Talk:John Harriman

Severe Editing of Article Details/In-Universe Problem

Resolved

I am against the recent edit by ShutterbugTrekker. Here are my arguments:

1. No size warning was generated during editing, so the article is not too long
2. Given what people use encyclopedias for, and given why someone might look up John Harriman's article, the previous edit contained crucial details regarding the manner in which The Captain's Daughter rehabilitated Harriman's character following the events of Star Trek Generations. A person wanting to know more about Harriman might want to know these details when looking him up.
3. ShutterbugTrekker argues that the article was tagged with an in-universe tag, and trimming it will keep it from being tagged again. I disagree entirely with this for the following reasons: First of all, the amount of details given in a plot synopsis has nothing to do with whether something is written in-universe, and if someone comes along to place the tag on the article again, the issue is whether doing so is well-founded. Not merely whether erasing most of the details will prevent it. If the tagging is unfounded, then amount of detail is irrelevant. Second, User: Cromulent Kwyjibo already removed the in-universe tag, pointing out in his Edit Summary that the article "not only differentiates fact and fiction, but also canon and non-canon fiction", and he's right.

I worked hard on writing the plot synopses for The Captain's Daughter and "Shakedown", and I see no reason how they violate WP policy. I am also disturbed by the somewhat knee-jerk manner in which ShutterbugTrekker restored his edit, including the false assertion that the story involves Demora contracting a disease--even thought I already informed him in my previous Edit Summary when reverting his edit that no such plot point existed in the story. He responded, "No, but it did cause a tagger to complain that this article is supposedly "in-universe," so let's trim it before taggers complain again." What does this have to do with placing incorrect information in the article that he acknowledged as such? Would it have been so hard to read the details of that plot point from the previous edit and conserve it? This suggests to me that the rationale behind Shutterbug's "trimming" was a bit more capricious than it could have been. I'm requesting Third Opinion. Nightscream (talk) 05:10, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

In my opinion, an article should not be compromised to satisfy taggers, said edit is not part of the plot so the edit by User:Nightscream should stand. Mww113 (talk) (Report a mistake!) 20:12, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

"An article should not be compromised to satisfy taggers." That's more or less what I'd been hoping to hear for at least a year now. Thank you Mww113 for setting this precedent. ShutterBugTrekker (talk) 21:39, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

You are quite welcome Mww113 (talk) (Report a mistake!) 00:59, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

The thing we need to understand about taggers is that their goal is not to encourage article improvement, but to make a case for deletion. For that strategy to work, they need to choose tags that are at least halfway plausible. Consider these lines from an earlier version of the article:

Because the Enterprise is the closest ship to the El-Aurians, it is forced to attempt a rescue, despite being undermanned, and under-equipped. The Enterprise discovers the ships caught in strange spatial phenomena known only as an "energy ribbon", which destroys one of the refugees ships. The Enterprise manages to transport 47 of the 115 refugees from the second ship, the Lakul, before it too is destroyed. The Enterprise itself is caught in the ribbon's gravimetric field, escape from which requires Kirk to make a modification to the ship's deflector relays on Deck 15. This allows the Enterprise to break free of the ribbon, but an energy tendril breaches the hull on Decks 13-15. Kirk is apparently lost in the incident and presumed dead.

Harriman is not even mentioned in these lines, and the thing reads as if it's about to veer off into a retelling of the whole film. With the novels, I remain concerned that there is too much retelling of the stories without focusing enough on how these events affect Harriman as character. There is no tag that expresses this exactly, so, unlike the taggers, I prefer to just come out and say it in my own words. Anton Mravcek (talk) 22:38, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

A perfectly valid point, but then, that's why that level of detail was rightfully trimmed away, which entirely different from the massive "trim" that was just done on the Captain's Daugther passage, or tagging the article with an in-universe tag. Nightscream (talk) 02:14, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Tagging rarely helps solve problems, I hope we can all agree. Bold editing has a better track record.

But the specific problem here is that Star Trek novels just don't have the prestige of the films and people are not as familiar with them to begin with. So Cromulent Kwyjibo has very likely seen Star Trek: Generations but not read Captain's Daughter or any of the others, so he was able to focus on how the film expresses Harriman's personality and discard the stuff that makes more sense in the article about the film.

What we need right now is someone who is familiar with those novels to approach these sections with a laser beam focus and get right to the point those novels have about John Harriman, and get to that point fast, and I mean fast. ShutterBugTrekker (talk) 23:45, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I already did that. I am familiar with the first two print stories, and the synopses for them only contain the absolute bare-bones information that allow readers to understand Harriman's actions, the context in which they occurred, and why they represent a rehabilitation by Peter David. I looked over it again, and I don't see what could be removed that would not remove that context. Second, what exactly is the reason for this "fast, and I mean fast" urgency? We're not operating on a time limit or a schedule. We asked for a Third Opinion, and the one who provided it confirmed that my edit is the proper one. The matter would appear to be closed, and any further disagreement would require mediation/arbitration.Nightscream (talk) 00:08, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Who is User:Third Opinion? As for the urgency, we do have a time limit: the time it takes a reader to decide that he just plain doesn't care about the paragraph he started to read a few seconds ago. Ask Cromulent Kwyjibo: did he not try to trim the sections about the novels simply because he hasn't read them, or was it because he was yawning too much after he read the third line and/or was wondering how all this information supported the first line? Anton Mravcek (talk) 18:10, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia: Third Opinion is not the name of a User. It's a procedure by which disputes are resolved on Wikipedia. Since Shutterbug and I disagreed on his erasure of large portions of the article, I requested Third Opinion. User:Mww113 provided it, as seen above.

