Wikipedia: Star Trek versus Star Wars

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Post by Socar » Fri Sep 07, 2007 9:15 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:I got things mixed up. So they don't want original research. So what happens if one puts a wiki up, or a website, and then has it quoted on wiki?
Depends. Just having an "outside source" itself is often not good enough. In this particular case, the main argument against the topic was that there were not enough "reliable sources". In fact, most people argued that the only reliable source on there was the Forbes article. That alone is often considered grounds for deletion. While it is nice to have articles covering phenomena such as this, if they aren't what those people consider "reliably" sourced, than it isn't viewed as belonging on wikipedia.

Edit: I forgot to mention, on wikipedia, webmasters adding their own links to pages is frowned upon.

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Fri Sep 07, 2007 9:30 pm

But what about the links I provided? Some are already known (Forbes), but what about the others?

What do you think about them? Do you objectively they could help the Keep side?

What about the fact that the board of Starwars.com was used by an official LFL employee to lay hiw views on a sensible point of the whole versus debate, even engaging LFL people by saying they agreed with him?

It's beyond borderline with mere board chat.

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Post by Socar » Fri Sep 07, 2007 9:52 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:What do you think about them? Do you objectively they could help the Keep side?
To be perfectly frank, I don't know. The DVD is all well and good, but what information can we take from it? Just existing is not enough. Some of the essays really don't help much, because although they reference sources that are relevant to the culture, the article itself doesn't really help bring in quality information. Several people tried to vote "Keep and Rewrite", and I think that's what I would have preferred, but I don't really know where to go from there.

What it eventually comes down to, is there significant coverage from secondary sources independent of the topic, which is often a requirement of Wikipedia articles.

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Fri Sep 07, 2007 10:01 pm

Frankly, not that much coverage I can notice outside of nerd circles.
And yet it seems like the half of english and occidental cultures on this planet know about this versus in a way or another.

As for the DVD, I don't know. By reading the Amazon comments, for example, it seems it has plenty of actor quotes, and lots of other stuff, but the sound and image quality is awful, and it doesn't go down into the depths of the subject (whatever that means).

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Post by Socar » Fri Sep 07, 2007 10:12 pm

To be honest, I find myself often pretty confused about Wikipedia and its policies. For example, just take the thing I just quoted about "is there significant coverage from secondary sources independent of the topic". Under this guideline, it seems like half of the character bios and other things shouldn't be on there, because I can't really think of many secondary sources that are independent of the topic to use. And yet, we have articles on everything from starships, to individual Pokemon. Should all of that be deleted? Apparently some believe so.

I didn't create Wikipedia (obviously), and to this day, I really don't know what their specific intentions were for the kinds of topics they want, and those that they don't. Their guidelines seem often self-contradictory (just take the fact that many of the people referencing this page were violating the page itself), and also silly (like how they tell people when having a discussion about an article, not to bring in other people who are knowledgeable about the topic (though that probably has something to do with keeping bias to a minimum)).

Perhaps we should start more work on our own article (we do have a wiki right here after all), and see what we can come up with. Besides, if this article is anything like half the pages from sci-fi and anime that get deleted, it'll be back within a couple months.

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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Sat Sep 08, 2007 9:13 pm

Socar wrote:Perhaps we should start more work on our own article (we do have a wiki right here after all), and see what we can come up with.
Good idea! (Folks... the wiki here is just begging for editors.)

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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Sun Sep 09, 2007 12:02 am

Now that I've gone back to Wikipedia to look, it appears as though the idea that the article could come back in a rewritten form has been sort of approved of by someone ruling on an appeal of the deletion (which is unfortunately closed to discussion now).

The admin, unfortunately, seems not to have listened to Mr. Oragahn:
Star_Trek_versus_Star_Wars – Endorse deletion. Even if we ignore whether the topic was notable, nearly the entire article was rather obviously Original research. If someone wants to take the single reference and start over, fine, but the AfD close was clearly proper, and supported by consensus below. – jc37 08:26, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Single reference indeed.

Actually, it might be nice to start the article afresh. A challenge to anybody who thinks the article should exist: Do up the article "right" (i.e., in a form that will survive) - with citations galore - and throw it back on Wikipedia.

I'd start with Brin and the documentary myself - the documentary showing the fan phenomenon, and Brin's essays (and book full of essays by numerous authors); there are a number of other scholarly books aside from Brin's which express the comparison or critically analyze Star Trek and Star Wars in a similar fashion.

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Post by Cpl Kendall » Sun Sep 09, 2007 12:13 am

I'm afraid I don't understand. How is counting the number of phaser strips on a ship not allowed? It seems a perfectly valid method of research to me given the ridiculous nature of the topic and have there ever been any official statements or published figures on the E-E anyways?

