Memory Alpha and Memory Beta

[Kor]

How do you mean?

Perhaps he didn't realize that they are wiki sites that anybody with an account can edit.

In my post above, I forgot to mention one of the biggest fan encyclopedias around, which is also hosted on fandom.com: Wookieepedia, the Star Wars encyclopedia. It has all of the same annoyances as Memory Alpha.

Kor

 

[ProwlAlpha]

I used to contribute a lot to Memory Beta, the Babylon 5 Wiki, and the Honorverse Wiki but with MB and B5, I had admins who would change details because of their own personal agendas. It became agitating that you would put in so much work just for some admin to change it or revert it on a whim. One Admin on B5 didn't like individual articles and made lists instead because he wanted to save space. Memory Alpha, is a great resource, but their infighting and logic on why something wasn't used for one thing but used for another is tiresome. Don't get me started on the Nebula-class Lexington's registry.

 

[Muldwych]

Is there any difference between them, is the content different?

 

[Paul Weaver]

As for Memory Beta, it's more of a dead site headed by one cantankeous admin.

When memory beta started presenting the star trek online stuff as "the truth" and pretending that all the content was a single timeline I gave up with it. I think it was one specific person who had that view which pretty much killed any effort I had in updating things.

I think it does. It depends. I left for a while and my account was pruned.

Mine was never pruned

 

[Markonian]

I like to classify and categorize everything I encounter in life.
Star Trek is ultimately about ships and Starfleet officers, that gives plenty of easily categorizable content like character department color/rank pips, ship name/class/registry number. The wikis are an outlet for that.

 

[Tuskin38]

Is there any difference between them, is the content different?

Memory-Beta includes all licenced content, canon and non-canon.

Memory-Alpha focuses on just canon content. They do have articles on novels and such, but they're product articles, not in-universe articles.

 

[Muldwych]

Memory-Beta includes all licenced content, canon and non-canon.

Memory-Alpha focuses on just canon content. They do have articles on novels and such, but they're product articles, not in-universe articles.

Thank you.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Memory-Alpha focuses on just canon content. They do have articles on novels and such, but they're product articles, not in-universe articles.

Information from non-canon sources is referenced in background and apocrypha notes, for interest's sake. Generally, these notes focus on follow-ups to information already covered in canon (names, birthdates, backgrounds, promotions/career changes, etc), rather than every single thing the character did.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

How many other users of The Trek BBS contribute to the de facto Star Trek wikis?

No. I use MA as a fact-checking resource if I want to double check a stardate or the shooting date of a particular episode, but editing in stuff myself only to have it inevitably changed by some other user or an admin just sounds like an exercise in frustration, especially if they're changing correct information to be wrong once again. MB I use even less, and I've heard a few horror stories here about the admins there abusing their power.

I'd rather just have (relatively) friendly debates here and on Twitter, or else do my own Trek stuff like my Timeline (here's the 23rd Century and here's the 24th Century) where I can have the last word.

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[JonnyQuest037]

I did do something akin to editing an MA entry about a year ago, though, when I finally got fed up about all of the inaccuracies I was reading on the TV Tropes page for Batman: The Animated Series. (I've interviewed dozens of the creatives behind BTAS for a book project I'm working on, so I know what I'm talking about here.) But instead of editing it on TV Tropes, where people would inevitably edit it back to unverified and incorrect information (), I just made a long Twitter thread about all the egregiously wrong stuff I found there.

 

[Enterprise1701]

No. I use MA as a fact-checking resource if I want to double check a stardate or the shooting date of a particular episode, but editing in stuff myself only to have it inevitably changed by some other user or an admin just sounds like an exercise in frustration, especially if they're changing correct information to be wrong once again. MB I use even less, and I've heard a few horror stories here about the admins there abusing their power.

I'd rather just have (relatively) friendly debates here and on Twitter, or else do my own Trek stuff like my Timeline (here's the 23rd Century and here's the 24th Century) where I can have the last word.

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Video unavailable
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Well dang. Was that your YouTube video? What was it about?

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I used to be on Beta until its dictat…moderator decided he didn’t like me and proceeded to ban me on trumped up charges.

 

[Enterprise1701]

I used to be on Beta until its dictat…moderator decided he didn’t like me and proceeded to ban me on trumped up charges.

I almost ragequit the site last year when the wannabe Khan Noonien Singh called me a "dunce" for writing "First Splinter" instead of "First Splinter timeline"!

 

[Tuskin38]

I find it hard to get any work done on M-B because one of the admins/mods whatever they are.
Undoing work even when I provide sources.

Memory-Alpha is a lot easier to get edits done funnily enough.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Well dang. Was that your YouTube video? What was it about?

No idea. That post you're quoting is from nearly two years ago.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

I use Memory Alpha after watching an episode to get some BTS information on it. I also quite like using it to read about the various models and how they were built or how characters were originally conceived and developed.

What I find ridiculous about the place in the main is they have articles (literally) that tell you what apples are or what wheels are, just to cite two very obvious examples.

I don’t go to MA to find out what apples or wheels are and lists of which Star Trek episodes have apples or wheels in them… I know there’s an irony in that I’m posting about Star Trek on a BBS but… surely there’s a better way to spend time than writing tediously banal shit like that?

 

[Nerys Myk]

One quirk MA has is listing all the actors from Trek who have appeared with subject of the article in non-Trek films.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Memory Beta fell victim to the designs of a single-minded, petty, gatekeeping, trollish little man who felt a rush of power in his belly and enjoyed it far too much.

 

[The Wormhole]

Another thing I find irritating about MA is their weird habit of listing different versions of a character as a separate character. IE LeVar Burton's page lists him as playing eleven different characters: Geordi La Forge, seven holograms based on Geordi and three representations of Geordi that appeared in someone's dream.

The people at MA really need to go outside and touch some grass.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

The MA articles about ordinary subjects may begin by defining the object the article is about (and depending on the object, it may be useful to do so if the term has multiple meanings in universe, or at least a different one than out of universe), but it continues by documenting facts about the object, or ways in which it was used/seen. For abstract concepts, it shows you what various species and individuals think about it (ideas like love, revenge, honor, etc).

I guess it depends on why you're consulting the site - searching for details to include in your stories/drawings/understanding of someone, or just exploring the various (mostly) exclusive to Trek details that make the world within the franchise unique.

As one of those people who add such "banal" topics, I enjoy finding the little details - it's like a scavenger hunt to me.

I suppose listing separate versions of a person separately helps to keep track of what the real person in universe really did or didn't do. If it helps, they're only listed separately on the actor's page; most holograms and alternates are listed in respective sections on the main character's page - only the imposter. who isn't played by him, gets their own page.