Forum:Amendment to COD:IRL

Based on discussion in another thread concerning the deletion of location-based articles, I have identified an ambiguity in our COD:IRL policy that should be amended to give better focus.

The wording of the current policy includes this:

"Particularly for weapons, the subject of article should be considered fictional and written in such perspective rather than real life perspective."

I propose that it be changed to the following:

"The subject of an article, though it may be based on a real-life topic, should be written from a fictional perspective rather than a real-life perspective."

The rationale is that the current policy blatantly states that all article subjects should be assumed to be fictional. This is hugely misleading and counterproductive to establishing consensus. Many events, places and objects in the COD universe are based on things in real-life, and there is no reason why we must assume that all thing are fictional. On the contrary, if we are to assume that all things are fictional, we must practically write articles that cover COD's portrayal of historical events such as World War II or nations such as the United States -- most of which does not differ from real history.

A consequence of this ambiguity is that editors are in debate over whether a subject is fictional or not. This is largely irrelevant, but is a problem when discussing relevance and notability.

In short, a subject can be both real and fictional (i.e. based on a real place, person, event or item).

The policy was written to establish a grounds to remove RL information from articles, which is not our focus. This was especially true for weapon articles, which were stuffed with inaccuracies and trivia based on real weapons. However, the policy already states that RL information is prohibited, and that the assumption of fictional status is unnecessary. --Scottie theNerd (talk) 13:02, July 1, 2012 (UTC)