Battlestar Wiki talk:Standards and Conventions

Because of their length, individual discussions which we believe have reached consensus have been archived. As further discussions are concluded, please move them to the archive as well, in order to keep this page topical and readable. If the first archive threatens to exceed 32 kilobytes, please create a new one. See Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page for details.

Previous discussions:

Archive 1 (September 10th, 2005 to Present):

Verb Tense, Ship Naming, Abbrevation and Capitalization Standards, Signing Your Work, Spelling, Single-name Address, Episode Links and Formatting

Image Sizes[edit]

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[edit]

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 argument.

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)

For this particular matter, we could have an article on characters whose humanity is undisputed. This would be a white-list - as characters are convincingly demonstrated to be human, they'd be added. This would have to be based on a fairly strict interpretation of the evidence - Starbuck and Helo are obviously in the clear as a result of the hybridization experiments in The Farm.

In a subsequent section, we can note very strong probabilities - ie, anyone whose existance can be verified 30 years or more before the start of the series is probably also in the clear - (after all, the Cylons were only gone for 50 years, and must have taken a considerable amount of time to develop from "chrome toasters" to the human models). Likewise, characters whose parents can vouch for their natural birth (e.g. Apollo) are probably also safe.

Any character in the very strong probability section who is convincingly disputed could be removed, but I am most definitely not a fan of the logical contortions that lead to Starbuck-is-a-cylon scenarios. I also don't think there's a compelling need for a paragraph in Humano-Cylon on every single character whose humanity isn't 100% verified, so that tempation should be resisted. --Peter Farago 21:19, 12 September 2005 (EDT)

I concur on most of that and some of iut should probably be noted on the Characters project page. Uhm... However, didn't someone have some theory about Starbuck? I don't remember it quite solidly, but I remember thinking it was odd, but not dismissable out of hand. Which is to say, I doubt Starbuck is a Cylon, but because of this theory I would not have a fit if RDM called me up and told me, no, Starbuck is actually a Cylon. Maybe the theory I'm thinking of held less water than I think it did. Maybe I dreamed it. Anyway, I guess this is getting off-topic, so to speak. I agree that we should shy away from <so-and-so>-is-a-Cylon theories because the volume could become enormous. Cally might be a Cylon. I'm not sure what advantage having someone with her personality type and limited-access would server the Cylons, but she MIGHT. We don't need an article on that, though. Certainly not on the Humano-Cylon page. Maybe, if it were going to be more than a note that her humanity was unconfirmed, it could go on her page. And, if we have a handful of people with rather elaborate humano-cylon theories, we could link their pages from the main page... WOW, I'm getting off topic. I'm done. --Day 21:27, 12 September 2005 (EDT)

Yes, let's stay focused on dispute resolution. The who's-a-cylon game can continue on the Battlestar Wiki:Characters. --Peter Farago 21:31, 12 September 2005 (EDT)

UPDATE: Day and I have put together an example of this at Sacred Scrolls. --Peter Farago 03:13, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

The sample on the Sacred Scrolls page is a good example, although long interpretations could render it something that needs a separate page. On the problem with the weight on speculative observations: There seems to be a preponderance of information that either supports or refutes a POV speculation. For instance, the Baltar-as-Cylon information is still open-ended as we still do not know what or if anything has happened to Baltar before, during or after the blast that leveled his home, and his behavior also supports this idea. On the other hand, Starbuck's origin is all-but-sealed. For any new theories, there has to be a reason why such speculation is germane and evidence to base the speculation, whether it be data that has interpretations with different results, or new information that opens up new questions on matters recently believed as undisputable. There has to be a way to define this to a standard. Spencerian 15:03, 25 September 2005 (EDT)

After two and a half months, I don't think anything very practical is going to come of this. I think we should table it and archive the conversation. --Peter Farago 23:54, 30 November 2005 (EST)

All disputes should be settled by Thunderdome. --Ricimer 11:58, 1 December 2005 (EST)

Quorum of Twelve[edit]

Are they Delegates or Representatives? --Peter Farago 03:52, 15 September 2005 (EDT)

Well, the Magazine refers to Tom Zarek as the "Representative for Sagittaron on the Quorum of Twelve". So, I guess there's that, for what it's worth. --Day 01:09, 14 October 2005 (EDT)

Well, here's the tally.

