User talk:BadCatMan

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Please leave a message on my talk page if I can help with anything! -- Captainmike (Talk) 2010-08-30T10:15:28

Will do, and thank you. I've just started learning the art of wiki-ing. – BadCatMan 12:08, August 30, 2010 (UTC)

Warning for plagiarism
Please do not, under any circumstances, copy text from published/copyrighted sources into Memory Beta.

I have identified sections of the article Alaris are copied directly from a FASA book. You should never just copy and paste OCR scanned text here, this is plagiarism. All text should be written or rewritten so that the text is not an exact copy of a source, otherwise this is a serious breach of our policy. Please respond here with an affirmative response that you will cease this illegal activity and correct all text you have posted to this site. -- Captain MKB 06:03, September 14, 2010 (UTC)

I have never simply copy-and-pasted text from a book to an article; I've endeavoured to rewrite every piece, though obviously there'll be the same information in similar terms and its a tricky art to rewrite without losing the meaning. I can't find a sentence in Alaris that completely matches the FASA entry, though some phrases are difficult to change.

I did scan and OCR the book, though only to make it easier to search and lift data from (numbers and stats and so on), and I found it easier to have the text on screen and rewrite above it.

Should I be altering the text to a greater degree? I'll go over my work and make sure nothing has slipped through, – BadCatMan 06:32, September 14, 2010 (UTC)


 * As long as you are cognizant of the fact of plagiarism being possible and are taking steps to avoid it, we should be on good standing here. I apologize If I overreacted when I saw your OCR comment. -- Captain MKB 13:12, September 14, 2010 (UTC)


 * No problem. As a PhD student, it's something that's regularly drummed into me, so I was watching out for it. But I also work as an editor, so I'm in the habit of trying to preserve the original phrasing where possible. That's where my habits come from, so I might not have been rewriting as much I could have. I've attacked a few planets again and altered them further from the source, and I'll try to look out for it more.

– BadCatMan 14:24, September 14, 2010 (UTC)


 * Thanks and I apologize again. Ever vigilant here.. -- Captain MKB 14:27, September 14, 2010 (UTC)

Orion Space
Hey, just a quick note. Since "Orion space" is a descriptor and not a proper name, it should probably be "Orion space" and not "Orion Space". I realize the source material might use a different standard, but by capitalizing it it makes it look like an officially named area when it is only a description. Kind of the difference between saying "Native American Lands" and "Native American lands" -- since they aren't a unified body, the latter is correct. -- Captain MKB 19:24, September 18, 2010 (UTC)


 * The authors love Capitalization, of course, but I'm not so sure this is the case. 'Orion Space' is used 72 times, 'Orion space' twice (but then, it is rife with typos; one of those appears earlier as Orion Space). Generally it's used in the context of a proper name of a region: for example, the Orion Colonies planet entries are divided up between The United Federation of Planets, The Klingon Empire, Orion Space, and the Neutral Zone. Or when it speaks of The Triangle and Orion Space. – BadCatMan 00:54, September 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * Again, I must reiterate -- we use a different standard than the source material. In proper usage, the Klingon Empire and the Republic of China are properly named and capitalized, as are the Pacific Ocean and the Romulan Neutral Zone. But unless Orion space is the realm of a single entity like a government or contained by a defined boundary -- both of which are lacking in the source material, it would no more be capitalized than we would capitalize "international waters" or "the Pacific coast" -- both of which are vague regions that are not properly named individual entities unto themselves. -- Captain MKB 01:00, September 19, 2010 (UTC)


 * Hmm, alright then. I guess everything I would have said under 'Orion Space' works as well in 'Orion Colonies', 'Orion Neutrality Area' and 'Outer Dark' anyway. I'll see about fixing my references to it. – BadCatMan 01:19, September 19, 2010 (UTC)

Where?
Where did you find the map for Rigel IV? Homesun 14:37, February 27, 2011 (UTC)