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Reason for canceling the show

I'm very much interested why did SciFi put an end to the show. This article claims it had nothing to do with ratings. What did it have to do with? If it's secret, nevertheless a note should be put up explaining why. -- J7n

I believe some of it had to do with the cost of production. After a while, the costs of the actors go up (they are being held back from other projects to do this show, so a little monetary incentive is in order). Additionally, Sci-Fi apparently felt it was time to move on/the story was getting stale. While I disagree, it wasn't picked up. Nothing acn be done about it. If anyone has additional info, please post. — BQZip01 — talk 03:18, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure about this, but I think it may have had to do something with the similarities between the Ori, and the Christian religion. A lot of people probably didn't like the Ori being portrayed as evil. They probably got a lot of "Stop Insulting my Religion" letters. 06:15, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Seems unlikely - the crusades are generally considered to be a low point in the history of Christianity, so I can't see too many people complaining about something similar to them being portrayed as evil (I expect some did, of course). --Tango (talk) 16:15, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
I only wish they had cancelled the show 2 years earlier, the entire Ori arc feels like a bad joke. "We have killed all original bad guys, now we change almost the entire cast and create a new foe thats even worse. To bad we have to contradict half the old background story to do it" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Obbas (talk • contribs) 05:07, 23 July 2008 (UTC)
Oops, forgot to sign that... Obbas (talk) 05:45, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Amelius- Creator of the Stargate?

The Ark of Truth very clearly suggests Amelius as the designer of the Stargate through a flashback. Would it be appropriate to include this? Should it be just under the SG1 provenance since it clearly doesn't pertain to the original movie? Under the section on the gate itself? I'd propose a paragraph such as:

"The Stargate concept was first proposed by Amelius, an Alteran in the first migration to Earth. His conceptual drawings depict the premise of a 6 symbol coordinate system to describe points in three dimensional space using constellations, and a circular frame to generate a stable wormhole event horizon."

Thoughts anyone?

Paul Roberton Proberton (talk) 04:54, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, you're right... its much more an implication than anything else and the drawings are nothing more than conceptual. I would like to give it a mention, Sikon... how do you think we can best do it?Proberton (talk) 00:16, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Note the scene where Amelius is programming the Ark just prior to the moment Alterans' ship bursts out of the mountain. He's halfway out the door and the goes to the table,where the notebook is sitting just next to the Ark after which he says "I had a wonderful idea last night"

As for your reference to Devlin or Emmerich, I'm referring to the 'in-universe' aspect of its creation. Further, I made a very clear distinction between the original movie and SG1 canon in my original post.Proberton (talk) 00:16, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Point taken about the in-universe aspect, although I'd argue that when it only takes a replacement of the name of a fictional character with a real person, the sentence is not written from a real-world perspective as WP:WAF says. Anyway, we're entering synthesis territory here. You can say how his conceptual drawings look, but for the conclusion that the character invented the Stargate, you need a direct reference in plot dialog or a confirmation from a producer. – sgeureka t•c 19:59, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
lil late but i think it will come clear in the new series universe (even about the ship too) Ottawa4ever (talk) 21:10, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

GA delisting

I started work on this article to keep its GA status because SG-1 is still one of my all-time favorite shows, but only now do I realize how bad the article is. The only Good Article criterion that it seems to pass is #5 (stability), and in the case of this article, that is actually bad. Improving this article to meet the minimum GA requirements would take much longer (a few dedicated weeks) than an "official" GA review would last, so I hereby WP:BOLDly delist this article to save us the bureaucracy (anyone is free to revert me, but I'll take the the WP:GAR route then, which will result in a delisting just the same). I have already added some tags for what the article needs to get back to GA, but what it mostly needs is a developed Production, Themes and Reception section with sources (see WP:FA for excellent articles to see what I mean), but the current article has practically nothing (except an outdated timeline of the cancellation, an overdetailed plot summary, originally researched themes, and context-free lists that border on indiscriminate). In the meantime, I'll keep working on this to get this to B class (I'd grade it as C-class for now). – sgeureka t•c 21:27, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Straw poll: Unmerge the stargate episodes

Last March an editor created Wikipedia:WikiProject Stargate/Stargate SG-1 episode review, he is the only person to have commented on this wikiproject. He then used this "Wikiproject" to justify[1] the redirection of over 50 articles.

