MediaWiki talk:Community Portal

This is the place for discussion of topics that affect the entire wiki. Some topics that would ordinarily be here have merited their own pages:

	Specific Discussion Subjects
Moving From Wikia: Arriving Leaving Complaints New Ad Policy: Ads Bookworm Database-Crash: Damage Control Central Project:Bookworm Crash Leaving Take 2 Server Move: Arriving Take 2 Relicensing: Relicensing Dealing With Vandalism: Vandalism GoBots Sister Wiki: Discussion on the place of GoBots in this wiki Wiki Technical Information: A Not So Brief Summary of the Horrible Things That McFly and Co. Have Done To Keep This Wiki From Melting Down

Disambig page visual menus

In the interests of making this wiki more friendly for people NOT well-versed in micro-continuity and canon pedantry...
I'm thinking that for the bigger disambig lists for major characters, your Optimusses and Bumblebees and whatnot, under the main text list we have a "gallery" of the various major iterations of those characters in their most publicly-recognizable form, with the images linking to the relevant pages. So it wouldn't have EVERY Optimus Prime, just say G1, RID, Armada, Animated, movie, Prime/RID (perhaps simple collages for characters who change bodies in sequel series). It'd help counter some of this (WFC) and whatnot since kids would, say, know Grimlock from RID 2015 more than some game from however many years ago.
The "not to be confused with"s can go under that. --M Sipher (talk) 13:52, 10 May 2015 (EDT)

Ooh, yes, that's a good idea. Jalaguy (talk) 14:17, 10 May 2015 (EDT)

Thirded.--Jimsorenson (talk) 14:19, 10 May 2015 (EDT)

Hell, I'd go so far as to put the image version on the TOP, considering the size of some of the disambig lists. --M Sipher (talk) 14:21, 10 May 2015 (EDT)

Gallery goes at the top, nitty-gritty goes at the bottom. --ItsWalky (talk) 14:37, 10 May 2015 (EDT)

Like how Marvel Database does it? Saix (talk) 15:10, 10 May 2015 (EDT)

I'd like to think we could come up with something better-looking than that particular bit of Wikia coding, but this seems like a great idea. - Chris McFeely (talk) 16:47, 10 May 2015 (EDT)

I took a simple whack at it with a Gallery setup. Nothing fancy, but I think it gets the point across. The final version would probably mix Prime and RID15 Optimus into a single image.
Also, Optimus's disambig page needs some major cleanup to become readable. Those sub-sections are an eyesore. --M Sipher (talk) 18:18, 10 May 2015 (EDT)

Already looking much more user friendly. Great idea, well executed. My one suggestion is that you'd probably be better off using a movie screen capture for the movie version. Something like this: [1]--Jimsorenson (talk) 19:07, 10 May 2015 (EDT)

Well yeah, I wanted to, but I was just using whatever was immediately on-hand for example purposes, and movie OP's page is bizarrely bereft of actual full-body CG renders that'd make decent main images. --M Sipher (talk) 19:12, 10 May 2015 (EDT)

I did a little edit as a suggested way of condensing the sub-sections. - Chris McFeely (talk) 19:29, 10 May 2015 (EDT)

I like this decision, but how do we decide which versions of the character make it to the top? For instance, would Shattered Glass Optimus Prime be considered noteworthy, since he has multiple toys and fictional appearances? Grum (talk) 19:33, 10 May 2015 (EDT)

Pretty much nothing Club-originated would qualify. I say this as someone who produced a lot of fiction for the Club, but I would not call any of that "major" in relation to the six up there now. If it's not major-mass-market, it shouldn't really go up there. --M Sipher (talk) 19:37, 10 May 2015 (EDT)

Yeah, I think it's a fairly easy division to make - just do it for the main headliner franchises. G1/BW/BM/RID/UT/Movies/Animated/Prime/RID 2015. For characters of Optimus-level scope, anyway. When it's a disambig page containing only versions of a character from... I dunno, Universe and Timelines, then, sure, whatever. - Chris McFeely (talk) 19:39, 10 May 2015 (EDT)

Well, once you're down that far in the list of importance, not sure we'd bother with a gallery. Though I'm sure there's SOME name that's used often enough to form a long list, but rarely/never in major media to maybe justify Gallery-ing... --M Sipher (talk) 19:49, 10 May 2015 (EDT)

So how many incarnations of a character do there need to be before they get a gallery? BT383 (talk) 06:28, 16 May 2015 (EDT)

I've done a fair few of these now and I think we're down to a few borderline cases - guys like Grindor (UT/ROTF), Hightower (RID/ROTF), maybe Leadfoot (G2/DOTM) or Overload (UT/ROTF) and Sideways (who may or may not be the same guy anyway). Otherwise, I'm pretty sure we've covered all the major players. --Emvee (talk) 09:11, 10 June 2015 (EDT)

Movie pages

I've been looking at the pages for the Movie characters that are in the film. and they are really all over the place in organization. Is there anyway we can organize at least the dudes in the film so it read coherently? I feel like McFeely had some sort of sandbox for it. Escargon (talk) 15:15, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

I think I did at one point. My thought was, if I recall, to essentially ditch the attempt at presenting the pages as a continuous narrative, and make complete , uninterrupted sections out of the Movies, the IDW comics and the Titan comics. - Chris McFeely (talk) 15:41, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

I certainly wouldn't be opposed to that. The 'chronological order' thing works well enough for Aligned pages where everything does more or less line up in order, but yeah, it's pretty much a lost cause for the film characters. Jalaguy (talk) 16:06, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

And shit, I think I was suggesting that before Dark of the Moon was even a thing! - Chris McFeely (talk) 16:08, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

Yeah, I found the article in question, and ROTF is still saying the to be added when it comes thing. Escargon (talk) 16:18, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

Here is that page. Wow, this was aaages ago. I don't even know where to start with a new one - I mean I think our movie sections are pretty grossly over-written as it is, like, no way does Optimus's role in the first movie take nine paragraphs to sum up. - Chris McFeely (talk) 17:37, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

Gave it a tweaking to just show the section headers - this might be easier than it seemed. I've removed "Prepare for Battle" cause that should probably go with the Ride itself on the games page, otherwise everything slots together fairly neatly. I really hate, for instance, that we don't currently subdivide the Titan section to separate the alt. timeline or letters page stuff. - Chris McFeely (talk) 17:49, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

Looks good to me. --M Sipher (talk) 17:57, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

Agreed. Even just the contents list alone is a billion times more readable than the live article. Jalaguy (talk) 18:12, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

This is a really good iudea. And man, seeing convos like this makes me feel better about where we're headed. I mean, this is a shit-ton of work we're heading into (I'm still mulling some of the disambig deals), but I think this is a good direction overall. --M Sipher (talk) 17:20, 12 May 2015 (EDT)

Splitting by species

Yeah, I'm rocking the boat this morning - here's another practise I think we need to stop, in the name of accessibility. I think there was merit early on when it was rare, and I think we'd agree it largely spun out of the absolute need to keep Masterforce versions of characters separate from their American counterparts, but the more times that, say, IDW turns a Nebulan into a Cybertronian, the more the distinction for characters like these becomes pointless. I'm inclinded to think along the same lines as we have to do when we discuss splitting a movieverse character - ROTF Lockdown and AOE Lockdown, for instance, are both iterations of the "factionless trophy-collecting hook-handed bounty hunter" Lockdown "archetype", so it would be dumb to split them. But by that token, say, Nebulan Tracer and IDW Tracer are both rooted in the same "he's Scoop's yellow gun" basis. Peacemaker and Headmasters Peaceman]are both "Pointblank's little gun dude". G1 Brisko and IDW Brisko are both "the guy who has Fangry's face on his back who hangs out with a guy who looks like Fangry". And when you get down to it, sources like the Ladybird Books and the Young Corgi books have been depicting Nebulans as robots since 1987. Let's talk about this. - Chris McFeely (talk) 05:52, 28 May 2015 (EDT)

I'm having trouble visualising what this involves, so to help organise it I'll add a list underneath of affected pages (please edit and update) --Emvee (talk) 07:45, 28 May 2015 (EDT)

I'll throw in - again - that I think we ought to have a sub-intro template, something that lets us write an intro paragraph for a guy like Fort Max at the top of his IDW or Headmasters cartoon section, calling it out visually that this is an important and somewhat different version of this character. -- Repowers (talk) 16:30, 28 May 2015 (EDT)

I'm for it. --M Sipher (talk) 00:41, 29 May 2015 (EDT)

I hadn't realised it was being split by species. There's a point to splitting up the main Masterforce characters and Nebulans we saw a lot of (like if IDW do a robot Galen) and honestly Serpentor (Wings Serpentor is pretty distinct from regular Serpentor), but most of them what's the point? Yeah, stop the splits. --Charles RB (talk) 17:49, 2 June 2015 (GMT)

Characters split by species

• Aimless (G1)/Aimless (Headmasters)
• Aquastar (Masterforce)/Aquastar (G1)
• Blowpipe (G1)/Blowpipe (Headmasters)
• Brisko (G1)/Brisko (IDW)
• Caliburst (G1)/Caliburst (Headmasters)
• Holepunch (G1)/Holepunch (IDW)
• Peacemaker/Peaceman (Headmasters)
• Pinpointer (G1)/Pointech
• Spoilsport/Spoil (Headmasters)
• Tracer (Nebulan)/Tracer (IDW)
• Zetca (Masterforce)/Zetca (G1)

Characters with multiple species on one page

• Centuriton (Stentarian and Mini-Con)
• Firebolt/"Professor Sparks"
• Lug (Nebulan and Cyberdroid)
• Serpentor
• Zigzag (Nebulan and Cyberdroid)
• Windshear (Stentarian, Mini-Con, and Micromaster)

Again, seconded. Plus this phenomenon will likely continue to worsen in the near future.--Jimsorenson (talk) 08:10, 28 May 2015 (EDT)

For whatever it's worth, IDW Zetca, Aquastar, Holepunch, Tracer, and Brisko (and maybe Wilder too) have never been human/Nebulan-sized beings, do not transform into weapons or heads, most likely will never transform into weapons or heads, and mostly do their own stuff apart from the IDW version of their -master partner. Isn't being a non-Cybertronian recruited to joining the (heroic or villainous) alien war a significant part of the character background of their archetype? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 10:58, 28 May 2015 (EDT)

We're not here to impose order where none exists, simply for order's sake. IDW Brisko is the IDW incarnation of Fangry's head-forming dude from G1, derived from the same toy and bio - that's pretty much beyond dispute. Separating them onto two pages... accomplishes what, exactly? Consistency? Which is good because... why? -- Repowers (talk) 14:56, 28 May 2015 (EDT)

Sure. --ItsWalky (talk) 11:04, 28 May 2015 (EDT)

I completely agree with Chris's contention. --M Sipher (talk) 15:29, 28 May 2015 (EDT)

What about Stratotronic Jet and Stratotronic? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 22:09, 31 May 2015 (EDT)

One's a thing, the other's a character. Why are you even posing this question? --M Sipher (talk) 22:25, 31 May 2015 (EDT)

Also on the topic of things that are unnecessarily separate: articles for the Predacons who were in Prime and their original Covenant of Primus counterparts. E.G. Predaking (Prime) and Predaking (COP). --abates (talk) 23:17, 28 May 2015 (EDT)

Eeeehhhhhn. I'm iffy on that, in that the Prime Preds are supposed to be clones in the same timestream. So like, derived from the originals, but NOT the originals. It strikes me as a different thing that "alternate universe incarnation". --M Sipher (talk) 12:43, 29 May 2015 (EDT)

Mmhn, yeah. I mean, I get that they're essentially identical, but they do "co-exist" with their own clones. I'm looking more at cases where okay, that dude's normally a nebulon but he's a robot but, but it doesn't matter because he's still this version's take on that same character. - Chris McFeely (talk) 12:49, 29 May 2015 (EDT)

I think it's clear that clones should get their own pages. e.g. Would we merge Dinobot (BW) and Dinobot II? Or Soundwave (G1), Soundwave (G2), and Soundwave (MW)? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 16:53, 29 May 2015 (EDT)

Just to play devil's advocate, those characters coexist with their clonal progenitor, the Predacons don't. I think abates is meaning that the Predacons could be seen as more reincarnation than duplication. --Khajidha (talk) 00:01, 1 June 2015 (EDT)

Bringing this up again. We doing this, now that we're less distracted by "Ask whoever"? --M Sipher (talk) 18:34, 30 June 2015 (EDT)

I vote for merging. Riptide (talk) 19:04, 30 June 2015 (EDT)

On this topic of clones vs. regeneration, if the decision does end up towards merging, might I suggest something along the lines of the entry for "The Patsy" for the Ejector page, and other similar entries? The original for a lot of these characters are basically just footnotes, important only because of their relationship to a more prominent character. Having a section at the bottom of the page for the "Original (Predacon name)" under "Related characters" might be a nice way to have an entry for the originals that distinct, but integrated into the clones' pages. Ascendron (talk) 16:31, 12 July 2015 (EDT)

A different kind of cleanup

In the same vein of "making this more accessible"... a skim of Tumblr posts about the wiki has turned up quite a lot of... well, let's politely call it "risque" humor. And I'm thinking we should probably trim that down. Tentacle-hentai jokes, dick jokes, etc. We've cut back in other areas that could cause hurt/offense, so maybe let's keep moving that way? We don't need to remove humor, but do we really need sex jokes? --M Sipher (talk) 22:46, 3 June 2015 (EDT)

Yeah, as I go through articles, I try to remove or replace captions with a certain color, but I'm only one dude, and there are 20,000 pages on this thing. --ItsWalky (talk) 13:04, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Just for reference, is there an upper limit on how risqué things should be? Obviously stuff like racial slurs and homophobia are right out, but what about captions like this? Grum (talk) 13:14, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

That's borderline, in that it's a joke that is not immediately, bluntly "ha ha penis". But removing it would not be a bad move.

