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Most questions about the 2018 film Ready Player One are using , a tag originally created for the 2011 book.

I edited the tag wiki for to suggest tagging questions about the movie with . However, seeing as there are several differences between the 2011 book and the 2018 film, I’m not sure whether this is a good long-term solution.

Should a new tag be created for ?

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    Are there dramatic changes between the book and film?
    – Valorum
    Apr 18, 2018 at 21:19
  • Tags like these should have dependencies. You selected 'Harry Potter'... did you mean the book, the movie, or both? Hasn't this been dealt with a thousand times for HP? Do that, w/e it is. Which apparently is you're supposed to add 'movie' if that's what you meant, otherwise it's assumed you're talking about the book?
    – Mazura
    Apr 24, 2018 at 23:57

3 Answers 3

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As TheAsh says, there are significant differences between the movie and the book:

  • Gate and key challenges are completely different
  • The Grail Hall with the librarian does not exist in the book
  • The final scene with the egg is about 50% different
  • Characters die in the book that do not in the movie
  • Interactions between the characters are different (Meeting, friendship, etc)
  • Ogden Morrow's involvement is different between book and movie
  • Some of the backstory behind Halliday is different
  • Ancillary character involvement is different

There are more, but that is probably enough to demonstrate that they are almost completely separate entities. I would say that there is at least 75% difference between the movie and tbe book, which would be enough to warrant the suggestion

Yes, we need two tags. The movie and book are very dissimilar.

I would suggest the following guidelines:

  1. - For questions about the book, that can only be answered by a book reference (Such as a question about Zork). Example question: In Ready Player One, how was Wade Owen Watts able to complete a perfect game of Pac-Man in his first try when it usually takes years to do?
  2. - For questions about the movie, that can only be answered with a movie reference, such as this question (Since the race is only in the movie), How often did the race occur in Ready Player One?
  3. If a question can be answered by either the movie or the book, tag with both. One possible example is Dying after completing part of the challenge, as it could potentially be answered in two different ways, one via movie and one via the book.

As a secondary corroboration for the need of separate tags, is that it was not easy to find a question among the (currently) 26 questions that might be answerable by either. There really is very little crossover between the movie and the book.

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    3a. If the question can be answered with either, but the asker prefers an explanation based on evidence from either the book or the movie (for instance, if they're only familiar with one of them), then tag with one.
    – Thunderforge
    Apr 21, 2018 at 2:04
  • @Thunderforge good point.
    – JohnP
    Apr 21, 2018 at 2:15
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    @Thunderforge or do what we do for ASOIAF/GoT and state which one you prefer with the other as an “alternate” explanation. Similar to what (I thought) we try to do with LOTR and HP
    – Edlothiad
    Apr 21, 2018 at 6:40
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    Are they more dissimilar to each other than the book and film versions of (say) Harry Potter, or Lord of the Rings, or The Hobbit? Because our usual policy is to use the same tag for all adaptations of the same story, no matter how different. The main exception I can think of offhand is A Song of Ice & Fire / Game of Thrones.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Apr 21, 2018 at 9:56
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    @Randal'Thor I would say yes. HP etc maintained the same elements, this almost completeky diverges.
    – JohnP
    Apr 21, 2018 at 13:22
  • @Randal'Thor does such a policy truly exist or does this remain as a remnant of the "it's too much effort to re-tag all the HP/LotR films"/proponents of media tags see it as a good excuse for them.
    – Edlothiad
    Apr 24, 2018 at 11:33
  • @Edlothiad Yes, that is the current policy. Just look at the way questions about HP, LotR, the Hobbit, Stardust, Princess Bride, Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. etc. are tagged. We use universe tags as a top level, rather than using different tags for different versions of the same story.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Apr 24, 2018 at 12:26
  • @Randal'Thor I don't quite understand your comment, what is the "current policy"? Where is the "current policy"? I don't think my original question reads like a yes/no question
    – Edlothiad
    Apr 24, 2018 at 12:36
  • @Edlothiad "does such a policy truly exist" is a yes/no question. The current policy lies in the tagging practices on the site: quite clearly, we favour using a single overarching universe tag (HP, TL, SW, ST, etc.) rather than splitting into separate tags for HP books and HP films, ST films and ST television, Stardust book and Stardust film, Hobbit book and 'Hobbit' films, etc. etc.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Apr 24, 2018 at 12:45
  • Well that was intended to be part of the rest of the question. "Does the policy exist or does this.." I guess you've simply chosen to ignore the rest, fair enough. Again, with HP, TL and ST (ish) it seems to be down to the "too much effort argument" The Hobbit films do in fact have their own tags. As do the separate SW films, select SW books, ST films, etc. So I ask again whether this is really a "policy" or a "too much effort to change matter".
    – Edlothiad
    Apr 24, 2018 at 12:50
  • @Edlothiad Even if the reason for the policy is that it's been de facto policy for years and would be too much trouble to change, that doesn't make it not policy.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Apr 24, 2018 at 12:56
  • I'm unconvinced this is a policy, or current practice. I remain convinced that the examples you site are historical errors that have not been changed because of the effort in fixing them. You yourself have cited "examples" which have ended up being false. I remain unconvinced. The community (12:1 & 10:1) seem to be headed in the direction of there being a separate film tag.
    – Edlothiad
    Apr 24, 2018 at 13:00
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    Ah I understand, @Randal'Thor, your argument is that there has to be a universe tag for everything, but this does not mean that there shouldn't be a rpo-2018 tag so that the film can be specifically targeted. In the same way there's an It-2017 tag and an original It as well as an It-1990 there is no universe tag there, yet there all very close adaptations.
    – Edlothiad
    Apr 24, 2018 at 13:14
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    @Randal'Thor - [total-recall], [total-recall-2012],[total-recall-2070]. [12-monkeys-1995], [12-monkeys-2015]. Then you have [crow] which refers to all media, [angry-birds] (all media), [constantine], [constantine-2005]. I am sure there are many more, that was about 2 minutes of searching. If there is a policy, it is very inconsistent. If it needs to be [universe], [universe-instance], and a massive retag effort, so be it.
    – JohnP
    Apr 24, 2018 at 14:29
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    Given the support for this and the other answer, I went ahead and retagged the RP1/Movie questions with RP1-2018.
    – JohnP
    Apr 26, 2018 at 15:27
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I created a tag about 4 months ago. But it was decided to be too redundant in this chat conversation.

That said, there are significant differences between the book and the movie, so an argument can be made that we should use them both, but in that case, we need clear usage guidelines and for people to actually follow them.

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  • Even if they weren't dissimilar, the tag should have stayed because it's a separate work. You can't ask about directors, behind-the-scenes clips, prop development, etc. about the book. Separate works, separate tags.
    – user31178
    Apr 26, 2018 at 14:40
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    @CreationEdge - Given the support, I went ahead and created the usage for the rp1-2018 and edited the usage for rp1 tags, and retagged the 5 or so questions using the 2018 tag.
    – JohnP
    Apr 26, 2018 at 15:28
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Yes, we need two tags. The movie and book are very dissimilar.

How about a Ready-Player-One-Movie tag?

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    If the movie were to receive it's own tag, it would be [ready-player-one-2018] as fits our conventions. As to the dissimilarities of the two works, would you care to elaborate on how they are different?
    – Edlothiad
    Apr 20, 2018 at 6:38
  • @Edlothiad See above answer
    – TheAsh
    Apr 21, 2018 at 19:19

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