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.

Contents

Unresolved issues

2012/12/29 — Captcha?

This issue was originally raised at Gineipaedia talk:Staff.

Given the increasing frequency of bots, I have been wondering whether we need Captcha to block these accounts from being created. Opinions? Iracundus 10:38, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

There actually are captchas on both account creation and the first few page edits. The captchas ask questions that are simple enough for a human to answer, but difficult enough that a bot shouldn't be able to. Some of the questions include 'What is the third letter in the name of this wiki?' and 'Generally speaking, which season comes before autumn?'
I had had a more conventional captcha before this, but it had almost no effect, because bots are just too smart now. When i settled on this one, the amount of spam and fake accounts reduced to almost zero. I'm not sure why there are so many more now. (Initially my assumption was that these accounts are not in fact being created by bots at all, but rather by people in India or somewhere like that who get paid a few pennies to spam Web sites. However, i actually have no idea.)
I guess what i could do is make the questions more complicated. That would probably foil both bots and the type of poor English-speakers who get paid to do similar jobs. I had just been weary of making them too complicated, because i didn't want to scare away prospective users. But i dunno  ♥ kine @ 05:09, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
If we could reduce the ever increasing number of spam accounts I think it'd be worth it to make the questions a little harder.Vympel 07:54, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
I'm all for some series specific question. Like "What was the first name of the founder of the Galactic Empire?" or "What is the name of the state located between the Alliance and Empire?". Unless they actually knew relevant information then they would trip up. Iracundus 09:56, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
That seems unfair to people who are coming here to learn though. If they have to go digging through the site to find information they will probably just give up, and we have too few users to be OK with that :(
I will probably stick with basic knowledge, but word them in a way that requires a near-native level of English to answer  ♥ kine @ 20:22, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
OK, i've made them more complicated. If you use another browser, or log out of the site in the one you're using, you can see the questions here:
Log in / create account
(The questions will not appear if you stay logged in, because your accounts have already been confirmed.)
We'll see what happens with it, i guess  ♥ kine @ 21:36, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
I know it is early but it seems to be working. The mass registration of new spam accounts seems to have fallen off and now it seems to be just the old ones becoming active and being banned. Iracundus 13:12, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
Whatever benefit we gained seems to have worn off, with the recent spate of daily new spam account creations. Maybe time to upgrade the questions? Iracundus 11:33, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
With almost daily multiple spam account creations, I think we need to upgrade the questions to be more specific and less general knowledge. Iracundus 04:08, 18 May 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Iracundus on this. Their near-daily appearances are cluttering up the recent activities section, which do not look nice at all. =( Glacierfairy 13:08, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
(Resetting indentation)
Alright, i've made a few changes, but not to the captcha itself. I think that might be as good as it'll get. What i've done instead is:
1. New users are now required to confirm their e-mail addresses before they can create or edit pages. (In other words, they can create their account and log in, but they can't do anything else until they check their e-mail and click the link they were sent.)
2. Auto-confirmation (the event that occurs when you become a 'real' user) delay has been increased from 4 hours to 12 hours.
3. New user registrations are now subject to a DNSBL check. This means that their IP address is checked against a list (several lists, actually) of known spammers, open proxies, bot networks, and so on; if the IP is found on the list, the registration is denied.
I've just tested a new registration and this seems to be working as expected. I'm very hopeful that it'll make a big difference, but we'll see i guess. Let me know if you have any questions/whatever.  ♥ kine @ 22:00, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
Unfortunately it looks like the daily spam account creation is getting out of hand. Iracundus is being very vigilant in banning these things, but it looks like they can easily get past the captcha (although due to measures taken it seems unlikely they can post). Vympel 02:45, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
So far only 1 has actually managed to post anything (and tried to move it from user talk to a page of its own). However I do worry that one of these days there might be a genuine new person mixed in there that gets accidentally banned. Iracundus 11:51, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, just have to look at the names closely. So far all of them have "spambot" written all over them. Vympel 12:26, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
Is there anything else we can do about these spam accounts? Blocking 7-19 accounts per day every day is getting tiring. Iracundus 22:23, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
Agreed. Perhaps we can try the more stringent measures that were put in place for a while a few months ago? Glacierfairy 22:37, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
Or the more full proof method would be manual account creation only and for people to post a forum post requesting it. Iracundus 10:29, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
Its pretty out of control. I think anyone who really wants to edit will jump through as many hoops as necessary. Currently its just a spamfest and its obscene. Vympel 14:58, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
Can we please implement those blacklists again or go straight to manual account creation only via a forum request? I did a quick count and I have blocked something like 105 in the past 7 days. This is getting beyond tiring and ridiculous. Iracundus 12:30, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
