SGCommand:Community Portal

See also the Archive for past discussions.

Why all my templates broke

Hello again Stargate Wikia, and oh my, all of my templates broke! The most prolific of them, {{cite}}, has uglified enormous numbers of templates I made. I am in the process of fixing them, and {{cite}} is already fixed. The reason for the problem is the new ParserFuction style (read my complaint to the admins here) and the functions are working again, but with a # at the beginning. Unfortunately, the change was not backwards-compatible, so I have been dashing through my contribs, trying to fix every template I ever made. Who knew that I could cause so much trouble by being away from the Stargate Wikia for a month! (By the way, I have been at the Myst Wikia - my other great love in life.) —Marco Polo 16:13, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Great to see you back again, and to see that you've got them fixed! I like the cite template. Peter R 07:10, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

IRC Channel

An IRC channel would be a neat way for us to meet and chat in real-time. All you've gotta do is log on to freenode... an admin should probably take care of registering the channel, which I can help with if you'd like. I suggest freenode as it is generally free of the problems of spam and takeovers common in some networks, and also hosts channels for the mediawiki software, the memory-alpha editors crew, and several othe interrelated topics which SG wiki editors may also enjoy participating in. To sum up what IRC is, it is a real-time chat medium for groups of people. Unlike instant messenger services, it is entirely free, and does not require registration or the submission of personal details at any time. Nick name and channel name registration are available - nick name registration is wholly optional, and I would suggest that an admin take the time to register any channel we may wish to create. This allows them to retrieve ops status in case no op exists.

Technical details

My favorite IRC client is XChat. It's free for UNIX users, and there are plenty of free and 100% legal windows binaries available also, as it is [GPL software. For Windows users, mIRC is also a popular client, but is not free. For UNIX users who desire a curses-based interface (XChat uses GTK2+), I would suggest irssi. Once in Xchat, or whatever client you prefer, log on to the freenode network via the host chat.freenode.net and the standard TCP port 6667. We can discuss here what the channel name should be, and I can check if any are already taken, though it's doubtful.

Resources regarding IRC

Plot Hooks Canon?

User:Jaymach has been adding information from "System Lord Plot Hooks," an online supplement to a role playing game. We currently have no policy at to whether this information should be considered canon. I believe a discussion is necessary. 67.171.163.212 17:36, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I know that the Stargate comics have been classified as non-canon, which is why I'm not adding any information from them (though we could make non-canon tags as we have over on the Wookieepedia for those articles), but I don't believe the RPG has ever stated to be non-canon, which is why I consider it canon myself. —Jaymach Ral'Tir (talk) 19:11, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but that's pretty weak; you don't consider something true based on a lack of evidence to the contrary. :Besides, have you considered the following:

Has it ever been stated or suggested anywhere that the RPG is canon?
Are any of the series writers involved?
It is a game, after all. I don't know much about it, but Wikipedia says that in role-playing games "participants assume the roles of characters and collaboratively create stories. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines." Therefore, which course of action is part of the canon universe? Or is just the online supplement canon? That seems a very fine distinction.

Sorry if I came off as overly critical. 67.171.163.212 23:57, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, going by every other universe that the term canon is in...if a product isn't stated to be non-canon, then it is considered canon...examples of this would be Star Wars (they have a very well defined non-canon, or Infinites section), Star Trek (the creator outright stated that only the live action shows/films are canon), and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the two TV series' and only 3 of the comics are considered canon, but the rest have been stated to be non-canon). Now because we have no official ruling on the canon status of the role-playing game, but the comics have been stated to be non-canon, I'd personally assume that they were canon until stated otherwise due to the fact that the creators went out of their way to state one product as non-canon, but said nothing about the other. Additionally; just to clarify how role-playing games work...basically, there's a whole bunch of information in a Sourcebook (none of which is changeable by players, or their actions) along with several "adventures" for the Games Master to set their players on. Generally the overall outcome of these adventures is stated, and it's simply left up to the players to find their way to that if they can. Now if you compare what I've wrote in the articles I've added to what's on the website, you'll notice I didn't include anything that's not there; I didn't "make up" or extrapolate how I thought players may act, I simply put down what the general outcome would be of said "adventures". I think I may be missing something out, but it's currently 1:30am here and I'm heading off to sleep...if I have missed out anything, then feel free to re-ask it and I'll try to get back to you. —Jaymach Ral'Tir (talk) 00:36, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

