Geography
This subject is at the moment IMHO not at all well organised in MA. Just now I tried to find out how Europe was geographically aligned in Star Trek. Hadn't I known to look at Earth, it would have taken me some time to find. There needs to come some sort of navigational reference to geography, both of Earth as well as other planets, such as Bajor. -- Redge | Talk 11:07, 2 Nov 2004 (CET)
History, physiology, philosophy, etc articles
Articles like Klingon Physiology, Ferengi History, Q Philosophy, Vulcan Mating Rituals etc. keep popping up on VfD.. is there any way we can create a more solid guideline for creating these articles so that they dont end up as graveyard fodder, and also the question has been asked: do they more rightfully belong at Klingon physiology, Ferengi history, Q philosophy and Vulcan mating (naming convention)? Dicussion? -- Captain Mike K. Bartel 20:26, 16 Dec 2004 (CET)
- With the exception of Vulcans, Klingons, and Ferengi, I don't think there is nearly enough information about the philosophy of any other species to justify a separate article; it's just clumsy when that information's not combined with the main species article in those cases. I also think that the history articles, with the exception of humans, are just redundant and should be merged with the history sections of respective articles (Cardassian History merged with Cardassians, Cardassian Union, and any separate articles like First Hebitian Civilization). I've argued for this before and I still think there's nothing covered in those history articles that wouldn't be covered in one or all of those other pages, which already repeat the information enough times for my taste.
- For naming conventions, I think it should be "Klingon philosophy" rather than "Klingon Philosophy". Capitalizing a non-proper noun just bothers me because it pretends a formality that doesn't exist. -- EtaPiscium 20:38, 16 Dec 2004 (CET)
For past discussions of this topic, please see: Talk:Interstellar History, Talk:Romulan History. Another good read is Wiki is not paper, especially the section "How long should the ideal article be?". If an article about X physiology would consist of two or three sentences, we don't need a separate article - but we don't necessarily need to restrict ourselves to one humongous article per species either; if we know enough about Romulan History, for example, why should we have to put everything on Romulan? Regarding capitalization: I agree, it should probably be lower-case. -- Cid Highwind 13:19, 17 Dec 2004 (CET)
- And again my issue is with repetition and convenience. Undoubtedly any article about the Romulans would include something about history (it would probably be the biggest section), and so I see no need to separate it into a separate article. In fact I think that would be clumsy and redundant, because either a very vital part of the subject isn't readily accessible on the page or only a cursory summary is provided with a link to another page with a slightly less cursory summary. I don't see what's so wrong with just collecting the information on a single page, because certainly it's more convenient to simply scroll down an article rather than having to follow a separate link. At present, the histories provided at the pages such as Klingon Empire, Klingon, and Dominion are already more comprehensive than their respective history pages, which are woefully inadequate by comparison. -- EtaPiscium 00:39, 18 Dec 2004 (CET)
- Well, actually, as far as convenience goes, there's a lot of material duplicated between History on Klingon and Klingon Empire. Ideally, I think, each page should have a blurb and tell you to see more at Klingon history-- that's how I did it with Xindi and Xindi history. Now it may not be useful for all species, but the Klingons, Romulans, and so on could all do with separate history articles to keep things less cluttered. As for physiology and philosophy-- those could certainly belong to the main article, since we rarely know that much about those aspects of aliens.
- As a matter of note, if we don't count "sector" in things like Mutara sector as being a proper noun, we sure shouldn't count "History" in things like Xindi History. -- Steve 01:07, 18 Dec 2004 (CET)
- I've gone ahead and moved all "histories" to the lower case. Also, see Talk:History for more on how I envision these pages evolving. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel