Policy talk:Canon

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Rethinking Hierarchy of Canon

Okay, so I'm currently going through the novels with the aim of filling out the wiki, and I think I've noticed an issue going forward w/ the current hierarchy of canon: there are very few contradictions between the novel material and OVA! Most of the "new" information in the novels only supplements what we can glean from the OVAs, and as such I'm not sure about relegating it to the Appendices. I propose moving the novels to primary canon status, but placing them at the very bottom. This would allow all pertinent information to be included in the 'body' of each article, while still retaining the animations' precedence. Information in the novels that contradicts animated material should still be in the Appendices, but under a "novel discrepancies" header.

Granted, I've been wrong-headed about things in the past, so if that's also the case now I'm very open to persuasion. Canary 15:52, 27 May 2021 (UTC)

The Localization Approach (canon, style, etc.)

Okay, so we've obviously got a lot to discuss re: the current and pending official localizations of LOGH. I have few proposals:

  1. Possibly this should go on an existing page, possibly a new page, but somewhere it'd be nice to have an article of some sort on differences, highlighting were different adaptations or translations differ from one another. For example, an article detailing differences between the novels and manga, between the novels and OVAs, between the OVAs and new anime, between the Japanese novels and English novels, etc., etc.
  2. Subsequent to our previous discussion re: hierarchy of canon, I think we need to establish a secondary hierarchy of canon and/or manual of style rule to accommodate vocabulary, specifically. The hierarchy of canon as-is works great for content, but not so much for style. When it comes to terminology, as I stated before (which either everyone agreed with implicitly, or more likely, didn't notice) I think we should derive nouns from official English sources before official Japanese sources before fan sources. IE "Caselnes" (from the novel) should have precedence over "Cazerne" (from the Japanese BD, presumably), and whatever Sentai Filmworks uses should have precedence over both.
  3. We need to finalize our approach to multiple adaptations in general, re: pages. Maybe we've discussed this before? IE does Yang Wenli get one page that covers all of his incarnations, or does each incarnation get its own page? I know we've spoken before about separate pages for the new TV series (following Memory Alpha's example with nuTrek), but I worry doing that would set an unmanageable precedent, where for consistency's sake we'd have to also have pages for the manga, novels, ballet, etc. So maybe it would be easier just to slap an extra category at the bottom of the relevant pages for "In other media," where we could highlight differences between the OVA adaptation and other media. I think this makes sense if we're going to keep Gineipaedia OVA-centric.

And finally, while I obviously think this is something to start talking about now, I do *not* think we should actually do anything until the Sentai Filmworks' OVA release happens, because then we only have to adjust things once. Canary 22:06, 21 March 2016 (UTC)


New Hierarchy of Canon Proposal

With all the new official English translations starting to trickle out, I propose that we amend our hierarchy of canon to give the official translations precedence over the unofficial fan translations and "Engrish" (and "Germanrish?") romanizations. Adhering to our original structure, canon sources would be ranked something like this:

  1. Sentai Filmworks' official English translation of the OVA series.
  2. Viz Media's official English translation of the novel series.
  3. Japanese BRD release of the OVA series.
  4. Japanese remastered DVD release (CentralAnime rips).
  5. Japanese original DVD release (Nemesis rips).
  6. Original LD release.

The big change is simply considering the official English translation of the novels as a primary source. With official English releases of the novels, I don't believe there's any reason to continue to view them as secondary canon. Of course, the OVA series would continue to have precedence. Thoughts? Canary 22:00, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