You know, even if the RPG isn't canon, we can still include the information from it in a section that "says according to 'System Lord Plot Hooks' blah blah blah is true" or something like that. Now, I'm just an unregistered user, so I don't think I have the authority to decide what our policy is, even if I was once Stargate-er of the Month. However, my recommendation is still that the RPG not be considered canon. 67.171.163.212 08:30, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

A few things to get straight:

I personally believe that no one person can define official Stargate Command policy.
67.171.163.212 has made over 800 edits (which is comparable to most admins) and does carry weight of opinion. (PS: get a user!)
On the discussion topic, only the movie and the series Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis are canon. No other series, comics, or role-playing games are considered official canon.

By the way, what is defined in the RPG which isn't in the series? I don't play the game. —Marco Polo 21:01, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm with Marco Polo (no surprise); it's far easier to just say the series and the film are canon (well, actually, from the point of view of the series, the film is semi-canon) then to try to go through everything written or created under the Stargate label and decide what is canon and what isn't. We can still include the information under a serperate section and, for articles about characters that don't exist in the canon, we can use Jaymach's own non-canon template. 67.171.163.212 11:46, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree. We should regard anything other than movie/series as non-canon and continue to add information found in i.e. RPGs with the splendid non-canon template. I also suggest that we, in cases where there are already a canon article, add the non-canon information but seperate the texts in some fashion. In MA, we use the ":" before the non-canon text, together with italic text. That should be great even here, I think. Example:

:Samantha Carter had a daughter, together with Teal'c, in the year 2017, according to non-canon book "Fun without meaning".

Is this a possible solution? Peter R 16:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Ugh...is that true? :P I've never bothered reading the novels...but anyway...take a look at a possible solution over on the Olukun page. I don't know if it'll be accepted or not, but it's what we've done over on the Wookieepedia for articles like Darth Maul, who has multiple resurrections. I'd still love it if the books were considered canon personally, as I don't honestly know where it's been stated that only the series' are canon (please feel free to show me though as I'd love to have the matter settled officially and all) but I'll bow to the will of the masses, and keep the stuff as non-canon. I'm just happy to be allowed to add it at all. :) Oh and just wait a day or so and I'll show you exactly what the Roleplaying books contain. —Jaymach Ral'Tir (talk) 16:29, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Ugh...is that true? :P I've never bothered reading the novels

Um, unless I'm mistaken (and forgive me if I am) that was an example of what is known as sarcasm. 67.171.163.212 21:50, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I just wasn't entirely sure, so I figured I'd check...if it had been true I woulda had to go and burn every novel I could find. :P Anyway, as promised, here's what the Roleplaying Game contains (note that these links will not work after a week, so if you want to save them then you had better do so soon):

Enjoy! —Jaymach Ral'Tir (talk) 16:04, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I looked at Olukun and I don't like it. I think it clutters the page and it can't be used at all places. For example, in the sarcastic note about Sam/Teal'c above, it was just a brief note, maybe put as a small part in the middle of Sam's article. In that case, your non-canon note couldn't be used, since it's not "the rest of the page", but just some part(s) of it. Peter R 20:38, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Uh...that's kinda the point in having both the start and stop parts of the template...the noncanonstart template says that the following section is non-canon, not the rest of the page, and then the noncanonend template lets you know where the non-canon information ends...additionally, I wouldn't ever be putting something as small as that note into the article...if you'll look at the links provided above, you'll see that there's a lot of information that's possible to add from these books. Can I ask why you think it clutters the page though? Can't say I quite follow why. EDIT: Just as an example, I've finished all the work I think I can do on the Marduk page. That's the amount of information I'm likely to want to add to all other articles as well, so I'm not too sure how the "This happened according to the non-canon book xxx" would work for these articles is all. —Jaymach Ral'Tir (talk) 21:40, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I still think that it's too big a notice on the page, that clutters the article. I also firmly believe that we should place the non-canon text in some other texting (for example italic), so that it's not easily misunderstood which is which. I don't think it would be enough with just a notice. Peter R 05:59, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Well I looked at a preview of what it would look like if we use all italics and...well...to me it doesn't look too good...but that's just my personal opinion and, as you're an admin here, your opinion would obviously count for more. If others involved in the conversation would like to try viewing a preview by putting it all in italics, then please do so and voice your opinion. The only other option I could think to go with, if others didn't agree on the italics either, is to put the entire non-canon section into a specifically coloured background...and I'm none too sure how that would look. EDIT: Erk, sorry, that was me...just at work at the moment. Jaymach Ral'Tir 09:37, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

