Forums → Ten Forward → Purely hypothetical discussion about what to call the different timelines (reply • watch)

This seems to keep coming up on many of the pages in the "New/Alternate/Prime" pages so I made a space to hash this out. This was Cid's idea, and I hope he doesn't take this the wrong way.

Now I wasn't here when the decisions and discussions were made and held on this subject, or I'm just a noob and didn't notice, but it seems like this is not over, as issues keep coming up. I don't really care what the "New timeline" is called, though if I had to choose I would g with Alternate timeline since it was described as an alternate reality in the movie but happens in more than one year thus necessatating a timeline. I really just want a concensius on the "Prime" issue, as this now affects everything, making links from the mirror universe and any other alternate what-have-yous hard to word. - Archduk3 22:29, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but that was a sarcastic remark to an already existing discussion here - where among the people that did contribute, the majority preferred "New Timeline", with a very verbose minority favouring variants of "alternate timeline". So unless there's a sudden influx of contributors shifting that majority, "New Timeline", or perhaps its abbreviation NT, seems to be the name of choice. I doubt this influx will happen, though, and in fact I'd be a little peeved if it does, because I was personally told by many people they were deliberately ignoring that discussion and didn't want to have a place in it - which led me to the remark that started this thread in the first place.

Regarding the question of "Prime" vs. some other title for the other timeline, there may be some discussion on that page as well. However, with "Prime" actually being used in the production, vs. any other name not being used, the choice seems clear at least to me. There's still the open invitation on the deletion page, to go and try rewriting some of our articles so that they work without any reference to this timeline - let's see how that works out. -- Cid Highwind 08:04, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Also, for what it's worth - if we're only ever going to use these terms from production POV contexts, we might as well get rid of "in-universe" terminology like "timeline", "reality" or "universe" completely, and instead use the one term that really describes what is going on here from a production standpoint. There's one continuity of stories that was used for the previous series and movies, and there's another continuity being started with Star Trek. So, while keeping the Prime/New disctinction, we could talk about the Prime continuity vs. the New continuity from now on. Would that alleviate any of the existing concerns towards these terms?

Since continuity is a well-known term in filmmaking (and storytelling in general), we could even create an article about it, and then merge information about the different continuities that now exist to that article, Continuity. This would help getting rid of the Prime reality article title that some dislike, as well as help removing some of information specific to the "new continuity" from a generic-sounding in-universe article about alternate reality. -- Cid Highwind 12:03, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

I knew about the discussion and the decision when I made this post, I just didn't know before the decision. I thought this would be the appropriate response, and place, in a sarcastic way, to allow anyone who avoided the original, or like me didn't know, to sound off since this keeps coming up. I do happen to agree that the alternate reality article sounds to generic, and I would even go so far as to say unless we go with what you suggested above, that it should be swapped with alternate timeline, which is kind of a mess right now, because since by all accounts were sticking with this "New Timeline" and none of the others. of course, new timeline is fine by me as well, my nitpick about it has been brought up before and IMO all the suggestions have same issues. The only reason I was hoping for a resolution on the "Prime" issue is I've been doing edits mainly to the alternate uniforms or mirror pages, which makes references and links back to the "prime" timeline a bit of a issue. - Archduk3 17:41, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Not cannon, but shows use of timeline over reality. - Archduk3 11:21, 21 June 2009 (UTC)