Talk:Iocus

I thought there should be some record on the wiki (I can't find any) of why the Iocus characters are being changed to G1 or whatever. I understand the clutter of dozens of pages with little-to-no real info outside of the toy. However, I have a hard time wrapping my head around a character from one continuity family being listed on another continuity family's page. Construct-Bots Ironhide is from Iocus, not Primax. How does it work having that toy on G1 Ironhide's page? --Crockalley (talk) 07:53, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

After the inclusion of Attacktix (which has characters that are undoubtedly from the UT and Star Wars), it was decided that this was evidence enough that Iocus wasn't to be taken as definitive on wiki organization. It's just one of those weird things that take in characters that are clearly from other universes—an in-fiction representation of how little Hasbro cares about continuity when it comes to those lines. Saix (talk) 08:16, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

Which to me is why the DON'T belong on those pages. They don't fit with the character as a character because they aren't meant to be a character. They are meant to be a play pattern. I never liked having Attacktix or RPMs or any of the other play mechanics centric items on character pages and like it still less now. --Khajidha (talk) 08:48, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

Also, for what it's worth, Sorenson, who created Iocus, indicated that he didn't want the obviously Unicron Trilogy-based Attacktix figures moved to the Iocus cluster: [1]. The discussion about treating Iocus guys as just the merchandise version of the guys they're supposed to be starts here: [2]. I'm on board with this change. --Giggidy (talk) 08:57, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

Hey, leave me out of it. My stance on Authorial intent is well known; if it ain't on the page, it's not evidence. Now, having said that, me as a private citizen wiki editor enthusiastically embraces this stance.--Jimsorenson (talk) 10:16, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

"The editors looked from fiction to wiki, and from wiki to fiction, and from fiction to wiki again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." Grum (talk) 18:32, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

I'm not sure where you'd like them to be, then? Saix (talk) 09:08, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

You... uh... you didn't like having Attactix Cybertron Megatron on Cybertron Megatron's page? You... wanted that to have a separate page of its own? - Chris McFeely (talk) 09:25, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

I didn't like it there because it obviously wasn't about the actual character, but was simply sticking his appearance on something that existed solely to play a game outside of the structure of the TF continuity. At the time there was no general concept of a separate listing for such things, so I just ignored it. With the more recent increase in such outside of storyline things we had started to put them in separate places, which made MUCH more sense to me. The Iocus cluster looked to simplify things by saying that we didn't need BotShots pages, Hero Mashers pages, etc but could put them all together for simplicity. I don't see how being told "this is where all these things go" has led to "fuck it, lets put them all in places that they don't really belong". For me, the drastic difference in play pattern IS a different story that does not belong with the general run of toys of particular characters from other continuities. --Khajidha (talk) 11:22, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

Rrrriiight, uh, well, I can't even remotely begin to understand putting toys and merchandise cast in a character's identical image anywhere other than on that character's page just because the toyline has a different play pattern to what the fiction shows them doing. And, er, I doubt anyone else will be convinced by that line of reasoning. - Chris McFeely (talk) 12:17, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

Yes. That is literally the exact kind of up-our-own-ass obfuscation of information based on hypreobscure microscopic minutia we should be actively running away screaming from. --M Sipher (talk) 18:07, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

Because the only reason Iocus exists was because of the wiki's decision to put all the ancillary toyline characters on separate pages. We were about to merge them into the pages of the characters they're based on when the Complete AllSpark Almanac came out and declared Iocus to be a thing, but at the design stage, the characters weren't meant to be separate - Bot Shots Bumblebee isn't meant to be a new guy, he's meant to be G1 Bumblebee. Riptide (talk) 08:13, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

Bot Shots Bumblebee is a mishmash of Bumblebee designs because Hasbro considers them all to be the same character. He's just at G1 because of his head and for convenience. Saix (talk) 08:16, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

Yeah, not every one of these is so completely straightforward. There could probably stand to be some more discussion of guys like Bot Shots Bumblebee and whether he should be listed as G1, Movie, both or neither. --KilMichaelMcC (talk) 09:13, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

I really couldn't care less where they end up. Pick an incarnation and fix the links if you want to. I just went with mostly G1 because those characters are de facto dumping grounds now. Saix (talk) 09:23, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

