Wookieepedia:Votes for deletion/SSD continuity issues

This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record.
The result of the debate was a horrible mess from which no consensus can emerge. However, I took the liberty of moving this article, reflecting that it is (or supposed to be) about a fandom debate rather than an actual issue with canonicity. - Sikon 12:05, 8 September 2006 (UTC).

SSD continuity issues

I think it's high-time to get rid of this. From what I've seen, it's basically one man's problem with "Why do we have different terms for different kinds of warships"? If he can't handle different classifications being in use and newer publications adding to this, then that's not this site's problem. Most of the viewpoints presented in this article is covered in bts sections or main IU articles elsewhere. It's nothing more than an attempt at restarting a debate that's been dead for years and I'm surprised to see it's still here after one whole year. VT-16 09:54, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Delete

1. VT-16 10:18, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
2. --BaldFett 13:43, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
3. Fleet Admiral J. Nebulax ^{(Imperial Holovision)} 21:48, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
4. Delete this silly, overly-long, and most of all unnecessary article. Whatever fandom-related issues it covers can be done much more briefly in the Executor-class Star Dreadnought article. Even after it was edited by more rational people from its original form, this article is still shows a lot of supposedly "NPOV" fanboy whining, going over how "both sides" feel about a subject that is actually open-and-shut. Face it, the 8 km length is wrong (always contradicting the highest canon), and it has now been retconned away. In addition, the recent sources such as Inside the Worlds state the ship's proper designation as "Star Dreadnought," confirm that SSD is just slang, and show that actual Star Destroyers (Imperial-class) are middle-of-the-road in comparison. That's CANON, and there's nothing more to say about it. JimRaynor55 04:41, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
5. STRONG delete This isn't even a discussion of the history of the issue like Dr Saxton's "5 mile fallacy" page is. The author could no longer debate the classification of ships in that page, and their arguments had gotten the page locked, so they create another to continue the argument. It is a childish manuver, and a waste of bandwidth. Lowkey 16:49, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
6. Delete I don't see why this topic exists. The issue has been decided.Vymer 13:35, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
7. --Jerry 00:48, 1 September 2006 (UTC)There are no more continuity issues, they have been resolved. The matter is closed.
8. Delete. The "debate" was ended by Inside the Worlds, and "SSD continuity issues" was obviously created just to whine about it. Most of it is already covered in the "Behind the Scenes" sections of the relevant ship articles. --Vermilion 01:33, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
9. Delete and write a new article called SSD length debate or something. The debate has been notable in the fan communty. Charlii 10:37, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Keep

1. Speedy keep - as much as I hate the SSD continuity debates, they are part of the SW culture. Like Mickey Suttle. It isn't something you can just ignore. - Sikon (Vacation) 15:28, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
2. Maybe a bit too long, and might even need POV pruning, but I think there's a need for this article. —Silly Dan _(talk) 21:46, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
3. Keep. The article covers an interesting issue that has been debated for years. On the other hand, I think it should be rewritten somewhat so that it is formatted more like an encyclopedia article and less like an essay.–Sentry^Talk 22:48, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
4. Definately Keep. Jasca Ducato _{Sith Council (Sith campaign)} 19:00, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
5. Keep, because it's obviously not one user's biased opinion, it's well-written and has plenty of useful content. Besides, it's just natural that we have an article on such a debated issue. I remember a long thread on one of the Star Wars general discussions boards about the SSD. There were many speculations about its size, which has more credibility and whatever. We must have everything about the SSD in one article. If nothing else, we could merge it into the main SSD article. - TopAce 19:06, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
6. Keep, per above. Adamwankenobi 19:12, 24 August 2006 (UTC)
7. Strong keep Kuralyov 04:46, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
8. Strong Keep, but a rewrite is needed. The size issue is probably the single largest debate ever seen in the online SW community, even if it is now essentially resolved except for a few die-hards; and the other debates, though smaller, are still significant. However, others are correct that it reads too much like an essay and has the mild aroma of POV; it should also include the shield generators/sensor globes controversy, as well. Thus, some rewriting is called for. jSarek 10:40, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
9. Well written, and it addresses a contentious necessary issue. If we have Han shot first, we should have this. Cutch 13:23, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
10. Weak Keep - as Sikon has said, I hate the terrifying SSD debate. I've been through it offline, and it is a tremendous leeching of my energies and time. However, it is useful. Cheers, RelentlessRecusant 11:26, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Merge

1. A shortened version in the SSD article would do Jedi Dude 09:57, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this kind of approach, there's nowhere near the need to have this as anything but a bts footnote. VT-16 11:26, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Comments

I think as an article about a part of fan culture, it is poor. Most of the article consists of ridiculous questioning and over-interpretation on the part of the writers, and is more about questioning the road to modern canon and why different types of ships have different terms associated with them, than a short history of the debate in the fan culture by itself. VT-16 17:11, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

• If nothing else, we could merge it into the main SSD article.

