Memory Alpha:Ten Forward/Archive 2004

Template:Tenforward

Image File Sizes

Folks, I urge any of you who have been uploading images to take a good look at the MA image list. Not counting the sound files (which can be expected to be larger), there are 32 images that are larger than 100 kilobytes. Some of them were over 200 kilobytes! (I've already gotten rid of those.)

When you're uploading files, please, please remember that Memory Alpha is not an image gallery -- it is not necessary to upload the largest or highest-quality image to our server. As long as the image is of decent size (say, between 400 and 600 pixels across), that's more than enough to show the subject of the image. There's a reason why the server complains when you try to upload an image that's larger than 100 KB -- we've got to conserve file space, because otherwise people will run rampant and upload anything they feel like, no matter the size.

Already, the images uploaded to Memory Alpha account for more than three times the file space that's consumed by our entire text database. I really hate to say this, but if we keep getting too-large and inappropriate images uploaded, we may have to consider disabling the upload service (at least temporarily). I say that not as a threat, but simply as a fact, the result of our need to make sure we don't consume too much file space. Because ultimately, it's Harry and I who are responsible for paying for this site.

I'm going to be keeping a much closer eye on the image uploads from now on. I urge you all to make sure that an image needs to be used to illustrate something -- think before you upload!

Thanks, Dan Carlson | Talk 18:29, Sep 13, 2004 (CEST)

Best Newbie Episodes

First, I hope this is an appropriate use of Ten Forward...

For some time now, I've been giving thought to what the best episodes would be to show to people who know nothing about Star Trek. In other words, which episodes are the most "accessible" and the least "obtuse"? Would this be an appropriate new article, or is this too much of a subjective and opinion driven idea?

I hope some regulars here have some thoughts! Thanks! User:Brad606 | Talk

I think that's a great idea. As a newbie myself, I've been hunting around to find an episode to use a basis, for (hopefully) writing my own. Having an actually "this is a typical example of what to aim for" link or three would be lovely. -- User:James Dec 4 2004

Who knows what the Whorfin class ship is?

My name is Connor Ennis but while I'm here I'm Lt. Ennis of the USS Southwest in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. I'm asking if anyone knows any information about the Whorfin class ship. I've seen pictures of them but I have zero information. I'm asking for help please.

Donation

I'd like to know more what the fund raising is about. What will we have with this 100 EUR? How fast do we need to get it? Has it something to do with the new server-hardware? And what are the benefits and changes about this server anyway? I like the concept of donating for a good idea, but a word or two concerning the site notice would be fine. If it is a secret birthday present for MA I'm now pushing to public, please do remove my posting as fast as possible! ;o) -- Florian K 01:05, 28 Sep 2004 (CEST)

Well, I might as well answer this, although it's a bit late ;) Basically, the rather boring answer is that the new server is more expensive than the old one. The server move was necessary because of the usual bandwith and diskspace issues. Memory Alpha continues to grow, and we just had to move to a more capabable machine. -- Harry 17:55, 9 Dec 2004 (CET)

Wikipedia

Hello all. I've just come across this site and it looks very good. I did notice it looks very similar to Wikipedia, and I was wondering if there has ever been a discussion here about mergin Alpha into the Wikipedia? As WP's goal is basically to include all human knowledge, there's definitely a place for Star Trek articles as much as say Medicine articles. -- 137.17.21.207 15:56, 28 Sep 2004 (CEST)

Thanks for your appreciation! Memory Alpha (MA) will never merge with Wikipedia (WP) since WP covers a real-live encyclopedia. Nevertheless WP features an article about Star Trek and MA. Besides this problem of topics and relations to real-life / fiction there will be the problem of licences, since WP is totally "free and open" and MA restricts commercial use (for instance). Both MA and WP bases on the same software and philosophie, so you can see Memory Alpha as a spin-off, a daughter or an offspring of Wikipedia. -- Florian K 18:02, 28 Sep 2004 (CEST)

Ah right, so you are using this license then: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/, I was under the impression that MA was using a less restricted license. Maybe linking to this human-readable license at the bottom of articles would be more convenient than linking to the full lawyer-readable version? Best of luck. -- 195.121.75.46 20:18, 28 Sep 2004 (CEST)

If you are using the standard monobook-skin you can see at the botom of each page a little button in the left corner. There's were we keep the secret human readable "short" version. ;o) -- Florian K 17:46, 30 Sep 2004 (CEST)

So lawyers are not human? -- Redge | Talk 14:11, 15 Oct 2004 (CEST)

I'd like to quote: "That's right, nothing will survive WWIII except cockroaches and lawyers." -- Florian K 12:46, 10 Dec 2004 (CET)

All those that would like to survive, please raise your antenna.