Delegate

McManus: "Every delegate she's chosen so far has been a Roslin cronie."
McManus: "Sagittaron have chosen the delegate for the interim Quorum of Twelve."
Thrace: "You've been selected as Caprica's delegate to the Quorum of Twelve."
Roslin: "We need a candidate. Someone who will quickly win the delegates' support."
McManus: "A number of the Quorum delegates have now shifted their support to the scientific genius..."

Representative

Grimes: "Mr. Zarek is a representative of the people, and we are the people."
McManus: "We’re here with Dr. Gaius Baltar, representative of Caprica."
Baltar: "I'm just trying to do my bit, you know, as the elected representative for Caprica."

It seems like delegate is the more precise term. I think we should standardize on it. --Peter Farago 23:50, 30 November 2005 (EST)

I concur. The last three quotes seem rather loose in meaning, as if they're using the word "representative" in its normal meaning because, after all, delegates tend to represent some grou0p of people to some body or other. Standardize away. --Day 16:59, 1 December 2005 (EST)

Image Credit[edit]

Okay... Most images are gonna be screen caps we get from the shows. In which case the credit should go directly to the SciFi Channel, SkyOne Network or Universal Studios. The question is, which one? Or should it be all three? Or does Universal own the two channels and so saying "Cedit: SciFi/SkyOne" is enough? Or... What do you guys think? --Day 23:56, 21 September 2005 (EDT)

Universal Studios. They own the copyright. -- Joe Beaudoin 16:26, 23 September 2005 (EDT)

Following wikipedia's example, we don't need to credit image copyrights in-text, do we? It should be enough to note copyright status on the image's description page. --Peter Farago 00:27, 14 October 2005 (EDT)

The Freakin' Quote-o-Matic[edit]

It's not very -o-Matic, is it? ;o) Anyway, I think we need a standard for how they're formatted. I prefer the following:

"The line, in normal-weighted text, enclosed in double quotes."

--Rank and Name in Italics ("Episode Name")

It would also be nice to figure out how to go and look at quotes entered for days other than the current day. What do others think? --Day 19:00, 23 September 2005 (EDT)

As far as looking at previous quotes, that's a Joe question, though it would be welcome. Joe mentioned that the template info has to be added manually, but a creative wikipedia might work something out from a large database. At first I added at most 2 lines as a quote, but now I stick to one quote. I think the style you noted worked well (it did for my two contributions this week), so let's see if we all say so. Spencerian 14:50, 25 September 2005 (EDT)

Well, if you want to keep track of all the quotes, why not just add them to Category:Quotes? Theoretically, every quote should then be linked from that category page. -- Joe Beaudoin 09:44, 14 October 2005 (EDT)

However, it's a bit late for quotes already put up, no? --Day 12:49, 17 October 2005 (EDT)

Wait. Is this page automated somehow? If so, then a Quotes category is kind of moot. I remember looking at it a while ago, though, and it having no date information and just a single quote in it. --Day 13:04, 17 October 2005 (EDT)

On second thought, I prefer this:

"The line, in normal-weighted text, enclosed in double quotes."

--Rank and Name in Normal (Episode Name)

For full exchanges I think something like this would work:

Rank and Name 1: Humorous battle banter aimed at Speaker 2.

Rank and Name 2: Scathing insult.

Name 1: Pithy retort.