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Sep 09, 2007 1:40 am

Cpl Kendall wrote:I'm afraid I don't understand. How is counting the number of phaser strips on a ship not allowed? It seems a perfectly valid method of research to me given the ridiculous nature of the topic and have there ever been any official statements or published figures on the E-E anyways?
Don't ask me. I suppose they'd call that OR, until some book does it and ges stamped "official". The study has to be official. Thus far, fans work from canon material, but their work is not official.
I think the rules are now beyond the ones who created them. Double standards rock the house, and it's turning into nothing more than a contest of influential emotion driven votes.

The page needed to be reworked out. A shame I didn't copy it, coz I don't know where to start from, and I considered that it was making a good job listing the history of the situation, at least as far as the internet debates were concerned.

EDIT: there's still the wookieepedia, but it's much different and biased than the last iteration I've read:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Tre ... _Star_Wars

EDIT2: User Akerkhof said (here) that he saved a complete archive of the article on his personal computers, since he felt it was well written, accurate, and sourced well enough to be moved to Wookieepedia since they already have an older, crappier version of the article right now.

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Post by Socar » Sun Sep 09, 2007 7:01 am

Cpl Kendall wrote:I'm afraid I don't understand. How is counting the number of phaser strips on a ship not allowed? It seems a perfectly valid method of research to me given the ridiculous nature of the topic and have there ever been any official statements or published figures on the E-E anyways?
Well, as someone who has followed the Trek pages for a significant amount of time, I've seen Alyeska fighting people on this topic simply because people would disagree with his analysis. In some cases (such as going along with my previous example) others would find different numbers of phaser strips, and thus revert Alyeska's edits (or just revert his edits simply on the basis of OR alone). This would go on and on. Basically it seems like Wiki doesn't want fans going around and doing their own "analysis" of events. According to them, it's one thing to look at a computer screen in an episode, and notice that it lists that a ship is carrying a payload of 100 torpedoes and add that to an article, but a different matter if fans are going around and calculating the rate of fire from a ship's torpedo launcher and putting that down.
Mr. Oragahn wrote:The page needed to be reworked out. A shame I didn't copy it, coz I don't know where to start from, and I considered that it was making a good job listing the history of the situation, at least as far as the internet debates were concerned.
Google has it on a cached page so get it while you can.

Anyway, if we’re going to rewrite this article, I think the first order of business is compiling a list of credible sources that we can directly pull useful information about the versus debate/culture from, and then work from there.

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Sep 09, 2007 12:14 pm

The page was too nerdy, too hardcore. Forbes is much more casual, and talking politics and philosophy of both universes is not in the same playground as the activities we mainly enjoy, though we do, from time to time, go there as well.

Simply put, it really seems to be a Spacebattles related article. It needs to be more than that.

Like have casual and hardcore sections.

We could list the discussion often compared in terms of "bathrobes vs pyjamas".

We would have to mention the fact that many fans adress this on their blogs, create videos and spread them through you Youtube and the likes, and that kind of thread pops in many boards with very different purposes.

A Vs Quiz on Fixter:
http://www.flixster.com/user/shazzzzzzz ... -what-more

A Homeworld mod (video game):
http://www.strategyplanet.com/homeworld/stvsw

The fact that the following research on Google, "star trek" vs "star wars" versus, returns 2.25 millions answers.

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Tue Oct 30, 2007 1:51 am

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_versus_Star_Wars

The page has returned, but it's severely lacking information.

Is the history of this popular vs some original research, I suppose yes, so that's why it's absent.

It also lacks several links.

For some reason, only ST-v-SW.Net and alt.startrek.vs.starwars are present.

Now Alyeska wants to close it because the title starts with Star Wars and not Star Trek (1), nevermind if the STvSW also works and redirects to this page.

Man, if they bicker on such trivial stuff, no wonder why the page doesn't stay up.

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Post by Socar » Tue Oct 30, 2007 3:50 am

Socar wrote:Besides, if this article is anything like half the pages from sci-fi and anime that get deleted, it'll be back within a couple months.
Yup.
Now Alyeska wants to close it because the title starts with Star Wars and not Star Trek (1), nevermind if the STvSW also works and redirects to this page.
Clearly, if you don't list it in alphabetical order it's overly biased. :)

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Sun Nov 04, 2007 6:29 pm

Do you think Shatner's presence and speech at Lucas' party, and reference to how Trek is so great, would be worth a reference here.
I mean, it would be pretty dumb to completely miss out the meaning of Shatner's tongue in cheek joke.

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Post by Socar » Mon Nov 05, 2007 11:24 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Do you think Shatner's presence and speech at Lucas' party, and reference to how Trek is so great, would be worth a reference here.
I mean, it would be pretty dumb to completely miss out the meaning of Shatner's tongue in cheek joke.
While I'm not sure how relevant it would be to the vs debate/culture and whatnot, we probably do need to include all these important "crossover" bits that we can, especially if we don't want the article to be deleted again.

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