Organizing Trek Stories and Content
- Thread starter JD
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Looking more into MB's policies and guidelines page (which is always a good place to start on any Wiki if you want to create lasting change), it looks like the core issue is that this is a fundamental and explicitly declared policy of MB, and has been since 2009 when 8 of 5 first proposed this all-inclusive everything-in-one-pot approach in MB. Essentially, the view by MB is that they don't have any level of authority to really claim distinctions in continuity, and so they don't try in-article except when there are blatant contradictions.
It feels to me essentially a branch of the No Original Research policy on Wikipedia? I don't like the approach, but at least it's spelled out in their policies, that's better than I expected.
Being Bold is one thing, and @TheAlmanac is right that it can't hurt to try (except for the possibility of a ban for vandalism, though I can't imagine CaptainMike would go that far), but without a policy revision any major restylizations are probably going to get instantly reverted as in conflict with MB policy, just like they would if you were Bold on Wikipedia to, say, add a major section of original research to some article, or radically rewrite the Country infobox template without admin approval.
Just like any RL organization, if you want to permanently change things for the better, you'd need to navigate the processes in place to do so systemically. And that's going to be a struggle here. :/
It feels to me essentially a branch of the No Original Research policy on Wikipedia? I don't like the approach, but at least it's spelled out in their policies, that's better than I expected.
Being Bold is one thing, and @TheAlmanac is right that it can't hurt to try (except for the possibility of a ban for vandalism, though I can't imagine CaptainMike would go that far), but without a policy revision any major restylizations are probably going to get instantly reverted as in conflict with MB policy, just like they would if you were Bold on Wikipedia to, say, add a major section of original research to some article, or radically rewrite the Country infobox template without admin approval.
Just like any RL organization, if you want to permanently change things for the better, you'd need to navigate the processes in place to do so systemically. And that's going to be a struggle here. :/
Maybe -- but even an "all in one pot" policy is no excuse not to cite sources clearly. That's just a basic responsibility of any competent reference text. As long as the sources are clearly delineated, then readers can still separate out what came from where. The problem is that some articles seem to intentionally avoid citing sources clearly, often creating downright false impressions about whether a given character name is used in a given source, say. This is deliberately misleading and dishonest, and it is an abuse, not a legitimate outgrowth, of 8 of 5's policy. That policy statement lays out clear guidelines for citing sources and addressing contradictions, guidelines that a number of MB articles fail to live up to. So the problem is not the policy, the problem is inconsistent adherence to its standards. MB is falling short even by its own rules. Maybe if the problem were framed to them in those terms, it could lead to some improvements in enforcement of the existing guidelines.
I didn't realize that was actually laid out as an official policy like that, I thought it was just a personal thing from CaptainMike and Markonian.
Another problem I have with MB is how it lacks uniformity with the simplest things, like a standard approach for characters (Spock and Kirk articles are structered in a completely different way, with Spock having a biographie section while Kirk has his first 16 sections dedicated to different phases of his life. And don't get me started on novel articles. How hard can it be to make uniform articles about novels!?) The part of me that's a german cliché can't decide wether it should attempt to fix that or just crawl under the desk and hope that it disappears without it's interference.
I found another example of the kind of article that got me started on this whole thing.
I watched The Enterprise Incident either for the first time or at least the first time I remember the other day, and afterwards I looked up Charvanek, the female Romulan commander. They have the Phoenix books, the Vulcan's Noun books, and the Enterprise Experiment comic book miniseries all together, with no real seperation between them. I haven't read any of them yet, but I was under the impression that the Phoenix books couldn't really fit in with the Novelverse/Destiny timeline/current continuity books, which the Vulcan's Noun books seem to be a fairly solid part of.
I watched The Enterprise Incident either for the first time or at least the first time I remember the other day, and afterwards I looked up Charvanek, the female Romulan commander. They have the Phoenix books, the Vulcan's Noun books, and the Enterprise Experiment comic book miniseries all together, with no real seperation between them. I haven't read any of them yet, but I was under the impression that the Phoenix books couldn't really fit in with the Novelverse/Destiny timeline/current continuity books, which the Vulcan's Noun books seem to be a fairly solid part of.
I know it would take a real comittment, and we'd end up with few contributors stuck with a huge amount of work, but we really just need a Litverse wiki.