Copyright Line

Hello. I've begun managing my own Wiki, and would like to ask you a question. What file did you edit to add the Paramount Copyright Line to your copyright footer? Thanks.

You should ask DarHorizon. Post on this question on his talk page. -- Krevaner 00:43, 13 Oct 2004 (CEST)
- I believe you'll find it in your system messages. If you look on your Recent Changes, it should be the first page to be edited. -- Redge | Talk 14:09, 15 Oct 2004 (CEST)

Apocrypha

I have noticed a large amount of apocrypha being added to Memory Alpha in recent days and weeks. Since I am now at university every day, and lack the time have time to go through every article talk page, I make this point as a general note: I strongly oppose the addition of such information at this time. There are still vast swathes of canonical information, much of it essential, that need to be written and expanded upon. Such additions only lead to confusion and clutter in the article, and make it appear that such information is acceptable to be added in the general article space, when it is not. -- Michael Warren | Talk 16:57, Oct 21, 2004 (CEST)

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)

More Episode Info

There is a post here about Episode Guides, and I'd just like to say I really enjoy this website, and with more definitive info of each episode, I'd probably like it more than Paramount's Star Trek website. I know it's time consuming, and I may add/edit info on a couple of episodes, but I'm wondering why more info has not been placed into this site concerning episode info. I'm sure there's plenty of intelligent people here who can creatively, and yet succintly give episode summaries without pirating info from Paramount or other websites or literature. 65.202.230.16 16:36, 5 Nov 2004 (CET)allstargeneral 9:33, 4 November 2004 (CST)

Superfluous Pictures

There are frequent references in MA talking about exercising restraint while utilizing multimedia in conjunction with articles. Now, many articles I've browsed have several media (usually pictures) associated with them and used in what I would assume to be proper usage. i.e. Several shots of different interior sections of a starship, diagrams and such for equipment, etc. However, I notice on many personnel pages that they frequently have several pictures depicting the same referenced personnel with little-to-no discernable difference in them (e.g. reason for having duplicate pictures).

Several personnel articles utilize multiple pictures in a manner I would construe as proper, such as James T. Kirk, (while not a person) USS Voyager, and Montgomery Scott. These differing pictures depict substantial changes made to the subject in question (significant age difference, partial assimilation, uniform difference (although the latter could also be construed as a non-influential change)). However, many entries utilize extremely similar or change-disindicative pictures for the same person, prime examples of this consist of Kathryn Janeway, Jean-Luc Picard, Jonathan Archer, and (while not a person) USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-E).

Now while I feel that having an assimilated Picard, or a picture of him from his time as a Lieutenant in the alternate timeline (TNG: Tapestry) would make sense, much as the already-existing picture of him as a cadet does. But three pictures of him only in the time span of 15 years with very slight discernable difference in the subject matter seems excessive to me, at least in view of the media policy. Either removing excessive pictures, or allowing their replacement with more ... differing ones would seem more in line with conserving disk space and prolonging the existence and up-time of Memory Alpha.

-- THOR 01:48, 8 Nov 2004 (CET) | Talk

In the articles you point out, I feel the problems is not so much an excess of pictures, but a lack of good information. if more inforation was written on Picard for example, those four pictures would not be crammed together like that. Besides that, these are very popular subjects, and there are tons of info on them. It stands to reason they'd have more pictures than most articles. -- Redge | Talk 13:20, 8 Nov 2004 (CET)

Holodeck Characters

Since there seems to be a list of virtually everything else, would it be a good idea to create a list of holodeck characters? It's not like there isn't enough of them for a list. --Brian M 19:44, 16 Nov 2004 (CET)

Production number prefices

Is there really any need for production numbers on DS9 episodes to start with "4XX" or TNG to be "1XX".. the only real meaning the number has for readers is to show the progression of episodes in production order. Internal studio info is neat, but I don't really think its useful or interesting to put it in individual episode pages. In fact, the whole thing seems kind of stupid.. the 47th episode should be episode 47, not 147 (in this example, to avoid confusion with episode 147). -- Captain Mike K. Bartel 00:19, 23 Nov 2004 (CET)

I've started a testing a few

If we are listing production numbers, they should be the official ones - and as obscure as they are for most of us, I'm sure they are useful for someone, so we shouldn't simply remove or change them. -- Cid Highwind 01:16, 23 Nov 2004 (CET)

In fact production numbers are, besides titles, the most acurate refference to episodes across the globe. Airing-lists may differ, even the original order is not linear if you have a look at TNG's first season. German airing order is very strange some times, not to mention the translated episode-titles. PS: Is that any 47-gag? -- Florian K 01:47, 23 Nov 2004 (CET)

