Talk: Editing Conventions

Multiple class types

When listing multiple class types, the word "class" may be moved to the end of the list, with each class retaining the "-" after it's class name.

Ex: Star Knight- and Warlord- class ships.... Jabrwock 14:27, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I like it. -- SaganamiFan 14:34, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Class-Variant-class

I thought that class variants were supposed to be Saganami-C-class, not Saganami-C-class, but I don't have my book on me today so I can't double-check. :) Jabrwock 14:41, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Found it. In At All Costs, it's written as Saganami-C-class. Don't know how the Medusa-B variant is listed in other books. Jabrwock 04:03, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Article summaries

For articles, never start with a heading. Always have a one to three sentence summary of the article, with the title highlighted by bold text. This way a short description of the article will always be visible, even if the article becomes detailed enough that a table of contents (menu) appears. Jabrwock 03:53, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

PD or P.D.?

Any convention? Saganami Fan partially edited SSNF article.--dotz 20:03, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Most date formats list eras (CE/BC/AD) without the punctuation, although both are acceptable. I vote PD. Jabrwock 21:22, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

My thoughts exactly. I found "P.D." looking strange as a era suffix, and I think The Universe of Honor Harrington uses "PD", that was one of my primary influences when I started working on the wiki. However there are also examples of "P.D." in the additional information sections at the end of some of the books. I think I just got used to editing it that way whereever I found examples - but of course we should have a clear convention on that. I'd vote for PD, mainly for practical reasons (and because I personally think "P.D." looks a little silly, like punctuations in "H.M.S. Fearless" or something like that.

Anyway, good you brought it up, I just got used to it... ;-) -- SaganamiFan 22:46, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Battle template

I suggest one (main) commander rule. Extended list is good for order of battle section.--dotz 21:00, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Agree, as dotz pointed out in another discussion, a secondary may be named if the main was killed during the battle (indicated by "(†)"), but order of battle section can go into heavy detail about other commanders. The Battle of Manticore may be an exception, where 3 whole fleets came together to fight on each side. But that would be a rare exception, as there has so far been only one battle of that magnitude (although the RHN side could be argued to be under the single command of Tourville anyway). Jabrwock 21:20, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Battle of Manticore explaines itslef of course - there wasn't common command over H, 3 and 8 Fleets.--dotz 13:39, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Tricky ones will be a three-way battle, like the Battle of Schiller, although one could argue it was really two battles in one, and the 2nd was merely a call for surrender. Until then, the SKM and PN were technically on the same "side". ;) Jabrwock 17:43, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

A three parties template is necessary:) - remember final duel at wikipedia:The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?--dotz 19:21, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Past Tense

I believe fictional characters can be referred to using the present tense based on their last appearance in a book. For instance, when you refer to a character's citizenship, titles, home, marriage, children, etc., you may use present tense unless the character (or spouse, child, etc.) has died or is mentioned as passing in a "chronologically" later book. Unless a "date" of death is added to the character's info, references to a character's static status, citizenship, titles, etc., should be presented in a present tense. I made mention of this under Honor's article but then noticed this might be a better place to repeat it. Using pass tense sounds awkward with active characters.--137.5.10.140 11:50, 21 February 2009 (UTC)Phil.

Unpractical. My full answer at Talk:Honor Harrington--dotz 13:02, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Liber Posterior Derogat Liber Anterior

...or later book contains more proper data than earlier - good rule for all inconsistencies, used by Weber too (afterword at HH9). Can be helpful with Grendelsbane and Gregor Systems also.--dotz 22:09, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Ships and Classes

I think we should come to an agreement about category conventions for articles on ships and ship classes. Currently, they are all mixed up, and many classes are categorized as ships. -- SaganamiFan 22:01, 22 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes I definitely agree with the need to distinguish between distinct ship names versus classes myself (e.g., ship named Honor Harrington versus Honor Harrington ship class). I can imagine how confusing it can be. I'd also like to see using the standard "wet" navy designations (e.g., CL for light cruiser, BB for battleship, SP(D) for podlaying superdreadnought etc.) somewhere in the wiki page title for individual ships (e.g., BB Victory, RMN). As a naval buff myself, I refer to Conway's Ships of the World whenever I need to find a reference and those books italicize names of individual ships (e.g., Admiral Graf Spee or Victory). Perhaps when mentioning a particular class of ship, we can use all caps (e.g., HONOR HARRINGTON class). So I guess to sum up, I'd like to see all individual ship names should be in italics and all ship class names should be in CAPS. -- AudubonBallroom 18:18, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Past tense

