MediaWiki talk:Community Portal

This is the place for discussion of topics that affect the entire wiki. For less wide-reaching subjects, either use articles' individual talk pages or our Discord server.

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

Changing format of some older pages.

Hey everyone, it had been discussed earlier today on Discord that the G1 Wheelie page is in need of a complete revamp. Suggestions had been made to archive the original format of the page to keep the joke alive and available for those who still wish to see and admire it, while starting fresh in our standard character page format. It is nothing against the running joke per se, it mainly boils down to the rhyming starting to take its toll on the information that the page is supposed to present to readers of the wiki. I myself, before joining the wiki and even now, always avoid the page like a plague, as it is hard to navigate and actually obtain any information from, which goes against what the page is intended to do.

That doesn't mean all of the rhyming has to go, it is still welcome in the opening paragraph and image captions, but general consensus on Discord is that it could do to be more informative. I also believe that the long-running joke is starting to take its toll on editors adding any new additions while trying to keep with the rhyming format and quite frankly, I believe that to be another downfall to the article since the wiki is made to be as accessible as possible for anyone to edit and it just adds another layer of complications. I bring this up here rather than on the talk page as it has also been suggested that the same be done to G1 Rewind's page too for the same reasons.

I advice that you please make these discussions on the individual talk pages: Talk:Wheelie (G1) and Talk:Rewind (G1).

Feel free to bring up any other pages worth making similar changes to here as there is bound to be others that could do to be looked over too.

Thank you and Happy 2021 to all! -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 05:53, 1 January 2021 (EST)

Just a quick follow up after reading back over what was said on Discord: We could possibly keep the pages as is and keep them as the featured articles they are currently, while having a suite with a link to a more informative version, therefore keeping the jokes and also having a variant that actually makes "sense". Funny still wins as the main page and the other can be for readers to actually learn something more about the characters. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 06:39, 1 January 2021 (EST)

I'm for redoing both into normal prose. Save the jokes for the intro. Saix (talk) 12:36, 1 January 2021 (EST)

All the human collaborators should have a page

The Human collaborators is the concept of Humans being allied with the Decepticons. It exists since the beginning of the brand, brought to existence in the Megatron's Master Plan Duology from the Transformers G1 cartoon and appeared for the last time in Transformers: Dark of the Moon, With DOTM 10th year anniversary on the horizon, i'm thinking of creating a page for all them. In fact i'm creating a sandbox about it and i want to know if its a good idea to do that or not. --Cybertron Forever (talk) 14:21, 18 January 2021 (EST)

Our existing "Category:Humans" is in pretty bad shape. It's divided into dozens of subcategories already so that the "main" listing is nowhere near a single comprehensive list. Instead people went and added subgroups like "Classified Humans" and "Military Humans" and many many etc. From an educational resource perspective it would probably be more useful to streamline the category we already have. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 14:41, 18 January 2021 (EST)

Okay i'll streamline the "Category:Humans" but how am i supposed to do that? --Cybertron Forever (talk) 15:42, 18 January 2021 (EST)

Decepticon human collaborators have been around a lot longer than just season 2 of G1. Doctor Arkeville was actually the first Decepticon ally. Even then, characters collaborating with Decepticons had been around in the years in between G1 and DOTM. the Marvel G1 comics, Dreamwave comics, IDW comics and such, more than likely had a lot of instances where that was a thing too (I'm not too familiar with a lot of those comics). Animated had some of the human villains working with the Decepticons on some occassions too.

As for the human collaborators page, I don't feel that a separate page needs to be made, there was never a collective group or organization of them, just occassional cases of random people being told what to do while more or less being held at gun point, or on some occassions, given the sweet promise of world domination. I think if anything, Thylacine's idea of making a subcategory would probably be your best bet, but a better name would be "Decepticon allied humans" or something. As far as I'm aware, there is no page for Autobot allied humans (which there are crap tons of), so there is really no point in making one for the Decepticon allies. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 18:10, 18 January 2021 (EST)

It most certainly is not "my idea to make a new subcategory." We have too many subcategories already. Most of them are dumb and are at the expense of having a useful, comprehensive Human category.--Thylacine 2000 (talk) 21:09, 18 January 2021 (EST)

There really is little to no point to a page for this concept; a category will do. That'd just be opening up for countless list-pages of random Things People In Fiction Sometimes Do, and this wiki is historically not keen on list pages. There's a lot of stuff characters do/are that don't have pages just because the concept is too vague, too broad, or too obvious that a page would not actually provide any new information (or comedy potential) on how its use within Transformers fiction is different from the immediately obvious. There's no page for "ninjas" (that just links to the Category), but "Cyber-Ninja Corps", a very specifically-defined group of ninjas, does get a page.

And... look, not to sound mean, but... if you have no idea how a big major overhauling project might be done, maybe you should leave that task to someone else. --M Sipher (talk) 18:40, 18 January 2021 (EST)

Besides "bad guys" like Shawn Berger or Doctor Arkeville, does Spike count when he went nuts as Autobot Spike and used Megatron to fire on the Autobots? Or do Buster Witwicky and Spike count when the Autobots had a truce with the Decepticons against a cosmically-powered Starscream? Or take Skywarp: he joined G.I.Joe and worked with them. Does that make all of G.I. Joe human collaborators? I hope not. If someone has to think this hard about who actually belongs to a category, it will actually clutter up the wiki instead of clarify relationships. Everything that could be grouped doesn't necessarily benefit from a page or category. It may be worth noting briefly on individual character pages about some characters' tendencies to work with Decepticons. Prime Radiant (talk) 19:31, 18 January 2021 (EST)

Okay it seems a page won't really be necessary, so i won't do it. But i'm until now trying to know how am i supposed to streamline the "Category:humans"? --Cybertron Forever (talk) 22:37, 18 January 2021 (EST)

Coming up with the answer to your question is the bulk of the task itself. It's a lot of work and there's no immediately obvious and clear approach. If you'd like to try something, use a sandbox and communicate with us here. If you need a lot of guidance, it's best to leave it to someone else like Sipher said. Prime Radiant (talk) 22:14, 19 January 2021 (EST)

I think i'll create a category called "Human Collaborators", but only after the "Category:humans" is streamlined, which is something someone must do here since i don't know how to do this and by doing so will help this wiki a lot. --Cybertron Forever (talk) 19:56, 21 January 2021 (EST)

I honestly think that is the opposite of what we need. The first thing to be done after streamlining should not be the addition of more subcategories. The point has been made that there are too many human subcategories already, and I agree. You seem very intent on specifically adding information about Decepticon-allied humans. Keep in mind that this is not an official faction. This is effectively like creating a category about "Humans With Yellow Boots and Blue Pants and Hard Hats". Yes, that group exists, but unless it's very funny, we don't need it. Going forward, I recommend focusing on contributing to what the wiki lacks (say, by adding information on our pages with stubs) instead of searching for differences without distinction. Prime Radiant (talk) 21:04, 21 January 2021 (EST)

Finishing the "Story sections" in the Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (PS2/Wii) and (PSP) pages.

The story of the PSP and PS2/Wii versions of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen video game must be concluded and i wanted to do this myself, but i'm having difficulties due to my family and i making preparations to move out. So the question is: Can someone insert the synopsis of the remaining chapters of each version of the game here? Because if you can it will help this wiki a lot. --Cybertron Forever (talk) 15:25, 31 January 2021 (EST)

That is entirely contingent on whether or not any of the regular contributors own the game or a system to play it on. Grum (talk) 21:07, 31 January 2021 (EST)

What's the matter? can't someone see it on Youtube and then write what they've saw on the articles? Because that's how i got the information about the story of the games i insert here. In fact that's how i got the necessary info to create the Quest for Optimus Prime and MechTech Wars online games and to insert the story of Transformers: Shadows Rising. --Cybertron Forever (talk) 21:14, 31 January 2021 (EST)

You know, petulantly whining at other people to do work there is absolutely no rush on, on a site done on a volunteer basis, doesn't really get any of it done faster. Tends to disincentivize people to do it, actually. --M Sipher (talk) 01:42, 1 February 2021 (EST)

The pages have been stubs for this long, I doubt having them being left a little longer will hurt anyone. They're bound to still be there once you're done moving and have more free time on your hands. There's no rush. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 07:33, 1 February 2021 (EST)

Micro-Sized

Hey all, was wondering if we should make a page/archive for the Mini-Con/Micro-Sized profiles from the Collectors' Club website and magazine?

They seem to be rather important pieces of fiction for a lot of those Mini-Cons and I feel we should have some form of proper write ups or a proper link to archives of the profiles themselves at the very least. Half the character pages have the profiles summed up in brief opening paragraphs but some people (me included) may want to read some of the online profiles which the Collectors' Club website doesn't appear to have anymore.

Just an idea I thought might be interesting to look into. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 20:04, 31 January 2021 (EST)

Yeah, but... is it legal for us to archive that material? I honestly don't know what the current status is of fiction produced under FP (or 3H, for that matter). Does Hasbro "own" it? Does Brian Savage? Does anybody? -hx (talk) 12:48, 24 February 2021 (EST)

Fun Publications produced that material under license from Hasbro and TakaraTomy. I assume Hasbro owns it just as they enable their current comic partner IDW to reprint Marvel and Dreamwave material. S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 12:57, 24 February 2021 (EST)

New signups temporarily suspended

New signups have been temporarily suspended due to excessive vandalism. Apologies for the inconvenience. --abates (talk) 04:04, 28 February 2021 (EST)

And now they should be back on. Thank you for your patience. --abates (talk) 00:46, 7 March 2021 (EST)

Reducing negative Energon episode notes.

Alrighty, since the wiki has been taking a pretty neutral approach to things over recent years and we had already decided on reducing excessive sarcasm and negativity to the Energon cartoon page, I feel the episode pages should probably follow suit.

I'm just started my annual rewatch of the show and I'm going to add, subtract and alter things like I did in the Armada episode pages after each watch. I'm already making a start on removing pieces of sarcasm listed as "trivia" that really doesn't need to be highlighted and is only there for the sake of bashing the show.

That being said, errors, plotholes, continuity issues etc. are fine, but the "pain count" sections probably should either be removed or be relabelled as "stock phrase count" or something along those lines. I'm personally still alright with the caption jokes and quote jokes, but the excessive "This character sucks because the show sucks." is definitely a no go.

After a disscussion on Discord, it had also been suggested that we list common stock phrases from the Unicron Trilogy on a separate page much like we do for Furmanisms. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 03:25, 2 March 2021 (EST)

Before anyone goes to the trouble of creating an entire "Energonisms" page, it is worth examining whether the series is well-known or well-liked enough for that to be worthwhile. Furman wrote hundreds of comics & scripts across multiple series and about 25 years; his repeat phrases are more noticeable and important. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 07:36, 2 March 2021 (EST)

I still disagree with the concept of "Furmanisms". They're just pulpy phrasing. It's hardly unique to him. --Khajidha (talk) 09:14, 2 March 2021 (EST)

I'll be honest, the Furmanisms page is filled with rather common oldschool comicbook phrases that aren't really unique to him or Transformers for that matter. You can almost guarantee that those phrases have been used in even older comics from the 60s, like X-Men for example. Hell, they've possibly been used in material even older than that. I generally stay clear of anything that makes references to that page, because it is full of blurred lines. Perhaps this should also be a topic for discussion. In terms of Energonisms, I personally don't agree with it either, but I thought I better bring it up for those who aren't on Discord.

My main concern right now is whether we should remove the "pain count" sections from the episode pages. As I've been binging the show and updating episode info, I've been working around them, but they still hold a heavy tone of negativity while everything else around them has been altered to the neutral tone. I've tried to think of a better title to use in its place, but the further through the episode pages I go, the more excessively negative it seems to get. Yes there are a lot of stock phrases used, but if people start to include other ones that haven't already been listed—and there are quite a few—pretty soon we're gonna end up with entire dub scripts for the episodes listed lol. As for stock footage counts, it's common in practically every Japanese Transformers series (From BWII onwards at the very least), so listing them is just another example of adding things to bash the show. Our captions/jokes policies also state that Energon jokes are pretty much frowned upon by today's wiki standards.

As I am writing this post, it has also occured to me that Cybertron's episode pages have pain counts that follow the same outline too (listing stock phrases and stock footage), so perhaps we should look into removing those for the same reasons. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 06:11, 5 March 2021 (EST)

I feel it should be pointed out that many of the stock phrases from Energon ("Uh...", "Huh?" "Let's do it!", "Wait up!" etc.) were first used by the same dubbing team back in Armada. If any new page is going to be created for those phrases, it's only fair that those from Armada (and probably from Cybertron too) be included since those phrases are not exclusive to Energon even if it's in that show that they're the worst offender. --Sabrblade (talk) 09:58, 5 March 2021 (EST)

I agree with removing the pain counts and overall negativity from the UT-related pages, while I disagree with creating the "Energonisms" page because that would neuter our efforts to remove said negativity. I also never cared for Furmanisms so I don't even see a reason for that page to still exist tbh. Fritz (talk) 13:11, 5 March 2021 (EST)

I don't think there's a need for Energonisms, but I think Furmanisms need to stay based solely on the fact that they're a known factor and both Furman and other creators have leaned into their existence in self-referential and parodical ways, enough that it makes sense to have a page explaining them. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 13:34, 5 March 2021 (EST)

It's funny you say that, Fritz. Armada was the first place to use the stock phrases, yet the episode pages were absent of any pain counts or any real negativity in general. As for Cybertron, listing the pain counts on those pages seems to hold the same weight as the negativity I pruned down on the main Armada page a couple of weeks ago. They seem to be an outdated case of critisms that were made when the show first came out. In my experience, Cybertron, while still not perfect, still remains the pretty widely enjoyed out of the three shows among the Facebook groups and stuff I've been in.

At the end of the day, I don't feel it's really the wiki's place to tell people how to feel towards something. It's one thing to mention issues and critisms, but when you're pushing personal opinions onto the reader, making them steer clear of the show entirely instead of letting them form their own opinions, it doesn't really help keep the history of the brand we're supposed to be documenting alive. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 15:28, 5 March 2021 (EST)

The keyword there is "outdated." Energon is from 2003 and the "pain count" stuff was probably all written in 2007 or so. In 2021 no one is creating canon with ironic joking references to a hypothetical Energonism, and even if they did, the whole source of complaint is that the dialogue is so interchangeable and empty that if someone were to say it in a future series it would probably just be seen as unrelated new bad dialogue. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 15:44, 5 March 2021 (EST)

So I guess we're all pretty much on the same page here then. From the response I got on Discord a few days ago and the repsonse here, it seems pretty clear that the "Pain counts" should go. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 16:11, 5 March 2021 (EST)

Totally agree with you there, Fanofcoolstuff27. I watched Energon and Cybertron for the first time just last year and actually enjoyed the latter a lot. At the time I felt that the pain counts were harming my own enjoyment of reading the wiki after watching each episode and I even consider removing them by myself. So I'm glad this is finally up for debate and other people are agreeing on getting rid of them. --Fritz (talk) 16:27, 5 March 2021 (EST)

I think this kind of went off on a big digression about "Energonisms" and personal liking of the series, but I think this is enough consensus to reduce the negativity of the Energon articles. (The episodes could use better summaries as well.) Saix (talk) 16:35, 5 March 2021 (EST)

The pain counts can go, but I'm 100% against removing the overal tone of negativity. Like it or not, Energon is a dull show with an objectively mediocre dub, and consistently remains the most disliked of any televised Transformers cartoon. To try and soften that in the Energon articles almost feels like a disservice to 20 years of near-universal fan rejection. (And the reason we say not to make Energon jokes on the caption page was because they were getting excessive across the whole wiki. That said, while other pages shouldn't be saddled with such jokes, there's no reason to sugarcoat things on the Energon articles themselves.) -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 16:41, 5 March 2021 (EST)

Agreed, and definitely on that last point. Energon is garbage in any language, and I feel we do a disservice to act like it's not a rushed, cheap, ugly job by the lowest bidder that runs out of plot halfway through its episode count and has to start over even BEFORE you take into account the first-draft English dub. And yes, the captions page remark about it and many other objects of derision is mostly about the unoriginality and over-use of adding new joke captions about it, not "it's wrong". --M Sipher (talk) 17:35, 5 March 2021 (EST)

See, my issue here isn't neccessarily the negativity itself, more the overuse of it. I've already taken it upon myself to remove silly pieces of "trivia" that aren't trivia at all and are more just an attempt to bash a bad show. You can mention all of it's flaws and whatever, there is no problem with that. It's the constant nitpickiness that is added, when just about every Transformers show has more or less the exact same issues. The line between openly pointing out issues in one show and turning a blind eye to those same issues in other shows is very blurred.