No strawpoll was ever conducted about this merge, those who participated the most actively in supporting the merge were three editors: Tone, Tango, and Sgeureka. This is the overwhelming consensus talked about here. Editor Sgeureka tedious edits on these article talk pages was more than all editors combined. The opposition to such a merge was much stronger:
In merging these articles, Sgeureka based the merges on the completely bogus Wikipedia:WikiProject Stargate/Stargate SG-1 episode review, in which Sgeureka was the only editor.
There is no consensus for such merger. I believe the articles should be unmerged, just as List of The Outer Limits episodes was unmerged.travb (talk) 19:29, 12 January 2009 (UTC)
Also to respond to WP:CHEESE, WP:HORSE! (travb) Ikip (talk) 06:27, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
I've been asked to comment on Inclusionist's request to reopen the debate about the merging of SG episodes. As I told Inclusionist, this is not really a windmill that I wish to fight, but here are my views anyhow, if you have the patience to read them. Feel free to ignore me :-)
First, I note that the SG episode mergers were, in fact, discussed prior to execution. That is good. Unfortunately, I also note that often, the only participant in the discussion was sgeureka, who proposed the merger. This is not so good. To argue that the merger was a result of "consensus" is disingenuous under these circumstances. I also note that most readers of Wikipedia (and Wikipedia is for its readers, is it not?) would not see these discussions until it is too late. How often do you look up a SG episode? I stumbled upon sgeureka's efforts completely by accident, when I was looking for information about some Outer Limits episodes and found details in Google's cache that were no longer on Wikipedia itself. A few days or weeks later and Google's cache would have been updated, the details gone, leaving me none the wiser. All I'd have seen are the merged episode lists, and I'd never have known that a merger had taken place. And how is that my fault? This reminds me of the famous beginning of Douglas Adams' Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which somehow it becomes Arthur Dent's fault that he did not visit the basement of his local council's planning office, find a hidden cupboard, and dig up the plans about bulldozing his house.
Second, these mergers destroy information. The reason why I became interested in sgeureka's efforts is because the pages he decided to merge contained information that was no longer present on the merged episode lists. Whether it was the name of a guest star, the opening narration of an episode, or other relevant detail doesn't matter... what matters is that after the merger, the information is gone, except for the select few who know how to find an old version of the merged page.
Third, shouldn't deletion be a last resort? Were these articles really so bad that deleting/merging them was necessary for the sake of the integrity of Wikipedia? I think that these mergers are accomplishing the exact opposite: they deprive casual users (emphatically, not fans!) of useful information, while they discourage volunteers (who may or may not be fans) who contributed the material in the first place.
Fourth, alphabet soups are not the answer. WP:THIS and WP:THAT may intimidate some, but it shouldn't... perhaps we need a few pages like WP:SHRUG or WP:SEEIFICARE, in order to respond in the same Kafkaesque fashion. Decisions concerning the fate of an article should be based on thoughtful discussion, not on which contributor can quote more Wikilegalese by acronym.
Fifth, the rationale for deletion should not include insults. Calling the material fancruft is insulting to the people who devoted considerable time and effort to the creation of these episode pages, even if the material is truly fancruft (in most of the cases under discussion it wasn't). Calling people arguing against a deletion fans in a disparaging way is highly inappropriate and, in my view, totally against the spirit of Wikipedia. In any case, a fan doesn't need Wikipedia... a fan knows his or her "fancruft" by heart. For the rest of us, who merely enjoy a show but aren't necessarily devoted fans, Wikipedia is a useful resource... but less useful than it used to be, because of these mergers.
Sixth, one rationale I have often seen was the issue of notability. Well, I submit that any television show, be it an episode or a stand-alone work, that is seen by millions, seen by further millions in reruns, and then even more millions when the show is exported, dubbed, or subtitled, is notable by default: every six or seven million viewers represent 0.1% of our planet's population. Further, episode pages offer space for encyclopedic details (e.g., guest stars) that cannot be placed conveniently on an episode list page.
Lastly, when despite all of the above, a merger is seriously proposed, at the very least the original authors and major contributors to the episode articles in question should be invited to participate in the decision-making process. They shouldn't be expected to stumble upon the proposal to merge just accidentally, if at all, before their work is removed. For instance, the first SG-1 episode that was merged, The Enemy Within, has many editors: the history of the page goes back to 2005. I suspect that the same is true for many of the other episode pages concerned. Were these people notified that their work is about to be deleted? Were they given an opportunity to contribute to the discussion (that is, a real opportunity that doesn't involve going to the basement of the local council office and finding a dusty cupboard there?)
As I said, this is not my windmill to fight, but hopefully the above makes it clear why I feel troubled by these wholesale episode mergers. vttoth (talk) 05:26, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Just as vttoth said terms like fancruft are being used again and alphabet soups quoted and the last time I contributed to Stargate pages the ridiculous situation of an 8 season character page being deleted ( who the producers decided to honor in the last Atlantis episode ) was being discussed and leaving one season characters pages intact .
I've always opposed the death of a thousands cuts and said be honest and delete everything if you believe fiction is fancruft .I don't believe in the theory that some fiction is fancruft and some isn't myself which I see happening here and in some other locations .
Will I unmerge them myself . No because I know we'll get a pile of alphabet soup and they will be remerged and frankly I've got other things to do with my time than argue over whether something is notable or not or indeed what does notable mean .And frankly I know where else to go to get the information .Garda40 (talk) 17:51, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
Sgeruka, I do not call your edits vandalism, I do not call you a deletionist, or a troll, so I would appreciate it if you refrain from calling thousands of editors contributions "fancruft". It does not help your case, it only exposes your own biases. I think this page explains it nicely: Wikipedia:Do not call things cruft travb (talk) 16:31, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
I am a fan of this franchise, I generally know what WP:FANCRUFT is ("a selection of content is of importance only to a small population of enthusiastic fans of the subject in question"), and I have written a couple GAs about this franchise to know what an article should look like to not be considered fancruft. I think this puts me into a pretty good position to use the word "fancruft" in relation to this set of articles. I have no problem with publicly admitting my bias against fancrufty Stargate articles - that's actually the right set of mind to clean them up. – sgeureka t•c 21:42, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
