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Given that the fundraising drive on Kickstarter to reprint the currently out of print compilation books is on pace to be one of the most successful such drives ever, I'm thinking it merits a mention in this article. 24.214.230.66 (talk) 05:36, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a reliable source for that? DP76764 (Talk) 16:04, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The IP is probably referring to this addition, which I reverted (my reasons are in the edit summary there). rʨanaɢ (talk) 18:48, 15 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Here are some reliable sources on the topic: [1], [2]. It is receiving media attention. Powers ^T 02:29, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If there's enough coverage in reliable media then I guess it might warrant a single sentence (e.g., "the Kickstarter fundraiser for OOTS set whatever Kickstart record"). Certainly not the press-release-y detail that was in the edit I reverted. rʨanaɢ (talk) 04:26, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Why the revert? It was made after this very discussion, and the section was explicitly written to avoid "press-releasy" by only including verifiable facts and "whatever Kickstart record" was reached; it's not my fault that it reached more than one record. What would you deem acceptable, and why in the world it should be a single sentence if there is more that one verifiable fact? Diego (talk) 15:16, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

PS - also note that Kickstarter is a reliable source about itself, so there's nothing "press-releasy". Diego (talk) 15:18, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't referring to whether the source was reliable or the information neutral; what I meant by "press-releasy" was that move than a brief sentence would be giving undue weight to non-encyclopedic information that is not essential to a reader's understanding of the topic. I'm a fan of OOTS, too, but this is not an "event".

Also, please don't edit war, as you did here. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:30, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I just thought that edit warring was a single editor reverting several times the same content from several other editors and that WP:EW doesn't mention 'status quo'. Don't worry, I won't add the section until there's some consensus. You're right about the "event" tag; I wasn't aware that it was meant for "a hundred or more editors". But I think that this was given due weight, that it's appropriate under the Publications section and that it provides encyclopedic information essential to understanding the level of support provided by OOTS followers. Now that we have measured our sticks, and given that we already have a third opinion (by the original poster, that seemed to find that level of detail relevant), what's the next step in dispute resolution? And I restate my question: if there are several records reached by this funding drive, how do we document them? Diego (talk) 16:08, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

• An entire subsection for this minor event (definitely not "essential to understanding" anything about the comic) is, by far, undue weight. Mention it? Yes, absolutely. But it doesn't deserve more than a sentence or two in an existing section. $0.02 DP76764 (Talk) 16:30, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Then this would be acceptable with two sentences directly under Publications? How about this:

On Jan. 22nd, 2012, Burlew launched a Kickstarter ^[1] campaign to get The Order of the Stick: War and XPs back into print, which eventually raised enough money to reprint the whole book series.^[2] The drive was the most funded creative work in Kickstarter up to that point^[2] getting more than ten times the original goal. ^[3]

(fact-reference, fact-reference, fact-reference, fact-reference.)Diego (talk) 16:58, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Seems like a reasonable distillation of the event. The only nit I would continue to pick would be for more variety of 3rd party sources, if possible. DP76764 (Talk) 17:45, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This is what Google News can find: [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] (some of them in German). Diego (talk) 17:55, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Seems fine to me. 129.33.19.254 (talk) 17:20, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Now that we have rough consensus (three green lights and an acceptance with a caveat about size) I've reinstated the content to the Publications section, including the additional non-german references. Diego (talk) 07:14, 17 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Burlew is maintaining a list of media mentions here. Could be a useful meta-reference for this article. Powers ^T 00:42, 23 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, now that we have documented the Kickstarter "minor event", shouldn't we say that Burlew has committed to create up to nine new stories as a result of the several goals met at the reprint drive? (as reported by a third party here). The updates give details of the themes and background of each story, and three of them will be for characters chosen by backers as part of a premium pledge. Definitely think this merits more than a single line after all. Or are upcoming new stories not important to "a reader's understanding of the topic"? Diego (talk) 13:28, 19 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

My sarcasm detector is going through the roof! Anyway, committing to create a few more stories might be worth one line, but anything more than that at this point would likely violate WP:CRYSTAL. 99.126.204.164 (talk) 16:14, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That's OK, one detaileded sentence will be proper due weight. There's some detailed material being confirmed by the author, which makes it better than just speculation (per Crystal "Wikipedia includes up-to-date knowledge about newly revealed products" and "It is appropriate to report discussion ... whether some development will occur"). My sarcasm came when an event that is clearly having a big impact on the OOTS creator Rich Burlew and his comic project was dismissed as a press release, when independent commentators are providing coverage about its implications. Due weight is about providing proper coverage, no more than its objective importance would require but certainly not less. Diego (talk) 17:59, 20 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Rjanag, your version of the plot depicts an inaccurate description of the story. First, only Vaarsuvius (and his familiar bird) knows that the Draketooth clan is dead because of Familicide, not the whole order. Second, Vaarsuvius already knew that the spell killed all who are descended from the black dragon; what s/he discovers is that it also killed people without any dragon blood. It's true that it's too soon to tell how this will be relevant to the overall story, but that's one more reason to get the details right. Diego (talk) 15:00, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I got the idea that Draketooth had somehow been distantly related to the black Dragon. Jokem (talk) 19:21, 23 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The distinction between who exactly realized the problem is, for now, exactly the kind of minute detail that does not belong in a plot synopsis. It might be relevant if V's trying to keep the information secret becomes a major plot point, but we are not a crystal ball. That's why, as I said in my edit summary, it's really too early to be adding t his information anyway; if you can't accept a summary-style edit but insist on going into unnecessary detail that you don't even know is relevant yet, then it's better just not to include this information at all, which is what the editing instructions say.

