Forum:What Is Memory Beta

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From Memory Beta's homepage: "Memory Beta is a wikipedia-style database for licensed Star Trek works, including novels, comic books, RPG sourcebooks, video games and any other licensed works." (quoted as of 15-Apr-2020).

A recent discussion on merging content from the Star Trek Online game has expanded beyond its scope by talking about the purpose of Memory Beta, or the type of content it should and shant cover.

Summarizing, one point in this discussion is that Memory Beta aims to cover everything there is about licensed Star Trek. While there are several Trek-based Wikis out there, all of them have a narrowed focus. For example, Memory Alpha only covers canon Trek information, STOWiki and Star Trek Timelines wikia cover information from their source games at the exclusion of other sources. Thus, Memory Beta is the only wiki in existence with the scope to cover all of licensed Trek.

The counterpoint presented in the discussion is that Memory Beta covers licensed material but should focus on content relevant to the overall Trek narrative. The example is that "random" ships from games like Star Trek: Armada are lumped together in lists and templates with ships that appear in a particular story and have a particular history, thus making it hard to look for something with a story attached to it rather than a random in-game item. I'd like to include a pertinent statement nicked from another talk page that illustrates the underlying reason for this argument:

"over the past couple of months, multiple novelists -- Greg Cox, Dayton Ward, KRAD, Christopher Bennett, and others -- have informed me that they no longer use Memory Beta as a resource because it's either not updated or too hard to find the relevant information these days -- all those articles on randomly-generated ships from games like Armada drowning out the "real" ships in any given category or navbox is one commonly-repeated example. We've gone from being a premiere resource for novelists and comics and RPG writers and constantly being thanked in their acknowledgement sections to being considered useless by them"

The core question is what Memory Beta is about: Should it aim to be the encyclopedic database of every licensed Star Trek material, or narrow its focus?

For the sake of argument, I subscribe to the former position. Kind regards, -- Markonian 12:26, April 15, 2020 (UTC)

I agree that Memory Beta should include every character, ship, race, location, organization, technology and item from every licensed Star Trek story or product, including episodes, movies, video games, novels, comics, video games, RPG games, card games, trading cards and action figures. Even if Memory Beta's original purpose was to focus on the non-canon stuff. Other franchises like Doctor Who and Star Wars have a single wiki devoted to the entire franchise, so I think Star Trek should also have at least one wiki that is complete.

However, I don't think we need an article for every card or action figure. That would be going too far. One article for every card set and every toy line should be good enough. There are other wikis like CardGuide Wiki and Figure Realm for people who want an article for each individual card or toy. --NetSpiker (talk) 12:53, April 15, 2020 (UTC)

I think the stated mission statement is on point, obviously. The most major narrowing of focus that was done was to eliminate fan-fiction, unpublished/undocumented material, and meta material dealing with episodes and movies.

• Fan fiction is anything that wasnt rightfully published - licensed. this eliminates a lot of the internet's Star Trek.
• unpublished/undocumented - this has been a talking point more often than other things. If ST Picard shows something, its canon, we write about it - pretty simple. But if the showrunner posts on social media additional details that didnt make it into the episode, that information does not have the same value. it didnt make it into the episode. even though the person is a writer, and wrote the official version, the fact that their social media post is not a publication is why the line is drawn. info in the episode or publication is valid, things they post on their own time is not.
• meta material is what Memory Alpha does. lists of actors from the shows, stuntmen, cast lists and call sheets. all behind the scenes and all of it dealing with episodes and movies, and not publications. we have a meta section for performers in video games, however. Colm Meaney has never been in a video game or audio book, so he's not represented in our meta POV. the rest of the DS9 cast HAS appeared in video games. that's there that line is drawn.

Now in terms of STO, there is a ton of "behind the scenes" data - meta, but about a publication - STO is a game which counts as a licensed thing. so yes, this is covered under our current policy. however, as my comment about POV indicates, this info needs to be organized.

As to the rest, we had a pretty big introspection a few years ago about continuity versus inclusion - which means we should be taking every step to make sure that if a reader needs to be informed theyre getting to a section about STO or Armada or another book - that each piece would be separate and cited, and in cases where it seems like there are different continuities at play, it would be noted. its a practice that is evolving and being constructive about it is the best approach rather than re-hashing the the status quo of a past era when different aims were at play. we have to look forward, not backward - looking at the less organized version of the wiki will only discourage us, so lets imagine a better one where future novelists will find it more relevant rather than re-hashing years of criticism for a form of the wiki that no longer exists -- captainmike 13:03, April 15, 2020 (UTC)

