Talk:The Twelve Colonies of Kobol/Archive3

Merge proposal

This article, and the articles for each of the Twelve Colonies, are all very short, and I don't see any of them expanding substantially in the near future. I think it would make for a nice looking, meaty article if we merged in each of the individual colony articles with this one under first-level headings. How say you all? --Peter Farago 04:50, 31 August 2005 (EDT)

I know this looks weird and kind of dumb. I'm still fiddling. It's easy to revert if the whole thing ends up being too hideous to bear. --Peter Farago 22:17, 13 September 2005 (EDT)

I like the idea and whats up now. If we knew more about each colony, it would look nicer, but until then I think this is fine. Now... What to do with these other two banners? Now, the two colonies without banners are Leo and Aquarius, the lion and the water-bearer. Both of these symbols could be a water-bearer, I guess, but I think the black and white one looks like he has whisters, there and that shape at the top looks more ear-like. That would leave the blue and red one to be the water bearer, which I think makes sense enough. Think we could drop those in with a note as to their speculative nature, or best not to? --Day 01:27, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

I'm leaving this one up to QuintusCinna, our resident flag-hunter. --Peter Farago 01:32, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

The two colonies without banners is Aquarius and whatever the colonial name is for Libra. I saw in the mini-series they mentioned a colony called "ICON" alongside of "PICON" so I'm a little weirded out. As for Leonis, that flag has been found. I did a picture search in google for the zodiac's constellation and found the flag's symbol looked exactly like what I have designated. I can't remember, but I believe the constellation for Libra looked quite similar to the black one. Since we don't yet know as of yet what is the name for the Libra colony, I have left it blank. QuintusCinna

At least we know it isn't Ophiuchi or something. Roslin identifies Libra in the Tomb of Athena map room, although she doesn't give its modern name. --Peter Farago 02:59, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

Realizing that it's still being worked on, it looks awful right now. You can't tell which banner goes to which colony, for one thing. --Fang Aili 08:30, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

Personally, I don't really like the combination of all 12 colonies together either since there is no set border and down the road we will have pictures relating to each colony. This will make it slower to download. --QuintusCinna 12:11, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

The problem, in my opinion, is that there's little to do at the main article other than simply list the colonies, and the majority of the individual colonies are stub-like in length. As for images, Caprica is the only planet we've seen thus far and probably the only one we're likely to see (unless we get Scorpion in a flashback in Pegasus or something). One thing we can do, if it becomes necessary, is link to full-length articles from just underneath the first-level headings.

As for the banners, I agree that they could be confusing but I rather like them right now. Do either of you think it coudl be re-arranged in a better manner (maybe if they didn't alternate sides? But then there'd be a lot more wasted space)? Or is it a lost cause in your opinions? --Peter Farago 12:20, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

Yeah, you could try putting all the banners on the right. See how it looks. --Fang Aili 14:11, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

There, that's what they look like right-aligned. Frankly, I think they look better alternating. I don't find it confusing, and the wasted space bugs me. --Peter Farago 14:36, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

Hate to say it, but I don't like it at all. The banners overlap with the previous colony's "box", there are no clear markers indicating where one section begins and another ends, it just looks bad. (Part of the problem is that we don't have much information about many of the colonies at this point.) --Fang Aili 15:07, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

It'd be better if we could insert a line across the entire page, and have the colony name under that line, along with the banner on the right. Then each colony would have a neat, easily readable section. I don't know if Wiki markup is capable of that though. --Fang Aili 15:10, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

I still think it's a better option than thirteen articles that are completely insubstantial on their own. --Peter Farago 15:11, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

I added captions to some of the banners, and in the process deleted some of the <div> markup. Wikipedia recommends against using HTML ([1]), and I've been trying to learn from the Extended image syntax page. I can't figure out why a new section like ==Caprica== doesn't appear on the same level as its banner. --Fang Aili 16:09, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

Ah ha! The wonders of <br style="clear:both;">! What do you guys think of the formatting now? --Fang Aili 16:28, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

My HTML/CSS was not used lightly. That's really the one way to get the banners at the section heading level as I did. Frankly this seems like a more cumbersome version of my right-aligned attempt. I really dislike the caption boxes, too.

