Forum:CT:Notability Policy: English Words

Forums > Consensus track archive > CT:Notability Policy: English Words
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 No consensus. JangFett (Talk) 13:55, September 1, 2013 (UTC)

Okay, let's give it a shot then. Vote on whether or not to keep articles on simple English words like rope. If you do choose to keep them, then every noun in the novel would be a fair game for an article. If not, most of those pages would actually be kept, as disambiguation pages to actual Star Wars items (see: rock). LOST-Malachi (talk) 07:46, August 17, 2013 (UTC)

English words

If a word holds the same meaning in Star Wars galaxy as in general English language, generally there is no need for a separate article. Notable exceptions that would allow for their own articles include:

  1. If a word is used to define something different in Star Wars galaxy than in real world. Bounty Hunter is not the same as Bounty Hunter, Cantina is not the same as Cantina, Spice is not the same as Spice.
    • A good rule of thumb is whether the word gains a different, easily recognizable meaning when used within the Star Wars context. Military ranks (captain, general, sergeant), technology (computer, hologram, jetpack) and astronomic terms (asteroid, planet, galaxy) are all obviously qualifying examples. On the other hand, words such as wheel, torch or lubricant have exactly the same meaning when used in context of Star Wars or outside of it. Such terms require no separate articles, as they would be telling nothing new to a reader.
  2. If a word has clear Earth origins or otherwise defines a term one would not associate with Star Wars, but is nevertheless canonical. Books, Paper and Glasses are rarely depicted in Star Wars media and are generally not expected to be found in them, yet are canonical.
    • A rule of thumb is whether an article on an otherwise generic Earthly term would provide new information to the reader. The article of paper may provide interesting and unusual examples because of its rarity in Star Wars. More generic items like bunk, bulkhead or barrel, however, are commonly found in both visual and non-visual Star Wars media and rarely draw special attention to themselves. An article on item such as bag would be telling only what a bag is, something a reader of text in English already knows.
  3. While a full article on a generic English word will not be appropriate, a page under its title might still exist, functioning as a disambiguation page between similarly named Star Wars concepts. See fish, stone and bridge for a proper way to use common English words in the main namespace.
    • When a word refers to a specific unique subject within Star Wars, the canonical page title should have precedence over the disambiguation page in namespace. See Lock, Switch and Abyss for examples.

Support

  1. LOST-Malachi (talk) 07:46, August 17, 2013 (UTC)
  2. Menkooroo (talk) 12:28, August 17, 2013 (UTC)
  3. These are good. I suspect TC discussions will revolve around interpretations of rule #2, which may require a few rounds of community discussion to clarify. —Silly Dan (talk) 13:52, August 17, 2013 (UTC)
  4. Darth Trayus(Trayus Academy) 21:33, August 17, 2013 (UTC)
  5. Per Dan. —MJ— Comlink 00:28, August 18, 2013 (UTC)
  6. Ayrehead02 (talk) 10:59, August 18, 2013 (UTC)
  7. Articles on words that have no different definition IU than they do in an English dictionary bother me. They bother me a lot! I'd love to know what those who oppose this want to do with that list of redlinks below. I just don't get hyperinclusionism. - Esjs(Talk) 08:02, August 19, 2013 (UTC)
  8. I think this would be better. Corellian PremierJedi symbolThe Force will be with you always 17:10, August 19, 2013 (UTC)
  9. Sensible. ~SavageBOB sig 00:26, August 26, 2013 (UTC)

