Forum:CT Archive/Legends names in Canon

Due to recent discussion on IRC and several current status article nominations, it has come to my attention that a basic assumption many editors including myself have been making when creating canon articles is not actually covered by any current policy. This assumption is that if a name from Legends is reintroduced in canon, then it applies to the same subjects, even if no canon source explicitly shows this to be the case.

The two nominations relevant to this are Tector-class Star Destroyer and Flatcake. In both cases it has been assumed that the film subjects that were identified by these names in Legends still possess those names, although no canon source specifically identifies these subjects by these names. There are many other articles that would be affected though, for example, Mosep Binneed appears in the novel Canto Bight, although the book does not explicitly show an image of the Nimbanel we see in ANH and ROTJ and label them as Binneed. As such without this policy with would have to treat those Nimbanel as separate unidentified Nimbanel until they are specifically identified as still being Binneed.

My argument for this to be made policy is that in my eyes it falls under a similar logic to the duck test, it is a safe assumption that if a name from Legends is reintroduced in canon then that name is still considered to apply to the characters it applied to in Legends by the Lucasfilm Story Group group and authors. There is no other reason they would reintroduce a name, and there have so far been no cases where a name has been reintroduced but shown to apply to a different or separate character.

As such I propose we add the following to our notability policy under the new canon subjects section: '''“New canon subjects that share a name with a Star Wars Legends counterpart may be assumed to be the same as that Legends counterpart, particularly if the canon subject is not visually identified in canon source material. For example: Mosep Binneed, who appears in the canon short story "The Ride" but is not pictured, may be assumed to be the same Mosep Binneed visually identified by Legends source material.”'''

To be perfectly clear, this policy would not re-implement any articles deleted under the social media purge, or make any other assumptions about material coming over from legends. For example, we cannot assume that Binneed is still Jabba's accountant as no canon source states this. We should not assume a character’s name or even parts of their name are the same as Legends until the name is used in a canon source, meaning if only a character's surname is reintroduced from Legends then we don't assume the first name is as well. This policy in fact should not really result in much change to existing articles or creation of any new articles at all, it is simply putting what we already do down in writing. Ayrehead02 (talk) 10:19, March 17, 2018 (UTC)

Support

 * 1) Ayrehead02 (talk) 10:19, March 17, 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

 * Just by scanning through the appearances section of each film, I've put together a by no means comprehensive list of characters from the original trilogy that are effected by this here. Keep in mind this is only characters and there are likely far more than this when you include weapons, ships, prequel characters etc. Ayrehead02 (talk) 10:19, March 17, 2018 (UTC)