Forum:Non-Canon Spin-Offs

Hola amigos,

today I am here to discuss a rather major issue which impacts the way this wiki is supposed to head to.

ಠ_ಠ That sounds really serious, doesn't it?

Anyways, to make this as short as possible, hahahahaha looking at it now, it really isn't short I think the way we are handling all the spin-offs appearing everywhere is extremely inefficient. We have barely enough active contributors to deal with the main series and its anime (hello, Eclipse Spirits arc still not being up to date?) and I believe not even Ice Trail, supposedly a canon series is completely updated.

There have been some people trying to make contributions towards these series (Fairy Girls, Sabertooth thingy, etc.) and their help is greatly appreciated, but for, uh, the betterment of the wiki, we should come up with a much simpler format to ensure that we are not left with half-updated articles, only a few character/magic/fight pages made, etc.

So, my suggestion is: Every spin-off series should have
 * A general page - As in, what the series is, its creator, brief description of plot, and a list of chapters/volumes. The latter could be a separate page too for all I care.
 * There should be a separate Characters page either for every different spin-off, or for all spin-offs together. I'm leaning towards the latter. The point is, I think it's super retarded to have these characters mixed into the main series' list when they are non-canon - more than any anime filler will ever be, hell, they could be an alternate universe of sorts too. Same goes for Magic, etc.

And that's it.

Seriously.

No specific chapter pages. No specific character pages. No fight pages. No magic pages.

Really.

As long as all these spin-offs are running, there is no way in hell we'll be able to make articles for everything necessary the way we do it for the main series. They will never be up to date or in the quality we're looking for. And that makes things look super messy in my humble opinion. Characters from different series mixed up with others, half of them not having pages or them not being complete... yeah, no, ty.

We're Fairy Tail wiki, not Fairy Girls wiki or something like that. If anyone wants to make a separate encyclopedia for them, be my guest. However, we should be focusing on the main series (ECS says hello again) before making more work for us with these spin-offs. Yea, they are FT related material, but they are not canon, they are different universe, etc. They do deserve a mention on the wiki, but they shouldn't get the same attention as the main series. By far.

So, uh, discuss? If anyone has a different suggestion, do share. Later, we can gather everything for some voting or what, but for now, just share your opinion.

Misk out.

20:42, September 3, 2015 (UTC)

100% agree from me. I think a general wikipedia style page for each series and a mention of canon character appearing in the series in the AIOM section and thats all they should get. Anyone is free to start a Fairy Girls or Twin Dragons of Sabertooth wiki but all that content is best saved for an individual wiki like that. We would of course affiliate with any wikis created for this purpose and probably advertise them here as well, but as Misk has said, we are already behind on the main series and cant be devoting resources to non canon info.--

I agree with this. For magic, just make a page called Magic (Spin-Off) and then make sections for every non-canon spinoff and list all the magic that's used. For magic that exists already, like Sting's, we can just make a non-canon spell section and put just a picture. No links. A character page for all spin-offs would be nice as well, again divided into sections. Anyway, I agree with all this. LUT taking over Zero and IT was one thing, they are canon. As cool as Twin Dragons is, it isn't canon. And all this Fairy Girls stuff being made is dumb because it doesn't fit anywhere in the timeline because it's not canon. We have a fights timeline for crying out loud, and where would we put it? Nowhere. Simple is best here, imo. 20:57, September 3, 2015 (UTC)

I really don't have a lot of time on my hands atm, so I'mma get back to this later in order to share my full opinion, but for now I'll just state my agreement. I think shortening down the amount of pages for the spin-offs, as well as the general information given regarding them, is a very efficient way of dealing with these obvious issues that we have right now. I would say we have one page for each spin-off, containing short chapter summaries and all that jazz, one page for the characters involved in all the spin-offs, which includes Magic, Spells etc. and that's it. So tl;dr, I whole-heartedly agree, and a mere one page per spin-off, including one page for characters in the spin-offs altogether, should be sufficient enough.

First of all, one of the main reasons why these spin-offs are being underworked is because the lack of translations available for these chapters and most of the users on the wiki are focusing on canon stuff and the ecs arc at the moment. According to the author, Blue Mistral is ending sometime either end of this year or early next year and you would think Fairy Girls wouldn't be too far behind. There are only a handful of new characters, spells, magic etc. It isn't as much work as people think. There isn't enough content to bother making another wiki. We will still have half-updated articles no matter what changes we make now. Chapters not being available is out of our control. Also, it just so happens that these spin-offs are coming out at a bad time, (with FTZ, Ice Trail being released around the same time and the ECS arc still being worked on). It doesn't matter that we're behind because most of this stuff isn't even available to us, and maybe only 5% of that is available legally (in english). @Wrath Fairy Girls was stated in the first chapter to take place immediately after the The Great Banquet, and all these spin-offs are quite easy to fit in the timeline. But in saying that, with so many events taking place in between the Grand Magic Games and the Sun Village arc, it's probably best that we don't have battle and events pages considering we don't do them for the omake. Also (spin-offs aside), I think with Fights and events, where it says previous and next we should do what we do with the story arcs and list the next canon event and list the anime event as anime-only (meaning on the Conflict on Grimoire Heart's Airship page, the next event listed should be Sky Labyrinth, and Dance Ball at Balsamico Castle listed with 'anime-only (in brackets)' next to it.--DuelMaster93 (talk) 22:23, September 3, 2015 (UTC)


