Warcraft Wiki talk:Lore policy/Archive01

Vote on current incarnation

Proposal

• See Project:Lore policy.

Votes

Yes:

1. Yes User:TopDread 01:58, 14 May 2006 (EDT) - ()
2. Yes Dispressa 17:02, 18 May 2006 (EDT) - (Accessibility and retention of all canonical lore, no matter how outdated or later contradicted, is desired. If the mechanism requires resorting to technical a/o real-world terms, then so be it.)
3. Yes Ralthor 16:03, 24 May 2006 (EDT) - (Tried to read all the discussions, there were a lot, but this seems to be a good comprimise.)
4. Yes Mikk 06:47, 13 June 2006 (EDT) - (Wow, contentious subject. While I'm not a lore nutter, I have to say that I really like the policy as currently written from an objectivity and legibility standpoint. So I'll call it a Yes unless someone calls me on it :-))
5. Yes Schmidt 07:59, 13 June 2006 (EDT) - (Good ideas here.)

Comments

1. Vote! --Fandyllic 12:23 AM PDT 13 May 2006

   If I really have to... Schmidt 07:59, 13 June 2006 (EDT)

• Vote closed. I'm moving this straight to Adopted since I don't see any implementation notes that need to be taken care of. --Mikk 11:58, 20 June 2006 (EDT)

The Need for a Lore Policy

There has been some recent discussion regarding how to deal with conflicts between different sources of lore, what should be considered canon, and what should be given precedence. If we concentrate the discussion here, hopefully we will be able to develop a consensus and write a formal policy in this area.

Discussion on the issue is currently occurring in several different places, including:

• Talk:Centaur (Eastern Kingdoms)
• Talk:Retcon
• User talk:Aeleas#RPG, Novels, Comics, vs. WOW
• User talk:Baggins
• User talk:Ragestorm#Contradictions

Outline for discussion

A few questions that could perhaps be resolved is:

1. Which of the following are considered canon?
   • World of Warcraft
   • Earlier games in the series and their manuals
   • The novels
   • The RPG books
   • Interviews, forum posts, etc.
2. Should material not reflected in WoW that comes exclusively from the novels, earlier games, and/or RPG be included in this site?
   • If so, should it be distinguished by a banner or similar method?
3. How should conflicts or changes in lore be handled?
   • Should any sources of lore be given absolute precedence, so that any contradictions from other sources are simply disregarded?
   • On the flip side, are there any sources from which any contradictory lore can be disregarded?
   • Should some conflicts be explained, with both versions presented?
     • If so, should this always be done in clear real-world terms, or lore-based terms where possible?
     • e.g., the difference between discussing Warcraft II manual as a real-world thing and discussing it as a sort of historical document within the Warcraft universe.
   • What qualifies as a retcon, and how should they be handled?

--Aeleas 15:40, 13 April 2006 (EDT)

"Should material not reflected in WoW that comes exclusively from the novels, earlier games, and/or RPG be included in this site?

• "If so, should it be distinguished by a banner or similar method?" --Aeleas

I think it should be okay to post any Warcraft lore here, since it provides context for World of Warcraft. WoW has some its own lore problems due to the need for specific game mechanics (see Talk:Gutterspeak for some interesting discussions). We should provide categories and banners for non-WoW lore, but maybe especially for Warcraft RPG, since it seems to range farthest afield from most lore from games and the official website. --Fandyllic 6:59 PM PDT 13 Apr 2006

I've created a draft template at Template:RPG.--Aeleas 09:16, 14 April 2006 (EDT)

Suggestion

It looks like there might be enough consensus and demand for a Project:Lore policy page as a sub-policy of Project:Writing policy similar to Project:DNP policy and Project:NPOV. Perhaps Aeleas could start filling in a Project:Lore page? If I see it gets created, I'll give it a quick editing sweep and put it up for a vote. --Fandyllic 6:40 PM PDT 24 Apr 2006

Citations

I've been thinking more about what would work best, and perhaps what we would most benefit from in terms of dealing with conflicting information, and ensuring the quality and verifiability of information in the wiki as a whole, is some sort of citation system to easily refer to the games, the manuals, the books, and the RPG sourcebooks. Wikipedia has <ref> tags that generate footnotes automatically, but we don't seem to have that functionality. I think brief in-text citations, like at the end of this sentence, might work.{{Cite|LG|256}} Naturally not everything would need to be cited, just things that are of unclear origin. Wikipedia also has a great system of allowing people to add a "citation needed" note in text, so that unverified claims can be either properly cited or removed.--Aeleas 12:35, 27 April 2006 (EDT)