--Episode Name

What do you guys think of this? If no one replies in a few days, I'll start soliciting opinions on people's talk pages and via AIM. After a few more days, I'll simply make an executive decision and put this policy up. I think it would be best to link it at the head of the Quotes page, too. When the time comes. --Day 04:05, 28 October 2005 (EDT)

Day, I've been adapting that format (per your original thoughts) and I find it works well. My only problem is insuring a proper break between the quote(s) and the name and episode for single-quotation blocks. I think this thing has languished long enough to put up a quick vote or 5-day consensus/no-objection period, where we can make this the practice (and retrofit all recorded quotes to match if necessary). --Spencerian 08:42, 1 November 2005 (EST)

COnsider this that period. Also, do you mean you like the break, but you're concerned about adding it for some reason that I do not understand, or do you mean that your dislike <br/> tags? --Day 12:46, 1 November 2005 (EST)

Okay. I'm about to put my above policy up. I think I'll have to play with it for a bit to get the display format the way I want it for ease of copying and for users who know nothing of HTML. --Day 15:02, 11 November 2005 (EST)

I would suggest putting this policy (when it is finalized) and a note about not repeating quotes right on the Quotes page where the "This is a list of quotes..." statement is. Nwobkwr 19:59, 17 November 2005 (EST)

I noticed that people have started putting in quotes from the original series. I think this is great but in terms of standardization I would follow the same idea as used on the Memory Alpha wiki:

If it is an original series episode, quote as TOS: [[episode title]]
If it is a 1980 series episode, quote as 1980: [[episode title]]
If it is a re-imagined series episode, quote as RDM: [[episode title]]

Nwobkwr 13:46, 21 November 2005 (EST)

Not a bad idea, Nwobkwr, but it might get cumbersome. Might I suggest we use only the "TOS" flag for TOS and 1980 episodes, and leave the RDM episodes as-is? This gives a slant to the current series, but then, we will have many more quotes from RDM than from the old series since transcripts of the TOS/80 shows are far less available than the current. It also saves on visual complexity. --Spencerian 13:30, 30 November 2005 (EST)

I think we should put the dab in the episode credit, and only when there are episodes in each series with the same title. (basically, "The Hand of God".) --Peter Farago 23:53, 30 November 2005 (EST)

Links[edit]

So, in my opinion, the first occurance of nearly any proper noun should be a link. Even the thing an article is about. This means that the first occurance of an article's topic will be in bold, which I think is nice. For longer articles, I think linking becomes kind of discretionary. If someone hasn't been mentioned (or linked, maybe) in a while, then they could/should be linked. Also, episode credits at the end of an event description should always be linked. --Day 15:19, 27 September 2005 (EDT)

Using links-to-self to bold title text is discouraged by the Wikipedia Manual of Style. In general I think we should defer to Wikipedia for guidance except where we feel a justified need to explicitly contradict them. --Peter Farago 17:02, 27 September 2005 (EDT)

Ah. I think that's probably wise. Should we, then, manually bold them (or, in the case of ship names, bold-italicize them), or leave it out all together? --Day 17:40, 27 September 2005 (EDT)

Manually bold. --Peter Farago 02:41, 2 October 2005 (EDT)

Namespaces[edit]

There isn't much confusion on this, but just to clarify: When content must be disambiguated based on continuity, the appropriate namespaces are:

(TOS) - Original series
(RDM) - Re-imagined series
(Video Game) - 2003 Video Game
(1980) - Galactica 1980
(SDS) - Singer/DeSanto continuation
(SC) - Richard Hatch's "Second Coming" attempt

I'll leave this for comments for a few days before posting it. --Peter Farago 02:41, 2 October 2005 (EDT)

Just added the (SC) above. Hope that's alright. --Day 12:48, 1 November 2005 (EST)

Disambiguation[edit]

There are two approaches to disambiguation between series currently in practice:

The most popular is to namespace (TOS) content and leave the RDM content at the un-namespaced location - this is currently done for most categories, for example. Under this schema, disambig pages should be namespaced (e.g., "Pegasus (disambig)") and RDM content should not (e.g. "Pegasus", not "Pegasus (RDM)").
The other practice employed here is to namespace both TOS and RDM content when a collision occurs, and use the non-namespaced article to disambiguate.

