Familiarity isn't referring to the gameplay, it's how the IP looks, feels and is recognised as. These rules seem to be about creative guidelines on how to construct new content that keep the feel and image of Pokemon intact and that doesn't necessarily mean they prove a shared canon.
"Shared canon" is a useless concept when discussing shared worldviews and settings, it isn't about sharing a continuity or canonicity, but about the rules of the world itself. These guidelines do include generic stuff about "how the franchise feels", but it also includes worldbuilding rules that it's what I mean with Sekai-kan and Settei.
As I used as an example before, IDW Sonic isn't canon to Game Sonic, but background element from the games that only exist as setting documentation does appear in IDW Sonic that we just haven't seen in Game Sonic before (Such as the look of Sol Dimension's palace that would later be used in Game Ad material by the official Japanese account), so that shared background element that is in the comic is shared with the game, even with the game never using it before, it exists as part of the official settings.
Another example is Dragon Ball Z Kakarot, the original stories themselves aren't really "canon", but the background behind them (The fact that Ginyu Forces had an extra member, her backstory, and design) is what is called "Official Setting" ("公式の設定", Kōshiki no settei) and accepted by the developers as part of the "True Story" ("正史", Seishi). So yes, the background elements of a work of fiction, if remained consistent, can be only explored and stated in material that isn't in continuity and those works need to be taken into consideration even if they don't share the same "canon/continuity";
The same is true for Pokémon, there are many background elements that only exist as setting documentation from Gamefreak, but are used and expanded in other material. The term that matters here are Sekai-kan and Settei, it's the entire basis for how this shared element works outside of canonicity, the importance of those terms for the Japanese developers seems to be really downplayed here when that is like, the one thing that basically they are sure to talk about, although the way that they manage that in some franchises is different.
Megaman, for example, does have some guidelines, but they are specific about not having an official setting background of the games to appear in most tie-in material and they keep most of the out-of-game content as just that and not retroactively valid for their games. But a series like, for example, Digimon uses a lot more a broader sense of worldview "consistency" as something valid between works. Take for example Digimon Legendary Skies or New Century, but are original stories, but that have been checked in regards to the background setting to be sure that everything from the official worldview fits with that work and is a true representation of that, so even if the story itself doesn't become "canon", the background elements are sure something that is. The same is valid for other things like a ton of Digimon adaptations that are so different from each other, and that doesn't matter because all that matters is the shared setting and worldview.
Pokémon is just like that, what matters between those works is the shared worldview and settings and how different material allows for the official settings to be explored outside of the limitations of the games themselves. It really seems that there's a big misunderstanding about how Sekai-kan and Settei matter so much from the whole "IP consistency" thing in Japan. Of course, there's still some case-by-case analysis necessary to know how each series deals with their expanded media, but Pokémon really goes deep into being sure that the background material is consistent with most of their serious works, literally it's something stated in every single interview I looked into with the only work that I have seen with still having "lots of freedom" being the anime itself, but even that one still uses official background that can't be found in the games (The entire Lucario and the Mystery of Mew movie were basically checked in its entirety by Gamefreak to be sure none of it broke the worldview and it even made use of said official setting documents).
While most series don't do a great job in regards to "IP Consistency" to include most pieces of their lore, there are franchises that do that and you are expected to see most of the tie-in material as sharing the same consistent worldview and Pokémon is one of such series.
The reason why I summed up your blog as being 'references make them canon' is because that's the only part of the blog that could be used as 'proof' that the verses share the same canon and all crossover with each other. Because otherwise, though it's a well-written and detailed piece, it offers literally nothing in terms of justifying composite profiles (which is what the blog is used to justify on the wiki).
Except that isn't the focus of the blog and although the discussion seems to be around canon, it's more about worldview and settings as a "different type of shared canon", something that is accepted as possible on the
Canon page. If that is something you didn't take into consideration while reading it, then it just is a different concept than those you use but is something that is very valid for certain series as I explained before in a blog
all about those terms.
