Talk:Stargate (device)/Archive 3

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
  • /Archive 1 - up to June 2005
  • /Archive 2 - up to March 2006

Contents

More nonfiction

Looking at the second FA submission, the peer review is still strongly saying we need to treat this article from a nonfictional point of view. I've altered the intro to reflect this and added a "name and origin" section with lots of nonfiction in it. Move the information around as needed, and do the same to other parts of the article I think - there are lots of ways to talk about these things nonfictionally. When describing the Stargate's event horizon, discuss actual event horizons too. Or when discussing how it works, make reference to what the idea hangs on (there's a lot of "attempting to be based on science" in Stargate).-- Alfakim --  talk  15:46, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Also, references. I'm surprised we have no references to Stepping Through the Stargate. There are a host of things beyond episodes that we can reference. I know we don't have to and shouldn't have to, but lets just please those FA guys. -- Alfakim --  talk  15:50, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Tighten things

Just read through the article from top to bottom. It repeats itself a hell of a lot. See how many times it tells you that Stargates open wormholes to each other, how many times it explains that 7-8 chevrons need to be dialled, and how the dialling system works, etc. The whole thing really could be tightened up a lot. Scrap the repetition and reorder if necessary. Introduce the information logically. I'd do this but I'm tired and need to go to bed. -- Alfakim --  talk  01:51, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Sci-fi FA - "spoo"

Spoo ([1]) was recently featured as an article on the front page. It's a substance in the scifi series Babylon 5. What are they doing that we aren't? Maybe we can learn something from the article. What I've taken from it so far is that it makes a lot of references to the real-life conceptual inventor of spoo.-- Alfakim --  talk  01:59, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

  • Are there any real-life Stargates? ;) No. Unfortunately Spoo has something going for it. There really isn't much info about Stargates beyond the show, which is why the article should already be a FA. The Filmaker 17:31, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Other Uses of a Stargate

I just altered the information in the "Other Uses of a Stargate" section from a list into prose, as per the suggestions on the featured article discussion page. Comments and edits are welcome! Abhorsen327 21:50, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Kawalsky's Comment

I think the comment that Kawalsky said about gate travel being about like pulling eight gees in an F-16, i really think that's just kawalsky ripping on carter for being a woman and being invited to be on the team. Anyone else agree or disagree? Jordan.Kreiger 22:11, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Disagree. There are many other cases besides that one where gate travel is made out to be a rollercoaster ride. Besides, the way its all pulled off, its obviously not a joke.-- Alfakim --  talk  13:55, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
I think that there are comments that it is just like walking through a doorway. We could find quotations like that to dispell this myth. But what happenned to the frost that formed on travellers who went through the gate in the movie? Val42 15:59, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
I think that the initial "eight gees in a F-16", frost, and rough ride were explained, early in the series (first season?). If I recall correctly, this was a result of problems with the SGC's dialling program, and how it corresponded with the Stargate system. After this problem was identified, it was fixed, possibly by Carter. Don't take my word on this, since I haven't seen the first seasons for over a year, and memory isn't always accurate. I think that the SGC's dialing program was fixed, however, to go from the rough ride of the movie and first few episodes to the "walking through a doorway" of the later episodes and seasons. Abhorsen327 16:12, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
I think you're are correct here, but I don't have a reference. I think this was essentially a retcon. JoshuaZ 23:54, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
With the frost, MGM thought that the effect was too expensive. Just FYI. American Patriot 1776 18:53, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
In episode 9.13 Carter says "Now, while it may feel immediate, the journey between gates is not instantaneous." This strongly implies no travel is experienced, and one feels as though they stepped straight through the event horizon to their destination. A transcript of this episode is found here[2].--128.205.219.214 05:44, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Mmmm, well the point is: the show is inconsistent. thats what it says in the article. the article also has the "immediate" version more prominent, and only notes the travellers-eye-view version as a side-note about the inconsistencies. -- Alfakim --  talk  10:30, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Gate travel definitely does NOT feel like eight G's in an F-16, and it was definitely retconned. For God's sake, an old lady was able to go through without problems!!(Cold Lazarus) Also, nobody would even feel going through the gate, since they are demolecularized in the same position they started at and don't remember anything. However this would contrast with the people actually feeling going through the gate....-Zxcvbnm 22:48, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Intro wording -possible change?