Given our recent response on Discord towards the removal of "Pain counts" from the Energon episode pages, perhaps we could at least settle with a mid-ground compromise. My proposal: The removal of stock footage from the counts. It's not exclusive to Energon at all, so listing them as a bad thing builds a pretty poor case. Yeah, there is a lot of stock footage use, but the show is to sell Transformers toys, so highlighting the brand's main attraction is hardly a crime. BWII, BWN, RID/Car Robots, Robot Masters, Armada/Legends of the Microns, Energon/Super Link, Cybertron/Galaxy Force, Animated, Go!, RID 2015 and I wanna say Cyberverse (?) are all guilty of using stock footage. Only about three of them are English-speaking original shows, while the rest of them are Japanese shows. It's practically been a tradition to include stock footage transformations and combinations at this point. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 18:31, 5 March 2021 (EST)

Voice actor categorization

I really don't like the idea of putting voice actors into company categories based on shows or games they've appeared in (see Category:Activision or Category:DreamWorks for example). This seems a little disingenuous, considering that none of these are employees of these companies, but rather freelance. Furthermore, this doesn't include all the different shows' production companies, but rather more like picking and choosing at random. If you were to categorize them at all, I would either do so based on the studio the series was recorded at (such as Voicebox or Studiopolis) or make new "(show) voice cast" categories. (But honestly, my first choice would be to not do so at all.) -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 00:17, 6 March 2021 (EST)

How about we create nested categories such as "Category:Activision freelancers"? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 01:34, 22 March 2021 (EDT)

"Category:Activision voice actors"? Maybe something similar with other videogames or tv series'/movies? "Category:____ voice actors". Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 02:39, 22 March 2021 (EDT)

Energon Terrorcons

I'm having issues with the way we have the Energon Terrorcon pages currently set up. The pages have a lot of misinformation being spread within them and between them and I'm not entirely sure how we should handle it.

The show presents three different colour variants/breeds/races of flying Terrorcon: Divebomb, a "Stealth Divebomb" (which is the Command Ravage colour palette placed on Divebomb), and the Shadowhawk Cosmo Type/Blackout colour scheme. I've just gone and removed the stealth colour scheme write ups from Blackout's page as they are clearly not the same thing and it would fall under potential citogenesis.

My proposal for this issue would be to move "Blackout (Terrorcon)" to "Shadowhawk Cosmo Type" and just make mention of the Energon dubs' cock up with the names as a note or that an individual Terrorcon named "Blackout" is also among them. Much like "Command Ravage", "Shadowhawk Cosmo Type" is also an official name and it's my understanding that if Hasbro names aren't available, we generally opt for the Takara names instead (e.g. Mirror), and because "Blackout" is referred to as an individual rather than a race/breed, it would be hard to use that as an offical English-language designation. I also don't feel that there would be enough to warrant an individual Shadowhawk Cosmo Type page and a Blackout page, as they'd contain most of the same information.

Secondly, I'm wondering if the stealth decoed Divebombs warrant their own page under a nickname title? e.g. Watchdog (G1). They are clearly a different breed to the two aforementioned races and with the Command Ravages being present alongside them, it only seems fair to mark them on a separate page too. If others agree, I was thinking maybe "Stealth Divebomb" or something, as the title—unless Super Link has a better term used in the episode?

Thirdly, and the least important of noting on this list of issues: The Planet Q natives featured in the flashback (before the planet was destroyed) use both the Shadowhawk Cosmo Type model and a recoloured version of the Battle Ravage model in the same colours. Do these Battle Ravage redecos warrant a page or is a note on the respective mold pages enough for them?

Thank Primus that the Insecticons and Cruellocks don't suffer from this issue of multiple breeds/repaints presented on-screen.

Let me know what you think. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 05:49, 10 March 2021 (EST)

I would make a "Shadowhawk Cosmo Type" article for that color scheme in general, but keep the Blackout article for that specific individual. All of the other weird color schemes like "Shadowhawk Desert Type" could just go on the regular article, with notes pointing out their existence. Saix (talk) 15:35, 10 March 2021 (EST)

Sounds like a plan. I'll get a sandbox started for the Cosmo Type Terrorcons. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 15:44, 10 March 2021 (EST)

Excessively long toy pages

Let's face it. A few pages such as "Optimus Prime (G1)/toys" and "Megatron (G1)/toys" have become so long that they can slow down a device just to be loaded. Will we allow indefinite expansion such that page scrolling time will balloon further? We need to do some kind of split that will set up a second page for many years to come. Some months back, there was a discussion on the Discord server suggesting the start of Generations in 2010 as a useful dividing boundary. Thoughts? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 16:38, 13 March 2021 (EST)

I agree with the split from Generations. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 17:36, 13 March 2021 (EST)

If no one is against this split, I might make a start on it now because I was editing the G1 Prime page before and I was worried it was going to make Chrome crash with how long it was taking just to load the previews for my edits. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 07:22, 14 April 2021 (EDT)

Regarding Megatron, I propose splitting out all non-transforming gun mode accessories that were available with other figures into their own page. There are a lot of those, and they don't need to clutter up a page along with the transforming figures.--Nevermore (talk) 07:59, 30 May 2021 (EDT)

Template:quote and Template:bigquote

Why do we have both of these? --Khajidha (talk) 07:39, 16 March 2021 (EDT)

the big one looks much better and less confusing. i suggest getting rid of the normal one. --GobotsFanForever (talk) 07:48, 16 March 2021 (EDT)

While I find the big one hideously obnoxious and would suggest getting rid of it.--Khajidha (talk) 11:32, 16 March 2021 (EDT)

sorry, it turns out that for some reason, the normal quotes were not showing up properly on my computer. but now they are. now the big quotes do seem kinda unnecessary. --GobotsFanForever (talk) 21:11, 16 March 2021 (EDT)

Merge or not to merge the ROTF toyline and N.E.S.T. Global Alliance pages.

I think we should merge the ROTF toyline and the N.E.S.T. Global Alliance pages, since they're both from the Revenge of the Fallen movie, along with the fact that some toys from that subline imprint are in the ROTF page. Besides, the reason why users here want their pages to be merged is the same from the Armada and The Unicron Battles, which by the time of this talk, they're already merged. --Cybertron Forever (talk) 16:52 18 March 2021 (EST)

I'm down with that. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 02:40, 22 March 2021 (EDT)

All those Takara BW-era-ish named weapon pages

So this caught my eye... we have a buncha pages for the various named weapons from the BW2/Neo-era toys, and... do we need them at all? Do these pages actually contain enough unique information to justify them? I mean, we got individual pages for Archadis's "Wing Gundreads", "Wing Bombs" and "Founder Shot", and not a one of them has anything that the actual Archadis page doesn't cover. Seems like most of these don't have any special effects like the "torque rifle" or "electro-scrambler" and such; it makes more sense to have those pages since the special effects are all right there without having to sift through non-weapon info, which feels like a good resource for writing purposes to see how these special weapons were used. But if they're all just normal old blasters and swords and whatnot, the individual pages are basically just severely chainsawed versions of the character pages. Feels kind of pointless and wasteful of the reader's time to point them at these pages. --M Sipher (talk) 17:27, 30 March 2021 (EDT)

After going through it all, I'm starting to think this is a valid point. Half of these weapons wouldn't even have enough information to fill a page to be quite honest—and that's after filling the fiction stubs too. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 08:24, 31 March 2021 (EDT)

New Molds are Not News

It quickly gets repetitive for toy entries to say such-and-such is a new mold. I think we should have "new mold" be the default, unsaid expectation, instead pointing out when toys are retools / redecos. "Actually a new mold" should be saved for occasions when something looks or is widely perceived to be a remold but actually isn't (i.e. Smokejumper / Energon Starscream). --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 16:03, 7 April 2021 (EDT)

Agreed.--Khajidha (talk) 16:58, 7 April 2021 (EDT)

Agreed. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 17:54, 7 April 2021 (EDT)

Impending upgrade

My intention is to attempt an upgrade of the wiki's core software tomorrow. It is not going to be a large jump in versions, so I don't anticipate it will break anything, but you never know. I'll post again here closer to the time. --abates (talk) 05:17, 23 April 2021 (EDT)

In, let's say, around about three hours. --abates (talk) 00:16, 24 April 2021 (EDT)

Ten minute warning! --abates (talk) 02:49, 24 April 2021 (EDT)

All done. Please go about your business. --abates (talk) 03:20, 24 April 2021 (EDT)

Change to combiner team member lists?

Inspired by some comments Chris was pointing out from his new Aerialbot video, I was thinking about how we could better contextualise the various extra/alternate members most combiner teams have wound up with over the years, rather than simply putting them all in a plain list that can, for instance, wrongfully give the impression that Balloon is a noteworthy Aerialbot and not a literal joke. Put together a sandbox to show what I was thinking: User:Jalaguy/Sandbox/Aerialbot - thoughts? I think this is one of those occasions - like Unicron's history and stuff - where going out-of-universe for a bit is the best way of communicating important context to the reader. Jalaguy (talk) 12:15, 24 April 2021 (EDT)

Request and code review for adding JS-based tabbed tables

A few of us were inspired by the tabbed tables on other wikis. For example, the Kingdom Hearts wiki, a main character has tables that contain "Profile" and "Journal" tabs. This request is strictly about tabs, not general infoboxes. I pulled the relevant JS and CSS and created a Template:Tab, and added the custom JS and CSS to my user page, and things seem fine. The tabifier only relies on jQuery, so we don't need to add anything extra. I have videos of the behavior on our Discord too.

Would it be possible for an admin (abates?) to review the proposed additions, and if approved, merge them into the page load?

JS: https://github.com/tf-wiki-discord/wiki-utils/blob/main/tabber.js

CSS: https://github.com/tf-wiki-discord/wiki-utils/blob/main/tabber.css

Thanks for reviewing/considering! Prime Radiant (talk) 13:22, 29 April 2021 (EDT)

What's the intention to use tabs for? My main reservation would be with user experience. E.G. putting stuff behind a tab hides it from a browser search, so if a user googles a term and ends up on a page where the mention of that term is hidden behind a tab, they might not be able to find it. --abates (talk) 16:57, 29 April 2021 (EDT)

One intended use-case would be supplementary. For most Transformers, I can imagine a "tabbed mainpic", one tab being bot mode and the other being the alt mode. I'm thinking particularly about a Transformers Universe or Dreamwave's More Than Meets the Eye, where bot mode and alt mode are viewable together as a single visual unit. And this is extendable to triple- or multi-changers, or can be ignored for Action Masters. This use is not restricted to mainpic use either. I don't think images of alt modes being hidden behind a tab is worse than things are now. Saix and AzimuthAcolyte may want to weigh in here. Prime Radiant (talk) 19:42, 29 April 2021 (EDT)

This is essentially a prelude to a more specific policy proposal once we get the machinery up and running and start working with it but I believe this concept of a "tabbed image" to display all modes of a character model, toy, etc without compromising readability to be perhaps the most potent utility of this technology. -AzimuthAcolyte (talk) 20:25, 29 April 2021 (EDT)

I can see this possibly being useful for toys that end up with multiple modes used within fiction like any of the Legends and Generations Selects characters with canonized "fan-modes" that get a little crazy to document in a single image or maybe having the Hasbro and Takara variants in a tabbed system?

The only thing I find that could potentially go wrong using a tab system at the top of an article for robot and alt modes, is the fact that G1 characters (as an example)—especially in the JG1 fiction—have been through multiple bodies with multiple vehicle modes. Even G1 Prime hasn't been the same exact flat-nosed cab for the 35+ years between American continuities. So this still kinda falls under the whole "prioritizing one thing over the rest" argument that the info box discussion created on Discord. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 20:42, 29 April 2021 (EDT)

I don't want to get too ahead of ourselves on the specifics of implementation at this juncture but I will say we've gone round on the philosophy of potential "alt mode mainpics" a bit on the Discord and I believe it would be important to emphasize consistency with the character model selected for the bot mode mainpic as opposed to getting lost in the weeds of a character's "one true alt mode" or what have you. -AzimuthAcolyte (talk) 21:29, 29 April 2021 (EDT)

New bot account on site

I wanted to give a heads up that we have a new bot account on the site: User:FuncGammaBot. This account is owned by the developer of the WikiClientLibrary library that User:Teletraan-X uses for logging in to the site. The developer asked to use us for testing his code against MediaWiki 1.19 because Fandom no longer has a 1.19 site for them to test against. I consulted with abates and since he had no issues with the developer using us for unit tests, I let them know it was okay. Unit tests are automated code tests that are run to make sure that: A. a new code fix works and B. that said new code fix doesn't break something else. This testing will allow the library to continue workinga and thus Teletraan-X to continue working while on TFWiki is on version 1.19. The account will only be interacting with it's own sandbox and not making any edits to actual content pages or the like. I wanted to let everyone know so they aren't wondering what this weird account is doing only editing sandbox pages. --Tigerpaw28 (talk) 15:46, 17 May 2021 (EDT)

Establishing gallery pages for characters

So it seems we (and creators) have run into problems with poor references (especially regarding alternate modes) and there's the simple fact that there's a huge lack of any central resource for official Transformers renders and art (aka assets)—especially for older media like Beast Machines. In that regard, I'm proposing we create gallery pages for at least characters with multiple bodies and incarnations and also serve as a repository for art. I've created an example for Beast Megatron that I hope will illustrate what I imagine those galleries to look like. Any thoughts or concerns about this? Saix (talk) 17:33, 27 May 2021 (EDT)

Technically correct but needlessly vague section headers, unhelpful "fiction first" format

I stumbled across this on the Cyclonus's Armada page. For reasons unknown to me, the section that covers how Marvel's comic adaptation of the 1986 animated movie handled Cyclonus and "his Armada" is placed under the not-so-obvious header "Marvel future timelines", with a storylink leading to "Judgment Day!", which I have to click in order to find out that it's actually not a UK future timeline story, but the comic adaptation of the movie. This is not helpful. Especially when there's currently still a deeplink further down in the "Origins" section that links to a now-defunct "Marvel The Transformers: The Movie comic adaptation" section.

Also, I feel like the "Cyclonus's Armada" section is suffering from the "fiction first, real life background information later" format. In cases where the subject of a page is a major conundrum that's more notable for the mystery surrounding it than for its fictional portrayal itself, I propose we should ingore the standard and put the background information above the fiction sections in order to make those pages more accessible to casual readers I'm not sure yet if that should be applied to Swerve (Chevy) as well.--Nevermore (talk) 08:30, 30 May 2021 (EDT)

Krunix (G1) might also benefit from an "explanation first" format. Not quite sure yet regarding Mister Johnson.--Nevermore (talk) 08:53, 30 May 2021 (EDT)

Repurpose notes

Does anyone else think it would be a good idea to add a bit to the repurposed toys note to identify where this happened? --Khajidha (talk) 10:09, 9 June 2021 (EDT)

That is a logical course of action. S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 04:26, 18 June 2021 (EDT)

Beast Era parentheticals

As already discussed here on jetliner Silverbolt's talk page, Earth Wars has clarified the need to reestablish the original Magnaboss toy trio as their own individuals with separate pages. For some consistency, what is our take on how the parentheticals will work out when Fuzors and Transmetals have not appeared outside the Beast Wars franchise?

