Help talk:Disambiguation/Franchise-based vs. Fiction-based

Soooooo... how does this address the desire for the parenthetical citations to avoid containing multiple words? Awa64 23:11, 11 January 2009 (EST)

It doesn't, admittedly. I'm open to suggestions for that on the main discussion page. --Jeysie 23:23, 11 January 2009 (EST)

Wait, what? So you want to split IDW G1 Dreadwing off from Marvel Dreadwing, or are we just pretending he's not in IDW? And what do we do with guys like Wheeljack who are everywhere? Chip 23:32, 11 January 2009 (EST)

The Dreadwing (G1) article only gives Marvel issues in its fiction... so if the same character is in IDW too and that fiction just hasn't been added, then it should get added and he should stay at (G1).

As for the guys like Wheeljack... my classification is that any character in more than one series/continuity in the G1 continuity family should therefore be bumped up to the (G1) continuity family classifier. Therefore, most of the guys like Wheeljack who are everywhere in G1 are already right where they should be and wouldn't need to be moved. --Jeysie 23:40, 11 January 2009 (EST)

Yeah, I'd misread; Dreadwing only appears in Marvel, so that's okay. I was thinking Dreadwind. It's senseless to me though, because every character from one version of G1 has the potential to exist in every other version of G1. And my word, "Ricochet (Autobot)" would refer to all four freaking characters named Ricochet.

The information you want to add might have a place in the "Such and such is a character from such and such" line at the top of each entry, but you're making the index needlessly complicated for no return I can see. Chip 23:44, 11 January 2009 (EST)

Dreadwing also totally appears in several animated commercials. --ItsWalky 00:45, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Crap, you're right. This may get at the core of what's really bothering me about this system; it takes as a given that some fiction (serialized comics, half-hour cartoons, lengthy prose) is more canon than other fiction (packaging blurbs and bios, commercials, pack-in comics). That's 180 degrees from the spirit of this wiki. Chip 01:00, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Fair enough on Ricochet... since the other G1 Ricochet is Ricochet (Nebulan), maybe Ricochet (Targetmaster)? I think he's only a Targetmaster in that one continuity. And honestly, I think IMHO that's one of those things that could use a move even if we don't change our rules.

And... so far I've identified 30 whole changes to make, since most things would stay right where they are. Plus half of them don't even have toys anyway, so trying to classify them according to the toys seems doubly strange. Things may change when someone gets to go through the Japanese series, but so far I'm not seeing this as "needlessly complicated". No more so than the number of edge cases we already debate under our current rules. --Jeysie 00:16, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Of the four Ricochets all four are Autobots, two are Targetmasters, two are from G1, three are Cybertronian... and the way they are right now works fine. The article name doesn't have to convey all the information, since we have disambig info at the top of every article it's relevant to.

The current subject headings aren't restrictive enough to convey every piece of information a person might want about a character. The headings you're proposing are too restrictive; they don't cover the totality of each character, which is in almost all cases derived from a toy and its bio. The fact that they're also more complicated than what works already is just icing on that. Chip 00:42, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Ah, proof-in-the-pudding time. Good to see. My first reaction is that it is indeed too specific to be intuitive. For instance, "Greasepit (DW G1)" seems like an active denial of his non-Dreamwave-related toy, whereas sticking with the franchise covers both. Since he was part of my toy collection a good DECADE before he was in a comic, I'm far more familiar with him as just a plain ol' G1 character. Also, several of the (IDW G1) characters you listed should simply be (G1) even just in terms of fiction, since every G1 character with a toy also got covered in DW's "More Than Meets the Eye" profile-comics. Plus, how do toy-bios factor into the scope of "fiction"? Since on-package bios are rarely considered part of any cartoons/comics/etc. series, does any character with such a bio get their parenthetical bumped up to a more general level? (I actually think the answer is "yes," but it also brings up the complication factor: Knowing the full range of a character's fictional appearances is a greater demand on an editor than knowing what franchise they started out in.) One minor point: if "Road Rocket (G2)" would be moved to "Road Rocket (G1)", then what happens to the current "Road Rocket (G1)"?Also, I would recommend going back through the debate and finding every example that people brought up and putting them in here as well. People came up with them because they are good tests for the system, so... let's test 'em.- Jackpot 23:49, 11 January 2009 (EST)
Character bios are fiction, so I don't see the moves like "Banzai-Tron (IDW G1)" at all. - Starfield 00:05, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Since we already don't focus on the toys, Jackpot's first problem is noted but not germane, I think. If this were a toy-focused database I'd agree with him (but then, if this was a toy-focused database we wouldn't be having this whole discussion to begin with). As for his other points:

*peeks* Ah, I'd missed the Road Rocket (G1). Hmm, I think you've come across the first problem case. Namely, since Road Rocket (G1) only has the toys for his consideration, it's proper to classify him by the toys... and yet Road Rocket (G2) wants to be there according to the fiction classifying. I'd probably leave it as-is, but I acknowledge it's a problem.

Now the toy bio thing is especially interesting. My inclination would be that they don't count as fiction, since they're just descriptions rather than actual stories. But I can definitely see how you could classify them as fiction, and I agree that's also something to think about that I don't have a ready answer for. --Jeysie 00:16, 12 January 2009 (EST)

This wiki includes toy-only characters. If Banzai-Tron (G1) was never in IDW, he would still have an article and it would be under "Banzai-Tron (G1)" and you wouldn't be questioning it right now because G1 is that character's first appearance. He, as a character, existed in G1. If you took your approach to its logical conclusion, you would have to exclude toy-onlys from this wiki. - Starfield 00:27, 12 January 2009 (EST)

As I said above, any toy that doesn't have fiction defaults to being organized by the franchise. Easy. I don't have a problem with toy-only articles being on this wiki, and it makes sense to sort those in a toy-centric way. It's organizing the fiction in a toy-centric way that I find weird. --Jeysie 00:48, 12 January 2009 (EST)

"Since we already don't focus on the toys"

Since when? No, really, since when? Once again, the toys are the focus. The toys are what all the fiction is built around. This strikes me as one of the fundamental flaws of this solution without a problem to solve. --M Sipher 00:32, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Help:Article types and titles

Contents: Toy pages are a low priority for the TF Wiki at this time, as there are a number of very thorough toy resources at other websites such as TFU.info. For now, and possibly for perpetuity, we simply include toy information directly on the appropriate character page. External links to pages at TFU.info and similar sites are welcome at the ends of character pages.

Naming: As we are not currently creating toy articles, no naming convention for toy articles has been established.

That's at least one statement against this being a toy-focused wiki... --Jeysie 00:48, 12 January 2009 (EST)

A statment I just removed because it's outdated information that's currently irrelevant to the wiki. It talks about toy *pages*, which wouldn't really exist, since all information about individual toys would be embedded on our existing pages, whether they're characters, objects, weapons, or otherwise. --ItsWalky 00:54, 12 January 2009 (EST)

This is a massively important distinction. Our wiki is fiction-centric rather than toy-centric, and I think that's important. However, the fiction for most characters begins with a toy and its bio, from which all subsequent iterations of that character are derived. No character with a bio can be said to exist solely in IDW or Marvel, because the bio is external to that fiction and it is fiction in its own right. Hell, the toys themselves could be viewed as fiction; they're all meant to represent imaginary people. Chip 00:49, 12 January 2009 (EST)

The idea what we are going to brand Banzai-Tron, who has been a Transformers character for over 17 years, probably longer than IDW has even existed, as an IDW creation because he hadn't appeared in fiction until IDW threw him in goes beyond patently ridiculous and into the realm of spreading easily-debunkable and wildly stupid minsinformation. Peel away the fiction, and look at what is in the center of it all... the toys. The toys are the core of the enterprise. Ignoring that is willfully stupid.