I don't personally plan to contribute to much outside of the RDM continuity, but given that this Wiki is given over to all four major incarnations of the show (TOS, 1980, the Video Game, and the current series), I'm not sure its appropriate to give the current series preference.

On the other hand, the RDM series is the only one currently producing new content, and namespacing everything can be tedious. What are your opinions? --Peter Farago 02:49, 2 October 2005 (EDT)

Obviously, most of the people looking up "Battlestar Galactica" in google, amazon, or wiki, or anything nowadays are probably looking for info on the new series. We should make that information as easy to access as possible.

Jzanjani 17:41, 5 October 2005 (EDT)

I'm in favor of using namespaces only when there are articles whose names appear in both TOS and RDM. For "Pegasus", "Galactica" and "Battlestar", namespacing was obviously needed. But for "Ovion" and episodes like "The Living Legend", no, since they are uniquely TOS articles. Since information here wasn't intended to naturally slant to RDM content (though for obvious reasons it is), we should strive to keep the balance by adding related TOS links to similar articles as possible. "The Hand of God" RDM page, for instance, should be namespaced since it has an identical name to a TOS episode, and that RDM article has a link to the TOS article (buried, however). I'm becoming a big proponent of helping to make this site THE authorative reference for TOS information: If you have searched the internet for TOS information and sites, you'd find that it's really, really sparse content out there. This site is going to make me rent or buy the complete TOS series (and, Lords help me, Galactica 1980) so I can study them with the same scrutiny as RDM and get their episode and character pages ship-shape. Spencerian 17:51, 5 October 2005 (EDT)

Having given it some more thought, I tend to agree that we shouldn't treat RDM content preferentially. On a personal note, you're a braver man than I. I hope exposure to the original series doesn't permanently damage you; it would be a shame to lose such a valuable contributor. --Peter Farago 17:54, 5 October 2005 (EDT)

When BSG is good, it's really good. When BSG is bad, it's still BSG. Spencerian 10:19, 6 October 2005 (EDT)

Although I'm sure there are legions of BSG fans who are very interested in TOS and 1980, I think that a more casual viewer will be a little bit lost when he finds a disambiguation page pointing to five different pages which share the same name except for a few capital letters at the end. A lot of people will not be able to appreciate the very clean and precise compartmentalization of one topic according to primary source, because they probably don't even care that there was some other BSG a quarter-century ago. If we're trying to make things clean and tidy for the fanbase, then compartmentalizing like that is the way to go. But casual fans (which the creators of the current series have said they're trying to attract) are going to stumble a little bit when they see that there was an original series, a subsequent, short-lived, non-canonical series, a video game, a mini-series, and then finally the re-imagined series which is really the only thing that's making people even talk about BSG anymore. I really think that if we make RDM pages default, it'll allow a lot more people to take advantage of the content. That way they don't have to educate themselves on the whole production history of the original BSG, and why the 1980's series sucks, and this, that and the other. It's really easy to get lost in wiki just by clicking on the first linked word which you don't understand, and it's going to distract the people who are looking for the real BSG, if you will suffer my usage.

I think people would know what "RDM" means just as much as "TOS", "TNG", "DS9", "VOY", or "ENT". ---Ricimer

I think we should use (RDM) for RDM stuff, rather than assume it as default. Otherwise we have to cross-link everything to the (disambiguation) page, rather than have the disambig page show up when the search is run. What if someone's doing research about TV shows from the 80s or something. I agree that people will know, or quickly figure out the abbriviations we use here. I didn't know who Ronald D Moore was before I started working on this Wiki and it didn't take me very long at all to figure out how things are. It's not some intricate, color-and-alpha catalogging scheme. --Day 04:40, 6 October 2005 (EDT)

Do we have enough consensus on this to make it a guideline? --Peter Farago 00:28, 14 October 2005 (EDT)

Can someone write up the proposed consensus from all of this? I'm ill and it's hard for me to do this at the moment. Spencerian 23:31, 17 October 2005 (EDT)

I will tomorrow. --Peter Farago 01:18, 18 October 2005 (EDT)

