Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Star Trek

Reviews ordered by year

I just noticed that User:GreyElfGT (talk) has gone through a whole load of Star Trek Enterprise episode articles (and probably others) and reordered the reviews chronologically. I reverted one case (Rogue Planet (Star Trek: Enterprise)) before realising this had been done across multiple articles, including GA rated articles such as Affliction (Star Trek: Enterprise). In the past editors making substantial changes have been noticed and urged to discuss large changes across many articles, perhaps I missed a discussion?

These changes look like they were made in good faith but I feel like this is a mistake that needs to be reverted en masse. I can understand that an editor might look at the sheer quantity of episode articles that list reviews chronology and think that it was the way to thing not realising that was merely the dejure way early stage articles got put together until something better could be done. At best chronology is of very little importance to readers, and it really only matters if a review is more or less contemporary or if it was a more distant retrospective review. But forcing the reviews into a strictly linear chronology undoes the efforts that were made to group reviews by theme (in an ideal world reviews would be organized not simply by chronology or reviewer but by topic, such as writing, acting, direction etc, that stood out in an episode).

Am I wrong? Do other editors think these changes were an improvement and should be kept? -- 109.76.139.141 (talk) 23:39, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

User:GreyElfGT even made this same change to a Featured Article (diff) (May 25, 2004) and changes to Featured Articles usually require a bit more discussion, or get reverted quickly (and as of June 20, 204 it still hasn't been). I really need other editors to indicate if missed something or if there really is consensus for this sort of changes. -- 109.76.139.141 (talk) 23:47, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

My 2¢ on this whole topic follows.

I'm a big fan of Star Trek and was watching TOS since long before TOS Movies even came out, let alone The Next Generation or anything later. I recently concluded a Re-Watch of ALL of my Series/Season DVDs of TOS, TOS Films, The Animated Series, TNG, TNG Films, DS9, Voyager, Picard, Discovery, Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks so that I can further enjoy and keep up with new seasons, as well as the upcoming Section 31. While doing so, I also looked at many (but not all) of the respective Wiki Articles for those Episodes, just like I did when I watched all 20 Seasons + Films of Gunsmoke:

1. to see what Reviewers and Critical Reception had to say...very interesting stuff, at least to me,
2. Other details such as Production, Cast, etc., and,
3. To make Improvements along the way.

So, Yes, they were Good Faith edits, and many were focused on those articles that had templates such as:

• Needs Citation (or a Better Cite)
• Needs Verification
• Dead Link
• Mostly Plot (i.e., not enough in itself to justify a separate Article), and,
• other-such "Needs Improvement" notices... because...

Unless such improvement occurs, the Episode Article is in danger of not retaining that add'l info and being merged back to the Episode List... as I'm just now finding out while watching The Mandalorian season 3 (see THAT discussion on its own page).

Now... a few things I noticed along the way. When it comes to the Reception sections, yes you very well could serve the reading public better by having prose/paragraphs that grouped various Review Cite's by Subject/Topic, and/or by Contemporary vs. Retro statements. But that's NOT how most Articles appeared to me! Within paragraphs they were NOT necessarily grouped in ANY meaningful way, and further, by Year, they were in NO Particular Order. It was a bit of a pet-peeve to me that no care was taken in grouping them in any meaningful way.

As for Year Lists, I partially agree that it IS a List, and understand the Argument that Wikipedia is not a place for Lists, per se. But from an Editor's perspective, if anyone ELSE adds NEW Reception/Reviews in the Future (or even Cite's add'l older reviews), it's easier to add it to the End of that List, than Mix it in to existing Paragraphs without ANY Thought to Topic, Subject, and/or Year. So that's why I ordered them, and also Grouped those Cites that fell within the same Year into the same paragraph.

My methodology was to keep Contemporary reviews to the Top of the section, in prose/paragraph format, then list Retro reviews afterwards by year, making it easier if anyone wanted to add Sub-sections to differentiate Contemporary V Retro.

