Talk: Content policy

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Suggest title change - "Resource policy"

Since it's always coming up whether "x is canon, y is non-canon" in terms of using it as a reference here, might I suggest that this be renamed as Resource policy, and we try and refer to things as valid and invalid resources, to avoid confusion with the true usage of canon (since things that are non-canon can be valid resources (for background information, etc)). This is not our policy on what is canon - we don't get to define that. Instead, it is a policy on what resources can be used in our articles, and should reflect that. -- Michael Warren | Talk 10:34, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Full agreement and support. This policy already does not really talk about what is canon and what not, but about "validity". The title should reflect that. -- Cid Highwind 12:01, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Also agreed. I assume this is just a matter of a name change? --Alan 16:22, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

After the note below, agree. - Archduk 3 16:30, February 20, 2010 (UTC)

We all aboard on this? If yes, should we have a bot change all the links already on the talk pages, or just leave a redirect? - Archduk 3 22:33, July 7, 2010 (UTC)

Not totally convinced today, but if we do it, I can have SulfBot make the changes. And we'd definitely leave an RD. -- sulfur 14:13, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

Why not convinced sulfur? - Archduk 3 06:31, July 14, 2010 (UTC)

Content policy?

This didn't go anywhere the last time, so I'd like to bring it up again, combined with another suggestion for the new title: Content policy - this page already describes what we'd like to have as content (and not just based on what resources), so this is actually a better title. It might also be slightly less confusing than "resource policy". -- Cid Highwind 12:50, February 13, 2011 (UTC)

This name is much better than "resource policy", which encompasses far more than this one does already. The current policy is already pretty complex and detailed, and to expand to cover all resources for everything? That's getting to be a bit much. Content is more suggestive (to me) that it covers the main content. -- sulfur 12:57, February 13, 2011 (UTC)

I don't really think the "resource" suggestion failed so much because of the name, but rather because there isn't really a need to do this. I know why it's been suggested, and I support changing the name of this, but I don't think anymore that it will stop the pointless debates on what is canon, for the most part, like we want it to. That said, I'm still more inclined to this being called the "resource policy" than the "content policy," since the latter seems more heavy handed as it implies that it covers "what content can be created" rather then "what resources can be used to create content." - Archduk 3 13:13, February 13, 2011 (UTC)

Either suggestion works for me.–Cleanse ^{( talk | contribs )} 00:39, February 14, 2011 (UTC)

Splitting this up

I've taken some time to create a split version of the policy here. While I don't consider this to be a final draft, I think it's a good place to start if we're going to move towards something as described in the sections above. I'm not sure would could get entirely away from using the word "canon" with this, as it does tend to be the term that applies the best here, but I think listing the resources removed from the definition of what the site uses as canon might be a step in the right direction towards alleviating the issues we have. - Archduk 3 21:54, April 3, 2013 (UTC)

That is a good beginning; I think it's something we are going to need to address especially given the discussion at Talk:Star Trek (video game) and the likelihood such discussion will come up again. 31dot (talk) 23:01, April 3, 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I doubt that's going to be last of it no matter what we do, but I think this might help. Part of the reason I kept the word "canon" is that even if we had a policy about what "content" we would want or not want to be considered in-universe, in the end the word "canon" was going to come up either way. That said, it's worth noting that every time the words "canon" and "non-canon" are used in these you could replace them with "in-universe content" and "real world content", if anybody is interested in more radical changes. - Archduk 3 23:26, April 3, 2013 (UTC)

Surprisingly, or not, this hasn't attracted much attention, so I've had too much time to think on it. I've made a few more wording changes, mostly removing the word "canon" from the polices, resulting in a "Content policy" (which canon would redirect to) and a "Resource policy". I've also added the text of the FAQ, since that's going to need to be mostly rewritten if we do this, and parts of it may be out of date already. The word "canon" is still going to come up, and the shortcuts and messages that use the word should most be fine even if we change the wording here. - Archduk 3 19:12, April 9, 2013 (UTC)

Last call to object before I make these changes. - Archduk 3 10:10, April 20, 2013 (UTC)

Has a decision to "deprecate" TOS original effects really been made?

In a recent discussion it was mentioned that "remastered effects take precedent" - and to my surprise, this is really part of this policy page at the moment. I just wonder where (if at all) this has been decided. I could track the edit that added this from this page to our "Resource policy" page, it was made by Archduk3 back in April ([1]). If I interpret the revision history of that page correctly (there's a bunch of merges and splits going on), it was most likely an edit he did in his own user space before supplanting an edited policy version back to the "official" location. In the mess of all this, I might have lost track of where this was discussed in front of a larger audience, so please link to that discussion if it exists. -- Cid Highwind (talk) 08:55, October 31, 2013 (UTC)

The relevant discussion being referred to is here; the statement seemed to be made out of some philosophical objection to the remastered episodes (the anon saying they feel their effects are "fan art" and the original had more "soul" than CGI) as well as a belief that the original effects somehow 'locked' what the effects look like (i.e. future changes are invalid) It was my understanding that we always went with the most recent version of an episode, regardless of the effects. Paramount owns Star Trek and they get to decide what it looks like(just like the redone original Star Wars films). 31dot (talk) 10:23, October 31, 2013 (UTC)