Please see my comments here. --Piotrus 18:16, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Order of battle vs squadron organization

To keep o. de. b. simple I suggest to describe names of vessels in squadrons just at articles concerning squadrons. Order of battle should be for tactical units like squadron (sometimes division or flotille) and above. That wa I'll try to reedit orders of battle. (inspired by Columbia Cliper's contributions)--dotz 20:25, September 14, 2009 (UTC)

Non-canon Art

I think we should have a paragraph at Honorverse:Editing Conventions regarding non-canon, contributed art, in wiki articles. I'd like to use it for illustrative purposes, until a canon image can be found; in which case the contributed image should be replaced. Opinions?--Samanda 17:52, April 17, 2012 (UTC)

Right. --dotz 12:03, May 9, 2012 (UTC)

Copyright policies

Hey guys, I am wondering which page, if any, discusses copyright. As in - this Wikia is reusing David Weber's copyrighted IP, extensively, through within some limitations (it does not reproduce the original text of the books). Did DW ever sanctioned this site, or at least similar fan page activities? Is there a general law that allows us to create fan fiction (in the encyclopedic form, but still fan fiction)? Those questions are related to a discussion at Wikipedia, where an editor is censoring a link to Honorverse wikia from the Honorverse Wikpedia article under the argument that this wikia is violating (Weber's) copyrights, i.e. being techically a pirate site, and Wikipedia does not link to pirate sites. The argument is in spirit ridicolous, I know, but it has some standing in the letter of the law. I wanted to rebuke her by pointing at least to a section here saying that this wikia does not post copies of copyright content, but even that is missing...

Oh, a final small note. I also cannot find here any note about copyrights regarding editor's edits. Usually most wikias would say that edits by editors (like me and you) are licenced under a free licencse, which legally means we have the right to change one another's content, and others can legally copy the content of this website. I'd suggest copying the relavant parts from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights#Contributors.27_rights_and_obligations for this. Cheers, Piotrus (talk) 09:17, June 2, 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out, Piotrus! Haven't checked Wikipedia's Honorverse material in a while, mainly because of people like Nikkimaria... I'll do some checking and try to bring our copyright situation up to date. I also intend to go through the images we use and assure that every one of them has a proper license tag.

Best, -- SaganamiFan (talk) 09:41, June 3, 2014 (UTC)

The wikipedia thread is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Honorverse#Can_we_link_honorverse.wikia.com_from_external_links.3F . The gist of Nikkimaria's argument seems to be that you don't respect fair use. If you could respond to that (with reasonable arguments; remember Wikipedia's discussion are not votes), it would help deter her argument. I think you follow fair use, mostly (through some changes may be required, primarily related to deocrative elements). PS. If anyone here is active in the bar or has  a way of reaching MWW, and could get him to say that he thinks Honorverse wikia is respecting his copyrights and fair use it would be wonderful. In his own interest, too, of course, Honorverse would benefit from a clear link from Wikipedia here, and vice versa... Piotrus (talk) 11:04, June 3, 2014 (UTC)

1. Let's check wikia copyright/fair use provisions (probably they actively censor nudity in fact).
2. There was Honorverse link at David Weber's page. There is no such a link now (may be good idea would be to migrate wikia content to Weber's platform and write there).
3. I supported Piotrus on enwiki talk page. --dotz (talk) 12:23, June 3, 2014 (UTC)

To me it looks like the biggest issue is our copying of the publisher's summaries. I mean the book covers and other images have the copyright tags on them. That editor talks about us being sued, and for honestly what, we are not making money off of the wiki nor are we exhibiting the information as our creations. I can honestly say that the overall majority of our articles are our summaries we got from the material. The way that individual was insinuating was very rude, however I do see the merit in the argument and we will investigate further. I surely hope we can be both linked to the wikipedia and back with David Weber's personal site. --Farragut79 (talk) 10:09, June 4, 2014 (UTC)

Actually I think (as I argued on Wikipedia at [1] that the use of blurbs is fine (through it would be smart for Baen to consider licencing the blurbs under Creative Commons, I mean, presumably they are more then fine with people sharing the blurbs?). What is more of a problem is 1) the use of fair use content for deocrative purposes (the bubble images like [[:Image:Button Biography 01.png]]), 2) the presense of untagged images, a clear copyvio (I haven't had time to look at all of them, I checked 5, I found one untagged at image:David Mattingly's reworked Honor Harrington for the OBS Cover.jpg) and 3) through I am not concinvinced this is really an issue, presence of fair use galleries. I think 2) would be the easiest to address (review all images, tag or delete the one's missing a tag). I'd appreciate comments about 1) and 3) (and of course, who'll volunteer for 2)?). 166.104.240.88 10:33, June 4, 2014 (UTC)