And guess what? We have toy pages. We have TONS of toy pages. We have pages for characters and subgroups that only exist as toys. We have (toyline) pages that do not focus on accompanying fiction (if any) all over the place. We have pages on toy gimmicks, toy marketing, toy construction, toy terminology. What you've quoted comes from the ancient and out-of-date early wiki era, and does not hold up to comparison to the wiki as it is now... like a fair few of these ancient "policy" pages, it's been long-neglected and overdue for some heavy reworking. --M Sipher 01:00, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Walky's response really just reinforces my statement... we create character pages and then stick the toys in a section that has no more importance than the fictional sections of those character pages.

And didn't we have a whole debate regards Rosicrucian's tech spec template about whether we should add tech specs and such or not because it's not germane to the fiction? If this is a toy-based wiki, why was there even a debate?

And yeah, we do have toy pages... but only because there's no fiction for those toys. When we do have fiction for a character, the fiction gets the prominent placement and the most extensive writeup.

I'm not denying that Transformers is a toy-inspired concept. However, we are not a toy database like Seibertron or TFU... we have chosen to focus mainly on the fiction. I'm not concerned about what TF as a whole does... I'm going by what this wiki already does. If didn't look to me like we already focus on the fiction most of the time, I wouldn't have even brought up this debate. --Jeysie 01:07, 12 January 2009 (EST)

My argument against the tech-spec template has nothing to do with "fiction" and everything to do with "being ugly and severely fucking up page layouts". And the only reason Fiction comes above Toys is just because well, whoops, that's how it happened all those years ago. One or the other had to come first. There was no big debate, it was just how it ended up happening. I really don't see how "we have decided to focus mainly on the fiction" when we list every single toy a character gets, with pictures and writeups of what they are and what they do and what toys share the mold and etc, and a ton of character merchandise to boot. That is what this wiki already does, and always has done. We shine the light on toys just as brightly as on the fictions, we dig for obscurata on toys just as much as the fictions. What we don't do for toys is largely the same as what we don't do for fictions... wholesale copy-paste of the material, for a variety of reasons. --M Sipher 01:15, 12 January 2009 (EST)

I agree that that toys don't... NOT matter. Especially when they come with bios, which are still a kind of fiction. And as Chip said, one might consider the toy itself to be part of the fiction because it's an incarnation of a character, however abstract. Like... the G1 Jetfire toy's gun is designed to be clipped to the underside of his jet mode. That's not documented anywhere, and to my knowledge he's never been drawn or described doing that... but in some sense, however you want to think of it in relation to the multiverse, Jetfire-the-character can use his gun in jet mode. So even a fiction-based parenthetical system shouldn't necessarily deny the toys.

But honestly, our article structure is ENTIRELY reliant on fiction. The toys alone don't tell us how to separate all the Optimus Prime figures. Franchise names, in and of themselves, are meaningless. If we were working from the toys up, we'd have a different article for every Prime released under a different line, or they'd all be in one. The fiction tells us which brands are related. We even give some toys with no fiction at all a fictional gloss: Most of the 2003 Universe toys have articles that claim the characters were actually involved somehow in the story attached to the franchise, even if they have no bios or even no package-blurb at all.

So I have to disagree that the toys are primary to the way the wiki is organized. It's pretty heavily fiction-first.