Oppose

  1. This policy seems to loosely defined to be of much use. The difference between items falling in rules 1 and 2 is too blurred to help in any decisions. In the end, the policy all comes down to user opinion.--Exiled Jedi Oldrepublic crest (Greetings) 22:04, August 17, 2013 (UTC)
  2. I know we've been over this how many times before with things like this and this, but I guess it bears repeating again. Whether or not something with a real-world equivalent has in-universe "uniqueness" should not be a determining factor for deleting that subject. The many times that we've had this debate proves that "uniqueness" is a very subjective idea, as EJ is saying above. If something exists in the Star Wars universe, we document it, and our readers deserve to be able to find it. It doesn't necessarily matter if it's "unique" or not. And I know someone like Trayus is going to try and throw this argument at me and question what's the difference between an electric shaver and stairs. Well, that's something I feel very confident we can adequately determine in a TC thread without the need for an exclusive policy like this. Toprawa and Ralltiir (talk) 22:37, August 17, 2013 (UTC)
  3. Per Tope. Cade GalacticRepublicEmblem-Traced-TORkit Calrayn 23:06, August 17, 2013 (UTC)
  4. If it exists in universe, we document it. Simple as that. Supreme Emperor (talk) 23:12, August 17, 2013 (UTC)
  5. If they know of it in the GFFA, we have it on our site. Simple as that. MasterFredCommerce Guild(Whatever) 14:40, August 18, 2013 (UTC)
  6. I agree that if an item is not notable in general, then it should not have an article. But if an item played some notable role somewhere in the Star Wars universe, then I would approve of such an article, regardless of it having the same definition as the real world. For example, if Luke Skywalker defeated a giant arachnid using a "torch," or if Obi-Wan used a "barrel" to destroy some battle droids, then I don't think it should matter that the item has real-world equivalent. Give it an article.--Richterbelmont10 (come in R2!) 01:48, August 19, 2013 (UTC)
  7. Trip391 (talk) 01:51, August 19, 2013 (UTC)
  8. I seem to recall a similar discussion from a while back regarding instances of "dictionary" entries. In situations like this, it may be best to approach each subject on a case-by-case basis. If it is something unique to some aspect of the GFFA, like pillow, then I see no harm. Trak Nar Ramble on 06:36, August 19, 2013 (UTC)
  9. IFYLOFD (Enter the Floydome) 19:25, August 25, 2013 (UTC)
  10. —Cal JediInfinite Empire (Personal Comm Channel) 20:46, August 25, 2013 (UTC)
  11. This proposal to me doesn't clearly resolve the differences between what's worthy of an article or not. Atarumaster88 Jedi Order (Talk page) 22:57, August 25, 2013 (UTC)
  12. Let's give it a shot? Let's not. Cut the notability policy shenanigans already.—Tommy 9281 Sunday, August 25, 2013, 23:15 UTC

Neutral

  1. Meh, for this, I can't seem to decide. Seems too controversial and unnecessary. JangFett (Talk) 17:11, August 19, 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