Is this preferable?
Silverbolt (G1), Silverbolt (BW eagle), Silverbolt (BW Fuzor), Prowl (G1), Prowl (BW lion), Prowl (BW Transmetal 2)

Or is this preferable?
Silverbolt (G1), Silverbolt (BW eagle), Silverbolt (Fuzor), Prowl (G1), Prowl (BW lion), Prowl (Transmetal 2)

Should the Fuzor and owl still have "BW"? I point out that such labelling does serve as a handy signal for readers as to which franchise a wiki URL belongs. S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 19:20, 12 June 2021 (EDT)

"(BW Transmetal 2)" is definitely too long. In Owl Prowl's case, he either ought to stay at "Prowl II" (due to the complications of his past, or in consistency with Transmetal 2 Dinobot similarly being at "Dinobot II"), or be moved to either "Prowl (BW owl)", "Prowl (BW TM2)", or just "Prowl (TM2)". Of those choices, I'm leaning towards either "Prowl (BW owl)" since it would be consistent with "Prowl (BW lion), or "Prowl (TM2)" since Transmetals 2 are still just a BW-only thing. The latter would also enable the lion to be as "Prowl (BW)", unless that's too misleading since he isn't the only BW Prowl, in which case "(BW lion)" and "(BW owl)" would be the most concise.

As for the Silverbolts, I've given my piece about them, but for a recap, I'm for "Silverbolt (BW eagle)" and "Silverbolt (BW Fuzor)", with "Silverbolt (BW)" redirected to the latter. While the Fuzor is unquestionably the more prominent of the two, the eagle came first and was, for a whole year, the only BW Silverbolt in existence at the time. He has every right to the "(BW)" tag just as much as the Fuzor does. Keeping "(BW)" in the title of both makes it immediately clear that both are BW-original characters without ever having to read the article.

Frankly, I am not a fan of "(Magnaboss)" as a tag since, to the uninformed, "Silverbolt (Magnaboss)" and "Prowl (Magnaboss)" make it look like we're saying that this Silverbolt and this Prowl are each "a Magnaboss", which is misleading for anyone who doesn't know who or what Magnaboss is. Sure, it only takes a second to read their articles, but "(BW eagle)" and (BW lion) are more direct and to the point, instantly getting the message across that they both originated from BW.

And if the eagle gets to keep "BW" in its tag, then certainly the Fuzor should as well since, as mentioned, he is the more prominent of the two BW Silverbolts and shouldn't be forced to lose his "BW" to the eagle, even if the eagle has just as much right to it. Ergo, they both can share. --Sabrblade (talk) 00:51, 13 June 2021 (EDT)

I vote for the first option except for Prowl the Owl, who I think works best as Prowl (BW Owl). MrRald (talk) 01:34, 13 June 2021 (EDT)

I'm personally thinking "Prowl (BW)", "Prowl (TM2)", "Silverbolt (eagle)" and "Silverbolt (Fuzor)". To me it just needlessly over complicates things by having "(BW eagle)" and "(BW Fuzor)" because we don't go "Swerve (Universe -insert whatever specifics here-)" and "Swerve (Universe Chevy)", we try to keep the character page titles as short and sweet as possible. With that, I'd also propose that we move "Dinobot II" to "Dinobot (TM2)" because I don't recall him ever being referred to by that name in the cartoon and it certainly wasn't the name given to the toy. As far as I can tell that was just something the sourcebook added to differentiate between multiple characters with the same name (e.g. Magnaboss II and Silverbolt II). We've also tried to move away from those sourcebook naming conventions due to a lot of them being incorrect or misleading in the wider scheme of things, especially for the Japanese characters. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 01:48, 13 June 2021 (EDT)

TM2 Dinobot was referred to as "Dinobot 2" in the Dreamwave Summer Special and as "Dinobot II" in Beast Wars Sourcebook. It's not a thing we made up. --ItsWalky (talk) 08:14, 18 June 2021 (EDT)

I continue to be opposed to inventing "compound tags" that aren't canonical terms. "Magnaboss" is a canonical term, just as much as "Stunticon," and I don't think it's so confusing to potential readers seeing it that they wouldn't think to click the link and understand just how it was possible. My votes: Silverbolt (G1), Silverbolt (Magnaboss), Prowl (Magnaboss), Prowl (TM2), Silverbolt (Fuzor). --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 10:51, 14 June 2021 (EDT)

As I had just stated on Talk:Silver Bolt and Talk:Prowl (Magnaboss), I'm actually in favour of using the "(Magnaboss)" parentheticals for all three of the Magnaboss components, after seeing how it looks as an actual page title. It unifies them and is simple and the most effective imo. I am still 100% against using the animal alt-modes in the titles as it just looks unprofessional and made up, as Thylacine had more or less pointed out. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 05:38, 18 June 2021 (EDT)

If we really have to, we could always make it "(BW Magnaboss)" as a happy medium. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 05:42, 18 June 2021 (EDT)

That's redundant. "Magnaboss" is simple and straight to the point. Saix (talk) 10:09, 18 June 2021 (EDT)

Rethinking Shattered Glass as a franchise/continuity family

Between the “Shards” mini-series, the new Generations Selects toys, and an increasing amount of high end collector statues, it seems like the concept of a Transformers mirror universe isn’t going away any time soon. All mirrorverse fiction since the original comic has latched onto the title “Shattered Glass”, even when that name hasn’t been applied to that particular fiction, creating “ghost” franchises like “Shattered Glass Animated” and “Shattered Glass Movie”. Given that these have no bearing on actual franchises – there’s no “real” “Shattered Glass Cybertron”, for example – I’m proposing that we treat “Shattered Glass” as less of a series of franchises and more as one big continuity family.

It’s true that:

a) continuity families are a fake idea made up by the wiki to allow for easier organisation

b) big concepts that span numerous franchises go on one article, e.g. Autobot, Decepticon, Cybertron (planet)

c) sometimes two characters from different continuity families share a page when they are either straight up the same guy (Side Burn (RID), Sky-Byte (RID)), or when their appearance is so negligible that it’s barely worth splitting them (Buckshot, Reachout (TF 2010))

Given the above, I propose that all of “Shattered Glass” be treated as one continuity family, with subheadings for G1 (the club fiction, “Expectations”, “Recordicons”, SD SG, “Shards”), Animated (lithographs, bios), Movie (Forged to Fight, high-end statues/merchandise), and whatever other mirror universes are concerned. Character articles should be moved to (SG) namespaces and merged where appropriate.

I’ve whipped up a rough concept for Optimus Prime in my sandbox. Let me know what you think of this idea below or on the Discord server. TheLastGherkin (talk) 07:29, 14 June 2021 (EDT)

Absolutely against this. It might be fine for Prime, but there is nothing linking SG Goldbug with SG Animated Bumblebee, for example. We can stand having a few smaller articles, not everything should be merged. We aren't Wikipedia, and I don't want to see this implemented. Escargon (talk) 09:54, 14 June 2021 (EDT)

I kinda like this idea, but I can also see where this could get very complicated, very fast, it's definitely not a "one size fits all" type of solution, as Escargon has stated. If nothing else, I think a continuity family page for SG (if we don't already have one) would be a good idea to have the concept laid out in the one place, since it has been used all across the franchise, but combining character articles and such is definitely looking like a possible issue. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 10:07, 14 June 2021 (EDT)

Bumblebee would be the exception. An ideal SG Bumblebee article would start with a G1 section to the effect of "Bumblebee was small and looked like Cliffjumper; for more information see Goldbug (SG)" followed by the two relatively similar, quiet-spoken backstabber versions from Animated and Forged to Fight. TheLastGherkin (talk) 10:16, 14 June 2021 (EDT)

I'm really not sure about that. What's the point of folding them together if you're going to split one of the most prominent ones out? It's all or nothing, in my opinion. --Riptide (talk) 10:19, 14 June 2021 (EDT)

Even more than that, there's characters like Rhinox; there's nothing linking the gag character with the morally ambiguous TransTech one. Escargon (talk) 10:22, 14 June 2021 (EDT)

And before anyone brings up classic examples like Marvel v Sunbow guys, those were characters based on the same toys. Not quite the same with SG guys. Escargon (talk) 10:24, 14 June 2021 (EDT)

The one thing I agree is that we should have a page compiling all Shattered Glass universes and listing them the same way we do with continuity family pages, like Movie continuity family for example. Put SG G1 as the "major continuity" and the others as minor. We need this page because most (if not all) SG pages direct to Shattered Glass (franchise) and that's just plain wrong when we're dealing with SG Animated or SG Movie. All character pages should remain separate, but a singular SG page explaining everything is more than needed. --Fritz (talk) 12:54, 14 June 2021 (EDT)

On that I absolutely agree. Escargon (talk) 13:11, 14 June 2021 (EDT)

Oof, no. Now, "Shattered Glass" might could use a page for it as a CONCEPT, sticking to out-of-universe discussion of it and how it's been applied to stuff outside the original series. But... not this. --M Sipher (talk) 17:19, 14 June 2021 (EDT)

I mean, sure, we don't have to treat it as "one big continuity", explaining how the concept expanded is enough. I just think that a page simply listing all instances of a new SG-based universe is going to be important as time goes on if the concept keeps getting revisited. And would make more sense as a linked page than to link SG Movie Optimus to the original SG franchise page when they have no real connection. It's as wrong as if we claimed that "Fire Prime is an Autobot from the RID Animated continuity family". Unless we just use the current SG page for these purposes, but I don't see that as the better option. --Fritz (talk) 19:10, 14 June 2021 (EDT)

Honestly, if the aim of this is to try and clear up minor pages people don't want, surely it would make more sense to merge the Shattered Glass versions with the ones they're explicitly spinning off from - ie merge SG Animated into Animated pages. (I am not suggesting this as an actual idea.) Shattered Glass is just the transformers name for "evil mirror version" which stuck around, and no-one is saying we should merge all Nemesis Primes from every continuity family together because they share conceptual DNA and a name. AkibaSilver (talk) 19:26, 14 June 2021 (EDT)

Japanese retail

In the process of whipping up a comprehensive list of campaign items (those "buy toy X or Y amount of merchandise and you get this fancy exclusive redeco for free" thingies), the current progress of which can be seen here, I've discovered that a lot of the writeups for those individual items are oftentimes based on very rough Google translations, and never fixed.

As a result, I've encountered several instances of the same store being given multiple different names, such as "Eiden", "Ideon" and "Eidon" for Edion (which is the spelling in the company's website URL and official logo), or even worse, "White Peony" and "Shirobotan" (or "Shiro Botan") for Hakubotan (again, the spelling in the company's website URL).

Additionally, there is the occasional bad grammar such as "He was an exclusive in Japan to Edion toy counter" or "Japanese stores like [...] Yamada Denki toy department", sometimes chains like "AEON", "EDION" and "BIC Camera" are spelled in ALLCAPS, and the original writeups made it seem like "Hakuhinkan Toy Park Ginza" and "Shiro Botan Ishinomaki" were both the names of chains with multiple stores, when in fact the stores in question were supposedly specific stores, namely the Hakuhinkan Toy Park main store in Ginza (Toyko's main shipping district) and the Hakubotan store inside the Aeon mall in Ishinomaki.

I assume these inconsistencies are the result of different people adding those writeups, but geez, what a mess.--Nevermore (talk) 07:39, 16 June 2021 (EDT)

AAAAAND it turns out that AEON and JUSCO are one and the same company. JUSCO used to be a subsidiary of the larger AEON orporation, but the JUSCO stores in Japan all changed their name to AEON in 2011.--Nevermore (talk) 08:46, 16 June 2021 (EDT)

Weapons

Lately I've been going through (mostly) old Marvel stuff to nail down in-fiction appearances of G1 weapons - see Electro-kinetic blaster, Plasma-shell shotgun, and Thermal melter for examples. I'm thinking of adding something to the Notes section similar to the "Gadgets and Powers" we do for cartoon episodes but for weapon shout-outs in the comics, perhaps titled "Courtesy of my..." as a more ordered way of keeping track of them. Does anyone have any feelings on that one way or the other? --Emvee (talk) 08:48, 18 June 2021 (EDT)

Request

Talk:Transformers Legends (comic)#Controversy section-if somebody's willing to take this up, I'd appreciate it. Escargon (talk) 14:03, 22 June 2021 (EDT)

Separate voice actor categories by series?

This is just an off-the-cuff idea, but would it be useful create categories for voice actors that appear in a specific TF series? For example, Peter Cullen would be under "TF 1984 voice actors" (or however we'd title it) and "Prime voice actors," David Kaye in "Beast Wars voice actors" and "Animated voice actors" and so on and so forth. I'm not suggesting these would replace the "English voice actors" category, they would just be in addition to it. Now, granted, I don't know if we would/should separate any Japanese (and other languages) voice actors and make separate categories for each language, which would probably get out of hand or be too much. Or we just lump the non-English VAs with the English ones for each series. Again, this is just a random idea I had and thought I would put it out there for consideration. I totally understand if there is no need or desire for such a thing to be implemented. Turborun (talk) 20:59, 1 July 2021 (EDT)

Hershey's Kisses Treasure Surprise

I just stumbled across some of these that I had forgotten that I had received for Christmas. They are tiny figurines of TF characters packed with four Hershey's Kisses in a light blue clamshell container with a cardboard label wrapper (white card, printed with yellow background to the logos and pictures). The packaging says "Collect all five!" I have only two, but each had a different figurine: Optimus Prime and Starscream. The packaging also shows Bumblebee. To my eyes, the Starscream looks like the Classics design, but they are pretty generic (and my eyes ain't that great). Has anybody else seen these? Where should they be documented? Khajidha (talk) 09:47, 11 July 2021 (EDT)

I've seen them around in the occasional CVS as well, actually; the full list is Optimus, Megatron, Bumblebee, Starscream, and Grimlock, and they all seem to be Evergreen/Cyberverse designs. As for where they should go, I'm honestly not sure. Probably a small page of its own similar to Candy Toy, and a quick write-up in each character's toy or merch section, though I'm not sure whether to list them as G1 or Cyberverse. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 11:21, 11 July 2021 (EDT)

To my understanding we've been putting anything Evergreen-inspired under G1, except when they're specifically labeled as Cyberverse. So if the packaging only says "Transformers" and not "Cyberverse", I think they belong to G1. --Fritz (talk) 12:51, 11 July 2021 (EDT)

Reintegration of Hasbroverse wiki content

I think we should consider migrating the content from the IDW Hasbro Wiki back here. The addition of another wiki made sense as a preemptive measure when the shared universe was first announced and we had no idea how long it was going to run, but with just two years of content, there really didn't end up being all that much, and a sizable chunk of the non-TF books and related content live here already, either fully or partially. The number of links out on Rom's page, for example, is rather low. Plus it just looks kinda silly when we have issues #1, #4, and #5 of a series on the wiki, but not #2 or #3. The only major sticking point is all of the pre-Revolution G.I. Joe issues, which would be a *big* ask to include. I'd be curious to get other folks' thoughts on the matter, though. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 01:16, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

I think the Hasbroverse is Transformers centric enough to be moved to TFwiki, with GI Joe possibly being an exception. MrRald (talk) 01:26, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

I’m fine with post-Revolution stuff being incorporated. It still drives me bonkers that the last Visionaries story isn’t covered here despite 95% of that storyline being here. Saix (talk) 02:00, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

As for pre-Revolution G.I. Joe, we don't include all of Marvel G.I. Joe either despite both the G1 and G2 crossovers. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 05:04, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

It sorta makes sense now. I doubt there will be an attempt to make another shared universe anytime soon. I assume there's a semi-reliable Joe wiki we could link to for the pre-Revolution/post Transformers material, if necessary. --MistaTee (talk) 10:06, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

Sensible. --Jimsorenson (talk) 13:06, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

I think the current IDW Hasbroverse wiki could just be converted to solely IDW Joe, since I don't believe the general G.I. Joe wiki is very comprehensive. Saix (talk) 13:25, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

The general GI Joe wiki is nearly moribund. As an admin there, I invite anyone who wants to to come in and help. --Khajidha (talk) 15:58, 23 July 2021 (EDT)

Can't help with this at all but sounds good, have at it --notsoalex (talk) 00:25, 25 July 2021 (EDT)

Echoing others that folding in the remainder of the content between Revolution and Unicron is just sensible and we can cross the Joe bridge when we come to it. -AzimuthAcolyte (talk) 10:49, 25 July 2021 (EDT)

I'm gonna leave the discussion open for a few more days to make sure everyone who wants a say can have one, but this seems pretty unanimous so far. That said, while I'm thinking of it, what do we want to do about Jem? The stance on coverage over there is "the characters are canon to Hasbroverse, but the books and stories themselves are not, but we're going to cover them anyway". Thus as something that's kinda-sorta-but-not-really related, is that too far outside of scope to carry over, or should those articles be migrated too? -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 20:08, 26 July 2021 (EDT)

I wouldn't include Jem (or Clue) here. Only media actually in continuity with IDW TF. Saix (talk) 20:52, 26 July 2021 (EDT)

Well, that's good enough for me. I'm starting a central hub to keep track of all that pages that need to be moved over or merged with existing pages. Please add to this list as you find pages that need migrating or complete the process. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 15:37, 6 August 2021 (EDT)

Further discussion on this topic has moved to this page; please provide your input. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 19:57, 6 August 2021 (EDT)

Pre-Transformers repurposing documentation

Hey all, I had been wondering if we should document the repurposings of left over pre-Transformers products in the toy sections instead of the notes sections? Or even both maybe?