- Jackpot 01:43, 12 January 2009 (EST)

If I were arguing for "toy-only", that'd be one thing. My point is that toys, being the core of the entire damn enterprise, are interwoven tightly into the very being of what Transformers is. Separating them from the equation is... just flat-out retarded. The fiction fleshes out the toys, but the toys are the skeleton of the fiction. As noted in the Banzai-Tron example, pretending Banzai-Tron wasn't around for 17 or so years simply because he hadn't happened to be in a "mainline" fiction and attributing him to IDW is... words fail. Bug Bite was not a Timelines creation. For the overwhelming majority of the cast, the toys are the starting point. For some, they're also the ending point. And once again we're at best dancing around this proposed system solving nothing at all and only adding more complications over less than one percent of our content for no good reason other than some bizarre can't see-the-forest-for-the-trees drive to champion one aspect of Transformers over another... which, as Chip noted, is completely the opposite of the point of the wiki. --M Sipher 02:16, 12 January 2009 (EST)

The way you were coming across, it sounded like you were taking essentially the polar opposite position to Jeysie's, which is just as wrong. When Jeysie called the franchise-of-origin system unreasonably toy-based, your basic response was YES AND THAT'S ALL THAT MATTERS. I don't think you actually believe that - hell, you MAKE some of the fiction we're talking about - but I wanted to put into perspective that, seriously, no, this wiki is structured with fiction fully in the prime and toys falling into place behind. Yes, Jeysie was wrong to dismiss the toys entirely, and I called her on it too... but you came on so strong in the opposite direction that it was ringing just as false.

As for your complaints about the endeavor as a whole, as you well know by now, we disagree there fundamentally. This has been adequately established. The point of a sandbox is to be able to experiment freely, so either help move the experiment along or stop wasting your time. Right now the experiment is NOT actually succeeding, which demonstrates your point far better than a thousand more craftily-worded insults.

- Jackpot 03:26, 12 January 2009 (EST)

I agree that the fiction is prime here... I'm not championing that fact, I'm just trying to state that we already do it. I'm calling an apple what looks like an apple to me while some of you are trying to claim it's really an orange. Even Chip's comment about the bios is still talking about the fiction, because he considers the bios as fiction.

However, since we do still give the toys due weight, the end result it seems is that... if you focus on organizing by toys you end up with one set of problems, and if you focus on organizing by fiction you end up with another set of problems. They're both equally problematic.

So... if we're going to change anything at all, I wonder if the only real possibility is a hybrid solution... keep organizing primarily by franchise like we are now (since if both possibilities are equally problematic, you might as well stick with the one you already got), but be willing to make the occasional exception for any fiction-only concepts where there's no toy to organize by, and trying to behave as if there was one creates inconsistencies. Basically, be willing to fudge sometimes instead of shoehorn. --Jeysie 03:49, 12 January 2009 (EST)

All right, here's the flipside to my response to Siph: No, toys are not ultimately supreme, but franchises are already hybrids of toys and fiction. The Armada brand is on both toy packages AND the comic covers. When we called the IDW Swarm "Swarm (G1)", you could say we did so because it came from a comic with the classic logo on it. That's an overly simplistic way of putting it, but I hope my meaning is clear: Every bit of fiction we cover in this wiki must have come out with Hasbro's approval, and if Hasbro approved it, then they put their brand on it, and that means that in some form or other it belongs to a franchise. Some franchises are more obvious than others, but nevertheless, they're always there, no matter how far from the toys you might be. - Jackpot 04:09, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Fair point, although that leaves us in the exact same bind from a different angle. If organizing toys by fiction means having to know all of the fiction the toy's been in, then I would think that trying to organize fiction by toys means having to know which toys the fiction belongs to.

For something like G1 that's old, this likely isn't a huge problem, since if it's based on G1 characters it probably goes in G1. (Well, except for when it goes in something like Timelines or Classics or Universe instead...) But for something like the movie, where the movies/recent comics are one storyline yet two different franchises, you suddenly have to start remembering the toys to categorize the fiction. It's... weird.

Since we've discovered that there is no alternative one-size-fits-all approach, maybe we just need to be less anal. If a toy-based concept clashes with the fiction when organized by toy, we live with it, since the toy comes first in our system, and since Transformers revolves around toys, we assume a fan would know the character first through the toys anyway.