BTW, when someone starts his or her userpage with "THIS USER KNOWS WHAT IT MEANS TO BE A WIKIPEDIAN" ... that pretty much tells me all I need to know... -- SaganamiFan (talk) 13:04, June 4, 2014 (UTC)

I don't think it's going to help commenting on editors. Has anyone considered getting in touch with Baen over this? And maybe David Weber? Dougweller (talk) 14:03, June 5, 2014 (UTC)

Per Doug. Commenting on others is not constructive. What would be would be if we could gain consensus on 1) replacing the following images with freely licenced versions: image:Button Biography 01.png,  image:Button characters 01.png,  image:Button Chronology 01.png,  image:Button Geography 01.png,  image:Button Honorverse Material 01.png,  image:Button Spacecraft 01.png,  image:Button Star Nations 01.png,  image:Button Technology 01.png, 2) reviewing all other images to ensure all are properly tagged and 3) trying to get official permission from the copyright holders (Baen/Weber) about this. PS. I just found this: Template:From Wikimedia. It's clearly inadequate; files should link to their original copies at Wikipedia/Commons. An image such as File:Chess.jpg may be violating Creative Commons attribution licence requirements, for example. Or the template may be inappopriate - without a link back, how can we trust this image really came from Wikipedia? -- Piotrus (talk) 07:16, June 9, 2014 (UTC)

First of all: I won't apologize for being negative in the face of some Wikipedia admin with a god complex calling us liars and thieves. I'm fully aware that it's not constructive, just as I'm pretty convinced that this person's crusade against wikias isn't. That said, I don't wanna get into this further, and I have no intention of interacting with these people in any way. They are a nice reminder to me of why I left that nut-house years ago, and I really don't give a damn if they allow a link to our wiki or not.

The button images were created years ago to make the wiki a little more accessable to newcomers; pretty sure they don't properly display on handheld devices anyway (I couldn't tell because I never access the wiki from such devices) and they can effectively go away. There are enough other main page designs out there to inspire someone, it just won't be me.

A large part of the Wikipedia images can basically go away. We have numerous articles with pictures that are essentially just dictionary entries that exist because a certain term was mentioned once. And lots of images just for the sake of having images. Safehold Wiki has the same problem. I tried to keep this limited, but for the longest time, was pretty much alone with that task. The "From Wikimedia" template clearly needs to be updated, but that too will be someone else's job. Same goes for going through the rest of the images and adding proper licenses.

Which brings me to my final point: I took some time to think, and I'm gonna severely dial back my involvement with this project. I love the Honorverse and I love you guys, but all the feedback I ever read is people commenting on how much this wiki sucks and how we do this wrong and that wrong -- sprinkled with highlights like the current allegations, which, as you may have noticed, I am personally insulted by. And things are only going to get worse when the Honoverse goes mainstream and the usual crowd of 14-year-old fanboys starts taking this place over.

I still want to add new content when new source material becomes available, but I will effectivly stop uploading anything and will keep my hands out of all the housekeeping, cleaning up after other people, and policy decisions. After more than half a decade, I am, in a very literal sense, tired of it.

Sorry for this rant (believe me, the first version included a lot more profanity) but I like and respect you guys too much to pretend like I'm fine with how things are currently going. I'll take some time off now, I obviously need it. -- SaganamiFan (talk) 23:12, June 21, 2014 (UTC)

@User:SaganamiFan, I am really sorry that my thread had brought you closer to burn out. For what it's worth, I think you and others here are doing a fantastic job, and my primary concern was and is to get more exposure to your tremendous efforts. That said, some more care should be taken regarding copyrights, but it is not so much yours (ours) fault, as, IMHO, Baen's Bar and MWW. Baen did go further than many other publishers with their free library and no DRMs, but they didn't go fair enough - for example, they did not release their works under a CC-BY-NC (i.e. make fansites/fanstuff legal). Heck, even the 163x verse, which is very inviting of fan submissions, is using traditional copyright... which, technically, makes most of we do here illegal. Sigh. At the very least, my recommednation would be thus: while cleaning up (deleting) problematic imges is a useful task (through hardly as useful as imprioving content), DID ANYIONE FOLLOW UP ON MY SUGGESTION OF ASKING MWW/BAEN ABOUT OFFICIALLY ENDORSING AND/OR LINKING HERE? I recently added a Wikia link to Wikipedia here, and I am pretty sure it will be unchallenged: here is a game publisher that officially endorsed a wikia, thus making the link removal from Wikipedia very tough. Can we do the same for Honorverse? If we do, most concerns related to copyrigh will become moot.Piotrus (talk) 10:55, July 1, 2014 (UTC)

