| This page is an official policy on the Forgotten Realms Wiki. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
This policy aims to help clear up whether or not a new topic of the Realms deserves its own article. This is not to be used in all cases, rather only when debating whether a topic warrants its own article or be included in a related article. If more than 3 sentences cannot be written about a subject, it does not deserve its own page. The only exceptions to this guideline though would be broader subjects such as items, creatures and people that can exist almost anywhere in many different capacities. Of course there are some vagaries as to the various writing styles (some people could stretch certain articles out to fill the requisite 3 sentences) but as stated before this is just meant to be a proposed guideline. The aim is not to stretch an article to three sentences so that you can place it on its own page. The aim is to use this guideline sensibly to determine whether or not an article is worthy of its own page.
For example, if you search for The Breaking or Dragonturtle Day you will be redirected to subsections of Marsember, as they are events related with that city. They are also both 3 sentences or shorter. It would be quite difficult to write more than this on these subjects. Midsummer on the other hand is celebrated throughout the Realms and is 4+ sentences.
Reasoning
Some articles, like Star ruby, describe unique, rare yet non-specific objects that cannot really be traced to any region, person, group or anything else within the Realms. Though there are only 3 sentences written about it, they are found throughout the Realms and thus warrant an independent article. It would not be possible to sensibly incorporate this information within a broader article.
Pros
- Less stub pages.
- More dense and longer articles (the ones like Marsember).
- Information on related subjects is a bit easier to locate.
Cons
- Some pages (like Marsember) may become too full of what some might see as trivial material.
- Fewer pages overall.
- Conditions are somewhat vague (any suggestions regarding this would be appreciated - please use the talk page).
