Template talk:Realworld

Creation...
It was suggested in Ten Forward to make a template that would mark a page as real world POV as opposed to in universe POV. I remembered something they do at Wookiepedia for eras and I though it could be adapted to service us. At first I thought maybe icons tagging the articles with more info, like "tech", "people", whatever with background colors to separate real from in-universe. I talked about it on IRC and I was told that that would be too much. So I just decided that there would only be one tag, and all other articles would be assumed to be in-universe. The text and image are up for discussion. I chose Dr. Wykoff for what should be obvious reasons. Anyway, thats the idea. Comments? --Bp 23:13, 10 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Why the TM symbol? Jaz talk |undefined 23:32, 10 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Maybe it's my imagination but that seems to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to the phrase restricted validity resource. :P --Vedek Dukat Talk 23:39, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Yeah its justa stupid joke. The text will have to be something different. Maybe just "Reality" or something. That also sounds jokey. I dunno. Suggestions please. --Bp 23:45, 10 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Suggestion:
 * >>> This article is written from a Production POV <<<
 * Further comments regarding this template on MA:TF. -- Cid Highwind 10:01, 11 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I expanded "POV" to "point of view" just for clarity's sake, reorganized the text to 3 lines to better fill the space in the box, and shrunk the box a bit to eliminate extra space. Do we want to keep "Real World", or use "Production" or some other phrase? -- Renegade54 13:21, 11 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I like the design! I have no real input on the wording, it might still need work but i'm at a loss what would help.


 * what i do know is that this would be easy to include in episode pages -- through the sidebar templates. :)-- Captain M.K.B. 13:32, 11 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't want to include it in the sidebar template itself, but if all the pages have to be touched anyway, it would be easy to add this template at the same time. Alternatively, this seems to be an easy bot task for most of the pages - as long as there's a list that contains only these Production (or whatever) POV articles, it should be fine. -- Cid Highwind 14:06, 11 May 2006 (UTC)


 * About the Wykoff thing, From the article:
 * According to Wykoff, the only real chance Russell had at recovering his sanity was to cease writing these stories as he believed they were providing an entirely false world for him. 
 * Russell refused to give up his stories and became increasingly unstable when he could no longer separate his 'fiction' from reality. 
 * As Wykoff tried to help Benny separate the real world from fiction, this template will separate the Real World articles from the Star Trek universe articles. At least that was the reference or joke. That's why I put Wykoff in the box and used "Real World". If the Wykoff picture is out, then the "Real World" should be changed to something more straight as well. Like "production" suggested earlier.
 * Also, you can see how it will look on articles at Lolita Fatjo. --Bp 16:29, 11 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I have suggested a compromise, it's a filmstrip with Wykoff in the frame. So what do you think of that Cid? --Bp 03:02, 20 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Honestly, not much, I'm afraid. This Wykoff thing was an obscure reference/joke from the beginning, now it's an obscure reference that additionally isn't even recognizable due to the image itself being so small. I think there are two options: If it is more important for this message to be "funny" than to be "instantly recognizable", then we should go back to the Wykoff image without any alteration. If the opposite is the case, we should use an icon. Trying to have both at the same time will only achieve neither... Obviously, I personally prefer the latter option. -- Cid Highwind 16:45, 20 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I would say that one isn't more important than the other, they are equally important! It's just as recognizable as a piece of film as the last one. The reference is just a little added fun. I wouldn't really call it obscure, the reference is pretty obvious, Dr. Wykoff tried to make Benny separate fiction from reality. the image may be small, but if you see the original Wykoff picture it is still obvious enough they are the same, and even if you dont know who the man is in the picture, it is obviously a man on film. It still achieves everything the plain white-on-black icon did, just with something extra. --Bp 18:36, 20 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Personally, I love the template as it is, although I agree that "production pov" would probably be better than "real world pov". The image, I think, is fine the way it is: it's a man on a film strip, indicating a production pov. The fact that the image is of Dr. Wykoff is a nice touch that doesn't hurt the template any; it's a great little reference to the seperation of reality and fiction. Sure, people may not recognize him at first, but once (and if) they do and they get the reference, they'll be like "oh, yeah!" And if they never get the reference, then oh, well. No harm, no foul. I see nothing wrong with it. (A bit off-topic – I just had the strangest feeling of deja vu, like I had written this comment before. Oh, well...) --From Andoria with Love 23:12, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Template usage
Is there a policy about where the template is to be used? I mean a user recently added it to novel pages. I find that doubtful, because except for the navigation and book sidebar the text follows our. If it is to be added to the novels it soon has to go to the movies and episodes as well, but there too the main body is not written from the POV of the audience. -- Kobi 08:43, 5 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Some people have already been adding it to the episode summaries, something I'm not entirely certain I agree with. -- Sulfur 11:54, 5 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, aren't episode pages as a whole supposed to be written from a production POV (BTW, I still don't agree with the wording "real world", because "production" is what we use in all other cases)? They aren't in-universe articles, right? -- Cid Highwind 11:57, 5 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The episode pages are a mix. The mini-summary at the top is kindof a production/real world pov, while the bigger summary seems to be a far-future historian in-universe POV, yet one that is also cognizant of alternate timelines, personal secrets, and other things that only the viewers would know about. Then everything else like backgound info and guest list is production info/pov. It think the it should probably be left off of episodes. Episodes are already obvious due to the episode sidebar. --Bp 01:34, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