(Resetting again)
First of all, i don't think it's necessary to block them unless they've actually added spam to an article. Wikis get loads of registrations every day, it's not feasible (as you've found) to manually vet each one for potential spamminess.
That said, i will look at it again, probably this week end. Maybe the block lists will work better now that the server has more RAM. Please remind me next week if i forget :/  ♥ kine @ 14:02, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
OK, i've re-enabled all of the block lists i'd disabled, and i've also added a few (not a lot) of LOGH-specific captcha questions. We'll see what happens.  ♥ kine @ 03:27, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
Thanks kine! Vympel 12:55, 14 September 2013 (UTC)
Doesn't look like it's made a lot of difference. I'll look at it again in a bit.  ♥ kine @ 02:12, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
Sorry for the delay. I've made an additional change — the server will now ban your IP for a while if you refresh the sign-up page more than a few times within a certain time period. I decided on this based on analysing the log entries from some of our spammers — i found that they frequently reload that page (presumably to get a favourable captcha question).
I honestly have no idea how effective this will be, so let's see what happens before making any other changes.  ♥ kine @ 21:22, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
Well, the good news is that it's been fantastic at banning spammer IPs. There've been over 300 bans since i enabled it. The bad news is that, because it has to read the server logs to see what's going on, there is a slight delay, and (as you can see) a lot of the time the sign-up goes through right before the IP actually gets banned.
This is a definitely an improvement over before, but it doesn't solve the issue someone mentioned of it looking bad for us if our recent changes are just filled with spam account creations.
I will add some more LOGH-specific questions, that will probably make them reload more and catch them sooner. Aside from that, i'll have to think on it.  ♥ kine @ 04:03, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
Cool, thanks for update. In meantime I've gotta do more contribs. Vympel 11:35, 2 October 2013 (UTC)
(Resetting again)
I was looking at the logs and i noticed there are several hosts that are repeat offenders. They are getting banned (one guy has been banned over 50 times just in the last week), but they keep coming back and coming back and coming back, and eventually they probably get through.
So my next step is this: I've added one more thing that blocks repeat offenders for a very long time (months). It looks like so far these people have only been about 10% of our bans, but it's something at least. The guy with 50 bans has created at least two accounts.
On that note, i've added a new tool that you guys might find useful, if only to play with. You can find it at Special:CheckUser; it allows you to search by user for all associated IPs and to search by IP for all associated users. There's not a ton you can do just with that information, but if you're ever looking at it and find a particularly bad offender, you can let me know.
Lastly, i'm going to look into adding a forced wait to the sign-up page, in order to address the log-reading delay i mentioned above. Since you only need to sign up once, it shouldn't be too big of an inconvenience.  ♥ kine @ 04:48, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
edit: Just added a wait to the log-in page. It was easy. I'm not sure how long the log-reading delay is, but i guess we'll see.  ♥ kine @ 04:54, 6 October 2013 (UTC)
The new measures seem to have reduced but not stopped the number of spam account creations, and I seem to be still seeing about 6 to 7 per day. Rather than all these countermeasure attempts (which they seem to evade or work around anyway), why not just go to manual account creation only via a forum request? That way all the automated spammers should not get anywhere, and even human sweatshop spammers would have to be able to convince staff via forum posts. I would think this would be the more definitive solution as I don't think the human spammers would be able to go on for any length of time on genuine LOGH related topics. Iracundus 06:15, 12 October 2013 (UTC)
I can do that if that's what you guys really want, but i want to be absolutely clear here: If i do, our legitimate sign-up rate will drop from almost nothing to actual nothing. Aside from the fact that that forum gets checked maybe twice a year, i can guarantee, with some knowledge of conversion optimisation and my own personal experience, that almost nobody will be willing to go through those hoops for a site like this.
Please discuss amongst yourselves whether you'd really like to keep that option on the table.
Until then, if that is on the table anyway, i would like to see what 100% LOGH-based captchas would do. I'm still hesitant about that, but it'd certainly be preferable to the nuclear option. I'll make that change now.  ♥ kine @ 01:06, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
In my opinion, people who are dedicated enough to create an account to contribute are most likely fans who already have a fair amount of knowledge about LoGH, so converting to 100% LOGH-based captchas should not have a detrimental effect on legitimate account creation. Otherwise, if the cluttering continues, I would also be tempted to support manual approval of account creations. Glacierfairy 04:53, 13 October 2013 (UTC)
The spams seemed to have dropped off. Is it the LOGH captchas blocking them? Iracundus 03:50, 19 October 2013 (UTC)
Yeah. They're all LOGH-based now, so they keep reloading them trying to find one they'll be able to answer and they get banned. The number of repeat sign-up bans (the several-month ones) has increased dramatically.
I have no idea how long it'll last though. Usually these things happen in cycles; you update the questions, they fail for a while, and then eventually they get a rhythm going again after they figure some of them out. It's just a question of whether they'll run out of IPs before that happens. Here's hoping i guess.  ♥ kine @ 19:37, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

2011/12/15 — Unnamed topics

How should we deal with topics that aren't given names anywhere in the series (anime or otherwise)?

