Talk:WikiNarnia/chat

WikiChat 11/3 Summary
♦I think it would work best if we discuss the conclusions of the chat using the bullet point section. Please leave the actual transcripts as they are, so this discussion doesn't get too hectic. Thanks! Lasaraleen Tarkheena (talk) 21:46, November 4, 2012 (UTC)

DEFINITIONS FOR CLARITY’S SAKE
 * •In-universe: refers to facts, characters, etc. that actually exist in the hypothetical universe in which Narnia actually exists. Lewis and all of his writings, the White Witch, and Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie are some examples of in-universe people/facts.
 * •Out-of-universe: refers to anything that does not exist in the hypothetical Narnian universe. The movies are OOU, as are their actors, directors, film crew, and any stories about their production.
 * •Canon: Anything that describes in-universe events/people. Thus, the Chronicles themselves are both canon (the events they describe are in-universe) and in-universe.
 * •Deserving a page: Separate from both “in-universe” and “canon.” For example, Ben Barnes is OOU and does deserve a page, while beasts shown only in book illustrations are canon but don’t deserve their own pages.

THIS SUMMARY INCLUDES
 * •Section headings describing the general categories of discussion.
 * •Bulleted summaries of what was agreed upon in each section. To be clear, these are not necessarily set-in-stone wiki policy, but only the conclusions of the WikiChat discussion.
 * •Most of the original dialogue. I removed a few non-sequitur humorous comments for the sake of clarity. I also took out some comments like “Yep,” “Agreed,” and “Sounds good to me,” and replaced them with “(agreed)” at the end of the statement they were expressing agreement with. Occasionally, I replaced typos with [brackets] surrounding what the typer meant to write.
 * •Bolded portions of the original dialogue that I think basically summarize the discussion and our conclusions. These are pretty arbitrary, but I included them to show you where I got the info in the bulleted summaries and to make the dialogue more readable.

VIDEO GAMES
 * •Any actual video game as a whole deserves its own individual out-of-universe page.
 * •Video game characters and plotlines do not deserve pages.
 * •Names of video game characters who also appear in a movie (where they are unnamed) may be considered canon; these characters’ pages should get the movie template.
 * •Is there a template for in-universe but non-canon pages (like the movie template, but for non-movies)? If so, Ed suggested we use this for characters who appear in a movie and are named in a video game.

Arvan Swordwielder OK, well, I think we might all be on the same page with that one, except Storyseeker, who's not here. 6:30

Lasaraleen Tarkheena To clarify which page that is: video games themselves deserve a page, but their characters and plotlines don't.? 6:30 (agreed)

Arvan Swordwielder Though characters who appear in the movie and are named in the video game only could have those names used... 6:31

EdmundtheJust How would they be catagorised? Canon or non-canon? 6:31

Lasaraleen Tarkheena movie-based? 6:32

Arvan Swordwielder Videogames? Non-canon I think... Movies I'm not so sure about. 6:33

EdmundtheJust I would say that books are the only canon. Movies and video games and new stuff added there-in are non-canon. 6:33

Lasaraleen Tarkheena Sorry. The games themselves, OOU. I meant to suggest that "characters who appear in the movie and are named in the video game only," get the movie template. 6:33 (agreed)

EdmundtheJust I think they should also get the template, I think we have it, that would basically say it is in the Narnia universe but is not canon. 6:35

ILLUSTRATIONS AND MOVIE CONCEPT ART
 * •Pictures from movies may be placed on pages as long as they do not contradict book canon. (Current policy; confirmed)
 * •The book illustrations as a whole, Pauline Baynes, and the movie concept art as a whole deserve pages. The first two are in-universe; the latter is out of universe.
 * •Beasts/objects/settings seen only in book illustrations and movie concept art do not deserve their own pages.
 * •The book illustrations are canon, and beasts/objects/settings from them may be mentioned in in-universe articles (although they do not deserve their own pages, as stated above). Concept art is not canon.