Your statement about a time limit makes no sense. Shutterbug's statement "fast, and I mean fast" clearly implied some specified time limit by which we need to do so. It did not refer to the time it takes for a reader to read the paragraph, which is something that cannot be measured or standardized for all readers, though it certainly takes more than "a few seconds", as you remark with your sarcastic comment.

Cromulent Kwyjibo trimmed the sections because he saw information that could be taken out of the passage without sacrificing its meaning or context, and he did so without snide remarks or sarcastic insults, a constructive activity that Wikipedia prescribes. Your statements, however, are in violation of Wikipedia: Civility and Wikipedia: Assume Good Faith, and have no business in a constructive discussion of how best to proceed with the editing of an article. Nightscream (talk) 21:22, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

To answer Anton's question: I would like to think I edited as I did because of the former and not the latter; the former makes me look good. But the truth is that the sections on the novels seem excessively long to me and I just don't care enough to put in the effort to read them and try to compress them.

Even if ShutterBugTrekker did mean a time limit by "get to the point fast," Anton's interpretation of that statement as "the time it takes for a reader to read the paragraph," even if it "cannot be measured or standardized for all readers," makes sense to me. I read the first liine about Captain's Daughter and I thought: "This is going to tell me how the novel exonerates Harriman." But by the third or fourth line I was like, "Is this all just going to be plot summary of a novel (which anyway can be contradicted by other novels or even a film), or is it going to support the premise laid out by the first line?"

So in summary, my opinion is that there is way too much plot detail about the novels bogging this article down, but neither a tagger nor a Trek fan who doesn't read the novels will be able to fix this problem. This is a problem that needs to be fixed by someone who has read the novels and knows what the point is that they're making about Harriman's character. If those novels deserve their own articles in Wikipedia, that's a different issue altogether. Cromulent Kwyjibo (talk) 22:18, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I think you already fixed the problem as you described it, and did a good job of it, and without Anton's vitriol, for which I commend you, Cromulent. Kudos. :-) Nightscream (talk) 23:03, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Um, thanks. But I think I've only fixed the problem for the film section. The problem remains for the novels section, as illustrated by ShutterBugTrekker's possible misunderstanding of the plot of Shakedown. Cromulent Kwyjibo (talk) 15:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

So I wasn't clear. By "fast" I meant one or two sentences, three tops. If after reading 20 sentences the reader doesn't know what the point is, is that getting to the point fast? Or what if the reader just gives up trying to read it, as Cromulent Kwyjibo did? Is that good?

Tell me, because I really don't know: what is the point Captain's Daughter makes about Harriman's character? That he can go berserk? Or that he can stand up to his dad and to Sulu? Something else altogether that's been crowded out by subsidiary details?

And what is the point of Shakedown? That Harriman won't break under Romulan interrogation? ShutterBugTrekker (talk) 14:38, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

If I'm understanding the paragraph correctly (I made an effort and read the whole thing), Harriman knew he was in holodeck pretending to be interrogated by Rokan. He could've said "Computer, end simulation" at any time. This doesn't show that Harriman won't break under Romulan interrogation. I would never break either in a holodeck. But in a real interrogation chamber, all they'd have to do is offer me a pack of cigarettes. Cromulent Kwyjibo (talk) 15:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I misunderstood you, Shutterbug. There is no WP policy or guideline that prescribes two or three sentences as the length of a paragraph. If a reader "gives up" before completing 16 sentences (the actual current length of the Captain's Daughter section), or understands that Harriman "went berserk", the problem isn't the passage's length. The problem is laziness, a low attention span, and/or poor reading comprehension on the part of the reader, since the passage doesn't say anything about Harriman going berserk. As for "Shakedown", whether a holosimulation not being a true illustration of a person's reactions to torture, and what the "point" of a story is, is a matter of aesthetic interpretation, and is not something for an encyclopedia synopsis to decide. A synopsis is just a summary of the salient aspects of a plot. Nightscream (talk) 16:08, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

If you decide to revert my last edit of today, please also do a text search for the word "berserk". Robert Happelberg (talk) 23:26, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Looks like a good trim to me. Nightscream (talk) 00:17, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Let's also give credit to Bob for what he added to the section: a paragraph break. It's so simple, it's brilliant; I wish I had thought of it. Although this is not the Simple English Wikipedia, it never hurts to make things clearer for the reader. Bob also deserves credit for removing the plot cheat of Shakedown, by moving the crucial bit of info to the beginning of the section. Cromulent Kwyjibo (talk) 14:53, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The morals of this story:

1. Don't blame the reader for bad writing.
2. Wikipedia has no obligation to keep the plot twists of the novel secret.
3. Reread the writing to make sure it really does say what you think it says, or what you want it to say.

Thanks to Bob Happ and Cromulent Kwyjibo for teaching us these lessons. ShutterBugTrekker (talk) 23:43, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Question about the sources

I'm sorry, I am somewhat new to Wikipedia and I have been unable to determine the location of source #2 in the article. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harriman#cite_note-1

It doesn't appear to link to any webpage, reference any literary material, or indicate any other source. It simply reads "Farrand, ibid." and then follows with some sentences in quotations that appear to back up the author's assertations. Could someone clarify this for me and tell me what I am missing?

Deathbyhornet (talk) 22:31, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi. See Ibid. - it means it's from the same source as the one already quoted by that author. "Ibid." confuses a lot of people the first time they come across it! - Fayenatic (talk) 08:13, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Redirect

While moderately significant within the franchise, this character has not been the subject of significant third-party coverage (WP:GNG). I've redirected to the franchise's character list. --EEMIV (talk) 21:08, 20 November 2013 (UTC)