I have a new idea: Rather than use the (rather long) banners, we can grab the icons from each, along with the background colors, and use them. I've created nine high-resolution versions from QuintusCinna's originals, which you can link to below:

Aerelon, Canceron, Caprica, Gemenon, Picon, Sagittaron, Scorpion, Tauron, Virgon

These could be scaled down to almost any size and still look nice. --Peter Farago 16:35, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

Without caption boxes, it's not clear what the banners are. I know it seems self-explanatory to us, but for someone who's never seen them before, it's not. I'll take a look at the icons in a bit. --Fang Aili 17:03, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

I find repeating "This is the Banner of X" to be tedious, and the red background to be jarring. Couldn't we simply note that the banner/icon/flag/colors of the colony is provided to the right? --Peter Farago 17:06, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

Peter. You've saved us all. As I said earlier, I liked it when the banner appeared to be hanging from the red line under its colony's name. I share Peter's dislike for tons of white space and alternating the sides seemed to create the least of that. However, if we just had the emblem and colors from each flag, we could do it below the red line as Fang seems to like, and not have this huge, long graphic. Maybe we can then link the full banner pics and, if we get enough information that a given colony's article wouldn't be a stub, we can display it there. Does all that make sense? --Day 17:11, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

I like it with banners to right, with titling, albeit a little redundant. Not sure how to deal with the "white space" of many areas, but we're really not going to get them filled until we get more data, so that is that. I feel it's informative enough as it stands, but I'll leave the formatting arguments alone. Spencerian 19:52, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

Which flag is which?

A close viewing of Colonial Day indicates that the flag currently labeled as Tauron belongs to Safiya Sanne's seat - either Picon or Leonis; and that the black flag belongs to Robin Wenutu's seat (Canceron), and that VIrgon's flag is a white field with a green inner stripe and yellow outer stripe. I'm curious as to how QuintusCinna came to his conclusion that the delegates aren't seated at their apprporiate flags, since I don't know any other evidence linking particular flags to colonies. I guess Scorpion is pretty obvious, though. --Peter Farago 17:34, 14 September 2005 (EDT)

Don't trust the banners lining up with those they represent in Colonial Day. The reason I say this is that Tom Zarek is in one area of the room and his very obvious banner for Sagitarron is completely in another area. This is the same for Virgon's banner and their representative. There are 3 different questions I carry thanks to the shows I have watched. In the mini-series we see the banners are in this order from left to right: Virgon, Picon, Caprica, Aerelon, Gemenon, Scorpion, Aquaria(?), Tauron, Libra (?), Sagittaron, Canceron (?), Leonis. Is this in the order that the colonies signed the unification treaty or is the order for the flags random or is it in the order they were nuked? Though I am sure the producers, directors, and such just put them up in random order, it is now a sense of fact for the show. If we were to believe they were placed up there, the banners must be up there in some order that is according to military protocol for flag bearing. In Colonial Day I add 2 more questions. We see that the banners are behind the delegates in a different order than in the mini-series. This means they were either a) put up randomly or b) have a separate purpose than those shown at the end of the mini-series (nuked, treaty order, or other). Then we see that the delegates are put in a different order than the banners behind them. The Gemenon delegate is clearly seen toward the middle and the Gemenon flag is clearly in a different area. The same questions come up for the delegates: are they randomly placed or is there reason. It's not alphabetical, and placements of delegates and banners in every society is always in some sort of traditional order. I hope that the Battlestar Galactica producers, writers, and such will be able to answer this though I suspect they won't because they have REAL lives.

As for the Picon flag, the constellation looks quite similar to the picon banner and the same goes for Tauron's with Taurus. I have no doubt with those. The Libra's icon can be seen in this picture http://www.gaitedhorses.net/Articles/HorseAstrology/AstrologySymbol.gif 2 clockwise from Sagittarius. --QuintusCinna 1:12, 15 September 2005 (EDT)