Battlestar Wiki talk:Standards and Conventions

Verb Tense (moved from Battlestar Wiki:Characters)

What about it? Some pages are written in the present tense, some in the past and some switch. I, personally, prefer past tense. That way, in ten years, it doesn't sound like the show just aired. What do others think? --Day 04:24, 31 August 2005 (EDT)

I favor present tense, which is traditional for discussing fictional characters ("Achilles kills Hector in Book 22 of the Illiad, not "Achilles killed Hector in Book 22 of the Illiad".)

The battle summaries would be a possible exception to this - as histories, the narrative flows best in the past tense, but as fiction, the events are "always" occurring every time the viewer watches - but that should be dealt with elsewhere. --Peter Farago 04:29, 31 August 2005 (EDT)

Hrm. Point. I was thinking, though, that when you read, for instance, the Lord of the Rings, "Gandalf said" rather than "says" and "Frodo did" rather than "does." However, this is a concern to more than just character pages... So where do we put it? --Day 05:31, 31 August 2005 (EDT)

When speaking of works of fiction, technically either past or present is correct, as long as one stays uniform. More traditionally, you would speak of a fictional work in the present tense (if you were giving a book report, for example) beacuse the work is considered timeless. If I review The Illiad today, someone who reads my review 50 years from now can read the book. I feel the same applies here.

In response to Day's concern about where to put it, there seems to be no central point for the guideline once it's decided. We could have a general "BSG Wiki Standards" page that would outline the preferred methods for future editors. Anyone else have any thoughts? Colonial one 21:25, 1 September 2005 (EDT)

A good future idea, but I'm not ready to go there yet. --Peter Farago 21:30, 1 September 2005 (EDT)

Okay, I'm game. --Peter Farago 01:24, 9 September 2005 (EDT)

Check this out, then: Battlestar Wiki:Standards and Conventions. I hope no one beat me to the punch. I've not put much on it, but I'll move this discussion to it's talk page, at least. --Day 05:07, 10 September 2005 (EDT)

Image Sizes

I tend to think that images that are whole-screen captures (and thus letterbox dimensions) should be about 300px wide. This is, however, based entirely on how that looks on my browser window, which is pretty large, but not maximized on a 1280x1026 resolution. So that might look horrid on some other screen. Anyway, with that in mind, I resize all my full-screen captures to be 600px wide since that's a nice two times what I think they should be viewed at. Should I be even thinking this way, or should I just be telling the articles to be thumbs and set my preferences for larger thumbs? In the case of cropped screen-caps, though, I think 300px is too wide, or rather, often too tall. How do others think on this? --Day 05:21, 10 September 2005 (EDT)

Yes, use your preference settings for this. FWIW, I'm a fan of judicious cropping. It helps make smaller thumbs more legible. --Peter Farago 12:28, 10 September 2005 (EDT)

If you're trying to illustrate something specific, sure, cropping is needed in most cases. However, for episode pages and, I think, when trying to show a scene, the whole screen is good for its sense of context. I could be wrong. --Day 16:09, 10 September 2005 (EDT)

Proposed Guidelines for Dispute Resoluton on Speculative Matters

Cooked this up with an eye toward the kind of arguments we've seen from time to time. Weigh in if you find the suggestion agreeable, or if you don't think it's necessary. --Peter Farago 18:42, 12 September 2005 (EDT)

Battlestar Wiki encourages speculation in areas where you believe your thoughts may be of interest to others. However, it is sometimes possible for contributors to hold two divergent and contradictory interpretations of the available material on a particular subject. This is a proposed set of guideliens for dealing with such conflicts.

• When debate on an article threatens to consume it at the expense of other valid areas, it is suggested that the debate be spun off into its own article, with a footnote linking the existing article to the debate. An example of this is Cylons and Twelve Cylon Models. This guideline is relevant for articles like Cylons with broad coverage of many equally important topics.

• Where two or more serious, diverging interpretations exist, they should be presented in the following manner - an comprehensive and NPOV list of evidence, with quotations, episode references, cut scenes, pod cast mentions, images, etc; followed by headers for each interpretation and a persuasive exegesis.

• Although the wiki process naturally devalues individual ownership of contributions, many people grow personally attached to their opinions in cases such as these. In order to avoid offense, please be tactful and judicious in your modifications to arguments which other contributors appear invested in.

I like the way this looks in my head. I mean--assuming I'm getting it right, and I think I am. However, I don't know that it should go on the Standards and Conventions page, so much as a policy page of some sort. Maybe you can convince me it belongs here, though. --Day 19:01, 12 September 2005 (EDT)

I think it's got merit, too. However, there may be too much jargon in what you're trying to say. "Exegesis" isn't in most people's vocabulary (it's not in mine!). For instance, if I were to rewrite the paragraph starting with "Where two or more serious, diverging interpretations exist..." it would be simpler to read as: "When two or more interpretations exist, writers should edit the page with "pro" and "con" arguments on the topic, with aired information and official statements from the producers given more weight than personal point-of-view." An excellent evolution of that was the Gaius Baltar-is-a-Cylon argument I added to that article, which extended/derived itself to the Humano-Cylon page. An important caveat to that should be, "When an argument can be fully refuted based on aired episode and official statements, the refuting information should be placed in the topic and its source. Deletion is not preferred since Battlestar Galactica is a "live" work that can and will change the information in unexpected ways." Someone today, for instance, deleted a item on Starbuck as a possible bioCylon after sufficient evidence was given in "The Farm." However, deletion there wasn't the best bet--somebody might come up with that idea again and we have that ping-pong effect of adding/deleting. This policy could resolve the matter. If we have a preferred page size, too, this could be a gauge for whether an article is going overboard. Spencerian 19:48, 12 September 2005 (EDT)

Spence: I added another colon to the front of your post for readability. Maybe I've a simpler understanding of how things usually go, but I think it's usual to add one more colon than the preceeding post. Anyway, to topic: How long after something is disproven should we leave the proof up? I mean--right now there are very few characters about which we couldn't have a <name>-is-a-Cylon theory, but if it turns out that in the next episode there is some kind of conclusive proof that, say, Chief Tyrol is not a Cylon, how long should we leave the annotated Tyrol-is-a-Cylong theory up? If it can be proven he's not, based on aired material, then I think it's a waste of server space to leave it up long at all, really. Now, debatable stuff, which is subject to interpretation is another matter, of course... ---Day 20:38, 12 September 2005 (EDT)

Ship Naming, Abbrevation and Capitalization Standards

I find myself a stickler on the use of "Twelve Colonies" or "the Colonies" rather than "12 Colonies" as it appears more as a country's name, such as "United States." Other items, I feel, should be reviewed, such as placing ship names in italics per print convention (such as Galactica), the use of "Mark" when referring to the Vipers ("Viper Mark VII" and not "mk. VII" or "Mk. VII"). Likewise, "Colonial" should always be capitalized thusly, although "colony" remains uncapitalized for the same reason we do not capitalize "state" when referring to one of the United States. Perhap military rank abbreviations should also be looked into. Any more of these for debate or discussion? Spencerian 20:02, 12 September 2005 (EDT)