Gineipaedia talk:Policy

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This page contains discussions on Gineipaedia policy matters. Any contributor may raise new points or respond to existing ones, but our goal is consensus, not democracy. Please bear this in mind.

Only the most recent resolved issues are listed on this page; for previous discussions, please see the Policy talk archive page. Note: Please start a new thread if you would like to re-open discussion on a resolved matter.

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Unresolved issues

2011/10/01 — Chinese names for Chinese characters

This issue was originally raised at Talk:Yang Wen-li.

This with regards to those LOGH characters of clear Chinese descent with names in the 'Eastern' format. Notable examples include Yang Wen-li, Lin Pao, Fang Tchewling, and Ulanhu. For these characters, the original official Japanese DVDs have Chinese subtitles and dub. Given the use of the anime in this wiki as higher canon, I move that these official Chinese subtitles be used as the names of these particular characters. In the 3rd Battle of Tiamat Gaiden, we see Ulanhu with a pennant on his bridge with character 马, or horse. This indicates the use of the Chinese character system is still existent at least in some form in the LOGH era, so this issue of the Chinese names isn't a completely irrelevant issue. Iracundus

Just to clarify in case anyone is too lazy to read the talk page this was started on: The question being asked here is whether characters of Chinese descent should have their Chinese names (taken from the official Chinese subtitles) included in the top bit of articles, like this —
Ulanhu (Japanese: ウランフ, Chinese: 伍蘭夫) was a vice admiral and the commander of the FPA 10th Fleet.
— or whether they should be limited to the Name variations section at the bottom of the articles.
My gut feeling on this is to leave non-Japanese names to Name variations. Firstly i worry about consistency of formatting, and secondly, in spite of the example given above, i can't recall any outright indication that these Chinese names are relevant to the non-Chinese-translated series.
That said, i guess i don't feel all that strongly about it. I will go along with whatever the majority says on this  ♥ kine @ 03:46, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

2011/07/06 — Reorganization

I've got a couple thoughts about the current structure of the wiki.

First: Vympel has done a great job with lots of information on ships and battles and fleets. But the problem is, that information is a bit hard to access. I would suggest removing individual ships from the technology category branches, and create a NEW category tree (under Culture, I guess) to put all fleets, individual ships, battles, etc. A "Military" category, or something like that, and place it on the side-bar, along with a few sub-categories like, Battles, Fleets, warships, etc. The "Armed Forces" pages would also belong here. This way all of this content would be more accessible.

Second: Kind of a minor addition to the above, but I've been thinking more about the "Armed Forces" moniker. And the more I think on it, the less I like it. The wording sounds very, very clunky and awkward to me. Especially when we get to the Iserlohn Republic Armed Forces. "Iserlohn Fleet," "Alliance Fleet," and "Imperial Fleet" seem much more fluid to me, so perhaps we ought to revisit this. Canary 20:04, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

