Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Writing about fiction/straw poll

Straw Poll

The below was a straw poll held to determine whether Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction) should be adopted as a guideline, a policy or rejected as either.

Guideline

Writing about fiction should be accepted as a guideline, part of the Manual of Style.

1. Fieari (based on comments)
2. BrianSmithson 14:20, 9 June 2006 (UTC) The last thing I want to see is all-out war on in-universe articles. It should be good enough to make this part of the MoS to get people to begin practicing it.
3. DJ Clayworth (based on comments) ...and now based on an actual vote too. DJ Clayworth 14:34, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
4. ragesoss 22:33, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
5. TheDJ (talk • contribs • WikiProject Television) Lets get it in MoS first, we can always turn it into a policy later. This is one of the best and most fluent guideline creations I have experience btw. Good work everybody.
6. Postdlf 23:57, 8 June 2006 (UTC) I've been advocating this for a long time and I'm very pleased with how this has turned out. I'd support policy as well.
7. — TKD::Talk 03:52, 9 June 2006 (UTC) I think "as a guideline" is sufficient for now. I would not be philosophically opposed to this as policy, but, as was pointed out above, from a practical standpoint, there are too many in-universe articles to start enforcing this as policy, at least right away.
8. I like it, but it's new, lets see how things work in practice. Not only that, but the main MOS is called a "style guide", not a policy. How you write something shouldn't be forced, although some aspects of this guide I can see as policy, but not the whole thing. -- Ned Scott 06:35, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
9. I don't think there's any realistic chance this will be adopted as a policy, and without a field test we can't be sure that there aren't cases for which it needs to be modified. So guideline. Deco 09:21, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
10. I like it; MoS guideline definitely. Ziggurat 09:53, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
11. I was just looking to suggest writing something like this, and here it is. Guideline at the very least, policy preferable, although i thought the Manual of Style was policy rather than a guideline. I thought it was a style guide, but that the use of the style guide was policy. Hiding Talk 11:45, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
12. I support it. In a perfect world articles would be rated for their importance, and articles below the reader's chosen level of importance would be invisible to that reader. In the absense of such a system, discouraging unencyclopedic content is good.Gerry Ashton 23:56, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
13. Guideline first, but would support policy if those creating detailed in-universe articles dismiss this as "only a guideline" and ignore it. But the less confrontational option should be tried first, by tagging the articles with the a suitable template, e.g. {{in-universe}}. Regards, MartinRe 11:46, 12 June 2006 (UTC)
14. I support it as a guideline as well - I think it's great, but we should live with it for a while before making it policy. --Brian Olsen 21:00, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Policy

Writing about fiction should be enacted as a policy; merely a guideline is not enough.

1. Improv - confirmed, although as guideline would be better than nothing. --Improv 10:40, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
2. A guideline is not enough. This is important if WP wants to be taken more seriously for its notoriously crufty fiction articles. Soo 16:22, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
3. Support. If this is made policy it can be used as both the carrot and the stick, and will be MUCH more effective in reducing fancruft. If it does not get passed as a policy I support is as a guideline. Zunaid 10:58, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Other

Writing about fiction should not be given a formal mandate or needs to be changed first.

1. Reject —Mira 06:50, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Although it is a poll, would you mind elaborating a little bit more? Just curious since I've seen such strong support for it. -- Ned Scott 06:54, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

his one major contribution to wikipedia is Book of Shadows (Charmed). Zzzzz 23:37, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Pardon me? I've contributed to more than one article. As for my reasons, I reject the premise of the proposal entirely. Obviously, it has strong support, but I felt I should register my objection. —Mira 09:31, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I think the question was why do you reject it? DJ Clayworth 18:02, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

1. Reject without reservation in its current form. Waaaay too strong. - SoM 12:57, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Closure

I've closed the poll, it's been running for a little over a week and the consensus in there indicates fairly strongly that people see this as being implemented first as a guideline, although there were a number of people who felt it could or should be upgraded to a policy were it to be disregarded. For those keeping score, there were 18 confirmed votes, of which 16 saw it as being formalised and 2 rejected it. The majority is a strong consensus, and within that consensus 13 favoured guideline as a first step, again a strong consensus. Hiding Talk 13:24, 16 June 2006 (UTC)