Wikipedia:WikiProject Science Fiction/Discussion Forum/Archive 1

questions
Interesting start this project, but I am not sure I understand its aims. How does it intersect WP Novels and WP Films? It sounds like it offers a forum area for editors interested in SF. Being a Philip Dick enthusiast, I see very interesting scope here. Hoverfish 20:46, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Many of the participants in Novels and Films are mainly interested in science fiction, so it seemed like a good place to advertise. The aims are, first, to be a general meeting place for editors with similar science fiction interests, and second, to provide a WikiProject home for dealing with the various issues (like WP:WAF) that cut across a wide swath of content but don't get much attention except from policy wonks.--ragesoss 21:01, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

sub-projects
is the idea for the WP:TREK and WP:WHO and the like to become sub-projects of this, or does this just cover "other SciFi"? or what? Morwen - Talk 17:05, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Sub-projects (but of course, connections like that are rather meaningless on WP); this is meant to be a project for those with a general interest in sci fi, including members of existing franchise-specific projects.--ragesoss 17:20, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * The big hole I see this project filling is for textual science fiction; currently the only real project for those interested in science fiction novels is the sprawling WikiProject Novels. So in part, this is a subproject of novels... but it seems artificial and less useful to limit the project by excluding the other media, since editors are likely to be interested in sf across media.--ragesoss 17:37, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * That makes sense. Morwen - Talk
 * Agreed, and I would add fandom as an additional area. Avt tor 20:07, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Most emphatically; the Trek and Who people are a microscopic element of the broader field of SF (sorry, Morwen, I'm one of those who can't abide that term you used). -- Orange Mike 23:15, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Overlapping projects
There are situations where different WikiProjects may have interest in a particular article. For example, I added Star Trek to this project, even though it was already listed under WikiProject Television, as I believe we'd have a (somewhat) different perspective. However, there are areas where I'm not sure the overlap applies. Someone added Serial Experiments Lain to this project; I think it's already well-covered by the Anime project and I'm not sure what additional or different value we might add to it. I don't want to delete anything without some discussion. Avt tor 19:33, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
 * WikiProjects don't really have any authority over articles beyond the authority of individual editors who edit the articles. In my view WikiProject banners are useful mainly for creating a stronger connection to the community.  Having several projects "claim" an article just gives more options for editors who want to find a broader community of interested editors in case feedback or help is needed.--ragesoss 19:49, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards
Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 17:30, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Manual of Style (fiction)
Hi there, I noticed that you brought attention to your Wikiproject on the Manual of Style (writing about fiction) talk page. Well done - I'm a large fan of science fiction myself, and I often use Wikipedia as a resource for such things. It's a big job!

The current Manual of style (writing about fiction) will have a big impact on a range of science fiction articles. Personally, I find the focus of the current article a bit lacking, as anyone who has a look at the current MOS talk page will note. I have put up an alternative draft proposal for comment, although not much response has been made as yet.

I encourage SF fans to take a look at the current MOS as well as the alternative draft and place any comments on the talk page. Your input will be very helpful! Thanks in advance Dr Aaron 05:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Infobox, Bottom box
We have an infobox on the side and a bigger bottom box at the bottom of the science fiction page. Do we need both? Avt tor 22:46, 12 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I made the bottom box (science fiction) because I didn't know about the existing side box (SF). If you look at the discussion on the bottom box's talk page, it used to be a side box until the folks that got Cyberpunk to FA said it was ugly as a sidebar.  A bottom box format was suggested and implemented.  - Malkinann 07:18, 19 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm inclined to agree that a bottom box makes more sense, for the simple reason that one can have mutliple bottom boxes but only one sidebar. Authors, books, films, and television shows each have their own sidebar infoboxes. I may be missing some detail. Avt tor 23:42, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

AfD
I put Firm science fiction on Articles for Deletion; please comment. Anville 21:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

