Forum:Licensed Production Staff

Forums → Ten Forward → Licensed Production Staff (reply • watch)

So, earlier a link to Kevin Michael Richardson, a voice-worker on several licensed games was removed. In my view, credited contributers to licensed works merit their own pages. Furthermore, I think one could make an argument that the role of creative staff (including writers, artists, and performers) are analogous to the author of licensed books (which, of course, we have many articles on).

Anyway I'm not looking to start a big issue here - to be honest, part of me worries that it's just too frivolous; I just thought it would be time to have a discussion on the matter. --- Jaz 04:10, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Side note: maybe we can form a Memory Alpha:Notability policy based on the result of our discussion here. --- Jaz 04:12, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

A notability policy would be a good idea. I don't think it should be very rigorous though - I don't want articles currently accepted as legitimate deleted. With canon articles, there should really be no notability requirement, but an acknowledgment that one-off mentions are sometimes better off merged into larger articles, on a case by case basis.

For production articles, I wouldn't mind seeing voice actors get their own pages, but likewise, I wouldn't particularly care if they did not.– Cleanse 05:47, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Considering that we have ink artists and such for comics, I see no reason to not have voice actors. --OuroborosCobra ^talk 05:56, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

On the other hand, we need to keep in mind that there's a whole wiki concentrating on exactly that topic - "licensed Trek". That doesn't mean that we have to remove each and every bit of information related to that, but there has to be some point in the chain from, say, the game itself, over the company that produced the game, over "important" staff for that game, to "minor" staff and finally concepts from the game story itself, where we say: Stop! This may better be suited for startrek.wikia.com. The same obviously goes for all other kinds of "licensed Trek".

I'd rather have less information duplicated here that might better be suited there - I think it would make both Wikis (MA and MB) better encyclopedias if we didn't allow too many articles about such stuff here, but instead suggested visitors to also contribute to "the other" wiki. -- Cid Highwind 12:33, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I was always told, that actors (voice or on screen) from the computer games should not have their own article when they only appeared in Star Trek video games. And I think this is a good "rule". We have several articles for performers who worked on both, computer games AND one of the series or the films. But I have to agree that we have articles for several ink artists who also never worked on a film or series... And now I am confused. – Tom 12:51, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Two points I would like to make. Firstly, I absolutely agree that whatever policy we make should not put put any of our current articles (such as ink artists) at risk of deletion. Secondly, I think that considering our mandate is to create an "encyclopedia and reference for everything related to Star Trek" without any regard for other wikis, I think we should, in general, lean towards inclusion. Unless you want to start talking about changing the fundamental mandate of the wiki, we are here to discuss everything related to Star Trek. The canon aspect only really comes in to play as pertaining to in-universe articles. Everything else should be fair game. --- Jaz 03:12, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not entirely certain where I fall on this one as yet... but if we do include voice work, then we'd also have to include everyone on this list and the various other video games. -- Sulfur 10:31, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't see the problem with that. Isn't that part of our mandate? It seems lately here, people are afraid to make changes where it will lead to our encyclopedia being less complete in the short term, while encompassing more in the long-term. Far too often I've seen arguments such as "if we include X we have to write about all of Y". To me, that seems like people are just giving up. There's something really wrong with that. --- Jaz 12:24, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Well - why don't we complete our article about the USS Titan with all the data from the new novel series? Why don't we add the exact locations of various star systems as described in the Star Trek Star Charts. Why don't we use Joe Blow's latest slash fanfiction to collect information about the Geordi/Worf relationship? All of it is "Star Trek" in some way, isn't it?

The fact is that, while the main page blurb says "everything", we decided very early on that this is supposed to mean "everything canon (with some liberty in the exact definition of 'canon'), plus everything production-wise for the canon productions, plus licensed works itself".

The very simple question being brought up here is, then: Do we want to extend this definition to something else? - and not because we're "afraid" or because we've "given up" (at least that's not my intention here), but because of the greater picture: Allowing an article on one "minor contributor" to one "non-canon" production would necessarily mean to allow articles on all contributors to all productions. We'd end up with tons of articles of people we could only describe with one-sentence stubs a la: "X worked on Trek production Y".

...unless, of course, we'd also allow unrelated (to Trek) information to be put in those articles - and in that case, I really am afraid. Afraid of those articles becoming even bigger "Six degrees of..."-games than our actor articles in that case, with even more off-site WP links to make sense of the fragmentary information.

Another implicit question that hasn't been answered yet, is: What would be wrong about the decision to not have those articles here, but instead invite people to also contribute to Memory Beta instead? -- Cid Highwind 13:33, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

I've always kind of wondered about this, myself. It strikes me kind of odd that we have articles on people who worked on one type of licensed product (namely, books) but no articles for those who worked on another type of licensed product (video games). They are both licensed products, yet the books get special treatment. Why is that? If we choose not to include people who worked on video games, then we also shouldn't have articles for those who worked on books; likewise, if we keep articles for authors, artists, inkers, etc. then we should have articles for game designers, directors, voice actors, etc. ... Right? I'm more in the inclusive camp, myself, but I can definitely see why having such articles may be excessive. --From Andoria with Love 20:10, 15 April 2008 (UTC)