FlowTV.org Article on BW

[Joe Beaudoin Jr.]

FlowTV has an article written by Sarah Toton regarding the Battlestar Wiki (http://www.battlestarwiki.org) and, even, Wiki Frakr (http://wiki.frakr.com).

It is located here (http://flowtv.org/?p=1060#identifier_3_1060).

As some of the people may know, Toton wrote an article on Battlestar Wiki for an MIT5 presentation (http://blog.battlestarwiki.org/2007/05/01/mit5-on-bsg/) earlier this year. The feedback from that was pretty informative, and as such I look forward to reading people's thoughts on this. :D

[Shane]

Here we go again...

[Serenity]

And we know even have a sexuality article!
http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Sexuality_in_Battlestar_Galactica_%28RDM%29

She isn't as completely misunderstanding and confrontational as in the first article. The article is mostly neutral and only turns to POV in conclusion. That's fine. :)

Though I still disagree with the implication that BSWiki might be better if it included fanfic or shipping. Thanks the gods it doesn't. By definition, those topics are pure opinion. One just needs to look at any forum to see how much friction and nonsense that causes. I have my own view on the characters' romantic relationships. I don't need or want to read other people's endless ramblings on it. I just dislike how they reduce the characters solely to romance. It's important, but not everything. Ok, sometimes I wished people wouldn't focus so much on the final five or Earth, which I'm sick of by now, but reducing the show to romance is equally bad. It's the relationships between characters in general that interest me.

[Joe Beaudoin Jr.]

I'll add to what Serenity said. We're a general encyclopedia and reference, and we look at the whole picture, not just romantic relationships. We have friendships, military relations, and relations between the Cylons and Colonials, relations between terrorists and military people, and a whole slew of relationships that also deserve to be noted. So yes, romantic/sexual relationships have their importance, but aren't the total sum of the relationships or drama within the show. I don't think people really watch the show to see Baltar and Virtual Six get at it.

From my viewpoint, the reason we never really had an article on sexuality before was that it wasn't a big issue before. Before "Razor" (and, hell, even before "Torn") It was relatively "safe" in that regard, and it's the "shippers" and "slashers" that add the sexual complexities and try to assign sexuality to characters (OMG! We've never seen Gaeta with a girl! Gaeta's gotta be gay!), not the writers or creative personnel.

As Taylor said, same-sex relationships in the new series aren't a big deal to the Colonials, and there's no reason why we have to make a "big deal" about it on Wiki either.

On the other hand, Sarah Toton's not wrong with anything she's said about Wiki Frakr, at least in my view. Not that it's bad, but it's an area that needs to be worked on, in my view.

[ThPrime]

For the as yet unread, like me, Folton's first paper/talk is here:

MiT5 abstracts: Reimagining Fan Culture: The Long Journey of Battlestar Galactica (http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/mit5/subs/MiT5_abstracts.html#toton), Sarah Toton

[Catrope]

As I've also noted on the FlowTV web site, Toton's timing is a little awkward for her, as we've just created sexuality articles two weeks ago. She even links to Special:Search showing "queer" doesn't exist, while it has in fact existed since Dec 7, some two weeks before this article was published.

I'm also happy that Toton seems to praise our encyclopedic approach and eye for detail (search the article for "Downloaded"). I also agree that Wiki Frakr has quite a way to go to maturity, but then it's only been around relatively shortly.

[Joe Beaudoin Jr.]

Actually, Sarah let me know about the article ahead of time and I talked to her briefly about it via e-mail. She attempted to submit corrections regarding the sexuality article, but they apparently were rejected -- the article was written weeks prior to my creation of the sexuality pages, so the so-called "mistake" is understandable.

On the flip side FlowTV's editor editor slipped in a footnote at the bottom explaining that "queer" redirects to the sexuality page as of December 2007, so the change is at least noted.

[Spencerian]

I made a lengthy comment on Sarah's page.

Comparing BW to fanfic is like comparing Encyclopedia Britannica to Mad magazine.

Sarah also tries to create an argument for BW's "lack" of sexuality articles to its larger male contributorship. That prejudices her article from the outset. Furthermore, BW cannot write what hasn't been documented.