Forum:CT Archive/Social media posts as canon sources

Over the last few years, Wookieepedia has become increasingly-reliant on social media posts for adding information to canon pages. This is ultimately to the detriment of our mission to be the premier resource for Star Wars information. While tweets from Story Group members, for example, may illustrate a degree of what Lucasfilm creatives are thinking at the time of a release, the Story Group is never going to make future authors be beholden to what Pablo Hidalgo or Matt Martin said in a tweet. Using these tweets in articles suggests they are clearly-defined canon, when in reality this may not be the case.

There are a few examples of this being a problem, from the standpoint of being 100% factual. Such as...


 * 1) Two popularly-cited tweets are this one and this one from Leland Chee, where he says that it's easier to keep the current names until there's an actual need to change them. Easier though it may be, Wookieepedia is so prominent in the Star Wars fandom that people just accept whatever we write as canon. So to create virtually any page we want, adapted from Legends, on the basis of that tweet alone creates the impression that those names are canonical. It may be true that the name will never be changed, but for our purposes it's prudent to wait for that name to be in an official source, lest it be contradicted, as opposed to creating it now because an editor really really really wants to make the page.
 * 2) On Interdictor vessel, a tweet from Matt Martin is being used to say that Interdictor-class Star Destroyers and Immobilizer 418 cruisers are the same thing. In reality, Matt said he would "assume it's meant to be the same." An assumption, even from a Story Group member, is not a canonical fact.
 * 3) Similarly, on Executor-class Star Dreadnought, Matt is being cited as saying he can "imagine" that any ship of that size has a fair amount of customization. This is being used to state, as if canon, that all ships of that type "had some degree of customization." The word "imagine," like "assume," is an expression of an opinion and should not be extrapolated as fact.
 * 4) Pablo Hidalgo recently set his tweets to auto-delete after a certain period of time, and he has explicitly said in the past that his tweets should not be used to cite canon on Wookieepedia.

To that end, I am proposing that we add a new section to Canon policy titled "What is not a reliable resource?" The clause we would add to that section would make it official that, for the purposes of Wookieepedia, tweets are not a valid source of in-universe information. We can use them for out-of-universe information, such as production info and authorial intent, but not for in-universe content.

That clause is as follows:


 * Social media posts from Lucasfilm Story Group members or Star Wars authors are not valid independent sources of in-universe information. The only social media posts allowed as independent sources of in-universe information are from official Star Wars brand accounts, such as the official Star Wars Twitter and Facebook page. Posts from Story Group members and authors may be used in out-of-universe pages and page sections as needed, such as to document authorial intent or background development.

Please note that the passage of this CT would mean that the tweet from Leland Chee in example 1 cannot be used as the sole basis for creating a canon page.

Also, the passage of this CT will typically only apply to future page creation. Existing use-cases are generally grandfathered in, though tweets can be removed when found and admins can use their discretion to delete existing pages. References will also be removed if they deal with examples like 2 and 3 above, where opinions are being extrapolated as fact. - Brandon Rhea (talk) 05:06, January 16, 2018 (UTC)

Support

 * 1) Brandon Rhea (talk) 05:06, January 16, 2018 (UTC)