Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Writing about fiction

An arts-and-media MoS proposal

FYI

 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

At Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Proposal: Adopt WP:WikiProject Video games/Article guidelines into MoS, it's been suggested to merge that WP:PROJPAGE into MoS, as one of the last remaining genre/medium-specific style guide kinds of pages that isn't in MoS, especially since someone's already put a guideline tag on it, and given it a misleading MOS:VG shortcut.

Strangely, several people from the WP:VG wikiproject have shown up to make what appear to be WP:OWN-based arguments against the idea. I hope that people from other media and arts projects, all of which have MoS pages (largely authored and maintained by people from those projects, but without a claim of absolute control by them) can participate in this discussion and assuage the unreasonable fears of people in that particular project. Promotion of topical style advice pages into MoS has not proven any kind of problem for WP:VISUALARTS, WP:ARTS, WP:FILM, WP:TV, WP:COMICS, WP:ANIME, WP:NOVELS, WP:MUSIC, etc. Meanwhile, the continued fragmentation of such a page to an "un-MoS" page (while simultaneously claiming to be an MoS page, somehow), is misleading and a recipe for conflict.

Or, if you think there's is some kind of problem, feel free to give the opposite opinion. I'm not telling anyone how they should !vote. I'm pointing out that that all the arts-and-media projects and arts-and-media MoS pages share a common sort of history, as well as the same practicality of their advice being included in MoS or shunted to a wikiproject backwater where no one is apt to take "guideline" claims seriously; it's the same across all these projects and pages. So is the increased level to which they agree instead of conflict, by virtue of MoS maintainers ironing out WP:POLICYFORKs between them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  23:39, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

List of exemplary articles pruning

I still feel this section is too long, even after I pruned it last year. We should probably narrow down each category to 4 or 5 entries for the sake of succinctness. What do you guys think? —Deckiller (t-c-l) 10:56, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Deckiller, with this edit, you added, "Furthermore, articles with an in-universe perspective tend to cover fictional aspects in greater detail, inviting unverifiable original research such as fan theories and unsourced analysis." But articles on fictional topics tend to cover fictional aspects in great detail regardless, meaning whether the article is written from an in-universe or real-world perspective. And including fan theories is fine when the theories have received substantial media coverage and are presented in a real-world fashion. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:39, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Fair enough - I tweaked that sentence. That whole statement just seems a little vague to me still, even for an introduction. I'm not sure if there is an objective correlation between original research and the perspective of the article. (Not saying that an in-universe perspective is good). Now, one could argue that an article with in-universe perspective and undue weight looks more enticing to a passer-by who wants to hit the "edit button" and add some conjecture or theories. Hmm. —Deckiller (t-c-l) 23:43, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, that's better. Thank you. I don't think that this is needed, but I can live with it. I'm not seeing any issues with the section, but I'm open to changes being made to it. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 01:42, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Question about asking questions in plot summaries

So in the current version of Unsane (film), the plot synopsis reads, "A young woman is involuntarily committed to a mental institution where she is confronted by her greatest fear — but is it real or is it a product of her delusion?" I thought to myself, surely this cheesy language is unencyclopedic, but I've been noticing many more articles with plot summaries that ask similar questions. Any thoughts on this? Would this be considered an in-universe perspective? Sro23 (talk) 07:37, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

@Sro23: When I see questions I usually jump to "is this a copyright violation of the book jacket?" or some other such conclusion. So check to see if that's the case first. Otherwise, it's not an expository tone to ask a question, i.e., it's not a question of in/out of universe but simply bad writing. --Izno (talk) 13:57, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Agreed. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 14:28, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Also agreed. Questions like that are normally an editor's attempt to write something 'exciting', rather than something encyclopedic. A question in that form isn't a summary of the plot at all, and should not be presented as if it were. MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:20, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

RfC: Is it encouraged to have references for key or complex plot points in plot sections?

Is it encouraged to have references for key or complex plot points in plot sections? Bright☀ 12:58, 10 March 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

Previous discussion; relevant guideline. This RfC follows (repeated) attempts to tell other editors that the current state of affairs where most articles about fiction don't have inline sources in the plot sections is not the desirable state of affairs:

• Sources in the plot section are not discouraged.
• The current MoS guidelines encourage sources for key or complex plot points, and to ward off original research.
• Removing sources (or reverting changes in general) because they are "unnecessary" or "not needed" is not a valid reason to revert edits, references should be removed only if they are detrimental. (For example, references should be removed if they cause visual or syntactic clutter. This argument was never raised in the given content dispute; it would be difficult to argue that two citations in a six-paragraph section are "clutter").

Attempting ward off the inevitable RfC arguments against the RfC itself:

• This is not an RfC about a content dispute, it's an RfC about plot section references across all Wikipedia articles. The content dispute was linked to illustrate the problem, which is Wikipedia editors who claim local consensus over this particular Wikipedia guideline. This RfC is meant to assess whether broad consensus exists for the guideline as it is currently written.
• This RfC is not malformed. It is neutral and brief. Everything after the first signature is meant to provide the relevant background to the neutral and brief request for comment, but does not have to be neutral and brief in itself.
• This is not instruction creep. The instructions already exist in the guideline, no change is proposed, this is only an attempt to gauge consensus for these instructions. Even if it was a proposal for new instructions, they would still be necessary as emphasis that inline citations are better than unspecified implicit citations, even in plot sections and even if most articles with plot sections do not have inline citations.

Bright☀ 12:58, 10 March 2018 (UTC)