I threw together a quick sandbox of a couple of ideas I had. The first was just listing them all under the blanket term-header "Pre-Transformers" and the other was using their actual franchise of origin as a header (e.g. Diaclone, Micro Change, Microman, etc.).

I just figured that since we document fictional toys of characters that appear in comics etc. under the toy sections, wouldn't it also make sense to add the repurposed Pre-G1 toys? It especially makes sense (to me at least) when a lot of those toys or characters appeared in fiction long before any e-HOBBY, MP or Selects releases of those characters were made, and some of them haven't received official Transformers updates at all.

Let me know your thoughts. --Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 00:07, 1 August 2021 (EDT)

I believe the central debate here will be whether we consider these toys "in-scope." I do think this structure would generally be more user friendly than what we're doing at present if folks do not consider it a bridge too far. With regards to your sandbox, I would say the most sensible title structure would be the bottom one, as there's no sense in playing coy about the names of these toylines, with "Transformers" and "Pre-Transformers" supertitles when applicable. -AzimuthAcolyte (talk) 14:08, 4 August 2021 (EDT)

Okay this concept has since been haphazardly implemented by a few different people with little pushback but the the moment I added a pre-TF toy section to one of my own articles it was removed. So let's try this again. Thoughts on including toy writeups for specific products from Diaclone, Microchange, Microman etc repurposed in Transformers fiction. We are not talking "inspired by the abstract concept of Waruders" or "new toy shares a color scheme with a Diaclone release" here. Some potential discussion points off the dome:

• Cons - Strictly speaking out of scope. Could be considered a slippery slope to writing up easter eggs from wholly unrelated toylines. Edge cases could get fuzzy.

• Pros - Generally more reader friendly than the ersatz toy writeups in the Notes section we're already doing. "Pre-Transformers" is a pretty tightly bounded scope based in franchises we already cover in a limited capacity. If implemented properly this discussion should only apply to tens of articles.

Any thoughts appreciated. Thanks. -AzimuthAcolyte (talk) 17:36, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

Actual toy sections are more sensible and accessible than shoving the information into note sections. Saix (talk) 17:48, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

I think repurposes of that kind should be covered on the toys sections and not clutter the notes. It's useful information that doesn't harm the articles.

MrRald (talk) 17:49, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

Where has it been implemented, "haphazardly" or otherwise, that pre-TF toys would get listed as TF toys? As you said, it is indeed out of scope and I don't see any possible positives to balance that. Not sure I see how it's difficult for our readers to understand a Note about a non-TF toyline. It's all at the same eye level, but calling it a Toy pretends a toy from 1981 is a Transformer and calling it a Note doesn't. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 18:20, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

Spin-Out (G1), Cordon, Magna Convoy, Azimuth (G1), Azimuth (COP), Ephemeris, and Meantime (G1) have varying degrees of implementation, to name a few . -AzimuthAcolyte (talk) 18:55, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

Spin-Out, Cordon, and Magna Convoy are the only actual changes - the only ones re-categorizing Diaclone toys into being Transformers toys. Meantime, Azimuth, and Ephemeris are correct, matching Headcannon and Skyklik and pre-TF Treadshot (G1). Can we please not blur that line? --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 19:19, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

Sounds like we're talking around about three rough categories of examples here:

• Full Pre-TF writeup in toy section - Cordon, Spin-Out, Magna Convoy etc
• Pre-TF named in toy section - Azimuth, Ephemeris, Meantime etc
• Pre-TF info fully contained in notes - Headcannon, Skyclick, Treadshot etc

Now to be clear, "pre-TFs have been sporadically added to toy sections" was intended as a value neutral observation and not part of an argument. If this premise has been satisfactorily established let us return to primary point of discussion, namely "Do we want them there or not." -AzimuthAcolyte (talk) 20:22, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

......wow wooow, I didn't even notice that Azimuth and Ephemeris have Toy sections, because they aren't formatted like our Toy sections. I am going to take the liberty of renaming those as Notes sections since this proposal was supposed to be about where we put pre-TF data, not about how maybe every single page should look different now. Anyway, uh. No one has ever opposed including relevant pre-TF toy info. We shouldn't include things that aren't TF toys in our lists of things that are TF toys. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 20:58, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

Kuwagatrer was like that before it was reformatted into a normal toy section (not by me, for the record). Saix (talk) 21:23, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

My concern is that we really DON'T want to have a hundred GoBots and three hundred G.I. Joe toys and however many Ponies written up. That said, when a Microman or Diaclone toy without any characterization gets repurposed into a new guy, having info about the toy seems reasonable. Crossovers, no; stealth repurposing of Takara ancestral products, yes. It's relevant and relatively short, and regardless only applies in a very small number of cases. I'm agnostic as to whether it should go in the Toy section or the Notes section. --Jimsorenson (talk) 19:22, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

I will add that these were strictly brought up for left over toys from Takara that weren't merged into the Transformers rebranding in the 80s and 90s. The way I see it, they aren't all that different to cancelled toys in that they could have become Transformers products but ultimately didn't, yet still got fictional appearances anyway, much like BWN Unicron or Universe (2003) Spacewarp. Besides, who's it hurting? It allows for more wiggle room to flesh out info on the toy itself without the restrictions that a notes section creates. Half of these toys have either been forgotten about or are just unknown to most people and not many places provide info on these toys either, so having that extra info could potentially be helpful for our readers who want to know more.

Also, quick side note: the Magna Convoy toy AzimuthAcolyte is referring to is his Blue Knight body from the Generations Selects comic which was a Microman toy pre-Transformers. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 19:38, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

Diaclone toys aren't Transformers and so they don't go in the Transformers toy section. You want information about them to be more readable? Find a different way to achieve that rather than creating a misleading perception about them by putting them where they don't belong. The first thing in that section should actually be a Transformer. Crazy idea, I know. --ItsWalky (talk) 21:00, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

Creating a foreign name list

A complete list page of all so far known foreign names and phrases. Grouped by continuity families, factions and priority. (First Optimus, Bumblebee, Megatron, Starscream...) Kiké Prime (talk) 03:50, 6 August 2021 (EDT)

Transformers_Wiki:Policies#We_Hate_Lists --M Sipher (talk) 23:45, 6 August 2021 (EDT)

Generations subline toy headers on character pages

I believe this has received enough support on Discord and on "Talk:Transformers: Generations (toyline)", but I am reiterating on the Community Portal for everyone in general. It has become clear that Hasbro considers "Generations" a catch-all branding for many unrelated lines. Thusly, though I suggested the fix in the first place, it no longer makes sense for us in a post-Prime Wars Trilogy world to lump together many indented subline headers underneath "Generations". Concordantly, a lone Generations figure such as Titans Return Overlord can afford to lose the "Generations" label in favour of "Titans Return" alone. As a proof-of-concept of restoring plain chronological series order, I just overhauled "Galvatron (G1)/toys". This eliminates the ridiculous placement of the Generations Selects figure above the Kingdom figure due to technically being labelled on packaging as War for Cybertron Trilogy in tandem with the HasLab Unicron pack-in minifigure. In addition, the entry for the Legends figure is physically nearer to the entry for the contemporary Titans Return counterpart, and Kre-O can now naturally come in release order before post-Thrilling 30 series. S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 04:50, 30 August 2021 (EDT)

That honestly looks so much better. I've gone and done the same with "Megatron (G1)/Generations toys" so we have an idea on how it would look implemented on split out pages. I've also shifted the G2 Megatron repaints that were originally categorized under "War for Cybertron: Siege" and "War for Cybertron Trilogy" respectively to the "Generations Selects" header with Super Megatron. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 05:21, 30 August 2021 (EDT)

In addition to simply reorganizing the toy headers, we really ought to be treating "Generations" like we treat "Timelines", only using it for Generations 2010 to Thrilling 30 while everything from Combiner Wars onward should be using their respective line names, including with their own disambigs. There are too many uses of "(Generations)" tags in instances where the much more direct "(CW)", "(TR)", "(POTP)", "(Selects)", "(Siege)", "(Earthrise)", and "(Kingdom)" would be far more concise. Generations stopped being the name of its own line as soon as Combiner Wars took it out of the toy packaging's main title logo and moved it to a tiny little brand logo in the corner.

Even the tie-in media for Combiner Wars through now never used the "Generations" name. The cartoons were "Transformers: Combiner Wars", "Transformers: Titans Return", "Transformers: Power of the Primes", and "Transformers: War For Cybertron Trilogy". The comic events for Combiner Wars and Titans Return were the same only minus the "Transformers:" part. Even in the TV commercials for each line called them "Transformers: Combiner Wars" and so on, never calling them "Transformers Generations: Combiner Wars" etc.

These aren't subline imprints, they're their own lines, and ought to be treated as such, right down to having disambiguation tags like "(CW)", "(TR)", "(POTP)", "(Siege)", "(Earthrise)", "(Kingdom)", and "(Selects)". In the cases of FOC and Thrilling 30, those did keep the title as "Transformers: Generations", so those were subline imprints and should stay as such. It also works to distinguish between Archer Era Generations (a toyline) and Warden Era Generations (an umbrella term/category).

The current people at Hasbro call these "Generations lines" in the sense that they are each their own line belonging to an umbrella term/category rather than being the same single line that Generations used to be before the changeover of Hasbro teams in 2014-2015. It's basically become how like we would say that Beast Wars, Beast Machines, Japanese Beast Wars, and Car Robots (and arguably Animorphs) are all "Beast Era lines", or like how we'd say Armada, Energon, and Cybertron are all "Unicron Trilogy lines", or like Movie 1, ROTF, DOTM, AOE, TLK, and Bumblebee are all "Movieverse lines". Even things like half of the AOE line and all of Studio Series are officially considered "Generations lines" despite the obvious connotations of "Generations" that most fans do not associate with the Movieverse lines. --Sabrblade (talk) 11:26, 30 August 2021 (EDT)

I'm fine with changing the section headers and disambigs. Saix (talk) 11:41, 30 August 2021 (EDT)

So I'm taking that we're also changing Movieverse toy sections from "Generations" to "Studio Series". I'm down with that. --Fritz (talk) 15:11, 30 August 2021 (EDT)

Hmm, you raise an interesting point. How might we implement something like this to, say, Bumblebee (Movie)/toys, which has multiple different "Generations" headers and sub-headers between one-half of AOE's line, the whole of Studio Series/Movie Edition/Premium Finish, and a portion of Buzzworthy Bumblebee? --Sabrblade (talk) 00:12, 31 August 2021 (EDT)

My solution is, we leave the AOE portion just as it is, as it's already placed separately from the rest of Generations and in the right chronological order, and the "Generations" header is necessary there to separate those toys from the "Robots in Disguise" ones. Studio Series, Movie Edition and Premium Finish should get promoted to their own lines just like CW, TR, POTP etc, and as for Buzzworthy we should just change the "Generations" header to "Studio Series". If we all agree on this, I'd like to help implementing these changes myself. --Fritz (talk) 01:14, 31 August 2021 (EDT)

How old should my account be?

To make captions? Grimbee (talk)

It's not about age. Captions are meant to be a reward for users who actually put in the hard work adding proper content to the wiki. And considering you've barely contributed (and most of the things you HAVE posted are jokes, one-sentence articles, or talk page messages telling other people to do things), doing so would be in poor taste at best. Honestly, if you're only here because you want to add captions, you're better off going somewhere else. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 17:30, 6 September 2021 (EDT)

Streamlining disambig headers

Several on the Discord have voiced assent, so I am bringing the topic here. Our current system for putting disambig headers is unintuitive and overly complex. It creates situations like movie Sentinel who is stuck at (ROTF) thanks to a one line mention, as well as the completely jumbled mess of Aligned, with character pages at (Exodus) or (WFC) or sometimes just (Aligned) etc.

My proposal is we streamline this by just having everybody at the continuity they hail from, not the piece of it. All movie characters at (Movie) and all Unicron Trilogy characters at (Unicron Trilogy) or possibly (UT). An argument I've seen for the current system is that it specifies which part of the family somebody comes from, but the fiction section already shows what parts they are in.

Characters like RID15 Grimlock or Prime Breakdown would be exceptions to this, of course, potentially maybe suite them with the other of their name in that continuity for convenient wiki searching. McBaggins (talk) 11:15, 17 September 2021 (EDT)

Oh God a thousand times yes. --Jimsorenson (talk) 11:19, 17 September 2021 (EDT)

I have advocated for this move before so I vote in favor. There's also a set precedent with Strongarm (G1) being moved from Strongarm (BWU) for the sake of reader friendliness. Simplifying the disambigs will reduce the amount of initials and individual disambigs one has to go through when searching a specific character. MrRald (talk) 11:25, 17 September 2021 (EDT)

I'm leaning against. Under the current system everything is handled the same way, with a limited number of (G1 Autobot) type clarifiers, but if you go by continuity family first, there are so many situations that would need further disambiguation that you'd lose all consistency.

Just think how many Beast Era characters alone reuse G1 character names - you've instantly got huge swathes of characters who are gonna need further disambiguation. So then you potentially have a situation of "Terrorsaur (G1)" versus "Inferno (BW)", where guys originating in the same thing have got a random assortment of disambig tags. So maybe you make an exception for Beast Era and use (BW) and (BM) by default, but then you're starting to get half way back to the current system...

