On Nov 16, 2006, at 11:30 PM, Sage Ross wrote:
There is some good stuff in your fiction essay, but I would rather see it incorporated (along with the fiction notability guideline) into the existing WP:WAF; I think support is building for combining WP:FICT and WP:WAF (and to whatever extent it isn't already covered, WP:NOT) into a general guide for writing about fiction.
My problem with incorporating it into WAF is that WAF is a MoS page, and while it is far and away the best part of the MoS, it is still MoS, and the MoS is a disaster area that nobody has cleared up yet.
I don't particularly like the way the issue is framed in your essay (diegetic vs. non-diegetic). Even aside from the jargon aspect, I think that talking about this issue in terms of in-universe and out-of-universe perspective better captures the spirit of what a Wikipedia article on fiction should be like. Diegetic information can be legitimate encyclopedic content on its own in some circumstances; your framing of the issue implies that plot summaries are generally inappropriate, except as background or support for specific non-diegetic information. Unless we think that (as some have argued) plot summaries are inherently a copyright violation, I'm opposed to trying to kick plot summaries out of Wikipedia. Limiting them, as WP:WAF advocates, seems like the most sensible approach.
Though in this case, WAF is in contradiction with WP:NOT, which states "Wikipedia articles on works of fiction should contain real- world context and sourced analysis, offering detail on a work's achievements, impact or historical significance, not solely a summary of that work's plot. A plot summary may be appropriate as an aspect of a larger topic." NOT is policy, so WAF is currently a bit in the wrong here.
Focusing on diegesis also emphasizes the text or artifact of the fiction, to the seeming neglect of broader out-of-universe context (e.g., the contexts of creation and reception, related works, etc.). At least according to the article "Diegesis" and as described in your essay, non-diegetic means aspects of the fiction itself that is not diegetic; i.e., the extradiegetic and metadiegetic levels, the domains of literary criticism and interpretation.
That's fair - I liked diegetic because it wasn't a term we made up, but I agree, I'm not using it with absolute precision.
-Phil