 * That doesn't make any sense. Obviously, the summary section contains a summary of the story of a published product (=production POV), not a summary of in-universe events that are, for reasons unknown, padded out with information that should be unknown in-universe, and split up in "Act/Chapter 1-X" subsections that are absolutely useless from an in-universe POV. Episode articles, as a whole, are "production POV". -- Cid Highwind 12:12, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The story is in-universe. The episode summary is (or should be) a condensed version of what you see on screen, which is in-universe. Just because we, as viewers, are privy to multiple storylines at once, giving us information that characters might not have in one story line or another, doesn't mean that it's not an in-universe POV. The production stuff is (or should be) limited to the background section (or in some rare cases, italicized text within the body). All the terms we're defining as in universe articles are from information gleaned from the episodes themselves; if the episodes aren't in-universe, then neither is the information taken from them. -- Renegade54 14:43, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm with Sulfur- the realworld template doesn't seem right on these pages. I think the episode, movie, and novel pages are really a third type of thing: not entirely real-word, and not really in-universe either. I don't think an additional template is required. The episode, movie, and novel templates already speak to this. 9er 15:05, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The Episodes and Novels should not be from a Real-POV. It's just that not every episode has a descent summary as is, so many of them need weeding out. And certainly the same goes with the books. the Real-Pov should only be on Actors, and "Star Trek-IRL" things, like "Phase II" and "Tillman Water Reclamation Center." - AJ Halliwell 04:11, 12 July 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, can we please think this through again before deciding anything? Title and wording of the template as it is now (including the phrase "real world POV" instead of "production POV") might cloud this issue somewhat, but the original intent, as can be seen in the discussions above and related discussions on other talk pages, was to separate articles that need to adhere to our canon policy from articles that do not.
 * So the question becomes: Do episode articles need to adhere to our canon policy? I personally believe that they don't, for the reasons stated above. On the other hand, if we decide that they do, that would mean that non-canonical parts would need to be removed/moved/changed - starting, however strange that might sound, with the article title which right now clearly marks each episode article as a "franchise reference" instead of an "in-universe reference"... -- Cid Highwind 13:43, 12 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree that the episode names are labels applied by the franchise, in this case, the writers, but what else would we use to reference them? How else can we label a series of events in a variety of character's lives? And it seems rather incongruous, at least to me, that the episode articles would be real world (ie production) POV, but everything mentioned (and linked to) in the episode article, such as characters, ships, items, terminology, etc. are in-universe. Am I alone in scratching my head over this? -- Renegade54 14:28, 12 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't know... the relation between "in-universe" and "production POV" isn't really a symmetrical one. The latter one can simply link to the first, while the other way around, we need to label links as "references". This has been the case for all the time now, so I don't really see that problem. -- Cid Highwind 14:44, 12 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Okay, wow, coming into this kinda late in the game, but I really don't see what the problem is here, aside from the fact that it hasn't been changed from "real world POV" to "production POV". I was always under the impression that the episode articles were told from an out-of-universe perspective – after all, I doubt the characters actually give their adventures catchy titles. Also, some of the summaries themselves are told in a production perspective ("the screen is black", "this episode begins..."), and, in fact, the entire page of an episode article a layed out in production form (summary, memorable quotes, cast & crew, background info). So, like I said... I'm not entirely sure what the problem is here... ;) --From Andoria with Love 02:11, 13 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Right, an article about an episode must be real-world, because there are no episodes in-universe. Forum:Episode pages are production POV --Bp 12:20, 4 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Having said that, I still don't think that we should have the 'realworld' template on episode summaries. Which is what the entire conversation is about. -- Sulfur 12:39, 4 November 2006 (UTC)


 * oh, yeah... right. --Bp 13:08, 4 November 2006 (UTC)