Proposal[edit]

Where articles from two different continuities exist with the same or easily confused titles, they should be namespaced with a reference to the series in parenthesis. Appropriate namespaces are:

(TOS) - Original series
(RDM) - Re-imagined series
(Video Game) - 2003 Video Game
(1980) - Galactica 1980
(SDS) - Singer/DeSanto continuation

The page at the non-namespaced title should serve as a disambiguation page. --Peter Farago 19:24, 21 October 2005 (EDT)

I concur; looks good. Should we note the Richard Hatch "Second Coming" info in some way, as it has more material in fact than the DeSanto works. :) --Spencerian 01:34, 22 October 2005 (EDT)

Got a catchy acronym handy? --Peter Farago 02:12, 22 October 2005 (EDT)

Either "SC" (obviously) or "DRM" (for "dream" as "in your dreams") :) Perhaps RH as well. --Spencerian 04:05, 22 October 2005 (EDT)

"SC" and "RH" are the diplomatic alterantives, gentlemen. Others enthusiasts do view this site. --Watcher 06:07, 22 October 2005 (EDT)

Personally, "SC" works for me. "DRM" is confusing, as this is an acronym for Digital Rights Management. (In addition to the point Watcher made regarding its potentially insulting connotation.) -- Joe Beaudoin 14:43, 22 October 2005 (EDT)

Ditto, Joe. DRM is also easily confused with RDM. I like SC. Otherwise, looks real good, Peter. --Day 18:11, 22 October 2005 (EDT)

Okay. Since no one's dissented with Peter's proposal, I'm gonna wait a few days, then put it up on the main page with the addition of (SC) for Richard Hatch's "Second Coming" attempt. --Day 12:11, 31 October 2005 (EST)

HTML[edit]

I, ah, didn't think this was exactly necessary, but, uh... I think, now, it might be. Do we need to make a note about preffering '' to <i>? I see various posts that have several changes, but leave the HTML intact. --Day 16:51, 21 October 2005 (EDT)

Agreed. Wiki sytnax should always supersede HTML sytnax. -- Joe Beaudoin 14:29, 22 October 2005 (EDT)

Adendum: By the way, I created two templates: {{s}} and {{u}} for Template:S and

This page is silly.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

You have found a link that leads nowhere... deliberately.

Reasons?[edit]

The reason for this is to clean up the Special:Wantedpages, thus making our lives easier behind the scenes.

So, what links lead here?[edit]

There are too many to bother wasting our time listing. So here's a list of pages that link here., respectfully. -- Joe Beaudoin 14:36, 22 October 2005 (EDT)

HTML isn't exactly tasteful, but isn't it preferable to templates? HTML and wikisyntax both retain their formatting if moved to another wiki, but anything formatted with templates won't. --Peter Farago 17:17, 22 October 2005 (EDT)

Good point, Peter... Maybe "hacking" MediaWiki might be an option, so as to create wikisyntax for underlining? Yes, this would undoubtedly create similar problems, but if a patch was submitted to the MediaWiki developers then they may introduce it (or something like it) into future versions of the software. Just a thought... -- Joe Beaudoin 18:58, 22 October 2005 (EDT)

What would you have the Wiki Markup be? Underscores and dashes, maybe? Might be dangerous, but perhaps it would require two of each in a row? Or three? I was thinking that _underline_ would render underline and that -strike- would render ~~strike~~. However, I don't want underscores to mess up URLs or for strike-outs to mess up use of the em-dash, which is often substituted by the double-en dash (--). I'd just as soon use the HTML tags (except that it would get in the way of validating the HTML of the Wiki in XHTML 1.0 Strict, if that's a concern). Maybe we could use !!underline!! and !!!strike!!! or something. Ohoh! What about ``underline`` and ```strike```. Of course... you could go nuts and '''''`````italic bold underline strike`````''''' for ~~italic bold underline strike~~. Sounds like a fighting more from some anime. Heh. --Day 05:52, 23 October 2005 (EDT)