But if a fiction-only concept clashes when being organized by franchise, then maybe we should be willing to consider classifying it by fiction, since anyone who knows about the concept will only know it through the fiction. Why be completely anal about sorting it by the toys when nobody's going to know of it through a toy?

(Of course, that would mean being willing to say, "Since the system works 99% of the time, the world isn't going to end if we fudge the other 1% a little," instead of crying about how the sky is falling, so I'm not holding my breath at this point. :P) --Jeysie 12:46, 12 January 2009 (EST)

But we do this already. All Hail Megatron is G1 fiction. So Swarm would go under G1. --ItsWalky 12:52, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Except that when you look at this fiction-only concept from a fiction perspective, it clashes with the G2 Swarm, which shows up in more than one G1 story. Which is why this specific argument got started in the first place. At least six of us were willing to say, "In this one case it makes more sense to classify this according to the fiction, as it solves all of the quibbles," while you were saying, "No, we can't possibly do it this way in this one single instance, as it'll somehow break all the other times our way works just fine so we can just follow the rules as normal! *ridiculously stupid apoplectic fit*" :P

So it'd be nice to know we won't have to go through that sort of stupidity every single time this sort of thing crops up, instead of getting to have a nice sane discussion that is willing to look at the matter with some sane objectivity instead of "Nope, we always gotta do it like this even in those occasions where it doesn't work, and you're an idiot for pointing out that it doesn't work here."

Because, quite frankly, if you had been willing to do that from the get-go, I wouldn't have even bothered going through this whole mess trying to find something else that works 100% of the time because you people can't handle any exceptions in a sane manner.

I would have been perfectly willing to just say, "99.9% of the time it works, this is one of the 1% times it doesn't work, we fudge it, we move on." You're the one who decided to make this more complicated than it actually needed to be. --Jeysie 14:11, 12 January 2009 (EST)

I still don't understand how the Swarm "shows up in more than one G1 story". It's created (and dealt with) in the G2 comics, which were the primary fiction for the G2 line. It's mentioned in Primeval Dawn which was BW-flavoured convention fiction. Why does it suddenly deserve a (G1) tag? --Emvee 14:33, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Because G1-the-continuity-family is the only label that encompasses both G2 and BW. Which doesn't matter by the current rule because the current rule is, at step one, blind to all but franchises, and G1-the-franchise includes neither G2 nor BW. This confusion over what "(G1)" means in any given situation will, it seems, ALWAYS be there no matter WHAT the system is, as demonstrated by the "Blackarachnia (G1)" example elsewhere. The current orthodoxy is that we shouldn't have to be looking over our shoulders and constantly wondering if parentheticals can be taken wrongly, so we just say "let the parenthetical do its job of separating identically-named articles, and if there's any confusion, let the disambig-note underneath it sort things out." If we were truly concerned about double meanings, we would never use "(Cybertron)" because it could be taken to mean that the character must be the only one associated with the planet Cybertron. Likewise, we've decided not to worry about the two different "(Universe)"es unless they're competing directly. I'm... not entirely comfortable with all of that, but it's the best approach we've come up with. - Jackpot 17:56, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Jeysie, I think you missed my point about franchises as they relate to fiction. Imagine there were no toys at all, and you would still have franchises. Hasbro's line-branding applies in some way to every officially-releases form of fiction. It doesn't matter that the Insecticon Swarm doesn't have a toy. It was introduced in a comic that bears the classic logo on the cover, which has been retroactively called "Generation 1". (If it were a DW comic, it would actually literally SAY "Generation 1".) The big-black-mass-of-death Swarm was introduced in a comic with Hasbro's "Generation 2" logo on the cover. Those are two different franchises of origin, with no necessary relation whatsoever to toys. Yes, the two comics are linked in continuity, but it's exactly the same as if this had been an Armada comic concept vs. an Energon comic concept. The ONLY difference is that "G1" has multiple meanings, and if we're going to police for multiple meanings in our parentheticals, then where do we stop?