In the introduction it says "Despite numbering in the millions, only a select number of races understand how to use these relics, including, most recently, Stargate Command of Earth." This should be reworded since Stargate Comman isn't a race, possibly replace Stargate Command with "humans of earth"? JoshuaZ 23:42, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

What about simply "select number of worlds or peoples"? --Tone 15:47, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
So what would your full wording be? JoshuaZ 15:51, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Hm... Stargates are present on many planets but not all peoples understand their purpose and use it to travel. What do you think? --Tone 19:31, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

But we presumably want to keep the mention that earth recently discovered how to use it. How about "Stargates are present on many planets but many peoples do not know how to use them. Recently, the U.S. Air Force discovered how to use the Stargate on earth." JoshuaZ 19:33, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good. Let's replace it. --Tone 19:38, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Work needed

I recently noticed this article was a project for WP:Stargate for improvement. The three things that still really need improvement were voiced at the FAC, but deserve mention here. First, the prop itself has next to no information, which is really too bad. Second, the "Other uses of the Stargate concept" should definetly be summarized into paragraph(s), split-off, and if made much smaller should probably be made a sub-section of something else. Finally, and somewhat all-encompassing, the article needs a serious look-over to deal with look at a fictional object as reality. When dealing with fictional powers of the object there needs to be at least some clarity that they are fictional powers. Staxringold 02:48, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree. A great example to follow is DNA Resequencer. It's a Stargate article, written from and out of universe persepctive. It has info on the prop, and many other real world sections. Just copy DNA resequencer and the problems will be fixed. Tobyk777 23:53, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

getting there

this article is getting close to an FA resubmission i feel. ive just done a huge load of work on it to prose-ify, and nonfiction-ify it, rearrange bits, remove OR, etc. i dont think we should submit yet. there's still a lot of stuff that they could pick on.

for now, i suggest working on the nonfiction. dont say "the stargate is cool." say "the character o'neill comments that the stargate is cool[234]." -- Alfakim --  talk  17:30, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

lol!

check out the very first version of this article, and compare to now!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Stargate_%28device%29&oldid=4306780

well - it made me laugh for some reason. -- Alfakim --  talk  17:55, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

omg, that's funny! American Patriot 1776 22:12, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Good Article

I've just reviewed this. I made some changes, but they were all only copyediting. As far as I;m concerned, this well deserves to be a Good Article. I may get more involved as it approaches FA status, or I may simply raise a few points when it gets there. Either way, I think the article should now be developed with FA in view. Congratulations to those involved in getting it this far. Metamagician3000 06:37, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree completely Tobyk777 04:14, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
It's been a week now since I disputed the delisting and nobody's addressed it. The delisting was based on a misunderstanding, the misunderstanding's been resolved, are there any remaining objections to relisting it as a good article now? Bryan 05:31, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Patience. The status to my objections is that I'm currently adding external links (including transcripts) to all of the Stargate SG-1 Articles. I'm currently in the Ts (alphabetically), and StargateWiki (my main transcript site) is down. If they don't come up soon, I'll continue and use Moon-catching instead. After finishing those, I'll add links to the transcripts from this article in the references (or you can start adding links now, if you want to help), and then there will be no further objections. Armedblowfish 11:11, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Rereading that, disputing the delisting is if you think the delisting was unfair, and as no one outside of the Stargate project besides me (and I'm the one who delisted it, and thus not an uninvolved 3rd party either) has said anything, it doesn't seem like there has been a consensus one way or the other. On the other hand, renomination is for when the complaint (my complaint, in this case) is fixed (which, as I said above, is still in the process of being done). Relisting should be done after a consensus (involving a 3rd party i.e. not me or someone from the Stargate project) is made on the disputes page, or after the article is renominated (and passes, which shouldn't be a problem after this is fixed, as the article is good in all other respects). Armedblowfish 23:05, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Transcripts cited. Whenever anyone wants to renominate this article, I will support it. Armedblowfish 23:45, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

