Memory Alpha

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Memory Alpha ( MA ) is an online knowledge base on Star Trek . It is named after the cultural archive of the United Federation of Planets from the Star Trek universe. Memory Alpha is a wiki ; Pages of the database can therefore be edited and supplemented by every visitor. The project was started in November 2003 by Harry Doddema and Dan Carlson and exists in the languages ​​English, German, Dutch, Swedish, French, Polish, Esperanto, Spanish, Czech, Russian, Portuguese (Brazil), Serbian, Chinese, Japanese, Bulgarian , Italian, Romanian, Catalan and Ukrainian. There is also a variant from the perspective of the mirror universe , which contains articles in different languages.

Content

With almost 48,000 pages (as of January 2020), the English version is one of the largest known fan wikis. The German version has almost 32,000 pages (as of January 2020) with an upward trend, making it the second largest language version. The project collects articles about fictional people, places, wars and individual struggles, technologies, races and species. There are also summaries of the episodes and films as well as information about the actors and the production staff.

Memory Alpha and the "Canon"

Memory Alpha makes a strict distinction between "canonical" information about the Star Trek universe, i.e. information that is part of the television series and films produced by Paramount , and "non-canonical" information, such as "unofficial" information played in Star Trek literature. (and partly inconsistent with the "canon") actions. A section “semi-canonical” information, as used by many fans in discussions, does not exist in this form with Memory Alpha. However, a lot of non-canonical information may be included in the background information section of every article as long as a traceable source (a licensed book, a blog by a producer, extras on the DVDs) can be given; alternatively, a link can be used to refer to the Memory Beta offshoot, which is open to all (including semi-canonical) information taken from officially licensed products. Information from fan projects, so-called " fan fiction ", however, is not welcome.

Canonical content according to Memory Alpha is the actions and dialogues of the following series and films
Licensed reference works which, among other things, serve as background information
  • Michael Okuda , Denise Okuda: Star Trek Encyclopedia
  • Michael Okuda, Denise Okuda: The Official Star Trek Chronology
  • Shane Johnson: The Worlds of the Federation
  • Geoffrey Mandel: Star Trek Star Atlas
  • Franz Joseph: Star Trek: Star Fleet Technical Manual
  • Michael Okuda, Rick Sternbach : The technology of the USS Enterprise
  • Herman Zimmerman , Rick Sternbach, Doug Drexler: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - The technical manual
  • Adam Lebowitz, Robert Bonchune, Jonathan Lane, Alex Rosenzweig: Star Trek Spaceship Guide

(Some of these books count in fan circles as so-called semi-canon , so excerpts canonical, as long as the information does not contradict the "correct" canon. In Memory Alpha they only count as background information and are basically non-canon .)

License

The content is under the Creative Commons license "CC-BY-NC", so further use is only permitted in a non-commercial context and with the name of the authors. This license is incompatible with the GNU license for free documentation and "CC-BY-SA" which is widespread in the Wikipedia environment . Although the project is very similar to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia in its functionality and also uses the same software, MediaWiki , content may therefore not be exchanged between the projects.

Memory Alpha makes intensive use of screenshots and in some cases also of real photos (e.g. of the actors, although the German-language version, in contrast to the English-language version, largely dispenses with this for reasons of content). In doing so, the operators refer to the limitations of US copyright law that are summed up under the term “ fair use ” .

Hosting

Since February 2005 the project has been hosted on the Wikia servers .

After Wikia installed the social media platform Discussions on its wiki farm in October 2017 , there was a break between the archivists and the hosting platform. The archivists rejected the increasing commercialization of their wiki (and thus license infringement), the general "community" requirement of wikias and the elimination of the actual main skin and their own web address. After a long preparatory phase, the Memory Alpha Nova, an independent and non-commercial wiki, went online on January 8, 2019 , which again reflects on the basic ideas of the Memory Alpha.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Meatball Wiki: BiggestWiki
  2. ↑ Canon on the German-language Memory Alpha