Halopedia talk:Canon policy

Something needs to be set up like Wookiepedia

Yeah, I'll get to it eventually. -ED 02:05, 28 October 2006 (UTC)

There's a lot of confusion among new and inexperienced users about the difference between fanon and fanfiction, and why we don't allow it. Perhaps a section on why we don't allow it as well? Specops306, Kora 'Morhek 04:50, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Opinion

For the record, the current policy isn't the way I currently would have written it.

• Statements from authors don't trump everything. They created the games, but they can't change them once they're gold. If a Bungie representative says in 2002 that Johnson survives Halo 1, he's simply wrong; anyone who's played the game on Legendary knows he dies.
  • One way of looking at it is that H1 is in a slightly alternate universe from the later games, which until FS was released was the only Halo universe we had access to.
  • One reason to accept Bungie statements over canon is if they represent the intent to change that aspect of canon; but even then, it shouldn't be considered completely canon until it's part of a published story.
• Story-telling media like games, novels and audio dramas should trump supplementary/background material like manuals, websites, strategy guides and flavor texts.
  • An exception might be if the background material resolves a contradiction that previously existed; sort of a tiebreaker vote.
• When there's a contradiction, the "cost" of resolving it one way or the other should be considered. GoO says (IIRC) that there were no second-generation Spartan IIs and no augmentation casualties among the Spartan IIIs; but if you accept that, the ilovebees audio drama can't have happened at all (no Melissa), whereas it doesn't really affect GoO's plot if just that passage is considered a mistake.
• While the games should be the top level, lots of things should still be considered "just gameplay". I'm not sure whether the player's slowness and the weakness of plasma weapons should be considered examples of this or not.
  • Also, some non-gameplay things like the Megg are clearly out-of-story; while things like the Thirsty Grunt and H1's Legendary ending are more ambiguous.
    • About GoO versus ilovebees, one was a book, and the other was an advertisement. A similar contradiction happened when the Believe Campaign showed Spartan 117 in a battle that he never took place in.(Quirel)

--Andrew Nagy 21:48, 8 April 2008 (UTC)