If you "really couldn't care less" then what were doing make these changes in the first place? And no, I'm not just going to "pick an incarnation" and "fix" anything unilaterally, I said I think there should be some more discussion first. --KilMichaelMcC (talk) 09:38, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

Most of them are easy enough, but yeah, there's a few worth of a bit more discussion. The Shockwaves jumped out at me, for instance - movie seems right for the first couple of Bot Shots, but there's a few which ought to go over on the Prime character's page. They don't all have to live in the same place. But generally my thought process would be "if in doubt, who's head does he have?" so I probably would but the Bees on G1. - Chris McFeely (talk) 09:45, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

Okay, but what about Bot Shots Ironhide? I can't say that a G1-ish head overides a blatantly Movie body. Or do we put the black ones on the Movie guy's page and the red ones on the G1 guy's? And what makes Bot Shots Lockdown G1 when G1 Lockdown is just a repurposed Movie design? Bot Shots in generally should have been discussed a bit more, I think, most of the other Iocus stuff is pretty straight-forward. --KilMichaelMcC (talk) 09:57, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

Yeah, I agree that Lockdown probably ought to go on the movie article, unless there's anything on the toy that's unique to Milne's G1 design, which I doubt. With Ironhide, I'd be tempted to say follow the head and keep them on G1, if only because there are other ones where they did do G1-ised movie heads, like Brawl and Barricade, so that's clearly not something they were averse to. On a related note, some or all of the Megatrons probably want moving to the Prime one, since they mostly use his specific flavor of buckethead where the cheek-guards go to a point and the nose is covered. Jalaguy (talk) 10:07, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

Or maybe PUT THEM IN ALL BOTH RELEVANT CHARACTER PAGES. Like, all the Ironhides in both G1 and Movie. Because holy Jesus fucknuts, people. --M Sipher (talk) 15:36, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

Agreed. We're just... TRYING too hard. Just go with the flow with these things. Ascendron (talk) 18:28, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

Same here. This debacle's makin' my head go "AAAAAAAAAAAAA boom."--Spin-Out (talk) 23:23, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

I did the changes because I knew nobody else was going to and because the consensus on Bot Shots (and other rubbish toylines) characters not warranting their own pages is pretty clear at this point. I strongly agree with this consensus, but I don't care that much about the specific locations of the information. Saix (talk) 09:55, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

One possible compromise position for those very few guys who seem to hail from no recognizably obvious continuity family (I'm thinking primarily a few Bot Shots here) would be to leave them--and only them--as some kind of Iocus-cluster natives. The wiki has recently been embracing a common-sense willingness to break hard&fast rules when it makes sense to do so. I think most of these guys have an obvious home somewhere else, and it's great to eliminate the clutter. That's what Iocus was designed to do in the first place, and this is taking it a step farther. But, given our recent stance towards flexibility, perhaps having a Lockdown (BS) page as an apparently Iocus-cluster native wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Just a thought. --Jimsorenson (talk) 10:20, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

I dunno about that; should our solution to "This character design fits equally well on either of these two pages" really be "create a third page using that design for it to go on"? Riptide (talk) 10:42, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

I'm finding myself wondering about Buzzclaw; she isn't really based on BW Buzzclaw beyond her colours, and if we merged the two then there'd be a Gender Inconsistency, which I'm not sure any other characters have? Then again, I'm pretty sure there are more divergent character portrayals than that which we've put on the same page. Riptide (talk) 10:43, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

Buzzclaw and Hydrax are new characters, basically. No need to merge them anywhere else. Saix (talk) 10:47, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

I think if the character is too different than any other version of him/her, then it deserves a page, in my opinion.

Bot Shots characters are clearly meant to be new versions but takes the desings from older versions. --Primestar3 (talk) 23:09, 26 July 2015 (EDT)

What about Kre-O? There's a lot more fiction than, say, Bot Shots, but there are some guys that are clearly supposed to be G1, Prime/Beast Hunters, Age of Extinction, etc. Personally, I think BotShots et al should stay on their own pages. They don't really neatly fit on anyone else's page as witnessed by above discussions. And how can we say what character pages Construct-Bots belong on? Just because they have a G1 head? --Crockalley (talk) 08:39, 27 July 2015 (EDT)