I think that vessels should remain under the Technology category. However, there's no reason that the vessel categories themselves can't be added to some other Military category. The only problem for me is that it needs to be a logical hierarchy, the idea of having a web of things that are all arbitrarily connected makes me very nervous. Not that i am saying that's how it would have to be, just that we have to be careful in setting it up. I will think about it further
Re the term 'Armed Forces', i agree actually. I dislike the term, particularly its use of capitalisation, which implies that it is the official name (and to my knowledge it's not). I know that i argued in some long-lost talk page that we should avoid calling them '____ Fleet', because naturally from a real-world perspective there must be people who aren't really in a fleet, but now that i've been rewatching the episodes where Rockwell is in charge of the military, i'm starting to wonder if i was wrong. Perhaps the entire Alliance military really is part of the fleet. If it is, then our Alliance military article should be called Free Planets Alliance Starfleet, per the name used in the 'In the Eternal Night' subtitles and also on some of the characters' arm patches (Sithole's, maybe, i think)?
Iserlohn Republic and El Facil both have clearly distinct names as i mentioned in the other talk page i've just posted to, so those are OK. That would only leave the Imperial military. I don't recall seeing an official name that could cover their whole organisation, but we'd have to double-check. Maybe the titles of the three chiefs of staff would help us  ♥ kine @ 20:23, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
I don't remember those titles as being very helpful, but I'd have to double check. Maybe the dictionary has something? Anyway, for the moment I'm thinking that it's probably safe to assume that all other military branches are PART of the fleet (for each nation) because in this sci-fi setting, every other branch of the military would be completely dependent on the fleet for communications, supplies, and transportation. Sort of like how the USAF was originally part of the US Army. That "Fleet" would just be a general synonym in-universe for "armed forces."
The only HQs we ever see in the Empire, at least is the Fleet Headquarters on Odin. Given that Reinhard & Siegfried were in the Navy, yet were assigned to... Kapche Lanke(?) as... infantry? tank operators? ... anyway, it seems clear at least that for the Galactic Empire (and, therefore, the NGE as well) there's ONLY the "navy." Canary 00:22, 7 July 2011 (UTC)
Well, we see the Fezzan Ministry of War as well. But i distinctly remember the subtitles for those two being unhelpful, they are just Ministry of War in German and Ministry of Military Affairs in Japanese.
It did occur to me though that in the same episode where the subs show Free Planets Alliance Starfleet, they also refer to the Imperial fleet as the Reichsflotte. I'd have to double-check what the Japanese said, but our precedent so far has been to use the English equivalent of whatever the German subtitles say (which is why our articles are about the Ministry of War instead of the Ministry of Military Affairs), so if we go off that then naturally we should just call it Imperial Fleet  ♥ kine @ 00:52, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

2011/06/23 — Counting appearances

Something i've been thinking about recently is how exact we want to be when counting appearances of things. If you directly see a person's face or an external shot of a building or ship or whatever, that's an easy matter. But what about less straight-forward situations, like the following:

When i think of how we should do appearances, only one thing seems certain, and that is that only specific, individual things should have them listed — classes of things or generic concepts should not. We also have a precedent for including non-literal appearances of things, like bridges of ships and pictures/paintings of people. So my mind, in attempt to be ultra logical, is leaning towards saying yes to all of the above. But i don't know, i feel like i haven't fully considered it  ♥ kine @ 07:56, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

2011/04/15 — Article Tense

So we've decided to write all applicable articles from an in-universe perspective. Great! But a problem arises--from when are we writing? To me, it makes sense to write from a position after OVA #110. What this means, however, is that we have some trouble when it comes to writing about things that only exist within a specific time frame. For example, starzones. Where is Astarte? From our perspective, it's a starzone within the New Galactic Empire. But the same can be said for every starzone, and most fans (I should think) persist in thinking of the logh setting in terms of FPA versus Empire. For starzones, for exmaple, I've started writing, "X is a starzone in the former Free Planets Alliance," and so on.

Basically, what I'm saying is the tense of each article needs to be more than just simply written in the past tense, it also needs to reflect the fact that thins have changed. That the FPA and Empire and Fezzan don't exist any more, that the only "present" political entities that exist are the New Galactic Empire and the autonomous regions around Heinessen that were established at the end of the series (which, as I understand things, are a "part" of the NGE in the same way Fezzan was a part of the GE. Sort of like how Australia still owes fealty to the Queen. Canary 04:43, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

What i had put in our policy pages — and this again is based on Memory Alpha — is that we are writing from the perspective of someone who exists far enough into the future that everyone in the series is gone, but not far enough for astronomical bodies to have blown up / been destroyed / whatev. So, all articles about people and cities and governments are written in past tense, and all articles about planets and stars (as well as eternal concepts like 'terraforming' and 'ships') are written in present tense. (Otherwise stuff gets complicated and inconsistent)
So i would say that that means 'in the former Free Planets Alliance' is absolutely fine. Whether we would also want to say 'in the former New Galactic Empire' is another matter. Personally i would prefer to say that a planet was in the New Galactic Empire, but leave out the 'former' so that it's a little more open-ended. This is again based on Memory Alpha's usage ('Earth was the capital planet of the Federation', but they don't explicitly state that the Federation no longer exists).  ♥ kine @ 12:59, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

2011/05/12 — Topics specific to novels/manga

How are we going to treat topics that are specific to the novels and manga? For example, in the manga, there is a character named Elizabeth von Castrop who seems to be the commander of Castrop's personal military (and obviously a relative of his, although i'm not sure how exactly they're related). She is never even mentioned in the OVA.

