Battlestar Wiki talk:Standards and Conventions/Archive2

DO NOT EDIT OR POST REPLIES TO THIS PAGE. THIS PAGE IS AN ARCHIVE.

This archive page covers approximately the dates between December 1st, 2005 and the present.

Post replies to the main talk page, copying the section you are replying to if necessary. (See Wikipedia:How to archive a talk page.)

Please add new archivals to the bottom of this page, or to Battlestar Wiki talk:Standards and Conventions/Archive03 if this page exceeds 32 kilobytes. Thank you. --Peter Farago 15:35, 23 September 2005 (EDT)

Disambiguation

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

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)