The original discussion regarding this topic can be found at Forum:SH:Non-canon tab. Forum:CT:LEGO Star Wars articles is also a little bit relevant.
As discussed in the previous Senate Hall regarding this subject (thanks again to Ayre regarding that, I felt like the discussion last time was really good and productive even if it did end up puttering off after that SH ended), non-canon subject matter is treated a little... strangely on this wiki. Current practice is as follows: Non-canon content regarding a canon subject is placed in the BTS of that subject's article, with the exception of subjects created for LEGO media that later became fully canonized, which get a /LEGO article. Articles that are wholly non-canon with no canonicity whatsoever receive their own articles entirely, formatted as if it were a fully canon article, albeit with a different banner at the top of the page and a disclaimer clarifying it's non-canon.
The kicker of all this is how we divide non-canon content. Like everything else on the wiki, we treat most non-canon content as subject to the Canon/Legends split of April 2014. As such, non-canon content pertaining to the same subject will be split across two different articles if that subject exists in both continuities. This even applies to WHOLLY non-canon subjects like Jek-14, whose non-canon history is split across Jek-14/Legends and Jek-14/LEGO (ignoring the fully canon /Canon page the character has, ofc). Another very applicable example is Rebel Friend and Rebel Friend/Legends. Why??
It's all just... arbitrary. And it also leads to some other messes. An issue of particular note, which even prompted the previous Senate Hall thread on the matter, is how we treat content from the Star Wars: Jedi Academy series. Content from books before the split is put on Legends pages, and content from books after the split is put on Canon pages... unless it's a subject original to the books, in which case they're still Legends (despite post-split-exclusive topics like Jedha and Maz Kanata coming up in them). This is all in spite of the fact that the Jedi Academy series has an overarching narrative and continuity encompassing all of the books. There is a similar situation with LEGO TV media starting with and after LEGO Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles, which all tie together to some extent (varying degrees, but there are nonetheless strings). This is what caused the aforementioned split between Jek-14's non-canon articles.
For subjects like Anakin Skywalker/Anakin Skywalker/Legends that have swathes of non-canon content for both continuities, a non-canon subpage would also be an EXCELLENT way of reducing bloat on the main articles for those subjects.
Then, most recently, LEGO Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy - Pieces of the Past came out, in which a particular Legends-pull character (spoilers!) made an appearance. Current policy and precedent dictates that content from Pieces of the Past would be categorized under non-canon Canon. However, at present, this character has no fully canon Canon continuity counterpart, and yet policy also dictates he is not eligible for a /LEGO article by the double-whammy merit of not having been created for Pieces of the Past (the current LEGO article policy makes no distinction between what continuity the character was originally created in) and not having appeared in fully canon material since.
With all of these factors together, I feel it is time to bring this subject back up and strongly consider, once again, the implementation of overarching /Non-canon subpages. The precise scope, implementation, and formatting guidelines for the subpages can, of course, be hashed out over time, though I feel Ayre made an excellent case example of how we could go about doing so back on the original Senate Hall thread.
To further clarify, the intention of /Non-canon subpages would be as follows:
- /LEGO subpages would be deprecated and replaced with /Non-canon wholesale (Note: the CT that implemented /LEGO subpages to begin with has already passed the 2-year threshold to be subject to a minimum overriding consensus).
- Non-canon content for subjects with /Non-canon subpages would be merged onto the subpage (if all pages regarding the subject are wholly non-canon already, they get merged into one. The split for these subjects in particular is especially arbitrary). This would include merging the "ncc" and "ncl" banners in the {{Top}} template into one, singular non-canon banner.
- The non-canon subpage would need to be linked in some form on the main article(s) of the subject. Perhaps as an additional tab up top, or somewhere in the BTS with a template similar to the Index link template.
- Non-canon content regarding any subject would be eligible for a /Non-canon page. Perhaps the amount of non-canon content can dictate eligibility, though if you ask me it feels as arbitrary as splitting non-canon content between continuity pages to require a threshold for a /Non-canon page. If we are going to have a threshold (which I oppose; I don't see a reason why we shouldn't make this consistent across the board), appearing across both continuities in non-canon content should be a sufficiency for /Non-canon articles. Even if we do have a threshold, however, I STRONGLY oppose arbitrarily limiting it to specific varieties of non-canon content. There's no reason I can really think of why we should limit it to, say, just LEGO and Jedi Academy content, for example.
