> You might laugh all you want, but I wouldn't discard the very possible scenario of one among your "colleagues" being the supposed "hacker" behind the illicit change. When the change was spotted and the subject came afloat in the forums, he/she obviously just kept quiet and would not acknowledge his/her "deed of the day".

Wow. You are, like, Sherlock Holmes reborn or something. Can I touch you?

>You might laugh all you want,

I'm not laughing in the slightest. It's extremely frustrating. But the point is, the change was made with no discussion and no authority, and has been taken out.

Authority that moves in secret is not authority.

I agree.

>If there are other series movies, or movies made from TV show that do the same, they would fall into the same category as Star Trek.

The category that Star Trek is in is not "films/shows that meet some arbitrary and interpretable standard." It is "films/shows that have been specifically exempted from the Source Material vote."

To Magn: there is no reason to be coy or mysterious about things like this. In fact, you take Brendan to task for it. Live up to the same standard you'd have had him apply. The exemption is going to be rare enough that it pays to make it explicit! There is no value to being vague and causing infinite, ongoing debate on a given series/movie relationship when a clear ruling could clear it up forever.

The general way we do things is to require the nitpicker to establish that a nitpick is valid, so I suppose if there's any doubt, it's up to the nitpicker to explain why a movie is closely enough related to a TV show (or anything else it relies on or quotes, for that matter) that a discrepancy would be nitpickable.  I don't know that there's any particular standard for deciding this, though.  In some cases it seems pretty obvious, so we don't require a whole lot of explanation.  I doubt, for example, anyone had a big discussion about whether the Gilligan TV specials were closely-enough related to the TV show that they were supposed to be consistent.  It was probably just a gut reaction (which I agree with in that particular case, fwiw.)

>If it was iron clad, it would be a fact, not a presumption.

Well, there are such things as irrebuttable presumptions, which I guess an "ironclad presumption" might be.  A presumption is something accepted without proof.  An irrebuttable presumption is something that's accepted without proof or evidence and everyone is required to act as if it's true.  For example, in a civil trial, a judge might tell the jury "The capital of New York state is Albany" and they would be required to accept this fact.  They might personally wonder whether Buffalo or New York City might be the capital, but they have to accept that it's Albany for official purposes even though they've been given no evidence.  On the other side, there are rebuttable presumptions that are assumed to be true until they're shown not to be.

What I thought geode was first saying when he was talking about an ironclad presumption was that discrepancies between movies and related TV shows were absolutely not nitpickable, except for Star Trek and that the only way around that was to change the rules.  It looks like now maybe he means people who are familiar with a particular TV series and related movie can talk about them and decide whether they're supposed to be consistent or not, on a case-by-case basis.  That approach makes sense to me.  And it seems to me it's more or less what we do now.

It's ironclad in the sense that it applies in every single case where an exemption has not been made. It's not something that needs to be judged on an individual nitpick basis. Source Material applies automatically.

Then, when a new instance of a possible examption comes up, people can discuss its applicability on the board for a bit AND IF the exemption is approved, at that point Source Material no longer applies.

Very straightforward!