EdmundtheJust illustrations from the books should be canon. Concept art from the movies or games are not. 6:36

Lasaraleen Tarkheena What exactly do you mean by canon, Ed? Deserving of pages on the wiki, not requiring OOU templates, or what? 6:37

EdmundtheJust canon means the same thing as in universe. 6:37

Arvan Swordwielder I don't think we should give pages to beasts only from illustrations. 6:37

Lasaraleen Tarkheena Agreed. Maybe they're in-universe/canon, but there are too many of them and too little information about them. 6:38

EdmundtheJust Good point. They could be mentioned in the canon articles and it be allowed as such. 6:39

Lasaraleen Tarkheena So I think we're in the same spot as with the video games. Pauline Baynes gets a page, maybe even her illustrations in general get a page, but individual aspects of specific illustrations don't. 6:39 (agreed)

EdmundtheJust While on this topic, should canon articles have photos from the movies in them or just the books? 6:40

Arvan Swordwielder I think it's fine to use movie photos as long as they don't [conflict with] the canon of the books. 6:41

Lasaraleen Tarkheena Same deal for concept art? A page for the general category with a large trivia section, but nothing for individual creatures or settings mentioned only therein. 6:41 (agreed)

SPOILER WARNINGS
 * There are spoilers on the wiki. We don’t need spoiler warnings on individual pages. (Confirmed from previous discussion).

BOOK PAGE FORMAT
 * The Chronicles are in-universe history books, and can be referenced in articles (eg, “…as recorded in The Horse and His Boy”). However, this should be used very sparingly and it is preferable to refer to the Narnian historical age (eg, “…during the Narnian Golden Age”).
 * •Book pages are in-universe and, as such, should include chapter summaries in the past tense.

EdmundtheJust One thing that does need to be rectified is the book articles are not all formatted the same, last I checked. 6:45 Some had summaries of the chapters while others had just a summary of the entire book or sectioned by events in the story. The Chronicles are essentially a history of the World of Narnia as recorded by Jack. 6:47

Arvan Swordwielder I think they should be sectioned by events, the ones that have just a huge block of text are too much to read. 6:48

EdmundtheJust I like that, Arvan. It would keep it more realistic to the world. 6:48

Lasaraleen Tarkheena We discussed this on [the Price Caspian movie talk page] a while ago. I think we should declare the books themselves in-universe (meaning that in the theoretical universe where Narnia exists, the books were actually written), and talk about them like history books. 6:48 (Agreed)

Lasaraleen Tarkheena If we do that, we could talk about chapters instead of events, which may be more reader-friendly and less confusing-and still be in universe. 6:49

Arvan Swordwielder Though I believe the format forbids the frequent use of book names. I think when referring to the books, we should refer to "the Chronicles" or something like that. 6:50

Arvan Swordwielder "According to the histories of Narnia, as recorded by C.S. Lewis", etc... ? I do like that we currently refer to time periods, it seems more historical to say "in the Golden Age" than just saying "In The Horse and his Boy" 6:52

EdmundtheJust "as recorded in The Horse and his Boy. " 6:52

Lasaraleen Tarkheena Exactly, although that could get wordy if we use it too often when it's unnecessary. 6:52

Arvan Swordwielder I think it should be used VERY sparingly... 6:53

IN-UNIVERSE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN LEWIS AND CHARACTERS
 * •The movies, unlike the books, are out of universe
 * •Facts about the books themselves are in-universe, and may be mentioned on book pages, but should be under a separate heading than the plot information to avoid confusion.
 * • The canon interactions between Lewis and the Pevensies (and other characters) are in-universe and may be mentioned on pages. HOWEVER, all extrapolated or fan-fiction interactions between Lewis and the characters is non-canon and does not belong on wiki pages.
 * •There is no need to address the times in the books when Lewis could not have gotten his information from the characters (LB).

