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We have the tag .

The usage descriptions says:

Questions about differences in plot/characters/details between a movie based on a book and the source book, and vice versa.

So it is evidently not fit for questions comparing books and other visual adaptation media such as TV shows. I have seen some questions which seek the comparison between books and TV Shows, so there is some need I suppose.

So how do we go about it?

  1. Should we rename the existing tag to something more generic? Like Book-vs-adaptation?
  2. Should we create a separate book-vs-show tag?
  3. Should we make them synonyms?
  4. Should we leave it alone?
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    Huh, I just learned that as well as an adaptations tag, we also have an adaptation-comparison tag. I'm a big fan of the book-vs-movie tag (clearly!), but I smell synonymisation approaching ...
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Dec 1, 2016 at 12:35
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    @Randal'Thor Oh that's a great find. I didn't know those tags existed.
    – Aegon
    Commented Dec 1, 2016 at 12:38
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    Another easy fix would be to update the tag wiki to include other things besides movies. The adaptation-comparison is probably the most generic that would fit any circumstance, but the book-vs-movie is more popular. I agree with Rand about synonyms.
    – Skooba
    Commented Dec 1, 2016 at 13:24
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    Just to complicate things, the books tag that says that it's meant to be used "to differentiate the book from the movie or other media".
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented Dec 1, 2016 at 13:54
  • @FuzzyBoots Let's not get into that dogfight :-) Media tags have been an issue for years: see 2011, 2013, 2016 meta posts about them. Besides, "to differentiate the book from the movie or other media" doesn't necessarily mean the question has to be about that differentiation: as Aegon says, the books tag could be used on a book-specific HP or LotR question which has nothing to do with book-vs-movie differences.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Dec 1, 2016 at 17:04
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    Can I suggest a wording like [version-differences] or [adaptation-differences]? We use [version-differences] in a similar fashion on Arqade for this purpose.
    – Robotnik
    Commented Dec 2, 2016 at 6:43
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    @FuzzyBoots The worst part of that tag usage guidance on books is that it isn't true. A maximum of 25% of the questions tagged books could possibly be using it that way, because the other 75% are just using it with story-identification where it should be novel instead. But looking at the remaining 25%, a high percentage are still are using it when the only media being discussed is the book.
    – user31178
    Commented Dec 3, 2016 at 16:44

2 Answers 2

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We already have a broader tag which covers questions comparing books and movies, books and TV shows, comics and movies, or any other set of adaptations of the same work:

For comparing the adaptations of a work to each other, or comparing a work's adaptations to the source work.

I suggest that we synonymise with .

This would mean that is the master tag, but anyone typing "book-vs-movie" into the tag box would also find and use this tag. If the synonymisation is accompanied by a merge (done by a moderator), it will also mean that all currently existing questions are automatically retagged with .

(There's also the tag, but although some of these questions, such as How is the movie adaptation of R.I.P.D. different from the comic?, are good candidates for tagging , others such as Does the Great Ormond Street Hospital control who can make Peter Pan adaptations? aren't. So this tag should probably not be synonymised, and any necessary retagging done by hand.)

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  • That seems reasonable. I am all for the making them synonyms.
    – Aegon
    Commented Dec 3, 2016 at 15:31
  • @Aegon I'd forgotten about this! Just merged and synonymised the tags, and edited a few of the adaptations questions. Not sure what to do about the rest of them, or whether that tag should really even exist.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Jan 13, 2017 at 0:19
  • Apparently I had too. Thanks Rand! :)
    – Aegon
    Commented Jan 13, 2017 at 7:32
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If is going to be the master tag, or any other more-generic wording, I think it's important that we think about our usage guidance n combining it with other tags.

Currently, we have these two takes on tagging:

TV's Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. vs The Comic Books

Which has the tags: .
It's using vs to specify which versions of the media it's talking about. Similar to the way we do for

And:

What are the differences between "The Strain" TV series and the books?

Which only uses and . It specifies which media/versions in the body (and title).

So should we use the media tag + adaptation comparison or not? Whichever we decide, that should be made clear in the excerpt's usage guidance.

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