Memory Alpha talk:Content policy

Suggest title change - "Resource policy"
Since it's always coming up whether "x is canon, y is non-canon" in terms of using it as a reference here, might I suggest that this be renamed as Resource policy, and we try and refer to things as valid and invalid resources, to avoid confusion with the true usage of canon (since things that are non-canon can be valid resources (for background information, etc)). This is not our policy on what is canon - we don't get to define that. Instead, it is a policy on what resources can be used in our articles, and should reflect that. -- Michael Warren | Talk 10:34, 28 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Full agreement and support. This policy already does not really talk about what is canon and what not, but about "validity". The title should reflect that. -- Cid Highwind 12:01, 28 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Also agreed. I assume this is just a matter of a name change? --Alan 16:22, 22 August 2009 (UTC)
 * After the note below, agree. - 16:30, February 20, 2010 (UTC)
 * We all aboard on this? If yes, should we have a bot change all the links already on the talk pages, or just leave a redirect? - 22:33, July 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * Not totally convinced today, but if we do it, I can have SulfBot make the changes. And we'd definitely leave an RD. -- sulfur 14:13, July 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * Why not convinced sulfur? - 06:31, July 14, 2010 (UTC)

Content policy?
This didn't go anywhere the last time, so I'd like to bring it up again, combined with another suggestion for the new title: Content policy - this page already describes what we'd like to have as content (and not just based on what resources), so this is actually a better title. It might also be slightly less confusing than "resource policy". -- Cid Highwind 12:50, February 13, 2011 (UTC)
 * This name is much better than "resource policy", which encompasses far more than this one does already. The current policy is already pretty complex and detailed, and to expand to cover all resources for everything?  That's getting to be a bit much.  Content is more suggestive (to me) that it covers the main content. -- sulfur 12:57, February 13, 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't really think the "resource" suggestion failed so much because of the name, but rather because there isn't really a need to do this. I know why it's been suggested, and I support changing the name of this, but I don't think anymore that it will stop the pointless debates on what is canon, for the most part, like we want it to. That said, I'm still more inclined to this being called the "resource policy" than the "content policy," since the latter seems more heavy handed as it implies that it covers "what content can be created" rather then "what resources can be used to create content." -  13:13, February 13, 2011 (UTC)
 * Either suggestion works for me.–Cleanse ( talk 00:39, February 14, 2011 (UTC)

Splitting this up
I've taken some time to create a split version of the policy here. While I don't consider this to be a final draft, I think it's a good place to start if we're going to move towards something as described in the sections above. I'm not sure would could get entirely away from using the word "canon" with this, as it does tend to be the term that applies the best here, but I think listing the resources removed from the definition of what the site uses as canon might be a step in the right direction towards alleviating the issues we have. - 21:54, April 3, 2013 (UTC)


 * That is a good beginning; I think it's something we are going to need to address especially given the discussion at Talk:Star Trek (video game) and the likelihood such discussion will come up again. 31dot (talk) 23:01, April 3, 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I doubt that's going to be last of it no matter what we do, but I think this might help. Part of the reason I kept the word "canon" is that even if we had a policy about what "content" we would want or not want to be considered in-universe, in the end the word "canon" was going to come up either way. That said, it's worth noting that every time the words "canon" and "non-canon" are used in these you could replace them with "in-universe content" and "real world content", if anybody is interested in more radical changes. - 23:26, April 3, 2013 (UTC)

Surprisingly, or not, this hasn't attracted much attention, so I've had too much time to think on it. I've made a few more wording changes, mostly removing the word "canon" from the polices, resulting in a "Content policy" (which canon would redirect to) and a "Resource policy". I've also added the text of the FAQ, since that's going to need to be mostly rewritten if we do this, and parts of it may be out of date already. The word "canon" is still going to come up, and the shortcuts and messages that use the word should most be fine even if we change the wording here. - 19:12, April 9, 2013 (UTC)

Last call to object before I make these changes. - 10:10, April 20, 2013 (UTC)