I love 47 refs. 42, adjusted for inflation. Anywho. Perhaps a dual listing is in order. (Serial number, production number). Someone also suggested a seasonal episode number notation, I endorse this also -->

I used production numbers on all my VHS DS9 episodes. Not the best, perhaps, but it's a quick, small number that tells me exactly which episode is on the tape, and makes it easy to find in the "Deep Space Nine Companion" book -- James 0200, Dec 2 2004

Check the layout i tried -- Captain Mike K. Bartel 20:01, 4 Dec 2004 (CET)

I would suggest the modification above, which has become a common representation of season-episode order. -- Michael Warren | Talk 13:38, Dec 6, 2004 (CET)

Excellent. I think this presentation is exactly what most users would be looking for. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel

redirect search

Is there any way to query the wiki software for a straight list of all redirect pages? I've been noticing a lot of badly formed article titles staying around in the database for long periods of time without being caught. If it isn't desirable to have so many of them, I'd suggest mandating a policy to create a manual list (recommended for addition every time a user moves an article or creates a redirect, just as every new disambiguation gets listed at Memory Alpha:Links to disambiguating pages), or to simply tag the redirects somehow. Comments? -- Captain Mike K. Bartel 06:58, 23 Nov 2004 (CET)

Waht about the Maintenance page? -- Redge | Talk 12:31, 23 Nov 2004 (CET)

Episode Log Entries

Hello - I'm new here, so sorry if this is in the wrong place, or I've made a similar mistake! In the past couple of months, I've created a new website - Star Trek: Captain's Logs. The site is a database of log entries from every series of ST, although I've only just started. I was wondering what others might think about adding log entries to their relative episode entries in Memory Alpha?

The site can be found here: http://www.freewebs.com/startreklogs/

That's certainly an interesting idea. At the very least, I'm happy you have the stardate spans of the episodes, as opposed to just the first stardate, since I planned to go looking for those soon. --Steve 19:21, 23 Nov 2004 (CET)

Looking for Star Trek the Magazine

Hellow everyone. I was a huge fan of Star Trek the Magazine. However I missed 10 issues of the publication. Does anyone know where I could get the back issues?

I don't intend to feature advertising but what about this link: https://www.gefabbri.co.uk/startrek/index.asp?source=backcovers.asp BTW: Google came up with this! And doesn't Scott Bakula look like Gordon Freeman from "Half Life" on issue "November 2002"? -- Florian K 14:27, 15 Dec 2004 (CET)

new MediaWiki version

Hey, you've updated the MediaWiki with parameter "silent" instead of "verbose"! ;) I happen to see something like "Templeted used on page:" when editing this article and had a look on Special:Version. There used to be something like "MediaWiki 1.3.4+", now it's 1.3.9. Are there any more killer features to know? -- Florian K 12:16, 16 Dec 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)

About the use of disambiguation pages

Right now, there are several pages claiming to be "disambiguation pages" (DP), such as Alpha, Beta, Gamma... I don't know if these are really necessary (or valid DPs at all). In my opinion, a DP should be created only if there are several "objects" that are normally referred to using the same term. Enterprise, for example, is such a term, because it is used to refer to one of many starships as well as the latest series. Alpha, though, could be a disambiguation page for Alpha (Jem'Hadar), Alpha Quadrant and Alpha system and others, but definitely shouldn't include links to articles like Treaty of Alpha Cygnus IX (no one would refer to that treaty as simply "Alpha"). In this case, the search function of this wiki seems to be good enough (try searching for "Zeta", for example). -- Cid Highwind 12:55, 17 Dec 2004 (CET)

Yeah, this was occuring to me as I wrote Beta through Epsilon; Alpha was created by someone else (Mike maybe?) and that's what gave me the idea. Wikipedia, though, does do these basically the way we are right now: Wikipedia:Alpha, Wikipedia:Beta, &c. -- Steve 00:32, 18 Dec 2004 (CET)

copyright on cover-texts?

I found many copies of cover-texts of novels inside MA, for instance Time's Enemy or First Strike. Is that covered by the Memory Alpha:Copyrights? I always thought verbatim copy of any material should be avoided; I'm not quite sure if the back cover texts are ment to be copyrighted since it is a kind of advertisement. Is there someone with proofed knowledge about that? -- Florian K 18:55, 23 Dec 2004 (CET)

File:No image yet.jpg Episode Image
Series:	TNG
Episode:	2x10 (#35)
Original Airdate:	YYYY-MM-DD
Production Number:	135
Year:	2365
Stardate:	Unknown
Story by:	WRITER
Directed by:	DIRECTOR