Yes. Most of the arguments are centered around the Executor and its class. That is where it should go. VT-16 12:14, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

• • I specifically requested that it GO into it's own article a while back because the "Behind the Scenes" part of the Executor article had ballooned to being twice as long as the actual article itself. Let me repeat: "Behind the Scenes" is not the place to have back and forth arguments over these issues, they should either go on a separate page, or not be there at all. QuentinGeorge 12:21, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
• The thing is, this topic shouldn't take up that much space. The old WEG sources pulled a number out of thin air without bothering to consult the highest canon, that mistake was repeated for years in other books, and now LFL has finally fixed it. Being fair and thorough doesn't mean you have to cover each and every fanboy gripe (many of which amount to simply ignoring the latest retcons), talk about how G-canon might just be "impressionistic" and not truly canon reality, or over-analyzing (saying that every in those official sources now looks like a moron for using the 8 km number, even though the whole point of retroactive continuity is that you go BACK and change something, acting from now on that that's the way it always was). JimRaynor55 04:50, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
• What really gets me about this article, is how it states that ILM intended the Executor to be 11 times bigger than an ISD, provides a source, then we see it in the films and then it keeps on discussing it! That should have ended it right there. The article doesn't describe the "history" of this fan debate (What history is there? It's just guys going back and forth about the same arguments over and over), it's a long diatribe because someone was discontent with changes to WEG lore made because that didn't fit the movies as well as the other information. Saying "fans have a history of arguing this issue" doesn't need to take a whole page. Just put it in few sentences in the bts section of the Executor article. VT-16 09:47, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Supplemental: This has to be the only retcon issue that is given so much space to keep a debate going. Why are even some admins agreeing to it? If you want this kind of approach to every single retcon in SW, you're gonna need alot of pages devoted to similar "analysis". If not, don't be hypocrites and insist on having an entire article devoted to something that belongs in a bts blurb.

There are a number of discrepancies and contradictions between various accounts of the Executor-class Super Star Destroyer

Yeah, it's called retconning something. This kind of text is nothing more than bts fluff that does not deserve an entire page devoted to it. VT-16 11:30, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

• If possible, I think any rewrite should be done by someone NOT involved in the argument, to avoid the POV issue. QuentinGeorge 10:42, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
  • As nice as that would be, is there any such person who also knows enough about the topic to write about it? jSarek 12:03, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

• Is there anything presented on this page that is not also duplicated on the Star Dreadnought and super star destroyer pages? I really reads like one person crying about a retcon. Lowkey 17:02, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
  • No, there isn't. The BTS section on the Executor-class page sums everything up in a much more concise way, without all the biased, pseudo-impartial appealing to "both sides" of what is a clear cut issue. Fanboy interpretations of canon that contradict G-canon and official policy have no place in what is supposed to be a truthful encyclopedia. JimRaynor55 03:51, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

The more I look at this article, the more pointless it is. After the first few paragraphs (which have been inserted into bts sections on multiple pages already) there is nothing left but whining about retcons.

If the film's length is true, that would mean all those sources are false.

This, dear readers, is what is known as a "retcon" or "retroactive continuity", a process of changing information about a fictional work that has been utilized by Lucasfilm on its SW franchise for decades. Now, I'm sure few people would want similar pages made every single time a retcon is done somewhere in the franchise, so why keep this article, when the only useful information in it is already written elsewhere and in shorter paragraphs?

The article also pulls out several outdated arguments (for instance about the term "Star Destroyer"", which I and others have made sure to now put in just about every article that's had the term used officially and tried to justify as having a double meaning, one for a general design ethestic and production line and one for the Empire's destroyers, thus explaining their different uses). It also makes false claims, like how "Star Dreadnought" might not be an official term, even though SSD is used as a slang term to cover for it and other designations. (Why would a slang term cover another slang term? That's a non-sensical assumption.)

The last great argument concerns the terms used to seperate different types of vessels, and tries to argue that the Executor and company are only really big destroyers, or that ISDs are really small battleships, which was already retconned as part of a smaller classification system in ROTS:ICS, based on SW:ICS and the old WEG classification system. So there's no contradiction there, but a reconciliation.

Saying that a ship that's several times larger than another ship and has many times more guns than it, is actually the same type of ship because they share a vaguely similar hullform, have guns and can carry smaller ships, makes as much sense as saying all the ships on this picture are exactly the same kind of ship, due to them fulfilling much of the criteria above. (Btw. that's the battleship Missouri in the center, with the cruiser Alaska below and the carrier Croatan with misc. destroyers on the bottom.) Even WEG saw a need to classify different types of ships, so this argument has never made sense with LFL, either.

I'll give people the benefit of the doubt, and conceed this article was written long before many of the facts above were discovered. But, even so, that's no good reason to keep it, when it has little to offer that hasn't been written about elsewhere. VT-16 17:25, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

• Can we no consensus this? It isn't going anywhere. - Sikon (Vacation) 16:00, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

• • Delete and write a new article called SSD length debate or something. The debate has been notable in the fan communty. Even so, the debate has been noted on about half a dozen articles already (including the Executor-class one, where it was most appropriate). This article, in any form, is by now superflous. There's plenty of other articles with similar percieved "problems", yet they don't end up with their own articles, even if the debate is of a similar nature. They get noted in bts sections, and that's it. VT-16 16:05, 7 September 2006 (UTC)