My revolutionary ideas:

1. delete all picture content :) and unable download
2. migrate to Weber's site

Talking about:

1. enwiki - Nikkimaria's crusade is selective - he/she don't want to challenge wikias with really strong communities like both Fallout wikis (I asked about his expetise in Fallout area),
2. dewiki - so called "~Feldzug in Polen" (1939 affair) can't be edited by unlogged (statistically - Polish) users - gues why? :)

Conclusion - Wikipedia is really terrible and unfair environment :) --dotz (talk) 16:48, June 23, 2014 (UTC)

That's going a bit too far, through I like "migrate to Weber's site" a bit. No, we should not live Wikia, because it's more stable than MWW's site which can expire more easily. But we should get him to link to us. Piotrus (talk) 10:55, July 1, 2014 (UTC)

The original question was put out, are we illegally using David Weber's IP? Of course you must ask, if yes, what do we gain from this? Monetary - no, passing off the Honorverse or something similar as our own - no, are we talking away traffic from Mr Weber's site - no, are we taking away potential customers from Mr Weber - no, what we are - a bunch of fans who have come together to work something that we all love. In fact, I can accurately assume that we have helped with the success of the Honorverse by just being a repository for knowledge of the books and lately, fandom.

In recent times, wikis very much like our own have been increasingly been associated with their subject matter to help fans. I mean I would like to see the wiki connected with David Weber's site, however, if it doesn't happen, then it doesn't happen. As some of you know, I take many breaks from the wiki because I get so annoyed with on how people generally act on here, and of course i burned out - well, I would say I am burnt out from early when it was myself for a bit. --Farragut79 (talk) 05:16, June 24, 2014 (UTC)

@[[User:Farragut79]] Yes, I'd like to think that sites like this help the publishers, too. Now, can we get them to say thank you to us by officially endorsing us? Piotrus (talk) 10:55, July 1, 2014 (UTC)

I have a simple suggestion: it seems that Nikkimaria's anti-wiki campaign is really an anti-wikia campaign. She probably uses a search script to monitor wikia links. Therefore, if you register a custom domain where honorverse.wikia would redirect to, such as let's say honorversewiki.com, it probably would not be removed. It may be worth a try. -- a Wikia contributor

A few days of thinking this over, I am in Saganami's camp. We put a lot of work into this fan project. I mean putting an author's work into an easy reference site considered illegal? Again, we don't pass this off as our own work, but I am going to be officially retiring from this wiki. I love the universe, but to satisfy my own personal itch about categorizing ships and such, I will just put it on a word doc. Good luck guys and this is the symbolic straw for me. --Farragut79 (talk) 21:10, July 5, 2014 (UTC)

As the Tales of Honor officially links to us here, my recent re-addition of Honorverse wikia link to Wikipedia is unchallenged, with my rationale being - we are officially endorsed (or at least, linked to). ([2]) Still, if anyone can get MWW and Baen and other official sites to link to us, it would be good. Piotrus (talk) 10:57, July 28, 2014 (UTC)

Reference tag chapters

I'm thinking of modifying the reference tag templates for the books (particularly the main series and spinoffs; not sure yet what to do with the anthologies and such) to allow specifying chapters, so readers can look up information more easily. Like so: (HH2:^3,5)
Is this a worthwhile exercise? If so, and if it's implemented, should it become a convention? - Histidine (talk) 13:41, July 10, 2014 (UTC)

IMHO good idea. --dotz (talk) 09:25, July 23, 2014 (UTC)

Ideally, we should link page, too. --Piotrus (talk) 10:58, July 28, 2014 (UTC)

Okay. I briefly considered writing a parser to intelligently write a reference string using given chapter and page numbers, but didn't feel like investing the time (and it would probably have ended up broken anyway). Instead, the user specifies the string by hand, e.g. ch.4 p.5-11 in (HH1^{ch.4 p.5-11})

Works with main series, Crown of Slaves, Saganami Island, Star Kingdom, Manticore Ascendant and short stories (and the raw novel template, if so desired). Tales of Honor didn't have its own template, so I didn't implement this change for it. Might still want some formatting changes, like a separator of some kind between the novel abbreviation and the superscript. - Histidine (talk) 12:55, July 28, 2014 (UTC)