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The description for the tag is as follows:

Use this tag when specifying the question is about the movie version or adaptation of a story.

This raises a couple questions:

  1. Could this imply that the OP is looking for answers specific to the movie version of a work, and thus unintentionally turning away possible answers from other versions, even when the question itself does not specify which sources to use? Since wikis are written for the site's audience, it seems we'd want everyone to know exactly what they're looking for.
  2. This answer mentions that, because the different versions contain different elements, that tagging with makes sense, but what if the question is about something they all share? Is it still appropriate to use this tag because the OP's question stemmed from something they saw while watching the movie?

Since I'm the one with the confusion, my suggestions would be that we either reword the wiki to specifically allow answers from other versions, or create a new tag (dibs) that can be used when the OP only wants answers based on the movie(s), such as or something along those lines.

An example of a reworked wiki could be:

Use this tag when specifying the question is about the movie version or adaptation of a story. This tag does not disallow answers from the books, video games, or other versions of the story.

So far the normal thing to do when you only want answers about a specific universe is to state them in your question, and rewording the current wiki will allow that to continue. If we make the new tag, we might also want to make new ones (dibs) for and so all the generic bases are covered, similar to how works for specifying canon.

So what are our thoughts on this?

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  • 7
    Probably worth mentioning that movie also gets used to narrow story-identification questions.
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented Sep 7, 2017 at 20:11
  • 1
    You should really have put your reworked wiki in the Answer section and not in the question section. The Question section should be you asking a question and the Answer section should contain the part that ends "your thoughts on this?" with which we respond with upvotes.
    – Edlothiad
    Commented Sep 7, 2017 at 20:35
  • 2
    This is a bigger thing than movie. See books and comics
    – user31178
    Commented Sep 7, 2017 at 20:59
  • @Edlothiad I've seen others put their suggested fixes in their question before, possibly since it's not really an answer? Anyway, that's how I assumed things were done.
    – DCOPTimDowd
    Commented Sep 7, 2017 at 21:46
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    I know, they're all wrong. I mean you pose a question? You pose a solution and then you pose a "what do you think?" Question which isn't really a question it's just there to turn the answer into your question into a question. I'm not slating your Question (& Answer) but the way the frequency of this needs to stop, the question section needs to be questions, and any solutions need to go into the answers, otherwise the answers just a "yes this is good" or "no this is bad" these aren't answers with solution, they're a poll. Does that make sense?
    – Edlothiad
    Commented Sep 8, 2017 at 6:11
  • @Edlothiad I think so. You should make a new meta to talk about that so we have something to link to in the future.
    – DCOPTimDowd
    Commented Sep 8, 2017 at 15:18
  • @DCOPTimDowd The funny thing is, I can think of any other way to word it then as a non-meta, a question suggestion pair?
    – Edlothiad
    Commented Sep 8, 2017 at 19:36
  • @Edlothiad You mentioned polls. Maybe we should suggest that feature for Meta?
    – DCOPTimDowd
    Commented Sep 11, 2017 at 15:40
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    Given the +6/-0 score on my answer, I've gone ahead and made that the tag wiki excerpt for movie.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Nov 12, 2017 at 22:32

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Here's a suggestion to be voted on.

This tag has three different uses: for questions specifically about the movie version of a work which has been adapted for different media (answers may draw on any adaptation but must be relevant to the question); for questions seeking identification of a movie (use together with the [story-identification] tag); or for wider genre questions about movies as a whole (generally together with the [history-of] tag).

Alas for the lack of markdown in tag wiki excerpts ...

I haven't checked whether this text is too long for the character limit on excerpts. If so, we can put some of the text in parentheses into the main tag wiki instead (although bearing in mind that even fewer people read the tag wiki than the excerpt). Some kind of warning about the third category, to avoid people asking overly broad questions, might also be nice, but it would probably have to go in the main wiki rather than the excerpt, due to that character limit.

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  • My brain isn't working right to turn this into a concise answer, but we have separate tags for books between "the book version" and "this is about a book". Would it make sense to do the same with films?
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented Sep 12, 2017 at 20:47
  • @FuzzyBoots do we? Some are for the films (such as the individual tolkien ones) and not for the books.
    – Edlothiad
    Commented Sep 12, 2017 at 20:48
  • @Edlothiad: Effectively, we use books for the former and novel for the later, although arguably the latter is only a subset of books.
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented Sep 12, 2017 at 20:50
  • @FuzzyBoots Oooooh I get your comment now. Books is for your former... I get it. What would it be for movies? film for film version and movie for identification
    – Edlothiad
    Commented Sep 12, 2017 at 20:55
  • Yes. I think that's exactly what I said. :-D
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented Sep 12, 2017 at 20:57
  • @FuzzyBoots your brain clearly isn't the only one working right, I was translating your puzzle into simple english
    – Edlothiad
    Commented Sep 12, 2017 at 20:57
  • @FuzzyBoots Wait, what? As far as I know, the only difference between the books and novel tags is that one applies to all books and the other only to novels.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Sep 12, 2017 at 21:33
  • @Edlothiad Don't you mean "clearly isn't the only one not working right"? :-D
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Sep 12, 2017 at 21:33
  • @Randal'Thor: "Use this tag to indicate the question is about the book version or adaptation of a work. If applicable, use a more specific tag instead (novel, short-stories, comics). For differences between the book and other versions, such as a movie, use "adaptation-comparison"." So yes, it looks like the intent is for "the book version of" rather than "about a book".
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented Sep 12, 2017 at 22:13
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    @FuzzyBoots But what about actual usage, rather than the tag wiki which hardly anyone reads? AFAIK, both books and novel are used in much the same way as movie: both for ID questions and to specify a particular medium for something with multiple adaptations. None of the medium tags are used for just any question "about a [book|movie|etc.]", except for ID questions.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Commented Sep 12, 2017 at 22:35
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    @Randal'Thor you're correct, we only add novel in practice if the user specifies a novel
    – Edlothiad
    Commented Sep 13, 2017 at 5:16
  • In theory, for a work with 2 media versions using the same tag (a poor practice, but unfortunately the likes of Harry Potter means it's probably never going away), you can use book to clarify that you're only asking about the books, not the movies. And it has been used that way, but generally it's more obvious with something like spider-man + comics where you're only after comic answers, not movie. The best guideline, though, is to create a tag for each specific work, so the-martian should really have the-martian and the-martian-2015. Instead, we see the-martian + movie
    – user31178
    Commented Sep 15, 2017 at 15:18
  • Which means, how we use movie and book is inconsistent, because why aren't the rest of the questions about the-martian also tagged with book? And that's just one recent example.
    – user31178
    Commented Sep 15, 2017 at 15:19
  • "This tag has three different uses" Shouldn't we immediately differentiate between those uses by using different tags?
    – Mast
    Commented Sep 20, 2017 at 13:41

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