I DID give thought, prior to my edits, that, like other articles, for other shows, that it would've been better if the Original Contributors created sub-sections that called out which reviews were Contemporary (i.e., Initial Reaction) versus Retro, because it seemed that many future reviewers, Like Me, might go on a Binge and put up their own "Re-Watch" reviews online... some even being Paid to do so by a Mag/Blog. I'm not paid, and have no interest in Blogging, but I can do what I can do on Wiki.

If you feel the need to go back and group them in some more meaningful way (i.e., by Topic/Subject), feel free, but don't just Revert them entirely. After all, I put in a quite a bit of time to make improvements & make better sense of those Articles, and to help Future Editors to add to them something New, quickly and within the relevant year the Reaction came. I've also Added Reviews from others where there was a Need...ie, where very little was present to begin with. Anyway...

Hope that helps! ~<}:^> --GreyElfGT (talk) 03:10, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

That thought process all sounds reasonable to me. Grouping by topic/theme is ideal, but if there is no logic to the section and you are just defining contemporary vs retro then that shouldn't be making the articles any worse. - adamstom97 (talk) 07:39, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

Adam, if you haven't already please look at this (diff), which added a whole lot of dates into the reviews section of a Featured Article. It's emblematic of what happened here. These do all seem like good faith efforts but it is a mistake to make retrograde changes to long stable Featured articles.

GreyElfGT, your massive interest and dedication to the franchise while impressive is beside the point of making better encyclopedia articles here. The time and sheer quantity of your changes and how much work you put in is unfortunately also not important. It is not about you, or me, it is about writing a better encyclopedia article.
In the past when this project was more active an editor would have noticed and reverted and given you helpful advice before you invested all that time, and to focus on the parts of your changes that were more in keeping with the best of this project. This project seems to be largely dead and no longer providing the kind of helpful oversight that would have been very useful here. (Very similar things have happened to me in the past, I used to edit a lot of film and tv articles, but when I tried to cleanup a video game article editors claimed the weird things they were doing there were actually intentional.)

"that's NOT how most Articles appeared to me!" also correct, most Star Trek encyclopedia article are not high quality but it is the high quality {{good article}}s and {{Featured article}}s that you should be taking as examples to aspire to. Making the best articles more like the worst articles (diff) is the wrong kind of consistency. All very reasonable and understandable, but unfortunately not an improvement. Wikipedia had changed over the years, in the past many articles were written like lists, particularly reviews being listed chronology, and many articles are still in that condition. (Most of the Voyager articles have seen little or no improvement in years). Over time some articles have improved and WP:PROSE has replaced the lists (or tables) which I hope you can see from the example of the Featured articles. "from an Editor's perspective" That is called writer focused prose, and it is not a good thing. It is not about making Wikipedia easier for editors, it is about making an encyclopedia better for readers.

"it would've been better if the Original Contributors created sub-sections " I would've created subsections if there was enough content for a subsection, but because of WP:OVERSECTION I did not create subsections when there was not enough to justify it (In most cases there is only really one significant retrospective review, and that's from Keith DeCandido of Tor.com, and I wouldn't wan to create subsection for less than three items but preferably multiple paragraphs of good prose.) Unfortunately you seem to have missed the {{Anchor}} tags I did frequently included that were there to help indicate where a subsection could go eventually (if the section ever got large enough to need subdivision).

I _always_ check the diffs before reverting. If corrections or improvements have been made to references (such as archive urls added) I will usually partially restore those corrections. Again though a lot of the things that might have seem like improvements at the time will need to be reverted, for example adding wikilinks to terms like science fiction might be helpful in a general article, but in context of an episode article for a science fiction show it is WP:OVERLINK (see also WP:SEAOFBLUE). Think about the readers, if somehow a confused reader ends up on an episode article the keyword in the opening sentence is the main article for the show and that is where most need to go for more overview information, rather than the general explanation of the concept of science fiction. Again I will try to salvage what I can but it is likely I will have to wholly revert a huge amount of the edits you have made to the Star Trek Enterprise articles.

