Wikipedia:WikiProject Soap Operas

All articles within this wikiproject's realm of influence must follow all commonly accepted guidelines and policies, mainly the article titles policy, the Wikipedia Manual of Style guideline (and its subpages on fiction and on television), as well as the notability guideline. Nevertheless, the following recommendations relate some of these rules specifically to soap opera-related topics.

Program articles

A soap opera article should include:

• The name of the series (in bold italics), network affiliation, first airdate and, if applicable, final airdate
• A brief overview of notable historical and current storylines on the show
• Cultural impact of the series and/or its characters
• Notable cast members

Character articles

Notability standards

All soap-related articles, and character articles in particular, must meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines, including the general notability guideline. Though there is no special guideline for the notability of fictional elements, a topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject.

An article should be created about a soap opera character only if the character is notable within the series and has been the subject of third-party discussions. Otherwise, the character should simply be included in a "List of characters" for that particular program.

Character articles should always be written from a "real world" perspective, and should definitely not consist simply of in-universe plot summary. As such, it should include:

• Real-world dates for when the character was created
• Which actors have played the character, and when
• Any awards which were won by the actor for playing that character

The article should not be used for a collection of storyline trivia about the character. As a rule of thumb, only those events which were significant enough to have been written about in third-party sources should be included. Remember that we are here to create an encyclopedia, not to provide a comprehensive guide to soap opera storylines. Wherever possible, try to discuss the character in "real world" context: Why are they important to non-fans, how are they affecting modern culture, what have they done that is historic in a real-world context. If a detail is only interesting to those who watch the show, it is probably not worth including in the Wikipedia article. See

See the "Examples" section lower on this page for samples of good articles.

Character article format

Articles should include:

• The {{Infobox soap character}}, with basic information included. See the template documentation for important notes on usage.
• A
  lead paragraph
  which indicates the name of the character, when it originated, current or last portrayer, and a very brief summary of the other material in the article. A good lead encapsulates the entire article in a couple of paragraphs.
• Notation of all of actors that have played the character, and the dates; this is usually done in the infobox, and often summarized in the lead section.
• Storyline summary; 500-1000 words maximum
• A list of the awards that have been won for the role
• Sources and references. Every article must have
  verifiable
  sources such as newspaper and magazine articles that talk about the character, or at the minimum, links to character biography pages on the official website for the series (per policy, fansites are usually considered unreliable). If a character is not notable enough to be mentioned in outside press, then they're not notable enough to have an article on Wikipedia!
• Appropriate categories; see Category:Soap opera characters

Character relationships

Soap opera characters tend to have complex family and romantic relationships. Obviously, notable relationships can and should be mentioned in the text of the article as they apply to a character's storylines. Though extensive relationship lists within the body of articles may seem helpful for navigation, article quality assessments have generally deemed them trivial and as having a negative impact on article quality. To keep articles visually appealing and manageable, relationships should be "listed" only in the infobox. The {{Infobox soap character}} contains a collapsible section to accommodate this. In order to keep these lists manageable, use judgment on which relationships to include.

• For most characters, relatives listed should be limited to closer family and generations having some relevance to the character in question. Remember, more distant relations (step-great-grandchildren?) will be noted in the infoboxes of other characters more closely related to them. This is especially important for long-running characters, who tend to have an excessive amount of relations. See Template:Infobox soap character#Relationship parameters.
• For miscarriages or other unsuccessful pregnancies (common in soap operas), list these only on the pages of the parents, along with the year that the event occurred. In many cases a footnote may be preferred to present this information.
• To conserve space and improve readability,
  Common names (usually the article name) should be used for links in infoboxes. For example, Sami Brady instead of the piped link Samantha "Sami" Brady DiMera
  .

In general, articles should be about individual characters, rather than about couples; however bonafide supercouples and other highly notable couples may be eligible for their own Wikipedia articles if:

• They have won a major award as a couple
• They have appeared on multiple "couple" lists
• They have been cited in outside (non-soap) press as a notable couple

However, large amounts of information should not be repeated on multiple articles; consider instead interlinking individual character and couple articles in a logical way to present all pertinent information without redundancies.

Plot summaries

Keep summaries brief.

Plot summaries should be kept brief, only as an overview of the topic. The main purpose of Wikipedia articles is to provide encyclopedic information about a subject, such as its cultural impact, and not to provide a detailed and lengthy description of story events. The Wikipedia articles can then provide links to other websites which have more detailed storyline information.

"Brief" in this context means a plot summary of approximately 500 words for a typical character article, though more may be appropriate for longrunning characters where there has been a great deal of real-world impact.

Storyline sourcing

As agreed by WikiProject participants, storyline sections do not require sourcing, as the programme itself acts as the source. These sections can be verified by watching the series.

Tense

Articles about fiction, like all Wikipedia articles, should adhere to the

In 1995, Amanda schemes to seize control of Warren's fortune, making several enemies along the way; she is murdered on January 22, 1996, leaving a string of suspects.

The basic intent of this tense guideline is to stylistically differentiate between real-world and fictional events. Past tense may sometimes be used for plot information which is framed by real-world content and described from that perspective:

When contract negotiations broke down, Stevenson was replaced by actress Judith Cray in 1976. Cray's Angelique immediately seduced longtime series patriarch Trent Dunham (original cast member Larry Braxton), branding her a villainess in viewers' eyes. Ratings soared when Trent's wife Olivia (Barbara Swain) finally learned of the affair and confronted her rival. Olivia slapped Angelique and called her a "whore," a choice the network had debated and initially regretted, before the anger of key sponsors was overpowered by a flood of viewer accolades, press coverage, and the highest ratings the show had seen in five years.

Prose vs. lists

Avoid lists within articles whenever possible.

The

Trivial lists such as "Crimes committed" or "Previous occupations" are also inappropriate, as they generally fail notability requirements. If events and details are notable, they will have a natural place within the text of the article.

Images

The use of non-free (copyrighted) images is of course tightly regulated to protect the rights of copyright holders, and all editors should familiarize themselves with the non-free content guidelines, policies of image use, and non-free use rationale guideline so our articles and images stay in compliance. In the context of soap-related articles, we need to remember to use only as many images per article as are necessary, and as few images as possible. Specifically:

Usage

• One main title image to identify the show in Show infobox
• One image per performer to identify the character in the Soap character infobox
• Subsequent images as necessary, to illustrate only notable elements discussed in the article, such as characters/relationships, storylines, or real-world coverage on magazine or book covers
• For articles featuring several characters, try to only feature images of the most notable, as necessary. Too many images in such articles may appear to be a gallery or repository of images, which push the boundaries of fair use.
• For a non-free image of the actual soap opera actor, if that person is living and neither retired nor deceased, do not add it to a biography of the living person. An image of that person may exist with either "some rights reserved," an expired copyright, or a failure to comply with copyright laws.

Image description page

Images themselves must have certain information on their description pages, in particular the names of articles in which the image is used must be noted (not just auto-displayed under "The following pages link to this file") and each use must have its own fair use rationale.

The image upload process can automatically insert the proper

For images used in multiple articles, each use much have its own rationale, so the separate templates {{