As I think of it, we MIGHT want to have a template or something for... well, bluntly, to put at the top of some of some articles that warn about material that's really not suited for kids. It's be mostly Kiss Players articles that fall under this, granted, but still. It just feels like a bit of due diligence. --M Sipher (talk) 15:11, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

I do think it's important to not, like, declare sexuality of any kind as terrible and offlimits, but to keep the sketchier references off. Remove stuff that objectifies rather than stuff that's just in the general neighborhood of "this is related to how new biological organisms are made." --ItsWalky (talk) 15:48, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Oh, sure. I wasn't wanting to scrub the wiki "clean". I mean, Animated had a sex joke in its opening miniseries. But I don't think a warning on top of the KP stuff would be out of order, because... yyyyyyeah. --M Sipher (talk) 16:00, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

GoBots articles

Is there some reason why we're not having full coverage of the GoBots characters' exploits in GoBots fiction? It seems kind of silly to acknowledge their existence in Transformers media and then... not really provide relevant information. It's not really like there's any cohesive GoBots site with all information in one spot, you know? Saix (talk) 03:43, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

There is such a site, and its existence has been cited in the past here as one of multiple valid reasons why adding GoBots to this wiki has never gotten off the ground. http://counter-x.net/gobots/ --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 08:34, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

As good as that site is, it doesn't go into nearly as much detail about its topic as we do about ours. Also, it is maintained by a much more limited set of editors (maybe even just one?). Our larger editor base could bring more eyes and viewpoints to the material. --Khajidha (talk) 09:07, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

It's been discussed in the past with some trepidation, and the idea of a "sister wiki" for GoBots content was floated, but nobody really seemed into the idea and we haven't talked about it since. At this point, though, with more and more GoBots stuff working its way into TF fiction, along with the complete release of the GoBots cartoon on DVD, perhaps it's time to talk about giving the GoBots show and characters their full and proper due on TFWiki again. - Chris McFeely (talk) 05:29, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

I don't actually know all that much about the GoBots *coughthatswhyweneedinformativearticlescough*, but I'd be more than willing to help with article maintenance and setup if we ever decide to go ahead with it. Saix (talk) 05:46, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

As I've said before, when the GoBots wiki was proposed I was told that there were technical issues to be taken care of before it could be opened for editing and that the community would be told when it was ready. The next I heard about it was that it was being shut down as not having attracted interested editors. I am still fully supportive of either option, a sister wiki or integration. --Khajidha (talk) 07:12, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

A sister wiki seems like an weird excuse to overcomplicate things. Is there really any reason to not have all the information in one spot? Saix (talk) 07:26, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

At the risk of overcomplicating things further, since we'd be including Go-Bots because the characters were retroactively made into alternate universe Cybertronians/Transformers, would we also provide complete coverage of Robotix since it was retroactively altered the same way? --DrSpengler (talk) 07:59, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

I'd say no, because we wouldn't be covering GoBots specifically because they were retconned to be alt-universe TFs, we'd be covering them because involvement of their universe and characters has become a recurring thing, and the two franchise have always been paired in some capacity or another. Maybe when Robotix actually does something that matters and isn't just a winky in-joke; otherwise covering them would amount to covering something like Jem or Inhumanoids in full. - Chris McFeely (talk) 08:04, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Oh god please no to Robotix.--Jimsorenson (talk) 09:00, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

For the sake of argument: TFWiki don't have complete coverage of G.I. Joe, despite it's many interactions with Transformers. TFWiki has relevant articles, but not complete coverage. Why do so for GoBots? --Crockalley (talk) 08:10, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Can you REALLY not see a difference between G.I.Joe, Jem, Inhumanoids, etc and GoBots and Robotix? Really? GoBots and Robotix have both been said to be counterparts of the Transformers. Joe, Jem, and the Inhumanoids haven't. Covering GoBots and Robotix fiction IS covering TF fiction, covering Joe, Jem, and Inhumanoids fiction is not. --Khajidha (talk) 08:15, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

For the love of God, NO. We already feature all the GoBots characters and stories that were published under the TF brand label, just like the relevant Avengers and G.I.Joes. We don't pull in all of the everythings that all of their colleagues ever did in unrelated, non-Transformers stories. It will never belong here. Adding 80 characters and 100 hours of programming? No. As someone said in one of the prior iterations of this, if Vector Prime said that Pandora was a transdimensional embodiment of Cybertron and Eywa was its Vector Sigma portal, we wouldn't fill this wiki with every character and animal from Avatar. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 08:26, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Avatar isn't a property owned by Hasbro nor something that's been constantly involved in the Transformers multiverse, so I'm not seeing the comparison. It also has its own dedicated fanbase and resources, which isn't really something you can say for GoBots; its presence in real life almost wholly overlaps Transformers. (It'd be around 26 hours, to be accurate.) Saix (talk) 08:46, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

And, ultimately, why does it matter that much if we make one exception for this? It's not going to result in a full-blown biography of Spider-Man from Earth-616 (which exists elsewhere in plenty of places) or full coverage on G.I. Joe (which has its own fanbase that can make a resource if they want to). We're talking about a small subset of articles that you aren't required to work on. Saix (talk) 08:54, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Why wouldn't it result in a full bio of Spiderman? The distinction between the two offtopic properties is arbitrary and insignificant. If you want to talk about ownership, Hasbro owns Visionaries and we know they canonically exist in the Animated galaxy. Shall we bring in articles on Leoric and Heskidorr and the Pig Imp? If you break down the rule of "TF branded material only," then the only thing keeping all the Inhumanoids out is personal preference and "oh, come on!"-ing. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 09:20, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Logic. Any potential revival of Visionaries is not going to be done under the Transformers brand. Spider-Man does not exist under the Transformers brand, G.I. Joe does not exist under the Transformers brand. GoBots now, for all intents and purposes, does. A full revival being hilariously unlikely, anything Hasbro does with the IP in the future - as well as everything it is currently actually allowing licensees to regularly do with the IP in a capacity beyond "referential nudge-nudge wink wink jokes" - is under the Transformers brand. - Chris McFeely (talk) 09:31, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

On the contrary - the only published Visionaries story material in 29 years was under the TF brand. It is far more likely that like Inhumanoids, the Visionaries will continue only as a hanger-on of Tramsformers fiction Easter eggs forever. And all of the GoBots material that was published under the TF brand, and is in any way related to real TF characters and stories, is already here. Which is all that belongs here. Hasbro owned Battle Beasts from the start and we currently include all the actual TF branded appearances of Battle Beasts / Beastformers. But we give only the most sparse coverage to the American comic book and American Battle Beast characters because it wasn't a real, branded, linked TF story the way the Japanese material was. We have to stick with standards and not just what people might personally find fun. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 10:40, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

That's why I stipulated a capacity beyond referential in-jokes for fans, which is all the Inhumanoids or Visionaries references amount to. I think where the disagreement lies is in whether or not we think of GoBots as another franchise that is being "referenced" or having "crossovers" with Tranformers - that's what Visionaries is, but my stance is that it is no longer the case with GoBots, but that GoBots is now part of the Transformers franchise and warrants broader treatment than Spider-Man-style articles where we pretend we don't know who Leader-1 is. - Chris McFeely (talk) 10:52, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Also, slippery slope arguments are silly, unless the people involved are idiots with no judgement capacity, computers, or state legislatures. You're concerned about things that no one is advocating or interested in. Regardless, I think everyone gets that you're against the idea.--Jimsorenson (talk) 11:00, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

That's not a slippery slope argument. That's pointing out that putting in Go-Bots would be inconsistent with how we treat other non-Transformers franchises. And, frankly, I think Jim Sorenson should probably recuse himself from this discussion since he's the guy trying to use official means to marry TF and Go-Bots with rubber bands, Elmer's glue, and footnotes. It feels a little disingenuous. --ItsWalky (talk) 12:23, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Fair point. I'll bow out. (Though I'm far from the first or only person to play in this sandbox. In fact, expect more from others in the very near future.)--Jimsorenson (talk) 12:55, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

IF we decided to do this, I think we'd want strict guidelines from the start about what is and is not in scope. Since the toys were mostly licensed from Bandai, a Hasbro competitor, I would say they should NOT be included. Also, ancillary media has been pretty much ignored by TF fiction.

My gut says that The Challenge of the GoBots cartoon (65 episodes, 1 movie) is about the extent of what we'd want to include. No coloring books, no Machine Robo, none of that. It's the easiest bit to do, the most influential, and the bit that Hasbro mostly has claim to.--Jimsorenson (talk) 09:16, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Hasbro has a claim to the cartoon? Then how come Time Warner sells it, no probs, without any Hasbro logos anywhere? --ItsWalky (talk) 12:08, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

The text on the back of the original mini-series DVD refers to "Hasbro's GoBots". - Chris McFeely (talk) 12:20, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

And the newer ones? --ItsWalky (talk) 12:24, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

They don't mention it, no, but I'm just pointing out that Warner's put it on there. Hasbro don't own the cartoon, we know that. I think we can all at least agree GoBots is a weird case, where Hasbro own the "idea" of the property and the characters and story and such but none of the actual physical assets. It's my contention that those "ideas" are now a part of the Transformers brand, and not guest-stars from another franchise. - Chris McFeely (talk) 12:27, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

As far as I can discern, they own the name, what other trademarks they've maintained, and that's about it. They don't own the character likenesses and they certainly don't own the toys, and it's confirmed they don't own the cartoon, either. We're not going to catalog a non-Transformers cartoon Hasbro doesn't own on this wiki, no matter what Vector Prime says. If you want to cover the "idea" of what they own, that can be accomplished by adding to the already-existing "Gobots" article. Hasbro owning part of a sliver of an idea of GoBots doesn't mean we need a "Scratch" or "Sparky" article. --ItsWalky (talk) 12:35, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Agreed. - Chris McFeely (talk) 09:31, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

I'd still like to see all the other stuff done up, but am willing to leave that for another day if it helps get this moving along. --Khajidha (talk) 09:43, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Same. Saix (talk) 09:50, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

This has been asked about 6 times in the recent past, including after the Gobotron incorporation, and it loses every single time. I think it's insppropriate to seriously discuss going ahead with it after about 2 hours of talk. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 10:01, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

I'm not sure what you're defining as the "recent past", but the last time I can find was in 2010. We're obviously going to wait for more input before we start pumping out articles. Saix (talk) 10:17, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Here's 2011: http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Talk:Cy-Kill_(GoBots)

Here's 2012: http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Transformers_Wiki_talk:Community_Portal/GoBots --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 10:51, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

I am with Thy. This has been argued to death a billion times over, and nothing has changed. We're not about to start cataloguing stuff that isn't Transformers media on our Transformers wiki. That's the opposite of what this wiki is about, and no amount of Vector Prime answers will make some Hanna-Barbara series into a Transformers one. Folks who want to catalog Go-Bots should make their own wiki, and if they can't drum up the interest to do so, and have to piggy-back on ours in order to get it done, maybe that should tell ya something. --ItsWalky (talk) 12:13, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Full agreement with Thy and Walky. And I'd like to point out that I'm one of the bastards who created the lion's share of TF-branded GoBots material. --M Sipher (talk) 15:02, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

If we can't document that time Cy-Kill dressed up as George Washington, what's the point of cataloging any of it at all? --Monzo (talk) 10:27, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Well, you just made my day.--Jimsorenson (talk) 10:44, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

GoBots 2015

Hey guess what - people are using AVP to try to settle this internet score too. What a shock, I know, right? Multiple wiki editors said the scores of new one-sentence-one-source GoBot articles should all be made into a single list, read commentary here: http://www.allspark.com/forums/topic/101932-tfwikinet-thread-30/page-96

Before very many more one-sentence-one-source articles get installed, I think we should at least have some discussion here. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 13:38, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

I say make an exception and do a full coverage on Gobots.--Primestar3 (talk) 13:48, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Completely sold on combo pages by Tindalos: we already do include Related Characters on pages like Susan Hoffman, Collins (Movie). We could easily do a Guardians#Minor Guardians and Renegades#Minor Renegades for people who haven't got enough to them. (Like, Cop-Tur and Zero gets a lot said about them but Fly Trap does not) Groups like Puzzler could be all stuffed under the Puzzler page. (The Axiom Nexus Renegades, I'd cheat and say keep them on their own pages since these are meant to be Transformers in-universe.) --Charles RB (talk) 18:49, 18 October 2015 (GMT)

Most of the Gobots described by RR are getting more than one note name mentions. History, alt-modes, personality, the works. I wouldn't just conglomerate them all together. Escargon (talk) 13:59, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

However, I wouldn't be opposed to consolidating articles like Puzzler, since he's practically a drone, and the Dread Launchers and Secret Riders, since all of them share history. Escargon (talk) 14:07, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

I think making a list page is better than having numerous pages with short texts.--Primestar3 (talk) 14:15, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

If we don't do them all, combining Puzzler, Launchers,and Riders is a good idea anyway.Charles RB (talk) 19:18, 18 October 2015 (GMT)

Proof-of-concept page for if we want to list 'em up: put it under fiction (so that's easier to find), put the main Gobotron and the in-universe TFs up top, and stick the details of the minors under that. tfwiki.net/mediawiki/index.php?title=Renegade&oldid=1016174 Charles RB (talk) 19:20, 18 October 2015 (GMT)

I've been doing most of the Renegade write-ups and most of them seem to be more than just name drops. Generally we get a name, a personality, an alt mode, and often an adventure. That's easily enough for an article. For the exceptions, like Puzzler, a single overarching page isn't a bad idea, but maybe not a necessary idea. The information on the Guardians is much more sparse, and having big lists for most of them could probably work. I haven't been writing them up due to how little there is on most of them.

I am not sure where the idea comes from that having eighty small articles is a bad thing, though. The Wiki has always erred on the side of inclusiveness, which leads to pages like Spike's booty call and Moe and DeForest High, things which are also one or two line articles about people and concepts that only appear in one source. I'm not sure why this is any different. If anything, there's way more interest in the GoBot material, as evidenced by how many people are asking questions about the Renegades and how many likes and shares those pages are getting.

