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Because of their length, individual discussions which we believe have reached consensus have been archived.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, Proposed Guidelines / Speculative Matters, Quorum of Twelve

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Verb Tense

While it may be a "convention" within fiction articles about an episode, the verb tense issue is not using present-tense within an encyclopedia unless something is still ongoing. As I posted in the main page talk page and on a user whom made me aware of the verb tense issue, I posit that this convention be changed for the actual entries for the people, places, things. In other words, in the episode pages, the verb tense would stay as it is, but the verb tense in the individual article entries for say "Gaius Baltar" which would be the encyclopedic entry on him, would follow the norms and conventions used in other encyclopedias. That convention being, again using Gauis Balter's entry, the descriptions of Baltar's background, and events which have already occurred on Caprica, etc. be in the past-tense, whereas referring to him as the Vice-President, and duties onboard Galcatica, etc. would be present-tense since this is the current state within the timeline of the show at present. This would of course be edited as events unfold within the show. If for example he is removed form office as VP, then the verb tense would change for that piece of information as well as adding in how he stopped being VP, etc.

Likewise passages about say the development of the Mark II Viper would be past-tense, while the current disposition and capabilities of the Mark II would be present-tense. Not trying to be overly pedantic, but if we were to use and adopt the convention that this "encyclopedia" were to be discussing things and concepts within BSG as if it "were real" so-to-speak, like say in a present day encyclopedia would describe the development of the F-14 Tomcat in past-tense terms but describe current description of the presently active variants of the F-14 (i.e. the F-14D) and its deployment and present status within the arsenal of the United States Navy, it would be present-tense. Contrast that with descriptions of say, a WWII German Stuka Bomber which would all be past-tense in a current day encyclopedia.

This sort of tense usage within things such as the Star Trek Technical manuals, Omnipedia's etc., which match he tense usage of current "real world" encyclopedias. Again, not trying to be a bull in a china shop as the new guy on the block, but it is rather jarring to read encyclopedic entries which do not follow the verb tense conventions used in "real world" ones. Lestatdelc 22:54, 1 December 2005 (EST)

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)

Image Credit

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

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

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

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

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)

HTML

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?

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

So, what links lead here?

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)