Conworlds:Imitationism
| This page is part of a series on |
| Conworlds philosophy |
|---|
 |
| Community |
|
Collaboration |
| Content |
|
Categories |
| Miscellaneous |
|
User-specific
|
|
Hosting |
Imitationism is the position that a mainspaced article on a worldbuilding wiki should follow the encyclopedic style of Wikipedia. This includes the view that wiki articles should be written, formatted, and structured in a way that bears strong resemblance or verisimilitude to their Wikipedian counterparts. Imitationist articles tend to emulate both the encyclopedic and technical aspects of Wikipedia such as the maintenance of a neutral point of view and the use of templates such as infoboxes and navboxes. Imitationism is similar to the idea of immersionism in which a project presents itself in a manner that simulates reading an encyclopedic article from the perspective of an in-universe individual.
Imitationism is distinct from verbatimism, which is the practice of copying and pasting sections or entire pages of Wikipedia articles. The goal of imitationist articles is not to incorporate or replace Wikipedia articles. Imitationist articles seek to write articles that could pass as a Wikipedia article. There are varying levels of imitationism. Hard imitationist articles seek to make articles match as closely as possible to their Wikipedian counterparts in all of its aspects, including the incorporation of references, external links, categories, and maintenance templates where applicable. Soft imitationist articles is the most common form practiced which only requires that articles be written in a manner that is encyclopedic and reminiscent of the style written on Wikipedia articles. Inspirationism is a subset of soft imitationism that allows for a more looser adherence to Wikipedian standards and may also derive inspiration from non-Wikipedian sources (such as fandom-based wikis).