I'm also seeing, both in this thread and in the thread linked to, lots of interest in wikiing up the entire "Challenge of the Gobots" cartoon. McFeely, Khajidha, Saix, Sorenson, originally, and now Primestar and Gearshift all seem to be in favor. On the other side, Walky, M Sipher, Thylacine. It seems odd to me that, with the momentum apparently leaning 2:1 towards documenting all of "Challenge of the Gobots", we're talking about curtailing the bits and bobs that are definitely for sure Transformers canon. --Giggidy (talk) 15:49, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Logistical question: Do enough people have the GoBots DVD (or, cough, other sources) to write them up? (We are still lagging in fleshed out UT character pages, after all, and I think more people own those shows). -- Charles RB (talk) 19:20, 18 October 2015 (GMT)

Well, episodes are on the internet.--Primestar3 (talk) 16:01, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Episodes aren't licensed by Hasbro, so we cannot write them up and place them here. Ever.

Giggidy: this is different from the silly jokes you refer to because at least those jokes are contained within licensed Transformers material. The GoBots AS PEOPLE REMEMBER THEM - the cartoons, characters, and toys - were never released under a Hasbro license, except for a tiny minority of exceptions in text stories. Even IF we settled for allowing independent articles for everything AVP said, it could never, ever contain any material more than that, because Hasbro didn't publish it and doesn't own it.

All in all I am extremely disappointed by the... I guess, poor sportsmanship, pettiness, and entitlement... of the pro-inclusion side. This has been rehashed and reargued and relitigated year after year after year after year with very clear reasons why they do not belong, and for some reason people think none of that matters because GoBots were just cool! Well, Samhain and the Bogey Man from the DIC Ghostbusters cartoon were just cool and we've got the Ghostbusters in here as an in-joke, but we don't freaking add in Samhain the demon from a DIC cartoon through overeager bootstrapping. We also don't add in the very awesome and well-loved Dark Phoenix by extrapolation just because the Allspark Almanac mentioned an M'kraan Crystal.

The MOST that could EVER be included about any of these GoBots is the stuff AVP writes, because at least that IS put out by Hasbro. I and quite a few others think that even that much material isn't much at all and since it's coming in a rapidfire slew for a lot of characters I think a list format collection is worth discussing. If a lot of people really really really disagree, then I could rationally grasp the argument that through the loophole that has been cheated into existence they have grounds on which to disagree and the articles containing the AVP material could hypothetically each stand on their own. But that's ALL that can go there. Only AVP. No cartoon, nothing else. And even that should not be taken for granted by the pro-inclusion side. They really have to sell their case, because from here it's STILL way too heavily predicated upon "oh-come-ON!"-ism. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 16:18, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

This isn't about winning arguments from years ago-most of us weren't even signed up when the AAII came out and everybody got into a whole mess over that. Many of us honestly think that documenting the series is something that we should do and within the jurisdiction. You can disagree with putting it up on the wiki, but don't just throw about terms like "pettiness" and "entitlement" cause you don't like the opposing sides argument or the fiction causing it in the first place. Escargon (talk) 16:46, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

I would suggest Hasbro's ownership or non-ownership is irrelevant. We document many things not owned by Hasbro but merely associated with them, including the entire Japanese franchise (owned by TakaraTomy) and the entire film franchise (owned and copyrighted by Paramount, with only the Transformers elements used under license from Hasbro). --Giggidy (talk) 16:50, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Ownership by TakTom is just as legitimate as ownership by Hasbro, and licensing is just as legitimate as ownership. Things that are neither owned nor licensed by a company that actually produces real Transformers, such as a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, are not legitimate for inclusion. Otherwise we'll be throwing in fanfic and third-party toys and Family Guy episodes with TF "appearances." --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 17:04, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

There is a possible justification for their inclusion that would still bar those other things. We could decide that having had the GoBots declared to actually be TFs in a multiversal sense means that any material that was officially produced about them is now open for inclusion (the fact that it was officially produced under the auspices of Tonka would be a mere detail). This would not open the floodgates for fanfic, 3rd party materials or Family Guy. --Khajidha (talk) 17:47, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

That concept has been decided-against, here, many times. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 18:19, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Saying that we've voted against something in the past is not a strong argument for why we should vote against it now. Things change, the population of editors change, our understanding of the material changes. Gay marriage was illegal, now it's legal. I'm not saying you're stomping on my civil liberties, but you really need a more compelling argument than "we've said no before." Besides, you're the one who jumpstarted this conversation.

My point with Paramount was that there are elements that we document fully that aren't owned by Hasbro. They're owned by another corporation, and are used adjacent to Hasbro material. Hasbro doesn't own, say, Seymour Simmons. Paramount does. But we document him because he's a Transformers character. Likewise, Hasbro doesn't own some elements of Challenge of the Gobots, Hanna-Barbara does. But Kenner did license certain elements to Hanna-Barbara to make the GoBots cartoon, and Kenner is now Hasbro. Effectively it's the same situation legally. We do the same thing with other crossovers, like DreamMix TV World Fighters or the Avengers book.

And even if it wasn't, our decisions about what's in scope and what isn't is just that, our decision. It's reached by consensus, after reasoned debate. If the consensus is that Gobots is close enough, passes the squint test, we certainly could choose to include it. You're acting as if your statments are akin to "it's obvious that water is wet", a fact, when in fact they're closer to "marriage has always been defined as being between a man and a woman," a social convention. --Giggidy (talk) 18:35, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

I just saw this in the morass of text, and fuck you for equating "not including GoBots cartoon" with "ban gay marriage". REALLY tempted to drop a ban on you right now for that little act of vileness. Holy fucking shit. --M Sipher (talk) 18:53, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

I am not purporting to cite stone tablets from a thousand years ago - I am referring back to the conversation FOUR MONTHS AGO directly above this one. Your reference to DreamMix proves my point perfectly: we include things that had an official Transformers creator stamp at time of publication, like Simon Belmondo, and NOT ancillary same-universe stuff that DID NOT, like Sypha Belnades. Ditto for Avenger characters that never had the stamp like the Brothers Grimm or whatever. We don't get to enjoy our way past the clear concept of who really owned and licensed what and when. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 18:55, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

So we've got the two positions:

a) GoBots the cartoon is not Hasbro licensed or involved in any way; we should only properly cover GB stuff in Hasbro-approved stuff like Fun Publications, AVP, comic homages etc

b) Approved stuff has now made so many GoBots nods and explicit references to the show (all the way back to 2007 and almost 2004) that this is no longer a big jump but a natural thing to do.

without much budging. We could put it up to an editor vote? --Charles RB (talk) 18:49, 18 October 2015 (GMT)

It might be a bit off topic, but are you sure about Simmons? Hasbro put out a Human Alliance toy with Agent Simmons. I don't have the box and didn't read all the fine print, but the front of the box has "Agent Simmons™" next to a Hasbro logo. One movieverse character that might be wholly affiliated with paramount and not Hasbro might be Bendy-Bus Prime. - Gimmick (talk) 19:00, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

We include stuff that includes Transformers even without an official Transformers stamp, like Unfoldings!. And the conversation four months ago looks like it was 4 in favor, 3 against, so it's not really a great argument for you. --Giggidy (talk) 19:10, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

How in the world can you imagine an issue of the GIJoe comic starring Transformers to NOT BE official licensed product? --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 19:24, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

I didn't say that it wasn't licensed. I said it didn't have a Transformers stamp. --Giggidy (talk) 19:39, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Also by my count of the last conversation it was 2 in favor, 4 against, 1 seemingly not strongly decided, and 1 recusal due to professional conflict of interest. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 19:50, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

My count: McFeely, Khajidha, Saix, Sorenson, for, Walky, M Sipher, Thylacine against. Sorenson's position was clear. And M Sipher also worked professional on GoBots, so if we're discounting Sorenson, we should probably discount Sipher as well. --Giggidy (talk) 20:22, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Unfoldings is Hasbro-stamped though, and we don't describe much of the Joe plot.

Either way, if it was that close a call last time, should we just aye or nay it?--Charles RB (talk) 00:14, 19 October 2015 (GMT)

It's been like four hours. This is a big decision and should have at least 2-3 days debate. Honestly, I haven't even decided how I feel, I just think Thy's arguments are pretty weak. That doesn't mean there aren't some strong ones. Let's not go calling for votes just yet. --Giggidy (talk) 19:18, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Help:Official info: the first sentence under "What constitutes official information?" seems relevant here. There is no way anything included in the movies is anything less than relevant to this wiki. --abates (talk) 19:26, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

"Simply put, anything coming either directly or indirectly from Hasbro and/or TakaraTomy, or from other official parties such as (currently) IDW Publishing, Paramount Pictures, Fun Publications or other companies officially involved with the Transformers brand."

Right. And since Kenner is wholly owned by Hasbro, then despite being owned by Hanna-Barbara, GoBots was (retroactively) coming directly from Hasbro as much as the movies are. Then the only question becomes is GoBots a Transformers subline. Hasbro and FunPub seem to feel that it is, and have been using the name andconcepts for decades.--Giggidy (talk) 19:39, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

The key - and wrong - word being "retroactively." Takara's Diaclones became Transformers, and there are occasional Diaclone references we catalog. But we do not catalog 1970s-80s pre-Transformer content as anything beyond curiosities and footnotes; they don't get their box-back name-dropped characters and events covered here; in fact the "Cymond" content we have is new, not vintage. The same goes for Macross and Beetras and Brave as well. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 19:57, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Also, I feel that I should point out that some members of the Wiki are at TFCon at the moment and unable to take part in this discussion. --abates (talk) 20:05, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Another excellent reason not to rush into any hasty votes.--Giggidy (talk) 20:16, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Well I'm back and guess what? Fuck individual articles. Stuff them all into a single "Renegade" article. The idea of a ton of two-sentence articles from a singular source that is blatantly doing this to ramrod shit we have repeatedly and recently said "no" to remains goddamn stupid and counter-productive. There's better arguments for documenting everything G.I. Joe than GoBots, and we're not fucking doing that. MAKE A SEPARATE GOBOTS WIKI. --M Sipher (talk) 20:29, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Except since the whole thing's started, it's moved on from name drops to actually expanding the histories of the characters, which is why many are turning back to the idea of individual Gobot articles. There's plenty of G.I. Joes and Cobra members who do nothing of note in the series they appear in with the TFs, but the only consolidated one is the Dreadnoks since they share most of their appearances together, which could work for Puzzler and others like that. Escargon (talk) 20:54, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Making the separate Go-Bots articles doesn't take away anything from the rest of the wiki. And if they're short articles, well, they are what they are. We have recorded the entirety of Transformers fiction covering their subject on one page, and that fiction is very sparse, but it is accurate, and faithful to the wiki's mission of documenting information. Beyond that though, I'd say I'd vote against merging in information about non-Hasbro/Takara/whatevs owned properties into the articles, such as the Go-Bots cartoon. A sister wiki seems like it would be the best idea, though I can't volunteer my services to completing it as of right now, as I'm pretty thoroughly engaged on other projects on THIS wiki. --Ascendron (talk) 21:13, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Call for Vote

It's been a week since this last came up and I know there are people still pissed that GoBots stuff is added at all, so can we pull the pin and decide? We all know the arguments by now. Whether we should reduce most of the existing GoBot pages or leave them (this seems to be all they're getting now Renegade Rhetoric's ended) is an important but I think separate issue to: include GoBots fiction in its entirety on this wiki or do not include anything but what comes out under Hasbro material.
At this point I've swung round to being against adding Challenge material; it should have its own wiki, which could be created tomorrow if people wanted. --Charles RB (talk) 01:19, 26 October 2015 (GMT)

I vote for leaving the Go-Bot articles as we have them now. They're hardly "two-sentence articles" for the most part, and whether we personally like something or not hardly has bearing on its inclusion in the wiki. Lots of people hate The Beast Within, but its here. And AVP has more people involved in its production, and more research put through it than that comic did. When there's going to be a Go-Bot's wiki, we'll link it in the articles like we do to other outside wikis. --Ascendron (talk) 21:36, 25 October 2015 (EDT)

I'm in favour of keeping the existing AVP, FunPub stuff too. Just draw the line there and all. --Charles RB (talk) 01:40, 26 October 2015 (GMT)

By the way, thanks to all the editors who have been working hard to keep all the Guardians and Renegades articles updated! It's a big help, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who appreciates it greatly. --Ascendron (talk) 21:44, 25 October 2015 (EDT)

I've been thinking on this and, despite the relatively weak arguments against including Challenge material, something about including it feels off to me. I think intellectually the case for inclusion is very strong, but I think emotionally it'd probably feel better somewhere else. I'd agree with Charles about voting on against full-on-wikifying Challenge. I've also been one of several people writing-up the GoBots articles and I'd strenuously disagree with deleting them. There is plenty of information on even the scantiest of them, including at the minimum names, factions, actions taken. The wiki is replete with articles for less. In the case of virtually every Renegade, we get at least two adventures, personality, and alt modes. Some Guardians get similar treatment. A few characters have visuals. It'd be silly to torch them.

As I said, I've been thinking on this and I think there may be a compromise solution between the two extremes, one of a big list due to a relative paucity of material, the other of wikifying everything from Challenge. I propose we only wiki up what's actually been said about the characters in a Transformers medium... but, to give the articles a little more oomph, we add in a main picture from Challenge if (and only if) there is no official Transformers image available. We've in the past shown a willingness to use these images in the notes section, so we'd only be bumping them up to the top. The copyright shouldn't be an issue, Challenge of the Gobots sports a Tonka copyright, and Tonka is wholly owned by Hasbro. This way we're still limiting to the "facts" of Transformers, but the articles will look and feel a little more robust. Only one image per character, and then only if they haven't gotten an official illustration. Thoughts?--Giggidy (talk) 21:45, 25 October 2015 (EDT)

It is unacceptable to catalog "Challenge" here. It is not and never has been owned by a Transformers license-holder, and I can't fathom how this could be seen as a weak argument. Even if AVP made every GoBot article 20 pages long, the cartoon never had the stamp and so any form of systematic involvement should be out. If that means a whole slew of articles with no main images, then that is the price for creating so many individual articles instead of a list. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 21:55, 25 October 2015 (EDT)

http://machinerobo.wikia.com/wiki/Gobots

Have fun. --Monzo (talk) 21:57, 25 October 2015 (EDT)

I feel like everyone's forgetting that even before AVP came into play, we had images from COTG on the wiki-Cy-Kill, the E-Hobby pack, Doctor Braxis, all in the notes section. The ones that didn't, I think nobody just felt like adding them. Fracture had Crasher's image in her notes section, and Deadlift had Spoons. So, yes, as long as they're in the notes section, with the images having all the copyright information. they'll probably be fine.