I've created a template, {{tlink|Cite}}, and a corresponding index at Project:Citation index, that could serve as a simple citation system. I'll try it out on a few articles.--Aeleas 14:29, 28 April 2006 (EDT)

Lore guidelines

I've put a draft proposal on the main page of this article for discussion; please give it a read and comment on it. As it contains general guidelines rather than specific, formal procedures, I think it would make more sense as a Guideline than a Policy.--Aeleas 17:44, 12 May 2006 (EDT)

I'm afraid I have to strongly object to your edits to the proposed guidelines, Baggins, as being quite opposed to the spirit of the principles I was trying to put forward. Lore changes can be confusing enough without mixing in conjecture to try and pretend they didn't occur. When something is retconned, calling the old version "Flavor Lore" or "Other Legends" implies that the previous account of the lore is still intended to be part of the Warcraft Universe in some way. While it is possible that it is, we've crossed into the realm of pure speculation.

For example, the recently outdated version of the Sargeras story isn't, as far as we know, an existing "legend" within the Warcraft Universe, or "Flavor Lore" intended as a conflicting history of events. It's simply a description found on the website and in the War3 manual that has been replaced by a more recent version. Any attempt to reconcile the two conflicting versions should be done in a separate article clearly labelled as speculation.--Aeleas 18:26, 12 May 2006 (EDT)

While you may disagree, it was an idea that Head book keeper Ragestorm and I have agreed upon within the last week. Please take it up with him, further if you have further complaint. The intent behind it is to keep material related to a topic within its own topic, but seperate it from main part of the article as being only myth, or no longer valid. This way if someone is looking for a story they may have once read, they will still be able to find it but see that a change has been made with the most current lore all within the same topic. It is to make sure conflicts are seperated(it is ok to refrence the term retcon within the other legends section itself, as well as point out if something is canon or noncanon when specifically known). "Other legends" is also to include patch lore from patch notes as well, that may not necessarilly be actual lore, but are blizzard's injoke way of explaining away patch changes.

As for your thoughts on patches and the "other legends" explaination, I think that's our best course for now.

-- Ragestorm, Head Bookkeeper

-Baggins18:33, 12 May 2006 (EDT)

While the Bookkeepers community team is of unquestioned value to the wiki, Policy is determined by the official voting process, not by Ragestorm. In any case, what I'm proposing runs completely contrary to your edits. If you object to the general principles that I've put forward, then I welcome discussion here about them, but altering the proposed guidelines to make them self-contradictory serves no purpose. If you support the "Flavor Lore" and "Other Legends" approach strongly, I would urge you to write a separate guideline proposal, so that we could debate the relative merits of each.--Aeleas 18:48, 12 May 2006 (EDT)

Obviously, we're at an impasse; the one question I want to pose to you, Aeleas, is do you believe that the previous, outdated, yet clearly established canon, should just be deleted, or chronicled somewhere? I'll admit that the heading "other legends" doesn't really fit. And Baggins, don't throw titles around on pages like this. --Ragestorm 19:26, 12 May 2006 (EDT)

Well I think that if something is related to a certain topic it needs to go into that same topic, so people searching for it will find it within that topic, with disclaimers of course. Maybe "Other Legends" isn't the best description but I can't thik of a better one(its in fact the one blizzard uses in its own works, they sometimes call differences "Mythos" , or "flavor" as well for things that may not be all be true).Baggins 19:31, 12 May 2006 (EDT)

We could use something technical, like "previous canon" or "outdated info" or something- but this comes to a writing style: should we be writing lore pages objectively, or as though we were inhabitants of Azeroth? --Ragestorm 19:36, 12 May 2006 (EDT)

In the guideline I've outlined, formerly established canon that has been overridden, such as the reference to the Northshire Clerics' belief in "God" in Warcraft I, would fall under the description of a "Retcon", and the change would be described on the Retcon page. A similar alternative, which I wouldn't be averse to, would be to have a "Retcon" subheading on the relevant main article page. The main advantage to a separate Retcon page in my mind is avoiding repetition by having several articles refer to the same retcon. For example, the Clerics of Northshire, Alonsus Faol, Northshire Abbey, and [Holy Light] articles would all refer to the same entry in the Retcon article describing the differences between the religion described in War1 and after.

