Talk:Minstrel-Class Yacht

I may need some help with neutrality here if anyone wants to give me feedback. I have an unnatural love for this ship ... and I am the manufacturer. --Arkhaios Plaga 03:18, 22 March 2011 (GMT)

factuality

I'm curious was R&D released at some point to allow only a select few individuals to design a ship?
Or will everybody from a faction with some datacard now claim to be its designer? Hey since my character is a leader of Rendili and a wookiee, who lived long before the clone wars, I could claim to have created the Dreadnaught and Lictor, and cooperated with others on C-3 and Neutron Star...
The original premise of the holocron still stands:

"The Holocron is for actual facts of what's happening and what has happened in the galaxy. It's not a place for advertising, ego stroking and blowing up your character, or rewriting history in massive favour of your faction (e.g. Fox News)."

— Jennifer Dreighton, Holocron:Guide

So once again did the characters mentioned in the article actually designed the ship in game? or Red/White Scenario? or was it somehow granted to them by admins as reward for some services to SWC? or was minstrel among all the ship DCs granted to factions around year 6? --Xanyarr Chyakk 11:21, 4 April 2011 (GMT)

Thanks for the credit, but the page you quote was not written by me. My version is this page: Community_portal :) We should possibly merge those two pages and put a redirect on one of them.--Dreighton 00:39, 13 April 2011 (GMT)

Around the time that Datacards were assigned, the Minstrel was one of a number of datacards offered to Drax (Minstrel, Xiytiar, Guardian, Mobquet among the choices). We ended up choosing the Minstrel and the Xiyiar. There was no red/white scenario, no in-game R&D. Having said that, we at the time assumed and role-played that the assigning of the datacard was, in essence, making us the designer of the ship in addition to the manufacturer. If this is incorrect, I would be more than happy to change it, but I'll need some help with the fix. If not those listed, then who? The original artist? Or for history purposes does the ship just have no designer? Or was the designer some arbitrary NPC and "The SWC Gods" magically gave us the knowledge of the design one day? I completely agree with the original premise of the Holocron ... but being at loss for another explanation, I took what liberty I did in order to tell a complete story; though as I mentioned above, we did honestly assume to be the "IC designers" of the ship. If someone can change this to a better alternative or can give me a better alternative so I can change it, please do, but I'd rather see people take the liberty I did here rather than ending up with every article looking like the YT-1210 article; I can read the rules page for that. --Arkhaios Plaga 13:52, 5 April 2011 (GMT)

Appreciate the answer and the history lesson. ;) --Xanyarr Chyakk 12:10, 10 April 2011 (GMT)

I took out the offending parts, hopefully. If there is more, let me know. I also tried to make the article much more neutral. Having said that, I'm sorely tempted to change the section in which I talk about the ships density to something much more "partial" and yet no less true: The Density of the Minstrel is greater than that of lead and rivals that of the Earth's core (~12,600 kg/m3); for comparison, the Lancer has the density of Styrofoam (~50kg/m3). --Arkhaios Plaga 03:21, 7 April 2011 (GMT)

It's not that those parts were offending... just think about everybody claiming to be inventors of some thing or other that they really had nothing to do with... I'd rather leave that until the actual R&D comes out and people start discovering/researching/designing things for "real"... but it's not my call!

I thought Dreighton would notice this discussion and pitch in, but perhaps we need to extend a special invitation! ;)

If it were up to me I'd rather see you invent some NPCs and use them not just here, but also in the history of your faction; they could even be relatives, parents or siblings of the player characters. But that's just me. --Xanyarr Chyakk 12:10, 10 April 2011 (GMT)

I'm more than happy to invent NPCs and use them here rather than PCs, but that would not be abiding by the "actual facts of what's happening and what has happened in the galaxy" any more than what I had before. Getting the DC's was largely, if not entirely, an OOC event. What happened in darkness is that one day the company didn't know how to produce any ships; the next day we did. And to this day anyone who leaves the company, potentially despite having done nothing but produce the ship for five years straight, immediately loses all knowledge of the design and how to make it. There are things that go on in darkness that are utterly ridiculous from an IC standpoint without some amount of creative license; we can either leave them out and get a neutral version of the rules pages or we can make something up that seems reasonable. I'm in favor of the latter. Does it really matter whether I claim to have made the ship or some made-up NPC? There are people running all around the combine claiming to be Emperor-Prince This and Duke-Baron That ... things they wrote into their characters back-stories! Does this mean that if they want a holocron page they have to re-write their back-story entirely? Malakai Brooks has a much better claim to the Minstrel as leader/owner of the DC holding faction than just "I wrote it in my back-story" ... but which of the two is more likely to be allowed I wonder? --Arkhaios Plaga 19:46, 10 April 2011 (GMT)

My understanding of that guideline is that it is above all to be applied to player characters, so they do not make up stuff like designing a Death Star or owning a fleet of SSDs. Unless there is something to back up that claim, like a Red/White Scenario or an entry in the SWC DB...

Yes a lot of actions that happened and continue to happen in Darkness and are largely OOC. But does it give any character a license to claim that they did something they did not actually do either IC or even OOC? If you've role-played it this way since the moment you've received the DC, then why is it not reflected on the rules page of the ship? In fact, when I look at the rules page (and any canon source) the ship was developed and designed well before SWCs timeline started and its designs only came into possession of Drax around year 6...

That's where I think NPCs could come in and be helpful. They are pretty much the only way to explain some things from IC point of view, at least in my opinion. Because if you use PCs then the impression is given that those PCs either were able to use R&D when nobody else could, or they've participated in an official RP scenario and received it there... whereas NPCs do not leave that impression.