 * So, can someone reiterate for me - why exactly should this template not be used on an episode article if that article is, in fact, written from this so-called "Realworld/Production POV"? -- Cid Highwind 23:34, 21 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, I disagree with the new text sulfur added; I think all Real POV pages, including novels and comics, should have the template. The only exception I was prepared to make was episodes, which have the very identifiable sidebar that makes them obviously episodes, but I don't think it would be bad to also have the realworld template on episodes. I was just ok with leaving it off of episodes, now I think we should go all the way and include it on episodes as well, simply because I gave an inch before and lost a mile, now I have to be completely rigid and argue that every article that is written from the real POV, including episodes, novels, comics, and films, should have the template. --Bp 23:49, 21 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Surely it's not the "point of view" that is real or not real, but the subject matter of the article. Everything we write on MA is "from a real world point of view", because we are writing it from here in the real world. A better template would be one that distinguishes those articles whose subject matter is located inside the fictional universe of Star Trek (e.g. articles describing episodes, characters, objects, places and events etc.) from those whose subject matter is located outside of it (e.g. articles describing actors, production crew, film studios, etc.). Isn't that the distinction we're trying to achieve? -Taduolus 23:59, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
 * No. The articles in the encyclopedia are supposed to be written from the point-of-view of archivists at Memory Alpha, the Federation library planet, and in the year 4-thousand-something. All of the "Meta" articles about things that the archivists at this fictional facility inside the Trek universe could not know about (like episodes and actors) are marked with this template. The real-pov articles are written from our POV here in the real world. --Bp 00:11, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Seems to me "real world" is pretty self explanatory, when you really think about it. Anything that is about Star Trek (episode titles, reference guides), that is, it is incorporated in the production of Star Trek (performers, designers), or based on Star Trek itself (novels, games) is "real world"-- and everything else, including anything you might see, hear or use if you placed yourself into the Star Trek universe is "in universe". --Alan del Beccio 00:11, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Seems as if I'm not the only one thinking along those lines... As mentioned elsewhere, I think that in the end, every article listed in Category:Star Trek, or one of its sub-categories, should have this template, and vice versa. -- Cid Highwind 00:18, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Bp, what you have just written is a much better explanation of why the template exists and how it should be used than what is currently on the template page itself. Could we have that on the template page, please?! -Taduolus 00:19, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I personally find this whole discussion entertaining. Still. We go around and around in circles on this every few months, and have done so since the creation of the template in the first place.  What I added to the actual usage section earlier this evening for the template is how the template is currently being used, figuring that we should at least make a note of that while this entire discussion ensues.
 * In terms of novels, comics, and episode summaries, I still stand by the reasoning that they are half-and-half. If we tag 'em with this template, then we should be writing the summaries from the real world POV rather than the POV that we seem to be attempting to stick to.  Either that, or we split up the episode articles into a summary article, and then a production article.  That way it'll be obvious... the one is a realworld POV, the other in-universe.
 * Grand scheme of things, I think that this template has caused more grief than it has solved, as is evident by this entire talk page. Perhaps we need another template that is an "in-universe" one, and we use that one on everything in-universe, and get rid of the 'realworld' on entirely. :) -- Sulfur 00:31, 22 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I guess I can agree that episode articles fall within something of a gray area, being that they are the focal points that link "in universe" and "real world" information together on Memory Alpha as some sort of perspective exchange point, this actor played this character, except we don't think of them as characters, but as individuals in this other universe. I think that rather than getting rid of the "real world" template, which I believe still applies to episodes as much as the others I mentioned above, we could create a second template for all produced episodes and films...either that or figure out a way to reformat episode pages, or learn to accept them as they are. --Alan del Beccio 02:26, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Actors who were characters of the same name
Recently there have been some found "mix ups" with adding template:realworld to "actors who were also characters" articles, like Stephen Hawking, Dwight Frye, etc. One solution to this would be to create a separate page for the "actor" (ie Stephen Hawking (actor) from the "character" (ie Stephen Hawking). It seems we did something similiar with Maury Ginsberg/Maury Ginsberg (actor).--Alan del Beccio 19:27, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The bot simply added the template to all pages that were in a XXX performers, writers and directors category. Theodore Sturgeon was also affected. -- Kobi 13:44, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Maury Ginsberg, the Star Trek dentist is presumably a different person from Maury Ginsberg the real life actor dude, to explain that case. -- Captain M.K.B. 13:47, 9 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with Mike here, if an actor from 1996 plays a character from 1969, they are most likely not the same person, despite having the same name. I think this is a case where two articles make sense, and I also think that the "played himself" bit needs to be removed from the actor page.
 * In cases where the "actor" and the "character" are definitely the same (like Stephen Hawking), I think we should stick to one article and have the "actor" part of the information in a background section - in that case, without using this template. -- Cid Highwind 19:43, 9 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Note that our logic has changed here, and we now separate "real world" person from "in-universe" person (ie Stephen Hawking (actor) vs Stephen Hawking, Isaac Asimov (author) vs Isaac Asimov, etc). -- Sulfur 14:53, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Use of this template @ the BSG Wiki
I've updated this template into a "better" version to work with our wiki. You can check it out at Template:POV Real. The CSS I can get for you if you want.. :-) Shane 02:14, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * what makes that version "better"? its a valid question... To me, other than some template redundancy for featured articles (which how I understand they are handled here, are not restricted to Real World POV), its a simple styleistic change that is no better or worse than the current one.  Personally, I prefer the style of the one here, but thats just my opinion. -- 6/6  Neural Transceiver 02:29, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I've integrated our FA, QA, and "spoken" icons into the side. Tricia Helfer article is, right now, the only example. Shane 02:37, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Maybe not "better", but I changed a few things. Shane 03:14, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I did this before, and also integrated shortcut, but it was shot down. --Bp 04:52, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
 * for now...it isn't broken..don't fix it. -- 6/6 Neural Transceiver 05:30, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Category
Should we have a category for articles written in the RW POV? It would be simple enough since all we would have to do is add the category to the template. Koweja 06:41, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Since nobody seemed to object I've gone ahead and created the category Articles written from the real world point of view. Koweja 16:27, 18 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I've reverted this. Sorry not to see this earlier, but new categories must first be discussed at Memory Alpha:Category suggestions. --OuroborosCobra talk 16:29, 18 March 2007 (UTC)