There are a few types of unnamed topics that are easy to deal with. For example, if a character has his own ship, we'll just call it <character>'s ship (see Yang Tai-long's ship). Or if the ship has a pennant number, we can refer to it by that (see GL-202). For the star that anchors a starzone, we just base it on that (e.g. Aldebaran (star)). If a battle occurs in a particular place, we name the battle after that (there are a few pre-Amritsar battles like this)

However, there are some that are not as easy, and the wording gets more awkward. Here are a few examples of what i mean:

Memory Alpha's usage more or less coincides with the examples i gave at the top of this post whenever possible — e.g., Sisko's attack ship, Irina's ship, NCC-73918, Cardassian sun.

However, they also make heavy usage of Unnamed <whatever> lists, such as Unnamed Ferengi, Unnamed USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) personnel, Unnamed Type 6 shuttlecraft, Unnamed moons, and so on.

So should our rule maybe be something like this?

If it is possible to attribute a unique and recognisable designation to an unnamed topic — e.g., Yang Tai-long's ship or GL-202, an article should be created with this designation. Otherwise, it should be added to the relevant article(s) containing unnamed topics of its type (e.g., Unnamed moons).

In general i would go for that (in fact, see Unnamed Imperial citizens), but there are edge cases. For example, we could say Alex Cazerne's younger daughter (or Younger Cazerne daughter, to be less biassed) is a unique designation that most people would recognise, but that is a pretty awkward phrase. At the same time, that character appears in many episodes and even speaks one or two lines, so i feel like she deserves her own article....

I was trying to find a similar example on Memory Alpha, but almost all of the recurring characters are either given on-screen names eventually (like Morn) or they are given names behind the scenes (like Youngblood).

Hum. Complicated  ♥ kine @ 19:03, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

2011/12/11 — Structure of appendices/apocrypha sections

This issue was originally raised at User talk:kine.