Funnily enough I actually set up a wiki off that back of the original conversations here. It was my intention to have that wiki be focused on information from Star Trek novels and connected material. It's very early days, I'm just entering information from the first TOS episode novelization.
If others are interested in participating, I'd love to work with you all on creating a wiki that is fit for purpose. The wiki can be found at http://memory-omega.wikia.com/wiki/Memory_Omega_Wiki. I've gone with the name Memory Omega, based off of the David Mack Mirror Universe novels.
If others are interested in participating, I'd love to work with you all on creating a wiki that is fit for purpose. The wiki can be found at http://memory-omega.wikia.com/wiki/Memory_Omega_Wiki. I've gone with the name Memory Omega, based off of the David Mack Mirror Universe novels.
I think it's great that you just pulled the trigger bok2384. There are three thoughts that come to mind at the idea of making this a wiki for all the books.
One is that this is great, as the games, especially Star Trek Online and the card games, will be excluded. That is where, in my mind, alot of the "irrelevant" info on Memory-Beta comes from. Two, it takes the issue of deciding exactly what would go on a Litverse-only wiki, off the table. That would be a daunting, and highly subjective question to answer. But that leads to my third thought, which is the corresponding criticism of making this a novel-only wiki. That will exclude several comics which were explicitly written to fit in with the novels, specifically the Lit-verse, and lots of others which have been referenced by novels over the years as taking place in the same continuity.
All in all, loosing the few comics which I would want included would be worth not having everything cluttered up with tons of video game and card game junk.
At any rate, as soon as I find some time, I will offer my help, in whatever small way I can. I will advertise the new wiki on social media to help try toget more editors. I definitely wish this project good luck, and perhaps we can all talk about this comics issue.
One is that this is great, as the games, especially Star Trek Online and the card games, will be excluded. That is where, in my mind, alot of the "irrelevant" info on Memory-Beta comes from. Two, it takes the issue of deciding exactly what would go on a Litverse-only wiki, off the table. That would be a daunting, and highly subjective question to answer. But that leads to my third thought, which is the corresponding criticism of making this a novel-only wiki. That will exclude several comics which were explicitly written to fit in with the novels, specifically the Lit-verse, and lots of others which have been referenced by novels over the years as taking place in the same continuity.
All in all, loosing the few comics which I would want included would be worth not having everything cluttered up with tons of video game and card game junk.
At any rate, as soon as I find some time, I will offer my help, in whatever small way I can. I will advertise the new wiki on social media to help try toget more editors. I definitely wish this project good luck, and perhaps we can all talk about this comics issue.
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Thank you, ryan123450, any help would be greatly appreciated.
With regards to the issue of the comics, there are three ways we could go with it: 1) Restrict the articles to comics that have connections to the novels, such as N-Vector, Divided We Fall and the adaptation of The Ashes of Eden in the extreme, to Star Trek: Early Voyages and Star Trek: Starfleet Academy series which has characters that appear in the novels.
2) Allow for the inclusion of comic articles on the wiki. As the wiki would include all novels, and not just novelverse, their would be contradictions and alternate accounts as standard anyway, so additional ones from the comics won't be such a hardship. As long as the articles are formatted correctly and contradictions easy to spot and highlighted it shouldn't be a problem. After all, most comics have been reprinted in graphic novels!
3) We don't include any comic content at all.
Personally, I would go for the second option. It's probably the closest to what Memory Beta's original content and intention.
I tend to agree. Comics and novels are far more closely related than any other media types that are included on Memory Beta. And like you've said, Trek comics and novels have been pretty intertwined at times. I'd put my vote towards including them.
Absolutely. I'm glad we've got an agreement on the comic issue, as I've been working on an article today, and forgot that even the DC Comics run has links to the novels. I suppose that's inevitable when both Peter David and Michael Jan Friedman were both driving forces for the DC line.
The article I've been working on is for Finnegan. A bit of a random choice, but I wanted to start on a character with few appearances so I could sandbox it and see how everything works. You can find it here: http://memory-omega.wikia.com/wiki/Sean_Finnegan
Perfectly done, in my opinion. I really look forward to this taking off. I hope to find time, and some particular project on the wiki, soon.
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