Forum:Canonicity policy

Starting with the Epilogues, some very heated debates rose up with regards to canonicity, as it was very unclear what exactly "dubious canonicity" means with regards to our coverage.

But lo, the clouds parted, and Homestuck^2 arrived, with a shining statement that... actually, was still kind of vague. But what it did do is make clear that this is intentional. The unambiguous purpose of the post-Canon (which is to say, collectively, the Epilogues and Homestuck^2) is to challenge the very notion of canonicity. And that means we have an opportunity to finally try and settle this and form a coherent policy founded on the idea that there is more than one variety of canonicity.

What I suggest to start with is this: below are a few headings marking out key points to discuss. Under each one, users should post their views, generally without reference to the views posted by others – the idea at this stage is not to debate the positions yet. Nor is this any kind of vote. It is simply a chance for various viewpoints to be aired in a non-competitive manner. Once we have accumulated a variety of views, we can look at distilling them down into positions that can, hopefully, be more precisely debated. This phase will come at a slightly later stage.

You can also suggest new points to be discussed, if you think there's something missing.

Users are, of course, welcome to discuss these matters on the Discord as well, but bear in mind that nothing discussed there is binding for policy matters – remember to come back here when you're ready to state your views! And, of course, you can edit your posts, too, if you change your mind (just update your timestamp if you do)

Handling of canonicity in general

 * I believe the best way to handle varying canonicities is to have subpages for each variety of canon as applied to the subject of the article. These subpages will likely later be transcluded as the content of tabs on the main article, in a similar manner to e.g. Wookieepedia with its "Canon" and "Legends" tabs, but that's an implementation detail, not a policy detail. The base article will be solely for information that is canon to Homestuck (or whichever other base media the subject is from, e.g. Joey's base article will obviously be for Hiveswap, not Homestuck); the subpages then act as supplements or modifications to that information. We thus separate out the stuff that is "definitely canon" from the "this stuff is optionally canon and it's up to the reader to decide whether they accept it"

Official Post-Canon material
Anything pertaining to the officially published content of the Epilogues and Homestuck^2
 * I think that information from Post-Canon should be separated out as a supplemental extension, and not affect information that is canon to Homestuck. For example, throughout Homestuck canon, Roxy identifies as female, therefore her base article would use female pronouns throughout. In Post-Canon, Roxy transitions, and we would therefore use they/them pronouns throughout Roxy's Post-Canon subpage

Official alternate-canon material
Anything that is officially published content, but is not canon to Homestuck, such as Pesterquest
 * Material that intersects with but diverges directly from Homestuck canon, such as Pesterquest, is clearly incompatible with the canon of Homestuck proper. The subpage for such information would therefore be a wholesale alternative to the canon information, referring to it only where relevant. This is a case I see no real complexities with

Material not officially published
Anything outside of official published media, including tweets and other social media (even from Hussie)
 * Since it seems apparent that Hussie's overall intention with Post-Canon is to reinforce the Death of the Author, and especially given that he is not the sole author of material surrounding Homestuck, it seems clear to me that anything Hussie says outside of official material is not regarded as any variety of canon unless and until it later gets confirmed by official media. We should still make note of it, as Hussie remains the most highly notable person in this wiki's scope, but things he says on social media – such as confirming all fantrolls to be canon or supporting the idea of June Egbert – should not be integrated into the main content* of articles without official media backing, though we will still cover them as statements and topics of interest. Furthermore, under the proposed subpage system, we would not expect such information to be integrated into the main content of the base article for a subject even if it becomes officially backed, as Homestuck's canon is complete, and such official media backing is likely to be in one of the other varieties of canon. I am also aware that a policy like this would potentially have retroactive effects on some information that is currently regarded as canon on the wiki! For example, anything that we were previously told via Hussie's Formspring or Tumblr would potentially become questionably canon, and the resulting question of whether stuff he said during Homestuck's run is subject to slightly different rules is, I think, something best discussed in more detail at a later debate stage

Anything missing?
If you think there's a category of discussion missing from the above sections, say so here, and we'll examine the suggestions.