Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television/Stargate task force/Archive 10

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images uploaded by Matthew

There are currently several SG-1 images listed on User:Matthew's talk page that are tagged by BetaCommandbot. Since Matthew is no longer active on Wikipedia, i thought I would notify the project, perhaps you guys can take care of them. --TheDJ (talkcontribs) 18:16, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

It seems the notifications are for images that wouldn't pass current FAIRUSE regulations, so I won't bother. Thanks anyway. :-) – sgeureka t•c 18:27, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Future of images on character and technology lists; question about infoboxes

To let you know what will be happening soon: Per Wikipedia:Non-free content#Unacceptable images, The use of non-free media in lists, galleries, discographies, and navigational and user-interface elements is generally unacceptable because it usually fails the test for significance (criterion #8). This has been practice for many shows in the past few months now, and is currently discussed again at e.g. Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content#Failure_of_WP:NFC_on_character_lists, which upholds that ruling. That means that most images in SG lists, especially for characters and technology, will be removed soon. (It may be argued to make each list element its own article, but that goes against Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) and may result in AfD. Current merge efforts attempt to avoid that, and you may encounter merge tags more often now (any input is welcome).

Kind of related is the question of infoboxes, especially for one-time characters. See Langaran characters in Stargate or Ancient characters in Stargate as examples. Without the to-be-removed images, can't we also get rid of infoboxes for the minor characters by merging the infobox information into the text? Example of how this might look: Characters of Carnivàle or Characters of Lost. This kind of layout is also encouraged by Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(writing_about_fiction)#Notability_and_undue_weight, but I need to ask about consensus before going ahead. – sgeureka t•c 21:30, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

I think the best solution for this problem is to transwiki the articles to Wikia. This has been done with a lot of SG-1 episode articles and could be done with other articles. Diabound (talk) 11:41, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
As a kind of example that could work for both fans and wikipedia is what I've done with formerly Ori_characters_in_Stargate, whose Priors section got merged in full to Prior (Stargate) (which is going to stay that way for a while), Tomin got merged in full to Miscellaneous alien characters in Stargate (too major to not be covered in some way on wikipedia), and Fannis, Harrid and Sallis, Seevis and Denya were transwikied to wikia:Stargate:Anti-Ori underground, which is linked to via a {{further}} template on Ori (Stargate)#Anti-Ori underground (these latter characters are practicably real-world-insignificant and/or were only one-timers, so they would have been removed from wikipedia in any case beyond short mentions). Do we want to go that route with other one-time characters as well? We don't have to decide this immediately, but there need to be discussions anyway if we want to comply with wiki policies and guidelines and still keep all info at hand, on- and off-wikipedia. – sgeureka t•c 15:07, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
Images of characters on a List of Characters page are quite clearly significant - they aid recognition of the character. If people want to get rid of the articles, they know where AFD is, but if the characters are worth describing, they are worth having a picture of. I will resist any attempt to remove the pictures. --Tango (talk) 14:13, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
I think you understate current AfD and deletion-minded (content and images) practices, and policies and guidelines currently work against fiction cruft that has no secondary sources (and almost no SG articles have secondary sources to establish notability). WP:ILIKEIT protests are often ignored now, even GA and FA articles got stripped of their many images. I don't want to speak of the devil, but if someone took Langaran characters in Stargate to AfD, it would certainly end in a trim&merge (best case) or delete (worst-case), so the image question would be even more moot. So we can wait in the hope that no-one notices, or we can do something about it and bring these articles closer to encyclopedic standard. I made my standpoint clear, but I cannot do anything unless I know that this wikiproject is willing to work from the perspective of existing policies and guidelines, not one from fandom (and I am a fan, but I'm also a wikipedian). Wikia is more mindful of fandom approach, so I guess this could be our big hope. – sgeureka t•c 15:07, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm not saying they wouldn't get deleted. I'm saying they should either be deleted, or kept with images, they shouldn't be kept without images. As for the Langaran list - I would vote to trim it, there are characters there that only appeared in one episode, they don't need any more mention than a sentence with a link to the episode article (of course, if it's been transwikied, it's a little more difficult, which is one of the reasons for keeping episode articles). --Tango (talk) 15:36, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
Sorry for my misunderstanding. Even without the episode articles, these characters can still be covered in Langara (Stargate) (?). If we go the transwiki route however, we can have a link to the wikia page there for more detail like I suggested above for the Anti-Ori underground. IMO, the only important Langaran worth going into detail is Jonas Quinn, who may even have enough reliable secondary sources to keep his own article. But what to finally do with the Langaran character list is not my call, and needs a separate merge discussion. – sgeureka t•c 16:01, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
We can merge the character list and the planet article, but that doesn't really help - if the list isn't allowed pictures when it's in its own article, why would it be allowed pictures when it's as part of another article? I agree Jonas is the only character that warrants any great detail (ie. his own article), but there are other characters that appear in multiple episodes and should get at least some description. --Tango (talk) 16:23, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
Right, that doesn't save the images, but it would save the characters info (for now). Now the question is how detailed we want to keep the character info, i.e. if we still want to leave everything unchanged and continue the use of infoboxes, or trim the info into three sentences each for a merge, or whether we hand everything over to wikia. And this was my initial question in this thread because I am unsure how to procede. :-S – sgeureka t•c 17:18, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
The pictures are essential to the article, so they should be kept - call it ignoring all rules if you like, although I'm going to keep trying to get the rules fixed. If the pictures are being kept, it makes sense to keep the infoboxes, since they don't take up much more space are make it easier to find key details. --Tango (talk) 18:36, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
I see you already started a thread at Wikipedia_talk:Non-free_content#Unacceptable_images, which may explain things better than I can. I agree that images and plot summaries are very helpful with recognizing fictional things, but the recent trend is to make wikipedia an encyclopedia focused on the real world, and go away from fansite coverage. That also means either cutting down on unwanted stuff (number of articles, images, plot), or expansion (conception, production, recepetion and keeping an image). There has only been limited progress in the latter, so we can only do the former or wait until others do it for us. – sgeureka t•c 19:17, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
Unwanted by whom? --Tango (talk) 20:06, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
Policies and guidelines. WP:FICT wants as few non-notability-establishing articles as possible, WP:NOT#PLOT and WP:WAF want existing articles to have real-world context and sourced analysis, WP:OR and WP:RS require sources, and WP:NFC wants as few images as possible. The only problem that most SG articles don't have is WP:RS because of the easily available primary sources. Still, most articles have major problems with WP:OR#Primary, secondary, and tertiary sources and WP:NOT#PLOT. – sgeureka t•c 21:15, 5 January 2008 (UTC)
Primary sources are perfectly valid and reliable. You have to be careful about you use them for, but as sources of plot details (which is all the Stargate episodes are used for), they are absolutely fine. The lack of secondary sources is because those sources don't exist, it has nothing to do with the ease of availability of the primary sources. --Tango (talk) 00:47, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

