Author Page Canonicity - SCP Meta Problems, Part 3/∞

[Agnaa]

For SCP canon, thus far we've ignored author pages. They have zero quality control unlike other pages on the SCPwiki, but a certain author page is making that difficult.

Operation ÓverMeta is written as a tale. It's listed as a tale for multiple other SCPs, along with zero other author pages an hundreds of other tales. It's linked to as if it's an ordinary part of the canon in many other SCPs and tales. The characters established here pop up in other actual tales.

But the page itself is still only tagged as an author page, not as a tale, and it's in the list of authors pages.

The canonicity of overmeta has serious implications on multiple pages for the verse. On top of the changes that would need to be done if it were accepted or rejected, the main plot point of overmeta is that the characters are trying to achieve immortality by anchoring themselves to an author page. This would get its own thread if overmeta is treated as canon, but this author page also has a central plot point that all author pages are cano.

On top of this, if it were to be accepted, the characters are interesting and used in other tales; I'm planning on making pages for them.

tl;dr Tale that reads like a tale and is treated like a tale is an author page and makes author pages canon, what do?

Bonus meme: ant was right

 

[Hl3_or_bust]

i think 3/infinity is a better title but thats just me

anyways, if this is as integral to as many things as it seems to be, it should be treated as EC imo

 

[Hl3_or_bust]

Also, i think this thread has caused Dargoo enough physical pain to make him not want to respond for now

 

[Sir_Ovens]

I don't doubt Dargoo is coming up with a solution for this, but here are my 2 cents.

Author pages should be treated as extended canon. The very fact that they can't be touched by anything less than Swann just proves their canonicity. If they are used in other tales, we give them the mainlist treatment and seperate their profile into tale canon key and extended canon key. The fact that this tale is in the author page changes nothing. It's a spiffy tale about dudes who don't want to die and are using the real world to root themselves onto existence.

If Overmeta is deleted at any point of time, it's the doings of Swann, as technically, no matter how vital you are to the overall lore and canonicity of SCP, Swann's word is law.

 

[Hl3_or_bust]

Swann is one of those guys who can literally go "you can't beat me because i said so" and have it actually work

anyways, more or less my thoughts

 

[Agnaa]

@HI3 Fixed

@Ovens I figured that author pages would in general be extended canon, if pages do get made for these overmeta characters, should they be "SCP Foundation (Extended Canon)", or is it an exception since that page is the original canon for them?

 

[Sir_Ovens]

I'd think they should just be treated as extended canon unless they appear in other tales. In which case, we make keys for every tale they appear in.

 

[Agnaa]

They're in other tales but I'm not sure if those characters specifically would have enough for separate keys, but I guess this could wait until the page is worked on.

 

[Agnaa]

Bump.

 

[WeeklyBattles]

Ovens already pretty much summed up everything i was going to say, although id like to point out that the overmeta crew are Swann avatars

 

[Agnaa]

Ovens already pretty much summed up everything i was going to say, although id like to point out that the overmeta crew are Swann avatars

Wait what? Can you explain this?

Does this apply to all members of the Pataphysics department?

 

[Hl3_or_bust]

The Foundation is getting more and more ridiculous by the second

 

[WeeklyBattles]

http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-3500

http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-3309

Just read these

 

[Agnaa]

Reginald is certainly an author avatar, and therefore a swann avatar, but the other members should just be normal metanarrative entities, right?

 

[WeeklyBattles]

All of them are Swann avatars, read the two articles I just posted

 

[Hl3_or_bust]

Ok, so basically:

almost everyone from SCP has some degree of plot-manip from this

correct?

 

[Mr. Bambu]

why did you make your eight sideways

 

[Hl3_or_bust]

INB4 people start making every SCP revision a staff only thread

 

[Sir_Ovens]

If I'm reading Weekly correctly, only those authors with self insert characters are avatars. People like Roget, Scantron, and Bright are avatars. That's how 3500 happened.

 

[Agnaa]

3309 is an effect of Swann's avatars, but the overmeta crew, the pataphysics department, and the foundation itself can't completely control it. While swann's avatars do use the foundation's database to decide to rewrite reality, no-one in the foundation can do that directly.

Hell, when they tried to use 3309 to get rid of 682, it backfired and made him retroactively stronger. And even when it has worked properly they've suddenly lost researchers because of it, they're not in control of the phenomena but they exploit it.

3500 just shows that there are some Swann avatars working as researchers for the foundation, and known by the foundation. This is huge, but I still don't see why the non-Reginald members of the overmeta crew would be Swann avatars.

EDIT: 3500 might give some weird scaling. In never metafictional character I didn't like, a member of the pataphysics department, as well as a typewriter view 3500 as an atrocious story of no literary merit.

 

[Antvasima]

I personally do not think that adding pages for the authors that write the SCP canon is a good idea at all, no matter how they were written, and it violates our Reality - Fiction Interaction standards.

Regardless, we need help from Dargoo with this. He seems to have the best common sense regarding SCP.

 

[Hl3_or_bust]

I mean, we don;t have to make a page for all of them, just the ones people want to bother with

besides, it's within SCP narritives, not actual reality

 

[WeeklyBattles]

@Ant Thing is the authors are actual characters within the fiction itself, not the real people

 

[Agnaa]

This isn't exactly for adding the authors themselves.