As for the wiki, I feel like a great many of us would rather have a sister site than some ad-filled mess of a page. My computer can't even handle going on it for a full minute without making me restart it. Escargon (talk) 22:02, 25 October 2015 (EDT)

What Thy said. This is not fucking up for debate. All the AVP end-run wank isn't going to change the FACT that large swaths of the GoBots IP are NOT owned by Hasbro, including the cartoon and toys said cartoon was derived from, the latter being owned by a direct competitor to both TF-owning companies. Frankly, I'm not even sure what, if anything, Hasbro DOES own from that IP, given they haven't used an overtly-GoBots Trademark in what, a decade? At best they MIGHT still own the name "GoBots", and I mean "own" in the sense that "nobody's bothered to challenge it so far". --M Sipher (talk) 22:15, 25 October 2015 (EDT)

My two cents is that despite my personal wish for all GoBots information to go on tfwiki, I say that as long as this wiki's rules are based on Transformers information (Hasbro, Takara, etc.-only), then the non-Hasbro owned CotG cartoon and such doesn't go on this wiki. In addition for convenience of navigation for GoBots fans, a sister wiki for GoBots would help for finding strictly GoBots information. Also, if we were to put CotG on the wiki, then on principle would we have to add in Robotix and all the Cymond Cluster franchises (Brave, Zoids, etc) because they're in the Transformers multiverse?

With regards to GoBots material in Transformers works ("Withered Hope", Renegade Rhetoric, the hopefully upcoming "Spatiotemporal Challenges", etc.), I say that it goes on the wiki because it was distributed through a Transformers medium. And gets individual articles as does G.I. Joe or anything like that. And given the influence of GoBots on Transformers, I agree that we make the exception to use limited CotG screencaps as the main pictures for GoBots characters on the wiki since we've been doing that for years in notes sections. S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 01:42, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

I vote against turning an EXCEPTION from like 4 pages into THE RULE on a hundred. "Challenge" screencaps should not be used as main pics on every single GoBot page. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 11:21, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

Reiterating this point: since the individual articles already exist it's probably just easier to leave them. However, I strongly suggest a total block on any further use of any unlicensed GoBots media appearances, of any kind. No more "Challenge," no more coloring books, not even as Notes, let alone as main pics. If folks want to leave up the small handful of longstanding examples we've got, eh. But since there a very real distinction between GoBots IP that is allowed / available and that which is not, we should draw a firm line, stick with it, and prevent any further inclusion of material that doesn't pass the usual rules of ownership / licensing. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 19:03, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

Oh, yes, nothing past the requirements should be included. I do agree with that. And I doubt we'll have any more Gobots related stuff for AVP. Escargon (talk) 19:08, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

Nays are having it so far.
Giggidy's suggestion of putting screencaps in Notes for some pages seems like workable, unless there's acopyright issue o people will consider it thin-edging the wedge --Charles RB (talk) 08:04, 26 October 2015 (GMT)

I might've been in favour of it before, but I too have swung around to thinking the Challenge cartoon doesn't fall within our remit, as a piece of media that was not ever, and is still not, owned or licensed by a Transformers rights-holder. I'm not averse to using screencaps from the cartoon for pictures, though. I'd also say we can definitely merge the components of Puzzler and Monsterous into singular articles under the combiner names. - Chris McFeely (talk) 06:49, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

Much of the story information that AVP revealed about the GoBots characters is straightforward recapitulation of episodes of CotG. Do we need/want to put a note to that effect on the character pages? If so, should it just be something general like "events are adapted from the CotG cartoon" or should we note the episode titles for the different events? Should/could we link to Counter-X's episode summaries? --Khajidha (talk) 11:19, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

Most of the AVP stuff seems to be original. Where it's not I've been mentioning the episodes. Linking to Counter-X is a good idea. --Giggidy (talk) 11:51, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

Not sure how much of a vote is actually happening here, but me and my seven years worth of contributions vote No to Challenge or further GoBots additions to the Wiki. I would remove or block any individual pages for GoBots characters due to AVP. I already think tongue-in-cheek reference pages like Harrison Ford and Indiana Jones are silly, and probably contributed to the all-inclusive mentality people are fighting against here.

Has/Tak only owns a small fragment of GoBots IP. This Wiki, like every Wiki and every fan website on the internet, exists at the sufferance of the property's owners. So while there are in-universe, multiversal collaborations between Marvel and DC continuity, you'll notice they still retain separate Wikis. It doesn't matter how closely related Transformers and GoBots become in the fictional realities -- real world reality has to govern this site.

Personally, I like the way the Marvel Wiki deals with Transformers -- each issue of the Marvel Comic contains an issue summary and cast list of the Marvel story, but the individual links on that page leave the Marvel wiki and go to the Transformers wiki (albeit the wrong TF Wiki, but they are on wikia). There is no Bluestreak (G1) page on the Marvel Database, even though he appeared in a Marvel Comic...just a link to a Transformers wiki that can actually cover the character in-depth as he deserves.

My recommendation is to reduce all of Renegades Rhetoric to a single story page, chronicling the many adventures and details provided by Has/Tak owned Axiom Nexus's Cy-Kill in one place, with no individual Guardian or Renegade pages on this wiki. If and when a functional Gobots Wiki is created, link the characters and concepts to THAT wiki where they can be covered in full. --Xaaron (talk) 11:50, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

That tactic gets my vote. The "minor joke article" was a bit of harmless fun back when the franchise was much smaller, and we do not need to kowtow to it when something comes along to abuse the wiki's "system" to do something of dubious legal standing. (Really ought to look at how the GB page addresses Hasbro's "ownership" and elaborate.) For the quadzillionth time, our "rules" need to be flexible and typically ARE, but some people really just can't handle the idea of not treating everything with the same ironclad law at all times, no matter what affect it has on the overall wiki. --M Sipher (talk) 14:41, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

I vote against it. Ultimately passing the buck off to another wiki isn't my idea of being informative. Where others would do that, we work hard to cover as much as what falls within our realm to cover. (Which, as it happens, does NOT include the COTG cartoon) That's what makes us stand out, in terms of both content and quality, above many other wikis out there. And I don't even think the franchise was ever even that small. That was just an illusion created by the fact that a lot of it had gone on undocumented for a long time. People need to stop making this out like its some kind of personal attack against us. What's it gonna harm that there are a few pages out there like the Harrison Ford page article? Are people gonna flip out and swear never to use our wiki again if they stumble across it? Are we going to be sneered at and ridiculed by some internet aristocracy because our "credibility" will be in doubt or something? I doubt its eating up much space in terms of bandwith or whatever. And no one will make any legal advance that has any ground here. Wikis wouldn't exist as a concept if that would regularly happen. Where is the harm? --Ascendron (talk) 14:49, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

That's a "nay" from me on cutting the small number of deliberately silly pages: we're long past the point that this wiki can say that's not on, unless we can say that it puts people off visiting. Casual fans and browsers seem to like them. -- Charles RB (talk) 20:22, 26 October 2015 (GMT)

I wasn't actually advocating removing the Harrison Ford-style joke articles. (Not a fan of taking a whole article to say "Somebody mentioned Broadside (SG) once!", either.) Just pointing out pages like that contributed to the mind set of including articles for every person, place, or thing mentioned in Transformers fiction. The difference, of course, is that no one is trying to write up full articles about the Indiana Jones franchise here instead of making an Indy wiki. --Xaaron (talk) 17:30, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

I wasn't either. I'd have thought the intention was clear: that the allowing of "harmless fun" articles of small references from when the franchise was VASTLY smaller was now being intentionally abused as an end-run around something that was decided against long ago for being not-HasTak-owned/licensed, one of the few pretty concrete rules we do have, and a fundamental one at that. Therefore I have no compunctions about making an exception to the general guideline (which we often have to do anyway) and compacting the information to a minimal number of pages... especially given the dubious nature of Hasbro's "ownership" of the GoBots IP (among other IPs mentioned in certain sources). --M Sipher (talk) 18:32, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

I actually expected more arguments for adding COTG material - check up the page and there have been more! Interest seems to have collapsed. -- Charles RB (talk) 20:34, 26 October 2015 (GMT)

Honestly, at this point, most-if not all-articles for the Gobots have been created. I really don't think it would hurt anyone to just leave them up. We can argue about all the IP ownership all we want, but as Ascendron already pointed out, we have other articles that don't exactly line up with Hasbro-owned stuff either-Hasbro certainly didn't shout at IDW for including Transformers in a Crossover that also involved a rival company (Playmates and Ninja Turtles). Escargon (talk) 18:39, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

...Are you actually contending that IDW didn't run the scope and parameters of the giant crossover by Hasbro at all before doing it? That the crossover wasn't extensively okayed by every rightsholder involved beforehand? Because there's no other way to interpret what you just said, and that's a staggeringly stupid premise. --M Sipher (talk) 18:49, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

Stay classy, M Sipher. --Giggidy (talk) 19:06, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

classy? is this the part of the thread where we equate gay marriage to gobots being on the transformers wiki --ItsWalky (talk) 20:17, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

I don't believe he was literally equating the two-he was using a recent example of rules changing from previous. Could he have used a better example? Yes, probably, but I understood what he was getting at, and I say this as someone who would be affected by said laws. Escargon (talk) 20:44, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

No, of course not. However, what I can say from experience: as our audience grew bigger, we did go back and make changes to the older gobots-involved answers. A couple model sheets here and there were deleted, because Warner Bros could have potentially sued Hasbro. I don't think we would've even gone through with Cy-Kill if it hadn't been without someone giving us the okay first-and even then, we made sure to delete an old avatar with Cy-Kill Hanna-Barbara face on it. Escargon (talk) 18:55, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

I'd be okay with a separate wiki that we could just link to when GoBots came up. I mean, the GoBots franchise has been basically dead for thirty years outside of a few winks from Transformers (with the exception of the Cy-Kill thing that started this whole debate), so I don't think it'd ever get too out of hand. Obviously time, money, and access to the show are factors in this solution, so it might not be 100% viable. Grum (talk) 19:57, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

Sorry if this is a really dumb question, but if the whole not-Hasbro IP thing matters for this wiki, then what stops sites like the Machine Robo wikia from using any GoBots material at all? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 20:55, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

The rules of this web site have no relevance to any other wikis, and the Machine Robo wikia does indeed include GoBots material. --abates (talk) 22:12, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

I was debating with myself whether or not to make this post, but it's going to bug me if I don't. Here goes. Obviously, a lot of us have become pretty emotionally involved in this topic. People say hurtful and stupid things when emotions run high. But if you're going to debate with someone, its important to challenge their arguments, and not attack the debater themselves... Despite whatever slip-ups may happen. I don't really know any of you. I can't really call any of you friends, because I'm not involved in any forums, and I don't attend conventions... But I respect many people's work ethic here, especially since we're all volunteering our time for the wiki. For the information itself, I get it that people are getting upset that information is being "snuck in" as a deliberate attempt to get it documented on the wiki. But if someone else got the job of getting to create fiction related to the Transformers brand, and used it as they saw fit, well I'm hardly in a position to debate that. They get to do stuff I never will, and as an adult, I have to concede to such defeats. Ultimately, it comes down to this: I believe that, for the most part, keeping the information on separate pages as they are currently is the best and most informative way to share it with whoever chooses to browse our wiki. (Some of the combiner components can be combined, as their importance relates wholly to the fact that they're components to a more important character). If anyone is able to prove me wrong by presenting even a crude mock-up that shows a better way of accomplishing that task, I will gladly change my stance on the issue. But we can do that by being civil and respectful. --Ascendron (talk) 04:40, 27 October 2015 (EDT)

Bottom line, GoBots shouldn't be treated any differently, and certainly not any better, than G.I. Joe on this Wiki. The Joes are a fully owned Hasbro franchise with decades of interactive history with the Transformers brand, BUT...all the images of Snake Eyes or Cobra Commander on the TF Wiki are from TF stuff, not from the Sunbow cartoon that was not connected to Transformers. No one is trying to explain Snake-Eyes' Vietnam origins in his Notes section, unlike the Doctor Braxis Notes section stuffed with COTG references. Because people understand that if you want to read about G.I. Joe, you go to a G.I. Joe website...which this isn't. --Xaaron (talk) 13:02, 27 October 2015 (EDT)

Vote Results

It's been more than 24 hours with no movement one way or the other, and even then, the stuff from yesterday seems like rehashing old arguments. Is now a fair time to tally? The voting is complicated because there are multiple proposals on the table.

• Proposal: Complete cataloging of "Challenge of the Gobots"
  • Supporters: Khajidha

• Proposal: Condensing all Ask Vector Prime GoBots pages down to just one or two master pages, probably Guardians and Renegades or Renegade Rhetoric
  • Supporters: Xaaron, M Sipher

• Proposal: Expand coverage of Ask Vector Prime GoBots to include "Challenge of the Gobots" screen captures
  • Supporters: Giggidy, Chris McFeely, Escargon, Charles RB, S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47, Khajidha, Ascendron (but only one, don't go overboard), tentative Riptide

• Proposal: Expand coverage of Ask Vector Prime GoBots to include link to Counter-X website
  • Supporters: Khajidha, Giggidy, Riptide, Saix

• Proposal: Treat Renegade Rhetoric like any other source, no condensation but also no expansion such as screen captures
  • Supporters: Thylacine 2000

I think I got everyone's position represented. Grum, I'm not really sure which camp you fell into. Regardless, it's clear that there's a solid majority in favor of documenting everything from Ask Vector Prime fully, with exceptions when it's sensible to do so such as with Puzzler and Monsterous. The good news is that this is exactly the current state of the wiki. No further action is required. Though it's ironic and a little sad that it took so much acrimony and name calling to get to the point of doing nothing different than we are now.