(outdent but reply to Tango) Of course primary sources are perfectly valid and reliable, but that wasn't my point. Please read WP:OR#Primary, secondary, and tertiary sources and Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction) (and maybe Wikipedia:Notability (fiction)) for why using solely primary sources in articles is not alright. As for The lack of secondary sources is because those sources don't exist: I highly doubt that as I could find dozens of secondary sources for all the insignifant characters in an unpopular shortrun TV show. It's all a matter of looking for such sources, which takes enormous amounts of time that most people are reluctant to spend. Also, if it was true that none of these characters have secondary sources, none of them would be notable by definition, and a list of non-notable fictional characters/elements is still non-notable and doesn't serve to exist (as per common WP:FICT and common deletion outcomes). That again makes the use of images in such lists really moot. (I am not explaining this to annoy people, but to educate people and prevent "but why didn't anyone tell me this before I spend time in wrongly "improving" articles I care about" situations.) Please ask if you have more questions, but I can't urge you (or other people) enough to carefully read the links I provided.)– sgeureka t•c 02:04, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

There are plenty of unreliable sources (fansites, mainly), but are there reliable ones? As for notability - it's a spectrum, there are plenty of things we include in articles that wouldn't warrant an article of their own but are still worth mentioning. The existence of reliable sources is a dubious measure of notability for aspects popular culture. I guess the episode ratings are the best evidence of notability - the fact that lots of people watched it makes it notable. --Tango (talk) 03:22, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
There are a couple of dozen interviews at gateworld, I have a couple of TV Zone Specials for Stargate, there are companion books and those official fan magazines, we have the audio commentaries and DVD extras, all of which are secondary (yet no always independent) reliable sources. We could certainly find something for at least the significant recurring characters, but that takes time. But if we don't do that, then notability is not established -> topic is not allowed to have its own article per WP:FICT -> topic is not allowed to have an image per WP:NFC. Per WP:NOTABILITY, notability is distinct from popularity, so ratings are not so important. But popularity blesses Stargate to make the existance of secondary sources more likely, which in turn increases good faith to give SG articles more time for improvement. Maybe some editors have gotten used to this kind of blessing and take it for granted now. But it's not (speaking from an unfortunate personal experience here), and the changes in policies and guidelines within the last 6 months have SG wiki fandom face the harsh wiki realities as well. The good thing about this is that it might encourage more encyclopedic treatment of fiction-related content. I know it encouraged me. ;-) – sgeureka t•c 04:11, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Tango, you mentioned quite rightly that there is a difference between Regular, Recurring and One-off. Since the regular characters have their own pages, the image-removal discussion is moot for them. Then we have a lot of significant and a few insignificant regulars, and a few significant and a lot of insignificant One-off characters covered at wikipedia. Can we, until wiki-wide consensus and agreement about this matter is found, at least start to remove images for the insignificant One-offs? I'm specifically talking about all the One offs in Asuran characters in Stargate, Genii characters in Stargate, Langaran characters in Stargate, Replicator characters in Stargate, and Lucian Alliance characters in Stargate. Since the Wraith and the Asgard look almost always the same, I am also in favor of removing the images for the minor (recurring) characters there. I'd definately leave the two Tau'ri character lists, Goa'uld characters in Stargate and Miscellaneous alien characters in Stargate alone for now, because almost all their characters are very popular and well-known. I'm unsure about removing images of One-offs from Ancient characters in Stargate and Jaffa characters in Stargate because the races are so notable. Can we have temporary consensus for this as to avoid removal sprees from outsiders? (Anybody is welcome to state their opinion.) – sgeureka t•c 17:22, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I generally agree with all that. One-off's shouldn't really be on the lists anyway (as more than a one line, at least), they certainly shouldn't have images. Ideally, I would have them described on the episode page, but as those are being deleted that's not an option, so where (if anywhere) the description should go is a little difficult, but there is no need for an image anyway. The Asgard all look the same, so I wouldn't worry about pictures for recurring Asgard. As for Wraith, Michael and Todd have distinctive appearance, so should have images, the others (if there even are any worthy of mention) don't need images. --Tango (talk) 18:23, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
I'll give it a shot tomorrow. If I remove an image that someone else believes should stay, feel free to restore it. – sgeureka t•c 03:02, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Stargate Atlantis Regulars

Template:Stargate Atlantis Regulars has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. ({{Stargate SG-1 regulars}}, {{Recurring characters on Stargate SG-1}} and {{Stargate Atlantis Recurring}} have been co-nominated.) – sgeureka t•c 12:55, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Unas language

 

An article that you have been involved in editing, Unas language, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Unas language. Thank you. (Just in case someone wants to do something with it, but I can't verify anything in the article with my memory, so I think the article shouldn't exist, not even in a merged form.) – sgeureka t•c 16:31, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Proposed mergers

I have proposed a couple of mergers in the last few days (mainly for SG-1), but haven't got a reply so far. I'm listing the proposed mergers below to give them more attention.