Do we create an article for her? If so, how should it be structured? Normally manga information is only allowed in the Apocrypha section — but if the character never appears in the OVA, obviously that would make for a somewhat oddly structured page. However, perhaps that's unavoidable. Not sure  ♥ kine @ 05:19, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure how other wikis structure this kind of thing, but I would suggest simply naming the page: "Elizabeth von Castrop (manga)." And do the same for any novel/manga characters that don't appear in the OVAs. For characters that DO appear in the OVAs, well, that's what the apocrypha section is for, right? Canary 06:24, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, that might work. We'd have to create new policies for manga-specific characters and stuff though. Guess we can work it out more fully when the time comes  ♥ kine @ 11:59, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

2011/05/08 — Surname Determination

We've discussed this elsewhere, but a recent dilemma makes be want to revisit this particular issue. Namely, do we make assumptions about surnames if they are not explicitly mentioned? My dilemma involves two people by the same name Elizabeth and Elisbaeth. (I'm not sure where either the 'z' or 's' came from, it's possible both should be 'z' or both 's'). Two very different people with the same name. Thing is, when it comes to commoners, we have no way to know whether a surname even exists to begin with, but these two women are both Nobles. Because Elizabeth is married to Rudolf von Goldenbaum, it's logical that her name would be "Elizabeth von Goldenbaum." As Elisabeth is the daughter of dear old Otto, it's clear enough that her name is Elisabeth von Braunschweig (but a bit more iffy--what if she's married? Presumably her mother, a Goldenbaum, became a von Braunschweig....)

So do we make any assumptions about surnames, and if we do so, how shall we make the determination?

I prefer not to make assumptions if possible, as i've stated elsewhere. What that means for the specific examples you've cited — i'd have to look into it further. My guess though is that this will not be too much of an issue in practice. I suspect that the Encyclopaedia or one of the art binders will provide surnames for us, and i support the notion of allowing those names if we have none other to go on. (This is similar to MA — they relax their canon rules [for names only] in the event that a character goes unnamed in canon but is named in some other legitimate source.)
In a hypothetical situation where we absolutely could not find a surname, i would say we should look at it case-by-case.  ♥ kine @ 06:46, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
I've got a lot of stuff to try and add this weekend. Several characters only have 1 name. Some have no names. Keep an eye out for 'Grandpa Dusty' and his son-in-law. Canary 04:43, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

2011/04/24 — Official/canon name spellings

We are undecided as to what name spellings should be considered canon for the purposes of Gineipaedia.

