Forum:Policies, sources and made up stuff

I've long been a supporter of the notion that folks can come in here and write articles, whether or not the subject of the article comes from an existing fanfic/film/rpg or is only "in their mind" - as long as it's well-thought out, reasonable and adheres to quality standards. Recent and ongoing discussions on Talk:Porthos and Talk:Lieutenant Sanders, as well as the ongoing saga of Homesun have changed my mind.

On Lieutenant Sanders, for example, Captain Zman has thrown together random bits and pieces of various Enterprise episodes to make what he thinks is a "kewl story." This is not the place for that. Fanfiction.net is full of thirteen year old authors who tell "stories" like that.

Zman and Homesun and their "made up stuff" aside for a second, what happens when one of those preteen FF.net authors comes here and creates (for lack of a better term) "crappy" articles relating to their fic? Like the one where Kirk falls in love with Harry Mudd and they have an adventure with Spiderman and the Easter Bunny on the USS Tooth Fairy? Because that kind of story is out there. It's author could show up here, and under current conditions, say that its inclusion here is perfectly valid. Does anyone really want that to happen? Because once it starts, the flood of ill-thought and badly-formatted articles will overtake the quality material here. What about slash, especially as regards to canon characters? How would we deal with that? How do we handle crossovers, like the glut of ST vs. SW stuff out there?

Getting back to the "immediate threat"... I propose we establish a policy that all information submitted to the wiki must come from existing fan fiction/films/online games/webcomics/whatever that has its own website (complete or in progress), or is part of a larger legitimate Trek-based site (ex, TWGuild.com), or is at least somehow published in a way that can be referenced (Star Trek: Unity episodes on YouTube).

Right now, those restrictions would discount most of my material from inclusion, and that's a sacrifice I'd gladly make to stem the blood-dimmed tide of tripe from overwhelming the wiki.

So, the idea is on the table. Discuss. --TimPendragon 18:30, 3 December 2006 (UTC)