Added on 01:23, 12 January 2008 (UTC):

Added on 21:53, 13 January 2008 (UTC):

Added on 16:02, 15 January 2008 (UTC):

Added on 13:17, 16 January 2008 (UTC):

Added on 11:34, 21 February 2008 (UTC):

(Merge rationales are at the merge target talk pages). I also believe Bra'tac and Adria (Stargate) should be trimmed&merged because they are not main characters. But Bra'tac has appeared in many episodes throughout the entire run of SG-1 and can wait,   Done and I still haven't found a good merge target for Adria, so she must wait. Furthermore, I believe most of the planets in Category:Stargate planets don't deserve their own article, but Planets in Stargate is already really long, and it's also possible to merge the planets into the articles of their civilizations. I need to give this more thought before proposing a merger for them.

The main reason is always that these articles don't have real-world information as "requested" per WP:FICT, and that I believe that they either can't or won't anytime soon. A merge would make them meet WP:FICT much easier (they can be de-merged anytime if someone wants to work on them), and the risk of AfDing gets lowered. If someone can address notability by adding sourced conception, production, and reception facts during the merge proposals, I'll be happy to withdraw the merge proposals on the spot. I plan to leave the merge proposal open for no more than one month, and I volunteer to do the merges properly. – sgeureka t•c 03:02, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I would keep Ba'al, Unas and the X characters in Stargate articles, the rest are probably mergeable. Ba'al is a much deeper character than the other Goa'uld, and there's quite a lot to say about him. There is a lot to say about the Unas, their history, culture, language, Goa'ulded and un-Goa'ulded states, etc. And Misc. aliens will simply get too long if we merge everything into it. --Tango (talk) 16:15, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Per WP:FICT#Defining notability for fiction, I believe the Unas are non-notable (at least the article doesn't establish any kind of notability) because I don't remember any secondary sources like DVD extras or insightful DVD commentaries about their "sales figures, critical and popular reception, development, cultural impact, and merchandise" that would justify keeping the article. What I mean is something like Kull Warrior#Making of the Kull warriors, and I doubt that the Unas (despite their in-universe notability) have anything like that. But maybe someone out there with companion guides has something about them, so I rather ask first before boldly merging. What you're suggesting to add is usually considered as failing WP:OR and WP:NOT#PLOT in AfDs, and is often deleted (see e.g. Ancients (Farscape) and Peecekeeper (Farscape), both of which I had to go to deletion review to get them back for a merge into what's now Races in Farscape). What the current SG races are doing is "just as bad" and more appropriate for a fan wiki, but they have the advantage to be major races of a major television show and there is a fair chance to fix them. Ba'al may have some secondary sources about him (I have one or two interviews with the Cliff Simon about his role), but none of it appears in the article, so his article wouldn't survive in AfD either. If someone wants to work on his article to make it something like Vala Mal Doran, which I am currently working on to establish notability, then that should be done very soon or after the merge (which is undoable).
All SG fandom currently has is a little bit of extra time to fix the issues before the AfD crusades begin. Farscape and the The Elder Scrolls already had their AfD and redirection crusades, now it's Charmed (TV series), Bionicle, and many anime and cartoon shows. I give Stargate one more year to get its act together, or we may be next. (I hope that explains where my paranoia and urge for merging is coming from.) – sgeureka t•c 17:20, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
At least in theory, an article can survive AFD just by having appropriate content that *could* be added, it doesn't actually have to be added. We delete articles that will never be any good, articles which are just bad currently we tag and move on. --Tango (talk) 18:34, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Right, an article can survive AfD without having appropriate content, and it may very well happen that the Unas article will never be AfDed. But, as you said, We delete articles that will never be any good. I say, without sources, the Unas article will never be any good, and therefore propose a merger rather than redirection (see the recent arbcom case that says that's alright) or deletion (which WP:FICT is trying to discourage, but even I Prod and AfD articles where I see nothing mergable). I'll accept the wish to hold-off for some time, but I'll tag the articles and leave the merge proposal up. Two months is usually considered an appropriate time for an article to prove its notability. There is also nothing stopping us from transwikiing and linking there like with the episode articles. – sgeureka t•c 19:26, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Merge recurring characters where?

Concerns have been raised at my talk page that the Miscellaneous alien characters in Stargate article where I have recently merged many recurring characters, doesn't make for great organization, and I am afraid I agree. Another idea is to move the characters to the races/groups they belong to (if there is a race article), but then we would practically give up on the real-world organization of characters-episodes-technology-etc. Note that I am only talking of the not-sooooo-notable races/groups like the Tollan or the Lucian Alliance who only played a role for a short while and who only have a couple of characters (2-3) worth mentioning. As I have added merge tags for four such character lists on Miscellaneous alien characters in Stargate, I'd ask if this is really the way we/you want the information to be represented. – sgeureka t•c 01:23, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

This is a wild idea, but it would/could make sense from both a real-world and in-universe standpoint. Take this suggestion with a grain of salt, because it just came to me five minutes ago: How about creating a new subpage called Artificial characters in Stargate (someone have a better name?), which includes Harlan (Stargate) (currently in the misc article), Reese (Stargate) (also in the misc article), then all characters from Replicator characters in Stargate and all characters from Asuran characters in Stargate? Reese has clear links to the Replicators, and the Asurans are very similiar to human Replicators as well. As I just removed some speculation yesterday that said Harlan had to do something with Reese, he might also fit in this group. That article would certainly satisfy WP:FICT better than what we have now, but I admit that since the Asuran arc in Atlantis is far from over, I/we can't properly judge in advance if the Asuran character list needs to be merged at all. What does everyone else think? – sgeureka t•c 14:27, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
Not a bad idea. It's a logical way to group the characters, and it should result in a reasonable length article (which is my main problem with merging everything into misc. chars - it would get too long). --Tango (talk) 15:34, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
That sounds great. I'll try to come up with a better name but this has my support. Transcendence (talk) 00:42, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Already got a name? :-) – sgeureka t•c 00:29, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

