On 22/10/06, charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews(a)ntlworld.com> wrote:
Phil Sandifer wrote
The problem is... well, let's pull up a solid
midlist Marvel
character - Speedball. 1603 word article. Only 500 words of that
pertain to the real world instead of the fictional world of the
comics. That's the problem. Fancruft is in many ways a poor choice of
terms for this.
Fair point. I think what Phil is saying is like this: people tend
to write without 'breaking the fourth wall', in a voice that suspends the
disbelief.
While I think it sensible for an article mostly about a fictional
character to be about the fictional character within the fictional
universe, I agree it is terrible to write an account of this without
breaking the fourth wall.
But in this specific instance, the [[Speedball (comics)]] article breaks
the fourth wall quite well. There's a section on publication history
before his "fictional biography" and a couple of sections later on about
other media he's appeared in.
And even in the case of a hypothetical article that's nothing but
"fictional" content, I agree that the article is incomplete but strongly
disagree with the notion that the way to fix it is to delete the
fictional stuff. Just add the real world context stuff instead. Not as
quick and easy a solution, but better for Wikipedia in the long term
(which is the only term I think is significant).