I'm less confident declaring victory on the screen capture question. M Sipher, Thylacine 2000, and Xaaron have all made their position against clear, as have the five supporters. I'd be curious to hear from Khajidha, Ascendron, and Grum on that issue before we go expanding them. I'm not sure if their silence indicates indifference, lack of awareness, or simply opposition to that proposal. --Giggidy (talk) 15:43, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

Didn't say anything until now since I didn't really have anything new to add, but I would vote for Counter-X and... maaaaaybe screencaps, but I'm indecisive on that one. --Riptide (talk) 15:53, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

I'm divided about the screencaps... My gut instinct says that it would be a good addition to the pages... But I almost would feel, I dunno, hypocritical giving my full support to their inclusion, seeing as I'm usually very steadfast in my stance of only including stuff that's official. I suppose I can justify it to myself, as their inclusion would do more good than harm as far as how informative they would make the articles... Let's just not go overboard with it? One pic for each guy, maybe less if a single picture does a good job of showcasing multiple characters? --Ascendron (talk) 16:31, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

Yes, that was my original proposal. One and only one, less where possible. Couldn't agree more. --Giggidy (talk) 16:42, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

Actually, I'm in favor of complete GoBots coverage, but have bowed to the overwhelming opposition on that score. TOTALLY opposed to the wholesale reduction approach. Favor screen caps (but expect that not to come about). Favor Counter-X links. I would prefer that the combiner members have their own pages, but the limited information available currently makes the redirection to the combined form page at least as viable a solution.--Khajidha (talk) 16:30, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

If we do include these screencaps, I would also like to request that we make it explicitly clear that they are not owned by Hasbro, and are not official Transformers images on the image's page itself. I was almost tempted to say in their captions on the characters' pages, but even I think that's a bit too extreme. So long as someone can learn quickly that the images do not come from an actual Transformers source if they make the effort of looking up the image's information. --Ascendron (talk) 16:44, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

For full coverage on GoBots as given in any Transformers media. Counter-X links seem like a no-brainer. Saix (talk) 17:46, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

I said on Oct.26, 19:03, that it would probably at this point be best to leave all the articles up as they are. So if the only issue actually up for decision now is whether to include COTG screenshots, then I firmly vote against that, and see it as sufficiently against our rules of documenting official HasTak material that I'm not entirely sure a vote is even appropriate. We agree on AVP - well AVP itself says COTG screenshots aren't HasTak property and couldn't be used, hence why they themselves took down the first Cy-Kill picture. I think people should be satisfied with what they got. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 18:49, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

Sorry, I missed that. --Giggidy (talk) 19:00, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

It's true that it's not in line with our policy entirely, but it would be nice for people reading the pages access to an image on the page, just so that they don't have to go hop over to google or whatever other website to see a visual representation of them. That's my main reasoning behind supporting this idea despite not being 100% behind it. --Ascendron (talk) 19:19, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

At first, I think we could include Gobots cartoon here but now I changed my thoughts. They are not owned by Hasbro. But I wonder if Hasbro buys the rights to the cartoon, can we include the cartoon on this wiki then? I'm just curious.--Primestar3 (talk) 07:12, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

I'd still say no because it's not Transformers. Like I said with G.I.Joe, we don't use images of Joes or Cobras from their 80's cartoon -- only from Transformers-related crossover media. --Xaaron (talk) 10:34, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

<<<<<Not mentioning the Joe franchise character that actually has a non-TF related main pic....>>>>> --Khajidha (talk) 13:58, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

Well we've got Transformers-branded visuals for reference for G.I. Joe characters. Less so for GoBots characters. Would it not be prudent to have visual points of reference for the GoBots who have appeared in Transformers fiction? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 14:25, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

It absolutely would. But we don't HAVE visual points of reference for those GoBots from Transformers fiction. We would have to take images from other fiction/mediums. And if we did it for GoBots, why not add some pictures for Jem, the Inhumanoids' Earth Corps, or the Darkling Lords? The aforementioned Harrison Ford and Indiana Jones pages don't have visual references either, for that matter. The Fantastic Four could probably use a better visual reference than that cropped cover border, so...

Do you see how this snowballs out of control? --Xaaron (talk) 16:08, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

My initial suggestion of just putting a picture in the note section is still out there, by the way. I kinda dropped it because no one really seemed on board... But I figured if we have the leeway to put up pics outside of Transformers fiction there, like we did for the Beast, and for that matter, Cy-kill, we could just do the same for all the Go-Bots characters. I know it's kinda seem like a silly game of working our way through loopholes, but it still is what I would personally prefer... Best of both worlds kind of thing. We still get a visual representation of the character in the article itself, most articles are short enough that the picture would be apparent immediately, but we'd still be sticking to our policy of only using official pictures in the body of the article. The picture is there as an aside, an addition to a note of "by the way, this guy is from this cartoon not owned by Hasbro." Like, look at the Night Ranger article. That's a great article right there! All the Go-Bots articles should be formatted like that. --Ascendron (talk) 16:21, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

That Night Ranger article actually turns me off the idea of putting pictures in the notes section. There's a huge unsightly gap of white space there between the external links section and the box with the categories in it. --abates (talk) 17:02, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

But that's only because that picture is a character model, which is taller than it is wide. Screencaps are wider than they are tall, and wouldn't create nearly as much whitespace! And we could do what we did with the Zebediah Braxis article, where we go in a bit of a brief overview of the character's role in the cartoon/ "Made-up Guy filled the role of the impressionable young kid-appeal character in the Go-Bots cartoon, similar as how Bumblebee did in the original Transformers cartoon." Something like that. --Ascendron (talk) 17:07, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

...Which goes right back to doing what we were complaining about in the first place, which is detailing COTG on the TFWiki! This is how quickly it gets out of control. "Well, we're not allowed to cover Challenge of the GoBots, but these pages would look nicer with some images. Okay, we're allowed to put one image in the Notes section as a visual reference, but now it looks unsightly so we'll add some details about COTG to justify having the pictures. Okay, well, we're already talking about COTG in the Notes now, so..."

- Covering the GoBots material produced under the Transformers franchise...Yes.

- Adding non-TF GoBots material so that the TF GoBots pages look better...No. --Xaaron (talk) 17:24, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

I think it looking "unsightly" is really a minor problem. And I didn't mean covering their every appearance. More along the lines of a blip of information. I'm sure a few characters could have more notes that would be informative and interesting to "pad out" the note section if the white space is that big of an issue, (which I don't think it is... Ugly, maybe, but I'd rather have an article that is "unsightly" than uninformative or goes against the wiki's rules.) Stuff like "he was also voiced by this guy who voiced this transformers character" or "this Transformers character is an homage to him," if stuff like that applies. You know, things that we already do for other character pages anyways. --Ascendron (talk) 17:33, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

Honestly the more the argument for adding in hundreds of unlicensed, non-TF images comes to hinge desperately on "You did it 5 years ago for Dr. Braxis and 8 years ago for Cobra Commander!", the more it starts to be an argument for deleting those pictures from Dr. Braxis and Cobra Commander. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 19:12, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

Just to note here, with all the comparisons being made to our handling of G.I. Joe, we've always treated the Joes with more leeway than we have, say, Spider-Man or Godzilla. A lot of our Joe articles include real names and factoids taken from filecards and such, and yes, even in one isolated instance a piece of art that's not from a TF source, because there was no point to the "wilful ignorance" gag, since it wasn't funny - everyone knows who Spider-Man and Godzilla are, but nobody knows who Seymour P. Fine is. There's no need for such wilful ignorance on Go-Bots either, given how repeatedly tied-in to Transformers it has become - it's not a Simon Belmondo or a Solid Snake, it's as much part of the Transformers "family" now as Joe is, even if its situation is a bit thornier. - Chris McFeely (talk) 17:47, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

If I could make another suggestion. Could we maybe forestall this discussion until after AVP has wrapped up? It is what kicked off this whole discussion. I don't want to "encourage" the feature to "spam" a whole bunch of Gobots screencaps... But it has already brought in a little bit of artwork for Go-Bots articles anyways, and with both VP's return to the storyline, and contact having been made to a Gargent Universe recently, any number of things could happen to influence this discussion one way or another, or even render it moot. --Ascendron (talk) 18:06, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

Unless Hasbro buys Bandai and/or Hanna-Barbera, nothing in AVP could change that we're really not allowed to have systematic coverage of Challenge (and that includes screencaps on ~100 articles) here. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 19:08, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

We're allowed to cover whatever we decide is in scope. We have no affiliation with Hasbro. The fact that the copyright notice on the episodes themselves gives ownership to Tonka, a Hasbro subsidiary, is a bonus. --Giggidy (talk) 19:20, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

AVP already HAS posted screencaps that were are using... Not to mention some original art of Cy-kill. It's a longshot, but it's already happened once. --Ascendron (talk) 19:22, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

I actually don't like using most of those screencaps - they WEREN'T posted by AVP, they were posted by dickish users trying to game the system, and were only acknowledged by Cy-Kill. Further, a quick look back at the FB page suggests the question threads they were posted in were deleted. - Chris McFeely (talk) 19:28, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

Just checked, they're still there. However, I wouldn't use them outside the Src page. Escargon (talk) 19:37, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

Hmm... Should we use the pics AVP deleted outside of source pages at all? Thinking about the Cy-Kill profile pic. Not like we don't have another one to replace it with. --Ascendron (talk) 19:43, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

Escargon is correct, we haven't deleted anything recently. Chris is also correct, you haven't seen us post screen captures from Challenge in the pages of Ask Vector Prime. We have acknowledged art and captures that others have posted. Also, regarding this: "Could we maybe forestall this discussion until after AVP has wrapped up?", it might be a long wait. --Jimsorenson (talk) 19:47, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

Adaptations storylinks

I understand that we're trying to move towards a less cluttered version of the Movie series character pages, but I sometimes feel it's a shame that a lot of media goes unlisted on these characters' pages, since they are merely adaptations of the more prominent movies. Especially since some of these media contain slight changes to the storyline, albeit ones too insignificant to warrant their own section on the page. I was thinking of maybe including notes such as these after the story summaries for Transformers (film), Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (film), etc.

(This character)'s involvement in the preceding events, or events mostly similar, were also chronicled in the following media: Transformers: Beginnings/ Bumblebee Rumble/ Transformers: Movie Adaptation/ Optimus Prime Versus Megatron/ The Quest for the AllSpark/ Sam's New Car/ Transformers (interactive Play-a-Sound Storybook)/ Transformers (novel)/ Transformers: The Junior Novel/ Transformers: The Movie Storybook

Of course, the note would vary depending if the character actually DOES appear in the adaptations. Thoughts? Stupid idea or not? --Ascendron (talk) 23:33, 7 June 2015 (EDT)

I don't think storylinks are meant to be used in notes. It ought to be something like "were also chronicled in the motion comic "Transformers: Beginnings" and the books "Optimus Prime Versus Megatron", "The Quest for the AllSpark"" and so on. --abates (talk) 00:00, 8 June 2015 (EDT)

That's fine by me. --Ascendron (talk) 01:28, 8 June 2015 (EDT)

Proposed solution for Sideways debacle, because this isn't going away any time soon, apparently.

I think one of the major problems with Sideways as a chracter, is that we're trying to treat him as any other character, when he kinda isn't. He's the result of multiple authors' conflicting authorial intent. Just like Primus and Unicron get special treatments for their pages (once they've been established as multiversal singularities, everything get worked together on one page), I propose Sideways gets his own special treatment for his page. But Sideways is a unique case, and so should get a unique treatment. I propose Sideways's disambig page to be made into his main page. There, a short bio can take up the top of the page, explaining his multi-dimensional shenanigans. A follow up note clarifying that, since Sideays ISN'T a multiversal singularity, any of the following Sideways could or could not be the same Sideways, be Sideways other Sideways have interacted with, impersonated, killed, been cloned from, etc. Each Sideways article could also have a note that links back to the disambig page, reiterating the situation. Thoutghs? --Ascendron (talk) 15:17, 30 June 2015 (EDT)

That sounds ideal to me, and a lot more elegant than either merging the pages or what we have at the moment. Riptide (talk) 15:28, 30 June 2015 (EDT)

Sounds interesting. Could you mock up what you think the disambig page would look like? --Khajidha (talk) 15:29, 30 June 2015 (EDT)

Sure, I'll whip something up. --Ascendron (talk) 15:34, 30 June 2015 (EDT)

Now, see, this is the kind of thinking we need more of. Break the rules, fer goshsakes! - Chris McFeely (talk) 15:57, 30 June 2015 (EDT)

Here's my mock-up:

User:Ascendron/sandbox: Sideways (disambig) Didn't take the time to look up some dates, and I'm open to suggestions to polish/rework some of the paragraphs, but this is more or less what I have in mind. What do you guys things? --Ascendron (talk) 16:18, 30 June 2015 (EDT)

Much better. We need to be doing more stuff like this, rather than trying to shoehorn shit into things that don't fit. --M Sipher (talk) 16:34, 30 June 2015 (EDT)

I'd say that the pages should be RID, Armada/Cybertron (including Robotmasters), Movie, Animated, and Kre-O. I'd also put the notes about the history of his dimension-hopping-ness on the disambig page, along with a fiction section for stuff like Ask Sideways, which kind of has "a blend of all the Sidewayses" as its selling point. Riptide (talk) 16:54, 30 June 2015 (EDT)

A stunning display of rationality!--Jimsorenson (talk) 16:57, 30 June 2015 (EDT)

Sounds good to me. --Ascendron (talk) 17:03, 30 June 2015 (EDT)

Looks good, although I wouldn't split the UT Sideways into Armada and Cybertron, mostly since the Hasbro edition of AVP made it clear that Hasbro thought of them as the same character. Escargon (talk) 17:21, 30 June 2015 (EDT)

I'll let you guys make the finishing touches to this page, as I have to go to work and then Celebrate Canada Day. I think this is as much as I can do for this page anyways, as I said earlier, I'm not overly familiar with the bulk of this character's fiction. I am very happy this is getting a lot of positive feedback though! --Ascendron (talk) 17:25, 30 June 2015 (EDT)

Like like like like like. -- Repowers (talk) 22:45, 30 June 2015 (EDT)

I went ahead with the article, as there didn't seem to be any strong oppositions to it. Also, thank you Riptide for your contribution to the page, they were very useful. The whole thing needs some work, with the "individual" Sideways's pages needing work, but I think this is a good start. --Ascendron (talk) 18:28, 1 July 2015 (EDT)

The pages certainly look neater this way. Just curious - what makes Robotmasters Sideways a special case? Is he explicitly stated to be the Armada guy? -- flicky1991 04:07, 2 July 2015 (EDT)

Cloud characters' toys

Now that all the Transformers Cloud Autobots and Decepticons have been moved to their G1 pages, should all the G1 pages' toy sections note when Cloud characters repurposed FoC designs? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 10:19, 2 July 2015 (EDT)

Yes. Saix (talk) 10:43, 2 July 2015 (EDT)

Probably an unpopular thought, but...