My vote does not count for more than yours. But I hope some more people can give their opinion - that would help. Peter R 20:37, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, I think we should go with the non-canon templates, but I think the current templates we have are too large, making the articles look, in my humble opinion anyway, rather clunky. I think the non-canon templates should be more like the spoiler template. 67.171.163.212 16:07, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

How would something like this work?

Warning: The following section is non-canon. It contains information explicitly confirmed to be non-canon by either the author or the Stargate producers. Everything said in this section and not elsewhere did not happen in the "proper" Stargate continuity.

Samantha Carter had a daughter, together with Teal'c, in the year 2017, according to non-canon book "Fun without meaning".

Note: those colors still need tweaking.

The idea I'm trying to convey is that the spoiler area goes into the box. This can still be implemented with {{noncanonstart}} and {{noncanonend}}, but unlike the above idea, the {{noncanonend}} template must be added or else the bottom will extend to the end of the page. Also, many formatting things do not work to full effect; this is best for plaintext.

But more to the point, how does it look? I was trying to visually separate it from the rest of the text. —Marco Polo 10:27, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

This could work, but I would rather make it much shorter:

Warning: The following section is non-canon.

Samantha Carter had a daughter, together with Teal'c, in the year 2017, according to non-canon book "Fun without meaning".

This way, it gets shorter, and the other info on the non-canon definitions should be added promptly at the top of the non-canon article. I believe we should have a separate page for non-canon issues, with not directly linking to the "Stargate canon" article. See that page, to see what I mean. Peter R 20:35, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind that at all...if it worked in Maxthon Browser (the browser I use personally)...which it just plain doesn't when I try it. It seems to work in Firefox perfectly...and Internet Explorer partially...you just need to scroll down past it then scroll back up to see the colours appear on IE. If you got that fixed, then I wouldn't mind using this template instead at all, as long as I can still use the nice cite template rather than saying "xx happened according to xx book". As a side note, I've now purchased all of the Stargate novels and I have to say that the material in them is really quite good. —Jaymach Ral'Tir (talk) 19:14, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Just found something that I seemed to have looked over previously in the Living Gods: Stargate System Lords book, on page 12 in the sidebar. "The material herein is a valuable starting point - and considered canon - but in the end, it exists to serve your enjoyment." Seems that the RPG is canon, even if the comics/novels may not be. :) —Jaymach Ral'Tir (talk) 17:19, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Who says it's canon?Is it an official person of some kind, or is it some producers that would like their RPG products to be canon? Peter R 18:18, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Well MGM gave Adelrac Entertainment the license to produce the Stargate SG-1 roleplaying game (while MGM still held the stargate license, as it's now passed to Sony) and so the books were published through official lines. I'm afraid that I can't say exactly who has said that line, as it's part of the book itself and so could be by any one of the writers. As MGM have now lost the license, and Sony acquired it, Adelrac Entertainment no longer have the license and so do not produce any further Stargate material as it would not be officially accepted. —Jaymach Ral'Tir (talk) 19:16, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

As anyone from the Star Trek side of things will tell you, folks in that world tend to be extremely canon-conscious. Therefore, it may behoove you to take a look at the canon policy used over at Memory Alpha (the Star Trek Wiki). The direct link is http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Memory_Alpha:Canon_policy for more info. Hope htat helps! --69.162.40.198 04:22, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

