| Ten Forward → Unreliable narrator syndrome (Reply | Watch) |
A lot of lip service has been paid to 'contradictions' and 'identifying alternate continuities' lately in discussing Star Trek publications. The modus operandi of Memory Beta has been well established that Star Trek, even though there have been various publishers, editors and perspectives on the 'flavor' of the universe, is in fact one universe. All published works are intended to take place in the canon Star Trek continuity by their very license to be published under the name "Star Trek" - the licensee is constrained to make their work reflect canon, and the owner(s) of the franchise enforce rules that require licensees use the correct editorial perspective to make their work 'fit' with canon.
If any source falters at this, it has never been MB's place to marginalize them, as we are not a website providing critical reviews. We catalogue information from sources without critiquing the quality of the source - we are encyclopedic.
None of this is up for debate here, but there is an avenue to be explored, which is to regularize how we mark and separate sources and identify contradictory data. to be encyclopedic, when we are vetting any sort of dissonant facts, we have to present them and then try to find the right way to present that data without introducing unencyclopedic perspective like assigning them a status as 'untrue'.
However, there is a large body of information in Memory Beta that is not presented properly. -- Captain MKB 12:39, February 18, 2017 (UTC)
Unreliable narrator[]
Case in point: The Final Reflection versus The Final Reflection (23rd century) -- the majority of this novel is a novel within the Star Trek universe. It is a story of a Klingon, Krenn, told to an ambassador, Tagore, and then written in to a novel by a 23rd century author based on the ambassador's notes, and edited by a 23rd century editor based on established rules of that era's censorship and modes of prose publishing.
The minor details of characters in that narrative are hardly likely to be accurate for encyclopedic presentation. Did Krenn list the names of his entire childhood klin zha team to Tagore who then passed those notes off to 23rd century Ford and 23rd century Panitch? Or is it more likely 23rd century Ford created all of those people's nuances as complete fiction?
A work such as that can at least be locked down under the editing perspective that we need to mark a lot of that data as 'unreliable' ... we know exactly how much of that work is admittedly fabricated.
But there are many more cases where characters 'tell tales' -- for example, when Garak imparts technical data about a planet or ship, do we really take it as face value? Or do we take all narration on the site and mark it as "maybe"? Garak is a liar, but so then might any character color their statements and give us figures and info that we cant add to the database?
And in cases where contradictions occur, are we skipping over this possibility and going right to discussion that the two contradictory stories are in different continuities? Rather than addressing the fact that someone quoted a false piece of data, and they exist in the same reality, just where one character was truthful and the other was off? -- Captain MKB 12:39, February 18, 2017 (UTC)