I think it is still better at least for now if the novels stay as secondary canon, since most people will still be more familiar with the OVA series than the original novels. Perhaps we can revisit this again once the 2017 adaptation is completed and all of the novels (including the Gaiden novels) are officially translated? Otherwise it will be awkward to have one article detailing the plot according to the novels and another contradicting it with that from the OVA. That said, I'm actually curious on whether the official translations did a better job in translating character names than the original subs, especially regarding Dusty. Glacierfairy 01:46, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
We'll see. Though I'm not sure how considering novels secondary cannon would be any different in practice than considering them primary canon, but ranked below the OVAs. In both cases, the OVAs would provide the base, with the novels providing supplementary information, and with the OVA information taking precedence when there is conflict. In terms of actively changing things around... I'm definitely NOT recommending we do that now, or even soon--if only for the fact that only one novel has been translated, and only four have been licensed for English publication at all. The time to do that is, I think, whenever Sentai Filmworks' releases the entire OVA series, and we have a full (or mostly full) set of official nouns. As for the 2017 series... I seriously doubt it will be as comprehensive as the OVA series, so unless it is, I think we can safely relegate it to secondary canon status, since it's just another "retelling" (like the manga).Canary 05:03, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
I am not sure i understand the rationale behind making the novels primary canon now. We already had all of the information they contain, not just in the original source material but in the fan translations too — and none of that information or the way that information ties in (or fails to tie in) with the OVAs has changed. It's all still just as confusing and internally inconsistent as it was before, the only difference is you can buy it from Amazon now.
As for what to do about secondary (or i guess at this point we should be calling it alternative) canon, i'm still unsure. The way we do it now, the alternative-canon information sort of builds off the primary sources — it doesn't stand on its own, it's meant to be read in the context of the main body of the article (which is based on the OVA). The nice thing about this is that it avoids a LOT of duplicate effort/content. The main alternative i see to the current method is having separate fully independent sections or articles for each canon — so one for the OVAs, one for the novels, &c. The draw-back to that is that a great deal of the story is shared amongst each canon, which means we're basically re-writing the same huge article over and over and over.
I don't know, maybe i'm not being imaginative enough, but those are my feelings off the top of my head  ♥ kine @ 20:41, 8 March 2016 (UTC)
I think we should adopt a wait and see attitude to the 2017 series, but my preference is fully independent sections for each canon. There will be significant points of difference between the 2017 series and the one we know and love. Case in point - Memory Alpha doesn't have one article for both versions of the Enterprise (the original series one and the 2009 re-imagining). It has two seperate articles. The same should apply to OVA Brunhild and 2017 Brunhild, for example. Vympel 00:54, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
They're working with a lot more fans and a lot less overlapping source material though. We have just a handful of contributors, and instead of two alternative continuities we have... what, five now?
That said, MA is a model i normally like to emulate, and i do see a lot of validity in the method itself. So i'm not opposed to it either. Just seems like an awful lot of work. :/  ♥ kine @ 01:38, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
Well, we shouldn't discount the possibility of an influx of new users out of enthusiasm for the new series. Will prompt rediscovery of the original too, I'd wager. Vympel 08:28, 9 March 2016 (UTC)
I'm thinking specifically of nouns, not content. IE, I think we absolutely should use the official English versions of nouns--first we take the nouns from the Sentai Filmworks subs/tiles, then from the novels, and only THEN do we go to the older Japanese releases. IE the Alex Cazerne currently gets his name from... it's not listed on the page, but presumably from the Japanese Blu-Ray release or one of the older DVD releases. But the English novel uses "Caselnes," so I think that should take precedence, and if the Sentai Filmworks release uses a different spelling, then that should take precedence.Canary 22:28, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

The Great Noun Game

It begins! With a new anime adaptation, plus official English translations of the OVA series and novels, we all knew this was coming: a new deluge of sometimes-contradictory nouns! Viz apparently shared some information re: their translation of the novels with Sentai Filmworks, so hopefully there should be fewer contradicting nouns with the official English releases... but who knows what will happen. In the meantime, I took a quick glance at the first few pages of Dawn and copied down what are more or less the "official nouns" for the English localization.

I'm going to go ahead and amend the policy page for the new sources, everything is pretty cut-and-dried for now, but eventually we're going to have to figure where to insert the new anime adaptation (probably as a secondary source above the manga but below Tanaka's books?) but we've got years to figure that out. Canary 21:34, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

I went ahead and quickly added the relevant new names under "name variations" for all the relevant characters. Going forward, I think every character page should have a "name variations" category in the appendices, even if there aren't any name variations, simply so we can demonstrate the source for the name used. Or maybe that's too much trouble. I dunno. Canary 22:00, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
I think that's the way it's supposed to be already, but i can't recall.
Another big thing i noticed is that they use senior admiral instead of high admiral.  ♥ kine @ 20:50, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Parallel canon: the new LOGH anime adaptation

