User talk:Hawki

Articles Query
"One of the things I've noticed is that there's many unexpanded articles on this site, ranging from characters in the novels to obscure units/veichles (eg roverlisks, the other classes of battlecruiser, etc.). I was wondering, is this intentional control to prevent articles that would be deemed as "pointless?" Or are we free to make them?"

You're generally free to make them, but there is such a thing as "too obscure". Unless an article cannot be saved, I often combine them.

For instance, right now there is an article on the C-14 Impaler. I don't think that really makes sense. I'm probably going to combine them into a "list of Terran weaponry" at some point. (I have StarCraft: Ghost scans that will help there, but I can't recall what site I got them rom :

Someone made articles on exceedingly minor Terran characters who appear (and die) in StarCraft cinematics. I've combined them as well. Stubs just don't get visited much.

An example of a failure of the "policy" is the Kukulkan Brood page. I don't know whether it should go into the Zerg Brood page of the Shadow of the Xel'Naga page, but it's too obscure to really exist by itself.

"Also, I was thinking of creating entirely new articles, eg a list of terran weaponry, from both the books and games (eg the impaler rifle, P1000, etc.). Of course, it probably wouldn't be just me or any other one user doing this, but I thought it best to have some form of permission before I considered doing something like this."

Go ahead. I suggest making one article to include them all; I might even link them right. (Eg I would link the reference to the Marine's Impaler rifle to your article.)

Oh yeah, about canon... Blizzard doesn't have a canon policy at all. It makes no attempt to deal with contradictions and/or errors, partly caused by lack of overrsight of the novels. (This is very obvious in Warcraft due to the greater number of novels.) This wiki has an unofficial policy on canon (there can't be an official one because Blizzard doesn't have one) - I think it makes sense, anyway. PsiSeveredHead 14:53, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Terran equipment from StarCraft: Ghost
You might want to look at. I don't recall where I downloaded it, unfortunately. PsiSeveredHead 00:19, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Nice. Still, if we can't cite a source, is it illegal to upload it?

As for weaponry, there's a link to a scan on StarCraft Legacy on the Ghost talk page. Also covers psionic abilities. --Hawki 00:33, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Minor Characters...
"I was thinking that it might be best to put minor characters with their respective unit classification then simply attach them to novels, thus making them more accessible. This is an example."

You could do both, actually, if the character is sufficiently minor not to get their own text. Otherwise use a link. (If Koronis deserved his own article section, it wouldn't matter whether it was in the SotXN article or the High Templar article; I'd rather put any text in the SotXN articlke and put a link to that section in the High Templar article.) PsiSeveredHead 12:36, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

When putting up minor characters on pages, could you reference them properly when possible? Looking at the List of Minor Locations page will show lots of examples of how to reference StarCraft Maps of the Week/Month. PsiSeveredHead 11:42, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

When recommending a block...
I just noticed your report on the vandalism to the Annihilators (22nd Confederate Division) page. As it happens, I was at work and ED noticed and banned the vandal anyway.

Every day I check the recent pages section and look at almost all the changes, but obviously I'll miss some. The way I view the changes, it won't show me if there was vandalism when you fix it. In fact, it didn't even show me the message to recommend a ban. I only noticed because I thought it odd that there were two changes to the page yet there were 0 characters altered in the end.

When making ban recommendations, please leave a message at StarCraft Wiki talk:Administrators and I'll notice. It's on my watchlist now. It'll be faster that way. Thanks. PsiSeveredHead 23:06, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Will do.--Hawki 06:34, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Two things
"Two things I'd like to ask you about. Firstly, I was wondering if you could tell me which units the heroes in StarCraft: Insurrection are, namely the ones that I haven't made articles for yet (eg Demioch, Charlie Vane, etc.)"

I haven't played Insurrection for so long (and never owned it). Finding good information on it, even on such things, is basically impossible :( I only recall a few units (eg Jack Frost, Aedus/Xerus, Black Morgan and Atticus Carpenter).

"Secondly, I've begun to wonder about capitalisation, how Terran, Zerg and Protoss are always capitalised. Truth be told, such capitalisation has always made me uneasy; protoss and zerg are species like humans, "human" being a common noun. Why should xenomorphs such privilages?

Granted, a case can be made for such capitalisation, as they're capitalised in the original manual and early novels. However, such capitalisation is lacking on the SC2 website and recent novels have ceased capitalisation also. Heck, even the dark templar lack capitalisation on the website.

Perhaps not the most pressing issue, but it would be good to have an official policy (eg wowwiki has official policies on race capitalisation also)." Thanks.--Hawki 01:08, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

A policy sounds like a good idea. Do you have a link for Wowwiki's policy?

I had used capitalization at first for the same reasons you mentioned (eg capitalized in the manual). I kept it up for reasons of consistency, as I don't like having "zerg" and "Zerg" on the same page. However, if the tide changes it will be amazingly difficult to achieve consistency (for capitalization or not). PsiSeveredHead 01:14, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Two More Things
When putting up images, they should be referenced. Referencing many images are difficult, and obviously many of the images here aren't referenced, but if possible, please include a link. (Even if the page isn't working now; internetarchive.org exists for that purpose.)

Second, are you British or Canadian? I was going over the Shadow of the Xel'Naga edit and wikia likes the American spelling. Probably 3/4 of the "spelling errors" were just using the King's English. PsiSeveredHead 01:53, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Giddings Station?
I don't recall that. Which book was it from? PsiSeveredHead 11:33, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Page 44 of SC Ghost: Nova. It's where Nova and Morgan are set to take off from.--Hawki 11:59, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Level 4 Headlines
From what I understand, we can't make level four headlines (I just tested it out too) and so have no choice but to use asterisks.

If level four headlines worked however, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't look bad. Having said that, I don't think headlines would make sense if the character descriptions are only a sentence or two long.

If you have a lot of characters descriptions, but they're all short, you could subdivide them (eg detectives in one level 3 headline category, technicians in another, etc). I had to split up the Raynor's Raiders characters in a similar way because there were just so many of them. PsiSeveredHead 14:06, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

Promotion
Thanks for taking care of "69.234.99.35". It looks like you've been doing that all night (well, I guess that's day in Australia). You've been promoted to sysop. Congrats! PsiSeveredHead 13:39, 22 September 2007 (UTC)