Talk:Space pirate

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If you have a page for the covenent in Halo than don't you think that you could have one for the space pirates in metroid. If not that then make a list of characters and enemies in the metroid series that has a section on them rather than having everything redirect to the series. 70.130.27.33 (talk) 15:07, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

*Shrug*. The Covenant have extensive characterisation and background, quite a bit of politics and a lot of juicy details in supplementary materials. The Space Pirates in Metroid are pirates, in space, and kinda like insects. Though I haven't kept up with the Metroid Prime series, there doesn't seem to be much to say about them. --Kizor 09:05, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

The Space Pirates is a band that has for 0ver 25 years occupied a unique position in music. as such they are worthy of a mention in wikipaedia. it is not self promotion, but a mark of the bands part in certain aspects of the countercultural history of the UK. it is not a 'band' as such, but a banner under which many combinations of players can create completely spontaneous music. please do not delete this again. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Willgreenwood (talk • contribs) 11:29, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Merging?

The "List of space pirates" should be merged with the "Space pirate" page, as the list is short and the "space pirate" page is itself only a stub. --69.142.3.253 (talk) 14:30, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I support merge/redirect with List of space pirates. This particular article has nothing of value, it is barely a stub.Spirit469 (talk) 23:50, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree. Just move everything from List of space pirates here. 53zodiac (talk) 12:44, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

I'm not completely sure about a merge because I'm still updating the list page. I'll see what I can find and throw something together then. If I can't find anything by the end of next week, then I'll let you know, but I seriously doubt I'll find nothing.--Historyday01 (talk) 17:07, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

So, @53zodiac, as an addendum to my last comment on here, I oppose merging the article at the present. I'm planning on doing a deep dive into research and/or writing a section with a large number of sources I was able to gather for the List of space pirates page. I already moved the space pirate media section here. That way the article will have value. What 69.142.3.253 and Spirit469 said in the past may have been right then, but now is not the time to merge. In fact, I don't think merging at any point would be advisable.--Historyday01 (talk) 06:40, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Space pirate (disambiguation) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 12:46, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

Well, that was a short discussion.--Historyday01 (talk) 17:05, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

Example farm?

I think this article does have too many examples: one I took out was that "In 2020, a game on Steam was released which challenges players to take down a fleet of space pirates", which has been added back. This doesn't seem to be a notable game (it has no Wikipedia article), and there are what look like hundreds of Steam games which involve space pirates in some way.

WP:EXAMPLES advises that "Before adding yet another example, pause to ask whether it will help readers unravel the many facets of the concept, or drag them into needless detail specific only to that example, thus deviating from the central theme of the concept."

I think we're getting into the weeds a bit if the useful broad-strokes points about how this stock character evolved from 1920s Buck Rogers comics via Star Wars are being lost with equally strong "in 2020, a non-notable Steam game featured pirates as enemies". The List of space pirates article is where the exhaustive list of every space pirate belongs. --Lord Belbury (talk) 15:15, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

@Lord Belbury, I have to disagree. I think this page should be more expansive than the original List of space pirates page. This page should include as many space pirates as possible, which is what I tried to do. However, if you present a convincing case that there are too many examples and that we are getting into "the weeds a bit," then I'd be willing to reduce the size of the page. I don't like just talking in generalities about "too many examples." Historyday01 (talk) 16:44, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

That sounds the wrong way around: shouldn't the "list of space pirates" be the article that includes as many space pirates as possible? If this is going to become an article that lists the exact same pirates (and more!) in the exact same chronological order but structures it as prose instead of a table and adds review quotes for context, why have the list article at all?