 * As far as I know, the chapters are getting translated though, regularly or irregularly. The issue is people not being interested in reading them, let alone working on pages related to them. Also, Zero and IT are over. 22:35, September 3, 2015 (UTC)


 * I meant that FTZ and IT were ongoing during the majority of these series run. There was 4 spin-offs all being released at once, and everyone was working on FTZ and IT. And by the time those 2 ended everyone lost interest in the non-canon ones. Blue Mistral and Fairy Girls have pretty much been dropped by their translators and there aren't many chapters out. From my understanding, Sane is pretty much the only person actively working on IT. Looking at Ultra's review of the Fairy Girls chapters there seems to be enough people interested but there was only 2 chapters translated at the time, but those people have most likely lost interest due to chapters not being translated or being translated at a very very slow rate. I'd say wait until a significant amount of time has passed after at least 2-3 volumes have been released in english. If the FTZ, IT and ecs arc are all done and the chapters have been available legally in english for a significant amount of time and still no one works on these spin-offs, then we can consider making changes. But as for now, work is still being done on other things and there is barely any chapters available to work with.--DuelMaster93 (talk) 23:02, September 3, 2015 (UTC)

It shouldn't matter where they are placed or whether there is availability. These spin-offs are non-canon. We can't put them in the synopses because of the obvious issue of them not being canon, as is the point of the whole debate, and the appearances in other media sections would just be blown up with bytes. We'd have to end up making even more tabs for people like Erza and Lucy. It doesn't matter where they fit in the timeline, if they weren't confirmed by Mashima to be part of the official FT-verse, then arguments are invalid. It also doesn't matter how many people are interested, we have non-canon things being mixed with canon things. So you are saying that you'd rather have the wiki just sit around and look like even more shit than it already does for like another year before we can even think about doing anything to make it look better? That doesn't make any sense. The LUT only handles canon stuff. FT Girls, Sabertooth, BM and the like aren't canon. Again, it's not hard to get. They don't fit anywhere, their presences are disrupting the content of the wiki. They should be completely separate and dumbed down. We are a FT encyclopedia, yes, but we can't document everything in detail. Like I said, simple is best in this case. 23:09, September 3, 2015 (UTC)

Here is a simple fact. Though they may use FT characters, these spinoffs are not FT. They are written by different authors who take whatever liberties they want with them. I like FT. I tried all the spinoffs and dont like those. As a member of the LUT, I shouldnt have to update non canon synopses for a series I don't like just because FT characters are in the series. It makes no sense. The separate wikis solution is the best. We can affiliate with spin off wikis and advertise them on the spin off pages but I am not in support of having anything detailed about the spinoffs other than a page about the spinoff--

The spin-offs themselves aren't that long. It wouldn't take up that much space in the AIOM page. The only exception being Wendy and Carla (who both have small AIOM sections) due to having significant appearances in 2 spin-offs. Every other character, It wouldn't be that much at all. And availability is more than a valid reason. You can't work on something that isn't available to you. And no one wants to work on a series if a chapter is only available to them every 5 months or so. And there are plenty of other pages that look like shit that no one bothers to work on (such as incomplete articles related to the ecs arc, video game pages, omake pages etc). Incomplete spin-off pages barely makes any difference to how good the wiki looks overall. If anything, putting everything on 1 page with incomplete information in every section would look even more shit. It will always look like shit until the series are completed with everything. And even if the wiki did look like shit for a year, what difference is another year going to make? What I'm saying is there are reasons why the series are being underworked and given what's out there at the moment it's best to wait. All it would be is a few summaries in the AIOM media for canon characters, and handful of spin-off characters, spells, magic etc. It won't be that many pages and most pages will be relatively small. If you don't want them mixed up with canon, then just add them to a different template or section. In 7 chapters of Blue Mistral there is only 1 new magic and only 4 new characters. There isn't as much content as people think. Even if it looks like shit, not many people are looking at these pages anyway, and given what's out there, we should at least wait until more is available.--DuelMaster93 (talk) 23:44, September 3, 2015 (UTC)
 * There will be far more than just a handful of pages. If we did it your way, we would have 20+ character pages from each series, 20+ magic pages, etc. The spinoffs have no end in sight. For all we know they could go for years. The fact of the matter is most people do not want to work on them. So why not create a wiki for those who DO want to work on them? This makes everything more organized and prevents the main wiki from being super far behind--
 * No, no one is working on them because nobody really enjoys them who actually does work on the wiki. No one wants to add even more work onto the pile for something that isn't even Hiro Mashima made, or put out by A-1. The point is that non-canon stuff and canon stuff are being mixed together and everything is incomplete and will always be incomplete. Shoving more work onto people who already do enough work as it is isn't right, and trying to force other people to do it accomplishes the same objective. We can't intricately document everything. Again, for the third time, simple is best. 00:06, September 4, 2015 (UTC)