Kre-O is a separate subject (Fornax) but it's got the whole "these are literally brick-made beings" thing going on to justify it as a unique universe. Construct-Bots seem relatively straight-forward to me, although I suppose an argument about WFC designs being so very G1-ish could lead to an argument about whether the G1 guys there could be potentially also be considered Aligned. Bot Shots is where I think most of the ambiguity comes up. --KilMichaelMcC (talk) 11:00, 27 July 2015 (EDT)

The only Bot Shots that seem to be confusing enough to potentially warrant their own pages (which I really think we ought to avoid) are the ones like all the Megatrons that have Prime Megatron's head but DOTM Megatron's altmode and deco. Or the unreleased Combaticon five-pack Brawl that uses the Movie-esque Bot Shots Brawl mold in G1 Brawl colors and comes with G1 Brawl's teammates. Aside from the few cases like those, however, the majority of all Bot Shots can fit well enough onto non-Iocus character pages.

At the end of the day, it's best to just think of the Iocus Cluster itself as being like a multiversal hub similar to the Nexus Cluster, in which characters from all over the multiverse can come over and interact with each other. It wouldn't even surprise me if some TCC fiction were to come along and declare the Iocus and Nexus Cluster to be something like close neighbors or like-minded realities. --Sabrblade (talk) 12:50, 27 July 2015 (EDT)

I still don't see how "well, this one looks like it belongs here, but this one looks like it belongs here, and this third one could go either way so let's talk about where to put them" is any simpler than "these are all from the Iocus cluster and belong on the same page". --Khajidha (talk) 13:00, 27 July 2015 (EDT)

If Bot Shot Optimus, Megatron etc. is different than their older versions and deserves page, I see no reason why other Bot Shot characters have to be added to G1 or Movie or whatever pages. If one deserves a page, others deserves it too.--Primestar3 (talk) 19:00, 27 July 2015 (EDT)

I agree, I think the desire to cut up the Bot shots guys arbitrarily is akin to the "shit we should run away from" M Sipher was talking about. A lot of the Bot Shits designs are clearly iterations of the character using design cues and aspects from previous versions to make a new iteration; something very common; just look at various Animated Characters. For straight up transplants like with AOE or attackix the simple and obvious solution is to put them on the individual pages, but , by the inverse it is just as silly to take a new guy that is a fusion of G1 and film designs and just put him on G1 as a default (the "G1-itis" effect is also a separate problem i think can get a bit out o hand, but that's a different episode) I agree with Khajida, KilMichaelMcC, Riptide, Sorenson and Crockalleye where the Bot Shots guys should be treated like Shockwave for example. Like Cipher said, the desire to follow some hard and fast dogma over common sense is a bad idea. and playing eene meenie miney mo whether a guy is g1, Film or Aligned is for sure a bad idea Lush City (talk) 13:40, 15 December 2015 (EST)

...You do realize you're replying to a conversation that took place five months ago, right, Lush City? Also, something about the italics in your post is screwy. -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 13:53, 15 December 2015 (EST)

Looks like while I was editing this section, Saix said pretty much the same thing as I did in another section. Oops. -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 13:58, 15 December 2015 (EST)

We are not debating this anymore. The current status quo of sensibly putting merchandise and toys on characters they're based on is fine. Saix (talk) 13:51, 15 December 2015 (EST)

I wasn't debating the policy, I was discussing it's enforcement. I was saying the sensible placement of amalgam characters would be to give them there own pages like we did with Battlemasters Shockwave and Lockdown, rather than arbitrarily;y picking one source. Lush City (talk) 15:45, 16 December 2015 (EST)

The Battle Masters characters aren't on their own pages because they're amalgams, they're on their own pages because they're so unlike any other incarnations that it'd be entirely arbitrary to pick pages for them. The Bot Shots, etc, use "best fit" techniques, because all of them DO have a place where they fit best. Incidentally, what characters would get their own pages under your suggestions? --Riptide (talk) 18:05, 16 December 2015 (EST)

New Iocus proposal

I have posted a proposal for this whole Iocus nonsense on the community portal page. If we're still debating this, please consider reading my post there. I would appreciate feedback, so I can either implement that proposal, or start thinking up a new one that I hope will satisfy everyone equally. Ascendron (talk) 02:34, 28 July 2015 (EDT)