Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Star Trek
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A recent move relating to Star Trek (film) has broken over 500 links, some more obvious than others. Made some headway but would be good to fix all links 2A0A:EF40:277:FF01:B090:1457:CF1B:6603 (talk) 07:27, 2 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I just noticed that User:GreyElfGT (talk) has gone through a whole load of Star Trek Enterprise episode articles (and probably others) and reordered the reviews chronologically. I reverted one case (Rogue Planet (Star Trek: Enterprise)) before realising this had been done across multiple articles, including GA rated articles such as Affliction (Star Trek: Enterprise). In the past editors making substantial changes have been noticed and urged to discuss large changes across many articles, perhaps I missed a discussion?
These changes look like they were made in good faith but I feel like this is a mistake that needs to be reverted en masse. I can understand that an editor might look at the sheer quantity of episode articles that list reviews chronology and think that it was the way to thing not realising that was merely the dejure way early stage articles got put together until something better could be done. At best chronology is of very little importance to readers, and it really only matters if a review is more or less contemporary or if it was a more distant retrospective review. But forcing the reviews into a strictly linear chronology undoes the efforts that were made to group reviews by theme (in an ideal world reviews would be organized not simply by chronology or reviewer but by topic, such as writing, acting, direction etc, that stood out in an episode).
Am I wrong? Do other editors think these changes were an improvement and should be kept? -- 109.76.139.141 (talk) 23:39, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My 2¢ on this whole topic follows.
I'm a big fan of Star Trek and was watching TOS since long before TOS Movies even came out, let alone The Next Generation or anything later. I recently concluded a Re-Watch of ALL of my Series/Season DVDs of TOS, TOS Films, The Animated Series, TNG, TNG Films, DS9, Voyager, Picard, Discovery, Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks so that I can further enjoy and keep up with new seasons, as well as the upcoming Section 31. While doing so, I also looked at many (but not all) of the respective Wiki Articles for those Episodes, just like I did when I watched all 20 Seasons + Films of Gunsmoke:
So, Yes, they were Good Faith edits, and many were focused on those articles that had templates such as:
Now... a few things I noticed along the way. When it comes to the Reception sections, yes you very well could serve the reading public better by having prose/paragraphs that grouped various Review Cite's by Subject/Topic, and/or by Contemporary vs. Retro statements. But that's NOT how most Articles appeared to me! Within paragraphs they were NOT necessarily grouped in ANY meaningful way, and further, by Year, they were in NO Particular Order. It was a bit of a pet-peeve to me that no care was taken in grouping them in any meaningful way.
As for Year Lists, I partially agree that it IS a List, and understand the Argument that Wikipedia is not a place for Lists, per se. But from an Editor's perspective, if anyone ELSE adds NEW Reception/Reviews in the Future (or even Cite's add'l older reviews), it's easier to add it to the End of that List, than Mix it in to existing Paragraphs without ANY Thought to Topic, Subject, and/or Year. So that's why I ordered them, and also Grouped those Cites that fell within the same Year into the same paragraph.
My methodology was to keep Contemporary reviews to the Top of the section, in prose/paragraph format, then list Retro reviews afterwards by year, making it easier if anyone wanted to add Sub-sections to differentiate Contemporary V Retro.
I DID give thought, prior to my edits, that, like other articles, for other shows, that it would've been better if the Original Contributors created sub-sections that called out which reviews were Contemporary (i.e., Initial Reaction) versus Retro, because it seemed that many future reviewers, Like Me, might go on a Binge and put up their own "Re-Watch" reviews online... some even being Paid to do so by a Mag/Blog. I'm not paid, and have no interest in Blogging, but I can do what I can do on Wiki.
If you feel the need to go back and group them in some more meaningful way (i.e., by Topic/Subject), feel free, but don't just Revert them entirely. After all, I put in a quite a bit of time to make improvements & make better sense of those Articles, and to help Future Editors to add to them something New, quickly and within the relevant year the Reaction came. I've also Added Reviews from others where there was a Need...ie, where very little was present to begin with. Anyway...
Hope that helps! ~<}:^> --GreyElfGT (talk) 03:10, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"that's NOT how most Articles appeared to me!"also correct, most Star Trek encyclopedia article are not high quality but it is the high quality {{good article}}s and {{Featured article}}s that you should be taking as examples to aspire to. Making the best articles more like the worst articles (diff) is the wrong kind of consistency. All very reasonable and understandable, but unfortunately not an improvement. Wikipedia had changed over the years, in the past many articles were written like lists, particularly reviews being listed chronology, and many articles are still in that condition. (Most of the Voyager articles have seen little or no improvement in years). Over time some articles have improved and WP:PROSE has replaced the lists (or tables) which I hope you can see from the example of the Featured articles.
"from an Editor's perspective"That is called writer focused prose, and it is not a good thing. It is not about making Wikipedia easier for editors, it is about making an encyclopedia better for readers.
"it would've been better if the Original Contributors created sub-sections "I would've created subsections if there was enough content for a subsection, but because of WP:OVERSECTION I did not create subsections when there was not enough to justify it (In most cases there is only really one significant retrospective review, and that's from Keith DeCandido of Tor.com, and I wouldn't wan to create subsection for less than three items but preferably multiple paragraphs of good prose.) Unfortunately you seem to have missed the {{Anchor}} tags I did frequently included that were there to help indicate where a subsection could go eventually (if the section ever got large enough to need subdivision).
I've made some edits to the first episode of Enterprise to show an example what the prose was supposed to be doing. Please look at the Accolades section of the article as a reader first, and consider if the most relevant information has been provided to you (rather than the editor or archivist perspective of the strict chronology of when it was published).
Then please do look at it again as an editor (diff) and hopefully you can see what is supposed to be happening but do feel free to tell me what I've probably got wrong, there's always something. I hope you will find hidden comments I've added helpful (albeit too late), but I know other editors would curse me for using them that heavily.
This has taken up to much time already and there is other work I should be doing, I'll try and tackle a few more episodes over the weekend. -- 109.76.195.249 (talk) 11:39, 21 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]