[WikiEN-l] Rethinking Fictional Topics

Thu Nov 16 19:39:14 UTC 2006

I've been, for a while, working on a way to codify existing best  
practice on writing articles on fictional topics, combined with a few  
ways to forge compromises between those who want Wikipedia to include  
all manner of information from within fictional worlds and those who  
consider such information fancruft.

There have been three main aspects of this work, all of which are  
now, I think, ready to go live.

I don't pretend that these are any sort of magic bullet for the  
problems surrounding fictional topics, since so many of those are  
social problems, not policy problems. But I think these do offer a  
way of fixing the underlying policy problems and of promoting a way  
of working on these topics that is less "us vs. them" and more just  
plain "us." I welcome any comments people have at the early stages of  
their deployment.

1) Sourcing

The blanket restriction on blogs, message boards, and Usenet that  
existed for some time was crippling to articles on fiction and  
particularly popular fiction. Too much high-quality information on  
these topics is self-published online, from blogs by creators to  
important fan debates. Such sources do need to be used with care, but  
they need to be allowed in, especially if we want our articles on  
fiction to be able to advance beyond pure plot summary.

Thankfully, [[WP:RS]] is clearly on its way to replacement by  
something, whether a revision of it or SlimVirgin's proposed  
Attribution policy. Either way, the consensus has clearly shifted  
towards an understanding that sources require a measure of case-by- 
case evaluation.

2) Coherent policy

Our policy on fictional topics is currently spread across an MOS  
page, a notability guideline, and [[WP:NOT]]. This meant that policy  
on fictional topics often had to be explained anew every time.  
Furthermore, the explanations at several points were less than  
satisfying, and did a poor job of showing why these policies are good  
ideas, making them seem arbitrary and ripe for ignoring.

To this end, I've, with the help of several people, worked on this:  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Phil_Sandifer/Fiction_essay

It's a fairly compact proposed guideline that offers a good  
explanation of how to deal with fictional topics. Virtually  
everything in it comes from other guidelines, though the explanations  
are often redone. I'd like to move it into the Wikipedia namespace  
soon and get consensus as a guideline, so any comments before I do  
that would be appreciated. Expect it to exist as  
[[Wikipedia:Fictional topics]] soon - I'll post again here when it does.

3) Alternative Projects

There is clear demand for good in-universe guides for many fictional  
worlds, hence the large numbers of people trying to use Wikipedia for  
them. Thus we need to do more than just declare it forbidden - we  
need to create a viable alternative. Thankfully, Wikia and other  
projects have already made this possible.

In order to make this easier for Wikipedia, I've created this: http:// 
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:FreeContentMeta

This is a meta-template that can be used to generate boxes that look  
like the existing sister-project boxes for other free-content sites  
running MediaWiki. So far I've created one: [[Template:Babylon  
Project]], which is only in place on [[David Sheridan]] at present. I  
intend to put it in place on some more Babylon 5 related articles  
over the next day or two, and then to start creating templates for  
other areas and taking them to the relevant WikiProjects so they can  
get wider adoption.

Since most of Wikia is GFDL, we can readily transclude our in- 
universe articles over there, and replace them with out-of-universe  
articles that contain boxes linking.

These boxes are also colored green to distinguish them from official  
sister projects.

As I said, I welcome any comments on any of these ideas and  
developments, particularly #2 and #3.

-Phil