User talk:Firebomb 87

Direct quotes

Please do not change direct quotes to fix grammar or spelling, such as you did on Aly & AJ. Thanks! --Yamla 20:34, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Re: Kyle Broflovski

Oh, we know without a doubt that Kyle's mom mentioned that he was diabetic, it's just that adding information from primary sources about a fictional character can be tricky. One would have to consider the amount of coverage this trait receives throughout the run of the series. The fact that Kyle has diabetes played a minor role in just one episode, and it never comes into play in any of the other episodes or in secondary sources. One problem is that if it were to be included, there would be an undue weight issue because countless other minor "one-off" traits that bear the same amount of coverage are excluded from the article. You would have to make the article evenly focused by mentioning these (Kyle says he likes hip-hop music, basketball, is a computer hacker, fell in love with a girl named Rebecca, is good at Guitar Hero, etc.) to counter this. Doing so would then put the article in violation of Wikipedia's guideline to writing about fiction, which states that an article about a fictional character should focus more on "real world" information surrounding the character rather than just using the primary source to make repetitive descriptions of fictional character himself, and that it should not include a simple "throwaway comment" as a source of information. Such an entry of minor traits may also lead some to consider it fancruft, in that the information contains no encyclopedic value because of its lack of coverage in secondary sources, and would only be of interest to fans of the show.

I myself once asked about something similar to this, and this is what I learned. Hope this helps! - SoSaysChappy (talk) 02:15, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

No problem. Always keep on the lookout for information in secondary sources (a source that isn't the show itself) about stuff like this though ...because you never know. One very similar example is when Tweek's mom mentioned in passing that Tweek had ADD. There was a news article written about how parents are sometimes too quick to misdiagnose their children with this disorder in an effort to excuse themselves from fixing their child's behavior or to remove blame for themselves for making their child behave erratically, and it cited the South Park episode as an example. Stuff like this is definitely worthy of being included in a Wiki article. :) - SoSaysChappy (talk) 03:33, 21 October 2009 (UTC)