The distinction between dragons descended from the black dragon and all descended from the black dragon (even without dragon blood) is also precisely the kind of minute detail that does not belong in a plot synopsis. And your assertion that V "discovers" the spell also killed non-dragons is your own personal reading. There is nothing in the comic to suggest that V didn't expect the spell to behave this way; to the contrary, V knew that it would kill every creature related from the dragon. V didn't expect the spell not to kill non-dragons; s/he simply didn't stop to think about that consequence (note that the latest strip, #843, is called Lack of Foresight).

Finally, your edit to the plot was not really an improvement; in addition to being unnecessarily long, it also left out the fact that the Draketooths are descended from the black dragon. Keep in mind that the plot summary is supposed to be accessible to people who didn't read the comic; our readers shouldn't have to figure out this important detail on their own.

In summary: we don't yet have enough information to know whether the fine-grained distinctions you pointed out are important for the plot, so they should not be included. One way to accomplish this is to allow a brief and less detailed summary; another way is to not try to summarize the very latest strip, and remove this addition entirely for now. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:56, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the removal. I don't think that a difference of 42 characters and 8 words makes my version too long, but that's a minor contention. The main thing is that we can't tell wether the "second-degree bloodline" detail will be relevant, but we certainly shouldn't imply that the whole order has found about the Familicide spell. Diego (talk) 16:09, 6 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

At this point, anything after the Order left the Empire of Blood is probably excessive detail, since we simply do not yet know how anything will fit into the larger narrative. Powers ^T 20:24, 9 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

==

@Diego Moya: I'm adding refimprove, in-universe, and bloated plot tags because the article lends undue weight to the plot and universe of the webcomic. The article has a fairly sized "characters" section covered entirely by primary sources, a fairly sized "fictional world" section entirely sourced by primary sources, and notably a particularly long "plot" section, which is almost entirely original research. The article is simply giving undue weight to the plot of the webcomic. Can you show me a few reliable sources that go into depth like this about the plot of The Order of the Stick? Has any reliable source ever discussed what happens in Blood Runs in the Family? I'd love to trim all the non-notable original research out myself, but I haven't read the webcomic and would have difficulty judging what aspects are most important.

With regards to "We have TV series articles where one chapter gets more description": I agree. we should get rid of a lot of those too, unless the plot of specific episodes get discussed in detail by reliable sources. Wikipedia is not a fan wiki, and therefore is not an indiscriminate collection of information. The plot details is what this website is created for. ~Mable (chat) 08:08, 25 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

If your concerns are with the other sections, why do you put the tags in the Plot one? This section is consistent with the MOS:PLOT guidelines, and in fact is an example of the real-world perspective. The amount of plot included is a fairly summarized exposition of the main events in each book, and contains little to no details of each event. It serves its encyclopedic purpose of letting readers know what each book is about, without incurring on the indiscriminate amount of detail that a fan site would present; in fact, there have been extended discussions at this page to keep it as tight as possible; huge amounts of detail have already been trimmed out, and what you see is the very minimum required to describe the series of plot twists in a multi-year, 1000+ strips-long work. If you haven't read it, you are not qualified to judge how much the work has been summarized, and how relevant to the primary plot are the events included in the current plot section. I assure you that each of the events described in the current plot document story arcs that span dozens of strips, and several of them have been developing through the six books and are still open; you wouldn't understand this work's storyline without them, except if you transformed the current detail into a bland generic "group of heroes fight monsters and bad guys, trying to save the world" archetype. You won't find an exercise of contention like The Order travels to Wooden Forest, where they slay a black dragon and loot its hoard in order to retrieve a rare "starmetal" to repair Roy's broken sword elsewhere; each of this sentence's achieved goals has major repercussions later in the story, and the multiple steps and roundabouts that the characters take to accomplish them have been removed from this plot description.

You seem to misunderstand the way plot sections work; it is expected that they are written from primary sources, and the community is OK with that, as long as the full article shows a balanced view of the relevance of the work; which IMO the Commentary, Reaction and Publication sections achieve. If you think other articles also have too much plot detail, the problem may be that your standards aren't aligned with those of the community. I quote the relevant part of the guideline (emphasis mine):

The plot summary for a work, on a page about that work, does not need to be sourced with in-line citations, as it is generally assumed that the work itself is the primary source for the plot summary. However, editors are encouraged to add sourcing if possible. If a plot summary includes a direct quote from the work, this must be cited using inline citations per WP:QUOTE. Sometimes a work will be summarized by secondary sources, which can be used for sourcing. Otherwise, using brief quotation citations from the primary work can be helpful to source key or complex plot points.

Last but not least, if you still wish to add tags to the article, please place the real date when you have created them, rather than recycling tags from years-old discussions.

Diego (talk) 10:48, 25 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I've always been particularly opposed to forming a habit of using primary sources for plot summaries (see my essay, for example), but sure, I'll get off your back about this. I don't believe that the article as it is now is a good representation of how the reliable sources discuss the topic, but it is definitely miles ahead of plenty of other webcomic articles. Don't get me wrong, I do think that the plot section here is better summarized and presented than in many other articles (*cough*), but I'm just of the school of thought that an encyclopedia article doesn't need to present an outline of a long-running plot at all. ~Mable (chat) 11:05, 25 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

151.30.95.230, tThe problem with your edits at Oots is that sentences like "generated some controversy among long time readers" are interpretations that need a reference to an independent source, i.e. some third-party publisher making that point. The forums themselves can only be used for direct quotations of the author attributed to himself. Diego (talk) 15:05, 14 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]