Various mediums sharing a worldview and a setting is not proof that they can be cross-scaled by each other. Neither is the fact that The Pokemon Company holds strict control over it's IP; that simply means that they are trying to keep it consistent and recognizable because it's literally the biggest media franchise in the world. I would argue that every single big IP out there strives to have it's multimedia (for the most part) resemble one and another, simply because doing otherwise wouldn't make sense; we do not use this to equalize any other multimedia verse though, so it should not be used to equalize Pokemon, at all.
It depends entirely on the material in question, sometimes the worldview and settings transcend continuity and you are expected to piece together settings from different works into a single worldview because that is how the series is made. There's a lot of case-by-case stuff as well, but with Pokémon the intent of shared worldview is very clear from most interviews.
Simply sharing a similar background and nature isn't grounds to equalize the 'background' (which, for the record, is an extremely vague term, as the 'background' of a verse could refer to...everything pretty much?) (and alternatively, we don't just scale 'the background' to each other, we scale everything) otherwise several verses in this wiki would be equalized. For example, most of the Transformers cartoons share a similar 'background in that there are autobots and decepticons fighting a galactic, million-year Civil War for Cybertron, and the battle is taken to Earth, Optimus Prime and Megatron lead both opposing sides, the robots all possess the ability to transform, et cetera. Why not equalize them since every show shares several elements between the two of them?
On the topic of different adaptations, how about adaptations Lord Of The Rings? If you want to talk quality control, the books literally have an entire legal organization dedicated to them called The Tolkein Estate that does nothing but monitor how the works are used and adapted. Outside of the books, Christopher Tolkein literally dedicated his entire life to making sure Tolkein's legacy is properly adapted and preserved, which includes the movies. The LOTR trilogy movies are infamous for how much dedication Peter Jackson put into it, how much he tried to painstakingly capture Tolkein's vision. It goes without saying that they are extremely similar in a huge amount of ways, from background to characters to plotlines. And yet, the movies and books are not canon to each other, and their profiles are split. Why not equalize the books and the movies?
The answer to why Transformers, Sonic, LOTR and everything else are split is because no amount of artistic control, per the wiki's guidelines, is a substitute for equalizing the verses. Pokemon is not any more monitored than these verses (in fact it is infinitely less monitored than LOTR) and should not be taken as an exception.
It depends entirely on the work in analysis and what is the intent with the shared background. With something like transformers the multiverse is well cataloged and the way, they manage their series in their own specific way, which is fine. In general, how other series manage that IP and if their "consistent view of the series" includes any lore detail that isn't explored in the source material, but is expected to be faithfully represented in tie-in material is something that each IP decides on their own. With Sonic, for example, you aren't supposed to think of IDW Sonic as canon to the games, but official settings from the games that only exist as setting documentation to appear from time to time in the comic, and you are supposed to take that as "canon" to the games, at least in theory (At best as "the most closely possible view on some canon detail as much faithfully as possible" going by what Ian Flynn once said about the Sol Dimension's setting before they used it on a Twitter art).
You also have stuff like the one I mentioned about Digimon and the huge amount of adaptations and "not necessarily canon material", but what really matters is the background lore documentation that is shared between them beyond what is "story inconsistency". If a series presents consistent lore as part of their "IP Consistency", I just think that is just how it works, they want the settings of the worldview to be shared between the works and that is all. We literally have the Detective Pikachu interview all about how Pokémon Company takes control over all the lore and makes sure everything fits their canon rules with necessary in-universe explanations for why a certain outlier happened, even stuff from mainline games are limited by those worldview rules as stated in a B2W2 interview and many others.
It's no different from what you said about Pokémon Masters, the story itself doesn't need to be in-continuity, canon, to exist in the same universe or even multiverse, what matters here is the background settings, and the details about the world. The point is that Pokémon Masters isn't some special work in the Pokémon series that "isn't in-continuity, but has canon details", this is just how the Pokémon series as a whole work, Masters isn't special about that.
What exactly are we disagreeing on? That is the entire point and purpose of this thread.
Because in a series like Pokémon, shared canon/continuity/universe/multiverse isn't the point of how the settings and worldview are shared. There are other series that work like that and Pokémon is one of them, that is the entire point of those blogs, thinking about the limiting "canon/continuity" from that point of view just does a huge disservice to how a series like Pokémon is managed and planned.
