WP:V. Criteria is way to subjective to be valuable. Resolute 06:44, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete I think this article would fail an ANOVA if you could run one. Miserably. Looks to me like within-group variance is at least as large as between group variance! In other words, it would be just as easy to match two films from different categories as they stand now as it is to agree with the match of the films IN the categories as they stand now. So I agree strongly with original research comments. Great point above on "Flushed Away and Ratatouille (film) being considered similar because the protagonists are rats? Nevermind that the actual themes are wildly different." There are tons of examples throughout the page of this. "Event Horizon (1997) and Sphere (1998), both involve an abandoned U.S. spaceship that contains a giant orb and members of the search or rescue crew who hallucinate their worst nightmares." You could just as easily argue that Nightmare on Elm Street should be on that list with the hallucinatory nightmares. While we're at it, I don't know about you, but those Aliens were pretty awful, and they were birthed as eggs (spheres) and Ripley does have nightmares... (*tongue in cheek*). If something like this is going to stay, I'd argue strongly that it should be stripped down to things that can be supported with citations(similar to the pruning comment earlier)...which, since there are currently no references, sounds like a fresh start might be a good idea. The list is also haphazard, so I don't think it meets Wikipedia's quality standards. Maybe these things would make more sense in the "Trivia" that appears at the bottom of some film entries.

Katsesama 07:52, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete this information absolutely. It's simply original research, and we shouldn't be expected to keep this garbage around on the basis that maybe some kind fellow will come along and clean it up. I'm more than happy to overturn the last AfD due to the ridiculous amount of non-arguments such as "I like it!", "It's useful!", and "It's interesting!" ' (Feeling chatty? ) (Edits!) 08:15, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete per nom. WP:OR and WP:NOT#IINFO are non-negotiable. MER-C 08:39, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, this is packed full of original research, and I agree that the relatedness may well be illusionary. A lot of the similarities seem to be related to the presence of stock characters common in a genre. Having said that, an encyclopedic treatment of this 'phenomenon' may be possible (but very difficult to do). This article is nowhere near, however.--Nydas(Talk) 13:01, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I've decided to withdraw this delete comment as sources have been added. Neutral for now.--Nydas(Talk) 17:07, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as original research and an unmanageable list. YechielMan 17:04, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Delete as unmaintainable original research. JIP | Talk 17:12, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I can see the case for this article, but it is currently unsourced. The only way we could have a list like this is if a good secondary source discussed the correllations. Tarinth 18:10, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep I think the idea has merit. Could be better organized and or written perhaps. Tuttt 20:45, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I just looked over this article again, and I think some contributers were confused as to its intention. Many films are/were listed just because they happened to have similar surface content (ie probably a coincidence), but the article should only be listing films that were made seemingly to compete with eachother (Deep Impact, Armageddon) or capitalize on a trend (Matrix, Thirteenth Floor, eXistense). Perhaps it should be retitled/repurposed (again), maybe to "List of films made to compete with eachother", which would be notable and would be much less subjective (and printed reviews could probably be used as sources). --Asriel 02:13, 4 January 2007 (UTC) (Used the wrong signature code first time)[reply]
  • Delete An unmanagable, subjective list of non-notable information stemming entirely from original research.--Nick Y. 22:35, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Wikipedia at its worst. Pavel Vozenilek 22:50, 3 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete. Pushing personal theories about relationship of two movies: original research. --maclean 00:45, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The idea has merit and I keep running into articles in the mainstream press that mention this phenomenon. Some of them contain suspiciously similar examples to this very list. I think it would be more productive to come up with more specific objective characteristics for what this list should and shouldn't contain, rather than deleting the whole thing. Ravy 01:29, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong keep - Criteria are relatively clear, and it's a phenomenon that's reported on in the mainstream media. Could be a little better sourced, but these are not just a bunch of coincidences. ProhibitOnions (T) 02:32, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I still maintain this list is arbitrary and unmaintainable. We have a vague definition of "similar release dates" which would, at best, be arbitrarily decided by the community as some form of consensus-driven original research- even then, we're still left with the whole principle of drawing a line somewhere- are movies considered similar release dates if they're in the same year? Two