MSTing Prod
Does anyone have sources for this? I know it was a big thing a while back ago, but no one has found any sources for it.--Rayc 04:16, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Google gets 28,000 hits on "MSTing", so it wouldn't be hard to do research. A prod is uncalled for, IMO. Avt tor 06:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

science fiction studies?
For a while now I've been annoyed at the relative dearth of information about science fiction studies in wikipedia. The major journals have stub articles (I note that New York Review of Science Fiction is being PRODded right now, apparently because someone did a google test & wasn't able to find, on the Internet, third-party articles about an academic journal. I'm really annoyed about this because (a) this is just a long-standing problem wikipedia has with inclusion of academics, academic fields, and what-not, and until it's solved wikipedia is going to be a land of fan-cruft (not that I totally hate that in all circumstances); and (b) as someone with a specific interest in sf studies, who has been slowly going at this, I feel I face the prospect of having to explain an academic discipline to people who really don't get it.  So.  Can we please have a section on science fiction studies as part of this project?  If anyone else is supportive I'll write it up & put it in. --lquilter 04:54, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Agree. I just looked at the subjects list on the project page, and I was astounded that there's nothing for criticism, but I think Science fiction studies is a better category and can cover academia and serious criticism.  Will help and support as I can (too many projects...) - PKM (new to this project but not to Wikipedia)


 * Agree - One of the reasons for creating this WikiProject in the first place was to help identify and expand subject areas that had been previously ignored. There are some very qualified people to discuss academic aspects of SF. (I am not among them. :) ) Avt tor 18:56, 4 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I started the page Science fiction studies, and perhaps other interested folks would like to work on it as well. I also started a Category:Science fiction studies and began gathering things in. There's a lot of work to do. Thanks for both of your ready support & interest. --lquilter 02:16, 5 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I added various sf studies links to the main project page. --lquilter 17:23, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

"Science fiction" as generic
There is a de facto practice of using "science fiction" in some articles as a generic term for speculative fiction/sf/horror/fantasy/etc. Naturally this causes some confusion, because we use "science fiction" in the narrower sense in other places, and break out "fantastic", "horror", etc. I'm not going to propose that we try to define and distinguish and force everyone into using a prescribed set of terminology / hierarchy, because I think that woudl be very contentious. Instead, I want to suggest that we ought to write something up in this project that explains these two uses of the phrase "science fiction". That way, the non-cognoscenti, the casual editors, and so on, can be pointed to the explanation when they stumble upon a confusion. We could also develop a set of very brief definitional templates that distinguish and explain the use of the term "SF", "speculative fiction", "science fiction", as generic; that way when we see that a page is using a term one way or the other, we can add in the appropriate definitional/distinction template at the top to clear up any confusion. --lquilter 17:27, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Note: There is an article, Science fiction and fantasy, which talks about the genre terms. I'm still thinking through whether this is the best title for the article, and what the article should really cover. --lquilter 16:30, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

RFD Category:Worldcon Guests of Honor
Just wanted the people involved in this project to be aware that the Category for Worldcon Guests of Honor has been tagged with a request for deletion. If you have an opinion pro or con, please weigh in. --JohnPomeranz 23:23, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Jack Williamson
I've placed the science fiction project template on the Jack Williamson talk page. TheQuandry 20:12, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Scope and template
Hi. I'm not a member of this project, but I'm seeing a bit of resistance against adding the project template to individual works, such as Serial Experiments Lain. I think there are two issues here What do you think?--GunnarRene 15:39, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The template is rather large compared to other project templates.
 * The bigger concern seems to be one of scope: Is adding all SF works to the project a good idea, or should templates be added only to
 * articles with Mid or higher importance to SF, and
 * other articles (such as about individual works) which are not covered by other projects?


