Forums > Senate Hall archive > SH:Nomenclature
This page is an archive of a community-wide discussion. This page is no longer live. Further comments or questions on this topic should be made in a new Senate Hall page rather than here so that this page is preserved as a historic record. Toprawa and Ralltiir (talk) 06:01, February 19, 2013 (UTC)
Some thoughts I had today, on things which either strike me as inconsistent or else just deficient... — DigiFluid(Whine here) 00:49, January 17, 2013 (UTC)
"Star Wars" or not?
I'm sure this has come up before, but damned if I can remember the reasoning, but I find it odd and very inconsistent how we choose to use (or not) "Star Wars" in article names for published material. Someone remind me again, why it is that books (ie: X-wing: Rogue Squadron, Heir to the Empire, Crosscurrent) are not titled "Star Wars: Heir to the Empire"? We do it for comics (ie: Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 1: Commencement, Part 1, etc).
I find this goes even more off the rails, seemingly at random: ie Star Wars: Crimson Empire without the SW prefix for that comic line, or Darth Plagueis (for obvious reasons) for that novel. Shouldn't we—across the board—embrace a single, unified practice? It may be a little redundant on a Wikia specifically devoted to Star Wars, but at least it'd be consistent. — DigiFluid(Whine here) 00:49, January 17, 2013 (UTC)
Discuss
- There was a related discussion at Forum:CT:Essential Guide title tweaks in 2010, where I started a mini-protest against the use of "Star Wars" at all. Unfortunately, no one, including me, ever took action on that. I still stand by the comment I made in that thread. —MJ— Holocomm 01:01, January 17, 2013 (UTC)
- The general idea/practice/precedent is this: We don't add "Star Wars" to certain books on the grounds that they are written in-universe. This applies primarily to novels (Shadows of the Empire), sourcebooks (Galaxy Guide 3: The Empire Strikes Back), and reference books (The Essential Atlas). Everything else, again generally speaking, gets "Star Wars" added to it, even if it's in-universe. This includes OOU reference books (Star Wars: The Ultimate Visual Guide), video games (Star Wars: X-wing Alliance), soundtracks (Star Wars: The Clone Wars soundtrack), etc. etc. This is by no means a perfect science as we practice it, and there are more than a few exceptions. Comic books seem to be the one area where we are most inconsistent. Some comics have "Star Wars," some do not. I think that's about the best I can describe our current system for you. Toprawa and Ralltiir (talk) 01:32, January 17, 2013 (UTC)
- While I think I understand the reasoning Tope provided above, I don't think it's really our place to abridge titles of books when most of them will have a left page with an official title that will be used for categorization in any official capacity, the Library of Congress for example. The way we have operated heretofore, few have been crystal clear on the guideline or reasoning for why some have "Star Wars" and some do not, and it has been implemented largely arbitrarily. Why does Darth Plagueis carry it while Millennium Falcon, a novel of the same general style and by the same author, does not? Most of them carry the prefix. Turning back to novels, there's an upside and a downside to using the left page, and I only need to use one book to demonstrate them: Legacy of the Force: Tempest. Going by the left page, it would be called Star Wars: Legacy of the Force: Tempest. Pretty long, yeah? Downside. It doesn't look messy, per say, but it would certainly take getting used to. On the other hand, doing this would almost completely deprecate the need for the use of "(novel)" after the titles of books that have common names, see the direct link to Legacy of the Force: Tempest. They would stand on their own as book articles far better, and we wouldn't run into cases like Legacy of the Force: Revelation, where the *ahem* revelation that there was an IU Force power by that name necessitated that all links to the book be switched to include "(novel)." I filed a bot request to that effect, but hasn't been addressed yet. It's a fairly pervasive shift. OOU sources that exist IU could also be handled this way: "Star Wars; The Essential Atlas" could be OOU and "The Essential Atlas" could be IU. "(in-universe book)" and, more recently, "(book)" have been placed on the end of the IU article, which would be unnecessary in a lot of cases if we used my proposed distinction, and the text of the article would tell the reader which they were looking for—or we could create a template header, possibly. Which leads to the downside of changing books from where they are now to the longer titles, which would be interesting to say the least, but the recent {{Ref}} switch showed that something similar, if less complex, isn't impossible. Another benefit would be that our edit fields' auto complete would be more effective in a lot of cases, which can be demonstrated currently by looking to link to Star Wars: Darth Plagueis. Typing "Star Wars: D" puts it right on top, and there's no need to type it out afterward to fill a "(novel)" pipelink. It's far more expedient. ¶
- Again, this isn't a perfect way to do it, but we can come up with ways to overcome downsides we think of. For one, we already classify young reader novels similarly: see Jedi Apprentice: The Rising Force or Rebel Force: Target. Omitting "Star Wars:" when the subseries gets a prefix in the title, as in the case of Legacy of the Force, would shorten the title somewhat. I still feel that's not our place, but that way wouldn't be applied arbitrarily. I just feel we need a more concrete system. NaruHina Talk
20:45, January 17, 2013 (UTC) - As another note, in the case of comic books, we've tended to follow what the official websites have called them, which is why we've ended up with Star Wars: Legacy—War and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic—War while the books show the colon on the covers. There was some debate about Legacy's that died fairly quickly because both were used on sites, so I suppose we just settled on one that was used first in that instance. They don't have traditional left pages that have the name stated plainly, as novels do, so that's just a way to handle it. NaruHina Talk 20:45, January 17, 2013 (UTC)
- Is there a reason why this is the case? I can't remember ever picking up a novel and thinking it was written as though it were an in-universe document. Reference books that specifically say so, sure, but never a novel. And that comics are treated differently is really bizarre. — DigiFluid(Whine here) 22:33, January 19, 2013 (UTC)
- Just the fact that the narrative is in-universe. It doesn't have to be an IU document. Toprawa and Ralltiir (talk) 00:05, January 20, 2013 (UTC)
- This topic has a long and contentious history - in addition to the above mentioned Forum:CT:Essential Guide title tweaks thread, we also argued about it in Forum:CT:Remove "Star Wars" from media titles?, Forum:CT:Media titles: Reloaded, and Forum:CT:"Star Wars" in article titles. We've never been able to come to a consensus on it. jSarek (talk) 08:09, January 20, 2013 (UTC)
- I think for novels, short stories, and other stuff titles we should follow latest The Essential Reader's Companion example, in mostly if not all we're already following I think. That is canon and solve whether to use Star Wars or not. And in BTS we could put alternative titles mentioned or used elsewhere if any. That's my two cents.-- Jedi Marty (talk) 12:27, January 22, 2013 (UTC)
Battles and parentheses
This one I thought of when I noticed Cade moving Second Battle of Dathomir to Battle of Dathomir (Hunt for Zsinj). I couldn't help but notice that this creates a circumstance by which we have Ground Battle on Dathomir and the Zsinj one, even though the Zsinj campaign is also part of the GCW.
