User talk:Jackpot/Sandbox/Sections
Organizing principles
I've organized all the various series and such on these principles:
1) Real-world chronology. Within each section, all subsections are arranged in real-world chronological order, even if that doesn't follow the fiction. This helps achieve the best approximation of prominence, roughly following the creative flow that produced a series. A negative example is BW Megatron's article, which begins with an incredibly obscure tidbit from a Japanese toy catalog that was made well after the character's first series. This elevates that tidbit to an undue state of importance, as though it had any kind of influence over the series that are listed after it. Likewise "Dawn of Futures Past," "Theft of the Golden Disk," etc. Derivative works should, I think, come after the works that inspired them.
2) Subsections by continuity. As fractured as the TF multiverse is, we can still preserve some amount of continuity flow. For example, the "Beast cartoon continuity" section begins with the BW 'toon, which exists within the G1/Beast family but is independent of all specific G1 continuities that preceded it. BWII, BWNeo, BM, etc., all follow in chronological order within their continuity because they're directly connected to BW in their fictions, even if they aren't connected to each other. We work our way up to the present day (as IDW-BW is yet another direct continuation of BW), then we jump back out to IDW-G1, which came after BW but is not connected to it and is similarly independent of all G1 fiction that preceded it.
2) Section-titles as links. Not only is this just a self-evidently good practice to keep readers fully informed, but it also helps address an issue I've pondered: TF continuity is fairly nonlinear, and we can only do so much with our page format to show what really follows from what. The Classics comic is a perfect example, where every time it comes up, there's a continuity note about how it disregards G2 and UKG1. To be consistent, we'd have to have a LOT of notes about how BW follows from no single G1 continuity, BM has no particular connection to J-BW, 3H-BW and IDW-BW are mutually exclusive, etc., etc. But if all the section-titles are links, we can forget about trying to keep the readers super-informed, as they then have tools to easily do their own research.
3) "Publisher + continuity + media" over specific titles. When I'm uniformed about a topic, I find it more confusing to see a title like "Linkage" than "Micron Legend DVD pack-in comics." Despite the brevity and specificity of the former, it's acutally more obfuscating to a reader who isn't already in the know.
That's all I can think of. I'll add more if they occur to me. Discuss!
- Jackpot 00:55, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Japanese continuity
Small issue. Beast Wars II and Neo are definitely in continuity with the original cartoon. Also, links shouldn't be in section titles; storylinks should be used instead. —Interrobang 00:20, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
- Ah, thanks for pointing out the BWII/Neo thing. I've made a change that will hopefully clarify how I see continuity-subdivision working. Also, see above for my thoughts on title-linking. - Jackpot 00:55, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Real-world chronology
Lordy, I know we've clashed over this before, but I am so against this. When I go to BW Megatron's page, I want to read his story, from start to finish, not give me the middle, then give me a little farther, and then jump back to the beginning, and then jump forward again. I shouldn't have to assemble the character history in pieces. You're right -- the Japanese catalog thing shouldn't go first. It should begin a separated Japanese continuity section, further down, since theirs is obviously not ours at this point.
I will fight you to the end on this, if necessary. The whole idea of a character article loses its potency to me without the narrative. --ItsWalky 01:05, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
- I agree with Walky. I mean, perhaps we can put some kind of date-note in there to note when something was a later prequel, but ehn. It's bad enough the fiction jumps around as much as it does. I'd rather read a single comprehensive flow of time when possible, and for a character overview, I'd think that's vital. --M Sipher 01:41, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
- Vital is right. --ItsWalky 01:47, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
- Hm. The date-note is an interesting compromise. Especially if we implement Derik's similar disambig idea too. It could become a recurring organizational theme on the Wiki. Mind you, I still think we should keep the subsections in real-world chronological order (as I explain below). But if, in the end, a compromise is called for... - Jackpot 03:46, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
- I assume you're talking about the Unicron debate. I see this as a different matter, since the Unicron subject has the added weight of the explicitly-multiversal Cybertron comic behind it. If we're talking about someone like Megatron, there IS no one "his story" unless you assume that the latest fiction automatically supersedes all that came before. You say the J-catalog bit "should begin a separated Japanese continuity section, further down, since theirs is obviously not ours at this point." Well, what counts as "ours"? IDW-BW? In that case, shouldn't we excise all UKG1 and G2 content from G1 articles and shunt them into their own sections because the Classics comics disregard them?
- As long as we present all fiction, past and present, on this Wiki, I think we should be more systematic about how we display it, rather than shuffling whole series around to make the storylines seem more chronological. To my mind, that's only acceptable within the actual write-ups (where, for instance, we can talk about the Constructicons building Crystal City first, since we don't have subsections for seasons).
- One more point: We're sticklers about making sure that continuities are arranged in real-world chronological order. Turning around and breaking that rule at the sub-continuity level is just plain confusing and misleading to anyone not in the know.
- - Jackpot 01:39, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
- Ordering events by timeline and then ordering those timelines by real-world chronology does not seem misleading to me. According to that logic, we can't even order the events that occur within a single media according to in-universe time. Optimus Prime's article can't start out with him being Orion Pax, because that would apparently conflict with the real-world chronology of the rest of the page. Unless Animated Ratchet's writeup switches back and forth between flashback and current day, that is "misleading" since the rest of his page is not ordered that way. In-universe is out the window. These would changes are antithetical to pretty much everything on the wiki. Any problems can be easily fixed by well-placed notes. --ItsWalky 01:45, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
- Like I said above, inter-series organization and write-up structure are two different things to me. Once you're actually writing paragraphs, go nuts, whatever flow of words best tells the story. But if that temporal play could apply across series, then I don't think we'd need subsections at all. To me, the whole point of separating series is to admit that this is, in fact, a fractured multiverse full of split ends. Playing the shuffling game at that level opens too subjective a can of worms for my taste. Like the BWII catalog bit - who says it no longer applies to "our" continuity? What's the standard? You didn't answer that question - is it IDW-BW? What about the implications of that re: Classics? Should we be constantly reordering sections on all articles as this or that old series becomes more or less relevant to the newest addition? And how do we maintain a rule that everyone can follow?
- Maybe it all comes down to this: I would agree about the "vitality" of cross-series chronology if I believed there was such a thing. Here's the example I see in my head: If whoever has the comic license at the moment decides to do a BW Dinobot story, what are the chances they're going to use as a backstory "Dawn of Future's Past" or "Theft of the Golden Disk" or the DW MTMTE bookend-story or anything besides the BW 'toon? Most likely, they're going to steamroll right over all the peripheral bits, and someday that's going to get steamrolled too. So rather than try to constantly keep up, I say we present each series in the order in which it came, since that's a clear standard which approximates the importance of the information as the multiverse feeds on itself.
- - Jackpot 02:59, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
- Ordering events by timeline and then ordering those timelines by real-world chronology does not seem misleading to me. According to that logic, we can't even order the events that occur within a single media according to in-universe time. Optimus Prime's article can't start out with him being Orion Pax, because that would apparently conflict with the real-world chronology of the rest of the page. Unless Animated Ratchet's writeup switches back and forth between flashback and current day, that is "misleading" since the rest of his page is not ordered that way. In-universe is out the window. These would changes are antithetical to pretty much everything on the wiki. Any problems can be easily fixed by well-placed notes. --ItsWalky 01:45, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