In short: franchise-of-origin may have its drawbacks, but toy-centeredness is not one of them. Defining the debate as toys vs. fiction is a false dichotomy and harmful to the discussion.

- Jackpot 17:56, 12 January 2009 (EST)

I didn't miss your point, so much as I don't think it applies here. From a fictional standpoint, the only thing IDW has in common with the G1 franchise is the characters, and even those are different (Sunstreaker a Headmaster, Nightbeat & Hardhead not Headmasters, Galvatron and Cyclonus having different origins, etc.) It's just not directly related to the toys. Blame Furman for going off and doing his own little thing, if you like.

Meanwhile, the Movie stuff has the exact opposite problem... the franchise method wants to treat everything branded with ROTF as separate, yet all signs (so far) point to both Movies (and RoS/Destiny) as all being the same series/storyline.

If people want to say, "Well, we'll live with the contradictions," then I guess I'll just sigh and deal with it (although in the case of the Movies I think it makes things more complicated than they need to be), but IMHO it's silly to claim they aren't contradictions. --Jeysie 18:27, 12 January 2009 (EST)

So, making sure I understand you correctly: You think it's "contradictory" that we determine the content of our articles by continuity family, yet we parenthetically disambiguate them by franchise? On account of those are two different concepts that swirl around each other but never quite match? Honestly, I don't think anyone would truly disagree with that. I don't think, in all this sound and fury, anyone has disagreed with that. In all of the defenses of the franchise-of-origin schema, no one has said, "Because it accurately sums up the scope of the article." People have simply removed that goal from the purpose of parentheticals. And this experiment is bearing out the reason why: It's just too damn hard to figure out where to draw lines and what terms to use when you're trying to describe something as sprawling and shifting and scattered as the TF multiverse in a few abbreviations. So it's no longer a "contradiction" if there are no competing goals to contradict. That's the point where Walky and Interrobang and many others will almost certainly never agree with you on: They don't see the "contradiction" in something like "Swarm (G1)" because if you don't think the parenthetical should do anything but tell you which franchise the subject came from, then it's working swimmingly. No need to "fudge" at ALL, because it's meeting every goal that's actually been set for it.

Now, I'm with you in the sense that I would PREFER it if somehow parentheticals COULD convey more fully the scope of the their subjects' fiction... but seeing it play out, I really really doubt it's possible to make that happen coherently. The "fudging" you're talking about amounts to second-guessing what anybody might possibly misconstrue and trying to proof against all such errant possibilities, which I just don't think will ever be worth it.

- Jackpot 19:37, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Well, the problem is... the parentheticals do convey information just by virtue of being in the title. Whether or not you're supposed to read them that way... it's kind of hard not to instinctively do so anyway. And the fact that I am not the only one who agreed with Swarm (IDW) indicates to me that I am not the only one who feels this way. And having correct parentheticals helps a reader determine which is which (speaking as someone who uses the search box and types in URLs frequently herself, so disambig pages aren't always the only stop for easy identifying).
Again, I think it's a divide between thinking like an editor and thinking like a reader.
And, considering that Walky sees no reason how anyone could ever possibly think Swarm (IDW) would be a good match, I venture that's at least one person who doesn't recognize the sometimes contradiction between the toys and the fiction.
And, since we've proved that there isn't a system that can proof against all errant possibilities, I'm merely saying that we should be willing to treat them as any other situation that needs a consensus.
I'd think that on any other topic six people would be enough of a starter to show there's a contention (seeing as how we don't have a large volume of people who speak up on topics), so why is it on this topic almost everyone in opposition is still busy pitching a fit and saying there should be no debate whatsoever? It's a stupid and embarrassing-to-watch reaction, IMHO. (Especially since I just got done on the IDW forums defending the people on this wiki as being fairly reasonable... now I'm starting to wonder if I spoke too soon.) --Jeysie 20:02, 12 January 2009 (EST)

To be fair, it looks like there haven't been any this-debate-should-not-exist statements since last night. For the moment, people seem to be respecting the nature of the sandbox, as a place to freely experiment.