I'm not really convinced of an "ease of searching" logic because that's not what disambig tags are for, they're just a technical thing because we can't name multiple pages the same thing. If you're looking for a certain Hound, you can just type "Hound" into the search bar and pick the right one off a nice disambig page list, you don't have to try and guess at what the disambig is. (And while it obviously shouldn't be a main reason for any decisions, the amount of link changes and page moves this would require would be absolutely insane.) Jalaguy (talk) 11:34, 17 September 2021 (EDT)

I definitely agree with not throwing BW/BM characters down the G1 hole and then having to build ladders of exceptions back out for every name reuse. If we're going to try this at all, start with something that would need the fewest ad hoc fixes possible. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 12:11, 17 September 2021 (EDT)

Not voting one way or another, but just wanted to say that the (WFC)/(Prime) and (Movie)/(ROTF)/(DOTM)/(etc) distinctions are the ones that have actually bothered me in the past. These are the ones where many prominent characters from later instalments share pages with super minor ones from the previous instalments. Conversely, I don't like the idea of merging (BW) and (BM). But creating merges for (Aligned) and (Movie) would solve a lot of headaches. (And, as a side note, the acronym WFC refers to SO many things now.) —The Wadapan (talk) 11:47, 17 September 2021 (EDT)

Instead of trying to change almost everything with a few exceptions, why not just simply zero in on making "(Aligned)" the main exceptional change? Since it's probably the one that needs the treatment of this proposal the most. For the characters who share names, I'd say neither would get to use the "(Aligned)" tag out of fairness. Like how we currently have the two BW Silverbolts at disambigs other than "(BW)". The two Sideswipes would remain at "(WFC)" and "(RID)", for instance. Same with the two Grimlocks, the two Kickbacks, the two Bludgeons, etc. Luckily, I think most shared-name cases are either with equally minor characters or equally major characters, the biggest exception I see being the Prime and COP Predakings. Maybe a suite could link those two together (along with all the other Prime and COP Predacons) since while each is their own separate person the implication of each Prime one being cloned from the COP ones suggests a biological connection between each one. --Sabrblade (talk) 11:48, 17 September 2021 (EDT)

I think the whole system could use serious overhaul but I definitely see the value in taking baby steps. Aligned seems to be the one that has the worst current system and the easiest fix so I'm all for giving it a shot. If it works, great, if not we've learned something. --Jimsorenson (talk) 12:00, 17 September 2021 (EDT)

Thinking more about this, I'm beginning to feel that maybe not every single-named Aligned character necessarily needs the "(Aligned)" tag. Some do, certainly, like those who have appeared across nearly all of the fiction spanning all of the eras. Optimus, Bumblebee, Megatron, Starscream, Jazz, who were in all/most of the games, books, and cartoons should get it. But if someone was only in the games, or only in one cartoon, then maaaaaybe they should be considered less of a priority for the "(Aligned)" tag. --Sabrblade (talk) 12:24, 17 September 2021 (EDT)

I think I would prefer just moving over the video game characters (and that dumb pop-up disambig) to "Prime". That was the main spine to Aligned, and it's weird how we got pedantic over video games and pretended they were "franchises". Saix (talk) 12:32, 17 September 2021 (EDT)

In favor of tackling Aligned first, then thinking about other continuity headings later and separately. --Xaaron (talk) 12:44, 17 September 2021 (EDT)

I just ran the numbers, and if we were to roll with this plan, 296 character pages would need to be moved from their current disambig to "(Aligned)", while 48 would be left as is due to someone or something else with the same name in that continuity. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 13:09, 17 September 2021 (EDT)

I am for this change. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 18:42, 17 September 2021 (EDT)

I am down for starting with moving Aligned characters. I think this would help tremendously, especially if it expands to G1 and more (almost made me wish it had a better name but what ya gonna do) --notsoalex (talk) 15:49, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

I agree with using Alligned as the guinea pig for all the reasons stated above. MrRald (talk) 17:21, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

It sounds like a good idea to me in the long run. Aligned always felt messy as it is now, with so many different potential origin points for characters. I imagine a newer fan might find it confusing.ParadoxFactor (talk) 18:07, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

Absolutely against using "Aligned". It's not an official designation, it's never been an official designation, and while it's entrenched enough that there's little point in expunging all our uses of it, we shouldn't be using it for disambiguations. That said, considering WFOC to be part of the Prime franchise is something I could get behind. As to an overall "disambiguate by continuity family" approach... mmmnnh I'm not dead-set against it, but it's been debated many, many times in the past, and the decision's always come down to "franchise not family". --Riptide (talk) 18:54, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

I think I agree with avoiding "Aligned" for disambigs. Folding WFC, FOC, and COP into Prime would solve a lot of people's issues with the Aligned disambigs, I think. Saix (talk) 20:06, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

That's treating a symptom and not the disease. Pretending that they're from a different franchise because if you're too strict about which franchises 'count' you get gibberish is a bandaid. --Jimsorenson (talk) 22:03, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

I dunno, WFC, Exodus and Prime were all treated as being part of the same initiative back when they first came out, right? "Prime" is the only part of that with actual franchise branding, so I don't think it's unreasonable to consider them part of the same thing. --Riptide (talk) 21:15, 19 September 2021 (EDT)

It's absolutely not unreasonable to consider them all part of the same thing. But that thing is Aligned, not Prime. WFC was absolutely not Prime branded. And that's the whole point of this. IMO. --Jimsorenson (talk) 23:01, 19 September 2021 (EDT)

While we're focused on using Aligned as a guinea pig, it should be mentioned, however, "aligned" IS just a word. I watched an interview with FJ Desanto and he mentioned Hasbro wishes Cyberverse and WFC to match up since they are part of an aligned continuity, so key moments should match up like Optimus throwing the Allspark. Idk verbatim but I'm sure I can find it, and I'm SUPER sure they used aligned --notsoalex (talk) 11:34, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Hypothetically, potentially, in an imaginary alternate universe... is it possible to switch everything back? The next live-action movie is going to be about Beasts and so is its tie-in media. If they invent Movie Manterror and Movie Tigatron, then we're going to have to disambig the prior characters as being from G1 and not BW. And, uh, no. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 13:41, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

BW is not going to be folded back into G1, period. Any BW characters stay (BW), and in that hypothetical scenario, those pages would get moved to Manterror (BW) and Tigatron (BW). -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 13:46, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

But then we're using a blatant double standard out of sentimental favoritism, on a huge, un-ignorable, wiki-wide scale. And we shouldn't do that. If we're going to keep the distinctiveness of Beast Wars, we should keep that of Victory. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 14:20, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

The next movie isn't going to be a Beast Wars movie, though. It's going be a "Rise of the Beasts" movie. Any new Manterror or Tigatron introduced in that movie would have a "(ROTB)" tag. If the movie was to be called "Transformers: Beast Wars", then we'd have a problem. --Sabrblade (talk) 14:26, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

The title of the movie isn't the point. Once there is a shared character name, all with that name get disambigs. There is no "default" Inferno. So once we have to disambig everyone effected, either we stay consistent with our Sept2021 system and disambig "old" Tigatron and Manterror as G1, or we work with multiple different systems for the same function on the same wiki based on subjective favoritism mostly shaped by how old people were when they first found the hobby. EDIT: actually it isn't hypothetical, if we're sticking with the Sept2021 system then Quickstrike (BW) and Depth Charge (BW) must now be disambigged as G1, or we're saying after about 20 hours that we're already largely ignoring our new system but still keeping it around to create confusion. Welcome to Hell. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 14:32, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Huh? Isn't the Beast Era as a whole already treated as a special case, an umbrella thing, in the same vein as say, "Unicron Trilogy"? I know on a strict continuity sense it's all quote unquote Primax, but the point of this move is a "let's not be nerds about this" thing. AOE Lockdown being at Lockdown (ROTF) is kinda weird; that's what this is about. —The Wadapan (talk) 15:13, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Beast Era is definitely a special case, otherwise we would have BW Megatron on a different page than G1 Megatron. (And don't say 'but they met each other' because Transformers meet other versions of themselves all the time.) There are also things like Strongarm (G1) and I do note that we don't have Trypticon (G1) under Trypticon (Scramble City) even though he appeared there before anywhere else. We make exceptions all the time when it makes sense to do so. --Jimsorenson (talk) 15:27, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

BW and BM and their Japanese spinoffs are within the G1 continuity family, no more or less than Masterforce is within G1, no more or less than AOE and ROTF are both within Movie. Unicron Trilogy is its own continuity family, like Movie and G1; it is a higher category than Beast Era. I don't think we've ever made a policy of "treating the Beast Era as a special case" to the degree that we dissolve some major franchises of origin but not others. That doesn't make it easier, because it creates dozens to hundreds of exceptions that everybody has to actively remember forever, and if someone ever asks why we're doing it, the answer is just "We like the cartoon from 1999 better than the cartoon from 2003, and make sure you remember that, maybe tie a rubber band around your finger or make up a little rhyme to help you." We should really turn back, gang. We just passed Obsidian (G1), Blastcharge (G1), Hamerstrike (G1), Strika (G1), Tankor (G1)....--Thylacine 2000 (talk) 15:35, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Okay, so, I was tentatively in favour of the change to the WFC/FOC disambigs on the basis of them being games rather than franchises, but I had forgotten that there were Generations (etc) toys released with that branding. I am very much against disambiguating based on continuity, and especially using an unofficial name like Aligned for that. --Riptide (talk) 19:03, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Simplifying Japanese toyline disambigs

Related tangent—an idea I had was to simplify (Headmasters), (Masterforce), (Victory), and (Zone) to just (G1), with obvious exceptions like the Zone faction-switch Microtransformers (and I guess Ricochet since there's already a G1 Ricochet maybe we should move that to Stepper). The same would apply for (BWII) and (BWN) to (BW). Both eras were functionally sold under the general G1 and BW lines by Takara, after all.

And the various (SL), (Adventure), (LOTM), etc disambigs would default to their Hasbro counterpart lines. This thing is being more pedantic than we need to. Saix (talk) 15:04, 17 September 2021 (EDT)

Listing of pages with Japanese disambigs. Saix (talk) 15:49, 17 September 2021 (EDT)

As someone who has been slowly going through and changing all of our JG1 toy headers to the accurate F!SRLT ones, I am all for this simplification. Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 18:41, 17 September 2021 (EDT)

Likewise. Much more straightforward for the casual reader. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 18:53, 17 September 2021 (EDT)

https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Star_Saber_(disambiguation)

So under the proposed system, would it be the main page saying "Star Saber (G1)", nothing changed further? Or would that disambig page now additionally say "G1 Star Saber" and "Star Saber, the Supreme Commander from G1"? --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 11:59, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

Either way is fine to me. I'm not that invested in disambiguation wording. Saix (talk) 13:26, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

This is an obviously good idea. --Jimsorenson (talk) 17:25, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

This is definitely a change for the better. MrRald (talk) 17:29, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

This is a pretty straightforward extension of the toy section streamlining initiative already underway. I echo others that this would absolutely be a win for reader accessibility. No sense hairsplitting by what is essentially country of origin. -AzimuthAcolyte (talk) 18:19, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

I'm in favour of this, yeah, assuming "if there's a preexisting G1 character of the same name, we keep the JG1 subline disambig". --Riptide (talk) 18:49, 18 September 2021 (EDT)

i'm glad i looked away for exactly two days and we've decided to just start recategorizing the entire damn wiki under continuity family rather than franchise of origin --ItsWalky (talk) 19:24, 19 September 2021 (EDT)

goddamn we deliberated longer on splitting out non-G1 versions of the magnaboss guys... and this was kind of a major-ass overhaul --ItsWalky (talk) 19:29, 19 September 2021 (EDT)

As I said, I'm in favour of this change — rooted in "Japan treated all the various lines as part of the G1/BW franchises", not "reorganising based on continuity family" — but, yeah, it's been THREE DAYS. We absolutely can't treat "well there wasn't any disagreement" as basis to make these kinds of sweeping changes so quickly. --Riptide (talk) 21:18, 19 September 2021 (EDT)

While I am in favor of what's been done, it seems to highlight the problem I have with us using Discord. The presentation of this proposal here seemed to me to imply that the discussion on Discord had favored it and it was pretty much good to go. I assumed that Walky and others who had previously opposed such moves had weighed in there. I really don't agree with the idea of discussions that affect the wiki being held off site. It's too "secret cabal" for me. --Khajidha (talk) 09:50, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

THANK YOU. The Discordification of the wiki is one of the worst things to ever happen to it. Every major change made here should be based on a discussion that is held here, with a transparent and permanent record of it. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 09:55, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

I made this argument back when major decisions were being made on the Allspark wiki thread. Once the Discord was launched, and I was told major decisions would not be made on another webpage but an entirely different platform I would have to download in order to follow, I chose to quit contributing for a year. I agree that it smells of "secret cabal". Decisions about wiki content and policies should be made on the wiki, visible to everyone. --Xaaron (talk) 10:04, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Policy on the Discord has always been that regardless of any discussion there, all major changes should be brought up and discussed here on the talk pages to have everything on record and avoid this very scenario. That's why this thread even exists. The recent moves are not "secret cabal", it's one person rushing into things before due process had a chance to run its course. (And Thylacine and Xaaron, considering I've seen you both post in the AllSpark thread, another source for off-site wiki discussion that now no longer has a record thereof, I don't think you have room to criticize the "Discordization" of the wiki. If you choose to participate in off-site discussion on one site but think another is over the line, that's exclusively on you.) -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 11:25, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

I participated in the AllSpark wiki thread because it was often necessary to be involved there about decisions here, while also advocating that that shouldn't be the case at the same time. I can't point to the occasional rant I had about it on Allspark anymore after their attack, but you can see here in Archive65, "Other versions of character" where I complain about people announcing major changes on Allspark instead of the Community Portal. And, like Thy said, at least I could find the Allspark discussions. I tried to learn Discord during the Allspark/Pete thing, and I found it impossible to find/follow a conversation that was only hours old at the time. So, once the process of off-site discussions was both something I disagreed with AND something I couldn't follow even if I tried, I stopped being involved in the site community. --Xaaron (talk) 12:18, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

There was never a major change made based on the AS thread, there certainly wasn't the pervasive attitude of "Why are you reverting such-and-such, this was already worked out on the Discord" for the AS thread, and also at least the AS thread was in the same format as our wiki pages so you could go back and quickly follow the sequence of a threaded discussion from years ago if you'd wanted to. Stuff on Discord scrolls away if you're not looking and unless someone specifically searches for it they'd never even see the discussion at all. You are correct that the AS thread now has no record - but that is a bug, not a feature, as it was erased along with the entire Allspark board, and I don't expect anyone will try to make a new one, precisely because such vulnerabilities are now obvious. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 11:47, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Also, Discord doesn't require you to download anything; you can use the browser-based version just fine. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 11:36, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

I think Discord is a fine place to brainstorm, drum up support for an idea, figure out what some of the pros and cons are of any given proposal. But enthusiastic support for an idea on Discord should not be taken as a reason to bypass discussion here. I'm enthusiastically in favor of this change and even I think it was implemented too quickly. Discord people (of whom I'm one), voicing your support and reasoning there is no substitute for voicing it here. But I'd like to push back on the notion that there's anything secret about it, it's a very open forum and can be fantastic for hashing out half-formed thoughts without having to take such a black-and-white stand on every issue. I think Saix just jumped the gun. --Jimsorenson (talk) 11:49, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Just chiming in as one of the Discord mods to say that we have been trying our best to direct important changes here. I think the instantaneous nature of the Discord makes it easy to end up in a rush over things. However, I think the "live" nature of it has genuinely helped reduce the number of heated arguments like those that happen on talkpages/threads, because miscommunications seem to happen less often and can be cleared up faster; it's a shame that it's introduced problems of its own. The intent absolutely isn't to obfuscate! Speaking historically, the reason the wiki Discord was made was to try and merge two groups of editors—those posting in the Allspark thread, and those posting in the Allspark Discord—which, honestly, was a status quo that much more closely (if inadvertently) resembled a secret cabal. The current setup is broadly an improvement over that; it's not perfect, but hopefully people can get used to the "brainstorm there, table here" approach we've been trying to push and we'll see less of these problems over time, rather than more. —The Wadapan (talk) 12:40, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

When it comes to off-site discussions, we have always been directed by both the admins of the wiki and the moderators of the Discord server to bring our topics up either here or on the respective talk pages. The input here always gets taken as the "true" vote no matter what, whereas most discussions on Discord are as Jim and Wads have said, just throwing around ideas and brainstorming, which can be very beneficial for filtering out the "dumb" and/or half-formed ideas before presenting the well-thought out ones here. That being said, Saix's actions yesterday should not be taken as the collective work of any off-site discussions. Most of us weren't even aware that he had already started moving stuff until Walky brought up his concerns here after the fact. But yeah, it seems that the Discord's instantaneous real-time reply system has made a few of us forget that talk page and portal discussions aren't as fast and that some users aren't around every hour of every day, leaving us with moments where things get changed a little too hastily before everyone has had a chance to see it or respond to it. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 12:53, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

We should probably move all of the talk about off-site discussion to a different header, as it seems we've gone overboard with it. --DDog (talk) 12:59, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Okay, just to make things very clear and stop discussions getting mixed up: this section is about the proposal to use (G1) disambigs for late-JG1 and (BW) disambigs for BWII/BWN, because they are considered the same franchise in Japan. BWII toys were sold under Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers, Victory was sold under Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers. This has nothing to do with the "disambiguate by continuity family" proposal, which is in the section above this one. --Riptide (talk) 18:59, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Also moving Japanese franchise disambigs to their American counterparts (e.g. LOTM to Armada, Adventure to RID2015, etc.), except in instances where two characters with the same name exist. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 19:17, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

