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Memory Alpha

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Mr. Starfleet Command (talk | contribs) at 03:00, 24 August 2023 (cleanup, -bits that i can't find a non-primary source for (and need one), general fix). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
This article is about the website. For the fictional Star Trek location, see The Lights of Zetar.

Memory Alpha
Type of site
Wiki
OwnerCommunal
Created by
  • Dan Carlson
  • Harry Doddema
RevenueAdvertising
URLmemory-alpha.fandom.com
CommercialYes
RegistrationRequired
Launched
  • November 11, 2003; 21 years ago (2003-11-11) (test site)
  • December 5, 2003; 21 years ago (2003-12-05) (official launch)
Content license
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0[1]

Memory Alpha is a wiki encyclopedia for topics related to the Star Trek fictional universe.[2][3][4][5] Conceived by Harry Doddema and Dan Carlson in September 2003 and officially launched on December 5 of that year, it uses the wiki model and is hosted by Fandom on the MediaWiki software. Doddema and Carlson retired from Memory Alpha in 2008 and 2005 respectively. Memory Alpha contains over 55,000 articles and 60,000 images in its English edition alone as of October 2021, making it one of the largest wiki projects. The site is also available in several other languages,[6] including Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, and Swedish.

The textual content of Memory Alpha is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.[1] Because this license does not allow commercial reuse, it is incompatible with the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) and with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (CC BY-SA), and material from the site cannot be copied into projects that use the GFDL or CC BY-SA.[7][8] This distinction makes Memory Alpha incompatible with the main body of Fandom wikis, which are currently licensed under the CC BY-SA license[9] and formerly under the GFDL. Memory Alpha is cited as a source by academic journals, scholarly studies and books as well as Star Trek-universe novels and reference works.[10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]

History

Memory Alpha aims to create a comprehensive database for all fans, but was not conceived as a wiki.[18] Two concerns spurred its creation in 2003: many Star Trek references sources on the internet were incomplete, and the most promising often shut down. Doddema and Carlson christened their project Memory Alpha, after the Federation's largest information archive, from the original series episode "The Lights of Zetar".

The two decided on a wiki format, which allowed for more collaboration than other formats available. As Carlson said in the Charlotte Observer, "The idea I latched onto with the wiki concept is you can spread the work around. Everyone can pitch in and go in on their own special interest." After experimenting with TikiWiki software, they switched to the MediaWiki platform, finding it less cumbersome. The platform of choice for Wikimedia Foundation projects proved to be, in their opinion, more stable and efficient, and they brought a test site online on November 11, 2003. Memory Alpha officially launched on December 5, 2003.

The site gained momentum in the following months, aided by a mention on the Star Trek fan site "TrekNation" on December 23. Memory Alpha reached 1,000 articles by January 12, 2004, but on March 23, the site's database was accidentally erased during an upgrade of the MediaWiki software. Although this caused six weeks of work to be lost, the project expanded to include Dutch and German versions on April 10 and May 14 respectively. It remained stable until the following year, when the fees associated with hosting the site became more than the founders could afford.

In February 2005, Memory Alpha switched hosting servers and joined Wikicities (later renamed to Wikia, now known as Fandom), a free for-profit wiki-hosting company started by Wikimedia Foundation board members Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley. Memory Alpha opened a Swedish site on May 5 and a French one on November 5. It also received several distinctions that year, such as the Ex Astris Excellentia award from Ex Astris Scientia, a Star Trek reference site, in September 2005.[19] By this time, Memory Alpha was the largest project on Wikicities and had become a central hub for Trekkies who previously been spread across a wide array of websites.[20] Memory Alpha was featured as the Sci-Fi Channel's Site of the Week for October 10, 2005.[21]

Memory Alpha is a resource used by mainstream journalists for information on Star Trek related issues.[22] Blogger Will Richardson hailed the site in his 2006 book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms as "one of the most impressive [wikis] out there".[23]

In June 2007, Memory Alpha announced that it had reached a milestone of 25,000 articles, which made it one of the biggest online Star Trek informational sources.[24]

Entertainment Weekly named Memory Alpha one of the 25 Essential Fansites in 2007. In comparing it to other Star Trek sites, the reviewer wrote, "Memory Alpha wins out for its handsome, intuitive presentation and its overwhelming mass".[25]

