Forgotten Realms Wiki talk:Fan Art

Support
I support this proposal. I think there is some fan art on this page that fills a need where canon material is insufficient. The art is consistent with canon descriptions and is of high-enough quality that it does not detract from the scope of the wiki, illuminates certain subjects and in fact inspires the imagination of our readers. Ruf (talk) 13:09, January 9, 2019 (UTC)

Rejection
After seeing many great editors getting involved in the wiki, I think it is the perfect time to reraise this discussion and draw in community contribution. First of all, I wish to explicitly define fan art as is relevant to the Forgotten Realms Wiki:

Defining fan art (or unofficial art):

Fan art is any art that is unofficial, whether made from scratch, or even content-modified official images.

What exactly is content-modification? Content-modification is changing of the content of the image. Take for example, a picture of Cadderly Bonaduce that does not fit the actual canon description:

"Danica teased, grabbing a handful of Cadderly's thick, curly brown hair."

- excerpt from the The Chaos Curse

It is clear from the text that Cadderly has curled, brown locks. However, a piece of official art draws the young scholar with short, straight blonde hair. As source text contradicts this, the art is clearly an oversight, and is wrong. However, that does not mean that we should draw over the image of Cadderly with brown, curly hair, or even replace it. Doing so is content-modifying the image. Instead, it is better to refer to the text, or find official art describing Cadderly correctly.

What about imagemaps and cropping — don't they modify the image? They do. However, they do not at all change the content. Imagemaps form a separate layer, so the art is unaffected, and is not at all modified. Cropping is also not fan art, as it only changes the dimensions of the image, and not the actual content.

In the case of images made from scratch without any official publication, they are clearly classed as fan art.

Fan art: Should it be allowed on a canon wiki?

Whilst there are pros and cons of having fan art, I believe it 100% should not be allowed on a canon wiki, which we fully aim to be. If we do allow fan art, we should explicitly state that we are a non-canon wiki, which conflicts with existing policies. The only logical argument for fan art on a canon wiki appears to be:

Fan art better represents the true description of the topic than official art.

Yes, that is often true. However...
 * This can easily be countered by making it clear in our canon policy that descriptive text always trumps official art. Thus, there is no actual conflict between descriptions and official art in the first place!
 * If fan art is accepted, then we should also allow stories / quotes that represent the true description of the topic better than the official stories / quotes.

Some other pros are given above by the previous poster, but they all point back to the above argument. For example, "canon material is insufficient; we should use fan-made images to expand the content". You could say the same for quotes and stories. There are not many quotes and stories about mastodons in the Realms, but that doesn't mean I should make some up, that would be explicitly non-canon! The same applies to the rest of the arguments for fan art.

Taking the above into account, it seems clear that fan art should be completely removed from the wiki.

tl;dr A canon wiki should only use official content, and with its respective place in the canon hierarchy. If fan art is accepted, the wiki should do away with its canon policy. Whilst fan art is often beautiful, it has no place in a wiki of this nature.

~ Possessed Priest (talk) 18:38, November 5, 2019 (UTC)