Conworlds:Essentialism

 

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Essentialism, in the context of the Constructed Worlds Wiki and adjacent communities, is the belief or operative tendency that a project or subproject should be evaluated primarily by the creation or completion of articles that conveys essential information or covers major topics. Essentialist projects place emphasis on a top-down approach to a world. For example, in an alternate history timeline, an essentialist project would focus on creating articles related to countries, politicians, political parties, governments, military, and significant events (such as wars or elections). Essentialism tends to focus on the generalist aspects of a project or topics that affect the in-universe world at a wider or large-scale. Essentialist projects tend to place great emphasis on the quality and length of certain pages, such as country pages. Although essentialist projects place emphasis on articles that cover essential topics, they are not necessarily devoid of non-essential topics. The creation of secondary or tertiary topics, also known as flavor pages, is not considered essential to the merits of an essentialist project, but may nonetheless be allowed or even encouraged to some degree.

Essentialism is contrasted by flavorism which is the philosophical tendency of a project or writer to favor or focus on topics considered non-essential or secondary to a project such as culture, sports, philosophy, religion, settlements, or niche topics. Holisticism is an approach that combines both essentialism and flavorism in favor of a project that attempts to cover or treat both primary and secondary topic articles with similar treatment and importance.

Topics considered essential

Most common

In an essentialist project, the following topics are considered essential and the most important to work on:

• Countries
• Government and politics
  • Heads of state and government
  • Major government institutions
  • Political parties
  • Elections
  • Major non-heads of state or government politicians
• Major settlements (generally capitals/largest city)
• Major events
  • Political events (coups, constitutional crisis, referendums)
  • Wars

Less common

The following are less likely to be considered essential but can still qualify as essential depending on the project:

• Geography pages (continents and regions, especially in worldbuilding projects)
• Major companies or corporations (especially in alternate history projects)
• Planets (in sci-fi projects)
• Religion (in worldbuilding projects)
• Languages (in worldbuilding projects)

Genre-specific

In certain projects such as map games, metapages or specific content may be considered essential such as algorithms, sign-up pages or sections, and/or map game turns.

Arguments for

• Covers general topics and ideas that offer an overview of a project, world, or timeline
• Provides a clear framework for a project to work with or towards to
• Creates achievable objectives that can be met by writers
• Easier to give a project a sense of completion and scope
• Makes a project more accessible and digestible by readers

Arguments against

• Makes a project less likely to stand out or distinguish itself from similar projects
• May impose a restrictive sense of creativity on writers
• May lead to rigid, formulaic, and/or uninteresting writing
• Discourages experimentation or deviation from central focus of project

See also

• Conworlds:Flavorism
• Conworlds:Holisticism