In terms of point-of-view, I would be emphatically in favour of an objective point of view. While it can be a very interesting enterprise to try and create speculation or fan fiction to resolve conflicts in the lore (I made an entire War3 campaign to explain the retconned high elven druids), I think our readers are interested in a clear statement of official lore which they can verify against official sources. If we say,

"The Clerics of Northshire may have followed a monotheistic religion during the First War," then we only confuse things. If we say "In the Warcraft I manual, the Clerics of Northshire are described as believing in "God" and "Archangels", though this was altered without explanation in Warcraft II to a belief in the atheistic philosophy of the Holy Light," then we have clearly conveyed to the reader exactly what we know, with no conjecture on our part.

As a final point, I would suggest there is a very significant difference between Blizzard including something as flavour lore or legend and us doing so on the wiki. Everything Blizzard does is, by definition, official, while nothing we do is. If they say that the original Sargeras/Eredar story represents an inaccurate but existing legend within the Warcraft Universe, then so it is. However, if they don’t say that, then it’s not up to us to assume that’s how the change should be understood. --Aeleas 20:00, 12 May 2006 (EDT)

"We could use something technical, like "previous canon" or "outdated info" or something- but this comes to a writing style: should we be writing lore pages objectively, or as though we were inhabitants of Azeroth?"

This is where the difficulty comes in, there are many examples where blizzard intentionally writes something to be wrong from a inuniverse perspective. Brann Bronzebeard's accounts are flavored in such a way that he makes his own opinions, and even points out he may not really know. In these cases they intended for it to be outdated from the get go(see Creation Myth for some examples).

In the eredar backhistory they literally took from the warcraft 3 manual, they have up on their site they call that entire section "Mythos" as if it isn't necessarily true, its legends within the universe, they have not chosen to take it down.

They write the patch notes as if it was in-universe, but its uncertain how official patch notes lore actually is, especially when certain quests storylines comopletely change directions when altered.

Metzen has also said that he views all documents ever written for warcraft as being "Legends" and documents written in the universe, and that is why they don't always agree with each other.(As soon as I find the quote I definitely cite this one, and add it to the wiki).

Sure if something is specifically said to be a retcon by blizzard themselve in interviews, and not part of the inuniverse, that's one thing. But blizzard has intentionally chosen to be vague on the issue over the years. Continuing to write sentences in such a way that it leaves possibility that material isn't necessarily true from the get go, and are legends within the universe...Baggins 20:09, 12 May 2006 (EDT)

All the same, Aeleas does raise a good point; listing the retcons within the article itself does raise annoyances (especially if Metzen changes anything to do with Illidan- we're still lost as how to treat the War of the Ancients books, imagine what would happen with a game retcon!). As for the POV discussion, that's more minor. I suggest labeling such changes "retcon" within the article for now, and as we finalize and vote on proposals, we can decide to change things. --Ragestorm 20:21, 12 May 2006 (EDT)

Concise Articles and Source Text

Proposal: Lore articles on characters, places, and events should be kept reasonably concise, summarizing and cleanly presenting the facts and events directly relevant to the topic. Large sections of copied source text are discouraged, as they tend to make articles overly long, create repetition, contain much information that isn't directly relevant, and are problematic to update.

Citations to an official source should be included where relevant in the form of a link. Following the policy of preferring internal links, the link would ideally be to an internal page containing a complete transcription of the source, clearly identified as Source Text. This should also allow for easier verification and citation of sources.

Votes

Yes:

1. Yes Aeleas 18:42, 2 Nov 2005 (EST) - ()
2. Yes Schmidt talk 23:44, 2 Nov 2005 (EST) - ()
3. Yes Hammersmith 01:47, 6 Jan 2006 (EST) - ()
4. Yes Fandyllic 3:08 PM PST 19 Mar 2006 - (Sounds good.)
5. Yes Ralthor 09:40, 15 April 2006 (EDT) - ()
6. Yes User:TopDread 02:24, 14 May 2006 (EDT) - (there shouldn't be too much repetition)

Comments

1. This should already be standard policy, why is this even needed? Was there a problem with something somewhere? --Terrybader 14:13, 10 Feb 2006 (EST)

   Maybe the policy hadn't been nailed down before, or perhaps someone wanted one or more of two things:

   • Confirmation among peers, so that there would be more similarity between similar articles
   • Confirmation among all others, so that they could give some input. That's what I'm thinking. Schmidt 16:36, 31 May 2006 (EDT)

2. This proposal was moved from WoWWiki_talk:Policies#Concise_Articles_and_Source_Text. --Fandyllic
3. And then moved from WoWWiki talk:Writing policy#Concise_Articles_and_Source_Text. --Mikk 05:27, 7 June 2006 (EDT)