I'm starting this discussion on behalf of @Argonbalt. Him and I are looking for community consensus on potential modifications to Acepedia's canon policy concerning AC2 and Legacy.
Your feedback and suggestions are vital to this discussion. We need to figure out, as a community, what we will do for the content of these two games. PLEASE READ THIS ENTIRE POST IN FULL BEFORE RESPONDING. NO CHANGES WILL BE MADE UNLESS COMMUNITY CONSENSUS IS RECOGNIZED.
Click here if you want the context that led up to this post: https://acecombat.fandom.com/wiki/Acepedia_talk:Canon#Canonicity_of_AC2_and_AC3_routes
ISSUE #1: Should the wiki consider Legacy a canon retcon of AC2 and therefore consider AC2 completely non-canon?
Argonbalt says No, citing the lack of preference in later games or materials which don't choose one over the other. AC7 in particular makes little to no mention of the coup d'etat. Instead, Argonbalt says the wiki should treat AC2 and Legacy as equally canon and let the reader decide on which version of the events happened.
I say Yes, citing Legacy putting the coup in proper Strangereal history. I also mention the fact that AC2's missions don't even have dates, whereas Legacy's missions do.
@Qbicle asked Ace Combat's brand director, Kazutoki Kono, for his opinion. Please keep in mind that Kono's opinion does NOT dictate wiki policy. Kono responded with the following: There is a saying that "history is determined by future historians". In the case of two missions with the same operation time, one historian recognizes A as historical. Another historian recognizes B as historical. I prefer to have a number of researchers rather than the history of a single historian. https://twitter.com/kazutoki/status/1181818868827742208
ISSUE #2: If we treat AC2 and Legacy as equally canon ("No" to Issue #1), how do we consolidate the information on the wiki while preventing the duplication of content?
This issue doesn't have any clear sides to it, it's a more open-ended discussion. Regardless of your answer to #1, for the purposes of this issue, pretend that we decide to treat AC2 and Legacy as equally canon. We would need to figure out how to handle the following problems, and if you have any suggestions, PLEASE respond with them.
The Strangereal/Timeline article presents dates that are only shown in Legacy and cannot be assumed as AC2's dates since AC2 didn't even have any dates and had different missions. Argonbalt mentioned an option of either showing all information (which I would personally prefer) or only certain shared information, but I'm not sure how we can squeeze all of AC2 into there without duplicating everything or giving incorrect assumptions of when AC2's missions may have taken place. Treating the games as equally canon means that we cannot use Legacy's dates for AC2's dates, and since AC2 didn't have any dates, we omit them in relation to AC2. So how would we handle the timeline article?
Operation articles that are shared between both games, for example Operation Anchorhead Freedom, link to the mission disambiguation page so the reader can choose which mission article to go to from there, AC2 or Legacy. But operation articles like Battle of Payton Channel describe operations that only happened in Legacy and not AC2. If we treat all AC2 as canon, would we be making operation articles for AC2's missions that didn't happen in Legacy, like Greased Lightning? And how can we justify linking them to operations that aren't specifically AC2? Attack on the Keep is something that happened in both AC2 and Legacy, but would the following operation in the infobox link to both Battle of Payton Channel and "Attack on Meriton Base"? And would we make two different operation articles for operations that are shared between both games, as I mentioned above, like "Operation Bellissima (AC2)" and "Operation Bellissima (Legacy)" since there are specific differences between them? Or do we somehow include both game details on the same operation page? But then also how do we deal with the date issue of AC2 not having dates and preventing any assumptions that it did present dates?
Location articles for the locations featured in both games have history sections that currently prioritize Legacy. Do we include AC2 information as well, and if so, how do we separate the two to indicate to the reader that this only happened in this game and that only happened in that game, within the same article? Or, God forbid, do we separate the location articles?
The war article, Usean coup d'état itself, currently prioritizes Legacy as well, so how would we include operations that occurred only in AC2? Do we turn the war article into two different articles, inevitably duplicating a large portion of text, or do we include all the information in the same article?