Talk:Contact (The Culture)

Merge of Special Circumstances / Contact

For the following reasons, I feel this should be merged:

1. Special Circumstances is described as a subsection of Contact in several of the books
2. Yet at the moment, SC is actually better sourced as to notability
3. Both are still at threat of at least eventual deletion
4. Combining them, condensing them somewhat, and finding more third-party refs is therefore more likely to keep them around

Ingolfson (talk) 06:35, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

I believe Special Circumstances is not really described as a concrete subsection of Contact, but affiliated with Contact. Though an argument can be made for this, one could also argue that Special Circumstances 'wears the pants' and is not a subsection.

I argue this because of the importance of hierarchy, or more like the lack thereof, in Banks' Culture series. Not because I ultimately care if the two should be kept apart.

I do think it makes sense to include them in a single article, but just make the article include general groups or associations that are part of Culture without any hierarchy. The Interesting Times Gang might be included in this, along with any ship specific articles (i.e. GSV Sleeper Service).

Why is pizza so good? (talk) 22:03, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. Having attracted reliable source commentary, Special Circumstances is a notable topic in itself, and it shouldn't be merged in order to shore up the notability of Contact. It's also worth noting that SC receives vastly more attention in the books, so regardless of exactly how it's affiliated with Contact (and it is spoken of as a subset, though sometimes with a wink and a nod), it's almost perforce going to be the more significant topic from an encyclopedic perspective. —chaos5023 (talk) 09:57, 31 July 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. Agree with everything Chaos5023 says... but I also can't resist. I think special circumstances exist for this article. Sol-Earther Timothy John "Space-Boy" McCloud of EagleRock Timmccloud (talk) 17:03, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Original research

Hi all,
I've just removed, again, some content which failed WP:NOR. I recognise that fans like having lots of text about the series, but please don't revert policy-violating content back into article-space. If anybody has text which does comply with policy, which they'd like to put either in this article or in the main Culture article, that could be a good step forward. bobrayner (talk) 21:03, 14 October 2014 (UTC)