a hundred days

where does it say in "A Hundred Days" that matter entering an incoming wormhole is destroyed? -- Alfakim --  talk  11:00, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

The MALP they sent through the wormhole while it was lying on its "back" popped up, returning telemetry for a moment, and then fell back down into the wormhole and quit sending. I'm not sure what the dialogue regarding the event said, though, I don't have time to dig out the DVD right now. Bryan 15:35, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Why I delisted this from Good Articles - Verification

The vast majority of the references in this article are to other Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia:Citing_sources#Why_sources_should_be_cited specifically states that Wikipedia articles cannot cite themselves. Also see WP:Verify. I am sure you can find episode reviews, plot summaries, or perhaps even scripts. However, this will take time, which is why I could not fix it quickly. Once this problem has been addressed, I believe this should be a "good article" again. Armedblowfish 00:49, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Verification!!?? There are 27 refs. We all worked hard to get this to become a Good Article. There are 27 citations. How can you possibly delist this because of refs? We are not citing ourselves. We are citing the episodes. Tobyk777 01:47, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Even though you are referencing the episodes, the episodes themselves don't have references, making this a case of Wikipedia citing itself. I believe he wants you to find outside sources, if not for the article, then for the episodes you cite, to prevent this.--Zxcvbnm 02:22, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Stargate#Important_-_Referencing. Armedblowfish 02:31, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
The condition of the episode articles is irrelevant. Whenever I cite an episode as a source for something in a Stargate article I use the DVD as the source for the information I'm citing. It'd be nice to get the episode articles fully referenced too, of course, but I don't see why that has to be done first before the episode itself can be cited as a source elsewhere. Bryan 06:38, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

As far as I can see this is a misunderstanding. We're citing the episodes, which then happen to be linked to a wikipedia article. Nevertheless it's the episode we're citing. But a quick question: If each individual episode article had citation to DVDs, etc., would it then become okay to cite our articles? I'd also like to point out that there isn't a WP:V problem here at all. There's a problem with internal citation, but there is no Verifiability problem, as we are ALSO citing outside sources like the official website.-- Alfakim --  talk  13:54, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

While I see what you mean, I still disagree. While citations to episodes are better than nothing, they are hard to verify (episodes are not things you can simply look up on the internet, or even something you can pick up at the library). If you disagree with my delistation, you can ask for a review. Alternatively, you can help me fix it, and then I will fully support a renomination for good article status. (Who knows, perhaps including external links will help this become a featured article?) Armedblowfish 17:05, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
The same criticism applies to most of the book references I come across in Wikipedia articles, too. I really don't get what the problem is with referencing DVDs. Bryan 02:45, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
Thats because there is no problem with refrencing DVDs. Lets say that you are writing an article on birds, and you used a DVD documantary to write it. That would be a perfectly valid soruce. There is no way you could link to the DVD, but it's still valid. The same thing applies here. It just looks like we are citing ourslevs because we link to a wiki summary of the DVDs. The DVDs are what's refrenced, not the summaries. Tobyk777 03:40, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

So why not citing references as: [[Episode XX]], DVD box YY, disk ZZ? It then cites the episode on dvd and adds a link to the WP article for pure convenience. I suppose this would be ok with everyone? --Tone 09:39, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