In April 2016 it became public knowledge that actor and writer for Star Trek Beyond, Simon Pegg, used Memory Alpha as a canon resource in writing of the film, even asking the community's then-inactive founders to name and give etymology for a device in the film.[26][27][28]

Structure

Several aspects of Memory Alpha set it apart from other reference works, such as its method of citing sources. All information must be cited from a valid source (see Canon section below), but rather than a "Works Cited" or "References" list, Memory Alpha prefers stand-alone inline citations, which are placed in parentheses after the sentence or section in question. For television episodes, this consists of an abbreviation for the series from which the information came (e.g. DS9 for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), followed by the name of the episode in double quotation marks. So, to cite information from the Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) pilot "Encounter at Farpoint", one would add: (TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint"). The same rule applies for films, without the series prefix and with italics in place of quotation marks. The same method of notation is also used in the printed Star Trek Encyclopedia, which is unrelated to the Memory Alpha wiki.

Articles on Memory Alpha are written from two points of view: "in-universe", which are written as if the reader is a part of the Star Trek universe, and "production", which speak from a real-world perspective. For "in-universe" articles, behind-the-scenes information is not included in the main body of the article; rather, it is placed in a separate background section or included indented and italicized to separate it from the in-universe perspective. The latter method is used in cases where either the information is particularly important (such as conflicting information from two canonical sources) or there is not enough background to justify a separate section. In most cases, the background method is preferred and italics are used sparingly.

Like many wikis, Memory Alpha has a section for "featured articles", those believed to represent the best the community has to offer.[21] The criteria for this distinction are that an article must be well written, comprehensive (which includes citing sources), accurate and undisputed – criteria any article could hypothetically fulfill. This has caused some conflict over the criteria involved (see Current issues section). To be featured, an article must be nominated by a user and unanimously supported by at least five other users; any objections must be fixable and may be invalidated if deemed irrational or unreasonable. Each week, one of the site's featured articles becomes the "Article of the Week" to be displayed on the project home page.

Several methods of communication are available beyond conventional talk pages. The "community portal" section of the website is named after Ten Forward, a locale frequented by characters on The Next Generation. Issues discussed there range from disputes between users to new ideas on how to improve the site to upcoming projects. A separate area, the reference desk, exists for discussions and questions related to what is considered part of the canon, discrepancies between sources, and other such topics. However, "meta-Trek" topics (a term used for Star Trek-related topics that do not pertain in any way to Memory Alpha) are not discussed on the wiki; a separate Discord channel exists for these discussions.

Content policy

The question of Star Trek's canon is a complex one that has plagued fans since Star Trek's original run.[29] Until 2010, everything outside of the live-action television episodes and films were "traditionally" considered non-canonical. However, there were some grey areas in this policy, such as books by Jeri Taylor[30] and Star Trek: The Animated Series.[29] To avoid any ambiguity, Memory Alpha crafted its own "content policy," which declares all episodes of all live-action and animated Star Trek shows and films as valid in-universe resources.[31][non-primary source needed] With the relaunch of StarTrek.com in 2010, The Animated Series was added to the list of canonical shows included in the database, thus officially confirming the show's new status as part of Star Trek canon,[32] in agreement with Memory Alpha.

