Talk:United Federation of Planets/Archive 2

members of the Federation
As members of the Federation, the article lists a number of species as opposed to a list of planets or states. Not only the great majority of semi-canon sources cite a list of planet as members of the Federation, but also the mere idea of membership for secies is frankly unlikely, as the citizienship of a person arguably depends upon his/her citizienship of a member state and not upon his/her species of birth.

For example: Worf is likely a Federation citizen (adopted by federation citizens and serving for years in Starfleet), while the humans living on the worlds gave by the Federation to the Cardassian Union/Empire in "Voyage's End" are not. Gbnogkfs 16 August 2006, 10:53 (UT)

I think this would be better handled on a case by case basis as sometimes systems are listed as members (e.g. several Human colonies), sometimes states (e.g. confederacy of vulcan) and sometimes entire species (e.g. caitian). Cvkoning (talk) 22:45, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Overhaul and In-universe
This article is listed on the Star Trek projects page as being too in-universe, and after a first read, it is. What is worse is that, as Trek fans, we all know what the Federation is, but no one has ever really said it in an episode. What has happened to this article is that it is now full of statements by people trying to explain what the federation is based on a lot of those feelings and not so much on cited references. This amounts to speculation, conjecture, and at its worse - original research. I'm going to take a jab at making the article less in-universe and trimming all of this un-cited conjecture out too. I feel there may not be much article left afterwards. Luckily, our purpose here is as an encyclopedia to let lay people know what the federation is, not what we think it is based on years of bits and pieces and trivia. StarHOG (Talk) 22:05, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Oh, and most of the citations are for articles and blogs that people have written about the federation, where they write their feelings, conjecture, and original research about what the federation is without citing any canonical information from the series itself. One author insists the federation can't exist without slavery. Another author insists that Roddenberry based the federation off of alien governments he was made aware of by friends in the Swedish military working with aliens or something like that. StarHOG (Talk) 22:15, 28 February 2019 (UTC)


 * That sounds like a ridiculous yet interesting theory. Cvkoning (talk) 22:48, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Cloaking
They developed a cloaking device but never really used it and aren’t allowed to so should it count? Kuttispielt (talk) 14:06, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Are you talking about the phasing device experimentally used on the Pegasus? That had a cloaking effect, in that it was phased out and couldn't be detected, but wasn't really a cloaking device. StarHOG (Talk) 21:25, 18 May 2020 (UTC)