Kerbal Space Program Wiki:Discussions/Fiction

This poll is about if adding fictive material should be allowed to what extend.

Currently there is no consensus about this topic and multiple pages containing fictive material exist. Non-fiction is anything which is provided by the game, real-world physics or can be assumed like mentioning of IKEA in Category:RKEA Inc. or MPEG in Category:Moving Parts Experts Group. Also names of craft may be mentioned in pages to describe screenshots and also wouldn't count as fiction.

This poll is not about fiction in userspace (any page beginning with User:… or User talk:…), tutorials and campaigns.

Arguments

Pro fiction

1. Fiction could be helpful for new players to decide a mission, like sending Bill Kerman to the Insular Airfield.
2. People often like to see people's ideas, and add to that universe, producing a conglomeration of ideas that could provide an amazing fan universe that could otherwise not of been created had fiction been forbidden
3. By allowing fiction, people can get everything KSP from one KSP website (KSP wiki) (See 'One common Place' Below)

Contra fiction

1. It can be hard for readers to distinguish between non-fiction and fiction (See 'Distinguishability' Below)
2. Who decides what to write?
3. There are other places for kerbal fan fiction (ex: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/forums/40-KSP-Fan-Works)
4. People should imagine things (e.g. missions) for themselves
5. Not everyone likes to see other peoples ideas, and just want to know the facts

One common place

The wiki allows many user to have one common place to write their fan fiction. There are other places where fan fiction exists, not many new, or even some veteraned, KSP players know about them, as everyone likes to just get everything KSP from one website, i.e. KSP wiki.

Distinguishability

For an inexperienced reader it can be difficult to distinguish between non-fiction and fiction. This is a problem because this wiki explains how KSP works so readers usually come here to get an explanation for various effects.

It is possible to use templates like {{Fiction}} to mark articles or sections about fiction but this can be applied every time. For example when within a section only a part of it is fiction. For example:

“

Bill Kerman as happy as a kerbal should be in Eva outside the Reco Space Station in the good old days when he worked for Insular Inc. — Article, about Bill Kerman as of 02:44, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

”

Another problem is when linking to a section of a fictive article. For example previous revisions of Crew had sections about all three default kerbals. When now someone wanted to link to Bob Kerman the author would use Crew#Bob Kerman to link to Bob. The problem here is, that this will jump over the fictive warning. A reader might not notice that and think the information there are real.

A possible way to circumvent it is to use a special name space like “Fiction”. The current timeline article then can be placed in Fiction:Timeline. Also fictional information can then be separated there from the non-fictional articles. Of course the reader then needs to be aware so linking to it like [[Fiction:Bob Kerman|Bob Kerman]] should only be allowed from other fictional articles.

Authorship

One different problem with fiction is that this is wiki. Obviously there is no author and other might and will edit pages. The question here is then, who decides what should be left in the article. This could lead to an edit war but different to non-fictional articles it might not be possible to determine which version should be used if it is about the artistic content.

Whilst this can be a tricky one, if more than one person imagined different things about the same subject, then the subject page could just contain links to the different people's imaginings, or have a 'like' system for (registered?) users, with the most liked one appearing on the page & the others with their links at the bottom of the page.

Votes

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Eligibility

To avoid using sock puppets only users with an account created prior to the 16th January 2014 00:00 UTC are eligible. Account created since are eligible if they made at least non-fictional edits in two different articles.

Pro fiction

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Contra fiction

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Don't accepting this poll

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