Memory Alpha allows the use of material not seen or heard in an episode or film for the purpose of clearing up ambiguity in name, date, species, spelling, gender, etc., with the condition that a background note be added explaining the source of the information. Production, reference, and reception resources can be used in real-world pages and "background information" sections, while apocryphal resources can be used in real-world pages and "apocrypha" sections. Non-canon products are also given their own articles written from a production point of view, which can also include original "in-universe" information that exist in the apocrypha but not in canon.[33][non-primary source needed]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Memory Alpha: Copyrights". Memory Alpha. Fandom. Retrieved August 17, 2023.
  2. ^ Barron, James (July 6, 2006). "It's an Auction, Jim, but Not as We Know It". The New York Times.
  3. ^ Tossell, Ivor (January 12, 2007). "It's a wiki world". The Globe and Mail. Archived from the original on March 28, 2010.
  4. ^ Lee, Ellen (December 25, 2005). "The (mostly) wonderful world of Wikis". Contra Costa Times. Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service.
  5. ^ no byline (October 14, 2006). "Web watch: Star Trek sites abound", The Record, p. F1
  6. ^ Crockett, Christine (September 17, 2006). "A 40-year 'Trek'", Sun Journal, p. B1.
  7. ^ Peter Black, Hayden Delaney; Fitzgerald, Brian (2007). "Legal Issues for Wikis: the Challenge of User-generated and Peer-Produced Knowledge, Content and Culture" (PDF). Murdoch University Electronic Journal of Law. 14 (1): 245. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 22, 2012.
  8. ^ "Wiki/cc license compatibility". CC Wiki. Creative Commons. Retrieved November 7, 2016.
  9. ^ "Licensing". Fandom. Retrieved August 17, 2023.
  10. ^ Ochoa; et al. (2007). "A Game Board Implementing Data Mining and Cultural Algorithms". Uruguaiana. 31 (59/60).
  11. ^ Corchado, Emilio; Corchado, Juan M.; Abraham, Ajith, eds. (2007). Innovations in Hybrid Intelligent Systems. Berlin: Springer. p. 490. ISBN 978-3-540-74971-4.
  12. ^ Conley, Tim (2006). Encyclopedia of Fictional and Fantastic Languages. Westport: Greenwood Press. ISBN 0-313-33188-X.
  13. ^ Firsing, Scott T. (2007). Disturbing times : the state of the planet and its possible future. New York: Pocket. ISBN 978-1-4165-2741-1.
  14. ^ Jill Sherwin; et al. (2001). The Definitive Star Trek Trivia Book. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7434-0671-0.
  15. ^ A. Decandido, Keith R.; David, Peter; Shaw, Sarah (2007). Star Trek : mirror universe : obsidian alliances. New York: Pocket Books. ISBN 978-1-4165-2471-7.
  16. ^ Lajoie, John (2007). Enterprising Endeavour: Scorpius Rising. p. 309. ISBN 978-0-557-00794-3.
  17. ^ Sennewald, Nadja (2007). Alien gender : die Inszenierung von Geschlecht in Science-Fiction-Serien. Bielefeld: Transcript. p. 65. ISBN 978-3-89942-805-6.
  18. ^ Ebersbach, Anja (2008). Wiki: Web Collaboration. Berlin: Springer. p. 33. ISBN 978-3-540-35150-4.
  19. ^ "EAE Award Winners 2005". Ex Astris Scientia. Retrieved August 17, 2023.
  20. ^ Barnett, Cynthia (September 1, 2005). "Wiki Mania". Florida Trend. Vol. 48, no. 5. p. 62. ISSN 0015-4326. Archived from the original on November 22, 2005.
  21. ^ a b Newquist, Ken (October 10, 2005). "Sci-Fi Site of the Week". SciFi.com. Archived from the original on December 13, 2005. Retrieved November 30, 2005.
  22. ^ Barron, James "It's an Auction, Jim, But Not as We Know It." New York Times. (Late Edition (East Coast)). New York, N.Y.: Jul 6, 2006. pg. B.3
  23. ^ Richardson, Will (2006). Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press. p. 62. ISBN 1-4129-2767-6.
  24. ^ ""Memory Alpha," the Online Star Trek Encyclopedia, Surpasses 25,000 Article Mark". PRWeb. Cision. June 20, 2007. Archived from the original on February 7, 2023. Retrieved August 17, 2023.
  25. ^ Vary, Adam B. (December 28, 2007). "25 Essential Fansites Archived 2009-01-29 at the Wayback Machine", Entertainment Weekly 971: T9.
  26. ^ "Gizmodo".
  27. ^ "Trek Core".
  28. ^ "Spinoff Online". Archived from the original on June 2, 2016. Retrieved June 2, 2016.
  29. ^ a b "Canon Fodder: The Star Trek Animated Series". StarTrek.com. CBS Studios Inc. June 5, 2006. Archived from the original on June 29, 2010. Retrieved August 22, 2023.
  30. ^ "Help: FAQ". StarTrek.com. CBS Studios Inc. July 10, 2003. Archived from the original on June 28, 2010. Retrieved August 22, 2023.
  31. ^ "Memory Alpha: Content policy". Memory Alpha. Fandom. Retrieved August 22, 2023.
  32. ^ "Sitemap". StarTrek.com. CBS Studios Inc. 2010. Archived from the original on July 17, 2010. Retrieved August 22, 2023.
  33. ^ "Memory Alpha: Resource policy". Memory Alpha. Fandom. Retrieved August 23, 2023.
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