This seems like the best place to discuss the effect of the new anime series on how we handle canon. I'm thinking we should ignore any material in the new adaptation that is also in the old one (IE for an article about the Battle of Astarte, we cite the original OVA series instead of the new series, and only cite the new series if it adds additional content not found in the original OVAs. In the case of contradictory content... I don't know. Mention it in the Apocrypha section? Or create parallel pages (IE Galactic Empire (OVA) and Galactic Empire (TV)? Canary 08:46, 15 August 2014 (UTC)

Our policy has always been that, when there are continuity errors/differences, the most recent wins. e.g., for the Battle of Astarte we use the events depicted in ONW rather than the ones from the OVA. The same applies to visuals — a few characters/buildings/whatever were re-designed for the DVD releases, and we use those as the primary source for any images.
I don't think it's clear how different the new series is going to be. If it's going to be a reboot on the order of the new Star Trek films, i think we need to consider having wholly separate articles (or at least separate sections) to differentiate between the two. But if it's going to be just a re-make, like ONW was, i think it's fine that we continue with our current policy.  ♥ kine @ 20:44, 10 September 2014 (UTC)
I think discussion on this is premature. I think we should wait til the remake is released and then re-assess. If it turns out to be a severe abridging or have markedly different chronology then a parallel canon may be needed, but again we can first wait and see. Iracundus 22:32, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
Judging from what we know now, I'd be very surprised if we don't do parallel articles. When the first bit of news about a remake is that its a fresh adaptation of the novels and not a remake of the original series, it tends very strongly towards a lot of differences. Vympel 08:03, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

A question about the BD boxes

Since the Blu-Ray release is considered the most canon of all, and since they are expensive as hell, my question is quite simple: has anyone here watched the actual Blu-Ray Boxes to confirm that there are no updates on the spellings? I ask this question because in the Blu-Ray release, the official name subtitles are softsubs - so the BD rips that are available out there do not feature these subtitles. So, did anyone buy the BD boxes or just found extracted subtitles track? Thank you very much. Saga, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

I had actually started a project to acquire and verify ALL of the subtitles for ALL of the different releases. Unfortunately for the Blu-rays, this requires either the original discs or the raw disc images (which are like 10 gigs per episode), since nobody online has done rips with the original subs embedded. And, to add further insult, since Blu-ray discs use a fancy subtitle format that very few utilities support (and the one or two that do support it are Windows-based), i would have to manually comb through every single episode and note each subtitle.
Naturally, because of this, the project was pretty huge, and i unfortunately did not get far before i put it (indefinitely) on hold. However, i was able to verify the subtitles for 9 episodes from about the middle of the series, and almost all of them matched the raw DVD subs. You can see all of the subtitle work i've done on the following pages:
  • User:Kine/CA DVD names (a complete computer-generated list of the name subs from Central Anime's DVD rips)
  • User:Kine/DVD names (a near-complete semi-manually generated list of the original name subs embedded in the DVDs)
  • User:Kine/Blu-ray names (a not-at-all complete manually generated list of the original name subs embedded in the Blu-rays)
I'd like to some day start this project again — i had even intended to do the original LaserDisc names as well — but right now i'm sort of outside of my LOGH phase, so i have no immediate plans for this. :x  ♥ kine @ 11:15, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

ONW and licensed works

Just realised this page needs to be fixed up. We don't consider licensed referenced works 'non-canon'. Also, ONW > OVA in terms of inconsistencies. Vympel 00:06, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

One of the changes i've just made was to put ONW ahead of the OVA in precedence — did i miss something?
I've added a note about vessel data; as far as i'm aware that is the only exception we've all agreed upon, rite?  ♥ kine @ 00:41, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
Yeah - of course, is there any other type of reference work? :)Vympel 00:47, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
Oh, one more thing - I thought the text (seperate from dimensions/crew) could also be incorporated, if we ever get it translated, with the same citation codes. Really, the same reasoning/principle applies, if there's any contradictions we can deal with them on a case by case basis.Vympel 00:50, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
I dunno. I sort of think that question is still open; i am still wary of it because it seems like it'd invite anything into the (main bodies of the) articles :/
I guess let's address that when the time comes though; for now i've re-arranged it a bit more so that it should at least conform to how things are at this moment, especially with regards to names and secondary sources  ♥ kine @ 01:04, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
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