Battlestar Wiki talk:Standards and Conventions

Images

I'd like to add a provision in regard to the image galleries, since they are becoming more prevalent now. While the wording can be debated, the following points should be made:

1. Image galleries are to be used sparingly. On smaller articles, such as those for ships, it is common to see a gallery composed of the top, bottom, and side views of the subject, in addition to other images that may note a peculiarity worth noting. This is acceptable. On pages for characters, episodes, and other articles, image galleries should never be used, due to fair use concerns and the fact that Battlestar Wiki is not an image gallery.
2. The only exceptions to the above should be with regard to the comics (and books) that have multiple covers, in addition to other merchandise, such as the Minimates.
3. Otherwise, Battlestar Wiki prefers that images be within the prose of the article, thus abrogating the need for image galleries.

We should also note that images in the infoboxes should be:

1. High quality with a minimum dimension of 200px in width.
2. Be the newest image available.

The above should have the explicit caveat that common sense prevails in such cases. For instance, we wouldn't want to upload a screen shot of Kara Thrace every time a new episode airs, because that would be ridiculous.

Ok, that's all I have to say for now on that subject. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 13:42, 16 February 2008 (CST)

Looks like a plan. I recently killed an image gallery at Kara Thrace consisting of one image :D --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 16:04, 17 February 2008 (CST)

Cleanup and Organization

I'm done with the cleanup and organization of the Standards and Conventions. I've also added summaries of each section to the main page, so to help people know what to do about certain things without reading paragraphs explaining the whys and wherefores. Thoughts? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 23:20, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Looks good. This split was long overdue. One thing I always wondered is why do we have different standards in the Quotes? For no apparent reason, episodes are italicized and not put in quotes there. That whole section could be cut drastically, if we used the same rules as everywhere else. Though changing that now would be too much work. -- Serenity 08:43, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I've always wondered that myself. But now it's too much to go through and change... call it a quirk, I guess. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 16:42, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Numbers

"Numbers less than 11 should be spelled out, "five" for "5", etc." May I suggest that when we find out who "Number Eleven" and "Number Twelve" are we continue to write out their numbers in full for consistency (so we don't have "Number Four and Number 11 meet" OTW 23:21, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Done. :) -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 23:25, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Name and Callsign Standardization

I know that there have been some recent concerns over phrasing a character's full name to read 'Lee "Apollo" Adama' or 'Alex "Crashdown" Quartararo'. Therefore, I wanted to start discussion on this, seeing as a lot pages on the wiki need to be standardized to get rid of the over-use of callsigns in favor of standard given last names.

To explain where I'm coming from, I feel that the characters should ultimately be introduced with their full name (first and last name) and callsign, simply because viewers sometimes don't get the fact that "Apollo" is a callsign for Lee, particularly if they are new viewers. Also, the lesser known characters (such as Skulls, Racetrack, and Crashdown) are referred to mainly by their callsigns, but do have names that we know of. Therefore, we there needs to be an effort to standardize them across the board, ergo the above idea.

I know some of you object to this, as I've seen in your edit summaries, but I wanted to discuss it here just to make sure everyone knows where I'm coming from. Thoughts? -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 19:46, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Why don't we just link Apollo to Lee Adama? --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 19:54, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

We could do that, but it just disjoints the prose. Also, it's not really encyclopedic to refer to people by nicknames or callsigns when we have their actual names, even for the sake of convenience. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 20:01, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

My personal annoyance with this is mainly that it sounds somewhat artificial to me (it's probably just me and I'm overreacting...), especially when it's done two or three times in a row. It actually reads like it's a standard. One character is generally fine, but particularly with Racetrack/Skulls, Racetrack/Athena or Boomer/Crashdown it's always something like "Later, Margaret "Racetrack" Edmondson and "Hamish "Skulls" McCall fly in their Raptor". It's just the sound of that that I don't particularly care for, for some reason :s You talk about bad prose with disjointed references. For me, always noting the full name and the callsign inbetween is bad prose too.

I can see the point with lesser known characters, for example Racetrack who is generally referred to more by her callsign than her name. That's one reason why I left that in the recent edit. I just think, rather than making it an ironclad standard, that some case-by-case judgment should be used about when to use names only and when to add the callsign. With the Battle of Kobol (RDM) article, I felt that it's not necessary to do it for Apollo and Starbuck, since they barely play a role in that section. Apollo is only mentioned as her wingman, and only plays a role during the boarding later, and Thrace only steals the Raider. The section is really about Crashdown, Boomer and Racetrack, so it's better to introduce them fully, since their names are used more often and in both variations.

At the same time, I think we kinda agreed that callsigns are appropriate for piloty actions. So using Racetrack exclusively in the battle article would be appropriate (though she can be introduced with callsign + name), whereas, in a scene in Joe's bar for example, her real name should be used instead. -- Serenity 20:02, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

The pilot vs. other stuff convention is a long-standing one that's followed pretty closely. However, I should reiterate that even if we decide to introduce people as Kara "Starbuck" Thrace, we should only call them that once and use their callsign or surname (whichever is appropriate) from there on, just like we do when introducing normal people (i.e. "William Adama ... Adama ... Adama"). --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 21:01, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

No one is suggesting to use it several times for one character. It's just about the introduction, and what you say is more or less what's done at the moment. But I think doing it in every introduction already creates formulaic sentences, because it's generally done either at the beginning of a paragraph and/or a sentence. IMO this isn't something that should be standardized so clearly that it needs to be done every time, but only when really needed, so that it doesn't impede the prose. For example it's superfluous when a character hardly plays a role in the text, or if subsequent references only use the real name anyways. At least with main characters. As said, when talking about people like Racetrack or Hot Dog, who are really referred to by their names, noting the callsign makes some sense. -- Serenity 21:22, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Logical punctuation

After seeing the link in the edit summary I just noticed that Wikipedia uses logical punctuation. Interesting. I thought they used American punctuation, but in practice it's probably completely mixed just as here.

I was under the impression that we mostly used American punctuation here, but it appears that the Season 4 articles, at least, use logical punctuation almost exclusively (before Passivity changed them). While the SAC says we use American punctuation, in fact there is a lot of logical one as well. Personally I generally use that as well, because I'm used to it and American punctuation just doesn't make the slightest lick of sense. It's just a stupid holdover from the days when the publications where typeset and there was a technical reason to print them inside. These days, many scientific publications for example are switching over to what the rest of the rest of the world does: place the punctuation marks where they actually belong.

While I'd prefer logical punctuation everywhere, I'm not really saying that we should change it over officially. Just pointing out that we have an inconsistency here. People use different styles and while one article may be consistent in itself, some others are formatted differently. -- Serenity 14:34, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

It's a mishmash, in practice. Generally speaking, putting commas outside of quotation marks makes tremendously more sense, and is far better stylistically. As with everything else American, we aren't exactly the greatest at making things efficient. For instance, we still haven't implemented widescale use of the Metric system, despite the fact that we're only one of maybe two or three countries who still use the "English" garbage while everyone else has converted some time ago. Anachronisms die hard, unfortunately. -- Joe Beaudoin ^{So say we all - Donate - Battlestar Pegasus} 14:47, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Re-imagined Series definition: a nickname used as a substitute for an aviator's given name in wireless communications and in conversation