Forum:CT:Encounters duology

This page is an archive of a community-wide discussion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made in the Senate Hall or new Consensus Track pages rather than here so that this page is preserved as a historic record.
The result of the debate was Support. DarthRuiz30 (talk) 00:14, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

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It is finally time to address concretely the problem of the Encounters duology. The issue was detailed by myself in a recent Senate Hall topic, but I'm still going to provide a TL;DR:

Cult Encounters of the Star Wars Universe and Supernatural Encounters in the Star Wars Universe, by author Joseph Bongiorno, were planned for release as articles in Star Wars Gamer (2000-2002), then on Hyperspace service (2004-2011), but each time failed to be published. In 2015, after an attempt to be published on StarWars.com, Lucasfilm authorized the author to publish his work on his personal website, which he did in 2017 (Cult) and 2018 (Supernatural). Since then, content from Cult and Supernatural Encounters have reached our shores, and started to populate the "Behind the scenes" section of Wookieepedia articles, under the umbrella of {{Unlicensedstart}}/{{Unlicensedend}} (e.g. Hutt, Rakata, Tilotny). There's even the now-infamous World Between Worlds/Legends article, which perfectly illustrate how the author kept editing his work from the initial proposals. Supernatural Encounters is currently slated for an Expanded Edition with illustrations and around 1100 pages (while it was supposed to be only 600 pages for Hyperspace).

In the Senate Hall, my conclusion, shared by some of you, was as follows: while it was authorized for development and later allowed to be published at the author's leisure, the Encounters duology is an unofficial, unlicensed, and unpublished/cancelled work. As confirmed by Pablo Hidalgo, it has not passed any editing review process internally at Lucasfilm, and Leland Chee made clear that it's not registered in any capacity by the Holocron continuity database. Furthermore, all publicly available versions of the prose of both texts (which is to say since 2017) have been compromised by an ongoing editing process outside of Lucasfilm jurisdiction, which can only be considered as fanon.

Proposition

Note: As this Consensus Track is only related to Cult Encounters of the Star Wars Universe, Supernatural Encounters in the Star Wars Universe, and Supernatural Encounters: The Trial and Transformation of Arhul Hextrophon, and any derivative articles (currently less than 200, by my estimation)^[1], note that it does not aim at modifying our policies, but will nonetheless define Wookieepedia's way of handling this content, per community consensus vote.

I propose the following:

All narrative information from the Encounters duology is to be removed from Wookieepedia in any form. The three documents articles (Cult, Supernatural (RPG article) and Supernatural (novel)) are to be kept, but limited to the recording of real world details, such as their publishing history.

Note

Vote

Support

1. NanoLuuke^{Cloning facility} 00:01, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
2. 01miki10 ^{Open comlink} 00:19, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
3. Manoof (he/him/his) (talk) 00:31, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
4. If we ever get hold of verifiable versions of the original proposed content then things might be different, but as it currently stands this doesn't fall within our scope. I will note that I think the mentioned in the BTS of Arhul Hextrophon/Legends should be left as it is since it doesn't cover narrative content and we know his name was going to be in the proposed title. Ayrehead02 (talk) 00:56, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
5. Completely agree with this solution. DarthRuiz30 (talk) 00:59, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
6. Burn it all! VergenceScatter (talk) 01:00, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
7. Per Ayre. Zed42 (talk) 01:06, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
8. Per everything said here and in the SH thread. Also massive kudos to Nano for putting this together, this is one of the best researched proposals I've ever seen! Supreme Emperor ^Holocomm 01:58, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
9. Dentface (talk) 02:25, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
10. Fascinating content, but neither official nor canonical. Have you ever heard the tragedy of Supernatural Encounters: The Trial and Transformation of Arhul Hextrophon? — YakovChaimTzvi (he/him/his) (talk) 04:07, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
11. There might have been an argument that Lucasfilm did "license" the author to publish the work himself, therefore making it official - if he had had left it as originally written and approved by Lucasfilm. But since he has taken after Lucas and continues to change it, then nope. - JMAS ^{Hey, it's me!} 04:33, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
12. Allowing it to be self-published on a website doesn't make it official/licensed or approved as canonical--it just means "go ahead, we don't currently plan to take legal action against you." Even if someone from Wookieepedia had access to a version that was previously reviewed, something that's not publicly available can't be verified by other people. The parts that other authors have mentioned in Legends or canon sources don't make Bongiorno's works canonical; only the parts that actually made it into a canonical source are. Immi Thrax (she/her) (talk) 04:58, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
13. Very nice work here, Nano. Only thing left is to resolve the discussion below, but I'm sure that will work itself out nicely. JediMasterMacaroni^(Talk) 05:15, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
14. LucaRoR ^(Talk) 06:42, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
15. From what I've seen of the Encounters it would be really fun to write about, but this is absolutely a line we have to draw. Commander Code-8 ^{Hello There!} 07:11, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
16. OOM 224 07:51, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
17. Imperators II^(Talk) 08:02, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
18. Time to drop a Force storm (wormhole) on SE and CE. SaintSirNicholas (talk) 08:24, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
19. Rsand 30 (talk) 11:15, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
20. UberSoldat93 (talk) 11:59, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
21. NBDani (talk) 13:22, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
22. DaRealDarkLord (talk) 13:22, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
23. I've been following the production, and it hasn't been proven that the current version is what was authorized. This is the right idea. Corellian Premier^MTFBWY 15:16, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
24. Lewisr (talk) 15:43, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
25. This has to go up there with FFG as one of the best researched CTs in Wook history. Well done. MasterFred(talk) 23:57, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
26. Sir Cavalier of One^{(Squadron channel)} 00:20, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
27. Amazing job Nano Fan26 (Talk) 18:45, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
28. Rakhsh (talk) 18:50, 11 December 2021 (UTC)
29. Green Tentacle ^(Talk) 23:54, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Oppose

Discussion

Perhaps a relevant note can be added to Wookieepedia:Canon policy#What is unclear? JediMasterMacaroni^(Talk) 00:05, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

• Maybe Wookieepedia:Canon policy#What is not a reliable resource? would be a better place, because we know that none of this is canon? 01miki10 ^{Open comlink} 00:19, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Yeah, that's a good point. Perhaps something like, "Supernatural Encounters: The Trial and Transformation of Arhul Hextrophon Cult Encounters of the Star Wars Universe are not valid sources of information", with a link to this CT below. Thoughts? JediMasterMacaroni^(Talk) 00:34, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
    • I think it's way too "niche" to be added to policy, and it's not unconventional to have concensus vote regarding content to be left out of policies, like TOR's multiple related CTs (which is way above this CT in term of scale). However, a specific header, such as what I have been planning with this discussion will be added on all 3 documents articles. -NanoLuuke^{Cloning facility} 01:07, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
      • I don't really see any harm in codifying it. Build the Millennium Falcon is also arguably quite niche, but that's written into policy. In my opinion, someone looking for how Wookieepedia treats certain sources in terms of canonocity could just as easily turn to our canon policy instead of the pages for the sources themselves. We could certainly do it in tandem with a consensus header, though. JediMasterMacaroni^(Talk) 02:51, 9 December 2021 (UTC)