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When did canon become such a hot-button issue?

It's very distorting really in that only the most vocal fans (and often least balanced - after all, who gets upset over this stuff really?) are really represented, despite by definition being a vanishingly small minority. Most people will watch a film or a TV show and judge it at face value for what it is, a form of entertainment.

Then they go about their lives having been entertained and deal with the more important stuff they were escaping from in the first place.

Can see that. People with strong opinions (positive or negative) are the most likely to speak up or want to spend the extra time talking about it.

Obsession with "canon" or outrage over "identity politics" within entertainment is by and large a niche mentality. It's only of interest to, or discussed by, a small fringe of the population and represents the modern expression of a stereotype which has been around for decades. The difference is now that fringe has a much more effective means of projection into the mainstream and can represent themselves and their concerns as being endemic, their own "outrages" and foibles as being weather vanes for public opinion when the overwhelming majority of people just....don't care.

Yeah, I can relate to being obsessed with canon (although I like to think that I'm better then I used to be). I'm all over the identity politics thing, given that I've found the only people who use that are projecting their own bigotry. Wish that the negative camp wasn't the one most vocal, though; there are positive elements within the small subsets of the fanbase who could steer the conversation into a better path.
 
What's the difference?

Generally all the conversation about "Canon" is really about continuity or lore. This is the background back story, the events that came before the current story. Vulcan has no moon, Pike's Enterprise did not have a second exit behind the main view screen, etc... This is lore. It is continuity. Continuity errors are sometimes fixed by a retcon.

The term "Canon" when used properly, simply means any product produced by the company of people in charge. Typically Canon in this case is limited to what appeared on screen. Star Trek Continues or any fan production is not Canon, regardless of how meticulous to detail their production is. If it wasn't made by the people responsible for making Star Trek, then it is not canon.
 
Generally all the conversation about "Canon" is really about continuity or lore. This is the background back story, the events that came before the current story. Vulcan has no moon, Pike's Enterprise did not have a second exit behind the main view screen, etc... This is lore. It is continuity. Continuity errors are sometimes fixed by a retcon.

The term "Canon" when used properly, simply means any product produced by the company of people in charge. Typically Canon in this case is limited to what appeared on screen. Star Trek Continues or any fan production is not Canon, regardless of how meticulous to detail their production is. If it wasn't made by the people responsible for making Star Trek, then it is not canon.
Yes, essentially this. (And more succinctly than I would have done.)
 
Generally all the conversation about "Canon" is really about continuity or lore.

No, since you can have Pocketverse continuity synthesizing Pocketverse lore and STO continuity synthesizing STO lore, neither of which is canon.

This is lore. It is continuity. Continuity errors are sometimes fixed by a retcon.

Lore is the sandbox, the building blocks of continuity. A retcon is a device used to synthesize lore into continuity, which would then be riffed on in future installments.

The term "Canon" when used properly, simply means any product produced by the company of people in charge.

The output of a production the property owners set up for that purpose.
 
The term "Canon" when used properly, simply means any product produced by the company of people in charge. Typically Canon in this case is limited to what appeared on screen. Star Trek Continues or any fan production is not Canon, regardless of how meticulous to detail their production is. If it wasn't made by the people responsible for making Star Trek, then it is not canon.

Exactly. It's about who makes it, not what it contains. The latter is just a side effect of the former, since usually the people making the original work won't be bound by what outsiders do, and what outsiders do is a different interpretation that isn't necessarily authentic to the source. The only times you see canonical tie-ins are when they're actually written or overseen by the creators of the canon.

And the "onscreen" thing is a red herring that's best avoided, because people misinterpret it as a statement of causality rather than mere description. It doesn't mean that being onscreen makes something canonical, it just means that Star Trek is a TV/movie series and that its books and comics are just adaptations and derivative works. As opposed to something like Sherlock Holmes or Watchmen, where the original canon is in print form and it's the screen versions that are adaptations.
 
Generally all the conversation about "Canon" is really about continuity or lore. This is the background back story, the events that came before the current story. Vulcan has no moon, Pike's Enterprise did not have a second exit behind the main view screen, etc... This is lore. It is continuity. Continuity errors are sometimes fixed by a retcon.

The term "Canon" when used properly, simply means any product produced by the company of people in charge. Typically Canon in this case is limited to what appeared on screen. Star Trek Continues or any fan production is not Canon, regardless of how meticulous to detail their production is. If it wasn't made by the people responsible for making Star Trek, then it is not canon.

Kinda makes sense, but words change. "Canon" may not've meant "lore" at one time, but I think the shift has happened and it's too late to back peddle
 
It means both. It means "official lore." And that only sounds like a contradiction.
 
It means both. It means "official lore." And that only sounds like a contradiction.

“Official” is too vague. Are novels ”unofficial”, like fanlore or unauthorized tell-all books? Of course not, they needed a license. ”Primary lore” would be closer to the mark.
 
Some fans do sometimes interchange 'canon' with 'continuity', when they are not the same thing. I'm a bit of a continuity nut (though I always stress not to every last detail, I do like to think I'm a little flexible ;) ).

To be honest, I don't even care all that much about canon, partly because I've adopted the novel continuity, particularly the relaunches, into what I consider my Star Trek continuity. And obviously none of that is canon. As long as nothing on screen contradicts that continuity that's what I go with. If a future show contradicts that I'll have to reconsider my continuity. That's probably going to be an issue with the 24th century relaunch novels and the new Picard show coming out. If the new show is totally inconsistent with the novels as they stand then I'll probably just have to consider the novels part of an alternate universe. But that's all continuity and of course we all have differing opinions about what we consider in our continuity. But that's much different from canon.

And to be honest we as fans don't even really need to worry about canon, because we may follow more than what's on screen, such as novels, comic books, online games. Some have noted here the ones that most need to be concerned about canon are tie in writers--because they can't be inconsistent with something that was shown on screen (or at least not without an ok from the PTBs). And maybe to a lesser extent show runners. Since they are creating the shows, and hence creating new canon, they probably have the most flexibility other than maybe the studio itself, but they tend to consider prior canon shows when making new shows (though that probably crosses over to continuity in that case).
 
And to be honest we as fans don't even really need to worry about canon, because we may follow more than what's on screen, such as novels, comic books, online games.

You’d think so, but canon is nevertheless a feature of online discussion since it serves as the lowest common denominator. One person can retcon in something from Picard’s Pocketverse backstory, another can choose to ignore it, but neither can dispute that he was born in 2305 or that he graduated from the Academy in 2327 unless they want to be sidelined.
 
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