 * I was a bit disappointed at the removal of the template from SEL, (which I'd added) and the rating of Evangelion as 'low' - mid would have been more appropriate, I thought. I think maybe there's a tendency to skew towards the Western canon? I've not joined the wikiproject, although I have been involved in the copyediting of science fiction and I have tagged various articles with the project template.-Malkinann 01:09, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Template:Science Fiction Project Error
The project template is somewhat flawed. For the 'type' parameter, when 'article' is inserted, it reads "This article is a Article." (Example:Talk:π (film)). I don't really want to muck with a template for a project I'm not part of, but I thought I'd let you folks know about it.--NPswimdude500 05:06, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm aware of the problem. If anybody has skill in editing templates, please feel free to fix it. Avt tor 15:09, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Importance Scale
How do we decide how important the articles are? Nearly half aren't rated yet. --Cheeesemonger 20:33, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

List of science fiction conventions
This article, while still retaining its old name, has been merged with other lists of anime cons, comic book shows, horror cons, etc. and is now an indiscriminate hotchpotch of media shows, furrymeets, comics expositions, Creation "Cons" and everything else. I don't know what, if anything, we can do about it. The motivation appears (though I must AGF) to have been to make it easier for t-shirt dealers and the like to decide where to go on a given weekend, rather than for fans to find actual science fiction conventions. -- Orange Mike 21:59, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. --P4k 04:12, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Banner
I propose removing the project banner from articles that are already coved by another WikiProject, along the same ideas as presented on. -- Ned Scott 19:39, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
 * It is quite common for a article to be within the purview of multiple projects. If it fits within the scope of this project, it is reasonable for the article to be tagged on its talk page as such, even if it is also in the purview of several other projects. If there is an issue of too many promjects cluttering the talkpage, undefined can be added, nesting the project banners.  Does the WP:SF banner support nesting? Aleta 03:20, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * If there's no point to the banner, and it does not aid article or project, then there should be no problem deleting the banner. I think the real issue is that the project itself is.. a bad idea for a WikiProject. WikiProjects by genre clashes with the majority of ways we divide work up and how we think about projects. It's far too broad to be of any real use. You won't be finding any "sci-fi" specific policy or guidelines. It just kind of sits there, doing nothing useful at all. -- Ned Scott 03:29, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * It brings together editors interested in a common genre, so that there is somewhere to go to get help from others who are likely interested in the article you're editing. It also provides a platform for assessing a broad swatch of content that is unevenly covered by other, more narrow Projects (many of which have no 1.0 mechanism in place).  Also, narrowly construed Projects tend to go in and out of style quickly, and many end up inactive after a short time.  Broader projects are more stable, and grow more consistently over the long term.--ragesoss 03:36, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * This project is doing none of those things. -- Ned Scott 03:41, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * That is, with exception to the assessing, which is why I have no problem with the banner being on articles with no project. -- Ned Scott 03:43, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * (edit conflicted) It's doing assessment, and people sometimes bring issues here to seek feedback. And as it grows larger, it's hard to say what it will do; at some point, a collaboration of the month will probably be started.  Having multiple banners gives people more places to go, and help advertise the project; it's not about marking territory, it's about making connections between groups of editors.--ragesoss 03:45, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Six months, the talk page is pretty much dead (42 edits as of my post. 42 edits in six months...). The project pages contain very little of value outside of the article assessments and some category listings. The whole thing is badly organized. And you're trying to tell me that it might improve in the future, and that is reason enough to mass tag based on genre? Please, don't take this personally, but this place is definitely what one would call a failed WikiProject. Adding the sci fi banner is not helping anyone, at all. I know all about WikiProjects, and I'm all for them when they work. I've helped many start out, I've helped many reform. We all understand the theory behind the project, but the reality is that it's not working out. -- Ned Scott 03:53, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Worklist
Is there a way to provide a worklist on the project main page? Science-fiction articles that need copyedit, expansion, sources, and so on? Kweeket 00:47, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