So...since we have so many battles that are just "Battle of x," and we're currently in the habit of either conjectural First/Second/etc or else arbitrary parenthesis....why don't we just use the year in the parenthesis? Couldn't we make life a lot simpler and more consistent if we had "Battle of Dathomir (3 ABY) and "Battle of Dathomir (8 ABY)" and did that across the board for all battles barring ones specifically named otherwise? I don't mean to pick on Cade's specific example, I just wonder if this might not be just a better way of doing things, considering we have some places that have tons of battles throughout history. — DigiFluid(Whine here) 00:49, January 17, 2013 (UTC)
Discuss
These are all very interesting points you raise. But what of battles/missions/events without an exact date? Stake black msg 00:53, January 17, 2013 (UTC)
- Yes, definitely as you get into the Clone Wars, the years get very messy very quickly, and they're often unknown. It's usually of greater relevance to have the conflict, which is much more related to the article (and its name), be used as disambiguation. That's my opinion, at least. CC7567 (talk) 00:54, January 17, 2013 (UTC)
- That's very true, and applies in some other cases too (there's a new non-date-specific ones in the Great Galactic War as well), but generally speaking these are the exception rather than the rule, aren't they? And, at least in the case of the Clone Wars, that's only 3 years to account for out of a galactic history that currently spans just shy of 26,000. You're right, it may not be a perfect solution and we might need wiggle room on undefined spots, but I think that generally speaking this could make life quite a bit simpler. — DigiFluid(Whine here) 01:01, January 17, 2013 (UTC)
- I'm right on board with what Digi is saying here. It's been our habit (a bad one, if I may) to conjecturally-title battles "First, "Second," Third," etc., according to a non-existent fanon lineage. It's much better to avoid the fanon lineage and just title them as independent entities using conflict and year in parentheses. Toprawa and Ralltiir (talk) 01:51, January 17, 2013 (UTC)
- I'll second that. I've been attempting to tackle this over the past couple of days as simply identifying which were canon or fanon titles was becoming slightly overwhelming. Rokkur Shen (talk) 09:39, January 17, 2013 (UTC)
- I've always thought that a number at the start of a conjectural battle title depended on how linked the battles were. To use an example where this has happened canonicaly all seven battles of Ruusan in the new sith war are pretty well connected, but in the case of the Dathomir battles brought up earlier, other than being in the same war and location, they pretty much have nothing to do with each other, which is why they should both have the dates in brackets like suggested above. A case I can think of where there is no confirmation of the battle titles but I believe its still fine to name them with numbers is the first and second battles of Harte Secur (Yes, I brought up a GB example, what'd you expect :P) which are connected because the first one is Harte Secur's capture and the second one is Harte Secur's liberation. Commander Code-8 To say hi, press 42 06:30, January 17, 2013 (UTC)
- I think the Harte Secur example is a good one, Code-8. Since both of those originate in Galactic Battlegrounds, we can basically infer their lineage and connection to one another. That's different than creating our own lineage from two sources that are totally unrelated. Toprawa and Ralltiir (talk) 18:34, January 17, 2013 (UTC)
- Then again, the little known Second Battle of Endor has about zero connection with the main one, but it's still canonically confirmed to have that title. However, if any votes take place which result in new policies I think this one should just be a special case and not be an example other battle articles should follow, since it's only got the second part at the top because the first one was really famous and because Marvel created it. Commander Code-8 To say hi, press 42 23:04, January 20, 2013 (UTC)
- We also have the Second Battle of Fondor, for which we have yet to find the First. —MJ— War Room 01:38, January 21, 2013 (UTC)
- Honestly I don't think either of these instances take away from what I was getting at in the first place. I think we can all agree that one size will never fit all, and that there's always going to be exceptions—such as the ones mentioned above. But I was thinking that generally it would solve a lot of conjectural silliness if we tacked years rather than conflicts on the end, while battles which are specifically named otherwise would be excluded.... — DigiFluid(Whine here) 01:44, January 21, 2013 (UTC)
- We also have the Second Battle of Fondor, for which we have yet to find the First. —MJ— War Room 01:38, January 21, 2013 (UTC)
- Then again, the little known Second Battle of Endor has about zero connection with the main one, but it's still canonically confirmed to have that title. However, if any votes take place which result in new policies I think this one should just be a special case and not be an example other battle articles should follow, since it's only got the second part at the top because the first one was really famous and because Marvel created it. Commander Code-8 To say hi, press 42 23:04, January 20, 2013 (UTC)
- I think the Harte Secur example is a good one, Code-8. Since both of those originate in Galactic Battlegrounds, we can basically infer their lineage and connection to one another. That's different than creating our own lineage from two sources that are totally unrelated. Toprawa and Ralltiir (talk) 18:34, January 17, 2013 (UTC)