Considering the unique overlap, should we be keeping Primax and Viron versions of RID characters on separate pages? Saix (talk) 12:38, 6 July 2015 (EDT)

No. --ItsWalky (talk) 14:12, 6 July 2015 (EDT)

That discussion seems to be about renaming (RID) to (CR) or whatever. I'm asking why Sky-Byte (RID) and Sky-Byte (G2) are separate pages when the former already occupies both continuity families at once. I just think it's a case where trying to adhere to the purity of continuities/universal clusters is resulting in a half-assed and contradictory presentation. And all over a franchise that has only a cartoon and one comic story as fiction. Saix (talk) 15:09, 6 July 2015 (EDT)

I'm trying to think if this affects any other characters besides Sky-Byte, because honestly, if he was the only one, I'd probably be inclined to go for it. - Chris McFeely (talk) 15:15, 6 July 2015 (EDT)

Side Burn (G1), Slapper (G1), Dark Scream (G1), and Wrecker Hook. Wrecker Hook should probably be merged anyway, since all of the CR-to-G1 stuff is kept on Sky-Byte's and Fortress Maximus's pages. Saix (talk) 15:19, 6 July 2015 (EDT)

But Robots in Disguise is a separate continuity family to Generation 1 in the English speaking world, and we've always approached things from a Western mindset where applicable. I don't see why Car Robots being part of Generation 1 should mean we should merge RID characters with their G1 counterparts. --abates (talk) 16:25, 6 July 2015 (EDT)

But the characters still exist in both families regardless, especially as Japan makes more fiction for those characters and we're left with a needlessly patchwork situation where some G1 stuff goes on this page while other G1 stuff goes on other page, both with notes out of the wazoo. I just think merging the pages and expanding the identifier at the top would result in a better presentation. Those G1 guys are functionally "RID guys, but in Wings/IDW", anyway... Saix (talk) 11:36, 7 July 2015 (EDT)

Functionally identical characters existing in two different continuity families is one of those weird corner cases like Sideways and should be approached as such. This is a perfect case for making rule exceptions. Having massive write-ups duplicated except for the names is silly and a waste of everyone's time, so I would suggest using the Notes section to clear up any oddities. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Giggidy (talk • contribs).

I fail to see how this merge would be productive. What about Megatron (RID)/Gigatron? It'll be a fine mess trying to merge those two pages. --Ascendron (talk) 14:14, 7 July 2015 (EDT)

Mmn, see, now that I'm seeing it goes beyond Sky-Byte, I'm not in favour of it. Sky-Byte's got that messy bit with the Legends comic on his RID page, where we have "the Sky-Byte who was in the RID cartoon" getting blasted into the Legends Universe, except he's ALSO "the Sky-Byte who originated in the G1 continuity family", so that is a bit messy and a merge or a move or something would help that. But in the case of other characters, no, I don't think it helps anything at all, and in the particular cases of Side Burn and Gigatron, it seems like an especially bad move. - Chris McFeely (talk) 14:17, 7 July 2015 (EDT)

With the recent influx of storylines involving Axiom Nexus and the multiverse, having notes indicating a character is from a specific universe traveling to another is kinda par for the course anyways. I don't see it as that big of a deal. --Ascendron (talk) 14:23, 7 July 2015 (EDT)

That's not what's happening at all. Car Robots Gelshark has JG1 stuff beyond the cartoon and so does other characters from that specific continuity (Wrecker Hook, Black Convoy, and Brave Maximus). He's not travelling to a different continuity family. Saix (talk) 19:46, 7 July 2015 (EDT)

I posted a half-formed thought there. I meant more, if we're really inclined to make the distinction on which Sky-Byte is involved in, say the Transformers Legends pack-in comic, we can put "The Sky-Byte from Primax 43213whatever Delta came to the Legends world. My argument boils down mainly that the concept of Car Robots being part of G1 continuity as far as english-speaking audiences are concerned is little more than a footnote. But I nonetheless see the validity of your argument. It's not a bad point. But this whole merging thing would wound up more complicated an affair than just plopping everything together on one page. Some experimenting with some sandbox pages might be necessary. Ascendron (talk) 20:19, 7 July 2015 (EDT)

Well, the idea of RID being its own continuity family/universal cluster is a footnote to begin with, no? People reading Empire of Stone don't think "this Gigatron guy is a Primax individual who is in-fiction completely distinct from the Viron Megatron who appeared in the RID cartoon". They just think it's RID Megatron in IDW continuity. It's a categorization system that exists for our personal convenience; I keep wondering if we'd be having this discussion if AAII hadn't made Viron a thing and canonized a distinction the wiki made because of reasons. Saix (talk) 20:55, 7 July 2015 (EDT)

A big part of this discussion stems from the fact that Hasbro says one thing (I do remember reading somewhere that they said Robots in Disguise is its own thing before AAII) and Takara saying something else. And here we are trying to maintain that they are both right, even though they are saying things that are incompatible. That being said, RID does hold a unique position as being the first true "reboot" of the Transformers franchise (everything before had been a sequel to G1). Being a separate thing is part of its identity as a franchise in that manner. I kinda see the characters as they are now like rectangles and squares. A square is a kind of rectangle, but a rectangle isn't necessarily a square. The character on Sky-Byte (RID) is both a Viron and (in japan) a Primax character, but Sky-Byte (G2) is a Primax character that's not a Viron character. But I'll admit that this might stem from a personal bias. Maybe a new kind of tag for these pages might be the answer? Or a new format for the page? Ascendron (talk) 21:15, 7 July 2015 (EDT)

I think there's a bigger debate to be had here. Continuity Families made an awful lot of sense a while back in terms of segmenting characters. In fact, I was strongly on the side of the 'disambiguate-by-continuity-family' debate. But I'm starting to think that this system isn't working so well anymore. Many of the friction points come when we've got two ostensibly the same guy in the same continuity family who are nothing alike. Admittedly, that's been a part of the franchise since almost day one, but it seems to be getting worse. On the other side, we're starting to get cases where you have the same guy in two different continuity families (Knockout is a very recent example) who gets two separate articles for no good reasons. This didn't used to happen, it used to be that if we had a new continuity family, then almost everyone in it was more or less brand new, sharing only perhaps an archetype. But now, guys like Gigatron show up and it's recognizably Gigatron. Or Sky-Byte. Or Breakdown. Or Rattrap (who is NOT considered a new character because Beast Wars happened before we decided on continuity families and got sorta grandfathered into G1.) Or Bulkhead. The list grows and will almost certainly continue to grow.

I'm not making any specific proposals here, but I think we should at least consider just going case-by-case and ignoring continuity families WHEN IT MAKES SENSE TO DO SO. (I'm not suggesting in any way, shape, or form that we scrap our existing organizational scheme, because goodness knows we need something and what we have works in maybe 90% of the cases.) We've already, for instance, separated out Marvel Shockwave from Sunbow Shockwave from IDW Shockwave, because they're three very different interpretations. We should at least be willing to consider allowing Knockout (G1) & Knockout (Prime) to live on the same page, because they're the same guy with the same design and the same personality. --Jimsorenson (talk) 21:20, 7 July 2015 (EDT)

The Shockwaves were separated out not because of differing characterizations, but in order to reduce the size of some gigantic pages for multiple "legacy" characters. It had nothing whatsoever to do with characterization. Unless you think having a separate page for a character's toys means all THOSE are somehow some "very different interpretations" of the character we consider separate from the others. --M Sipher (talk) 21:29, 7 July 2015 (EDT)

Which works out to be exactly the same thing. We break where there's a logical break point when it makes sense to do so. Or have you not noticed that, say, Grimlock's Marvel page also includes things like Regeneration One and Classics, or his cartoon page includes the Japanese G1 continuity and Wings. It's clearly not JUST space, because many of those little sub-sections are tiny. Offshoot and splinter timeline versions of those characters are kept together. Which is entirely sensible.--Jimsorenson (talk) 21:36, 7 July 2015 (EDT)

I'm not going as far as to say that the Knock Outs should be merged. I'm only arguing for the RID characters because of the overlap that already exists. Saix (talk) 22:52, 7 July 2015 (EDT)

At the very least, we could take this opportunity to sort out whether this kind thing should be modeled after Fortress/Brave Maximus's page (keeping both the English Viron and Japanese Primax versions on the same page) or after Wrecker Hook's page (separating the Japanese Primax version onto it own page from the English Viron version), as those two instances are very much polar opposite solutions for the same type of character (as each and as Sky-Byte). Currently, Sky-Byte (RID) is like Fort/Brave Max's page, but if it's to be changed to be more like Wrecker Hook's (i.e. - creating a separate "Gelshark" page), then would the same happen to Fort/Brave Maximus? Or if we keep Sky-Byte's page as is, would that stand to reason that, by the same logic, Wrecker Hook's page should be merged back in with Tow-Line's? --Sabrblade (talk) 21:51, 7 July 2015 (EDT)

I think Wrecker Hook is the one case where it should definitively be merged. Saix (talk) 22:52, 7 July 2015 (EDT)

I second that motion. Reconsidering my position on this. Considering maybe making some sandbox mock-ups for proposals. Ascendron (talk) 22:58, 7 July 2015 (EDT)

A new proposal, this time to help along with this whole "Iocus" nonsense

I'm currently at work, so I won't be able to post up a mock-up until tomorrow afternoon, probably, but I've thought up another proposal, as the back-and-forth over "Iocus" characters, such as the hero mashers and Bot Shots is, apparently, still the source of debate. I'm not big on simply recycling the idea I had for Sideways, but maybe it'll satisfy now just as it did then. So for "Iocus" incarnation of characters, I propose that we create a new section on their disambiguation pages. It would have a short write-up along the lines of:

"The following representations of Ironhide are not necessarily meant to represent any one specific incarnation of the character, but should be taken as a representation of the "Ironhide" archetype as a broader concept. In fiction and meta-fictional settings where a strict categorization of Ironhide's incarnations is necessary, these representations of Ironhide are said to be part of the Iocus cluster. Ironhide's Kre-O incarnation is also said to be part of the Iocus cluster, but those are relegated to their own page (listed above) due to being more fleshed out in nature."

There would then be a sub-section for game appearances (since Bot-Shots had a game accompanying the toys) and a list of the toys/merchandise that are appropriate to the section. I would still recommend we keep a link on certain pages that redirect to this list on, for this example, Ironhide's G1 and Movie toy pages. It would just be a short blurb telling readers to go see the list on the Disambig page.

Thoughts on this? I'll start working on the mock-up tomorrow, or I'll start working on thinking up an alternative proposal if I get mostly negative feedback on this one. Hopefully we can put this whole thing behind us soon, and concentrate our energies once more on recording fiction and whatnot. Ascendron (talk) 02:32, 28 July 2015 (EDT)

Kre-O is Fornax, not Iocus. In any case, I don't agree with this; filling up the disambiguation pages with content beyond, well, disambiguations seems like a bad idea, and I don't think it'd have any benefit that wouldn't also result from keeping the Iocus pages. Riptide (talk) 05:39, 28 July 2015 (EDT)

Yeah, disambiguation pages are for disambiguation, not for sticking toys and fiction on. --abates (talk) 06:46, 28 July 2015 (EDT)

Duly noted. I'm retracting my proposal then. Ascendron (talk) 08:32, 28 July 2015 (EDT)

New plan:

Step 1) bring back the dedicated pages for the Iocus cluster <airquote> "characters" </airquote>. Possibly harmonizing all of their disambig tags (to Iocus or Merchandising or Sideline or...), with generous helpings of redirects.