Anyway, no need to restate positions; I agree with you in principle about many things, and I've said as much already. I see the debate as being entirely a practical one. At this point, it seems to me the whole "alternative system" thing has been dropped. If what you're advocating now is truly "fudging" on a case-by-case basis, then the case that started this has been taken care of, and the discussion is effectively over.

If you'd still like to work this out in a broader way, though, then we're talking about an addendum to the current rule, so we can keep the franchise-of-origin starting point but make further changes if the result is.... still "wrong" somehow. And there's the sticking point. What defines "wrong"? So far, the only definition I've seen that makes sense to me is that "G1" has multiple meanings beyond franchise, one of which overlaps with "G2", so we shouldn't use those two terms to distinguish against each other. Well, if that's the case, then (as Interrobang asked a while back) do Afterburner (G1) and Afterburner (G2) conflict? Do Crumplezone (Armada) and Crumplezone (Cybertron) conflict because Armada Crumplezone came from the planet Cybertron? These are real questions. Let's figure out what we're actually saying instead of just talking about "fiction" verson "branding."

- Jackpot 20:48, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Now that I've taken the time to meditate on it, I'm increasingly not sure there is a good alternative broader system, because I think Chip actually identified the problem square on.

See, most fictional properties have an official canon policy. They are "allowed" to give some bits of fiction greater weight than others, so they can organize by series without it getting too unwieldy.

Not us. As Chip pointed out, we treat everything as canon. We give every bit of fiction equal weight. So as you pointed out, that potentially makes organizing by the fiction in this case unwieldy and unintuitive. (We have to disambiguate by a video game?)

Therefore, for the sake of sanity we have to artificially decide some things are more important than others solely for filing purposes, and I think any limit we come up with is going to just end up with different sets of exceptions, and thus just different sets of problems. (Not because Transformers is toy-based or because this wiki isn't fiction-focused or other similarly irrelevant/inaccurate arguments, but because the nature of TF fiction even taken as itself without the toys... is still weird.) --Jeysie 13:06, 13 January 2009 (EST)

With you 100%. The current system still doesn't feel completely adequate to me, but its efficacy in the face of alternatives seems only more certain. Thanks for putting the effort into the experiment, which is so much more helpful than a thousand pages of debate. - Jackpot 14:48, 16 January 2009 (EST)

Thank you and the others who tried to stick to debating the points brought up with some relevant arguments. (This whole thing would have gotten resolved a lot sooner if we'd all been able to do that from the get-go... :P )

Anyhoo. Part of me does wish we had been able to come up with something, as it would have made for an interesting footnote in fiction - trying to elegantly organize a setup that I don't think any other fictional universe has to deal with. I swear, a TV/Film major could probably get a nice little project paper out of trying to figure out TF fiction. --Jeysie 15:32, 16 January 2009 (EST)

I should note that this list probably isn't comprehensive, so feel free to point out anything I missed. Mostly I was trying to gauge how many changes we'd get stuck with, and so far it's actually less than I was expecting. --Jeysie 00:16, 12 January 2009 (EST)

One HUGE area that would be affected by this kind of specificity is the Movie stuff. Check out the list of media on that page. There are lots of characters from the comics, video games, card games, online games, etc., that are specific to those subsets. That's an awful lot of obscure parentheticals we'd need to come up with. In that case, I like having the more general parenthetical of "(Movie)" because it lets me know what larger world I'm in, as opposed to, say, "(ROTCA)", which would look nonsensical to me even though I know what "Rise of the Chevy Autobots" is. Yes, we use some crazy parentheticals like that now, but at least that's an unfortunate event brought on by necessity, not a requirement of the system. - Jackpot 00:35, 12 January 2009 (EST)

That's another fair problem to consider that I also don't have a ready answer for. (I like you, you come up with problems that actually are problems.) --Jeysie 00:48, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Well, even though I've said from the beginning that I think this approach has issues, I still want to see it put through its paces, and I'm glad you're willing to devote your time to it. I think the factor we're both motivated by is the notion that if you put something in the title of an article, it ought to either carry meaning or be obviously meaningless. Franchise-of-origin is somewhere in-between, and the best thing I can say about it is that nobody has come up with a better idea. Right now, this sandbox is not a better idea. But maybe with some work, it could be. The only way to know is to try.