I have reinserted those remarks where they belonged. The "disambig by continuity instead of by franchise because Japan" is no longer a "proposal," it has already happened, and I think it's a mistake that rather seriously breaks the wiki which is why I asked several times for it to be undone, at least until people could vote on it in the light of day. I do not see "because Japan" as a worthwhile reason. Once we create "Overlord (G1)," there is no internally consistent reason to have a "Quickstrike (BW)." Someone born in 2003 who never heard of any Transformers pre-Animated will have no idea why we are breaking up certain series or characters, and for them to get it they'll have to learn a lot of background about Transformers before they can start actually learning about Transformers. Upthread I saw a bunch of people say the equivalent of "Obviously this is a great idea!", with none of them explaining exactly what was so great about it. Would anyone care to start? Preferably after this radical change has been reversed, so people can decide in good faith whether or not it's good instead of feeling like they have to come to terms with a diktat that was forced on them? Thanks. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 19:52, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Moving back because you're continuing to miss the point. Moving late JG1 to G1 and BWII/Neo to BW isn't being done by continuity family, it's because they were being sold as G1/BW toys. They're not franchises, they're sublines. By the same token, if we have Overlord (Masterforce), we should move Darksteel (Prime) to Darksteel (Beast Hunters). The treatment of JG1 and JBW as full franchises in place of sublines is rooted in misunderstanding from over a decade ago, and the passage of time has allowed us to gain a better understanding of what these lines actually were. Hence why JG1's and JBW's toyline pages were merged back into their parent toyline pages a year ago. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 20:02, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Also going to point out that Overlord was at Overlord (G1) until 2009. Escargon (talk) 20:03, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

If toy packaging and instructions support "flattening" the G1s and BWs into G1 and BW, then, okay, fine. That IS how we do things. That is the letter of our law. What sent off my alarm bells is the flattening, which felt very "we're changing fundamentally how we're organizing things," away from franchise-of-origin, and also the doing it in two days. I actually didn't see the ACTUAL "let's do this by continuity family" discussion one subheader above until later! Which I guess is alarm bells vindicated, I dunno. And that's a whole other thing. But: It's just, like, if you're going to move literally hundreds of pages... give it more than two days. Give me a heads up, even. (Though I really have a feeling Saix wanted to get this done before I found out. It's a feeling.) --ItsWalky (talk) 22:25, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Entirely fair. I will say that I think that, while the pages shouldn't have been moved to begin with, I don't think we should go through the huge ordeal of moving them back until we have come to an agreement on this just to prevent a repeated back-and-forth mass-page-move. (Of course, if people agree that the pages should be at (Masterforce) et al, absolutely move them back.) --10:05, 21 September 2021 (EDT)

JG1 and JBW series are repeatedly listed as franchises all over this wiki, including on the Franchise page and on their own pages. If the argument is "the instructions say Japanese-G1-font-then-Victory, so it's just a subline of G1 and not its own thing," then we are still very much hurled into the same problem I've been talking about. The late-G1 "Thunderclash windshield" logo is used on G2 and BW, so Blackarachnia is every bit as G1 as is Deathsaurus. Or are we basing this on ad hoc judgments of how prominent the older logo is, whether it's on the top or the bottom or bigger or smaller or what color they use? I also notice that Return of Convoy was not re-disambigged into G1, even though the packaging for Grandus (ROC) has the same "Fight! etc" livery and proportions as the other JG1 lines. If next week two people started to agitate for BW to get re-tagged as G1 because of the instruction font precedent, our only argument against that would be "No, we like BW too much for that" (but don't worry, we wouldn't be expected to reclassify Beast Machines, because that didn't use the late-G1 font. So Obsidian stays within Beasts, but Blackarachnia doesn't, it's easy to remember, surely friendly to new users....) This was not carefully reasoned through, and anything done by an automated script can be undone the same way. By rights people should have to make a tight and comprehensive argument both of why this change would improve the wiki and why it definitely won't reclassify other long-recognized franchises into mere sublines of G1 that now just get called G1.

(EDIT - moving the Overlord/Darksteel point to the end. It seems nearly all of the TF:Prime:Beast Hunters line were clearly designated as such except for Darksteel and some other Target dudes who were just TF:Beast Hunters. Really don't think people want to argue for dissolving a half-dozen long-recognized franchises because of that. That is literally the opposite of what "exception" means.--Thylacine 2000 (talk) 10:04, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

For what it's worth, Return of Convoy was the only real line to branch out from the JG1 toyline, even if just a little. Everything before that was strictly F!SRLT, with sub-branding used for specific cases (e.g. The Headmasters for Headmaster characters, including the ones from the Masterforce cartoon, Targetmaster was used for Targetmaster characters, Seacons for the Seacons, etc, etc). Scramble City was the only exception to this, with it being used for Metroplex, Trypticon, Ultra Magnus and Galvatron, instead of just the combiners. Super-God Masterforce, Victory and Zone were titles that were never used in the toyline at all. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 10:24, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

I second Thylacine's proposal to include the ROC guys in the move to G1. --Jimsorenson (talk) 10:26, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

Oh, I wasn't against a move for the ROC guys to G1, just pointing out the weird branding that was JG1. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 10:29, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

nobody actually do that for at least 20 seconds --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 10:43, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

I didn't move the ROC guys because I forgot about them, not because of any particular reasoning. Saix (talk) 12:17, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

Thank you for making that clear. So we are left without the sub-brand / logo issue altogether, back at square one. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 12:57, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

Are we? If the toylines don't have any mention of Masterforce, Victory, Zone et al, that feels like strong evidence for those franchises being part of G1 in Japan, exactly like Beast Hunters. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like your main point of objection is "well, we've always done it like this"... but that was because Western fandom was previously unaware that JG1 was all one large toyline. I don't think the idea is to change the disambigs while changing nothing else about our coverage; we should probably update all of the way we cover these sub-series rather than treating them as their own full franchises like we currently do. --Riptide (talk) 13:35, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

Popping in out of sequence to say, for future readers, that here is where someone should have doublechecked the assertions that "the toylines don't mention Masterforce, Victory, etc.," and "the toyline only says F!SRLT plus the gimmick subline like Targetmasters." Because it turns out, the Masterforce, Victory, and Zone boxes totally do say Masterforce, Victory, and Zone on them. I regret that this was not done until several days later. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 16:06, 25 September 2021 (EDT)

Because the ROC thing undermines that. If the other JG1 lines have no unique logos specifically on the boxes and instructions, and that's why they were merged into one big thing, then we've now been told several times that ROC does have those but the person who made the merge only left them out of the merge purely by accident and several pro-mergers are saying ROC should also be merged now. It looks like there isn't clear agreement on what the grounds for inclusion are. I am not against changing "what we've always done" as a matter of pure principle, but treating all of those series the way we treat subline imprints pretty radically changes the meaning of that concept. There are no other sublines (i.e. Powerlinx Battles, Primus Unleashed) that have completely separate storylines, settings, and casts. We'd surely have to keep their write-ups separate anyway, just as we do with the many many Optimus Primes that Hasbro considers to be all the same guy. What is the benefit of the change, to us and our readers? And if we are including ROC with the logo that was supposedly of equal importance that maybe it shouldn't be included but nevermind, why doesn't this suck in G2 and BW? --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 14:55, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

I actually think that it's debatable whether ROC should be included, same as with Operation Combination. I will note that G2 is "Transformers: G-2" and BW is "Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers"; neither has the "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers" branding that was given to the entire rest of JG1, which firmly delineates them as separate from the original line. --Riptide (talk) 15:06, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

Should have been clearer: my concern is about G2/BW disambigs being tipped into USG1, which would become in-bounds if the supposedly important distinct-toy-branding-of-ROC-keeping-it-out-of-JG1 was decided not to matter anymore. If we're making these judgments based on the level of labeling that makes something a distinct franchise, we need to be consistent. Can we at least agree on that guardrail? I'm still not embracing it - we all know Masterforce et al have their own very distinct logos that we would continue to display - but at least can understand it. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 15:29, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

Note that several Return of Convoy Autobot Micromasters also share the same names as their G1 Decepticon Micromaster counterparts, so many of those won't be receiving the "(G1)" tag anyway. But nonetheless, all of those toys were still sold under the "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers" toyline logo. The secondary "Return of Convoy" logo they had was no different that the other secondary logos had by previous FSRLTF toys, such as "Scramble City", "The Headmasters", "Targetmaster", and "Godmaster". Thy, it really seems you're only harping on this because you can't grasp the idea that one toyline had five different cartoons in Japan (and another single toyline later had four different cartoons), when the idea of one show per cartoon has only been a thing in Hasbro's markets; a concept that Japan was never beholden to. --Sabrblade (talk) 16:14, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

Specifically, the only ROC characters that would be moved are Sky Garry and Grandus. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 17:34, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

By my read - and please tell me if I got this wrong - Fanofcoolstuff says ROC is distinctive enough that it wouldn't be merged into G1, Riptide says it's a real debate and probably shouldn't merge, Saix said it would have been merged but got left out by accident, and Sabrblade says it's not so distinct after all and "nonetheless" will at least partially merge. And that was all in one day. To be very clear, I don't care about ROC. This is probably the longest conversation about ROC in world history. But since a whole shitton of stuff just got G1-ified, whatever can prevent that suddenly got very important! My point all along has been that if having a distinct-ish logo and storyline can still see a series get disambig merged one level up, then G2 and BW can be disambigged as G1 and we don't really have anything stopping that from happening except personal favoritism. Someone could ask next week "why NOT re-disambig G2 as G1?" and just from today's conversation I really do not see how we would have an answer. What, is the G2 toyline or cartoon more distinct from G1 than Victory was? We need a clear consistent disambig system that we can explain to newcomers under which Victory is G1 now and Beast Wars Neo is BW now but G2 and BW cannot be turned into G1 now. Do we have that system now? If so, what is it based on? If you think it's at all self-evident, it isn't. Maybe I can't grasp it - but if that's the case, I am not so special that I would expect to be the only one. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 18:16, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

This is all a fair point, and I am sincerely glad for the dissenting opinion! I guess the question is "at what point does the Generation 1 "franchise" stop being a franchise"? In Japan, at least, I would argue that the answer to that question is "when they stopped using Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers"; that seems like the clearest delineation, given that that puts it at the same place we consider to be the dividing line in the US (between the Micromasters and G2). If we consider FSRLTF to be the Japanese name for the G1 franchise, just like "Micron Legend" is to Armada and "Adventure" is to RID15, then there's a clear divider that means G2 and BW can't be considered part of it. --Riptide (talk) 18:39, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

I freely admit that I wasn't entirely convinced at first, but after considering the issue for a few days I've ultimately decided that this consolidation is the right move. When the wiki was still taking shape in the late 2000s, individual franchise components were still very insular--chopped up, sequestered away, and written under the assumption that characters and concepts would likely never be revisited in any meaningful way, or backported into American Transformers culture. Look at Deathsaurus's article for a good example of this: not just Victory, but also Zone, Dreamwave, Timelines, Wings Universe, two IDW universes, and even a random cameo in the original Marvel timeline thanks to TF '84. It seems weird to disambiguate by his franchise of origin when almost 64% of the headers in his page have nothing to do with Victory, or even Japanese G1 at all! We don't, for instance, disambiguate Windblade (G1) by "Windblade (IDW)", even though here's arguably more instance to do so, particularly when it comes to the hordes of continuity-transplanted characters who keep showing up in stuff like IDW2 and the crossover comics.

We all know that Hasbro and its licensees don't view Transformers canon and continuity the same way we do, and this has led to an increasing amount of bleed between different stories--between stuff like IDW's ongoing comic stories freely pulling from whatever catches their fancy, and FunPub stuff like Beast Wars Uprising and AVP, I think that this debate should probably go beyond the intricacies of packaging minutiae... but, well, now I feel like I'm conflating these two separate proposals together, so for the time being I think that reorganizing the JG1 characters like this is a good thing.Grum (talk) 18:49, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

It's also worth noting that the ID numbers for the toys keep counting up all the way through Return of Convoy, furthering the argument that these are all part of one larger toyline. Same with Beast Wars. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 19:00, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

Thy, you keep confusing "G1" the toyline (known in Japan as "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers") with "G1" the continuity family. G2 and BW are part of the latter, yes, but both are not part of the former. And "Return of Convoy" is basically a subline imprint, like what "The Unicron Battles" was for Armada. It's the same toyline with just an extra logo. And as Cyberlink says above, it continues the same ID numbering system as the rest of the FSRLTF line. G2 and BW were both separate toylines from G1 in both Japan and in Hasbro's markets. For Japan, neither were "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: G-2" or "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: Beast Wars", they were just "Transformers: G-2" and "Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers" (losing both the "Fight!" and "Robot" parts of the FSRLTF title, even). And each even used a separate ID numbering system from that of FSRLTF. --Sabrblade (talk) 01:45, 23 September 2021 (EDT)

I just want to make it clear AGAIN that I was never against the move of (ROC) to (G1). I was just simply pointing out how the packaging is slightly different. I apologize if I made that unclear. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 19:28, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

I want to apologize for igniting this whole thing. My Sunday boredom and rush to get things done got the best of me, and I'm sorry. If it's decided to revert my moves, I'm fully willing to undo all of my edits, when I can get the time. (Sorry for the late reply, I'm very busy with irl stuff for this week and the next.) Saix (talk) 17:22, 21 September 2021 (EDT)

I realize most of the conversation was around the JG1 disambig, but I really don't like the suggestion to collapse the other Japanese line disambigs into the US lines. Using Adventure as an example, Cosmos was released in Adventure — he's not an RiD character, having no presence in the RiD version of the line. I know we tend to lean on the US version of things as the source of truth, but this to me feels like it implies something that isn't true. Spectre (talk) 20:41, 22 September 2021 (EDT)

Maybe that's the case, but to most users (MD), (SL) and such are going to not mean anything. Broadly speaking, the "Heavy Metal (Energon)" is accurate in that the character came from the Japanese counterpart to the Energon line; when you open the page itself it'll explain the specifics of the character's origin more clearly. --Riptide (talk) 13:39, 23 September 2021 (EDT)

It's been discovered that, despite the ID numbers restarting, none of the Operation Combination toys actually have an "Operation Combination" logo, just the standard "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers" logo used by every phase of the line before it. And that the Return of Convoy toys all still have the same "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers" logo while the secondary "Return of Convoy" logo does not have its own separate "Transformers" part, meaning that that logo is not "Transformers: Return of Convoy" but simply "Return of Convoy". Though, none of the ROC Micromasters can be moved to G1 since that tag is already used by their Hasbro Decepticon counterparts, so it would just be Grandus and Sky Garry. Out of all the Operation Combination toys, only six of them currently use the "(OC)" tag: Sandstorm, Falcon, Circuit, Discharge, Glide, and Windy. And of those six, only the latter three would be moved to "(G1)" since the former three share names with other G1 characters. And I really can't see anyone raising a fuss over Discharge, Glide, and Windy using the "(G1)" tag. Also, Scrash uses "(OC)" since there is an Animated Scrash, but again, no sane person would complain about him becoming "Scrash (G1)". --Sabrblade (talk) 13:14, 24 September 2021 (EDT)

On that note, as part of this, I think we should consider merging the ROC Micromasters back into their Hasbro counterparts' pages, as they have no independent fiction and are 100% identical to the Hasbro releases save for the faction symbol on their boxes. Nothing says we can't chalk this up to "it's the same guy but they're an Autobot in JG1". -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 13:39, 24 September 2021 (EDT)

Feels quite sensible. --Jimsorenson (talk) 14:17, 24 September 2021 (EDT)

Also we should move all the JG1 series to "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: Whatever", since they all include it as part of the title and we're currently very inconsistent in its usage. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 17:21, 24 September 2021 (EDT)

So just to be absolutely clear about what we've determined here, One: The graphic we had listed as the Return of Convoy logo is in truth a modifier on the classic F!SRLT logo in the style of the rest of JG1; Two: the original, solo Fight! Super Lifeform Transformer logo continues to appear on toy packaging through Return of Convoy and Operation Combination. Operation Combination is the last line where this occurs and can be considered the definitive end of the original F!SRLT branding. Hope this helps clear things up. -AzimuthAcolyte (talk) 13:57, 24 September 2021 (EDT)

It would make since to consider everything before G2; G1. -DDog (talk) 14:37, 24 September 2021 (EDT)