EdmundtheJust In one of the books, they refer to the story itself like that. 6:53

Arvan Swordwielder In SC, a blind poet tells the tale of "The Horse and His Boy" 6:53

Lasaraleen Tarkheena There were a couple things like that. On Deathwater Island, Lewis talks about Lucy describing the size of Aslan to him. 6:54

Arvan Swordwielder Still, it's jarring to see the books referred to within the article body, unless it is well written. 6:55

Lasaraleen Tarkheena Look at the talk page for the PC movie. (The last comment kind of sums it all up.) I think the movies, unlike the books, should be OOU. 6:55

EdmundtheJust One thing that may become a problem is if people are coming to the wiki and want to get factual stuff about the books. How would we do that? 6:55

Arvan Swordwielder How do you mean? Like history of the writing, publication dates, etc? 6:55

Lasaraleen Tarkheena Well, if the books are in-universe, facts about the way they were written are, too, so we can talk about them in a separate section of the book page. 6:56

Arvan Swordwielder So place the OOU template in the middle of the article rather than on top? 6:56

EdmundtheJust I just solved it. England is also in universe as well. So these books had to be published there as well. 6:57

Lasaraleen Tarkheena Exactly. We don't need the OOU template at all, because facts about the books are in-universe. 6:57

Arvan Swordwielder So... is that to say that we mix the literal facts with the fiction? Perhaps Doug Gresham knows Susan? 6:57

Lasaraleen Tarkheena That sounds like fan-fic. 6:57

EdmundtheJust Who said Narnia was fiction? 6:58

Arvan Swordwielder But seriously, I think if we don't talk about Lewis talking to Lucy on the book pages, we can call the book articles in-universe... is that what was meant? 6:59

Lasaraleen Tarkheena That's a good point, though. Maybe we should try to keep the plot facts and the extra-plot (but in-universe) facts as separate as we can to avoid confusion. Ed: Fan non-fic, then. 6:59

Arvan Swordwielder Exactly. Some people might be too Eustace-y to understand our humor. 7:00

Lasaraleen Tarkheena I think we can call the books in-universe even if we do talk about Lewis' conversation with Lucy. 7:03

Arvan Swordwielder RE: Lewis's in-universe [conversations], I don't think I agree, Las. We'll confuse people, or look silly. Besides, it doesn't happen all that often anyway, so I think it's not hard to avoid. 7:06

Lasaraleen Tarkheena Why would it be a problem? If Lewis and his books are in-universe, why not mention the canon interactions between him and his characters? 7:06

EdmundtheJust The Pevensies and the others from Earth may perhaps have known Lewis personally. 7:08

Arvan Swordwielder This could present an interesting problem for LB: How did Lewis know all this stuff if everyone who could tell him something died? 7:08

Lasaraleen Tarkheena We definitely need to be careful about extrapolating into fan-fic (or fan-nonfic, if you like, Ed ) relationships between Lewis and the other characters, because Arvan is right, that would get really hectic. That is interesting. 7:08

Arvan Swordwielder I don't think we should ignore those interesting comments about them knowing Lewis, I just don't think we should overdo it. 7:10

Lasaraleen Tarkheena I think we need to do what the books did: conveniently fail to talk about the times (like LB) when Lewis's interaction with the characters breaks down. 7:11 (agreed)

Arvan Swordwielder So any such references should be used with great discretion, I guess that's as far as we're likely to get.

Lasaraleen Tarkheena In-universally, he had some other source of information about LB events which isn't canon. We can't extrapolate because that would be fan-___. So we talk about Lewis' interactions with the characters that he actually wrote about, and conveniently ignore the rest 7:14

USING THE CLEANUP PAGE

Arvan Sordwielder So, how about the cleanup page and it's talk page: WikiNarnia_talk:Cleanup ? I think we could be using that to get somewhere... maybe start revising the Format starting with what we've discussed right here. 7:12

Lasaraleen Tarkheena I think we should post a summary of our conclusions somewhere, and give naysayers (especially Storyseeker) a last chance at it. After that, yeah, we should update WikiFormat and make a list of tasks to add to Cleanup.