Talk: Guide to layout

Revision as of 20:19, 23 June 2004

More appendices

The following two appendices are used regularly and should be included. Suggested wording:

Appendices

Appearances

A list of episodes/movies in which the article subject appeared. List only those episodes that aren't already referenced in the article text, but yield important additional information about the subject.

Background

Further information about the subject, originating from official but non-canon materials such as interviews, technical manuals, encyclopedias, novels, etc.. Avoid putting fan speculation here.

References

External links

Comment and/or discuss below. If there's no disagreement, I will add those in 5 days. -- Cid Highwind 18:40, 6 Jun 2004 (CEST)

I'd like to support a site-wide initiative to unify the section names, we have Background, Background info, and Background information, and Background Information, Background Info, BACKGROUND, etc.

How about simply 'Background' I think its easier to look at, and link to if it is one word. --Captainmike 18:45, 6 Jun 2004 (CEST)

I picked "Background information" because it seems to be in use most often, but simply "Background" seems to be as good as that... Unless someone provides a good reason to use the former, we might as well go with the shorter title. Suggestion updated. -- Cid Highwind 19:01, 6 Jun 2004 (CEST)

I think it's a little too much to ask every episode in which a certain subject was mentioned. I would propose only to name those episode which have given important information (like when you say the Federation has 150 member worlds, you note "Star Trek: First Contact" either between "(..)" or at the end of the page) on the subject. -- Ottens

Suggestion updated, please check. -- Cid Highwind 19:01, 6 Jun 2004 (CEST)

I don't agree with this. I think that in-line references should also be listed under Appearances, if only for the sace of completeness. If you don't know all episodes to list under this header, you can ask people in your edit-summary or the Talk page. -- Redge 11:48, 17 Jun 2004 (CEST)

PS: Things like Shields and Phasers and such generic topics excepted of course, you'd get a complete episode listing of a series ;-) -- Redge 11:50, 17 Jun 2004 (CEST)

What exactly is it you don't agree with? The "either/or" clause or the "important episodes only" one? I think the latter one is necessary for exactly the reason you gave in your PS - for something that was shown "often", we only want those episodes listed that added something relevant.

The first one follows from that - if an episode added something relevant, this should be described in the text anyway; in this case, a list of "important" appearances also serves as a Todo-list. -- Cid Highwind 17:13, 17 Jun 2004 (CEST)

By the way, I don't think that the Edit summary should generally be used that way. If you want to ask people for help, it would be best to do it on the appropriate talk page. The summary should first and foremost describe what you did ("started section -Appearances-; still incomplete"), not describe what you did not do ("please help me here"). -- Cid Highwind 17:19, 17 Jun 2004 (CEST)

I don't agree that we shouldn't post references we already made in-line. All relevant episodes etc.. should be listed under appearances, except in very common subjects such as Data or Phasers. In cases such as Prometheus-class, you should list every episode that starred a Promethues class, whether you already mentioned the link in the text or not. And asking help through the edit summary is IMO very efficient. That way everybody who reads recent changes sees the question, and only the person with the answer has to open the appropriate page, and people who don't know it don't have to visite both the article itself and the talk page. -- Redge 20:02, 17 Jun 2004 (CEST)

As to Appearances, I feel that such a list should include all episodes something appeared in, even if they've already been cited. Take Michael Rostov for example: he's cited for many episodes he wasn't in, as he's mentioned a lot, and having a list at the bottom of where he actually appeared seems a fairly useful idea.

On the other hand, having Appearances lists for things like phasers or shields is stupid in the extreme; obviously in those cases the section should be called References or whatever, but ideally I think we should avoid References lists, and just keep the episode citations as in-text parenthetical notes.

--Steve 21:36, 22 Jun 2004 (CEST)

Further suggestions

Additional suggestion: All appendices should be subsections in a section Appendices (see example above). Reasons:

Better separation of content and meta information.
Readability of TOC.
Allows 'in-universe' sections with the same name (Maquis has a section Background, for example).

-- Cid Highwind 18:52, 9 Jun 2004 (CEST)

I like the == Appendices == idea. One section title i've been considering is a word that comes along with Trek fans' appropriation of the term "canon"... instead of === Background ===, we could create a section purely for showcasing data from credible but non-canon sources: === Apocrypha === . Anyone like this? --Captain Mike K. Bartel

I like the /extra page idea better, because it provides better readability of both canon and non-canon info. And what does Apocrypha mean? -- Redge 13:20, 21 Jun 2004 (CEST)

The term 'canon' was originally derived from biblical study (which is why it is a bit comedic to use sometimes), apocryphal is from the same context, meaning the same as the word 'non-canon.' Okuda liked to use this word a few times discussing canon in his Encyclopedia. --Captain Mike K. Bartel 23:03, 21 Jun 2004 (CEST)

I like this whole Appendices thing; I noticed Mike had been using it, but was unaware of why. I also like differentiating between "Apocrypha" and "Background." I think we should make sure we go light on Apocrypha, though. I've used it very sparingly: the USS Bozeman article and to mention a few names not given in episodes (ex: trellium mining planet or Xindi-Insectoid councilor). Other than small mentions of significant facts, we should try to avoid it. --Steve 21:36, 22 Jun 2004 (CEST)

Italicization?

By the way Cid, I notice that you added the note about italicization to this policy, but I seem to have missed it being discussed here, because I certainly don't support that, especially since many articles written before it show the italicization supported in the old policy. Is there some technical reason the policy needed this change, or can users discuss it. --Captain Mike K. Bartel 23:06, 21 Jun 2004 (CEST)

I didn't see that as a rule change, but as a clarification (see edit summary) of an existing 'implicit' rule - as Steve noted here, most of us don't and didn't ever italicize info in separate 'Background' sections (as far as I am aware, there never was any 'old policy' defining that style). In my opinion, italicization alone can't be used to mark background information, because it is also used for quotes or, generally, emphasis - that's why both italicization AND indentation is used for inline notes, for example. If you feel that this needs further discussion, feel free to do so. -- Cid Highwind 00:22, 22 Jun 2004 (CEST)

I feel that the use of italicazation&indentation to differentiate in- and out-of-the-box info is too vague; I think we should always use a "Background" or "Apocrypha" section. I also feel that parenthetical episode citations should not be italicized, since their status as out-of-the-box info is pretty obvious.

Doing this could potentially free up italicization&indentation to be used for alternate universe info; or maybe we should come up with something wholly new for that.