SG-1 Episode notability (again)

I'm a little concerned - who decides which episodes are to be kept and which to delete? As far as I can tell, the episode Zero Hour (mentioned as a "good example" of what to keep) is being kept because someone has made notes when listening to the DVD commentary and a (very) brief guest appearance by Pierre Bernard. Compare that to the episodes: Grace, which has been removed despite Amanda Tapping winning the Leo Award for her performance; and The Nox which is deleted despite it being "...the first episode to feature one of the races from the Alliance of four great races" and an Emmy nomination. The criteria for keeping a separate episode article seems to be a lot less to do with notability outside the world of Stargate and importance to the story of SG-1, and a lot more to do with how much effort is put in to creating the article or someone's personal favourites. Astronaut (talk) 08:40, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree. It's a point I've tried to make before - we delete articles that can't *become* good articles, not articles that aren't currently good articles. I think any episode article can become a good article by someone taking the effort to go through the DVDs, blogs, interviews, etc. and write it all up, which is why I would keep all the episode articles. Having some but not others just doesn't make sense, it ends up being completely arbitrary. --Tango (talk) 12:18, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
I believe that almost every SG-1 article, beginning season 4, can become at least a Good Article. But with no-one doing the actual work, the current approach of fiction notability definition simply does not allow the SG-1 episode articles to exist. User:Masem, who currently helps the most with the rewriting of Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) (we're at Draft #8, but the demonstration of notability is already part of the curent guideline) summarized and explained the discrepancy here, and I agree. As I am the one transwikiing the episodes and then deciding what can be kept at wikipedia for the moment, I'll explain my reasoning in more detail:
  1. Does the article have much encyclopedic coverage (production, reception) in the article? -> Keep per WP:FICT/WP:N.
  2. Has the episode (and not the actor) won a notable award? -> Keep per WP:N and in good faith that encyclopedic treatment is possible to make the article meet WP:FICT.
  3. Is the episode a season opener or finale? -> Keep in good faith that encyclopedic treatment is possible to make the article meet WP:FICT.
  4. Has the episode been nominated for multiple awards, are audio commentaries available for production details and is it important in-universe-wise? -> Keep in good faith that encyclopedic treatment is possible to make the article meet WP:FICT.
  5. Is the episode a fan favorite? -> Keep to avoid edit wars.
  6. Else cut the link on the LoE and wait for others to reinsert the link (per my edit summaries). Then redirect the unlinked articles after a week.
I have done all of this with my best judgement, but I may be off into both directions here and there. If someone wants to work on an article, even a redirected one, just do it. But since it has now come up here, I can just tell that my current plan for Season 9 (a season I really liked) is to make it something like Smallville (Season 1), which IMO just looks awesome. Avalon (Stargate SG-1) would be the only S9 episode where a separate article would be beneficial. I have already started work in my userspace but still need some time to present the article and then propose/decide if that's the way we want to go with all SG-1 articles. – sgeureka t•c 13:26, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
I'd be against "fan favorite" as a criteria for inclusion mainly because, how do you measure "fan favoritism"? Is that just the fans on Wikipedia? Is that based on a poll on a single fansite? Both being very restrictive on representation of the episodes "fanbase". That's sort of the reason we don't have fan opinion sections, or even mentionings, for fiction related topics because it is extremely difficult to measure accurately. If a show is viewed by 5 million people, and 500 people take an online poll (disregarding the possible vote stacking), is that really a representative sample of the people who viewed the episode?  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 06:18, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
I haven't finished transwikiing (still 14 episodes to go, which will take two or three more days). When I started doing this in late November 2007, I had no idea in what direction this would develop or if people would start working on the episode articles I left behind, and I considered it nonsense to redirect fan favorites of Season 4 when I knew that it would take me more than a month to "get rid" of the unpopular ones of Season 10. I had always planned to then go over the list again and see what episodes we can further lose, hopefully with some input from others saying what episode articles they wish to work on. Long story short: keeping fan favorites was never meant to be the ultimate goal. If the season page for Season 9 works out and I can get sufficient support for doing the same with the other seasons, all of this will be moot anyway. It's all about the progress, right? – sgeureka t•c 10:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
Although my first impressions were of poorly thought out policy bullshit supporting edits that were either, vandalism on a massive scale, or something similar to the fair-use images deletion fiasco some months back; I can now see what you are getting at. I still think "why not have an article for each episode?"; and if an article is particularly poor, why not improve it instead of deleting it?
BUT, having looked at the Smallville (Season 1) article and seen just how awesome it is - enough details in the episode table to satisfy people, and season production notes, awards, etc. - I think that perhaps that is the way ahead here. To be honest though, shouldn't the development of a Stargate SG-1 (Season 9) article (and the other seasons too) come first? And then on "big-bang" day, you can be bold and move the season articles from userspace, retire the individual episode articles (keeping just the REALLY notable), and redo the LoE to point to the season articles. That way, we get to keep the comprehensive coverage of Stargate SG-1 throughout the changes, I would imagine most people would be happy and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Astronaut (talk) 01:39, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
I agree that that would have been the better idea. But at the time I started with the episodes, I just cared about getting the ball rolling without much disruption, mainly to avoid scenes like what's happening with Scrubs (TV series) at the moment (excessive wikilayering and disruptive editing, AN/I threads, and a request for arbcom). Fandoms on wikipedia do not always welcome change, and bold changes even less. In hindsight, I can't imagine us reaching the goal of a great SG wiki covereage any other way, even if that means I/we wasted a lot of time on things that didn't need fixing and should have been transwikied or AfD'ed immediately. – sgeureka t•c 14:48, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Centralized TV Episode Discussion

Over the past months, TV episodes have been redirected by (to name a couple) TTN, Eusebeus and others. No centralized discussion has taken place, so I'm asking everyone who has been involved in this issue to voice their opinions here in this centralized spot, be they pro or anti. Discussion is here [1]. --Maniwar (talk) 00:54, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

An RFC was opened that asked a couple key questions on the notability of individual episodes that will help to resolve the huge issue of WP:EPISODE. Morphh (talk) 16:35, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Go from Episode articles to Season articles?