I've have other things to do besides edit Wikipedia, it was months before I even noticed these problems, it could be a while before I have time to do cleanup [on the Enterprise episode articles]. The Featured articles are best examples, please look to them. I'm sorry if this is personally discouraging but I hope other editors will help GreyElfGT make better changes in future and help revert to restore the articles. -- 109.76.195.249 (talk) 11:00, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

I've made some edits to the first episode of Enterprise to show an example what the prose was supposed to be doing. Please look at the Accolades section of the article as a reader first, and consider if the most relevant information has been provided to you (rather than the editor or archivist perspective of the strict chronology of when it was published).
Then please do look at it again as an editor (diff) and hopefully you can see what is supposed to be happening but do feel free to tell me what I've probably got wrong, there's always something. I hope you will find hidden comments I've added helpful (albeit too late), but I know other editors would curse me for using them that heavily.
This has taken up to much time already and there is other work I should be doing, I'll try and tackle a few more episodes over the weekend. -- 109.76.195.249 (talk) 11:39, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

I've done some cleanup on various Enterprise season 1 articles. Dear Doctor had nothing to do with User:GreyElfGT but set a bad example with the same problem of overtly including the chronology of the references in the prose so i reorganized it and several other articles from season 1. -- 109.79.168.147 (talk) 17:42, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

I went back into my Contributions list to hit all the ST Articles I edited, looking to "de-list-ified by Year, reverting to prose", and to do so without Reverting anything else that I may have "fixed" like Typos & such... Hopefully I was successful enough that you don't have to Revert-Fix any more of my GF changes... last thing I want to do is "make work" for anyone else. Specifically, I removed Years that are already in the Cites, and Grouped Ratings by "Best of ALL ST" vs "Best of Series" and by Negative vs Positive reviews, and by Other Topic (such as Time Travel ep's vs Borg ep's vs... you get the idea). Also added Hidden Commentary on one article ("The Measure of a Man") to help section it off by Topic, since it has a very large "Reception" content. Hope that helps ~<}:^> --GreyElfGT (talk) 11:53, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

Some points: 1) Wikipedia articles vary in quality and comprehensiveness, and so just something existing one way or another isn't innately a good reason for something to be the way it is. 2) I would say that given the large amount of time the majority of Trek episodes have existed, especially before the internet was as omnipresent as it is, separating contemporary from retrospective reviews is a good idea, but it would depend on the sourcing available for the specific pages, and strict chronologies run into WP:PROSELINE issues and should almost always be avoided. Likewise, different contexts and sourcing would mean some articles just aren't going to be standardized, and trying to make them conform isn't a good use of time. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 15:26, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

I should also note that the Idea of ordering Reception By Year was not initially mine alone... I had run across other ST Episode Articles that already had Reviews listed in order of Year, and worse, those in the same year were not even Grouped into the same paragraph, but instead had only one line per review/citation (which bugged me). Anyway, that probably contributed to why I edited other ST Episode Articles to order and group by year, intending to "help" maintain consistency across articles. Of course, now that I know better, I'll keep an Eye out for any others that are listed that way and fix them. ThanQ All for your feedback! ~<}:^> --GreyElfGT (talk) 13:57, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

That's because there was a prolific editor who would add prose line stuff to every article they could; that means articles need to be cleaned up, not that it's how reception sections are supposed to be organized. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^talk 14:50, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Requested move at Talk:Dominion War#Requested move 14 July 2024

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Dominion War#Requested move 14 July 2024 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. 98𝚃𝙸𝙶𝙴𝚁𝙸𝚄𝚂 • [𝚃𝙰𝙻𝙺] 22:30, 14 July 2024 (UTC)