I think you're going against WP:EXAMPLES to mention something genre-defining like "recurring villains in the Buck Rogers comic strip" in passing, before giving equal weight to every minor videogame cameo in the last few years. I think "In science fiction" would be a much more interesting and useful read if it gave a readable overview of the history of the stock character, and drew out some threads of inspiration and commonality. --Lord Belbury (talk) 16:54, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Well, Lord Belbury, the only reason I am wary of adding lots of space pirates to the list page is that I have been part of deletion discussions of lists (which were luckily all saved) in the past year, where people complained that the lists weren't narrow enough, so I guess my outlook is influenced by that. Admittedly, I just copied over the pirates from the list page and added them to this page, which is why it looks similar. Additionally, if you want to point out which ones are minor videogame cameos, that would be great, because I'm working on a number of pages. Also, the main page is clearly not perfect, and perhaps it would be more interesting if there is "a readable overview of the history of the stock character, and drew out some threads of inspiration and commonality" but I have a day job and I don't have unlimited time to improve every page, so I just wrote up what seemed right to me.Historyday01 (talk) 17:32, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

You're the one who's adding these: if you can't tell whether they're protagonists or minor background characters when you're doing that, or whether the reviewers are citing them as an important part of the space piracy genre or have merely used the adjective "piratical" in passing, perhaps it's time to stop adding examples and work on improving the section as a whole. If you're deliberately avoiding adding minor pirates to the list of space pirates article and putting them here instead because you've a feeling they're less likely to get deleted, that isn't helping to make a good article. Somebody (with more free time than either of us) will clear it all away one day and write a better "history of space pirates in sci-fi" section.

If I think this has too many examples, and you think it would be great to have some guidance in which minor examples to trim down, put the {{example farm}} template back and other editors will help out. --Lord Belbury (talk) 17:43, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Well, I'll mull it over. It's not that I'm "deliberately avoiding adding minor pirates" to the list page, but I'm adding nothing at all, after already spending a lot of time fixing that article. I have a Google alert and all for "space pirate" set up, so I can add anything new. I guess I can go through every entry I have listed and remove the "minor" ones, although that will probably take some time. I seriously doubt that anyone will come across and "write a better "history of space pirates in sci-fi" section," based on the fact that there are very few editors who have edited this page since I made the changes back in November. So, reluctantly, I guess, apparently, I'm the only one who can fix the section. I thought you would give some guidance to help in this process, but I guess I'm all on my own on this one like I am with just about every single page I edit. Someday I may read this book too, but since it's not in either of the public libraries near me, that probably won't happen anytime soon.Historyday01 (talk) 20:11, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

This article has been around in some form or other since 2005, and it'll probably still be around in 2035, people will always be passing through who might decide to work on it (as I did last month). Remember you and I are WP:VOLUNTEERs here - don't feel that you have to maintain the whole article by yourself, forever, or that you can't take a break to see if it'll grow by itself.

Where it's agreed that a problem is outstanding and needs some work, a template like {{example farm}} can help bring someone in to fix it. As well as giving a clear call to action to anyone who's reading the article, it also means that the page will be automatically listed in categories like Category:Wikipedia articles with style issues from December 2020 and Category:Articles with too many examples from December 2020, and anyone scanning those categories might jump in and help if the topic catches their eye. --Lord Belbury (talk) 20:39, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Well, I'm not sure if I'll do it with this page yet, but I'm definitely doing it for the Lesbian characters in fiction page. I thought I had paired it down, but apparently, I didn't.Historyday01 (talk) 20:33, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

This article came round on my watchlist again, and giving it another look these examples do need paring back, I'll add the examplefarm template. I appreciate that you've trawled a lot of the web to check for popular culture references to the words "space pirate" for every year since 1925, but some of these ("[in 2014] a student artist drew a space pirate named Cheesebeard"?) seem very minor, and take away from the important parts of the genre history, per WP:EXAMPLES. --Lord Belbury (talk) 07:33, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Well, I suppose I can go back through it again and remove some examples when I have some time. Historyday01 (talk) 13:28, 5 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for taking a look. The sections still seems very dense to me, that it's hard as a reader to pick out any broad, significant themes about the history of space piracy in fiction. It looks like there's possibly a focus on gender and disability in takes on the genre in the 2000s/2010s, but if there is it's somewhat lost among the year-by-year chronology.

If all the reader learns from an example is that a movie or videogame definitely had a space pirate in it, with no sense that this advanced or reinterpreted the space pirate trope, I'd take that as a sign that the example should go into the list of space pirates table instead. --Lord Belbury (talk) 09:20, 6 August 2021 (UTC)

I see what you are saying, but I didn't know how else to organize it except to do it chronologically. Historyday01 (talk) 17:44, 6 August 2021 (UTC)