That having been said, the Movie subsets (which I should've used instead of that hypothetical S.T.A.R.S. example before) are a perfect example of why starting at a fine grain can be a hindrance to meaning. What about bumping the starting point up to continuity family? Well, then you get default conditions like "Blackarachnia (G1)", which collides with the very issue that started this thing: "G1" has different meanings at multiple levels. And that's... pretty much where I'm stymied. I can't figure out where the ideal baseline is, where the default answer will always give you something both fully representative of the subject and easy to understand.

- Jackpot 01:15, 12 January 2009 (EST)

To be honest, I'm actually almost convinced to drop this based on your comments about the toy bios and the various games, unless I or you someone else can think of good solutions. Because you've managed to come up with things that actually were problems, instead of complaining about things we already do, or trying to make it seem like I'm trying to change the wiki into something it isn't already.

I'll have to meditate on it. --Jeysie 01:19, 12 January 2009 (EST)

I think it should be on the sub-continuity family level, which would not be much different than it is now. The sub-continuity families are: G1 (the sub-continuity of the G1/G2/BW/BM family), G2, BW, BM, RID, Armada, Energon, Cybertron, Movie, and TF Animated plus any more I can't think of (and Japan). Any toylines without fiction (Machine Wars, Dinobots (toyline)) are considered their own family for this. IDWverse is not a sub-family. It is a continuity in the G1 sub-family. Transformers: Universe (2008 franchise) is also not a continuity, so the few new characters in that line should go with their "series". (Thus Skyhammer (Universe) would move to "Skyhammer (Armada)"). A character goes with their first real-world appearance. (Blackarachnia goes to BW). A toy is a fictional appearance. It is a fictional representation of a character. That's how I think it should go. I don't think that tears much up. Actually, I thought that's the way it did go all along. - Starfield 14:22, 12 January 2009 (EST)

I'm completely lost on what a "sub-continuity" is. I know what a continuity family, continuity, and series are. I know what a franchise is, which floats in the middle of those depending on specific examples. But I don't know how you're defining this new idea of a "sub-continuity." For instance, you say that the G1 sub-continuity includes G2 and the Beast series, then you call G2 and the Beast series sub-continuities too. I have no idea how you would figure out parentheticals for any given subject inside of those. Edit: Never mind, I misread you. Your definition doesn't seem to have any overlaps, but I'm still unclear as to where in the continuity-chain you stop and go HERE, THIS is a "sub-continuity." - Jackpot 18:04, 12 January 2009 (EST)

Maybe a better word is "era". "G1" as currently used for disambiguation, is the pre-Beast Era, which probably ends with the Maximal Upgrade. G2 is a little era that is sometimes ignored. If we were super-consistent, G2 could be lumped into the pre-Beast Era (whatever that's called), but for historical reasons, it is on its own. It is basically by toyline. Anyway, it makes sense to me but I can't fully explain it. - Starfield 18:54, 12 January 2009 (EST)

And there's the rub. Everybody's got their own touchy-feely sense of how best to divide the fiction up, but until somebody can make a well-defined, practical shorthand system out of it, franchise-of-origin will remain supreme. Thing is, I'm totally with you on the 2008 Universe thing, and I've tried to defend that approach before on the grounds of overlapping franchises, but that ended in a stalemate. Shrug. - Jackpot 19:51, 12 January 2009 (EST)