Step 2) put link out sections on the pages of any character that a particular Bot Shot (Hero Masher, Construct Bot, etc) was designed after. These would be in the toy sections, have a picture and a "for information on the Bot Shot toy designed to look like this character click here" notice." There would be no description of the toy or its history of redecos on these more mainstream character pages to prevent data drift. --Khajidha (talk) 09:11, 28 July 2015 (EDT)

Whatever solution we come up with, I just don't want this wiki to ignore something that's... well, official, I guess. I understand that lots of people dislike the idea of "Iocus" as a universal cluster, but since it's established as an official concept by "Ask Vector Prime," there's no turning a blind eye to it. We can't just decide to ignore something official because of our personal tastes. There's lots of other things Ask Vector Prime established that have proved... divisive. We haven't ignored them, so why start now? Ascendron (talk) 09:34, 28 July 2015 (EDT)

That's my big thing, too. --Khajidha (talk) 09:51, 28 July 2015

I'd be okay with that. It'd help with the issue of ambiguous continuity characters without duplicating information, too. Riptide (talk) 10:12, 28 July 2015 (EDT)

I don't think that we're ignoring Iocus because we don't like it. I think were trying to treat it as it was designed, which seems at least partially to reduce wiki clutter. Also maybe to deal with all the questions about "what's the home universe of Optimash" and the like. It really doesn't seem to be it's own place, much like Axiom Nexus isn't. It'd mostly a place where other universe versions of guys go to be strange. Hero Mashers or Bot Shots or Battle Masters. We don't make a page for Needlenose [TransTech] just because he's in Axiom Nexus fiction. Maybe it's fine not to do it go G1 Starscream who just happens to be a Hero Masher. But, following that line of reasoning, maybe it is OK to have a few pages for guys who are so amalgamated that they have no clear universe. Battle Masters certainly seems to have its own esthetic. --Giggidy (talk) 10:21, 28 July 2015 (EDT)

Yeah, this return to moving stuff to existing characters was prompting by Attacktix being declared Iocus, which are all very unambiguously based on specific existing characters. I think the description of "Iocus is populated by gimmicky versions of characters from other families" is quite apt, and I'd say that putting stuff on existing character articles is the best way to deal with it. I mean, we've already been doing that with Q-Transformers, which is very much "these movie and G1 and so on guys all just coexist here and that's normal" rather than being any sort of multi-dimensional crossover deal. In the cases where the inspiration is clear-cut, then it's far more helpful for the uninformed user to be able to find these ancillary toys on the appropriate page (rather than them being hidden off on a page full of all sorts of random stuff), and where they're more of an amalgam, then I agree with Sipher that simply duplicating listings is the best course of action. Probably the one thing where I might argue an exception could be made is Battle Masters, since the majority of them (barring Optimus, Bumblebee, Grimlock, etc.) bear nearly no resemblance to previous versions of the chaaracters. Jalaguy (talk) 10:36, 28 July 2015 (EDT)

Also, Sorenson himself came out against moving all the Attacktix guys to the Iocus pages. (Mr. Sorenson, if you're reading this, apologies, I know you're not a fan of Authorial Intent.) So he isn't acting as if he feels his work is being disrespected. --Giggidy (talk) 10:46, 28 July 2015 (EDT)

How does putting them on the inspiration character's page help more than putting them on their own page? If I knew very little about Transformers but had a Bot Shot of Ironhide why would I ever look on the Ironhide (G1) page for information about it? Yes, we as fans are aware of these homages but to an outsider the most logical place to look for information on Bot Shots Ironhide would probably be somewhere like "Ironhide (Bot Shots)". --Khajidha (talk) 11:04, 28 July 2015 (EDT)

Oh, I was talking about the reverse - if somebody is, say, looking for toys of G1 Rodimus, it would be helpful for Hero Mashers Rodimus, which is inarguably a toy of G1 Rodimus, to be on the G1 Rodimus article, rather than squirreled away on a different article. I get what you're saying, but with the same logic, could one not argue that, say, RID15 Bumblebee ought to go on a separate article to Prime Bumblebee to make it easier for people to learn about his RID15 toys? Jalaguy (talk) 12:46, 28 July 2015 (EDT)

1)That's why I advocated leaving the link out sections. 2)This is where the "generous helpings of redirects" come in. I have always thought that we needed more redirects for when a character in one franchise is released in another. That is, Hot Shot (Armada), Hot Shot (Energon) and Hot Shot (Cybertron) should all exist and link to the same page. 3)So "why not just redirect to 'Blankity-blank (G1)', then?" Because the one real piece of information we have about them says that they are not G1, but Iocus. And that "inarguably" is quite arguable because of that simple fact.--Khajidha (talk) 12:56, 28 July 2015 (EDT)

Locus is meant to put all that Bot Shots, Construct-Bots things to the same contiunity named "Iocus". Like Primax being G1. For example all versions of G1 Optimus Prime is placed on a single page, so why not do the same to the Iocus characters? Like placing all Iocus versions of Optimus Prime to a single page. Prime Bumblebee is based on the appearance of Movie Bumblebee but he's not the same character and thereof, not shares the same page. Bot Shot Acid Storm is based on his G1 appearance but he's a different character too. It's the same.--Primestar3 (talk) 15:25, 29 July 2015 (EDT)

Links to other wikis

Browsing the site, I've noticed that the various Star Wars-related pages have a nifty little template that takes the clicker over to Wookieepedia. Would it be a bad idea if I made similar redirect boxes for properties that have been involved with major and/or repeated crossovers with Transformers? (I'm thinking Marvel, Angry Birds, maaaaaybe Animorphs.) Or is this something that we don't do anymore? Grum (talk) 21:23, 4 August 2015 (EDT)

I'd be down for this. I've always really like the Wookiepedia template, expanding the idea to other wikis, within reason, seems like a good idea. Ascendron (talk) 21:41, 4 August 2015 (EDT)

Part of the reason we did this was because Derik wrangled an informal partnership between the sites (Wookieepedia has a link to us on their main page). Not sure if we should worry about doing so with the other sites as well before adding custom templates for them (I see Marvel Wiki already has some links to us too). --abates (talk) 22:06, 4 August 2015 (EDT)

Should Wikipedia itself be also included if this template project is to go through? Ascendron (talk) 22:19, 4 August 2015 (EDT)

I wouldn't be opposed to it, but there'd be a ton of pages to add it to. --abates (talk) 22:49, 4 August 2015 (EDT)

We'll take it one Wiki at a time. If someone else can make the templates, I'll help out updating the appropriate pages, I don't mind the workload. It just might take a while, is all. Ascendron (talk) 22:56, 4 August 2015 (EDT)

The important thing to remember, I think, is whether the other wikis are worth linking to. We link to Wookieepedia because it's an exhaustive resource, but there's a reason we don't link to the G.I. Joe wiki. - Chris McFeely (talk) 11:55, 5 August 2015 (EDT)

I threw together a quick mockup of a Marvel redirect template. I'm not entirely sure of the red; I just did that so that it could be quickly distinguished from the Wookieepedia template. I might do Angry Birds too, because that one probably isn't going away for a while. Grum (talk) 10:13, 5 August 2015 (EDT)

Email marked as spam

Hello, this is my first time editing so forgive me if I do it wrong, but I just wanted to let the admins know that the confirmation Email was marked as spam, at least for me. Sorry if this has already been addressed, but I didn't want to go digging through the entire archive looking for the topic. Wheelpath (talk) 21:05, 5 August 2015 (EDT)

That's up to your email client, not us. Saix (talk) 21:10, 5 August 2015 (EDT)

Huh, well okay then, thanks. Wheelpath (talk) 21:28, 5 August 2015 (EDT)

Many email clients will have a button or link so you can mark emails as not spam, and also in many if you add the email address into your address book it'll override your spam filter. --abates (talk) 21:58, 5 August 2015 (EDT)

Yeah, I fixed the issue by selecting the name and choosing to 'report as not spam'. Thanks for the tips, I hope other newbies can avoid this problem. Wheelpath (talk) 22:57, 5 August 2015 (EDT)

Upvoting or whatever else it's called

Sorry to bother again, but next to edits I've been seeing +# or -# and I was wondering how to do that? I decided to check Wikipedia to see if it was borrowed from there, but I couldn't find anything about it. Granted, I didn't really know what to look for. Wheelpath (talk) 01:47, 6 August 2015 (EDT)

That's the number of bytes added to or removed from an article. Saix (talk) 01:55, 6 August 2015 (EDT)

Oh, Well I guess this was unnecessary then. Wheelpath (talk) 01:56, 6 August 2015 (EDT)

Reorganising Regeneration One

User Saix has proposed that some of the Regeneration One sections should get moved out of "Marvel Comics continuity": specifically, characters, teams and concepts that only appeared in the UK comics and Generation 2, as they aren't from the US run that RG1 is sequel to and their stories aren't linked. What do people think? Charles RB (talk) 23:13, 11 August 2015 (GMT)

Seems needlessly complicated. It'd be a lot of work for dubious benefit. --Giggidy (talk) 18:22, 11 August 2015 (EDT)

It only applies to about a dozen pages that don't have the Marvel US -> RG1 link and it's not a whole lot of work. Saix (talk) 18:54, 11 August 2015 (EDT)

It is still an extra complication though: the stories continuing Marvel continuity are now not counted as part of a Marvel continuity but separated into their own thing? Charles RB (talk) 07:59, 12 August 2015 (GMT)

Couldn't that just be solved with a "Regeneration One is a continuation of Marvel US but not anything else" note template, rather than making the super-false declaration that they are no longer in Marvel continuity? --ItsWalky (talk) 03:14, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

How is omitting "Marvel Comics continuity"—meant to indicate a continuous narrative for a character—a false declaration while collecting unrelated characterizations under the same header isn't? Lots of articles have just one section, like "Armada cartoon"; is it a false declaration that we don't use an extraneous "Cartoon continuity" header? Saix (talk) 13:29, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

And we've already got one of those. Charles RB (talk) 11:41, 12 August 2015 (GMT)

I will point out here that Saix's proposal is similar to how the Wiki treats the G1 cartoon at the moment. If a character appeared in the first 95 episodes, there's a overall G1 Cartoon continuity header, followed by subheaders for The Transformers cartoon and Japanese cartoon continuity. If the character only debuted after the split, like Chromedome, then American continuity and Japanese continuity are two separate but equal headers, not grouped together as part of the overall G1 cartoon. For characters like Blacker, his appearances in Victory and Wings are completely disconnected, with no indication that both are splinter continuities of the main cartoon branch.

I disagree with Saix and the cartoon format. I think all G1 cartoon streams should be clustered together and identified as such, and all Marvel streams should be as well. But perhaps more importantly, the Wiki should follow a consistent theme -- all one or all the other, yes? --Xaaron (talk) 07:38, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

I've said it here before and I've no doubt I'll say it here again: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds..." -Ralph Waldo Emerson. Not that there's no place for consistency, but making a bad choice in one arena because we've made a similar choice in another is still a bad choice. Most of our users care far more about being able to quickly and accurately find the information they're looking for than if what's being done on one page matches up with what's being done on another.

As for the specifics, obviously, keep the RG1 stuff as close to the Marvel US / UK / G2 / Classics stuff as possible. I don't think this needs to be generalized to the much more complicated and varied G1 cartoon tree. I'm not sure if it should or shouldn't be, but I am sure that the cartoon situation is a lot more complicated and needs a lot more thought.

Oh, and PS, for the record, the tangentially-relevant Ask Vector Prime that's going to hit in a few hours was written and scheduled weeks ago--Jimsorenson (talk) 08:52, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

Why is it the job of character pages to detail continuity relations that are irrelevant to the subject? Saix (talk) 13:29, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

Because they're not irrelevant. RG1 and Wings are not full continuities onto themselves -- the underlying framework of the stories comes from the main cartoon or Marvel universe. No character article exists in a vacuum. Even if RG1 Springer himself has no previous history in the US Marvel timeline, >90% of the other characters and concepts he's interacting with do. Putting it under the Marvel Comics header gives readers the overall context necessary to interpret everything in Springer's history other than him. --Xaaron (talk) 13:55, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

We have pedantic templates that spell out the continuity now. And, again, we don't do this for every piecemeal continuity section that's in isolation on a page. Beast Machines cartoon sections aren't automatically under "Beast Wars cartoon continuity", Energon cartoon sections aren't automatically under "Unicron Trilogy cartoon continuity", etc. What makes Regeneration One so goshdarned special if it happens to be on the same page as other MG1 branches? Your logic doesn't follow. Saix (talk) 15:30, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

The Beast Machines and Energon cartoon sections are usually under "Cartoon continuity" (with Beast Wars/Armada respectively).Charles RB (talk) 23:47, 12 August 2015 (GMT)

"In isolation". Jetstorm (BM), one of many examples, doesn't have a "Cartoon continuity" header because it's pointless clutter. Why do only the Marvel offshoots require the "overall context" that justifies the header? Saix (talk) 19:20, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

Jetstorm doesn't exist in Beast Wars! Arguing that characters who are only in RG1 and no other Marvel-based continuity is a different argument to saying it about Jhiaxus, the Wreckers, or the Mayhem Attack Squad. Charles RB (talk) 07:54, 13 August 2015 (GMT)

Saix, let me turn this around on you. You're strongly advocating for a reorg against mostly uniform opposition or indifference. So what advantage do you see to a new schema? --Giggidy (talk) 14:42, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

I thought I made that clear already. G2 Jhiaxus and RG1 Jhiaxus have nothing to do with each other and do not belong together. There's no continuity or narrative between the two brances, regardless of the fact that they come from the same tree, and putting them under the same header pushes a false impression. Saix (talk) 15:30, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

G2 Jhiaxus is the leader of a faction of Cybertronians operating out of a series of interconnected mechaformed planets called the Hub in a series written by Simon Furman to continue the story told in the US G1 series, while RG1 Jhiaxus is the leader of a faction of Cybertronians operating out of a series of interconnected mechaformed planets called the Hub in a series written by Simon Furman to continue the story told in the US G1 series. I can see why you'd be arguing that they're dissimilar, I mean it's not as if they look identical too. --Emvee (talk) 15:57, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

So they're in the same continuity? Or is this strawman supposed to have another point? Saix (talk) 17:34, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

They branch out from identical starting points, though. Moving one piece of fiction out of the Marvel section while keeping others in seems like it will needlessly obfuscate things. Grum (talk) 18:32, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

That's not what anybody is arguing. This is a discussion over having sections under "Marvel Comics continuity", even when none of those sections on a page have anything to do with each other. If an article only has some combination of G2, Classics, or RG1 without Marvel US G1, then I'm arguing they shouldn't be mushed together as if there were some narrative thread. Saix (talk) 18:43, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

And in the case of Jhiaxus, don't some of his RG1 details qualify as offscreen G1 events that therefore apply to G2 Jhiaxus's background? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 18:33, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

No. The RG1 backstory only applies to RG1 and makes no sense with G2. Saix (talk) 18:43, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

I think we all understand your argument. We just aren't persuaded by it. And you haven't really ever answered my point about the advantage of upending the existing system. The closest you've come is that you feel that the two interpretations of Jhiaxus have nothing to do with each other and you'd like to separate them with other stories. I don't find that a compelling argument. All else being equal, inertia alone would suggest we not make this change. And all else isn't equal, we've heard plenty of arguments about keeping them together. Unless there's something of substance to be added that's been missed, I think we can all reasonably consider this proposal tabled. --Giggidy (talk) 18:50, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

What was it I said about being imperious, again? But keep on insisting I haven't elucidated my position and making appeals to tradition, I guess. Saix (talk) 19:20, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

Actually, I'm saying just the opposite. You have made your point, and as far as I can tell Charles, Walky, Sorenson, Grum, Emvee, S.H.I.E.L.D. Xaaron, and myself seem unconvinced. But keep on regurgitating the same arguments. It's a wonderfully productive use of everyone's time. --Giggidy (talk) 19:42, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

You are free to leave the discussion if it bothers you so. Or you can actually address my points instead of constantly saying I didn't make any. Saix (talk) 20:09, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

Nobody else is into this. Quit cluttering up the recent changes page. --ItsWalky (talk) 20:40, 12 August 2015 (EDT)

Fire in the Dark characters

Now that "Fire in the Dark" continuity has been classified as a Primax-influenced Aurex universe, what shall we do about the Maximal and Predacon characters from the story? Keep the details on the G1 characters' pages or make new Armada pages for them? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 17:44, 13 August 2015 (EDT)

As always, I think it's really silly to make pages for "X (UT) is just like X (BW) except he's from the Unicron Trilogy." Inferno makes a little sense because he has a toy and fought in the Universe War. But most of these guys, I'd say no. But I'm almost always in the minority on that.--Giggidy (talk) 17:59, 13 August 2015 (EDT)

I agree with Giggidy here. We'll probably never ever revisit this universe again and it seems pointless to make tiny article stubs for every BW character that appeared in the story... especially when it seems like the only reason for any of this is because the author didn't do a lot of research on continuity. Grum (talk) 18:29, 13 August 2015 (EDT)

Strictly speaking, we should make pages for each one because it's a new continuity but, y'know...

