Talk:Kamea Arano

Sources and Canonicity

Anyone have any feedback or tips for creating character articles like this?--JesseTheHobbit (talk) 18:00, 21 February 2017 (EST)

I could use to know as well. PS: There is a button next to the minus on top bar named as sign - press it to know that you've written your part here. --ManganMan (talk) 17:41, 21 February 2017 (EST)

I'm not familiar with the game, but I can help on the technical side of things. I could do with a bit of information first, though, so I know what it is you want to do, and what you need help with. How significant a character is Kamea Arano? Does she occupy a position that comes with a title, like being a state leader, or a senior military figure, like the leader of a House military? Where is the information on her located? If it's inside the game, then how it's cited as a reference will be different to how it's cited if there's a written web page containing information on her, for example. BrokenMnemonic (talk) 03:10, 22 February 2017 (EST)

Well, as far as I know, the most known information sources for these informations are the BattleTech Video Game Kickstarter Updates & upcoming Michael A. Stackpole's ebooks for some backers. The rest of information as far as I know are the mixed fan/dev speculations on the official forums. --ManganMan (talk) 05:57, 22 February 2017 (EST)

Ok, that complicates things a little bit. Everything to do with the game at the moment is apocryphal as far as Sarna is concerned, but there's basically going to be two types of information - canon and fanon (with the caveat that I don't mean that in the traditional sense). If HBS have said something, or it's in one of Stackpole's books, then it's canonical to the game. If it's just speculation, then it's fanon. Fanon detail shouldn't be put on Sarna.

For the official HBS/Stackpole detail, we'll need a way of creating references, so that people reading the pages know where they can go back to the source material. We've had a lot of problems in the past with citing things from message boards like the official CGL forums, because every time the forum crashes or is relaunched, the material disappears. Normally, what we do is include a copy of the quoted post/ruling in the Talk page for the article, with a link connecting it back to the original post. That's not going to be possible if the only material available is online material though, because quoting large chunks of text directly would count as plagiarism.

Is the material in the Kickstarter updates open for general viewing, or are some of the updates backer-only? That'll create another wrinkle in how things are handled. Do you know if HBS will be producing anything in hardcopy format of any kind? BrokenMnemonic (talk) 06:05, 22 February 2017 (EST)

To the best of my knowledge, all this Kickstarter info is published as promotional material to the general public (as opposed to exclusive content, like Heir Apparent for example). It never occurred to me that it might not be. For the time being, given that it's still an ongoing Kickstarter project, I think the correct reference for this information would be HBS' BattleTech (Video Game) as the Kickstarter update presentation and the online forum are virtually the only official channels where information pertaining to the game is published. Frabby (talk) 09:11, 22 February 2017 (EST)

How do we future-proof the articles against that material being removed at some point? It's easy with canon sources, as the vast majority of the detail is in published texts, and where it isn't, it's been small snippets of information. I don't think we've had to deal with a large amount of information from a purely online source before... BrokenMnemonic (talk) 09:53, 22 February 2017 (EST)