Category talk:Starzones

From Gineipaedia, the Legend of Galactic Heroes wiki

Structure of starzone pages + categories

I will edit all star/starzone/planet pages accordingly later, but until then, as a heads-up for any potential new pages, here is how I think the pages should be worded:

1) Present-tense. 2) No mention of EITHER the FPA or Empire in the star/starzone/planet's introductory paragraph. (If there's any information of that nature, it should be in a "History" section). 3. Opening paragraph should contain only the star/starzone/planet's geographical location. What this means, in a nutshell, is that we use Sagittarius Arm instead of Free Planets Alliance and Orion Arm instead of Galactic Empire. After all, the politics may change, but the geography is constant.

Additionally, I plan to alter the category format. Basically, I think....

Planets/Stars should be a subcategory of Starzones. Each individual starzone should be a category of either Saggitarius or Orion Arm. Saggitarius and Orion should both be part of the Galaxy category (which, in turn, is part of the Places category).

This is all part of my ongoing effort to pin down, as exactly as possible, Galactic geography. Canary 05:40, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

The first part seems fair, but i'm nervous about the category structure:

1. Do you anticipate there being very much added to the Galaxy category beyond the two arms and the Galaxy article itself? If not, doesn't it seems like an unnecessary hurdle for readers who are trying to access our list of starzones and so on? Our 'Science' category has so little in it already, it seems like it would be just fine to add those three extra articles right there (until such time that we determine it's too confusing of course). I think avoiding unnecessary categories is an important goal for us.

2. I am nervous about putting planets and stars into starzones. Firstly, from a theoretical perspective, nothing says that a planet has to be part of a star system. (Although i don't know if there are any examples in LOGH itself.) But more importantly, would it not be easier for readers to find all of these classes of astronomical bodies — stars, starzones, planets, maybe asteroids if we decide we need one of those — if they were positioned together in one place? (This is how MA, WP, and Wookiepeedia all have their cats structured FYI)

I dunno, maybe i am being too theoretical, but that's how i feel at this exact moment anyway  ♥ kine @ 13:57, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Rouge planets are very much a (theoretical) rarity: space being so dark and all, it's kind of hard to figure out where they are. For the purposes of logh, every planet is in a star system, and every star system is within a starzone (or, of cource, every star system is a starzone due to synonyms).

As for making things easy to find... that's why I'm leaving the "Starzone" category under "places" as well as "Galaxy." I do this under the assumption that a starzone is both a natural geographical feature (star system) as well as a man-made one (a "zone" in which warp is possible). In practice, this won't really change ANYTHING with regard to how people browse information: I'm adding the category, not removing any categories. Canary 20:17, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Well i don't think 'places' necessarily implies man-made stuff anyway (that was not the intended connotation in my mind at least), so that wasn't the concern.

I guess my issue, to re-word it, is two-part: (1) I don't understand the usefulness of a Galaxy category, given that every single location in the series is in the Galaxy. What would be the purpose of the Places category if it existed? (2) I feel that putting 'Planets' under 'Starzones', whilst it has a certain logic, breaks apart the pseudo-list of 'astronomical bodies' we've got going. To force the reader to drill down further into Starzones when he could just find it in Places seems unnecessary. It also breaks the logic of the way our other categories are set up — if Planets belongs under Starzones, then doesn't Cities belong under Planets? And Buildings under Cities?

This is the alternative that i would propose:

(auto-collapsed to save space)
Places | |-- Orion Arm | | | |-- whatever | | Pages: | Orion Arm | |-- Sagittarius Arm | | | |-- whatever | | Pages: | Sagittarius Arm | |-- Asteroids? | |-- Buildings | |-- Cities | |-- Planets | |-- Stars | |-- Starzones Pages: Galaxy, ...

(Then i would also suggest placing 'Galaxy' and maybe the two Arm articles in the Science category.) That would resolve the problem of having unnecessary/redundant categories, and it would put the Galaxy article and all of the places sub-categories right at the readers' finger-tips so to speak. That's how i see it, anyway  ♥ kine @ 20:59, 22 May 2011 (UTC)