Unless AVP adds more info then it's not really a priority. Charles RB (talk) 00:58, 14 August 2015 (GMT)

Maybe just add a note in the "Transformers Legends" section of the characters' fiction write-up? I think they're worth their own pages, since between AVP, the toy bios and "Fire in the Dark," this is a fairly elaborate micro-continuity. I think maybe leaving the header in the original (BW) character pages with a link to the (Armada BW) pages would be nice though. Ascendron (talk) 20:26, 13 August 2015 (EDT)

This may be more complicated than at first glance. Character page disambiguation isn't done by continuity family (i.e. universal cluster), but by franchise of origin. If these were brand new characters in this continuity family, wouldn't (Legends) be their closest franchise of origin? Not to mention the Armada franchise already has Rhinox and Cheetor as modern era Autobots. Would FitD versions of those two go on their existing (Armada) franchise character pages?

I say this is a unique situation that requires a unique, rule-bending response: leave them on the existing Rhinox (BW), Cheetor (BW) pages. Add a Note saying "This version of the Beast Wars occurred in an Aurex cluster instead of the typical Primax cluster." --Xaaron (talk) 20:58, 13 August 2015 (EDT)

Agreed. Rather than create 18 dead-end three sentence pages, let's add a special disclaimer to the FITD page and to the sections of each BW / AR characters' pages. Other approaches are much too much work for no reward and losses of clarity. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 21:35, 13 August 2015 (EDT)

An amazing outpouring of common sense! (Don't get used to it, Jim, you'll only disappoint yourself.) --Jimsorenson (talk) 22:29, 13 August 2015 (EDT)

Then how should we do the pages for the mentioned Mini-Cons who have previously appeared in Primax fiction? List the "Fire in the Dark" appearances on the same page? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 23:03, 13 August 2015 (EDT)

I think we should keep it on their main (Armada) pages, yeah. The whole "Primax influence Aurex universe" seems more-or-less code for "It's an Aurex Universe with some Primax Universe bits shoved into it." The Primax bits, obviously being the Beast Wars characters. A lot of these questions recently seem to be hinting that sometimes, the differences between some universe is a bit of a blurred line. And the Iocus universe are where there are too many blurred lines to figure anything out so they're shoved into their own "miscellaneous" category or something. That's what I'm getting out of it, anyway. Really, we shouldn't forget that in-universe, the classification system isn't some absolute truth handed down from Primus himself. It's a classification system made up by a bunch of guys. Highly advanced guys, but still. And they seem to occasionally have trouble finding a perfect slot for some stuff, just like we do. Ascendron (talk) 02:03, 14 August 2015 (EDT)

Looks like we were the TransTechs all along. --Riptide (talk) 08:55, 14 August 2015 (EDT)

Who's that Pokemon character?

I'm going through posting pics up for Cybertron's Most Wanted, but need you guys' help to identify some of these guys! This is the first character I can't identify. (He is listed as the question mark in the number 7 slot of the featured characters section.) He's not Starscream (TransTech) as I initially thought. Starscream appears later in the issue, and is definitely visually distinct. This is the second character I can't identify. (The green one, not Windblade, listed as the question mark at #23 in the featured characters section). Although there is a slight possibility that he's supposed to be a generic, I highly doubt it since every single other character on the page is a specific guy or gal. Ascendron (talk) 15:26, 14 August 2015 (EDT)

Maybe the first guy is just Starscream misdrawn? This post and picture from the Rook blog indicates so. [2] S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 16:17, 14 August 2015 (EDT)

Ah, well, if that post says so. That's also a much nicer version of the image I just uploaded... Ascendron (talk) 16:37, 14 August 2015 (EDT)

By the way, what about that dog-looking thing on the streets on page 1? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 16:45, 14 August 2015 (EDT)

That's just a turbofox, I believe. Not an actual "character" per se. Ascendron (talk) 16:53, 14 August 2015 (EDT)

Actually, Jesse's said on the Allspark that it's meant to be the wolf Mini-Con from Classics. Escargon (talk) 18:22, 14 August 2015 (EDT)

Shows what I know. Ascendron (talk) 18:27, 14 August 2015 (EDT)

Here's another guy I can't identify. He's mostly obscured by text boxes, which makes it even harder. However, he's in the same panel as the other unidentified green guy, as well as the two Windblades. He may or may not be a double to the other green offworlder, considering who else is in the panel. In any case, we're looking at the back of an orange head, big green shoulder kibble, with some yellow details on the arm from the looks of it. Ascendron (talk) 17:10, 14 August 2015 (EDT)

Here's another bunch. I Think the red guy's Ironhide? But the vents on the side of his head are throwing me off. The two bug guys at the bottom, I have no idea. Ascendron (talk) 22:39, 15 August 2015 (EDT)

And another. I'm assuming some of these guys are homages to non-Transformers franchises. Ascendron (talk) 23:42, 15 August 2015 (EDT)

Hmm. The guy on the bottom left of the one with Hellbat looks like a Kamen Rider that Matt drew in Spotlight: Trailcutter. Escargon (talk) 19:12, 16 August 2015 (EDT)

Oh, yeah! The colour scheme between this one and "V3" are pretty different though. Is it patterned after another character of that franchise? That way I can give it a "nickname".Ascendron (talk) 20:12, 16 August 2015 (EDT)

Don't know much about it, sadly. Escargon (talk) 23:05, 16 August 2015 (EDT)

That "unknown inmate" is totally based on Kamen Rider Amazon. -Ookalf (talk) 19:34, 16 August 2015 (EDT)

AllSpark Almanac

So I noticed this guy in the second AllSpark Almanac. I was not gonna bother with it, but then decided of anyone might recognize it as an actual character, and not just some generic critter. Mainly because, this is the AllSpark Almanac, and it has homages and Easter Eggs out the wazoo. If no one can think of anything though, I'll just assume it's a generic that's not noteworthy. --Ascendron (talk) 16:43, 18 August 2015 (EDT)

Catillia, according to Forster's deviantart. Also a snake on that page is named something like 1412 or something like that. Escargon (talk) 16:54, 18 August 2015 (EDT)

Thanks, I looked it up, and he says he "stuck in" his real life snake (named 1812). I don't particularly feel that's worth including. If anyone feels otherwise, I can be persuaded to upload the picture and make the page, however. --Ascendron (talk) 17:21, 18 August 2015 (EDT)

Apocrypha and Vector Prime

There have been a few parallel discussions about apocryphal works. Alignment, Doomsday Redux!, Bumblebee at Tyger Pax. User Grum went ahead and removed the Apocrypha template from Bumblebee at Tyger Pax, prompting a short discussion. I put forth the question on Doomsday Redux!, and by extension on the other unreleased Energon comics that scripts are available for, and got little response. Alignment had quite a robust debate when the AllSpark Almanac came out, but not much since then. All three have been declared to have happened by Vector Prime, and in their primary universes as opposed to in some splinter timeline. Is there value to keeping the Apocrypha template, versus just having a note detailing the unusual circumstance of the publication? It seems like something that should get a greater discussion than it's getting. --Giggidy (talk) 00:05, 18 August 2015 (EDT)

They're. Still. Fucking. Apocrypha. --M Sipher (talk) 03:36, 18 August 2015 (EDT)

Since Doomsday Redux was approved by Hasbro and declared to be canon even though it was unreleased, I think that one maybe merits a little more discussion. The others, not so much; even if they're canon from an in-universe perspective, they still aren't Hasbro-approved. --Riptide (talk) 05:07, 18 August 2015 (EDT)

A story that was officially commissioned and scheduled, then yanked because of licensee bankruptcy, should be listed as no different than a canceled toy. An explanatory note afterwards can be enough. But something that was never licensed cannot be licensed after-the-fact just through assertions and "oh, come on!"-ism. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 08:04, 18 August 2015 (EDT)

I tend to agree. I'd suggest that Vector Prime's statements be added to the notes section, and perhaps the stories be slotted into the appropriate position in the navigation track. --Giggidy (talk) 09:23, 18 August 2015 (EDT)

Galvatron II style linking

So I've noticed that there's been some disagreements on how to organize articles such as, say, Spychanger Prime or Balancing Act Prime. Perhaps we could implant a Galvatron II style system; link both in the main article, along with a suite. Also it could be used for the Thirteen and their Uniend selves, for the time being, I suppose. Escargon (talk) 19:37, 25 August 2015 (EDT)

What if we did something like this for Screech since he is 1 version of G1 Skids? Or Razorclaw since he's 1 version of Tigerhawk? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 19:51, 25 August 2015 (EDT)

Quite honestly, I don't think I would have a problem with that. Escargon (talk) 19:54, 25 August 2015 (EDT)

Seems promising. Maybe sandbox one? --Giggidy (talk) 21:39, 25 August 2015 (EDT)

Unfortunately, I couldn't make a sandbox to save a life. Escargon (talk) 21:49, 25 August 2015 (EDT)

There are a couple of other characters that might also benefit from this - BW Megatron and Noble, Overlord and Gigatron maybe... I think it's probably worth looking into. --Emvee (talk) 14:17, 1 October 2015 (EDT)

Notes and images

I seem to remember that there was some clever way of adding notes so that they don't break onto a new line when up against a left-aligned image, but for the life of me I can't find it by searching. Can anyone hit me up with the codez? --Emvee (talk) 05:27, 17 September 2015 (EDT)

Timelines fiction release order links

I have noticed that where it is so, a Timelines story's primary previous or next story arrow points to the BotCon comic if it has the closest release date. However, the primary previous and next story arrows on BotCon comics' pages always point to other BotCon comics because they actually have a "Volume" order to go with. It seems inappropriate to me a story point to another which is not also linked to it. So what do we do, for instance, with "Burning Bridges", the first non-Facebook Timelines story to come out after BotCon 2015's "Cybertron's Most Wanted" and "The Return of Blurr"? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 00:39, 18 September 2015 (EDT)

I think the idea of putting all of the disparate Timlines stories in chronological order for the template is stupid. What exactly is gained there? Saix (talk) 12:43, 18 September 2015 (EDT)

It was probably workable at some point, but it's long since lost any functionality, I think. We keep winding up with stories that have like three or four "previous" or "next" links. - Chris McFeely (talk) 15:19, 18 September 2015 (EDT)

Right. It's excess that only exists to do stuff like link "Collections" to "Head Games" because... why? How does that really help readers? It really should just be limited to the specific media (script readings, etc.) and continuity (Wings Universe, etc.), not a grab-bag of random stories that just happen to be under the Timelines banner. Saix (talk) 15:29, 18 September 2015 (EDT)

Would anyone object if I went and removed all previous and next release order story links, leaving in only previous and next continuity story links? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 14:38, 1 October 2015 (EDT)

Harmonic resonance

So throughout Ask Vector Prime, the theme of "trans-dimensional harmonic resonance"/"quantum harmonic resonance" has come up as an in-universe explanation for most commonly used characters (i.e. the franchise tropes of Optimus Prime, Megatron, Grimlock, etc.), design re-use across continuity families (i.e. pre-Transformer toys which got recycled as Transformers toys), mistaken use of story elements which seemingly don't belong (i.e. Armada Beast Wars in "Fire in the Dark"), other things (i.e. RiD Unicron as a seemingly mundane Transformer who (not) coincidentally became a universe-destroying planet), etc. Do we want to make a page(s) about this and how should we handle it? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 21:23, 9 October 2015 (EDT)

Same way anything else is handled? Create an article and document the things VP said about it? --KilMichaelMcC (talk) 21:25, 9 October 2015 (EDT)

Online Transformers Games help request

So, I've recently been frustrated with the fact that many online games have been taken down, making it really hard to create articles for them. I've been doing well creating articles for them up to now, either finding copies of the games on other websites or cobbling together articles by watching play-throughs on Youtube. However, I've hit upon my first real snag with "Transformers Prime: Beast Hunters Game." I can't find any footage of it whatsoever anywhere, and the game doesn't seem to load on the Hasbro or Hub website. I never played the game, so I can't create anything from memory either. Anyone has anything to help me out with this? --Ascendron (talk) 22:29, 17 October 2015 (EDT)

Repurposing vs Multi-family toys

Over on the discussion about Clampdown, M Sipher raised an excellent point about how silly it is to not have the Clampdown Kreon on the Clampdown Robots in Disguise page. This dovetailed nicely with my own musings on the subject. Right now, technically, the way the wiki is organized if we wanted to have that toy on two pages we'd have to arbitrarily declare one Clampdown to be a repurposing of the other, which I find to be ridiculous. I had a discussion on one of the talk pages about removing the repurposing label from toys that were simply imported from one continuity family to another, only to be shot down.

As a compromise position, I've worked up a related idea: "multi-family toys". That is to say, a toy that seems to exist more-or-less unchanged across multiple families. This seems like a distinct idea from a straight-up repurpose. To me, at least, there seems to be a fundamental difference from someone like Armada Dirge, which is a brand-new character based on a toy with a different name and bio, to someone like IDW's Lockdown. Furthermore, Ask Vector Prime has formalized the idea that Hasbro's been running with, namely that a character can comfortably exist across multiple continuity families and that this is no big deal.

This is my go at introducing the idea: User:Giggidy/Sandbox/Multi-Family Toys. Any feedback would be appreciated. --Giggidy (talk) 16:34, 25 October 2015 (EDT)