Wikidata:Property proposal/Canonicity

canon status

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Creative work

   Not done

Description	canon status for this creative work, episode or fictional entity in it's respective narrative universe
Represents	canon (Q53815)
Data type	Item
Domain	creative work (Q17537576) and fictional entity (Q14897293)
Allowed values	canon (Q53815), non-canon (Q99841874), unconfirmed canon (Q124162270), disputed canon (Q124162276), fanon (Q3739281)
Example 1	Leisure Suit Larry 4: The Missing Floppies (Q1118622)→canon (Q53815)
Example 2	Hugo Simpson (Q4990628)→non-canon (Q99841874)
Example 3	Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (Q17738)→canon (Q53815) (applies to work (P10663)→Star Wars universe (Q19786052))
Example 4	Magearna (Q24041783) (sex or gender (P21)→female (Q6581072)→Canon status → fanon (Q3739281))
Example 5	Graggle Simpson (Q112513067)→fanon (Q3739281)
Example 6	The Star Wars Holiday Special (Q1538082)→non-canon (Q99841874)
Example 7	Treehouse of Horror II (Q2376730)→non-canon (Q99841874)
Example 8	Crystal Blue-Haired Persuasion (Q63344441)→canon (Q53815)
Expected completeness	always incomplete (Q21873886)
Distinct-values constraint	no

Motivation

This would open up more far possibilies when modeling fictional entities and works both as a statement but also as a qualifier

We might or might not want to have a mandatory applies to work (P10663) qualifier but i'll leave that decision up to the community. Same applies to unconfirmed canon (Q124162270) and disputed canon (Q124162276) being allowed values--Trade (talk) 03:11, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

• @Valentina.Anitnelav:--Trade (talk) 03:15, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
• Valentina.Anitnelav Thierry Caro Shisma Arlo Barnes Tsaorin SilentSpike Maxime জয়শ্রীরাম সরকার Wolverène Rampant Spirit Rtnf dseomn lijil
  Notified participants of WikiProject Narration --Trade (talk) 03:16, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
• TomT0m Valentina.Anitnelav Shisma (talk) ElanHR Arlo Barnes (talk) Maria zaos (talk) EEMIV (talk) OmegaFallon (talk) Kurzov (talk) dseomn (talk) Natureshadow (talk)
  Notified participants of WikiProject Fictional universes--Trade (talk) 03:16, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
•  Support extracanonically and unconditionally save one: that the label and description together clarify that this property isn't for religious texts or other works not attempting to serve as fiction (such as [un]authorised memoirs). Arlo Barnes (talk) 05:47, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  Why not also use it for religious texts?– Shisma (talk) 13:26, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  Because it's a different kind of canonicity. One relates a work to its status within a fictional universe (Q559618), the other within a doctrine (Q117850). A fictional work can have an unambiguous 'authority' such as a publisher, whereas religious texts are more often contested. Arlo Barnes (talk) 15:12, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  I disagree with this limitation. So long as the work specifies what canon it is relating to I don't see why this property should be exclusive to works of fiction. For example, Gospel of Peter (Q762054) could set this property to non-canon (Q99841874) with a qualifier that the canon status applies to Catholic Bible (Q591016). This could be valuable in instances such as the Book of Mormon (Q459842) only being canon in the standard works (Q3847515), but not canon in other Christian canons such as Catholic Bible (Q591016). Keplersj (talk) 20:28, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

  Support, with the suggested exception of not using it for religious texts. This is a different usage. Lijil (talk) 09:56, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

  Done Trade (talk) 19:08, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

•  Support. --Wolverène (talk) 10:58, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
•  Oppose I don't know. Can't a work be part of multiple canons? there are things that exist in mulitple universes. That's why I consered a canon as a seperate entity. For instance:
  • All star trek episodes and films are part of Star Trek canon (Q3500963)
  • All star trek episodes and films and every licensed Star Trek work (novel, video game, comic…) is part of the informal Beta canon (Q123436716)
  • I'm not an expert on this but there is also Star Fleet Universe (Q7600715) in which I think only Star Trek: The Original Series (Q1077) and Star Trek: The Animated Series (Q20922) are canon for licensing reasons

so canonicity doesn't seem to be a boolian value–Shisma (talk) 12:48, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

There is nothing to stop a work from having multiple canons Trade (talk) 19:07, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

•  Oppose This would mean adding a "canon: yes" statement to pretty much every existing item for a canonical subject in a work, which is needless bloat IMO. Also, as mentioned above, there's the matter of things existing in multiple canons. One of the proposed examples is for Star Wars, which has its regular canon and also "Legends". I think the idea behind this is good but there are just a lot of problems I can see in trying to implement it in practice. OmegaFallon (talk) 13:14, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Is the Star Wars example wrong?--Trade (talk) 15:06, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

@Trade, Arlo Barnes, Keplersj, Wolverène: I created an alternative proposal under Wikidata:Property proposal/is part of canon –Shisma (talk) 09:19, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

•  Support - Support. Preferring this one over Shisma's alternate for reasons stated in there. -- Kurzov (talk) 17:30, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

•  Weak oppose I’m not 100% sure (as I would need to think way more about this), but my gut feeling is that canonicity is something that is inherently contextual − which canon are we talking about? «Official StarWars» vs « Legends » come to mind − and thus needs to live as a qualifier on something, not as a main statement. Would it then work to have it qualify takes place in fictional universe (P1434)? or media franchise (P8345)? Or is canon something orthogonal to both the universe and the franchise, and needs a separate proposal entirely (Perhaps Shisma’s alternative proposal aligns better with my thoughts) Jean-Fred (talk) 11:01, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

•  Comment I’m also not sure what’s the relationship to continuity (Q2141130)/timelines − for example, the Tomb Raider games are divided in 4 continuities − but my understanding is that each game is canon within each continuity (there also a bunch of side-stories / spin-offs, some of which I guess may be assigned to a particular subseries, but which may not be canon). Jean-Fred (talk) 11:28, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

  I feel like example 3 already adresses this Trade (talk) 02:41, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

•  Not done, no consensus of proposed property at this time based on the above discussion. Regards, ZI Jony ^(Talk) 06:54, 28 May 2024 (UTC)