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Franchise Designations, part three

Since part 2's gotten huge...

I'm fine with the idea of dropping the tags from any characters who don't need disambiguation, I guess. Since most entries still need work ANYWAY, no big whoop, we can get to them over the normal course of things.

It doesn't really solve the issue of the tags when we NEED them, though. As it is, I vote "franchise of origin" using 2~3-letter abbreviations as the starter to reduce the number of double-tags out there. "Armorhide (ARM)" and "Armorhide (CYB)". We're gonna HAVE to do SOME doubles, but less is better. That second one... go with allegiance first, if that's the same, instead go with a subgroup or such. "Sky High (G1) (Pretender)" "Sky High (G1) (Micromaster)". I'd keep the franchise tag in these instances, because you never know when we might get a UT Sky High.

There IS some repetition between US/UK-G1 and J-G1, I'd rather go "series" for consistency's sake. "Guzzle (G1)" "Guzzle (MF)".

I favor the method with the least number of exceptions to it.--M Sipher 01:19, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Part of my protests that we're losing some context- but then I remember that same context comes form categories (G1 v Beast Era).

I'm still not... delighted by this proposal (mostly because I think the automatic 'Generation' designations made it easier to put links up without checking for escoteric naming) but I'm pretty alright with it. -Derik 01:28, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I still don't like it, and think it makes things needlessly complicated. I'd rather things be manageable than consistent, and I absolutely dread a (tag) system that has 40 different possibilities. --ItsWalky 02:44, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't get where this is supposedly "complicated". It's so incredibly cut-and-dried. "Complicated" is trying to decide which fiction carries more weight for what character, which version of the tag should be used for any random instance. "Series of origin" as the tag is simple. It's how the fandom refers to the characters as it is, as Steve-o has already noted. "What series did the character first appear in" is not a difficult question. Plus, I don't see how this is any different from how we handle the likes of G1 Grimlock or BW Cheetor.

My JOB is sorting through vast piles of data to present it as cleanly, simply and consistantly as possible. There is a big difference between "expansive" and "complicated". Yes, there are a lot of series. But we know where everyone debuted in our world. I can argue Trailbreaker was more important to Universe than G1. I'd rather not leave things up to that train of thought, espeically with how wonky the fiction is. --M Sipher 04:23, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't see any reason why we should even have double tags at all. They're redundant. I mean, there's no reason why we can't have Sky High (Pretender), Sky High (Micromaster), and if we ever get a UT Sky High, we can just deal with that then. It's incredibly simple to move a page. Two clicks, and a line of text. That's it. It's really not worth designing a system based around what will happen in the future, when it's so simple to just deal with problems when they come up.

Disambiguation's supposed to be to distinguish between multiple pages that would otherwise have the same name. It's not a categorization system. It's not meant for people to be able to guess what each and every URL on the wiki is. Under no system will there never be "esoteric" naming, since things like Sky High are going to be problematic no matter what. I'm really not in favour of this idea that we have to have this long pre-approved list of disambiguation tags and everything must follow that. I'd far rather just keep it simple. --Suki Brits 03:21, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree we can probably get away with removing most of the tags, mostly because I find that infinitely preferable to the Giant Freakin' Tag List Of Doom. --ItsWalky 04:08, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I would just as soon have SOME form of FACT-based, inarguable and consistant "how to mark this" when articles would need disambigution to AT LEAST START WITH. Yes, there's going to be some exceptions. But there's LESS of them that way, less room for ambiguity. As for using only single tags and no acronyms of single-word titles, fine. "Sky High (Pretender)", fine, because series-of-origin does fail there (we're lucky this happened in the era of rampant subgroups). "Thunderblast (Decepticon)", fine (if we end up with a non-Cybertron Thunderblast, then they can be "Thunderblast (Douche Wars)" or whatever... we're lucky Hasbro, despite name-re-uses, is generally good at keeping the re-uses spread out across difference series or at least factions). "Guzzle (Masterforce)", fine. "Armorhide (Armada)", fine. "Ricochet (Timelines)", fine. Multi-word tiles, sure, compress them. "Stampy (BWN)". This is about as simple AND consistant as it can get. --M Sipher 04:23, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree with everything you said. --Suki Brits 04:29, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