As for people claiming to be some nobility they may very well need to adjust their back-stories if a planetary body which they claim to be governing exists or is added later and they have never had anything to do with it... e.g. one can't have been a queen or a king of Naboo unless one either owned/governed the whole planet at some point in SWCs time or had a substantial property on it... but I'm sure there are other examples too and without additional research I can only give a personal one - my character was given a title of baron by a noble house, with it came a stewardship of a whole planet, where the barony in question is located. I think you would agree that in such a case a claim to be a baron of a planet (not that I use that title very often beyond a certain RP setting) is sufficiently proven.

Anyways Orphaea raised somewhat similar question about characters and their history @Talk:Community_portal#Rewriting_History_-_Characters and in my opinion it still remains to be adequately addressed.

--Xanyarr Chyakk 22:15, 10 April 2011 (GMT)

Sometimes I notice, sometimes I overlook a discussion I should see. So sending me a notice, if you think I should know, can never be wrong.--Dreighton 00:39, 13 April 2011 (GMT)

I'll wait to hear from someone else on this, but I'm about to put back most of the non-neutral things and take the NPoV tag off myself after having actually read the The Avance Coalition article for myself; within that particular article, the author refers to Avance as "utopian", as well as describing Avance as "the ideal place to [...] set up a thriving business" among other things, and this much only in the first 2 sections. This was a featured article for goodness sakes! If that is considered "neutral", then so is half the stuff I took out and more than a few of the things I never even had the audacity to put in. I am fully on board with this wiki following guidlines to ensure articles have a NPoV, but only if that applies to every article equally. --Arkhaios Plaga 01:29, 10 April 2011 (GMT)

Don't think that "blackmailing" is the way!

If you think that article (featured or otherwise) is not written from neutral point of view add the flag, and leave a comment on the articles talk page about non-neutral part(s)... and if you think "your" article was neutral then ask the person who flagged it as NPoV what was considered not neutral... --Xanyarr Chyakk 12:10, 10 April 2011 (GMT)

And you really should quote more then one word out of context: "form[ing] the idea of a utopian society" is not quite the same as Avance being described as "utopian"... as for "the ideal place to [...] set up a thriving business" I'm not sure which part do you object to "ideal" or "thriving", both are not impartial and are probably only true from a certain point of view, so could stand to be corrected... --Xanyarr Chyakk 12:10, 10 April 2011 (GMT)

I appreciate the responses Xanyarr, and sorry if I'm rather combative about the matter; from my point of view, it's very easy to see something like this as just the latest in a long line of slights to go against Drax over the years. As for the utopian bit, it seemed to be implied from the tone of those few paragraphs that Avance was indeed being referred to as utopian, or at least more utopian than someone else; it goes on to say "In order to [form the aforementioned utopian/ideal society, Avance] will govern those that seek [...] protection from the corruption of the outside galaxy." The implication is clearly that the galaxy outside of Avance is, in fact, corrupt. But I'm really not here to argue semantics; I don't have a problem with the Avance article or with articles in general showing a bit of bias. Straight from wikipedia's article on coca-cola: "Coca-Cola was bought out by businessman Asa Griggs Candler, whose marketing tactics led Coke to its dominance of the world soft-drink market throughout the 20th century." It's true; I fully support the Avance article saying that it's the best place to seek asylum from the galactic civil war ... as a neutral party in the matter, I'd agree that such a claim is also rather hard to deny. Having said that, claiming that the ship is hand-produced exclusively by Drax industries or referencing the many qualities that make the ship a luxury freighter I would argue fall under the same category. With a few rare exceptions, the ship has always been produced by Drax; Drax has always used NPCs as opposed to droids to construct the ship; every Minstrel Drax sells comes with custom exterior and room images/descriptions, npcs, droids, weapons, items, docked ships, doors ... if that is not luxury by comparison to the vast majority of ships sold in the combine, then I'm not sure what is. --Arkhaios Plaga 19:46, 10 April 2011 (GMT)

What are you fighting over anyway? Arkhaios, didn't you ask for help to make the article more neutral? With good reasons, if you ask me. Something like "Though the ship itself, hand-produced exclusively by Drax Industries, is relatively new, the design for the ship draws on inspirations that go back millennia." does not belong in an encyclopedia, just as a matter of style. If it were all true on a factual level it would still be the wrong way to say it. At the same time I am all with you that describing how Drax Industries designed the ship is much better and closer to what we want with the Holocron than to state that you got the datacard assigned, for that would be OOC. We want the IC history fleshed out, and this includes some lenience on what you can describe, just as people are basically free what they write into their charatcers background story. The limit to this is the appropriateness relative to the undoubted facts and the question if other characters or faction could have rights to the same claim. In this case they have the same right to portarit their own deeds as you have. That is where Xanyarr is right to warn you about limiting yourself and I really want to thank him for bringing up the whole matter and discussiing it here. I hope I made you see how both of you are right, at least to some extent. Just refrain from those childish references to other articles of Wikipedia or the Holocron. I call it childish, because it makes me think of kindergarten where evry child reprimanded will usually point to another child, saying: "But look what she is doing!" More mature people should never use someone elses mistakes as an excuse for their own ones. If any other article is not neutral, this article should be fixed and every user of Wikipedia or the Holocron should take it upon themselves to do just that. The bad quality of one article can NEVER excuse the bad quality of another article. I am really lenient so far with neutrality, especially if someone creates a new article from scratches and marks it as work in progress. But I assume then that the creator will come back to improve it. And if someone marked your article as not neutral and Xanyarr started a discussion here about some points that he saw as not neutral enough this is a good thing and exactly what we need everyone to do to improve the quality of the Holocron. I hope I got my point across, if I was not clear enough, please feel free to ask.--Dreighton 00:39, 13 April 2011 (GMT)