Forum:CT Archive/New canon policy

Now that Star Wars has a "new canon," Wookieepedia needs to update its Canon policy. Just in case anyone has missed any of the news since Friday, April 25, the following now applies to canon: These facts and the statements made in the following proposal come from these two StarWars.com news articles and from comments made by Lucasfilm senior editor Jennifer Heddle on Twitter. You can peruse all the things she said here.
 * The Expanded Universe is non-canon and is now under the new "Legends" banner
 * The official canon is now the six Star Wars films, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Star Wars Rebels, and just about everything new that comes out from this point forward (with a few exceptions)
 * The new canon officially begins on screen with Star Wars Rebels and in print with the aptly named novel A New Dawn, which will be released on September 2, 2014

I have rewritten our Canon policy page, which was in desperate need anyway, to reflect these changes. I invite everyone to read the draft here. I will preface this by saying that I have made no major changes overall, besides the introduction of the "new canon" and rewriting everything. This proposal operates on the basic assumption that Wookieepedia is going to divide its articles, in some form, into "Canon" and "Legends." That is a forthcoming discussion, and I ask that everyone please refrain from going off on that discussion tangent here. Please reserve that discussion for that appropriate forum. Everyone, I'm sure, also understands that we're facing a lot of changes to how we do things in the weeks and months ahead. I know we're all upset about the EU, but I ask that everyone please approach this objectively and without emotionalism.

Perhaps more so than any of our other policy pages, this Canon policy is a living document. It can, and certainly will need to be, updated and revised as we move forward. Heddle herself has said that the canon status of everything isn't crystal clear right now, and there are certain things they haven't even figured out yet (this is all explained in the proposal). As they make decisions and announce updates, we can update this policy as needed.

I will now summarize the changes in the proposal:
 * The page is now divided into two sections: New canon and Expanded Universe. Each section describes how its respective canon system works and provides a solid overall frame of reference for what sources are now new canon and what sources apply to the EU.
 * The New canon section devotes a subsection specifically to the comments made by Heddle in regards to the canonicity of certain EU sources. For example, there is EU material that is still ongoing, and she admits they haven't fully determined everything yet. Once they do, this section can be updated.
 * The EU section begins by laying out the Holocron continuity database's former tiered canon hierarchy system, which you can also read about in our Canon article. This system is now defunct in lieu of the Lucasfilm Story Group.
 * The section after that details how the old canon system still applies to our Legends articles. In short, we're not changing how we write our Expanded Universe articles. The idea that higher canon trumps conflicting lower canon in the EU still applies. I've laid out a more simplified explanation of the tiered canon hierarchy, since it has the potential to be confusing. Again, this isn't changing anything, but is only simplifying the explanation to help our editors understand the relationship between what I've termed Cinematic canon and Expanded canon.
 * The only significant departure here is that we're basically shedding the "ambiguous canon" tag. Now that all of the EU is non-canon, calling something in the EU "ambiguous canon" is pointless. So we will simply document that material as normal without any declarations of ambiguity.

That's about it. There's quite a bit here to digest, so I'm happy to answer any questions and clarify anything that needs it. Toprawa and Ralltiir (talk) 02:13, April 28, 2014 (UTC)

Support

 * 1) Toprawa and Ralltiir (talk) 02:13, April 28, 2014 (UTC)