Talk:Alley Cats Strike

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This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:

Ben Blatt (June 26, 2014). "The Longest Movie Plot Summary on Wikipedia". Slate. So what's the longest plot summary on Wikipedia? .. the honor goes to the immortal 2000 Disney Channel original movie Alley Cats Strike.
Ben Blatt (June 30, 2014). "The Screenwriter of Alley Cats Strike on Inspiring the Longest Plot Summary on Wikipedia". Slate. Do you wish Wikipedia editors had left the page intact? Honestly, I think they made the right decision for their site, though I admit it was nice to see the Alley Cats Strike passion—so nice, in fact, that I set up www.alleycatsstrike.com to host the full, now-deleted synopsis. A lot of work was put into writing that, and it seemed a shame to let it go to waste, particularly since it's now a record-holder {{cite news}}: External link in |quote= (help)

Plot Summary and "Obsessed Fan" Vandalism[edit]

As in the article from slate.com, this was the longest plot summary on Wikipedia. The past few days has seen some attempts at fixing it. In order to address issue, I made a few different edits before settling on one that seemed most correct based on the root cause. The reason this plot was not concise was pointed out by Ben Blatt: as a single, obsessed fan added way to much information to an obscure article. I would argue this is a type of vandalism. When a culturally, irrelevant movie has the longest plot summary on Wikipedia, it makes the site look bad and makes the article difficult to read.

The plot has been reverted to the state pre-"obsessed fan vandalism," which removes the negative aspects of the obsessed fan (too much plot) and keeps the positive (identification of songs from the movie). 24.3.16.236 (talk) 05:39, 28 June 2014 (UTC) perhaps I shall make an account and tackle more of these obsessed fans.[reply]

But the article is not irrelevant. -- Taku (talk) 06:19, 28 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The article is not irrelevant; however, the plot summary is. If you read the wikipedia article How to write a plot summary, you will see that the level of detail in the current plot summary is too much. Understanding the story does not depend on every little detail.

On 16 May 2012, 23,000+ characters were added to the plot in one go, which is relatively the current state sans some minor edits. ‎ On 19 Aug 2012, the article was marked for clean up. No clean up has happened since then.

Considering the version of the Plot portion of the article before 16 May 2012 gave a concise (though perhaps not complete) plot summary, that point in the article's history seems the best place to start in order to produce a quality plot summary by wikipedia standards. Please read both versions completely and let me know if you really think the article is better with or without the 16 May 2012 additions to the plot section. (talk) 06:37, 28 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Slate[edit]

There is no reason to include the Slate articles as references if they are not going to be used. Plugging them as references for unchallenged material is citation spamming. We can discuss whether or not to summarize the Slate coverage in the article body, but if we don't do that, we do not need to use them as references. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 19:41, 1 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In addition, reviewing the interview with the screenwriter, if he really did create the blog page to display the overlong plot summary that came from Wikipedia, it needs to comply with one of Wikipedia's licenses: Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 19:44, 1 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

He does state on the page, "So, here is the once upon a time longest Wikipedia movie summary (reprinted with the hope that none of the authors of it will mind or will let me know by comment, tweet, or another way if they do)." Maybe someone can send him a message on Twitter to follow the instructions above. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 19:45, 1 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