I hope we can hopefully find a solution to this that will make navigating the wiki easier for our readers and make things for cohesive for our non-canon subject matter across the board. I give the floor to you all. - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 18:00, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
Discuss
- I should have clarified this in the body of this thread, but of course content that is in a canonical "gray area" like the Legends Tales of the Jedi comic series would not be considered eligible for /Non-canon article coverage. That'd stay on the main articles. - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 18:04, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- (Unless, of course, it's confirmed to be non-canon in some form. I know there is some stuff from Tales of the Jedi that we can definitively say isn't canon.) - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 18:11, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- TOTJ is fully canonical in the Legends timeline. SaintSirNicholas (talk) 20:42, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- There are multiple stories in Tales of the Jedi that are considered non-canon, and others that are considered kind of iffy. The version of George Binks seen in Tales, for example, is not considered outright canon, but likewise not considered outright non-canon. - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 21:01, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- There are no non-canonical TOTJ stories, the stuff with Exar and Nomi and co really happened (in the Legends context). I am also not sure what referring to Star Wars Tales, a separate series, has to do with TOTJ?SaintSirNicholas (talk) 21:11, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- That's where the confusion here is from; I was indeed referring to Star Wars Tales the entire time and mistakenly said "Tales of the Jedi" instead. - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 21:25, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- I see. Ok then. SaintSirNicholas (talk) 21:31, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- That's where the confusion here is from; I was indeed referring to Star Wars Tales the entire time and mistakenly said "Tales of the Jedi" instead. - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 21:25, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- There are no non-canonical TOTJ stories, the stuff with Exar and Nomi and co really happened (in the Legends context). I am also not sure what referring to Star Wars Tales, a separate series, has to do with TOTJ?SaintSirNicholas (talk) 21:11, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- There are multiple stories in Tales of the Jedi that are considered non-canon, and others that are considered kind of iffy. The version of George Binks seen in Tales, for example, is not considered outright canon, but likewise not considered outright non-canon. - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 21:01, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- TOTJ is fully canonical in the Legends timeline. SaintSirNicholas (talk) 20:42, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- (Unless, of course, it's confirmed to be non-canon in some form. I know there is some stuff from Tales of the Jedi that we can definitively say isn't canon.) - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 18:11, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- As I've made clear in the Discord a lot, I'm in favor of a Non-canon tab. Thinking about what will receive said tab is difficult though. For example, I'm not sure blaster or planet would need Non-canon tabs. There's also some incredibly minor non-canon bits and pieces for characters that I wouldn't see the need for including on the tab. Also formatting is still an issue, while Ayre's proposed idea of it being similar to the current BTS treatment isn't a bad one, I'm just really not a fan of the OOU wording. Definitely something to workshop and create a thorough example for in a workbench on a larger subject than good-ol' Vizam. Mor9347
(Talk) 18:55, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- Yeah, I think actual narrative content would be a decent baseline for a non-canon tab page, my thoughts on a "threshold" for what qualifies was more regarding how much narrative content. Obviously there'll be subjects that appear in non-canon content but if they have quite literally no bearing on the narrative or unique information to speak of, there's not much of a point in them getting a non-canon subpage. But if they have actual narrative content or at least something new as far as non-canon info is concerned (beyond a new example of a broader concept, like a member of a species or a new planet; we don’t need B1 battle droid/Non-canon just for it to say nothing but “R0-GR was a B1 battle droid.”), it seems incredibly arbitrary to me for us to restrict non-canon subpages to subjects that only have a certain amount of non-canon content or only appear in specific non-canon content. - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 19:12, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- Further reading back of the original Senate Hall thread about this topic showed me a number of folks have concerns about how we would source or describe information for subjects that are otherwise not defined by their non-canon sources, as well as which continuity we would need to link to or reference for subjects that have non-canon content in both continuities. This is admittedly a challenge in the potential implementation of this, though I personally don't see much of a reason to alter our standing practice on this. Imo, links to and references from subjects should still be derived from whether or not the source was released before or after the continuity split if the mentioned/referenced subject does not itself have a non-canon subpage. For subjects that do have the subpage themselves, they could instead be linked as the relevant narrative material would likewise be applicable to them. For example, if describing an encounter between Rowan Freemaker and Darth Vader on, say, Dagobah (assuming Dagobah has no non-canon info) on Rowan's own /Non-canon subpage, the link to Darth Vader would be pipelinked to "Anakin Skywalker/Non-canon," whereas Dagobah (again, assuming it doesn't really have much distinct about it non-canonically) would be either pipelinked to "Dagobah/Legends" or just linked to "Dagobah"(/Canon) depending on which continuity the media was released under. - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 23:31, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- As for linking to a subject without non-canon info a second time should it come up more than once, each time under a different continuity, I'm not quite as sure whether or not we should treat the second link as a duplicate or link to it once again under the other continuity. - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 23:33, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- To further clarify as well, referencing would be more or less the same deal. If non-canonical info is being referenced, cite the relevant non-canon source. Otherwise, refer to the relevant canonical source of whatever continuity the media would have been "released under." For example, Essential Atlas to cite Tatooine as a planet for non-canon content released under Legends, Galactic Atlas for non-canon content released under Canon. - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 23:39, 27 September 2025 (UTC)
- I agree with the idea of having a non-canon tab, though the exact way to treat them might be tricky. Also worth mentioning pages like Gold brick and Minikit, which only cover their non-canon Canon appearances, since their non-canon Legends appearance is not notable for a page. Which is probably confusing for casual readers, why we don't list Complete Saga or LEGO Clone Wars on those pages. Just like Rebel Friend, I think there are certain non-canon subjects that make no sense to be split, and having a single non-canon page is best for them. Rsand 30 (talk) 14:37, 28 September 2025 (UTC)
- Comepletely in support of this. Another good example of how arbitrary the canon/Legends split is would be Imperial Dropship/Legends. The non-canon Legends page is based on the original 2008 set and its two remakes, but since one of the remakes appears in a video game, it also has a non-canon canon page, which only covers that appearance. This separation is not based on anything other than our own rules and is completely unnecessary. Also, I'm sure it's only a matter of time before something from Visions gets referenced in canon, at which point we would have to make a /Visions tab adjacent to the current /LEGO one. /Non-canon solves that problem permanently. EmeraldMan26 (talk) 20:42, 10 October 2025 (UTC)