I disagree. At first, there are no reasons to include 2, 3 or 5 stub templates mentioned above in article together. One stub template is quite enough. At second, why do you think, that such articles will not be evoluted in future? There are many articles of films/episodes that was stubs for a long time, and then was increased by new editors to good state. Krasss (talk) 19:48, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
why do you think, that such articles will not be evoluted in future Because they were created in 2004 and haven't been improved since then? Because they were tagged with several cleanup templates for a couple of months before the merger happened and weren't improved? Because the three editors who actually have improved the articles, support to keep the articles merged because they think they won't be improved? Counter question: Why do you think these specific articles will evolve to a minimum standard of quality? You can neither cite precedent for improvement of this set of articles (unless you cite my work and Matthew's, but ooops, the two of us think an unmerger is a bad idea) nor do volunteer for improving them to minimum standards yourself. – sgeureka t•c 21:42, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
Did you know what is the exponential law? The speed of evolution of articles is in proportion to their size. Great articles grows quickly, and the small articles grows slowly. Merging of any articles into the list of episodes means to stop their further evolution for a long time. For example, no one will add posters and other additional information for films, if these films are already merged to the list of episodes. On contrary, usually images becomes deleted from the original articles while merging. You can propose articles to merging/deletion only if these articles was created by yourself. And in such a case you can also propose these articles to deletion, without merging, - and without any explanations to other editors. Krasss (talk) 23:47, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
Yes, but your argument on exponential law is a little flawed in one sense, the episodes are merged into lists, making them bigger, so the lists would also expand greatly. -- Matthew R Dunn (talk) 23:58, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
But in any case, some information from the original articles can not be included into such lists. I am not against to adding of short plot summaries and other information to lists of episodes - without removing the original articles. So, the lists would be greater and may be, they would also expand more quickly. Krasss (talk) 00:38, 16 January 2009 (UTC)
You seem to be arguing that "handful of good articles (and) a hundred bad (articles)" is mutually exclusive, as if it is an either or. It is not. You can have "good" articles, and "bad" articles which have the potential of becoming good articles in the future.
Merging and deleting articles makes the chance of these bad articles becoming good, much harder, because editors will have to start over from scratch. (if they don't know the article was merged). travb (talk) 16:26, 14 January 2009 (UTC)
As we all know, the issue with episode articles is the lack of any reliable sources for anything more than plot summaries. Such sources do exist for some episodes (DVD commentaries, critical reviews, interviews, etc.), and those episodes may well warrant articles. If anyone has such sources, they should go ahead and unmerge the relevant episode article and write a half decent article about it. If you don't have any such sources, then you'll never be able to write an article worth keeping. --Tango (talk) 05:51, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
What consensus? It is clear there was no consensus, and that the majority of editors opposed this merge, yet the merge was done anyway. travb (talk) 18:04, 15 January 2009 (UTC)
All but two of these comments came in after the episode discussions of October2007-March2008. The merger did have consensus at the time it was performed, and thinking about how consensus may change after that is crystalballing. But as this straw poll shows, there is no consensus to unmerge either, and the status quo is to keep them merged (unless an article is improved to minimum standards, which automatically turns this discussion moot for that respective article). – sgeureka t•c 14:29, 17 January 2009 (UTC)
Notability is a incredibly controversial guideline, probably because it is the number one tool that editors use to delete other editors contributions. Wikipedia:Television episodes is being disputed right now. I would strongly suggest that Sgeureka follow Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Episodes and characters: "An ideal response to such situations would be broader discussion of the guideline among editors with varying editing interest, with consensus achieved prior to widespread changes." Ikip (talk) 10:11, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
Uh, no. WP:NOTE isn't controversial, nor is it being disputed. Until I see a giant discussion with a somewhat plausible possibility of overturning NOTE (aka there's a giant "disputed" tag on the top and a significant, ongoing discussion), then it stands and things are expected to abide by it. The fact that it's used in AfDs (as it should be!) as a "delete" rationale does not mean that it's an invalid argument. Whether WP:EPISODE is disputed or not is entirely irrelevant, as all articles are expected to comply with NOTE. And citing the E&C case and the Arbs' very generalized statements does not grant you license to ignore notability guidelines either. Until you take your head out of the clouds and stop believing NOTE doesn't exist can you have any sort of constructive discussion here. — sephiroth bcr (converse) 10:37, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
All the "merging" suppositions consists from two different ideas. The first is "merging", i.e. adding plot summaries into lists of episodes, - and in such a case almost no one is against. But the second supposition is to remove the original articles, considering as "nonnotable" or as "stubs" by some editors. And even if they are "stubs", what is the reason to remove them? Is it an attempt to economy the hard disc's memory? But, at first, disk space is cheap, and at second, this articles's information will not be removed in any case, - they will be just saved somewhere in archives of Wikipedia. And the only result of their deleting will be that these articles will be just keeped out from display, making them invisible, especially for watching by new editors. Krasss (talk) 17:06, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
WP:PAPER does not give you carte blanche to create articles that are non-notable. You're also confusing the concept of stubs with a lack of notability. A stub is simply a very short article that is in need of expansion; a stub by itself can be notable if it has significant coverage in independent sources. Simply, we don't (or shouldn't rather) have articles on non-notable items. End of story. — sephiroth bcr (converse) 22:16, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
End of story? But you did not answered the question. And, about WP:PAPER, that you mentioned, you can look at this:

There is a feasible limit for article size that depends on page download size for Wikipedia's dial-up and microbrowser readers and readability considerations for everybody (see Wikipedia:Article size). After a point, splitting an article into separate articles and leaving adequate summaries is a natural part of growth for a topic (see Wikipedia:Summary style)... This also means you do not have to redirect one topic to an equivalent topic of more common usage.

As you can see, it does not proves deletionist's position. On contrary, it recommends to split (=unmerge) articles to make possible their's further growth.Krasss (talk) 23:33, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
I did answer your question. The reason we don't have articles on the episodes is because they don't pass our notability guideline. Your comment that we have enough space for them is a stereotypical WP:PAPER argument. In any case, as you probably missed the bolded sentence in WP:PAPER, I'll point it out for you:

This policy is not a free pass for inclusion: articles must still abide by the appropriate content policies, particularly those covered in the five pillars.

And the guideline that WP:PAPER cites, WP:SS, has WP:AVOIDSPLIT, which notes that editors should not create pages that do not follow our notability guideline. In any case, this is the end of the line. Show sources that prove the notability of these articles or don't and they stay merged. Those are really your only two options at this point. Continuing your blather about the necessity of having these episode articles is a bunch of hot air without concrete evidence of notability. — sephiroth bcr (converse) 01:19, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
Again how bout a compromise? For the people who want unmerge, de- merge the last season, give a few months, if the articles are not brought up to snuff by then accept the merge, if they are, start on season 9 and work the way down. For those who want the merge your given a chance to proove your point if it can be. Challenge these editors (and new ones) to improve the articles. I still stand by the belief that the articles can only improve if they are accesible. Theres always going to be some sort of bickering about this as whenever you look on the talk pages here theres something about this merge and someone complaining about it. Ottawa4ever (talk) 01:38, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
You do realize the article don't have to be unmerged for someone to work on them, right? They're not deleted, they're redirects. For instance, for the "Cold Lazarus" episode, the history is freely accessible. Anyone is free to make a userspace draft (for instance, if I was doing the draft, it would be User:Sephiroth BCR/Cold Lazarus. Just replace my username with yours and work to your heart's content) on the episodes. That said, it isn't really a question of how much work you put into the episode articles, it's a question of finding the sources that prove adequate notability. For instance, if you found an review of "Cold Lazarus" from a reliable, independent source and showed it here, then you would have a compelling argument to unmerge the article. It's really as simple as that. Why people here are bickering about other irrelevant topics is beyond me. — sephiroth bcr (converse) 02:29, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

(Maybe im just silly but i have a hard time finding these histories and Im sure new users not so famillar with wikipedia would expereince the same, but just might not be thinking correctly where to look). But agreed many of these articles need some valid sources to stay (or become) notable which basically sets them up for deletion anyway if theyre unmerged. Ottawa4ever (talk) 04:49, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

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