He does provide a link to the list of all authors of this page. See (c) here. So, I'm pretty sure he's gotten the memo! -- Kendrick7^talk 00:03, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We can include Slate. It's a reliable source. If Slate discussed the movie in some other non-Wikipedia context, we might include that also. Just because the subject of the source is about Wikipedia doesn't give it a special consideration. The question is if this "achievement" on the website Wikipedia is significant enough for inclusion in an encyclopedia article about Alley Cats Strike, regardless of where that encyclopedia article is hosted or written. -- GreenC 14:12, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I agree with you completely. :) I think it is problematic to include it without saying anything else at all about the film. I've poked around for sources to use, and I think any contemporary sources to use (e.g., reviews) will be behind paywalls. If this article had more substance, I think there could be more of a case to include the Slate content as just another detail. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 14:20, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We have to start somewhere adding content. Every article is in a state of development on the road to featured status. Along the way it may look like a fun house mirror with some things more emphasized than others. WP:WEIGHT comes into play here, a single sentence is a minimum coverage (or possibly an External links). -- GreenC 15:42, 2 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As we all know, per WP:RS, any un-referenced material may be challenged and removed. It does not follow that it's somehow wrong to provide references to material just because it has not been challenged. (Slate (magazine), though you may not have heard of it, is a WP:RS.) However, I fail to see how including the director's own website which details the plot of the movie would be a violation of WP:EL and I have, as such, restored it. -- Kendrick7^talk 23:58, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In point of fact, WP:EL explicitly says one purpose where external links are allowed is that they provide "information that could not be added to the article for reasons such as... amount of detail...." As the previous plot information was removed exactly for providing too much detail, removing the external link would an obvious attempt at having it both ways. -- Kendrick7^talk 00:16, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Including the two Slate articles is appropriate. --evrik ^(talk) 21:36, 6 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You have not explained why it is appropriate. The details in the article are unchallenged, so you're just putting in these sources as references just because they exist out there. You can make a case to add either of them to the "External links" section, but if they're not being used to add content, they should not just be plugged in as references. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 22:03, 6 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Again Erik, you are working backwards on this. We should provide the references we have right now per WP:RS. Who knows what will be challenged tomorrow? Or a century from now? Strike while the iron is hot! Maybe IMDB is a good enough general ref, maybe not. But per WP:PRESERVE let's keep all the references here we can get. Collecting references is our basic function as a tertiary source. We can argue about how to gloss them and whatnot, and future generations may decide to rewrite our understanding completely from what we've left to them for references. But references themselves should be sacrosanct. (I am spilling no more pixel-ink on this matter, but I hope you take my words to heart.) -- Kendrick7^talk 03:02, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If we use them as references, we would need to add content to the article body. Do you want to talk about the Wikipedia article having a very long plot summary? It seems overly minor to me, especially in the absence of other details about the film in the article. (There's surely reviews out there, just behind paywalls because of how old the movie is.) Otherwise, we could include them as external links. Which approach do you want to take? Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 03:15, 8 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Using a reference doesn't mean more info from that reference needs to creep in. I admit that's a risk, and it's basically fine, per WP:NAVEL, to not want such a risk. But it's too much to fuss about either way on such a low importance article. I think they are at least OK as EL's. -- Kendrick7^talk 03:12, 11 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia is one of the largest websites in the world (top 5 I believe), it's a major part of popular culture. The Slate story is significant for inclusion because Wikipedia itself is significant and notable. That's an objective fact not "navel gazing". It wasn't always the case but has become more so in recent years. Also NAVEL doesn't say to exclude the type of self-reference here, in particular when it discusses the plot summary, quotes from the script writer and other things that tie directly to the film itself. -- GreenC 03:56, 11 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I find the plot-summary detail awfully reflexive, though. What do we say? "Someone pointed out that the film had a super-extensive plot summary in its article on Wikipedia, but right after they pointed it out, it was fixed to be a proper length"? I mean, it makes me think of these stories reporting that a Wikipedia article got vandalized as if it was some major act of hacking. Can we not just include the Slate links as external links and be done with it? Unless there's some non-plot-summary detail you think we should include. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 11:54, 11 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

But this is different from those "Wikipedia was vandalized" sources which are news filler. The source did an objective/mathematical study that wasn't trivial but an actual word-count of every plot summary on the Wikipedia. It then makes some interesting observations about why this film may have garnered the longest plot on Wikipedia. The second source about the removal of the plot is interesting in that the film's script writer liked it so much he created a memorial website for it. This is unique and interesting stuff. -- GreenC 14:06, 11 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Plot revisited[edit]

Just wanted to let you guys know that I've grabbed the freaky long version of the plot summary and dropped it into my sandbox so that I can work on giving the article a real plot instead of our current little one sentence summary. Erik might remember me and my plot efforts so hopefully he can speak to my good will in that regard. For whatever it's worth though, this one is not even the worst that I've poked at. That honor belongs to a scary as crap Pinnochio flick I worked on a few years back (it was 3200 words when I started on it, I brought it down to 800 and some other editors followed behind me to get it down to 700ish). At a guess based on my first skim of the long version, I think this one will be around 500 when I'm done. But I've not seen the film so I will just be assuming all of that fancruft was factually correct and proceeding from there. I would appreciate any help you folks can give on double checking that sort of thing once I drop a complete but trimmed summary in place. Cheers and happy editing. Millahnna (talk) 14:05, 29 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That would be greatly appreciated! :) Erik II (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 16:34, 29 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

And thank you for fixing my section heading typo (in case anyone thinks I'm not okay with that sort of thing). Millahnna (talk) 17:22, 29 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]