Forum:SH:Eras in infoboxes

So because I'm an idiot and my job is all-consuming, I missed yesterday's Mofference but I wanted to bring up a topic that I had intended to discuss during that meeting. Essentially, I would like for us to discuss and reexamine our use of the "Eras" field in infoboxes, specifically with regards to characters. Currently, our layout guide specifies that for Legends articles, this field is to be occupied with the out-of-universe publishing eras in which those characters appear. These eras were established by Lucasfilm not as in-universe indicators of chronology, but rather, as out-of-universe marketing distinctions. These OOU publishing eras are also represented in Legends articles within the Eras template that displays the corresponding logos for the eras in which those characters appear.

There are several problems with including them in the infoboxes:
 * 1) This field is the only place in the intro, infobox, or main body of the article that includes out-of-universe information. Whereas we are (rightfully) very strict in our goal to ensure that all other information&mdash;outside of the "Behind the scenes" section&mdash;is to be written from an in-universe perspective, this field is arbitrarily required to display OOU information.
 * 2) This information is already provided at the top of the article by the Eras tag. Duplicating it in the infobox is redundant.
 * 3) Inclusion of the OOU era in the infobox has the potential to be misleading to readers. Because it is placed among information which is ostensibly all in-universe, a layman could easily get the impression that the term Legacy era is an in-universe distinction.
 * 4) The above point is reinforced by our currently inconsistent treatment of the era designation. Again, these labels only apply to the individual pieces of media, and not the events within. That is why Crosscurrent is designated as being exclusively in the Legacy era by Lucasfilm, and not in both the Legacy era and the Old Republic era; while some events within the book take place in 5000 BBY, the novel itself is focused on events in 41 ABY, and therefore Del Rey only lists it as being in the Legacy era within the novel chronology in the front of the book itself. However, for articles like Relin Druur, the infobox (and the eras template, for that matter) include the Old Republic era, despite the fact that Druur has never appeared in any media that is encompassed within the official Old Republic era designation. While he appeared in-universe during the time of the Old Republic, he has never made an appearance within anything that bore the logo of that publishing era.
 * 5) *It's worth noting that because 5000 BBY appears in Crosscurrent, that specific in-universe year has therefore appeared within media from the Legacy publishing era. This is to say, the publishing eras don't determine when things happen, they only signify the category of the media in which those things appear.
 * 6) *Darth Vectivus is another example much like Druur. He is only mentioned or appears in media belonging to the Rise of the Empire era and the Legacy era, however his article includes the Old Republic era on the basis of information from The Complete Star Wars Encyclopedia. The Encyclopedia is an OOU reference book and therefore does not belong within any publishing era. The information within does not retroactively make Vectivus appear in any Old Republic era media; it simply places him within the in-universe timeframe that this publishing era is attached to.

In light of the fact that placing OOU publishing eras into the in-universe infoboxes is arbitrary, misplaced, redundant, potentially misleading, and done without regard to what an OOU publishing era actually represents, I would like to make a proposal that we remove that mandate from the layout guide. My preference is instead to fill that field with the in-universe eras in which the character was active, as can be found. Obviously there are not in-universe era designations available for every year within the Legends timeline (as was discussed previously here]). In those cases, editors would simply leave the in-universe eras field empty.

The Eras template at the top of the article would still provide the OOU publishing eras but we should ensure that we are only including the logos for the actual pieces of media in which they appear&mdash;i.e. if a character's only appearance is a mention in a Legacy era novel wherein he/she is said to have been alive during the Clone Wars, only the Legacy era logo would appear in the template, as the character never appeared in Rise of the Empire era media.

Okay, so that was just he Legends part of the conversation, now let's talk Canon:

On the flip side of this, we have Canon articles which thusfar have absolutely nothing in any of the Era infobox fields because Lucasfilm scrapped all of the EU publishing eras when they began anew with the current Canon. There is also no in-universe dating system within the new Canon works, so it can be kind of difficult to suss out when a character is active in relation to the rest of the galaxy in our Canon articles. Sure, readers could actually read the prose, which usually contains some dating information by way of comparing the timing of events to the timing of the films ("x" years before the Battle of Yavin; "y" years after the Invasion of Naboo; yada yada), but the point of an infobox is to provide readers with the in-universe quick-and-dirty on a given subject&mdash;birth date, death date, species, gender, etc. Right now, we can't do actual dates because they don't exist, but we can do eras to provide a general sense of when these individuals were alive/active.

Given that Legends articles will (hopefully) be using in-universe eras in the Eras field, I would hope that Canon articles follow the same trend. While there are far fewer in-Canon-universe eras, the Databank uses a consistent internal era system for the prose sections of its articles:
 * All events in the Prequel era, including The Clone Wars, happen during the Fall of the Republic.
 * After the establishment of the Empire in RotS, we enter the Dark Times&mdash;also labeled the Age of the Empire in A New Dawn&mdash;for the following 19 years.
 * The Original Trilogy and events within are characterized as the Galactic Civil War for obvious reasons.
 * The only annoying part about the Databank era labeling is that the events of TFA are all placed within the terribly unimaginative era headline "The First Order."

So the second part of this proposal is that all Canon articles now include an in-universe era where applicable, with those eras determined by the Databank or other Canon sources that specifically name in-universe time periods. I don't have a problem with considering the GCW both an in-universe conflict and era; the New Sith Wars were kind of always treated that way on the Legends side of things. As far as "The First Order" era is concerned, I think we could find a consensus on something like "Rise of the First Order" or "First Order conflicts" instead of just leaving a direct link to the "First Order" in the eras field.

ANYWAY, I brought all this mishegas to a Senate Hall thread to kind of test the waters before taking it to a CT. As you can see in this thread, folks were generally ready to get rid of the OOU eras in IU character infoboxes back in 2010, but we got no consensus because of an uncertainty about including the in-universe eras instead. I'm still in support of including in-universe eras where possible, especially for Canon articles because we do not yet have any other standard system of dating. I'm not as concerned about the IU Legends eras, but they would also be nice to have. Either way, the OOU publishing eras should be out of there.

Any feedback on this rambling mess would be great. Trayus ( Academy ) 08:17, March 6, 2016 (UTC)