That would be fine with me. But links to external transcripts would still be useful. (I am currently adding external links to the articles on the episodes, and can add the links to transcripts in this article later.) Armedblowfish 17:38, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
What external transcripts do you suggest? Sites like Gateworld are still fan-oriented and I don't know whether there are original synopsises available on the web. --Tone 23:23, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
Look at what I've been doing. I've gotten through about half of the Stargate SG-1 episodes now. Just one transcript linked to from the article itself would be good. Anyone who wants more external links can look at the articles on the episodes themselves. (Stargatefan, StargateWiki, GateWorld....) Armedblowfish 02:40, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Special:Contributions/Armedblowfish <-- See there. (Oh, and I don't really like scifi.com because it requires flash, but the more links, the merrier, if you want to add links to it.) Armedblowfish 02:49, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
We could also use www.scifi.com/stargate which although it does not have full scripts, does have plot synopsies of most episodes. (In general, I was under the impression that citing a work itself(a play, a television episode, etc.) was acceptable as long as it was extant. JoshuaZ 23:26, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
So is it now dvd+external link+WP article? The only problem I could see with that would be that it might be too extensive :-) --Tone 23:49, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
I still have a problem with it. Refrence 3. It says, various early episodes. This is vauge. It should list all of them. Tobyk777 01:39, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Think about it

How could the unique symbol on Earth's Gate be the sun rising over the pyramids if the Goa'uld used the gate to get to Earth in the first place? The Stargate would predate the pyramids. Thinktank 01:35, 5 May 2006

Shh, you're thinking too hard. P.S. Sign your posts. Shogun 01:51, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm shocked, shocked, to find that a science fiction show would have inconsistences. Actually, that's a major one I haven't seen pointed out before. JoshuaZ 01:59, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

A very good point, but - a simple explanation gets round it. Daniel Jackson's interpretation of the symbol was wrong. Reinterpretations - symbol for atlantis leaving earth? (arrow pointing up to circle).-- Alfakim --  talk  13:21, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
But isn't the Abydos symbol also based on pyramids? The ancients didn't leave Abydos in any special way. Maybe the symbols are just arbitary - we know the gates get moved around a lot, so the symbols shouldn't bare any relation to the planet they are on. Daniel didn't just interpret it wrong, he was trying to find a reason for something arbitary. Of course, the whole gate system doesn't actually make sense, so it's not worth trying to work it out. For example, in Torment of Tantalus they mention the planet being close to Earth as a reason for the dialing working - it was random chance, the address changing over time isn't going to affect guessing. --Tango 00:01, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Alright, the Goa'uld know how to work with Naqahdah, correct? Then maybe the Goa'uld removed an original set of symbols installed by the Ancients (which might have looked more like the Atlantis/Pegasus galaxy gate symbols), and replaced them with their own symbols, designed to look like Goa'uld constructions, and lend greater credence to their claim that they created the Stargate system. Possibly? CaptainVindaloo 16:38, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
The Antarctic Stargate was unknown to the Goa'uld but still used the same style of glyphs as the other Stargates, so seems unlikely. There were also plenty of other Stargates the Tau'ri discovered that the Goa'uld didn't know about when O'Neill updated the address database while under the influence of the Ancient Repository, we'd probably have heard if those had different symbols on them. Bryan 23:10, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
Arg! Ok, scraping the bottom of the barrel here, but maybe the gate symbols change themselves (à la Replicators) to suit local landmarks, so as to be less confusing to anyone else wanting to use the system, but who may not know what the original Ancient symbols mean. Any civilization clever enough to build the Stargates would be able do do that, surely. On the other hand, not having seen much of SG:A myself (I missed it instead), does Atlantis have a 'pyramidy' architecture? If so, then there you are. The symbols represent Atlantis, as Alfakim says, or possibly the Ancients built local pyramids and other monuments of their own, and the Goa'uld copied them (or took the credit for them), to further the 'we created the stargates' line. CaptainVindaloo 23:52, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Maybe the Ancients built the first pyramids, and the Goa'uld, then Egyptian humans continued building them? CaptainVindaloo 18:59, 5 May 2006 (UTC)