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Control art
There's been a lot of control art thrown up recently -- try [Megatron (BW)] for example -- but I'm not sure how to treat it yet. I certainly don't think it belongs up at the top of the article with the bios, and it would probably work better down near the toy section, but that area's going to be swamped with toy pics already. (I'm also concerned with the ethics of putting them all up on the wiki. Placing the entire contents of the BW Reborn DVD on the wiki can't possibly fall under Fair Use.)  --ItsWalky 22:35, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I figured it was fair game since there certainly seem to be a fair amount of comic scans, Genesis scans, DVD screenshots, as well as having Dan Khanna and Guido Guidi art posted. There's far more on the Golden Disc, but the only thing that really seemed needed was the toy art.  And true, I had no clue where it would fit, so it can be moved to wherever.--MCRG
 * It's a matter of proportion. There's a difference between scanning a panel from a comic book for an entry and having the entire comic book issue scanned, page-by-page.  This is a simple distinction.  --ItsWalky 23:49, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not putting up the entire disc.--MCRG
 * I think putting up every single piece of control art from the disc would be very different, fair-use wise, than is having up a few scattered comic panels and character portraits. Even if there is more to the disc than just the control art.  So I definitely do not think they should all be uploaded to this Wiki.  I'm also not sure what the point of uploading them here is...  They are neat, of course, but we aren't really envisioning this Wiki as a repository of every single piece of Transformers information ever.  It's a TF encyclopedia, basically.  I think having an article called control art would be a great idea, and could include a few examples.  And we can include control art for some of the characters' toys in the character articles if there's something especially interesting about it, like the spark figure on TM2 Megatron.  But including all of them is, I think, neither fair use nor useful.  --Steve-o 01:18, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Is this on an archive somewhere? Create a Control Art article, upload a few examples, and put a link to the off-site online archive.
 * If it's NOT online soemwhere, maybe you have to ask yourself- in an era when everything tf-related is online, why isn't this? Possibly peopel decided it was a tad gauche to upload a big chunk of the exclusive content of a comercial product while it was still being widely sold.
 * And even if ti wasn't- this wiki is not an archive for that kind of thing. We dont' have everyon'es box art up, or their tech-specs, or anythign else relatign to them.  In fact, we tend to fall back on box art just when there's no other images of characters.  On tech-specs for content when the character has no media appearances to guide us.
 * Control art is interesting- for what it is. It's appropriate to show off for, like, Megatron and Dinobot, where it shows off features that didnt' make it into the final toys.  The wiki is not an archive.
 * That said, the internet is full of archives. I love the control art.  Go put it up at one of the archives.  -Derik 02:15, 3 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I basically agree with everything Steve-O said. --M Sipher 02:38, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

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)

If we were to adopt a convention of that sort, the layout of the box would have to be drastically different than the one they use on Wikipedia. (For example, no motto because different versions of a character may have different mottos. No English (Japanese) name in the box's title because there are way more languages than two to cover.  Etc., etc.)  I think that we already provide all the important information in our "standard" character layout, though, so I don't really see the need for it. Did you have something specific in mind? If you can make a good case for it I'm sure people would be willing to consider it. --Steve-o 16:58, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Citing sources
I've lost track of the various places this has come up, but some of us have previously discussed how we can cite sources of information without interrupting the flow of an article's text. Derik has even experimented with some templates that could be used. Well, apparently the Wikimedia software has a built-in footnote mechanism, which I noticed somebody else using when I got back from my vacation. (But of course I've forgotten who it was and where they used it.) But anyway, here is the Wikipedia footnotes mechanism. It inserts subscripts in the text that link down to a list of references at the end of the article. I think this is probably unobtrusive enough for those of you who didn't like the idea of "breaking the fourth wall" by making citations in the article text. I recommend that we encourage use of this mechanism. Opinions? --Steve-o 18:28, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

First-line continuity statements
We have had some brief discussions about how to format the italicized first-line statements that exist in most articles, and I'd like to see if anybody has ideas for making things simpler. Currently the format goes like "Sunstreaker is an Autobot in the G1 continuity." When more specific information is needed, we may say, for example, "Lander is an Autobot Pretender in the Masterforce portion of Generation 1 continuity."

One problem with this is that Generation 1 isn't a single continuity. "Continuity family" would really be more appropriate. Additionally, when we move beyond G1 into later franchises that are part of the same family (BW and Universe for example) we run into our old problem of not having a name for this "main" continuity.

If we were to simply drop the word "continuity" from the statements, it would solve a lot of problems, but I feel like that's not quite a complete solution. If the word continuity remains, I think "family" should probably be attached to it.

Naming this monster continuity family would be a complete solution to the problem, because then we could be pretty specific, but of course that is a big problem in itself. (Personally I think "Classic Continuity" would be self-explanatory and sufficiently non-fawning, although I could probably warm to simply "Original Continuity".)

So, if anybody else has issues with the current scheme, or ideas for improving it, I'd like to hear about them. Post away.

--Steve-o 02:48, 6 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree that "the Generation 1 continuity," singular, stuff isn't such a good thing. We could simply pluaralize it, make it "continuities" rather than adding "family," but I'm not sure how well that would work. I'd also like to suggest "continuity group" as a possible alternative phrase. As for a name for the Generation 1/Beast Era family well, how about just that? "Generation 1/Beast Era"? --KilMichaelMcC 04:21, 6 August 2006 (UTC)


 * We're lucky that Aaron provided an "umbrella term" for the Unicron Trilogy, giving us something at least quasi-official. I'm loathe to suggest anything for any others for a variety of reasons (I'm not even wild about "Beast Era", in all honesty), other than if we DID need one that encapsulated everything "fictionally" pre-BW (G1, G2, MW, RM, etc) I'd vote "Great War". As for some giant umbrella term for the G1-through-BW vaguely-timeline/tree? Ugh. --M Sipher 04:36, 6 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I move we put off this sidcussion by 6 months until the second Transformers Elseworlds come out from IDW. I suspect that those two points of reference, whch START with G1, but are very much NOT G1 in ways other iterations of G1 ARE, will (witht he DD Joe/TF series) allow us to make a sound judgement on this issue.
 * Attemptign to define broad parameters just BEFORE we're about to get data that will cause ot to define/redefine just where those boundaries lie strieks me as either stupid or futile, possible both.
 * DD's Joe/TF, for instance, features elements from the classic Joe timeline- and Sigma Six. (Their 'Armada' lets say.)  They've also stolen dome character design elements from Armada- but not much.  I anticipate that SOME FUTURE IDW elseworld will completely shatter existing defintions of 'G1 or not' by mixing elements much more agressively.
 * (This doesnt' mean we can't talk about it. But I suggest holding off on a fina decision) -Derik 04:50, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
 * ...Sigma Six? Dare I ask what you think is Sigma Sixy about the DD crossovers?  I know I'm going to regret it.  (But seriously, about the name for G1/BW/BM, we need to bug Archer a bunch.)  --ItsWalky 05:20, 6 August 2006 (UTC)