Mistipedia talk:Levels of Canon

This is an initial draft. I'll be finishing up the various templates soon. What do people think of these categories? Did I miss anything? Anything that could be better defined? - Gonzoron 22:28, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Looks great, but I'm a little confused on Potential-Canon. It sounds like it should fit with either Canon or Questionably Canon. --Nerit 01:05, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I guess what I was trying to say is that Potential-Canon is stuff that might have been canon if the creators ever got to publish it. So it's not canon, because it was never officially published. (For example, VRGttMists would have probably gone through more revisions before publication, and Rucht said that the Salazar contradiction would have been resolved. So the .pdf that was released is not what would have been the final canon form.) I suppose it could be Questionably Canon, but I think it's a "little more canon" than that... since it reflects the intent of the creators. For example, the details of S's bracer have been revealed by Mangrum and Naylor on our forums, and the fact that she would have found her own corpse on Blaustein. If they had written Gaz VI, no doubt that would've become canon. But they didn't get to. That seems different to me than MCS placing Berez (mentioned in I, Strahd) on the Barovia map in a random location, or the TSR trading cards saying Tavelia was an illusionist while she's an Expert in Gaz II. Does that make any sense? -- Gonzoron 04:47, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes! I suppose it's a proper distinction. Are the images not yet uploaded or is there a problem with the templates? --Nerit 05:16, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

The Former... I'll get around to finding/making some good images soon, unless someone beats me to it. Also, I don't like the way I did the small template. looks nice in isolation, but it doesn't play nice with text around it. (The intent was that the large ones would be like banners that interrupt text, the small ones would just be an icon embedded in text, but the table format doesn't seem to like that. So I'll probably be changing them to just images eventually. -- Gonzoron 13:46, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Uhhhh...Template:netbook-canon is categorizing pages as netbooks instead of sections utilizing netbook canon info. --Nerit 05:20, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

oops. fixed. --Gonzoron 14:08, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

So, are magazines canon?DeepShadow 04:47, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

good question. I would say that Dungeon and Dragon are, but no others. I know that the new online versions are explicitly considered official, but I'm not sure if there was any official word on the paper version. I suppose we could add another category if needed, but there's already so many and it is probably confusing, or we could put it in "Questionalbly", but personally, I say canon. Anyone know of any particularly egregious stuff in the D&D magazines that really aught not to be canon? IIRC, a lot of the Dungeon Valachan adventures got incorporated into Gaz IV, no? Keep in mind, we're not the final arbiters of whether something is canon or not, we're just trying to document things. A new RL book could come out at any time and validate or invalidate anything from anywhere. So really these categories just best guesses anyway. --Gonzoron 14:06, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Organization of Canon Level Labels - From an aesthetic and organizational standpoint, I'd prefer the canon level label to be place at the very bottom of each page, so the graphics don't block out the actual content of the page. I recommend placing the canon level notices just above the category banner. Canon level notices should be listed in the following order from top to bottom: Canon > Potentially-Canon > Netbook-Canon > Questionably-Canon > Declared Non-Canon > Homebrew Non-Canon (including speculation/extrapolation). What are y'all's thoughts? --ChrisNichols 20:30, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

The Canon level labels are not meant to label an entire page, only a section. Sometimes a whole page will fall under a certain level of canon, but that will probably be the exception, not the rule. See Malus Sceleris for an example of the intended usage. The graphics are meant to be a sort of banner separating the sections by canonicity. I've been meaning to get around to figuring out how to put a box around the label to make it look nicer. Would that help make it clearer that it's a heading/banner, and not a label for the page? -- Gonzoron 20:40, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Ah, OK. Yes, making it clearer that these are headers would be nice. I didn't catch that they were supposed to be used that way. (Wikipedia has some graphics like these that are tagged at the end of articles; I thought that's how these were supposed to be used.)

So, should articles be divided into sections using headers similar to what I've produced below? --ChrisNichols 20:56, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Not necessarily, please see the issue I raise at the bottom.Cure 14:19, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Canon Information

CONTENT GOES HERE

---

Potentially-Canon Information

CONTENT GOES HERE

---

Declared Non-Canon Information

CONTENT GOES HERE

---

Netbook-Canon Information

CONTENT GOES HERE

---

Homebrew Information

CONTENT GOES HERE

---

(Unfortunately, this poses a problem when dealing with a fully developed article that blends the various canon levels into a unified whole, such as domain articles.)

I have no real problem with that, though I'd prefer

---

Homebrew Information

CONTENT GOES HERE

---

But I won't argue too much. In this case, the section headings do the job of warning the reader of the canon-level of the upcoming text. When the canon levels are blended together, that's where the "small" versions of the templates come in. They are meant to be inserted mid-text. I still need to work on them a bit, since they break the flow of the text. I plan on making them less obtrusive and more like Template:Spec. -- Gonzoron 01:02, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Awesome. I'll try to format articles in this manner (header, canon level, then content) in the future. Thanks for the clarification! --ChrisNichols 05:31, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

This won't work at least without revision. A Canon section excludes the Statisitcs section which is very often canon too. And in fact we have canon statisicts for a great many NPC so this needs to be done differently. Take a look at Eleni of Toyalis to see the problem in action. In fact this is particularly troublesome in that it not only invites the reader to think that any given bunch of statistics are not canon but moreover obliges any future editor to dig through the history of each entry or to go back to the sources (if given) to try to restablish the truth of the matter.Cure 14:12, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

If "Canon Info" is a level 1 heading and the Statistics are canon, they should be a level 2 heading under the Canon section. I've edited Eleni of Toyalis to comply. Is that acceptable, cure? (see the prior revision if you want to see the problem cure pointed out. If we like this formatting, should I just include the section headings in the banner templates before we go too crazy adding headings everywhere? -- Gonzoron 16:07, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

OK, I've thought about this quite a bit today, and even consulted with my wife.  :) And now, I've completely changed my mind. I don't like the canonicity section headings. Or rather, I don't like them as level-1 headings. Cure's example of the stats makes me think that the level-1 headings should be whatever makes most sense, and then the canonicity headers should be beneath that.

I realize this is hard to picture without an example. So I made one. Compare Malus Sceleris with Malus Sceleris (Testing) and Malus Sceleris (Testing 2). Personally, I like Malus Sceleris (Testing) best. But I could be convinced to use Malus Sceleris (Testing 2). I think both are clearly superior to the original. My thinking is basically that from a usability perspective, the average user is going to expect a page to be organized into logical sections. Canonicity is an important thing to note, but it's not THE most important organizational criteria for most people. Thoughts? -- Gonzoron 01:27, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I like Malus Sceleris (Testing 2) better. But YMMV. --ChrisNichols 08:21, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

OK, even so, I don't think I can put the 2nd level headings into the template, because we might hit a case where a different 2nd level heading makes sense, and the canonicity heading would be level 3, etc. In other words, we can ask the user to make an appropriate level heading to separate the canon categories, along with using the template. But the template itself can't pre-suppose the level at which it will be used. Interested to see Cure and Deepshadow's votes at least before changing the guideline... -- Gonzoron 16:31, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Both are a definite step in the right direction. To the eye, version 2 is appealing. But until I try it a few times I can't pass a grounded judgement on the matter. My suspicion is that there will be exceptions. But as long as it is highly recommended rather than obligatory, that probably won`t matter. Excellent work in any case.Cure 07:23, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

On another note: Are web enhancements of Canon material Canon or Potential-Canon? I'm leaning to Canon. Thoughts? -- Gonzoron 16:31, 20 April 2010 (UTC)