A solution to non-free image issue
Commonly, sci-fi shows-related articles (as many other screen media ones), have problems due to fair use images disputed - particulary painful when we are dealing with a FA article, which sometimes lacks even a single free image. However we are in a very lucky situation, as there is a great source of free images available, many of which members of this project can easily make in the future (if they haven't done so before): Cosplay images. Most sci-fi (and multigenre) conventions feature many characters from sci-fi shows in cosplay costumes; we can take freely licenced pictures and upload them to Wikimedia Commons (see Category:Cosplay). I am very suprised to find that this category is so tiny; I am sure there are many free images that can be found on flickr, and that many members of this project had taken some in the past - and will in the future. I am uploading some images I took at Gen Con; if I went there with a goal of getting more cosplay photos (and better batteries... : I could've had dozens of characters. So I strongly suggest - hunt for freely licenced cosplay images online, ask for free licences if status is unclear, ask your convention-going friends for their photos, and when you go to a con - carry a camera and take photos!--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 20:16, 26 August 2007 (UTC)

Science fiction writing circles/workshops
Aboutmovies from WikiProject Oregon suggested I drop you folks a line and find out how much interest there is in maintaining and improving articles about prominent science fiction and fantasy writing circles/workshops. There are several articles about such in Wikipedia, like the Wordos and Turkey City Writer's Workshop, but very few of them are of very good quality. Would these fall in the purview of this Wikiproject? --GoodDamon 17:12, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Sandworm (Dune) needs cites
The article Sandworm (Dune) has been tagged as "This article does not cite any references or sources" since April 2007. -- 201.19.77.39 11:43, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Classification of stories
(originally misposted elsewhere because I am a victim of Shukla's Law)

Is there a guideline for classifying stories? For example, the Charles Stross series, "The Merchant Princes" is listed as being fantasy, but after reading the fourth book, there is not one element in the series that would qualify it for being fantasy. There are no fantastical creatures. There is no magical or occult activity of any kind. All of the parallel universes involved appear to have the same physical laws. The process of world-walking now appears to have a scientific basis. So how, exactly is it fantasy? Dfmclean (talk) 13:53, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

According to Charlie (see Usenet article <820te4-9h.ln1@antipope.org>), it's SF, despite what the US publisher (TOR) put on the cover. Mstemper (talk) 20:04, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Richard C. Meredith
Hello, does sbdy have more info than what I could find? I did not know about this writer, then I just read At the narrow passage and I think it is a great sf story, and suggest you read it. Then I discovered he died when he was only 41... --Frankesko (talk) 20:06, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

My God, I am impressed by the level of the interaction in this forum! --Frankesko (talk) 23:43, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

What is an alternate history story?
See the discussion in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Alternate History/Archive 1. Dfmclean (talk) 17:23, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Antimatter
As you have the article Antimatter within your scope I thought you might like to comment on the proposal to restrict the "Antimatter in fiction section" of the article.  Sp in ni ng  Spark  18:49, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

Project active?
Is this project still active? I know people don't like giving up on these things, but at the moment the project doesn't seem to be giving anything to it's constituent articles, so what is the point? Maybe should be marked defunct?

Articles for assessment seems to be dead, and requests for peer reviews go nowhere. What is the aim of the project, now that adding templates everywhere is done? I had to get the novels SF task force help to get any input in SF articles i've worked on.

Also, i've been assessing many articles as C class (some moving down from a B). But the project doesn't seem to recognise this as a cat, making going through the unassessed articles difficult. Can someone make the C class category, so it is auto generated on assessment? Yobmod (talk) 14:38, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I believe many have gotten involved in subprojects more than this one, but I'm hoping to encourage activity here. C Class works now in my experience.  Netmouse (talk) 04:27, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

ISFDB templates
Am I correct in assuming that an isfdb link template is pretty much always appropriate on an article about a work of SF that has an ISFDB record? An editor is persistently removing the template from Knights of God. 129.42.208.186 (talk) 16:38, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, I would this a template is appropriate wherever there is an ISFDB entry. Netmouse (talk) 04:27, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Steampunk
I would like to organize a Steampunk sub group/task force to organize and improve the various articles on that topic. Is there anyone else interested in this? Is there a traditional process to this in this WikiProject? Holzman-Tweed (talk) 16:43, 23 February 2012 (UTC)