There are already a few author avatars, such as Clef, Kondraki, and Bright. This is about author pages, which sometimes have plot relevant information or personnel documents for actual characters within the SCPverse, and whether they should be considered canon or not.

The only characters that might get pages out of this are ones from operation overmeta, an author page that reads like a tale. If I do add those characters, the author avatar almost certainly won't get his own page.

Even if I don't end up making pages for those characters, whether author pages are canon or not affects existing pages.

 

[Antvasima]

Well, I personally much prefer if we avoid adding such pages, and think that SCP seems to be turning into more trouble than it is worth to keep around, especially as it is borderline FC/OC material.

 

[ProfessorLord]

goodbye SCP!

 

[WeeklyBattles]

@Ant What is wrong with adding legitimate characters from the verse? And this is why the new regulations for rating SCP dont work, it turns the verse into an overregulated mess when there wasnt any issue with the way the pages were before.

 

[Antvasima]

From what I recall, I thought that Dargoo made good sense during his revision.

Anyway, I am not going to advocate deleting the SCP pages. I just find all of their inconsistent nonsense frustrating to deal with.

 

[Agnaa]

Understandable, but large changes to the rules of canonicity for a a verse as huge as SCP should get reviewed by many staff members.

I don't quite feel comfortable applying this with just the acceptance of Weekly and some normal users.

 

[WeeklyBattles]

Yeah i'd like more input on this as well

 

[Antvasima]

We should not apply this yet, no. Dargoo seems to have the best common sense regarding SCP, so I will ask him to help out here.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

Well, you guys caught me right as I went to sleep, sorry about not hitting this sooner.

First off, this isn't due to Canon revisions. This is a hot mess with or without regulation.

In my revision, there were a couple of issues being addressed, which should be talked about here:

• The SCP Cosmology, as it was ranked, was due to using statements of scaling, the nature of the universe, and the strength of several characters from different authors each, and then amalgamating them together into what we would call "God-Tiers". Even after the revisions, I couldn't really do much for those pages other than request that they just be labeled under "Extended Canon", as they don't have an original author.
• There was very little quality control. Even in regards to webcomics, you have one author dedicated to telling a consistent story, and as for the ones that don't, well, you don't see them on this site (for the most part). I've come to realize in my discussions with Matt, that his Elder Scrolls example was actually not applicable to compare SCP to, as even in Elder Scrolls, there is moderation by hired employees of Bethesda. SCP is not regulated by staff members in canonicity, it's popular demand. If there is a story idea that is radically different from the common interpretation of the verse, and enough people like it, congratulations, you're eligible to be added to this wiki. Collaborative logs let me even add abilities to popular characters like 682 within reason.
• I've already gone over consistency issues. Heck, there is an entire SCP about how trying to make a timeline for the verse literally rips it apart. I can just namedrop 001 and how nearly each one tries to tell a different version of the Foundation's history, how 106 has nearly three backstories now, how some say the Foundation started as an offshoot of Area 51 in the 70s, or of an American organization in 1800s, or has existed for eternity. I could keep on going, but I'm certain that it would be pinned on a multiverse. Thing is, if you want to call all of that part of a multiverse, then there's no way of telling which version is the "mainstream" Foundation version.
  • Oh wait, we have one. Original Canon.

What this is telling me is that Kep might have been correct with his original "slash and burn technique" for tales, and honestly I did the Canon revisions to try and stave off this argument.

You all can see what direction the site is heading in. They're specifically trying to make more and more abstract stuff. and we've had nearly 3 discussions on the Tiering System and actually had to update it because of relatively minor pages.

That put, I don't think we should remove profiles, but I can't think of a better idea if we don't want to see increasing narrative/dimension debates. The vast majority of the SCP pages we have aren't causing this issue, it's actually mostly stuff that's either insanely popular, or stuff that doesn't have a page.

 

[Agnaa]

I appreciate the in-detail response, but could I get an answer to whether you believe author pages should all be canon, only overmeta be canon due to being largely treated as a tale, or none be canon?

 

[WeeklyBattles]

TFW i talked with Kep a while back and he agreed that the current rules are too restrictive...

 

[Antvasima]

@Dargoo

Thank you for the input. I am starting to lean towards that SCP will turn into far too much completely inconsistent trouble to keep around, if what you are saying is correct.

I would appreciate if you talk with Matthew about it.

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

Oh, that's a straight-up no.

There are other Author pages like Bright's/Clef's/Kondraki's that similarly act as a qseudo-hub for tales.

 

[Agnaa]

TFW i talked with Kep a while back and he agreed that the current rules are too restrictive...

Do you still have a way to talk to Kep? I'm interested in what he has to say about this situation, even if he's not staff any more.

 

[WeeklyBattles]

It was in chat before he got banned

 

[Dargoo_Faust]

If that's his current opinion, I'd like to talk to him, and I'll PM him.

He proposed discounting all tales whatsoever, for one.

 

[Agnaa]

Does he still pay attention to his fanfiction.net? Did he ever have one in the first place?