[Wikipedia-l] Nonfictional, factual, objective perspectives must apply to both stories and religions

[Virgil Ierubino]

I have two major points in the following:
 - As religions are disputed as fact, articles about them should conform to
the same style guidelines as articles about fiction.
 - These style guidelines can be cumbersome and suffocating for articles,
and disclaimers might be a better way to preserve NPOV.

As a (once) active participant in WikiProject Stargate, which tries to
improve Wikipedia's coverage of articles related to the science-fiction
media franchise Stargate, I am all too aware of the importance of contextual
tone when writing about what is non-factual. It's not correct in an
encyclopedia to have an article about a fictional character, e.g. "Sokar",
and then state that "Sokar took over the universe in 2003." The article
should come from the perspective of "Sokar is a character from the
science-fiction series Stargate..... .....and during a major story arc
written by Martin Gero spanning 3 episodes, the character took over the
universe."

It is clear why this kind of clarification is needed. Sokar has not taken
over the universe. If the claims were about "Jack Bauer" "defeating
terrorists" it would sound more plausible of course: it is imperative to
clearly mark what is fact and fiction! It is a fact that "24", the fiction,
depicts certain fictional events.

Most articles do this to a fair extent already. However, I am concerned that
the focus for the Writing About Fiction guidelines is only on things like
Stargate. Religions apply to. Seen as these are disputed as fact, statements
cannot read "If the pilgrim dies before entering Mecca, their soul is sent
into limbo, where Allah will judge them by the purity of their soul and
their lifetime devotion to Islam and the words of Muhammad" (from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajj). It is not encyclopedic fact that people
who've never been to the Hajj will have their souls sent to limbo for
Islamic judgment. This needs to be clarified as "Muslims believe that..."

It's either all or none: either fiction and religion articles must both
contain these clarifications, or none. And I think none might actually be
easier:

There are some types of articles (or just sections in articles) that by
their very nature are going to be 95% a documentation of non-factual things.
These include articles (or sections) about plots or religions, etc., etc.
Seen as there are so many articles/sections of this type, and prepending
every line with "It is believed..." or "It was depicted..." can suffocate
content, I was wondering if it might not be better to just have a disclaimer
template? Something to place at the top of a section, reading "The following
section discusses fictional events as depicted in [Stargate]" or "The
following section discusses the beliefs and opinions held by [Muslims]." The
template can be taken as temporary until someone rewords the section purely
factually.