The problem with that statement is that the Star Trek canon doesn't apply to the Stargate universe...I've never actually seen a specific canon status being put down, and so far I've only seen that the comics are non-canon, the roleplaying books say they're canon and they are licensed but whether or not you can trust that is apparantly up in question...as for the novels...I've absolutely no idea on their status...I'd assume non-canon, but it's entirely possible that they are canon. But if we're going to look at other canon policies, then I can easily bring up the Star Wars canon system. :) —Jaymach Ral'Tir (talk) 04:28, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, my point wasn't necessarily "how" they define cannon vs non-cannon .. it was more what to do with it w/in the wiki. Certainly you can pick whichever cannon reference you like (Star Wars, Star Trek, etc)..and it may be a good idea to take a look at them all. I'm not one that tries to say "my SciFi is better then your SciFi" - I generally enjoy it all - so personally I have nothing against considering what others have done before...why reinvent the wheel? In any case, cannon discussions always tend toward zealotry, but I figured it would be worth adding my $0.02. You milage may vary however. Is there anything from the producers that could be considered a definitive statement on what they consider cannon? Has anyone tried contacted them to see what they think? But I would agree: most likely anything episodic or in the movie would be considered cannon - beyond that, who knows. :) It is interesting that the role playing folks think they are cannon considering that role playing, by it's nature, is specific to the story being told by the DM...now the "specs" discussed in any of the role playing manuals could be cannon though - assuming that these texts kept to the info that happened within the SG Universe. But any modules, I would think, would not be since these would be dependent upon the author and not on the producers - regardless of licensing arrangements. --Lance 14:44, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree; RPGs can not be canon because the story is what you make it, and would thus be different for every person who played it. On a related topic, I've noticed a few comic illustrations from Jaymach Ral'Tir and a little snooping revealed a company called Avatar Press which seems to have produced the comics. I have therefore altered the {{image}} template to allow for Avatar instead of MGM (see Image:Minotaur.JPG) and was wondering if I have placed credit on the right group. As I mentioned earlier, I do not play the RPGs, so I do not know what companies hold what rights. Is there a single overarching company which controls "majority copyright" over other middlemen companies (like MGM) or is it just the name on the back of the comic?

The template I made was definitely not supposed to do that (I use Firefox) and if someone hadn't pointed it out, I probably wouldn't have known that there was even a problem. Here's a better (-ish) version of the above:

Warning: The following section is non-canon.

Samantha Carter had a daughter, together with Teal'c, in the year 2017, according to non-canon book "Fun without meaning".

It seems to work better on IE (I don't know about Maxthon). It still has a few bugs, but they aren't catastrophic.

Also, on a different topic (I don't want to start a new header and stop this topic), can we have a general fanbase question portal? What I mean is a portal for people with in-universe questions which would not be heard on the talk pages due to lack of viewing. I would imagine it to be at least sidebar-worthy (add a link on the left sidebar). Cheers! —Marco Polo 13:24, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

RE: RPG's...that's actually a common misconception about roleplaying game books. The books themselves actually offer only solid facts, perhaps sometimes ideas's for "adventures" but the story in them is actually not what you want to make it...you can still feel free to check out any of the books as I haven't actually bothered to remove them from my host. Take a look at the Living Gods: Stargate Systems Lords book, and read any of the Goa'uld entries...you'll notice that there's not one single little thing you can actually change in what it says. I agree that people's personal adventures while they're roleplaying can't ever be considered canon, but I truly don't see any problem at all with the books.

RE: Comics...yes, both the Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis comics are produced by Avatar and so the image template is correctly modified to reflect that...there's also some Stargate the Movie-related comics (both a comic adaption of the movie as well as about 5 set outside of it) produced by Entity Comics, but I'm not too sure I'll ever be adding information from them as they're a bit...out there...monsters coming through another "second" stargate (note: these were produced before Stargate SG-1 came out) and the like...but it's entirely possible that if I ever get through all the myriad of other information I have then I may eventually move onto them.

RE: Template...I kinda figured you used Firefox...most people who know any wiki code do :P...but it works perfectly (as far as I can see so far anyway) in both IE and in Maxthon so whatever you've changed seems to have solved that problem. As I said, I'm fine with that template if it's chosen to mark the RPG content as non-canon and will of course use it on any articles I make from the comics or the novels (though the latest ones are also MGM-licensed, so I'm tempted to attempt getting in touch with a Stargate higher-up just to see exactly what the canon status for everything is) so feel free to swap it in for the current noncanonstart and noncanonend templates. —Jaymach Ral'Tir (talk) 16:55, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

And from further research...please see this thread over on the Alderac Entertainment boards...especially the posts from StargateBrandManager (note: despite the name being corny, he actually is the Brand Manager for the SG-1 RPG books) which state that the RPG, at least, is canon. I'm still researching further, and I've posted threads on both Gateworld and the official SG-1 boards to see if I can get any sort of official answer, or at least a link to somewhere that has official information. I doubt I'll learn that everything I want to be canon is, but I suspect that I'll fine the RPG books at the least definitely are. —Jaymach Ral'Tir (talk) 11:54, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