years? Five? How about ten? If we were to eliminate the date criteria, we'd simply be left with "lists of films with similar themes/plots/whatever", which could be indefinite and unmaintainable seeing as any critic could compare any two movies and declare them similar. This leaves out that there's a question of how similar two movies must be, whether through plot, actors, score, theme, etc. This whole article seems to hinge on an undefined concept of "similarity". I completely agree that it's a phenomenon noted in the press through common ripoffs and movies riding trends, but I don't think it can be made into an article because it's essentially a collection of "Hey, these two things are sort of alike according to so-and-so" --Wafulz 03:27, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I still maintain that this is a phenomenon that is widely reported on in the media. Have a look at this: [2]. I think it would be easy to find consensus that a year would be an appropriate cutoff for this phenomenon, and that we should make it clear in the comments of this article that people should not add their own original research, but should only add verified, notable similar films with similar themes and similar release dates. Cas510 04:05, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • How can it be easy to assert that? Would we be allowed to create articles for two years or more? This opens the door to all sorts of slippery slope arguments and bad precedents. --Wafulz 04:12, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • I'm saying it would likely be easy to find consensus, if we tried. All of the copycat movie articles I've read, and all the typical examples (Bug'sLife/Antz, Capote/Infamous, TrumanShow/EdTV) are very close in release dates, usually under a year. Movies take about a year or less to make; for two movies that are very similar to come to fruition within a year is notable. I'm going to keep trying to improve this article during this AfD, adding references, removing OR, and trying to find consensus on the talk page about what the list definitively is for. I thank you for bringing this article to mine (and others) attention. Cas510 04:50, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak Keep Like people have said above, the idea has merit, unsourced things should be put on probation for a fortnight and then removed though I believe. If you can't find sources for the facts given then delete the fact, not the article. Nobleeagle [TALK] [C] 04:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment regarding sources, I just added about 10 source links to the article in as many minutes. All I did was Google the two movie titles together and always found articles discussing or at least mentioning the similarities. Shouldn't be too hard to source every movie listed in the article, and any movie where a source can't be found can be removed. --Asriel 05:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong Keep Well researched and good to read. Thank you bringing it to my attention. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 08:20, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong keep Now that somebody has gone through and diligently sourced this, there's no grounds for calling it original research any more. As for Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information and Wikipedia is not a directory this article does not fit. It is a common phenomenon, as demonstrated by the size of the now-sourced list. The improvement has negated the original grounds for deletion.--JayHenry 18:48, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Being well sourced does not make it not original research. This is a common misunderstanding. It simply makes it good original research. All good OR is well sourced but reaches novel conclusions. The conclusions reached here are either novel or so specific and a nearly verbatim recounting or someone else's work as to be inappropriate for wikipedia.--Nick Y. 19:31, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete for reasons listed above. Classifications, to be valid, ought to have bright lines around them, not 'this-is-funny' lines. This list is mildly amusing, but it belongs somewhere else, not Wikipedia. Bigturtle 23:18, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. To take the first entry, no unsourced claims in "Hoodwinked (2006) and Happily N'Ever After (2007) are both computer-animated films that send up fairy tales. Both also happen to feature Patrick Warburton and Andy Dick.". (The claims are sourced in the articles on each film.) The addendum, "The Shrek series also bears a notable resemblence to Happily N'Ever After." is vague (and weasel wordy), but that's easily fixable, and not a reason for deletion. Looking at the rest of the list, I similarly see very few unsourced claims. — Kwi | Talk 23:40, 4 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That the information is verifiable is not the only criteria for inclusion on wikipedia. This article is a thesis that uses multiple sources to reach novel conclusion never before reached. OR just well written and supported and compelling OR such that it could be a chapter for a PH.D. in comparative filmology. It would never pass the thesis committee without good sources, but that is not how we judge articles here. At wikipedia they must be verifiable and not novel, otherwise it belong elsewhere like a novel or a thesis.--Nick Y. 20:56, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Never before reached? But those conclusions have been reached elsewhere. Have a look at the Washington Post article in the references at the bottom of the article. Cas510 22:47, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]