My concerns about the statement itself aside - even if it has been discussed and agreed upon, in the context of our "content policy" it would apply to differences in content itself (for example Kermit T. Frog being replaced with "real" names), not necessarily to variances in the depiction of the same object (TOS vs TOS-R). I don't think that phrase should be used to explain the replacement of all TOS images with their TOS-R counterparts. -- Cid Highwind (talk) 21:18, November 2, 2013 (UTC)

I'm open to wording changes, as the intent was that TOS-R & TNG-R do take precedent over the original versions, but that "both" versions are equally "canon", just that we use the remastered versions as in-universe for consistancy. That was my understanding of the many, many discussions on retcons and remastered effects. - Archduk 3 22:56, November 2, 2013 (UTC)

To clarify: As far as effect shots are concerned (example: different appearances of the Aurora (NC-17740)), or also regarding actual content (example: Kermit T. Frog as Raymond ancestor)? -- Cid Highwind (talk) 14:00, November 3, 2013 (UTC)

Content and effects, though only if there is a "conflict", as in the examples you gave (though the second one does most likely require more discussion, and maybe a separate retcon policy, since the content was the more muddeled of the two, and this policy was worded to be as simple as possible with the FAQ covering the recons in more depth).

Regarding some other things mentioned, the policy isn't suppose to be a call to replace all original effect shots though, but the better quality of those releases tends to result in that happening anyway. Also, the most complete version is before recent now so the blu-rays don't knock Peter Preston out of "canon". - Archduk 3 07:00, November 4, 2013 (UTC)

In that case, suggestion to replace:

...are considered canon on Memory Alpha, with the remastered, special, or director's editions of those releases taking precedent.

with

...are considered valid "in-universe" content on Memory Alpha, with the remastered, special, or director's editions of those releases taking precedent in case of unresolvable conflicts. In all other cases, all releases are considered equally valid.

This replaces "canon" with "valid in-universe content", as this term is defined on the mentioned FAQ page. It also clarifies that the "precedent rule" only applies to some edge cases, not to everything. Further definitions of what exactly makes a conflict "unresolvable", how to deal with that ("use talk page first"), and that "equally valid" means that images can be taken from original TOS, but can also be replaces with better versions from TOS-R could be added to the FAQ, although I don't think this is absolutely necessary.

As an aside, the handling of Kermit T. Frog is indeed somewhat strange. I think we need to discuss (again, I believe?) whether we either want to mark those "retcon articles" somehow (for example using an article banner), or alternatively whether the retcon category should become a hidden category. It should not be visible on the article as long as that article is considered "properly in-universe". -- Cid Highwind (talk) 10:06, November 4, 2013 (UTC)

I support the suggested replacement of text above. I would support a hidden category so all such retcon articles are listed in the same place, in case anyone wants to know how many such articles there are. 31dot (talk) 13:10, November 4, 2013 (UTC)

[edit conflict] - That's understandable, since a unified/complete way of dealing with retcons never really got implemented/rolled out, though there was (most of) a plan. There is suppose to be a banner to accompany the category (my lack of non-free editing software kinda put a damper on my ability to use transparency effects, and the discussed joke GIF still haunts my dreams). The articles could still be written as in-universe (so as to avoid having to rewrite all of them, and they are still valid material for that matter), which I'm sure would lead to confusion without the banner. I'm not sure if all the in-universe links to those articles got updated to the new ones either, and I don't remember off hand how the category system was going to work, or if that even got decided. So, yeah, everything retcons are still kinda a mess and needs work, the least of which is de-stubbing the retcon page. That said, I'm OK with deploying a "blank" all black banner on the retcon pages until an image is decided upon, since the text and link are the important parts of those. I think the text and link for that were good to go at least.

As for the wording change to the policy, I'm good with the gist of it, though I would prefer trying to keep the thought as one sentence, with a semicolon or more commas; mostly for flow. The parts around what takes precedent are the actual important bits, and they shouldn't end up too far apart if it can be helped. That's small potatoes though. - Archduk 3 13:43, November 4, 2013 (UTC)

Discovery

Consistent with MA's policies elsewhere, I'd like to suggest a small note be added to this policy stating that materials from episodes (chapters?) of Star Trek: Discovery will become valid at the time they are aired/released in the United States. --- Jaz 04:54, August 11, 2016 (UTC)

That was always the standard when ENT was on the air, so it seems to me that is already a given. --Alan (talk) 11:32, August 11, 2016 (UTC)

Indeed; that is already how we do things with the films. 31dot (talk) 11:40, August 11, 2016 (UTC)

It's already in writing at Spoiler policy. No need to double up policies/etc. -- sulfur (talk) 11:57, August 11, 2016 (UTC)

It might be worth it to make the "released" text in front of DIS a link to the spoiler policy until that series concludes, since based on the films no one can seem to find that policy. - Archduk 3 16:37, August 11, 2016 (UTC)