Not touching unidentified subjects here, as it is a different discussion entirely. LOST-Malachi (talk) 07:46, August 17, 2013 (UTC)
I opened Heir to the Empire (because Zahn is awesome) and started reading. And on the first fewpages I've found crew pit, conversation, shoulder, shout, line, pen, display, order, sound, footstep, weight, walk, heartbeat, information, direction, recipient, trouble, native, exception, attempt, position, bid, membership, support, raid, report, bitterness, problem, anger, fact, vulnerability, suspicion, echelon, loss, memory, image, explosion, capriciousness, promotion, fraction, fiasco, leadership, threat, smile, procedure, shouting, person, suite, secret and sorry, do I need to keep on? If you agree that every noun ever mentioned in Star Wars deserves an article, you might as well have a bot import the entire English dictionary here, that whould be faster, easier and more convinient. But if you agree that "Well, we obviously don't need THAT.", then why not have some resemblance of rules to establish it? And if you disagree with some particular rule or line suggested above, why not point that out so a change can ba made and consensus can become easier to reach? LOST-Malachi (talk) 06:19, August 19, 2013 (UTC)
No, I don't think that every noun ever published deserves an article. But that's not what your policy is all about. Your policy's main premise is that: "If a word holds the same meaning in Star Wars galaxy as in general English language, generally there is no need for a separate article." I disagree with this policy because it's not a good guide as to whether or not an article should exist. As I mentioned earlier in my comments under "Oppose," if an item played some notable role somewhere in the Star Wars universe, then I would approve of such an article, regardless of it having the same definition as the real world. For example, if Luke Skywalker defeated a giant arachnid using a "torch," or if Obi-Wan used a "barrel" to destroy some battle droids, then I don't think it should matter that the item has real-world equivalent. It should be allowed to have an article with the mention of this notable event.
Reviewing your list of red links, most of these should not have an article. Are people making articles this silly? I've reviewed all of your "Unidentified persons" articles that you mentioned in the Senate Hall, and I find the Dancer's leg is pretty silly, as well as some of the "Unidentified patrons". But I don't think that people are going beyond that to the extremes that you are mentioning here such as "shoulder" or "sound." (Actually, the one exception I do think would make a good article in your list is "crew pit", since it's about a Star Destroyer's bridge.) If you can point to other examples that shows the line is being crossed from silly to completely unacceptable ridiculousness, then I will consider changing adding my vote to Forum:CT:Notability Policy: In-Universe Subjects. --Richterbelmont10 (come in R2!) 17:06, August 19, 2013 (UTC)
No, Richter, no one on Wookieepedia has ever to my knowledge abused this to such an extreme as Mauser is making out by his sensational examples above. Mauser is angry that people are opposing his ideas, so he's losing his cool and going to extremes. You are correct that "crew pit" would actually be an excellent addition for an article, since that has definite in-universe significance and originality with no real real-world equivalency. Though I'm sure he'll try to show you some English-word articles that he thinks are ridiculous and need to be deleted, I find that most of our English-word articles have valid substantive research value, and ones that are indeed complete ridiculousness are usually always appropriately deleted in the Trash compactor forum. After all, we're not complete idiots around here. :P Any articles that exist that are nonsense can and should always be taken to TC. I'm positing that we don't need a policy to tell us to do this. Toprawa and Ralltiir (talk) 18:00, August 19, 2013 (UTC)
In his defense, Mauser brought up some excellent points in his Senate Hall policy draft, namely, that a lot of effort is being spent to send pointless, non-notable pages to status. For example, Unidentified dancer, Unidentified Gotal patron (Twirling Twi'lek) and Unidentified Ho'Din patron are seemingly pointless articles, yet they got approved for status. What I wish is that the efforts that are being spent to send these unremarkable Unidentified background people and things to status would be redirected to send more notable people and things to status.--Richterbelmont10 (come in R2!) 19:24, August 19, 2013 (UTC)
Angry? Losing cool? Lol, I'm doing it because I'm bored and it keeps me entertained (editing the Wiki I mean, not making points on deleting stuff at random. Definitely not that). I've tried editing other wikis, but every special-themed wiki out there is utter garbage compared to the Wook, you try to clean up something and quickly give up, because incomprehensible mess is like 85% if not more of all their articles. Wikipedia is much cooler, with sourcing and such, but they don't like special stuff from fictional universes much either. TvTropes is awesome though, without notability or any hard rules whatsoever. Go figure how. Anyway, the point is that every time I come across stuff like Boog's captain's species (look, a Human made a tatoo! is my roommate of an unidentified alien species too?) or Couch (this tells me... what?) I get frustrated. But not of the fact that such articles exist at all (if only TCs were as good a solution as you make them seem to be!) - it's because they are consistently allowed to. The very presence of such stuff repeatedly kills my mood to edit actual, useful and interesting articles - because what's the point in improving the thing if garbage such as Mounted beasts exists for years and is not cleaned up, these users obviously don't care at all about the quality of the stuff they keep. You have an upper bar for FAs/GAs, but no lower bar for "Eww, don't be ridiculous" (Except for fan projects, I will grant you that) kind of articles. In wanting them gone I'm trying to improve the overall quality of the Wook by raising the bar, that's all. Luke Skywalker used a torch to defeat a spider, cool! He also used a vulnerability to defeat a Death Star. So?
I also know a lot of Star Wars fans who use the Wook extensively at least every week, if not every day, but won't edit even a smallest typo. One thing in common: those articles do not exist for them. They either read article for famous subjects to learn new information (Thrawn, Mara, Revan etc.) or search for the character/planet/whatever after encountering a name in a source (book, comic, TCW episode) and checking if it appeared anywhere else and if so, "what's your story, thingie?" Nobody's entering stuff like Unidentified patron in a Coruscant cantina (19 BBY) in a search box to randomly come up across an article that describes a self-evident panel in a comic. And nobody in their right mind searches for stairs either. People come here to read about Kanz Disorders, Pius Dea crusades, Orinda campaign... not pillows, pants and chairs. You can delude yourself with "If it appears in canon, we have it!", to which I reply (again) with Luke Skywalker's Tatooine hat, Dinner at the Lars Homestead and Unidentified Tatooine rock R2-D2 hit behind before being captured by Jawas. Such articles are absurd indeed and most of the time you don't have them... and yet sometimes you do and there's not a written rule that says there's a reason not to. Not to mention that time spend focusing on such articles (such as taking them to CAN) that nobody but other nominator-editors ever reads is the time that could be spend on actual named, useful, interesting stuff (you won't deny that huge areas of wiki are still lacking, would you?). Sadness and frustration, that's all I have. Although I could hold the entire wiki hostage by demanding to kill half of Category:Articles with conjectural titles in the full accordance with the first rule of Wookieepedia:Deletion policy if they don't agree to my demands. It will severely violate WP:POINT, but will sure as hell be entertaining =) LOST-Malachi (talk) 20:01, August 19, 2013 (UTC)
They may not search for it, but if there is a link, they may click on it. I rather enjoy reading conjectural articles and articles based on things obviously similar to things on Earth. I find them entertaining. MasterFredCommerce Guild(Whatever) 20:10, August 19, 2013 (UTC)