I'd brought this up in the 30th anniversary topic, but I felt like it was worthy of its own topic. So, here's the gist... As an editor of Wikipedia, I've been a major contributor to the Sonic articles; I got the '06, Adventure, and Knuckles' Chaotix pages to "featured" (highest quality) status, and a bunch of others through basic review. One of my biggest goals has been to get the main Sonic franchise article to featured status so it can be run on the main page on June 23, 2021. I didn't start until around October since it was such a daunting task. But jump to now... ... and we're almost there! This is how the article looks now, compared to how it looked in October. I've just got two sections to finish up before I submit it for an initial review, then we're on to the featured candidacy forum. It's been a big task for me, especially that "commentary" section. However, it's been a labor of love that's come out of my diehard appreciation for the franchise. I hope you guys enjoy the article; if you have any suggestions, please let me know! I'll keep y'all updated on how it's going.
Where is that Chaos Emeralds picture from? Orange isn't one of the standardised (Sonic Adventure onwards) Chaos Emerald colours.
I fixed it, just had to revert to an older version. It's not official artwork because, on Wikipedia, it's generally preferred to use free images if they exist.
Are you saying that neither image is official? I don't think it's a good idea to have fan art on the article.
It's not "fan art" per se, it's just not from Sega itself. Per Wikipedia guidelines, the general rule of thumb is to avoid using non-free images if a free equivalent that serves the same purpose can exist. Take this Shadow story map, for instance. We could use a screenshot from the game, but this image serves the exact same purpose, and hey, it's free. The Chaos Emeralds image is the same. It works just as well as an official image, but it's not copyrighted, which makes it better.
I mean... It's fan art. I don't think that the Chaos Emerald art works. With the ShTH story map it's a diagram used to explain the mechanics, but with the Emeralds it's completely incorrect.
I did update the image to feature the correct colors, and it looks pretty close to official art. For whatever reason it takes a while for the page itself to reflect image updates, but it should pretty shortly.
That guideline is more for real life subjects - a lion, or Sean Connery. Then you'd use a "free" photo of a lion or Sean Connery. I don't think it really applies when it comes to cartoons and other works of fiction. It's either official or it's fan art. The Spider-Man and Mickey Mouse pages don't use fan art, and the Sonic page shouldn't use fan art.
I was wondering why the page had slowly gotten easier to follow recently. You've done great work revising it, hope it can get featured.
Thanks! Right now we just need to finish sourcing some sections. There's a list of reliable sources that are considered fine to use; just type WP: VG/S (without a space though, I just added one so the smiley won't show up :P) in the search bar to find it.
It's actually been a pretty contentious thing to debate! It boils down to a few things: Sega's never labeled it a spin-off (for instance, Secret Rings would be considered a mainline game if Sega hadn't said it was part of the Storybook spin-off series), and it's not obviously one (like Chaotix and Shadow). Similarly, sources don't really consider it a spin-off. It retains the mechanics of previous games (platforming, running fast, collecting items, etc.) and ignoring the Flicky collection (which isn't all that different) it doesn't really deviate from the established formula. Sonic Team played a central role in its creation (Traveller's Tales did the programming, but they built it based on what Sonic Team came up with, which was everything from the concept to level designs) Overall, the general consensus is that 3D Blast doesn't check the spin-off boxes. There was a lengthy debate in 2017 that almost led to that changing... until all the accounts on one side of the debate were discovered to be the same exact person.
Eh. Sounds like a rather liberal criteria to me, especially since like you said, it would place the Storybook games in the main series if Sega hadn't called them spinoffs. But thanks for the detailed response.
You know, you can use this one I made a few years ago: http://info.sonicretro.org/images/archive/4/4c/20110122205205!Shadow_StoryModeRouteMap.svg.
So I've been thinking recently, and I wanted to hear what you guys think - under the "story" subsection, do you think a subsection about the series' lore and how the games' plots have evolved over time? I think that'd be good information to include for an overview, but I'm not sure if it's relevant to the series as a whole in comparison to the individual games.
I feel such a section would prove too controversial. It would probably lead to endless debates, such as which spin-offs are canon and which aren't. Chaotix comes to mind, whose canon status fans can't seem to agree upon. It would also be hard for people to remain completely objective about the ambiguous parts of canon; the whole controversy surrounding Blaze and Eggman Nega comes to mind. And that's not even getting to the dual/split timeline from Mania, or the bizarre dual world thingie that Iizuka posited and seems to be in contradiction with previous games and other dev quotes, including Naka's. Can you say edit wars?
You also have to be careful with adding information that Wikipedia could consider too specific and only of interest to Sonic enthusiasts and not average Wikipedia-goers. I personally think going into series lore in that way would be overboard for this context.