As was stated in several threads above, I have devoted some time for an SG-1 article review, and as such have transwikiied all ep articles to wikia:Stargate while still leaving the promising articles intact on wikipedia for possible improvement. I finished the transwiki yesterday, but have so far not redirected any articles of Season 10 because of the current massive discussions at WT:EPISODE.

Now, as I have already hinted at above, I am currently in the process of finding out whether SG-1 lends itself for season articles in the way that Smallville (season 1) does. From a production standpoint, I think it is. (And to make this clear: I started thinking about having SG-1 season articles for all seasons maybe two weeks ago, so this is virgin soil for me as well.) All the different important arcs that play out in individual episodes are already covered in the different Races and Characters articles, so they don't (IMO) need detailed repetition as episode articles. Also, most villain arcs play out over a season (think Anubis in Season 5, the Ori in season 9, then Season 10). I can however see one drawback with season articles: the loss of scene-specific cultural references. There is the possibility to have a "Cultural references" section in a season article, but I don't yet tell if this would work well. (Trivial cultural references shouldn't be in an encyclopedic article anyway, so I don't think this will be a major obstacle.)

I have started a very prelimary version at User:Sgeureka/Stargate SG-1 (season 9) for the ninth season. Ignore the poor language because it's still very draft-y (my sandbox is open to everyone to play in it). I have merged what was there in existing S9 episode articles, and I am sorry to report that almost all of that was just trivia. I have expanded the season article with ratings, info from the S9 DVD featurettes "Directors Series - Avalon" and "It takes a crew to build a village" and a few bits from the "Avalon" audio commentary and a couple of my TV Zone Stargate specials, so there is much more there.

I am currently working on bringing another SG article up to Good Article status, and then I'd go ahead and start some real work on the S9 season article to also make it GA (will take a couple of weeks). All I can say with certainty is that Avalon could make for a good individual episode article, but all the other episodes simply don't need their own article. Still, I'd turn Avalon (Stargate SG-1) into a redirect to this season article until the season article has gotten so long that I consider a spin-off of some Avalon material beneficial (that's just the way I work). I have no specific wiki plans after this, although I usually work on what I have started.

So, the question is:

  1. Do we want to do the same for all the other seasons of SG-1 or leave them like they are?
  2. What will happen with the still existing episode articles? - Will they be merged/redirected to the season articles (which will have better episode summaries than just one or two lines). Or will we keep existing episode articles like they are and wait for someone to improve them? Or will we have a tradeoff and just keep hugely important/notable episodes (Children of the Gods, Heroes (Stargate SG-1), Lost City (Stargate SG-1), Reckoning (Stargate SG-1)/Threads (Stargate SG-1), Avalon (Stargate SG-1), 200 (Stargate SG-1), Unending), while merging/redirecting the others (allowing other episodes when someone wants to work on them)?
  3. How should the "new" List of episodes look? - E.g. the LoE is already huge, and it may be wise to move the episode summaries to the season articles, leaving none at the LoE. (See List of Lost episodes, List of Smallville episodes, List of The Simpsons episodes).
  4. How will this action, if it takes place, be performed? Do we want to work behind closed doors and only present the season article when it is (reasonably) finished. Or have an open sandbox like the Avatar WikiProject has for List of Avatar: The Last Airbender episodes#Book Three: Fire (2007-2008)? The former has obvious pluspoints for presentation, but the latter encourages more collaboration (e.g. I am pisspoor at writing plot and rather work from written real-world sources, while IPs seem to not get enough of adding plot).

Obviously, all of this would be such a huge undertaking and requires discussion. It would be enough progress for now if we can have consensus on the first question, leaving the other questions for later (nothing will be set in stone). If I come across as pushy, then it is not my intention and I apologize, but I (now) feel season articles are the way to go. – sgeureka t•c 19:56, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