There are a few things going on in the page moves that I think have gotten not quite enough discussion, so I wanted to raise them here:

RiD versus RID - As ItsWalky commented on Talk:Hot Shot (RID), I don't remember reaching a consensus on this. I strongly prefer the all-caps version, but every time I've brought it up, nobody has said anything in response. But now there are pages being moved. Anybody want to express an opinion on this?

Preferred order of disambiguation - I noticed a couple of page moves such as (Scavenger (Universe Deluxe) moved to Scavenger (Deluxe)) which I thought might be a bad choice. I don't think any article should be disambiguated by size class alone. Maybe it's just me, but I do not remember the size classes of a lot of my toys, and certainly don't remember the size classes for a lot of the toys I don't own. Seeing "Scavenger (Deluxe)" tells me absolutely nothing. First choice for disambiguating should be franchise of origin. If that fails, then using subgroup or faction instead will usually do the trick. If that doesn't help, I would almost prefer something like altmode to size class. Size class, in my opinion, should be a last resort, and used only in conjunction with another word (usually franchise). Hence, "universe deluxe" would be okay.

Reactions, anybody?

--Steve-o 16:37, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

The Constructicons are probably the only time we'll have such a huge problem with this. We can't do them by faction, color, altmode, name, what-have-you, and in the case of the Universe ones, we can't use their franchise either. They just keep makin' freakin' Constructicons, and none of them are the same guys, even though they're all identical. Deluxe by itself is kinda wonky, because not only were they sold in two-packs as an ultra, but, well... we just don't have very many things descriptive enough to distinguish them. I think we just need to admit that we can't have a single-word disambiguation parenthetical for everyone. (Though, actually, upon reflection, perhaps Bonecrusher (Target) may suffice.)

In regards to RiD/RID, I'm opposite Steve, in that RID looks bleh to me, and much prefer RiD, and I'm wondering where this was discussed that we would change all the countless RiDs to RIDs. I'm open to changing my mind, and the people may overwhelm my opinion, but in the absence of this discussion, I want to know what's going on. --ItsWalky 17:00, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

(Target) works for me. It's a pretty easy identifier. Fuckin' Constructicons.

And I prefer (RiD) too. Something about (RID) just doesn't look right.

--M Sipher 17:25, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

With RID vs. RiD, that was... well, me not seeing anyone argue with Steve-o against it, and agreeing with the logic as he presented it. Sorry if I jumped the gun there.

On the other hand, I obviously agreed enough with what he said to go through with the moves in the first place. We don't have random case-drops in any other acronym, and if acronyms themselves don't work with random case-drops (except for something like, say, OpComb - two words smushed together, as noted above), then I think it should be all-caps.

I would personally favor consistent capitalization across acronyms over the possibility of it looking weird. I grant that we don't have any other three-word acronyms, though...

As to the Constructicons, I thought Universe Ultra was fine. I'm not entirely sure about store-origin as a possible tag, but I suppose my worry about it is in the same field as Steve's "would people remember what sizeclass this toy is?" issue; that is, if people would remember what store it came from. --Monzo 20:42, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Yea, it would probably be easyest to go with (Target) and (Micromaster) tags, assuming we count the toys European Energon release to be the same guys.

On a similar note, how are we going to handle the Color Changers vs. the Stormtroopers and Aquaspeeders? Although the specs are copied almost word-for word from the European G1 specs, and the names were switched, not just changed, and diffrent molds were used. Are the US and Euro characters with matching specs and bios the same guys, or are they diffrent characters alltogether? --FortMax 21:13, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Infoboxes

Should we have an infobox to unite all of the tangling information, like foreign naming, voice actors and continuity into one nice place? Something like this? Singularity 08:04, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

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