Editing Incubator escapee wiki:WikiProject Soap Operas (section)

====Notability standards====
All soap-related articles, and character articles in particular, must meet [[Wikipedia:Notability|Wikipedia's notability guidelines]], including the [[Wikipedia:Notability#General notability guideline|general notability guideline]]. Though there is [[Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)|no special guideline for the notability of fictional elements]], a topic is presumed to be notable if it has received significant coverage in [[Wikipedia:Reliable sources|reliable sources]] that are [[Wikipedia:Verifiability#Sources|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 [[WP:CRUFT]] and alternatively [[WP:NOCRUFT]]. 

See the "[[#Examples|Examples]]" section lower on this page for samples of good articles.