The season articles is a good idea. Besides, I suggest we take a look at the Atlantis episodes since it is reasonable to do the same selection and merge as it was done for SG-1. --Tone 16:18, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Looking at your work-in-progress season article, it is quite impressive, and I would argue an improvement over the old episode articles! In fact, the only flaw I can see is that the episode plot summaries are far too small, with many of them being nothing more than teasers. However from the looks of things, you are planning to expand such text into a proper short summary, and that would resolve that matter! Stylistically, I'm not sure if the episode listing should be at the top, or at the bottom of the article, but that is no doubt for discussion elsewhere. LinaMishima (talk) 19:23, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Update and reply: I stopped working on Season 9 when I remembered that I had typed up most Season 8 audio commentaries for gateworld once. My current result (with some unwikified copy&paste paragraphs from Mallozzi's production notes) is at User:Sgeureka/Stargate SG-1 (season 8). I still haven't added info from the audio commentaries for 8x05 through 8x08, all the DVD features, and in-depth production material from 11 pages of a magazine for the first half of the season. I already have collected some DVD reviews for expansion of the reception section. The current episode summaries are taken from the LoE, although I've already expanded the plot summary there for "New Order" (I have enough material to make New Order (Stargate SG-1) featured, but that is not my concern right now). I am not yet sure whether to use the wikia links like we have at the LoE, or just add one wikia link at the bottom. Then it's just prosifying (would take about two weeks to make the article presentable to the public) and de-cruftifying and polishing, and the S8 article would be ready for GAC in maybe 2-3 months.
By the way (for those who don't already know), current EPISODE discussions seem to to encourage the deprication of episode articles on wikipedia in favor of season articles, but nothing has been decided yet. – sgeureka t•c 21:41, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Per the lack of opposing views, I am going to start the season articles for SG-1 now. Note that I am leaving all still-existing episode articles like they are, with no further merging or redirecting (we can decide later what to do with them). I'll leave the wikia links in the tables. So what is going to happen is that the LoE will just give a list of episode titles and link to the season articles, similar to what List of Lost episodes is doing. I will then try to improve the season articles to something like Smallville (season 2) or Lost (season 1), with the ultimate goal to have something like Smallville (season 1) at some point in the future. The creation/expansion of episode articles like Zero Hour (Stargate SG-1) and 200 (Stargate SG-1) is always encouraged. This will be a work in progress (obviously). – sgeureka t•c 13:21, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
After seeing what you did totally oppose and reverted.To make the LOE like that you might as well delete it .No problem if no matter what you click you get to the season article but bare names of episodes is pointless .Garda40 (talk) 15:11, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I'll start a discussion about this soon to get more input. For now, I have changed {{Episode list/Stargate}} to allow the episode summaries to appear in the LoE (to avoid redundancy), and undid your revert (i.e. nothing changed other than the coding). – sgeureka t•c 15:27, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Okay posted this before your last message .Don't know why it didn't take .
A case in point ,I clicked onto the LOE to find out what the episode currently on air in my location is about and what the next episode is . Garda40 (talk) 15:45, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't understand. – sgeureka t•c 16:23, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
This episode was on air in my location Resurrection .Without short summaries I couldn't remember a thing about it and had no idea what episode would be following it on the channel and I'm a fan of the programme .Garda40 (talk) 16:53, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
And you also did not know what season it was in? (Honest question, because I generally know which episode belongs to which season, and if not, I know the range of seasons (usually two). – sgeureka t•c 17:10, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Offhand no , except for knowing it wasn't season 6 since Daniel was in it and again, I'm a fan .That means to even find out what was in the story summaries possibly clicking through 7 season articles if I missed the onscreen episode title .Garda40 (talk) 17:30, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
That's a reasonable argument, and I'll read the archives of the TV shows that don't have episode summaries in the LoE after switching to season articles, because concerns like yours must have come up there as well. If the Project wishes to keep summaries in the LoE in the end, I'd still be very much in favor to keep that summary to a poignant one-line summary and leave the longer summaries (4-6 lines) for the season pages. That can be achieved by putting the episode tables back into the LoE and trimming the summary (i.e. no transclusion, which creates the error-prone redundancy I was hoping to avoid), or add a second ShortSummary parameter to the {{Episode list/Stargate}} (I don't know if this will work). Give me some time. – sgeureka t•c 18:09, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
If the Project wishes to keep summaries in the LoE in the end
Well if they don't they should be more honest and just delete them as making them so useless is just death by a thousand cuts .It reminds me of the tactic tv companies have used to get rid of various programmes by shifting them to so called "death slots " eg Dr Who against Coronation Street in the 80's and then axing them on the basis that nobody watches them .Garda40 (talk) 18:35, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
(outdent) I have stated my intentions in this thread one week ago and have encouraged (and still do encourage) input from the Project (i.e. this WikiProject). Without that, I can only do what I think is right. And for what it's worth, I prefer a "death by a thousand cuts" to what is currently going on over at WP:EPISODE and the arbcom case, which is pretty much a nuclear explosion (backed up by WP:NOTABILITY, so I rather make sure the necessary changes are applied appropriately to topics I care about before they are enforced by deletion squadrons). – sgeureka t•c 19:46, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
And if some want to really get rid of the articles they will eventually get rid of them no matter what you do .They won't care that you have done massive edits to them to try to "fix" them .So be it if they are gone in a nuclear explosion they will have at least been useful until the second they are gone .Garda40 (talk) 20:02, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
No one will get rid of articles that are in line with policies and guidelines. If an article however fails WP:NOTABILITY, WP:NOT#PLOT, WP:OR, WP:RS, WP:TRIVIA, and potentially WP:QUOTE (and many many episode articles of many TV shows fail these), then yes, these articles will be removed if no progress is visible. But progress is visible for this WikiProject, so I don't think we'll have any problems with deletionists in the near future. I really want to avoid the nuclear explosion situation, which has only led to those nasty wikilayer wars. – sgeureka t•c 20:24, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Something will always be found to get rid of articles if people are really gunning for them .You satisfy WP:OR then they will go onto WP:RS ,satisfy that then they will go onto WP:NOT#PLOT or any order you want to go WP:RS,WP:OR,WP:NOT#PLOT.If it somehow survives all that they will quibble over every paragraph ,sentence or word .Believe me I have seen similiar situations happen in various places .Garda40 (talk) 20:42, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I believe you. Just look at the Pokémon articles, some of them Featured Articles once, now gone (current controversy: Bulbasaur). But that's because their current state doesn't meet the updated/"improved" policies and guidelines, which I admit can be hard to swallow for the editors who remember the old versions of the p&g. But I only started getting interested in guidelines when they were updated last summer, and I found the p&g being a great help to write WP:GAs, WP:FA/WP:FLs and even WP:FTs, so I am not fighting them, rather the opposite (as reasonable and constructive as possible to create great content). Now I'd like to help out with some new Stargate GAs (not only in relation to episodes). – sgeureka t•c 21:15, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
It has taken me a while to figure out what you mean. From what I can understand, the current episode list with summaries will be replaced with a list with just single-line entries of production information (name, director, writer). Then, the season article themselves will instead have a list of episodes within it with more a reasonably detailed summary for each episode (couple of lines, few hundred words max sort of thing)? In that case, why have a separate list of episodes at all, why not redirect the lists to the season pages (or the appropriate summary section of the main article which contains the links to the season articles)? Regarding the season 8 article, it looks good, but again only the first two episode plot summaries are of appropriate length. LinaMishima (talk) 18:48, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
You got most of that right, or that was at least my intention until Garda40 stated her concerns (see above, no significant discussion or solution as of yet, so keep status quo). Why keep around the episode list at all if it just contains stripped-down information that the season articles have / will have? One, current practice, and two, some people (like me) get a kick out of such lists (don't ask, I don't even know myself). Now, all but the first two S8 episode summaries in the season articles are just copies from the LoE, and I just haven't had the time and dedication to expand them. It's a work in progress, the season pages have an {{expand}} template in the episode section, and I am sure some IPs are more than eager to help out (judging from what I've seen on other episode lists). Also, I am trying to do all of this in little steps, first because I can only work as fast as my research/ideas/spare time allow, and second because I always have to make sure that my actions have consensus to avoid reverts. – sgeureka t•c 19:46, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
That's wonderful, then! I might be able to help out in the future with expanding plot summaries to appropriate lengths. I'm still not if the episode list should be at the top of the article, style-wise (use-wise, it probably should). Is it worth reproducing the season summary from the main article, or do we assume that readers have read that and want the episodic guide now? LinaMishima (talk) 19:59, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
I have no particular opinions about layout (I have never written season articles and hence don't know what works best), so do what you think is right. Reproducing the season summaries from the main article is a great idea. For the time being, I'll probably only focus on expanding the S8 article with more production facts, and some copyediting to improve the prose... – sgeureka t•c 20:14, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

