While participating in a discussion on Talk:K. Glover, I've for the hundredth time been thinking about the unreferenced material category, which due to its unique allowing of non-canon in articles that look and feel a lot like in-universe content occupies a very uneasy position on this wiki. And I think I've got an idea worth proposing:
The problem: This section of the encyclopedia keeps getting the redheaded stepchild treatment. Pages have been brought up for deletion repeatedly by people who just happened to come upon them and felt that they had no place here, sometimes kept, sometimes merged into episode pages, pretty arbitrarily. At some point in the past the community apparently explicitly decided that pages like these could have a place on the wiki, but that does't seem relevant anymore. Some think these articles shouldn't exist, people have various ideas on where to merge the info in, and in essence, nobody’s happy.
The Solution: I think that putting these all on a single page, as a sort of Star Trek Encyclopedia-like glossary, would be the end of a lot of drama and concern, and a solution more people would be comfortable with. The info would continue to be available, but would be better contained, more easily recognizable as non-canon, etc.
The resulting page would be a long but manageable reference list of elements, people, planets etc, existing in a similar spirit as pages like Performers whose scenes were cut or Undeveloped Star Trek episodes. Subsections could perhaps be organized for people, celestial objects, varia, etc. Or perhaps a distinction per series and episode would be better. If the list became too large, splitting it up would of course be an option. I don't suspect we're there yet though.
I would propose making a single mixed list containing the contents of both the "unreferenced material" and "Deleted material". I am aware that there's already a page for Deleted scenes in which deleted material could also be folded. But the terms would get lost in the long descriptions of that article. As to retain the idea of entries, putting them on the new page seems better. The new page and deleted scenes would then function complimentary, the former functioning as a glossary accompanying the latter.
There's also an unexpected added bonus for putting all references on one page whether they were filmed or not. Episode pages background sections often mention stuff that's in the script but not the final episode. In many cases its simply unknown if the relevant scene was filmed or not, which until now places them in a kind of limbo. If both types of entries exist on the same page, each would still mention if it came from a deleted or an unfilmed scene, unless that information was unknown.
Ultimately this approach would make Category:Deleted material and Category:Unreferenced material obsolete, though Category:Memory Alpha images (deleted scenes) should remain. The single resulting page to come out of this could be placed in Category:Production, where the deleted categories once were.
What's left is to name the page I guess. "Unused material" or "Unused elements" perhaps? I'd be happy to hear suggestions. So, anyone like this? -- Capricorn
- I think that "aggregate articles" should be avoided where possible. They are very uncomfortable when it comes to linking or searching for individual information - especially as they get longer and longer. If there's a decision to no longer have individual articles for "unseen" stuff, that content should be merged to "their" episode or movie articles, but not to some all-encompassing huge list. -- Cid Highwind 23:44, February 25, 2012 (UTC)
- Cid is right that if we decide we don't want the individual articles, then we should just merge them with whatever they were "unseen" in or deleted from. --31dot 23:52, February 25, 2012 (UTC)