I have made some new discoveries on the matter. The FSRLTF, 2010, and Victory cartoons all used the FSRL text in their title logos, while The Headmasters, Masterforce, and Zone do not. Meanwhile, in the next-episode previews for The Headmasters, Masterforce, and Victory, all three omit the FSRL text from their series names in the narration, only calling themselves "Transformers: The Headmasters", "Transformers: Chojin Masterforce", and "Transformers: Victory". Likewise, Zone does not have any FSRL text in either its title logo or its theme song lyrics (just "Transformers: Zone"), but its DVD bonus features do have FSRL text added to the Zone logo. Meanwhile, the Japanese dub of BW refers to itself as "Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers" in both its title logo and theme song lyrics, but just "Beast Wars" in its next-episode previews. BWII's logo reads "Beast Wars II: Super Lifeform Transformers", but its next-episode previews consistently call it "Super Lifeform Transformers: Beast Wars II". Likewise, Neo is called "Super Lifeform Transformers: Beast Wars Neo" in both its title logo and next-episode previews. Metals is "Super Lifeform Transformers: Beast Wars Metals" in its title logo, but just "Beast Wars Metals" in the next-episode previews. The first Metals movie is "Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers - Metals" in its logo, but the characters shout "Beast Wars: Metals". Likewise, the second Metals movie is "Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers - Metals - Convoy Daihenshin!" in its logo, but the characters shout "Beast Wars: Metals - Convoy Daihenshin!" And finally, Returns is "Super Lifeform Transformers: Beast Wars Returns" in its logo while the characters just say "Beast Wars Returns". So, while logos vary, the only shows to actually speak either the FSRL or SRL text are just BWII and Neo (and technically BW but only in its theme song). Meaning that while the franchises are "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers" (nicknamed "Transformers" for short) and "Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers" (nicknamed "Beast Wars" for short), not all of these shows are necessarily beholden to using the full titles of each franchise along with each respective subheading. So we needn't necessarily have to move Transformers: The Headmasters et al to "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: The Headmasters" et al. If anything, I'd suggest just leaving out the FSRL text from every JG1 series after 2010, since none of them used it to refer to themselves verbally. --Sabrblade (talk) 01:09, 25 September 2021 (EDT)

Did no one look at the back of these JG1/JBW boxes? Because the murals on the back of Masterforce, Victory, and Zone boxes plainly do have the unique Masterforce, Victory, and Zone franchise logos. The stuff repeatedly said to not be on toy product actually is very much there. So, uhhh....--Thylacine 2000 (talk) 15:16, 25 September 2021 (EDT) http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6Qu8NMnPbX0/U9FNiQT6Z3I/AAAAAAAADxs/c1n1Srl37po/s1600/20140706_125112.jpg https://tfsource.com/products/view/product_id/1659/

The back of Overlord's box says Masterforce in Japanese AND English! --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 15:31, 25 September 2021 (EDT)

That...really doesn't change the fact that the original F!SRLFT logo is still very much front and center on the box. Nor the continued ID numbers between all the lines. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 16:15, 25 September 2021 (EDT)

It changes the assertion made about 6 times by multiple merge advocates - and in the "Summary and Vote" section below until it was just struck out a second ago - that there wasn't any unique branding on the toy product and we've only been treating the toylines as separate because of old assumptions and inertia. I will grant that the ID numbers are a piece of evidence in favor of a merge, but it now looks like that's the only one left. Are we going to make a change this big over a checklist? When this merge was already made, was it made based on believing something that isn't true? --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 16:29, 25 September 2021 (EDT)

Not really. Honestly, it doesn't change much; seems like it's no different a case than 2010, which had the normal logo on the front and the 2010 logo on the back. And we acknowledge that as a subline of G1 while still giving it a franchise page; should the vote pass, the other series would be treated exactly the same. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 16:35, 25 September 2021 (EDT)

I'm comfortable with my vote. I don't think a tiny logo on the back smaller than the team logo is that big a deal. If anything it reinforces the idea of how messy and subjective what constitutes a franchise is. Maybe others might feel differently and change their vote. We'll see.--Jimsorenson (talk) 16:38, 25 September 2021 (EDT)

I absolutely believe that a logo on the back of the toy packaging does not outrank the main logo on the front. --Riptide (talk) 16:55, 25 September 2021 (EDT)

Thinking more about this, the notion of the "media logos" (as I'll call them) being on the back of the boxes doesn't strike me as being all that different from when the original 2010-2011 Transformers: Generations line had secondary "Transformers: War for Cybertron" media logos on its packaging for the figures based on the designs from that video game. In those cases, the media logo was there to say "Hey, the specific Generations figures bearing this second logo represent characters that are also featured in the video game that this other logo is advertising." But it did not mean that the toys featuring that logo were suddenly part of a toyline named "Transformers: War For Cybertron" or even "Transformers: Generations - War For Cybertron". It just meant that certain toys sold in the "Transformers: Generations" toyline represented characters featured in a contemporary video game called "Transformers: War For Cybertron". Likewise, the media logos on the back of the FSRLTF toys indicated which FSRLTF toys were affiliated with which cartoon and manga of each media logo belonged to. --Sabrblade (talk) 18:47, 25 September 2021 (EDT)

It's the same kind of thing we've most recently seen in the Cyberverse toyline. There the main franchise named remained "Cyberverse", with added imprints like "Bumblebee: Cyberverse Adventures" or "Dinobot Adventures". The additional logos alongside F!SRLT just denote the subline of that year, like the aforementioned Cyberverse or the three lines within the War for Cybertron Trilogy franchise. --McBaggins (talk) 01:30, 26 September 2021 (EDT)

More findings. I just did a binge-watching of almost every Japanese G1 toy commercial that we have covered in our Commercial/Japan article, and have observed that not every year's commercials actually used the secondary logos for each series. The 1985 and 1986 commercials all use just the standard FSRLTF logo, with the 1986 commercials also using the Scramble City logo for the specific toys that logo pertains to. By 1987, the FSRLTF logo just becomes a standard "Transformers" logo without the FSRL text, with only one 1987 commercial actually using The Headmasters logo (that being the specific Headmasters toy commercial, but not the Fort Max and Scorponok commercial), and none of the 1988 ones using the Masterforce logo. 1989 and 1990, however, DO use the Victory and Zone logos, respectively, while in 1991, only the Sky Garry and Grandus commercials use the Return of Convoy logo while the Star Convoy (ironically) and Sixliner ones do not. The 1992 Sixtrain commercial, meanwhile, goes back to only using the "Transformers" logo. --Sabrblade (talk) 09:20, 26 September 2021 (EDT)

Is there a reason why Operation Combination is not included in our own very long FSLRT toyline page, when our OC toyline page says it's part of FSLRT? https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Fight!_Super_Robot_Lifeform_Transformers_(toyline) https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Fight!_Super_Robot_Lifeform_Transformers:_Operation_Combination_(toyline) For the record, here are OC boxes front and back: http://heroicdecepticon.blogspot.com/2012/02/transformers-operation-combination-tf.html?m=1 --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 08:23, 2 October 2021 (EDT)

It's funny you mention this as a discussion was brought up earlier lol. I think it is safe to fold into the JG1 page. It pretty much follows the other sublines, with only the ID numbers setting it apart from the rest. We have reason to believe that it was probably forgotten about during the merge of the other pages a few years ago. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 08:51, 2 October 2021 (EDT)

It's leftover from before the big FSRLTF page was compiled together. It was initially left out because its renumbered ID system confused us into thinking it was a separate thing. But the recent discovery that its toy packaging never used any other logo has reopened talk of reincorporating it. Thy, if there are still things related to these talks that are still unchanged right now, it doesn't mean we're deliberately leaving them alone. It means that nothing has been done about them yet as these talks and votes are still ongoing. --Sabrblade (talk) 10:37, 2 October 2021 (EDT)

Summary of discussion and vote

So I'm going to summarise all the information as clearly as I can for everyone to vote on. For clarity I will be referring to the Japanese G1 franchise as "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers" to distinguish it from "Generation 1" as a more general concept.

The "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers" toyline is unambiguously a single, cohesive toyline. Rather than being split into separate lines for each cartoon, it uses specific brandings for different subgroups like Headmasters and Godmasters, akin to the Micro Transformers logo on G1 Micromaster toys. The one exception to this is Return of Convoy, which has its own co-branded logo, but the "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers" logo is still on the packaging regardless. CLARIFICATION: The series logos are on the packaging, but only on the back, with the exception of Return of Convoy. The toy numbering remains consistent up through Return of Convoy before being reset for Operation Combination, but even then the toy packaging didn't actually carry any Operation Combination logos.

Regarding tie-in media, the cartoons are packaged individually with their own titles, though it's worth noting that this also applies to "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers 2010" (G1 season 3). The manga were also given their individual series' branding (apart from 2010 and Return of Convoy), but were collected as "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers: The Comics". While the in-series Headmasters and Masterforce title cards don't use "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform", supplementary material for the cartoons does.

If the "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers" title is treated as the distinguishing factor, there is no risk of G2 or Beast Wars also being subsumed. Generation 2 was sold in Japan as "Transformers: G-2", while Beast Wars was "Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers".

Lastly, all of this also applies to "Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers". Just replace "Victory" and "Masterforce" with "BWII" and "Neo", "2010" with "Metals", and "G-2" with "Car Robots".

With all this taken into account, there seem to be two possible ways to take this:

• Keep viewing each of these brandings as their own full-fledged franchise. While the toyline does not carry any franchise branding, it can be covered as a single toyline covering multiple franchises; the fact that each year's branding was used across multiple pieces of fiction means it should be treated as the mark of a full franchise.
• Treat "Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers" and "Beast Wars: Super Lifeform Transformers" as each being a single franchise, with the individual yearly brandings as subsets of these lines. This seems to be how they are considered in Japan: individual components of a single overarching line. The shared branding across fiction is no different to how the "Beast Hunters" branding is shared by Prime Season 3 and the IDW comic.

Please cast your votes below. --Riptide (talk) 21:32, 24 September 2021 (EDT)

• I vote for option two. McBaggins (talk) 21:35, 24 September 2021 (EDT)
• I vote for Option two as well. MrRald (talk) 21:37, 24 September 2021 (EDT)
• 2. Jimsorenson (talk) 21:38, 24 September 2021 (EDT)
• Definitely leaning towards Option 2. F!SRLF appears on all the toy packaging, and the ID numbers continue on from one another. It's clear Takara thought of them as one franchise. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 21:44, 24 September 2021 (EDT)
• Option 2 seems the most sensible given the information presented. -AzimuthAcolyte (talk) 21:46, 24 September 2021 (EDT)
• Option 2 Grum (talk) 22:01, 24 September 2021 (EDT)
• Option 2. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 22:30, 24 September 2021 (EDT)
• Option 2 -- Fritz (talk) 23:10, 24 September 2021 (EDT)
• Option 2. Each is one franchise with mutliple cartoons (I've posted some new findings above) --Sabrblade (talk) 01:09, 25 September 2021 (EDT)
• Option 2 -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 04:39, 25 September 2021 (EDT)
• I'm also going with option 2. The fact that the series logos are on the backs of the toy packaging is arguably more evidence that we should treat them as we do other subline imprints, in my view. --Riptide (talk) 16:18, 25 September 2021 (EDT)
• Option 2 --notsoalex (talk) 16:41, 25 September 2021 (EDT)
• 2, if we're going by the wiki's pre-established rules of (generally) adhering to logos on packaging and instructions. --ItsWalky (talk) 15:45, 26 September 2021 (EDT)
• Option 1, though that's more of a gut feeling.--Nevermore (talk) 18:18, 26 September 2021 (EDT)
• Option 1. "There are no logos" became "Logos on the back don't count" a bit too quickly for my comfort. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 19:17, 26 September 2021 (EDT)
• Option 1. I'm uncomfortable with the combination of being extremely literal in one regard — "All JG1 is a single line known as Fight! Super Robot Lifeform Transformers" — while using fuzzy terminology in another — "Generation 1 refers to everything pre-G2 in all territories". I feel like this decision was made hastily and the proposal is not balancing accuracy and clarity in a thoughtful enough way for me at this stage. -- Spectre (talk) 15:56, 28 September 2021 (EDT)
• Option 2, but not for the stated reasons. Standards for naming pages should be based on accessibility to new visitors, not satisfying the most technically accurate organizational scheme devised by older visitors. Some new fan who enjoys modern stories about Deathsaurus, Overlord, or Star Saber isn't going to understand what (Victory) or (Masterforce) is compared to (G1). But they're also not going to understand "It's at (G1) instead of (Victory) because we analyzed 30y old box art captions in a foreign language to satisfy ourselves about the change." We don't need to twist ourselves into knots to justify this move on technicalities while also finding reasons not to do it for (BW) while still claiming to be internally consistent...*inhale*...if we just say, "We're doing this to be more accessible." Boom, done. --Xaaron (talk) 09:49, 29 September 2021 (EDT)
• Option 2--ZacAttack (talk) 04:28, 3 October 2021 (EDT)
• Option Two. Reducing the number of disambig parentheses is useful here. Saix (talk) 12:29, 4 October 2021 (EDT)

Okay, the vote's been running for two weeks now, so we're probably gonna wind it down soon. If anyone's got any last minute votes or thoughts, now's the time to add them. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 00:47, 9 October 2021 (EDT)

All right, with a final count of 16 to 3, the vote is overwhelmingly in favor of Option 2, folding the Japanese G1 and Beast Wars sublines back into their parent franchises. Thanks everyone for voting and lending your opinions to the discussion. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 18:32, 18 October 2021 (EDT)

Disambigs for TM2 characters

While we're still on the topic of page moves and titles and what not, I figured I should bring up these two cases that have bugged me for a while now.

I personally feel that we should move "Dinobot II" and "Prowl II" to "Dinobot (TM2)" and "Prowl (TM2)", respectively. These two were not given the Roman numeral suffix things (for lack of a better term) until the IDW Beast Wars Sourcebooks which were written what, 10 or so years after the fact?

Both the toy packaging for the pair and their bios never gave them that title and I'm pretty sure Dinobot was never called "Dinobot II" in the BW cartoon (granted, I haven't watched it in about 2 years, so I could be wrong). It just feels incredibly weird that we're naming these two after the Sourcebook names and not their original names.

MrRald had also brought up on Discord that the fiction surrounding Prowl II and Prowl (TM2) should be split, but I personally think that we should keep them together as it's the same character, just with a different origin, which is no different to say any G1 character between Marvel, IDW and the cartoon, etc. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 22:41, 19 September 2021 (EDT)

I agree with this change because the use of Dinobot II and Prowl II in the titles gives the wrong idea that these names have been used much more often than they actually have. Also there's always the possibility that someone will use those names in an official capacity just because they saw them on this wiki, and I think that's something we should try to avoid. --Fritz (talk) 00:02, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

The Sourcebook didn't even use the "II" in anything outside of the page titles and the Credits Index. Not in any of the biographical information for any of the "II" characters. In fact, the Credits Index goes the extra mile of placing each "II" inside a set of parentheses like "(II)", as if to say "These are each the second character listed with a shared name, but the 'II' isn't actually part of their names." --Sabrblade (talk) 00:48, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Prowl-II-the-owl-and-Binaltec-car was such a chore to put together, the only thing worse would be finding a way to take it apart - and both halves would need to refer to one another so much they would take up more space and cause more confusion than the single article currently is. Let's leave it alone. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 09:52, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Yeah, as stated above I'm personally not for a split. I think MrRald also has plans on bringing it up on the talk page itself, so I'll leave that discussion more up to him to bring up. But what's your thoughts on the moves to "(TM2)"? -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 11:35, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Are either "Dinobot II" or "Prowl II" canonically-published names, or are they convenient shorthand this wiki made up? Beast Wars Universe says "TM2 Dinobot", the BotCon 2002 postcard set says "Dinobot (Transmetal 2)". I don't own BW Sourcebook. In general I side with names that are official (even if obscure) over those we made up. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 13:03, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

They were used officially, but only in the Sourcebooks for the most part. In Prowl's case, the Sourcebook use was kinda pseudo-retconned into being the JG1 version of the character, with AVP building onto the story and solidifying him as part of the Binaltech stuff. But other than that, both prowl and Dinobot have appeared in more pieces of fiction without the "II" in the name. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 13:30, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Turns out "Dinobot II" was used in Earth Wars. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 17:52, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

Before Dinobot II with the Roman Numeral in the Sourcebook, Dinobot 2 was used in the Dreamwave Summer Special title page for "Ain't no Rat." --KilMichaelMcC (talk) 13:10, 23 September 2021 (EDT)