WP:STARGATE main page

I'll revise the mainpage of this wikiproject in the next few days, clean out some sections that aren't used, and add sections for GA/FA content and statistics like many other WikiProjects have. I am also impressed with how the Harry Potter WikiProject has been dealing with their many non-notability-establishing articles, and since SG-1 and SGA still have quite a few of those, creating a list with problem articles might give us better perspective what to work on (expand/trim&merge/transwiki&redirect). I feel all of this is necessary because WP:STARGATE is one of the older (oldest?) fiction-related WikiProjects, and wiki-wide consensus on how to treat fiction has developed into another direction against the initial goals of this WikiProject. If a bold change of mine requires more discussion, feel free to point that out, I am certainly not trying to push my will as the only acceptable way. – sgeureka t•c 17:00, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Done per the KISS principle. Change what you believe should still be changed. Some subpages got orphaned in the process (see [2] for all wikiproject subpages), and I'll see whether some should be merged, or rather MfD'ed for complete inactivity. – sgeureka t•c 16:27, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I forgot. The partipants list has grown quite a bit, but there is not as much project activity anymore. I suggest to move all project partipants to /Inactive and issue a message to all (former) members like the one below. Comments before I go ahead? – sgeureka t•c 16:39, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
  Hello, WikiProject Television/Stargate task force/Archive 10! Your username, as well as the usernames of other members of Wikipedia: WikiProject Stargate, has been moved to the inactive members list, as part of a process for making the wikiproject active once again. If you would like to continue to be an active member, please follow the instructions on the top of the participants page to add your name to the active participants list.

Thanks!

Stargate schedule

Is the U.S. and Europe back on the same show schedule? I stopped participating in the project due to the change in schedule (U.S. was behind by several months), which created a spoiler situation. Just wondering if they were back in line again running at the same time. Morphh (talk) 16:40, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

The US is back to being ahead, I think. The US only ended up behind because they stopped for a massive break mid-season and the UK (does it show anywhere else in Europe particularly soon?) just kept going. That only lasted until the end of the last season, though. Looking at the TV guide, it looks like Sky is a week and a day behind the US. --Tango (talk) 17:00, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Actually thanks to the US stopping for Thanksgiving and Sky showing an episode that week Sky are now 4 days behind the US .Garda40 (talk) 20:54, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Stargate SG-1

Template:Stargate SG-1 has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. – sgeureka t•c 03:13, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

TfD nomination of Template:Stargate Planets

Template:Stargate Planets has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. – sgeureka t•c 03:13, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Leaked plot/episodes/films

What is the consensus in the project about accidentally leaked plot (e.g. recently Stargate Universe), episodes (e.g. several early Season 4 SGA episodes), or films (e.g. Stargate:The Ark of Truth)? Allow per se with the primary source as source; allow leaked material (I don't mean normal gateworld spoilers) if properly sourced by independent parties (may be against the wishes of the copyright holders); revert and explain on the talkpage (possibly leaving hidden comments), and/or later revert and ignore? I am leaning towards options 3 and 4. – sgeureka t•c 16:11, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

I would recommend covering the coverage and discussion of the leaked material, unless the leaked material is confirmed as genuine by a production company. As that is highly unlikely, the only reliable coverage of such a source that we could reference (and reference we must) would be the media coverage of the leak. Where websites simply state that "leaked document says leakitty leaked leak", without stating anything more about the leak or the document itself, this is probably not enough for us to work with. LinaMishima (talk) 19:13, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
I would treat leaks like any other source - if it's reliable and verifiable, we can use it, if it isn't, we can't. Whether or not the powers that be wish us to know it isn't important. --Tango (talk) 19:46, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Zero Hour (Stargate SG-1)

Could someone give Zero Hour (Stargate SG-1) a quick read-through for grammar? It is a Good Article nominee and the prose is sufficiently good, but my judgement for singular/plural and for time tenses is not always ideal. – sgeureka t•c 19:02, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I've made a couple of minor changes to the wording in places. I'm concerned the plot summary may be too long - it's pretty much a retelling of the whole plot. --Tango (talk) 19:35, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
Thank you very much. The current word count for plot is 438, which is within the recommended range of 10 words per minute. The recently FA-promoted Greatest Hits (Lost) has about the same plot length. But I'll see where I can trim a little more. – sgeureka t•c 20:27, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
A Stargate episode is about 42 minutes long, so it's actually just outside the recommended range. It's not a serious problem, but I think it could do with a slight trimming. --Tango (talk) 21:35, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Guidelines