RE: Template...okay...so I tried switching the template...and noticed a problem with it. When used in conjunction with the Infobox Character template, the infobox actually covers the text of the page. Also, when an image is placed above it the entire non-canon section is moved down below said image. Please see Marduk for an example...I'll leave the templates like this until someone else can see and then revert back until it can be solved. 195.153.219.170 13:17, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

The Marduk article looked twisted in my Firefox. The Non-canon info was intertwined with the character box on the right. Is it just something temporary, or is it wrong somehow? Is it because the template's width are 100%, perhaps? Peter R 05:16, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Well I've removed the 100%'s and...err...it kinda fixes the problem...but makes it all look so very nasty...take a look again at the Marduk page to see what happens. Though I was originally fine with these new templates....now I'm really not liking them....I'd be fine with them if the problem can be solved though. 195.153.219.170 12:58, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

I tried to fix it (I did say there were still bugs)—the truth is, I'm having a hard time just envisioning the way it should look. Ideas:

Non-canon box goes behind Infobox, but text wraps around it. Near-optimal solution, but it is proving to be next to impossible to reproduce.
Box is compressed to the left a few hundred pixels (the whole length of the box) to accomodate the Infobox. This is the current setup. Side-effect of not going full-width if text is less than 1 line.
Box is full-width, but goes behind Infobox. This was the setup before 195.153.219.170's fix. This usually produces odd text covering artefacts and is probably not a good idea.
Box is preceded by <br clear=all>, which will put the entire template below any Infoboxes. This we have not tried yet, and might be OK. THe main side-effect will be that long vertical templates will leave large empty textless areas.
Avoid the issue and simply try to add enough text before the non-canon box that it doesn't collide with any templates.

So, as you can see, there are many options for this belligerent template, none of them perfect, simply because there there is no perfect option here.

RE: Comics—I'll add a mod for Entity Comics just because I can even if no-one will ever use them :)

PS: This page has reached 32KB and 13 months. We should probably add an archive.

PPS: My bot, BotMeister, is almost operational and will be activated soon mainly for category organisation soon if it is the will of the community.

PPPS: We desperately need a graphic designer here. I think people need to learn that we don't need 500px footers looking like this running amok everywhere (no offense). I'm not saying that I'm a good graphic designer myself (see {{noncanonstart}}) but I am trying, and I think we should all get a feel for what we should aspire to attain from Wikipedia. —Marco Polo 13:41, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

The Project Namespace

I suggest that we change the project namespace (currently "SGCommand" — an example is this page's title) to something else, for two main reasons:

SGCommand is an obscure mix of abbreviated and normal words.
SGCommand is actually the user name of this wiki's founder, and I think the namespace should represent the wiki, not the founder.

Because of this, I propose that we change the project namespace to either "Stargate Command" or "SGC", or something completely different. I'd do the changes myself, but it is quite a ground-breaking change, and I don't want to change something so radically without consulting the "committee". —Marco Polo 05:39, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Just a practical note (as I was passing by) - if you decide this needs to be done, please send a mail to community@wikia.com and we'll make the change. Just moving pages won't have the full effect, it's got to be set as the new namespace in the database. Thanks -- sannse (talk) 21:57, 27 August 2006 (UTC) (Wikia community team)

Sannse, don't worry; when I became admin I checked all of my powers and I know exactly what to do to make the change. As a sidenote, whether or not the change is made, I encourage all members of the community to change all SGCommand: hardcoded links to Project: links (e.g. [[SGcommand:bla]] → [[Project:bla]]). The reason is that there is no cosmetic difference and should the change happen the links will automatically change to the new namespace. —Marco Polo 04:18, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Pausing

Due to having much to do on both a personal, educational and workrelated level, I must tell you that I will not have the opportunity to be here as much as I ought to be in the future. I'd might pop by from time to time to check in or to make some contributions, but you cannot count on me for some time now. I believe this wikia is doing well and it's great to see all of you who has started editing here during the last months. You are doing great work! Keep up the good work! If you want to contact med, please do so by contacting me at the Star Trek Databas, under "Om sidan --> Redaktionen", since I can't guarantee that I will look in on my talk page here. Peter R 09:21, 18 September 2006 (UTC)