After a lot of thinking and research, I think Prowl II should be moved to Prowl (Transmetal 2) to fit with the system used for Prowl (Magnaboss) and Silverbolt (Fuzor). The name Prowl II has been proved to be non diegetic and the Binaltech body is called Prowl 2 (possibly a callback to the Spychanger who used to be on the same article as the owl). As for the contents of the actual article I changed my mind on any need for splitting. I'd just make the chip chase Prowl fiction more self contained and I have a sandbox as proof of concept. MrRald (talk) 11:55, 9 October 2021 (EDT)

I agree with moving them to disambigs. Saix (talk) 13:14, 9 October 2021 (EDT)

I'm all in for more accessible disambigs over anal "this name with a hyphen was only used once and thus requires no disambig" nonsense.--Nevermore (talk) 18:07, 9 October 2021 (EDT)

"(TM2)" for both of these gets my vote. It's simple and eliminates the space in the middle of the tag. --Sabrblade (talk) 18:14, 9 October 2021 (EDT)

TM2 for Prowl is fine, but Dinobot II is an official name used more than once and it's... also what people call him, so. --ItsWalky (talk) 18:42, 9 October 2021 (EDT)

Isn't that only in Earth Wars, though? And it really wouldn't surprise me if Furman mainly did that because of our calling him "Dinobot II" in the first place. If that's the case, then shouldn't his original name in his primary media appearance(s) supersede later-given renames/nicknames in less prominent media? To use a bigger example, Hasbro has officially switched G1 Slag's name to Slug, but we don't use that name as the article's name because of the original media history wherein his name was Slag. TM2 Dinobot was always just "Dinobot" until Earth Wars. Dreamwave's description and the Sourcebook's page header were never diegetic. --Sabrblade (talk) 00:56, 10 October 2021 (EDT)

Alright, here are the fictional appearances of both characters that I know of and what name they are referred to by:

Dinobot: Toyline/toy packaging/bio = "Dinobot" BW cartoon = "Dinobot" 3H comics = "Dinobot" Dreamwave = "Dinobot 2" IDW BW 2006 = "Dinobot II" Battle Tactics = "Dinobot Transmetal II" Earth Wars = "Dinobot II" Total: "Dinobot" = 2, "Dinobot II" = 2, "Dinobot Transmetal 2" = 1, "Dinobot 2" = 1

Prowl: Toyline/toy packaging/bio = "Prowl" JG1 = "Prowl 2" (Binaltech), "Prowl II" (Ask Vector Prime) IDW BW 2006 = "Prowl II" (BW Sourcebook only), "Prowl" (comic itself) TransTech = "Prowl" IDW1 = unnamed cameo Total: "Prowl" = 3, "Prowl II" = 2, "Prowl 2" = 1

I also want to make note that, based on some digging that Nevermore and MrRald did earlier today, it seems the original Japanese transcript for the Binaltech fiction uses "プロール2" (aka "Prowl 2") rather than "Prowl II", which leads to a bit of inconsistency when the AVP entry and the Binaltech story are supposed to be set in the same universe. However, I'm under the impression that the name was changed to "Prowl II" to not confuse him with the RID01 Prowl 2 that was established as a Binaltech duplicate in the same AVP entry. But then again, Ichikawa was also building off of the BW Sourcebook bio for the character in the AVP entry which used "Prowl II", so that could have also been a mistake. Also keep in mind that the BW Sourcebook bio for Prowl was very loosely based on the Binaltech fiction (or at least it seems like it). I don't know about you, but my head hurts now. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 04:17, 10 October 2021 (EDT)

A few things to note about these findings. First, Dreamwave's use of "Dinobot 2" and the Sourcebook's use of "Dinobot II" were never diegetic. The Sourcebook just called him "Dinobot" in the biographical text of his profile, and the Credits Index labeled him as "Dinobot (II)" to denote that the "II" isn't actually part of his name. Earth Wars is the only thing to use it as such, and it came years and years after the fact.

Second, the "Prowl 2" name given in the System Description for the Binaltech toy does not refer to the name of the character but to the physical body unit built by Honda that Prowl's soul was to inhabit. It was designated "Prowl 2" because it was created to be a duplicate body for Prowl to use with the GT System in addition to his normal body (until the accident that destroyed his original body changed those plans and forced the duplicate body to be the primary, but I digress). When referring to the character personally, the toy's profile, System Description, and Story of Binaltech chapter all just refer to him as "Prowl". Looking at the AVP answer, its use of "Prowl II" to refer to the character reads as if the writer (be it Jim, Ichikawa, or both) was under the misinformed impression at the tie that the owl Maximal was literally named "Prowl II" diegetically in IDW's 2006 BW comics, which he wasn't. He too was just "Prowl".

Like Dinobot, the use of "Prowl II" by the Sourcebook was only in the page header for encyclopedic disambiguation, and was likewise labeled as "Prowl (II)" in the Credits Index to say that the "II" was never part of that Prowl's actual given name. Our Wiki article at the time merely gave the misinformed impression that it was, likely leading to the specific wording of the AVP answer. In other words, these numbered names really don't have much leg to stand on. --Sabrblade (talk) 08:50, 10 October 2021 (EDT)

So, about 1995 Generation 2...

At the risk of opening yer another can of worms, what about the 1995 figures? In the United States and Canada, the packaging had dropped the "Generation 2" branding by that point, though the European releases were still "Generation 2".--Nevermore (talk) 04:51, 27 September 2021 (EDT)

Feels like if Europe was still branding them as G2, and everyone else was just not branding them at all, they'd still be G2. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 12:45, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

The real problem is the 1993 European releases with G2 faction symbols but not the G2 logo. --Khajidha (talk) 13:23, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

Toys used as Props

There's been discussion on the Discord about noting the use of Transformers toys as props in various movies. I think it's absolutely noteworthy to add when they are physical props, along the line of Starscream in Top Gun or Shockwave in Aliens; they're using the physical toys in a real world sense as part of film production, similar to our note on Grimlock's toy page about his toy being in the British Museum. We've already got it on certain pages like Spaceballs because they are mentioned in fiction, but it think if we're going to do it, it should be an all or nothing thing. Something along the lines of this: ""Optimus Prime's toy was used in the movies Chuck Goes to McDonalds, Death God 2: Payback's a Bitch, and Larry the Donkey, and the television shows CSI: Berlin and Darla's Mystery Shop."

PUTTING THIS HERE BECAUSE I KNOW IT"S GONNA COME UP: I am specifically talking only through a real-world perspective of usage of props. Any discussion of in-fiction use is entirely irrelevant to me. If it's animated, I don't want it added. Escargon (talk) 16:32, 5 October 2021 (EDT)

This feels like something that would be easily abused by users looking for an excuse to add even the slightest mention of something peripherally related to Transformers to the wiki, and would lead down a slippery slope to our notes and trivia sections becoming absolutely bloated like the average Wikia. Strong oppose. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 16:36, 5 October 2021 (EDT)

The thing is we already have people bloating notes sections as is. I think worrying about any potential negative outcome actively hurts what we're capable of. Escargon (talk) 16:42, 5 October 2021 (EDT)

We have been deliberately avoiding "Razorbeast was in Fresh Prince and Beast Megatron was in Knock-Off and RID Megatron was in Sex and the City" since day-1 of this wiki. I think it's mildly interesting to include cases where the TF toys are "hidden" within a fictional world - such as Shockwave in Aliens, or Movie Bonecrusher on that CNN demonstration of how minesweepers work, precisely because they aren't supposed to be Transformers, they are supposed to be something else. But a notation of "such-and-such show had a character playing with a Transformer because Transformers are cool," ugh, no, heavy no. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 16:51, 5 October 2021 (EDT)

I'm on Thy's side here. Fun little trivial facts about a Transformers/Transformers-related producted being repurposed as some weird thing in the background of a movie is always an interesting thing to note. However, if it is something like a kid holding a toy in the background of one episode of a show or in a movie, that's when our notes section would get overly bloated with pointless facts. On the Spaceballs note though, the colouring book and lunchbox fit as a repurposing of a product in a movie since they clearly just plastered on a sticker over an official Transformers logo to pass it off as something else in the context of their film. That doesn't mean I'm for noting the use of a G1 Starscream in Topgun because of the theory that "in the movie's context it's just a jet toy" when there is no real proof of this. Unless it is blatantly obvious that it is being used as something that was not its intended purpose, then I feel it shouldn't be documented on this wiki.

I did have another idea for those who might feel strongly about listing toy appearances in other media outside of Transformers: What if we made a page similar to "Popular Earth vehicle alternate modes" that just compiles together a bunch of appearances from over the years where a random Transformers product/toy is being used as a prop for a kid to play with? We could list all of the most popular ones together like G1 Prime under a "Generation 1 Optimus Prime" header and then any odd cases like RID01 Megatron in Sex and the City where only a single use of a figure is shown can just be placed under a simple "Other" header. -- Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 20:19, 5 October 2021 (EDT)

I like the idea of a single page listing all toy appearances in off-brand media, could be something fun and informative to look through, and I think it would be preferable than listing them in the notes section of each character's page. Doing the latter could potentially clog the notes with trivia that is not actually relevant to the characters themselves. -- Fritz (talk) 23:56, 5 October 2021 (EDT)

I feel that as an encyclopedia, that whenever the media you are covering is depicted in another media, it is worth noting because it's making a cultural impact (whether it's big or small). I feel that nothing can be lost from listing these things. I can think of half a dozen times a Transformers toy has appeared in a TV series that is totally worth mentioning. I can see how on The Transformers: The Movie page that the Notes section is purely for information pertaining to the background of the movie itself and not to be abused, but that film has such a significance in one of the Goldbergs episodes, that it seems unjust to not refer to it somewhere on the wiki. I find stuff like this truly fascinating. So, it's either make a new section for stuff like that and include the info underneath, or make a new section that can link to a new page entirely. Thanks for reading. // Anythingspossibleforapossible (talk) 18:03, 10 October 2021 (EDT)

Merge ROC Micromasters with Hasbro Micromasters

As part of our reintegration of JG1 into G1, I'd like to merge Bombshock, Dropshot, Growl, Tracer, Grit, Hammer, Knockout, Sledge, Direct-Hit, Excavator, Power Punch, Stonecruncher, Fireshot, Half-Track, Meltdown, and Vanquish with their respective Hasbro counterparts. I think there's plenty of sufficient grounds:

• Their names and toys are identical in both markets, with the only difference being the faction symbol on the box.
• They have no fiction, aside from Growl making a brief appearance in Legends, but considering the Hasbro version has no Japanese fiction, that doesn't pose an issue.
• The "W teams" the latter twelve are part of in ROC aren't actually teams at all. According to Sabrblade's research into the original Takara toy bios, "each W Team is actually two teams, with each Micromaster pair being a team on their own. The Shuttle Rocket W Team is actually the Shuttle Team and Rocket Team. The Fire Tanker W Team is the Fire Team and Tanker Team. And so on and so forth."

Given all this, I don't think it's unreasonable to merge them together and just leave notes saying "this character was marketed as an Autobot in Japan". Any objections? -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 11:25, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

I thought this would apply to the Zone Micromasters too, but I see most of them at least changed names or colors (with Whisper (Zone) and Nightflight (Zone) being the exceptions), on top of having more fiction. I'm not opposed to the ROC guys being merged, since those are really sparse pages. Saix (talk) 11:38, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

I'm glad you brought this back up, as I feel it's important that we have some sort of consistent system to denote which Hasbro and Takara Micromasters we consider the same characters as each other, and which we consider different. Setting the Rescue Patrol and Rescue Patrol Team aside (since the existence of Holi and Fire's separate HasLab toys from the Siege toys of Stakeout and Red Hot indicates that the current Hasbro team is willing to consider them separate characters from each other, despite their original toy decos and factions being identical), the following setup is what's true for each and every Micromaster, minus the six-combiners:

• Category 1: Same name, same deco, same faction - Roadhandler, Hot House, Ironworks, Blaze Master (kinda), Eagle Eye, Sky High, Tread Bolt, Crumble, Groundpounder, Neutro, Takedown, Barricade, Ground Hog, Roller Force, Big Hauler, Heavy Tread, Hydraulic, Slow Poke, Phaser, Blast Master, Moonrock, Missile Master, Barrage, Heave, Wheel Blaze (kinda), Roadburner, Oiler, Slide, Power Run, Strikedown
• Category 2: Same name, same deco, different faction - Nightflight, Whisper, Bombshock, Dropshot, Growl, Tracer, Meltdown, Half-Track, Direct-Hit, Power Punch, Fireshot, Vanquish, Stonecruncher, Excavator, Sledge, Hammer, Grit, Knockout
• Category 3: Same name, different deco, same faction - Sidetrack, Sunrunner
• Category 4: Same name, different deco, different faction - Road Hugger
• Category 5: Different name, same deco, same faction - Highjump/Nutshell, Mudslinger/Footdemo, Powertrain/Freed, Tote/Flak, Freewheeler/Wheelrun, Swindler/Glorean, Tailspin/Spinchange, Erector/Cragun, Overload/Roadjet, Countdown/Moonradar, Motorhead/Motorstar, Big Daddy/Grease, Greaser/Legs, Hubs/Lucas, Trip-Up/Vanishing
• Category 6: Different name, same deco, different faction - Storm Cloud/Star Cloud, Tailwind/Windrim, Flattop/Skywave, Roughstuff/Missile Bull, Airwave/Overair, Greasepit/Glasspit
• Category 7: Different name, different deco, same faction - Big Shot/Gunlift, Flak/Powerbomb
• Category 8: Different name, different deco, different faction - Blackjack/Black Heat, Detour/Deadhour, Hyperdrive/Gingham
• Category 9: Hasbro-only - Groundshaker, Skyhopper, Skystalker, Terror-Tread, Cement-Head, Retro, Surge, Pipeline, Gusher, Blackout, Spaceshot, Full-Barrel, Overflow
• Category 10: Takara-only - Gunrunner, Deadwheeler, Rabbicrater, Metrobomb, Sonic, Speeder, Drillbuster, Shotbomber, Spinner, Hot Rodimus

The way we have it now is that those in Categories 1 and 5 (minus Countdown/Moonradar) are the same characters between the Hasbro and Takara releases, while those in all other categories are separate characters. Of note is that Categories 3 and 7 are Hasbro's Battle Patrol and Takara's Battle Patrol Team, while Categories 4 and 8 are Hasbro's Sports Car Patrol and Takara's Super Car Patrol Team. Were I to have included Hasbro's Rescue Patrol and Takara's Rescue Patrol Team, they would have gone into Category 5, but both we and Hasbro consider them separate characters from each other like those in Category 6 (which includes Airwave/Overair, who even got separate Earthrise toys from Hasbro), minus the difference in faction. And, as mentioned, we have Countdown and Moonradar separate despite their toys falling into Category 5. --Sabrblade (talk) 16:43, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

BWU had members of the Battle Patrol Team (Powerbomb, Gunlift) and the Battle Patrol (Flak, Big Shot) as different characters, so they'd have to remain separate either way. Keeping this separation for the other two (Sidetrack, Sunrunner) keeps things consistent. Saix (talk) 16:54, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

I would guess that BWU did that because we had separate articles on them, and I feel like there's a push for not further propagating things that got that way because of us (e.g. Violengiguar). --flicky1991 17:47, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

I likely would have done it anyway. Please don't make any decisions based on what Beast Wars Uprising did. It's not intentional outlier.--Jimsorenson (talk) 19:28, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

Added in links to group together each patrol/squad's members. --Sabrblade (talk) 17:07, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

I'd be inclined to consider categories 2 and 3 the same characters, for sure, and at that point I feel like I'd have a hard time arguing that category 4 shouldn't also be the same character. So I guess in a nutshell, it feels like at the very least if they have the same name they should probably be the same character (it's already really common for characters to have multiple decos of the same toy, and wouldn't even be the first time a character has had toys of different factions) -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 17:54, 19 October 2021 (EDT)

The thing is, Categories 3 and 4 are linked with 7 and 8, respectively (3 and 7 are the Battle Patrol/Team and 4 and 8 are the Sports Car Patrol/Super Car Patrol Team). So anything we do with 3 and 4 must also apply to 7 and 8. Plus, the Air Strike Patrol/Team is similarly split between Categories 2 and 6, so they're linked as well. However, Category 6 is full of characters that we consider separate, particularly Airwave/Overair whom even Hasbro distinguished from each other in Earthrise. --Sabrblade (talk) 19:19, 19 October 2021 (EDT)