Something else just came to mind. Should we have a separate article for every duty officer in Star Trek Online, even though there are more than 36,000 of them? Each one is technically a separate character, but this would mean years of work for whoever chooses to set this task for themselves. And by the time the work is finished, Star Trek Online may not even exist anymore (since MMOs do sometimes get shut down) making the whole endeavor pointless. --NetSpiker (talk) 13:06, April 15, 2020 (UTC)

Captainmike, I agree with what you said about writer's or showrunner's comments online, with one sole exception: I think author's annotations should be used if they identify an unnamed movie character with a named novel character. Christopher L. Bennett's Ex Machina annotations contain many examples of this. --NetSpiker (talk) 13:17, April 15, 2020 (UTC)

Well, so much for me taking a break. I was writing all of this when Mike made his edit here, so forgive me if he's already covered some of this.

Popping back in here to clarify something, because I feel it's important, even though I desperately want a break from this place. We write from an in universe perspective, and the only real world articles we have are about the sources of in universe material. Therefore we do not cover memorabilia, because there is no "in universe" way to write about t-shirts, mugs, or anything like that, even if they are licensed. We also specifically do not seek to reproduce the work of Memory Alpha. We do not cover aspects of fandom or the history of the "Trekkie culture," despite their massive importance to the Star Trek franchise (that's part of STEU's remit). We are not the "Everything Star Trek Ever" wiki, nor can we ever be. It simply is not our purpose, nor is it feasible. The example NetSpiker used earlier about being like TARDIS wiki also does not apply to us, for several reasons. The nature of Doctor Who "canon" is different than that of Star Trek or Star Wars. The official position of the BBC and the Dcotor Who creators is that every licensed story written about Doctor Who actually happened, somewhere, somewhen. So either "it's all canon" or "there is no 'canon'." That is not true of Star Trek, nor has it ever been. Also, though TARDIS wiki covers most of the Doctor Who franchise, they have an entire list of things they consider "NOTVALID." TARDIS wiki believes that only stories, only narrative, creates the world of Doctor Who, so they do not acknowledge the reference books as anything other than background, or the RPG materials at all; nor any of the many stageplays or choose-your-own-adventure stories because they're either "different every time" or "open-ended." Also, for various idiosyncratic reasons, there are entire licensed DW spin-offs that they choose to ignore, like Vienna. They also do not cover memorabilia. The are not the "everything Doctor Who wiki" anymore than we or Memory Alpha are that for Trek. The focus, for all of us, writing from an in-universe perspective, is on the narrative content.

To clarify something about my comments that Markonian quoted above, I do not want to remove data about STO or the Armada ships, or anything of the sort. I simply do not want that data to overwhelm the rest of what we have, to drown it out and bury it. When it comes to the procedurally-generated ships, a list of them by class/type would be of far greater efficacy than dozens/hundreds of articles saying "there is no history for this ship, only a randomly-generated name for a ship of this class." That would maintain the data, provide it with context, and make sure that the categories are populated with articles on ships that have actually been written about/featured/developed in something. It would solve the "signal-to-noise" ratio problem, while still keeping the relevant data.

If the action figure lines, for example, include bio cards or "in universe" content the way the old GI Joe figures did, then yes, an article on the line should be here, so the source can be cited when that material is included in, say the Jean-Luc Picard article. But we do not need a "Jean-Luc Picard (Playmates)" article to describe the action figure itself, because it cannot be written about from an in universe perspective. We handle the the CCG and The Official Starships Collection in the proper manner, as NetSpiker says, we don't need an article for every card, nor do we need a "USS Voyager (Eaglemoss)" article to describe the model in order for the content of its magazine to be referenced. The list article for the collection suffices. Individual stuff like that belongs on a Memorabilia wiki, of which there are several (I think there's even one specifically for Trek memorabilia; if not, there should be).

Likewise, when material from STO gets to the point of being too in-depth to really be useful here, I would much prefer it included in some form of list, and direct readers to STO wiki for the more in depth articles about it there. Just as with Memory Alpha, we do not want to duplicate the work of another wiki so intensively. Hull materials while arguably an in universe content are not particularly relevant to anything other than a player looking to use them on their ship, and STO wiki is the proper venue for an in-depth examination of them. We should definitely have a list, and some example pictures. But we like the ships from Armada, I do not believe we need a separate article for every one, nor for every vanity shield, or anything like that that serves no purpose in the world of the game or Star Trek as a whole, beyond a cosmetic feature for players to enjoy. If the material is lacking on STOwiki, by all means add it there, and go as in depth as you want -- they actively want people to contribute in that fashion. But we don't need to reinvent their wheel, for the sake of "completeness" here. --TimPendragon (talk) 13:24, April 15, 2020 (UTC)