My position is that we should generally follow a newest-first policy — making the official DVD subtitles (seen on the Nemesis rips, not the CA ones) the current top-priority source for the spelling of names. However, we would also want to be able to override that policy when the DVD names fail us. An example that i frequently cite is Dusty, who is called 'Dusty Attemborough' by the DVDs. In his case i would like us to be able to use the more correct LD name (Attenborough). Otherwise, the DVD names are generally more accurate (i.e., 'true to life') than the LD ones — Maurya vs Mauria, Sithole vs Sitolet, Schönkopf vs Schenkopp, and so on.
Whatever we decide on, we are going to have a list of common alternative names at the bottom of each article, so they will eventually all be listed somewhere on the site. The only question is, what do we use officially — how do we spell the article titles, how do we spell the names in body text, &c.  ♥ kine @ 16:20, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
A couple of points. First, I think that every name spelling should be sourced for each article. There are a number of articles I see with weird names that just leave me thinking "huh?" because it's so unfamiliar. Secondly, the "Official DVD subtitles" are several generations out-of-date. Neither the remastered DVDs nor the Blu-Ray releases of LoGH use any name-plates at all, so I don't think it's wise to lock ourselves onto so old a standard. Given that these plates were intentionally removed by the producers, I believe they're worth ignoring. (Generally speaking, our "order of reliability" goes BluRay, then Remaster, then DVDs, then Laserdisc). Third: at the very least, the various spellings used by CA for all of their fansub versions (3, I believe) should be included as "alternate spellings" and have redirects. Fourth and finally, no matter what we decide on the "official" spelling we will need to note (and remember) that whatever we decide on will only be a TEMPORARY 'official' determination, pending a possible, officially-licensed translation of either the logh ovas, or novels.--Canary
My response to Canary's points above:
I am not opposed to sourcing names. How would you recommend we do so? Maybe repurpose 'Alternative names' so that it lists all of them instead?
Where does your claim that the official DVD subtitles are out of date come from? I know that the remaster and Blu-ray rips that have been released don't include subtitles, but that doesn't mean anything, it's just a decision that the release groups made. Perhaps we should ask someone from CentralAnime (who presumably own the DVDs/BDs) if they are included on the original discs? Or do you have a source?
Even if the new releases don't have subtitles, how else would we decide what to go with? The only evidence we have of 'officialness' either way when it comes to names is the fact that the official LOGH Web site uses the same names (with the exception of Dusty) as the ones on the DVD. That suggests to me that they are more accurate than not.
Regarding redirects and citations from other name variations, i absolutely agree 100%
Regarding a future English translation, i agree that they would take precedent. I can add a note about this to the policy pages.  ♥ kine @ 19:45, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
I've discussed the issue of missing name plates with heibi on the Central Anime forum in the recent past - they are indeed still on the DVDs (and presumably blu-ray rips), but they don't carry over automatically, so they're forced to put them back in manually. I agree that names should be sourced (perhaps in the alternative names section?) and in terms of ship names especially, maybe a little blurb as far as the "real" English name and what it actually means (i.e. "Garga Falmul" means nothing but "Galga Farmr" definitely means something, and is amusingly appropriate to Lennenkampt (kampf's?) final fate.)Vympel 01:27, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for confirming the name-sub thing, that's really helpful. What's your opinion on which names we should choose as 'official'? Do you agree with using whatever's the most common, or do you prefer going with whatever the newest available is (with or without a 'Dusty Clause')?
Also, as far as citing names, what do you reckon the format for that should be? Some of the episode titles can get quite long, so if we use the full episode citations, plus which release (LD/DVD/BD), those one-line citations we have can start turning into two- or three-line citations. Is that OK? Or should we have a names-specific abbreviated citation format?
Lastly, what's a good name for this new combined names section? Maybe 'Name variations'? What do you think?  ♥ kine @ 01:50, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
Hmmmm. I'm not too up on all the differences so its hard for me to have an opinion on what names should be 'official'. As far as combined names section, I'd say 'Name variations' is perfectly fine.Vympel 06:16, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
Oh. Hum. We are at impasse then — as far as canon-ness anyway. I will have the bot replace 'alternative names' with 'name variations' now though.  ♥ kine @ 06:51, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
Please include whichever name is used for the page's title with the name variations. EVERY name should be included. Canary 00:05, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, that's how we'll do it. I don't think the bot can do that for us, but i did have it replace 'Alternative names' by 'Name variations'. (I also had it add 'Appendices' to most of the articles that didn't have it — but there will be some left that have weird formatting. We'll have to get those by hand. But that's... not actually relevant to this conversation...)  ♥ kine @ 11:11, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Ok, having looked at the Nemesis rips, I was interested to see a few of the ship names were a lot closer to what (Japanese) fandom tells us they should be in English than the LD rips (and by extension CA's DVD rips). Of course, some were still just as weird as the original LD names. I imagine the same goes for various character names. I think I agree with Kine in that we should go from the DVDs rather than the LDs. For example (and I apologise that my focus is on ships so much but I'm just that way inclined) take the 3rd Fleet flagship. The LD rip says its "Ku Horin", the DVD rip says "Cu Chulainn". One of these names actually means something. Winner is Cu Chulainn. Same with the 8th Fleet flagship - LD rip says Kulishuna, DVD rip says Krishna. Krishna wins. Mittermyer's ship? Its IIRC "Beiowolf" in the LD rip, "Beowulf" on the DVD. Beowulf just massively wins. Also IIRC the DVD rip takes care to include omlauts (is that you spell it) in the German names, which I think is pretty important. I believe this lends credibility to the DVD rip name plates as being both a: newer and b: having a tendency to be more accurate. However, I think the variation is such that case-by-case analysis is still required - sometimes it clear that both the LD and DVD just got the names wrong, and we have to choose. Dusty is a serviceable example of when you need to look at something case by case.Vympel 11:01, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
I think you have encapsulated my feelings pretty well. And, just to clarify, we would only be using the original/Nemesis DVDs because it's all we have at this particular moment. By default, the newest should win, so that would mean that whenever we do manage to get access to the official name subtitles from the remasters and/or Blu-rays, those would take precedent. But as it is, all we have are the original DVDs and the LDs (Heibi2 from CA has confirmed that he uses the LD names for all of the CA remaster rips).  ♥ kine @ 11:11, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Oh! This will perhaps shed some more light on the situation: I've asked Heibi2 about the names (see here) and he's confirmed two things: (1) The names he uses in the CA DVD rips are the LD names, because he prefers them over the newer ones, and (2) the physical remaster DVDs have the same names as the Web site, and therefore presumably the same as the original DVDs. So that should hopefully address any concerns of outdated-ness.  ♥ kine @ 06:56, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
The obvious issue being the official website only has a handful of names. If we can get our hands on the tiles for the Remaster or BDs somewhere down the line, that would be ideal. Granted, at the end of the day, we'll still be accepting engrish in lieu of an official romanization. As such, it may be best simply not to have any "canon" name spelling, and just make all the versions of a given name "accepted", with page title spelling following the order of most-recent romanization (BD>RM>DVD>LD). It may be that logh will never see a licensed English translation, but until that day, I think we can't really call anything 'official' without making uncomfortable presumptions. Canary 03:14, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
Oh, naturally we would not mean to imply that our 'canon' is in any way endorsed by the franchise. I can make this clear on the policy pages at some point — any unqualified use of the term 'canon' is specific to this Web site only and can be superseded at any time by a 'higher power'. Any unqualified use of 'official' simply means that it was produced directly by the franchise's owners/producers (as opposed to fan subs or anything else).
If you are happy with a newest-first policy, that resolves 90% of this question. The only other question is, should we have a Dusty Clause? Since we don't have access to the 'official' subtitles for the BDs or remaster DVDs, we have no way of knowing if they've fixed his name in the newer versions. What do we do about it in the mean time? (Same question for any other name that appears 'wrong' in the original DVD subtitles.)  ♥ kine @ 15:43, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
It would be nice if we could gain access to the BD or even remaster subs. Oh well. Re: wrong names... I would say we don't change things. As per our earlier discussion, when it comes to names in particular, we have no way of knowing how the spelling and pronunciation may have evolved in Tanaka's history. Of course, by not changing incorrect names, we're assuming that any and all incorrect spellings are intential, similar to 'Hari' instead of 'Harry' in Asimov's famous novels. That said, Asimov made a habit of playing with language like that, whereas Tanaka (seems) to be going for an "exotic" flair to the names be incorporating lots of German and bits of English and Chinese. So, basically, I don't know. We can go with the incorrect names and include the 'real' spelling in the appendices; we can change the name to what we think it should be; or we can handle this on a case by case basis and go with whatever sounds best. Or we can follow CA's chosen name because it's the one our fanbase is likely to be most familiar with. At the moment, I have no strong opinion any way. So... congratulations, Vympel, it's up to you! Canary 18:03, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
I've recently realized that LoGH getting a Western release is far from being an impossibility: it is actually probable. For now, at least. Not the OVAs, as of yet, but the novels. Which begs and interesting question: if the novels DO get an officially-licensed translation (and the OVAs do not) then do we accept the novel names as the "canon" spellings? Canary 03:23, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
That's a VERY tricky question. I am not sure how i feel. On the one hand, we are primarily intended to be a resource for the anime, with everything else as a secondary focus, so it would seem to conflict somewhat with that. On the other hand, that would be an official English translation!
The possibility of LOGH, novel or otherwise, getting an English translation actually presents heaps of potential problems for us. For example, what if they decided to change the name of the series itself in a theoretical English translation? Like, what if they made it 'Legend of the Star Heroes' or something? We'd have to change all of our articles, all of our citation templates.... And never mind what would happen if they did translate the OVA — the episode titles would probably all be different. Shit would be wild.
This is all something to think about, but for the time being i don't think i can decide. I say let's wait and see what happens if this does come to pass  ♥ kine @ 03:39, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Resolved issues