 * We also already have a discussion about this potential category on that page: Template_talk:Realworld. The concerns noted there haven't really been worked out, yet. -- Cid Highwind 17:05, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Sorry about that - didn't know there was a new cat suggestion process. Koweja 21:03, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Category:Real world POV

 * moved from category suggestions.

To put on the "RealWorld" template, as I've seen it pop up on several articles that it shouldn't, and as far as I can tell There's no way to keep track of where it is. - AJ Halliwell 06:34, 30 July 2006 (UTC)


 * We already have Category:Star Trek, a category that was first suggested as Category for "Meta-Trek" (name to be found), then agreed upon using that name as production information category, for all "out of universe" POV articles about the franchise. The "Realworld" template also was initially suggested as a template for "Meta-Trek" articles, so that template and the existing category should be placed on the same pages - ideally by replacing existing category links with the template first and then adding the category to the template. I oppose creating yet another category just because there's a controversy about what exactly might constitute "Meta-Trek"... -- Cid Highwind 11:00, 30 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Note: The "Star Trek" category already has several sub-categories, so perhaps it should not be added automatically by the template. It's safe to say, however, that any article that is in "Star Trek", or a subcategory of that, should probably have the "Meta Trek"/"Production"/"Realworld" template. -- Cid Highwind 11:36, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't involved in that particular political debate- I just want a way to see what pages have the Template on them (such as the PNA articles) because I know of at least two episodes they've been added to, several novels, and some things that should be from an In-universe POV. (IE: If someone put the Realworld template on Cardassia.) I know Cardassia doesn't constitute "Meta-Trek"... - AJ Halliwell 11:41, 30 July 2006 (UTC)


 * And now you're officially a part of that debate... because others think that this template should be added to all novel and episode pages, for example. Congratulations... ;)
 * On the other hand, I don't think categories are generally a good idea if the rationale for them is "to find out on which pages a template doesn't belong". I think the "What links here" of that template would be a much better tool (that doesn't confuse readers at the same time) in this case. -- Cid Highwind 11:53, 30 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Archived. --Alan del Beccio 05:13, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Credit for image
Mike Sussman's asked me how he'd be able to receive photo credit for the "real world article" banner, since it's a blow up of a photo he took and submitted for a mirror universe episode writeup. --Defiant 17:05, May 29, 2012 (UTC)
 * Here's the image proper, and the photo it was based on. -- sulfur 17:15, May 29, 2012 (UTC)

...both of which cite Mike Sussman as the source, I see. I've suggested that he might like to contribute to this discussion, rather than contacting me directly. --Defiant 17:19, May 29, 2012 (UTC)
 * I added the specific photo credit to the articletype image today. Not sure how it was missed previously. Whoops. -- sulfur 17:33, May 29, 2012 (UTC)