Gineipaedia talk:Policy

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Unresolved issues

There are several undecided policy issues that we need to clear up. For many of these, Canary and i (kine) have differing opinions, and for others we're simply uncertain. If our fellow contributors would register their own opinions here, that would help us a make a final determination.

2011/04/27 — Position of ONW in canon

Vympel had pointed out that some of the ships look different in ONW from how they appear in the OVA. This raises the question of what sort of position ONW should have in our canon. Our current policy (and the policy that existed on LOGH Wiki) is that the main OVA always trumps ONW when any conflicts arise. However, that does present sort of a dilemma because in most other matters we have a newest-first policy (which logically should make ONW take priority). So which one should we choose to have precedence?

My my view is that ONW should take precedence over the OVA battle for Astarte for two reasons:-
1. As the newer production, it should be considered to be 'retconning' the OVA at the points where the two differ (which can be significant in terms of plot points). In addition to the primary consideration of the much expanded and elaborated plot, I think its significant that the producers took the time to alter the Pergamon to look more distinctive, as well as showing us Merkatz' unique flagship (I'll add an entry for that in the near future) - when they could've just animated the old version ships all over again; and
2. As a movie length account of the same events (and their background), it is closer to the original novel's version of events in several key aspects - whilst this isn't really a 'canon' consideration it does lend the ONW account more credibility with me simply because its closest to the creator's original intent.
This probably goes without saying, but notwithstanding what we may decide on this, ONW sheds IMO significant background light on the events of Astarte that the OVA does not, so its account of the leadup to the battle should still be incorporated into any account of Astarte we do. Further, perhaps in the 'background information' section of the ships, we could note they look different in ONW/OVA?Vympel 01:08, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

2011/04/26 — Kaiser Naming Standards

The names for Kaisers are inconsistent. Several pages include the "von Goldenbaum" surname--most, however, do not. We need to decided: do we add 'von Goldenbaum' to each Kaiser's name, or remove it?

I'm torn on this. With Goldenbaum kaisers, it's pretty obvious they're all Goldenbaums. The historical precedent would be to simply refer to them as "Catherine I" and "Rudolf I" and so on. (We don't even know if those are the names they're born with, or if a Kaiser chooses a "king's name" once he ascends to the throne). Given that is how kings and emperors are historically called, I am (mostly) in favor of omitting the "von Goldenbaum" surname from pages of Kaisers. (Obviously, it should stay there for the few Goldenbaums who never got to the throne).
My only problem arises with the fear of creating a double-standard: if we omit 'von Goldenbaum' from the Imperial Kaisers, are we not also obligated to remove the 'von Lohengramm' from the Goldenlowe kaisers? I'm not sure I'd like the pages to be, simply, 'Reinhard I,' 'Hildegard I,' and 'Alexander I.'
Of course, we could get around that by saying that Reinhard's last few words to Hilde prevent the Goldenlowe from being a "real" dynasty, but that would feel kinda cheap. Canary 00:05, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
I have to admit that, at least on my part, there was very little thought going into the names for all of the kaisers. It's super haphazard.
In general i would prefer to be (if i can make up a word) a 'strict canonist' — we don't put anything into the wiki that isn't explicitly shown or heard in the series. To me that would include things like surnames. (The precedent i would point to is Therese — in all likelihood, her full name is Therese Wagner, since her father's name is Wagner and that's usually not a given name. But since this isn't actually shown or heard, i mention it only as a background note.)
So... if we were going to go that route, i would say that, no, unless they are explicitly referred to in the series as '_____ von Goldenbaum', they should not have von Goldenbaum in their name. That means Rudolf will have it, but most of the others won't.
And i don't think that's a contradiction, because our policy should be — like Wikipedia's and Memory Alpha's — to use the most common name. Rudolf von Goldenbaum is more commonly called that in the series than 'Rudolf I', Reinhard is more commonly called 'Reinhard von Lohengramm' than 'Reinhard I', and so on — just like how, in the real world, some people are known by their middle names, and some people aren't.  ♥ kine @ 15:46, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

2011/04/25 — Order of real-life Japanese names

Oh, another thing we must decide on: The order to use for the names of real-life Japanese people. For example, Yoshiki TANAKA (English order — surname last) or TANAKA Yoshiki (Japanese order — surname first)?

The advantages of English order are:

The advantages of Japanese order are:

Please register your opinion by replying below this line!