2011/05/14 — Italicising titles

Note: This policy matter is considered to be resolved and is archived for purely historical reasons. If you would like to re-open the matter for discussion, or ask a question, please create a new thread at Policy talk.

Up until now, we have not been italicising the titles of books and the like. This is incorrect according to most English rules, but we (Canary and i) had discussed it a while back and we both agreed that italicising things is sort of irritating.

However, now that i've been messing with these novel and game articles, i'm starting to re-consider my thinking. Putting quotes around things over and over again within an article is messy-looking, and leaving the titles 'bare' can be confusing. Italicising would solve those problems for the most part.

What do you guys reckon? I want to get an OK before i start changing things  ♥ kine @ 18:14, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Seems fine with me. We could also bold things (we do, after all, bold the titles of each episode in each episode's own article). Canary 04:43, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, but that's a separate thing. On Wikipedia and Memory Alpha, those bolded titles are also italicised when applicable (like they italicise 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine'). I think i'll do that.  ♥ kine @ 13:01, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
Moving this to resolved  ♥ kine @ 07:13, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

2011/05/14 — Stars and starzones: separate or combined?

Note: This policy matter is considered to be resolved and is archived for purely historical reasons. If you would like to re-open the matter for discussion, or ask a question, please create a new thread at Policy talk.

I noticed that we've redirected Dagon to Dagon Starzone. This is how i had initially envisioned all of our star/starzone articles being set up (star redirects to starzone, then we have more information on the star there) — but so far i think most other stars have their own articles. In fact, we've even got a separate category for stars themselves.

I am open to doing it either way, personally. Both methods have their logic. But in the interest of consistency we should probably decide. What do you reckon?  ♥ kine @ 11:59, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I think we need separate categories, if only because at least 1 starzone (the Proxima Starzone) seems to be home to three stars. And, IIRC, binary systems are fairly common in the "real" galaxy. Canary 04:43, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
I'm OK with this; however, i was thinking something just now. Say i'm your average reader, and i'm watching through LOGH, and i get to the part where the subtitles mention the 'Holbit system', and i want to learn more about that. When i go to Gineipaedia, and i pop 'Holbit' into the search field, which am i more likely interested in: the starzone, or the star itself? Since the latter is never actually mentioned or seen (and this is common for stars in the series), probably i want the starzone, right?
Given that, should we maybe make the following policy? We keep the articles separate, but we name all of the star-specific ones like 'Dagon (star)' and 'Amritsar (star)'. Then, we make 'Dagon' and 'Amritsar' redirect to 'Dagon Starzone' and 'Amritsar Starzone'. That way, the reader is sure to get the most amount of information the first time they search, instead of having to go to the star page first, which in 99% of cases is never going to be more than a sentence or two.
Does that make sense?  ♥ kine @ 07:34, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. It would also be in keeping with my desire to have battle names omit the "starzone" bit because of its inconsistency. Canary 19:00, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
I am still not sure i agree with that particular decision (and i'm not sure how it's related to this one) but let's discuss that separately! For now i will rename the star articles as discussed, moving this to resolved  ♥ kine @ 07:13, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
Only the most recent resolved issues are listed on this page; for previous discussions, please see the Policy talk archive page.
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