WP:FICT has been revised

WP:FICT, the notability guideline for elements within a work of fiction (characters, places, elements, etc) has a new proposal/revision that is now live [3] Everyone is encouraged to leave feedback on the talk page. Ned Scott 22:14, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Notability (serial works)

There is a proposal to split WP:EPISODE into a more general notability guideline, Wikipedia:Notability (serial works), and make the rest of WP:EPISODE just a MOS guideline. Please join in at WT:EPISODE#Proposed split of EPISODE and/or Wikipedia talk:Notability (serial works). -- Ned Scott 22:14, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

MfD nomination of WikiProject Stargate/Recent Changes subpages

A group of subarticles related to WikiProject Stargate/Recent Changes have been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/WikiProject Stargate/Recent Changes subpages and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of the WikiProject Stargate/Recent Changes subpages during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. (This is mostly a housekeeping MfD.)sgeureka t•c 18:51, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Atlantis Season 5 characters

See http://www.gateworld.net/news/2008/02/robert_picardo_joins_iatlantisi_.shtml, if you haven't already. This may concern a number of character articles that are currently merged or are proposed for a merge. Also see e.g. Talk:List of Tau'ri characters in Stargate SG-1#Woolsey in Atlantis Season 5 and Talk:List of Tau'ri characters in Stargate Atlantis#Merger of Jennifer Keller. – sgeureka t•c 19:05, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Until Season 5 starts to air, the press release doesn't warrant more than a sentence in the appropriate character descriptions. --Tango (talk) 14:14, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Stargate Citations

Hi, I hope you don't mind me just barging in... I was looking at the project page, and while I'm probably not going to be much use expanding and improving articles, I'm more than happy to help with menial edits! I read on the to-do list about disambiguation and citations so thought I may as well have a crack at that. To that end (well, start really!), I've edited the {{sgcite}} a little so the <ref> format matches the one suggested here for all articles. Apart from the "show=ref" option, the other options and outputs are the same. I've already checked all the articles that include the template and there are no redlinks (I edited a few to use standard series names though) and nothing else is broken. So I'm hoping that I can go ahead and start standardizing article references by using the {{sgcite}} for references now? Is that alright? Ch1902 (talk) 00:49, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't matter whether you use "[[Episode X (Stargate SG-1)|Episode X]]" or {{sgcite|Episode X}}, so don't fix it if it ain't broken. {{sgcite|show=all}} however does work better for refs, so go ahead if you believe that makes wikipedia better. The toDo list refers more to cases where an episode (or whatever) links to "[[Episode X]]" (dab page) instead of "[[Episode X (Stargate SG-1)]]", and the only way I can imagine to fix that is to check the incoming links for each dab page (via Whatlinkshere in the toolbox), and clean up from there. At this point, you should wait with "fixing" such links in episode articles, as the community is trying to determine if (or what kind of) episode articles are permitted on wikipedia at all, so that might save you some "work". – sgeureka t•c 10:44, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
I wasn't suggesting it would make wikipedia better, I assumed the point was to standardize citations across all the stargate pages. I have read the lengthy discussions on episode articles and season articles, are there any articles in particular I can help with? Ch1902 (talk) 11:49, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
are there any articles in particular I can help with - not really. I guess you could check the References section of each (list) article if the citations are right, or check each disambiguation page for incoming links to SG episodes, but there is a growing tendency in the Featured Article area to only use {{cite episode}} tags for referencing, possibly making {{sgcite}} with its complex syntax obsolete in a few years. I still use sgcite sometimes, but the KISS principle rather argues against it. – sgeureka t•c 17:47, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I have started an episode review for all remaining SG-1 episode articles at Wikipedia:WikiProject Stargate/Stargate SG-1 episode review, and ask for input from other intersted editors (there, not here). As the current arbcom case only restricts the (un)redirection and (un)deletion of episode articles but not discussion, this review is perfectly fine. I expect the review to last for one or two months, and hope that the currently disputed wikipedia policies and guidelines will have confirmed their old consensus or have found new consensus. Should the policies and guidelines change to allow episode articles regardless of (established) notability or real-world content, this episode review will of course be moot, but I don't expect this to happen, so I seize the day (month). – sgeureka t•c 17:01, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

2007 Hugo Award featured topic

An article from this project, 200 (Stargate SG-1) (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), is part of a featured topic nomination for the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Horm. Feel free to leave comments. Will (talk) 01:12, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Window of Opportunity (Stargate SG-1) GAN

I just submitted Window of Opportunity (Stargate SG-1) as a Good Article Nominee, but if someone want to read over it again to check for oversight mistakes or to improve my grammar here and there, I would certainly not be disappointed. :-) – sgeureka t•c 01:14, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

DNA Resequencer GA on hold (GA sweep)

I have reassessed this article as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force. We are currently revisiting all listed Good articles in an effort to ensure that they continue to meet the Good article criteria.

In reviewing the article, I came across some fairly significant issues that may need to be addressed; I have left a detailed summary on the article's talk page. As a result I have put DNA Resequencer's GA status on hold. This will remain in place for a week or so before a final decision is taken as to the article's status.

I've left this notice here because (from the article talk page where the last post is from 2006) I'm not sure how actively this article is being monitored by its authors. Hopefully any interested editor will be alerted this way.

Regards, EyeSereneTALK 10:13, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Stargate (device) GA Reassessment

Partly because the current GA sweep would have reached Stargate (device) anyway, I have started a GAR at Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Stargate (device)/1. This will also (hopefully) help to learn what is necessary for improvement. – sgeureka t•c 17:50, 22 February 2008 (UTC)