(I had been leaning towards English order, but i'm not married to the idea.) We might want to provide both orders in the body text, regardless of which we use. For instance, if we use English order we can do:
Yoshiki Tanaka (Japanese: 田中芳樹, Tanaka Yoshiki) is...
If we do Japanese order, we could do:
Tanaka Yoshiki (Japanese: 田中芳樹; English: Yoshiki Tanaka) is...
But maybe there are better ways, i'm not sure.  ♥ kine @ 22:24, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
To me, the simplest and most accurate method would be to retain the Japanese word order. I know Western academia sees fit to alter these things as often as possible, but it's a philosophy I (strongly) disagree with. I hope my reasoning for this stance is sufficiently obvious I need not explain it, so I will only add that, should we choose to alter the naming convention for production staff (authors, actors, producers, etc.) we would ALSO need to alter the naming convention for characters, lest we find ourselves with a double standard. I think we can all agree that double standards are bad, right? If we change Tanaka Yoshiki to Yoshiki Tanaka, we would also have to change Yang Wen-li to Wen-li Yang, as well as research the etymological roots of every character's name to determine which is a surname versus forename, and alter everything accordingly. To me, that sounds like a tediously bad idea. — Canary
I don't agree that we would also need to change the characters' names.
With respect of course — by arguing that having 'double standards' is inherently a bad thing, you would seemingly be arguing against your own position that we should be allowed to change date formats but not characters' names. Is that not a double-standard also? I would say it is just as much as changing Japanese names is, but that doesn't necessarily make either one the wrong way of doing things.
That said, as far as the philosophical issues, i have no argument for it, because you are right.  ♥ kine @ 00:07, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
Date format "localization" v. name "localization" is not a double-standard, as they are two very different things. In this case, we're dealing with proper names on both ends, so it is a double-standard. Canary 02:49, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
Well, i was actually thinking about this a bit further, and i think i'm going to concede. We both agree on the philosophical matters, my only concern was to make it friendly to people aren't familiar with Japanese conventions.
So let's do the Japanese order — but let's address my concern too. What's the best way to do it? Something like my example above? Or maybe a little italic line at the top that says like This person's name uses Japanese name conventions? Or... something else? Let's solve problems bros  ♥ kine @ 05:46, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
Exactly how many instances are there of a Japanese staff member having a non-Japanese name? And rather than something at the top, I think a simple footnote ought to be fine. — ???
I think there are two Japanese people with non-Japanese names. One is James Onoda, i can't think of the other.  ♥ kine @ 15:46, 27 April 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

Please register your opinion by replying below this line!

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)

2011/04/24 — Date formatting

We have also had a disagreement regarding date formats. Currently, we use dates according to the following patterns:

2801 CE
U.C.796
R.C.487
N.R.C.1

The formatting of the CE dates is not the same as the in-series dates. I would prefer that we make these all the same, by removing the punctuation from the in-series dates and putting them in the back; for example, 796 UC. Also: the term 'RC' (and by extension 'NRC') has a questionable and potentially nonsensical meaning — presumably it stands for something like 'Reich Calendar', which is a mixture of German and English. I would prefer that we use 'IC' and 'NIC'; for example, 487 IC.--Canary
My response to the above is this:
  • The date formats we use are appropriate if we assume that their common usage is the most correct one. Wikipedia says that 'CE' always follows the date (unlike 'AD') and implies that it is usually un-punctuated. Meanwhile, all official and unofficial LOGH sources use U.C./R.C./N.R.C. in the way that they appear above — in front of the date, punctuated, and without a space.
  • We don't actually know what 'RC' stands for. There is some likelihood that it's either 'Reich Calendar' or 'Reich Century', but they never outright state this to my knowledge.
  • As has been correctly argued in the past, we do not have the ability to determine what the author's or producers' intentions were. We can't say for sure that 'RC' and whatever it stands for aren't 100% correct according to 36th-century spelling rules.
♥ kine @ 16:20, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

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Resolved issues

2011/04/24 — Starzone article naming conventions

This comment has been moved from Translation.

Neither system nor starzone should appear in page names. Just use the name of the star. Ex., Amlitzer, not Amlitzer Starzone; Sol, not Sol Starzone; Tiamat, not Tiamat Starzone; etc., etc. That would be like "America Country" and "Britain Country"--a pointless redundancy. — Canary

I don't think i would agree:
1. I should point out that the articles we've brought over from LOGH Wiki, many of which were written by you, contain frequent references to '____ Starzone' and '____ star' — so this is not unique to the articles here. :p
2. The Japanese sources appear to refer to them in a majority of cases with '星域' Starzone, so there's precedent there as well.
3. I don't agree with your analogy. America is a country and that's all it is, but 'Tiamat' and 'Tiamat Starzone' are two different things. One is a star and one is the stellar system which encompasses that star.
I chose the latter for the article names because it was my intention that they include more than just information about the star itself. This mirrors the usage on Wikipedia (see Sun versus Solar System) and on Memory Alpha (see Sol versus Sol system) — the only difference here is that we simply do not have enough information about most of these individual stars to give them separate articles. So i chose the one that encompasses both the star and its system, as that way it will be consistent — every star has a starzone, and every event that occurred within that starzone (whether it's near the star or not) therefore has a place in a 'starzone' article.
... Does that make sense?  ♥ kine
Works for me Canary 23:18, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
I agree that we should put in either starzone or system. I think 'starzone' sounds a bit clunky, personally, but I'm easy, really. Vympel 01:22, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
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