I like the idea of keeping all the FFC stuff together in its own section, however more and more I'm thinking the "Apocrypha" sub-heading just serves no purpose. We see this in how some ship articles don't use the title at all. Did a test edit of Airget lamh on that basis to show what I mean. Vympel 15:44, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Hm. From your edit it doesn't seem like you're arguing that the heading serves no purpose, more that you want the heading there, but don't like the name 'Apocrypha'. Is that accurate?
If so, that's a discussion we've had a few times back and forth in several talk pages, and although i can understand that the term 'apocrypha' might be confusing or carry bad connotations for some people, my concern is that the alternatives don't fully apply to all of the things that 'apocrypha' does.
For example, you've got 'Licensed sources' there, and that fits right now, but then what happens when that article gets novel and manga sections? I don't think 'licensed sources' applies to those. So then you might say, OK, what about 'Other media'? That would fit for all of the above, but then what about instances like Asgrimm and Pergamonn where there are differences within the animation (either between OVA and films or between LD and DVD)? Those aren't 'other' media, they're the same.
'Apocrypha' covers all of those scenarios quite succinctly, which i think is the great thing about it and the main reason i'm attached to it. Is there another term you can think of that would satisfy all of those concerns? (Or am i misconstruing you entirely?)  ♥ kine @ 16:10, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
The tricky part is what happens when the background for a ship has integrated information from both the FFC and the Data Book encyclopaedia as some ships already do. Iracundus 20:57, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
It is pretty tricky, i still am not 100% positive what the best way of doing that is. We could keep doing it the way it is, or we could do the same but just put it under 'Apocrypha', and those are i guess sufficient at the very least for readability. We could prohibit combining apocryphal data at all, but that's too drastic. We could also do a structure like this:
Appendices
・・・Apocrypha
・・・・・・Manga (or whatever)
・・・・・・(text)
・・・・・・Licensed sources
・・・・・・(combined text)
・・・・・・・・・Data Book
・・・・・・・・・(source-specific text)
・・・・・・・・・Fleet File Collection
・・・・・・・・・(source-specific text)
That last option seems to me like the most logical in terms of structure, but (a) i'm not sure how it would work out if we ever needed to do something similar with manga/novel stuff and (b) it adds yet another level of depth to the Appendices section, which is already pretty deep hierarchy-wise. For now i guess just keep doing what we're doing though :/\/\  ♥ kine @ 21:17, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
The danger is simply listing everything out by source risks creating an incoherent narrative, given how background information is broken up and scattered everywhere. For example, take the Leda II entry, the FFC gives some information about the frontal cannons but does not name them as neutron beam cannons, which is done by the Data Book. The Data Book gives information about the secondary guns near the bridge as electron beam cannons but it is the FFC that says they are low calibre rapid fire versions. Both sources end up often filling in each other's holes. If we just listed everything, we end up with an article that is just a long listing of one line facts instead of something readable. I admit I am for integration where possible of these two sources (with citation), simply because ultimately it was Wright Staff that was involved in both. Iracundus 21:48, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
Right, i agree for the most part  ♥ kine @ 21:53, 10 December 2011 (UTC)
In terms of apocrypha / licensed sources etc, I think 'apocrypha' serves a purpose in terms of say, ONW/OVA appearance differences, or the Sindur's amazing changing crest, etc. But yeah, I think "other media" would work for novels and manga (we can hardly say they're apocrypha - within their own terms of reference they're cnot). Also Iracundus gives a persuasive argument for having a consistent narrative. I think he's right in the end. Vympel 01:54, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
Mm, so what are you proposing? Something like this?
Appendices
・・・Background information (or whatever)
・・・(text)
・・・Apocrypha
・・・(text about ONW/OVA differences or whatever)
・・・Novel
・・・(text about novel)
・・・Manga
・・・(text about manga)
・・・Licensed sources
・・・(combined text from all licensed sources)
(Keep in mind that is probably a conservative structure in terms of how we would want the wiki to eventually look in the end — that's leaving out a handful of other licensed books [like the encyclopaedia], those non-FFC models, the 15 or so video games, the three or four pachinko games, the stage adaptation, the DVD features, the LaserDisc art books, ...)  ♥ kine @ 09:33, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, that looks like a good structure - how would we deal with the FFC section & picture thing we've got now? Vympel 10:12, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
I don't know. I can't say i care for it personally. :/ It would pollute the main 'Appendices' section with dozens of sub-sections that can all logically be grouped into one and i think that the terminology is also inaccurate.
The thing that complicates any solution is the desire to combine sources into a flowing narrative. I understand the desire and generally agree with it, but it definitely makes things difficult because it turns those two or three sources into a special case that doesn't apply to any other source.
I'm having difficulty trying to come up with something that would satisfy all requirements mainly because of that. I thought maybe with a change of terminology it might work well if we did something like the first structure i illustrated above (where combined text would go under 'Licensed sources' and then we could put source-specific stuff right under that), but the term 'Licensed sources' basically applies to every single secondary source except for novels and managa, so that'd be a pretty heavy section.
On the other hand, perhaps we could do something like this (sorry for length)?
Appendices
・・・Background information (or whatever)
・・・(text)
・・・Some other word for 'apocrypha'
・・・・・・Animation differences
・・・・・・(text about ONW/OVA differences or whatever)
・・・・・・DVD features
・・・・・・(text about DVD features)
・・・・・・Alba Create sources
・・・・・・(combined 'narrative' text from AC sources)
・・・・・・・・・Data Book
・・・・・・・・・(Data Book-specific text, if applicable)
・・・・・・・・・Fleet File Collection
・・・・・・・・・(FFC-specific text, if applicable)
・・・・・・Novel
・・・・・・(text about novel)
・・・・・・Manga
・・・・・・(text about manga)
・・・・・・Video games (or whatever)
・・・・・・(text)
That would have the benefit of clustering all of the animation-derived sources (which are our 'main' sources obv) up together at the top, and limiting a section to 'Alba Create' would make that quite specific and avoid the difficulty of including other sources in something more generic like 'Licensed sources'. Then we could put everything else below in roughly descending order of relevance.
Assuming you guys could go for that (?), the only trouble would be coming up with a good alternative to the word 'apocrypha'. Maybe 'Other depictions' or 'Alternative depictions' or something?  ♥ kine @ 10:53, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
Urkh. I just don't know to be honest. I find it hard to come up with a preference that doesn't conflict with a goal! :( Vympel 13:49, 11 December 2011 (UTC)
Well let's see what the others say i guess. (Moving this to policy talk, btw, as you can see)  ♥ kine @ 15:10, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

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)
"Ulanf" is a name of Mongolian origin not Chinese. The original japanese writing should precede all other languages and be listed because it's the original work. If we know how it's written in the specific language then that writing should be adopted as "correct translation". It's all about translation here. We are using the alphabet so the appropriate or general alphabet version should be used when translating from the various languages. Almael 19:13, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
Ulanhu is of Mongolian origin however the LOGH character Ulanhu has a pennant with a Chinese character on it. Like the historical Ulanhu( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulanhu), he can have an official Chinese transliteration/translation of his Mongolian name, much like how Yang Wen-li is a direct transliteration of Chinese characters. Iracundus 00:27, 3 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)
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