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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by You Can't See Me! (talk | contribs) at 20:52, 22 May 2007 (→‎About those Pokemon that don't evolve...). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Merging Pokémon species

Currently the two main things to consider are an appropriate way to merge Pokémon species content (either by Dex number, evo-line, some new way, or a combination) and what kind of content should remain included. I think the kind of content needs to be discussed later as it is very dependent upon how we merge. For contributors who are just joining the discussion please refer to the project talk page for further info. -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 13:42, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Pokemon by type

someone brought up the very justifiable concern that these new pages will screw up the categories Category:X-type Pokémon. I had proposed that we reinstitute Lists of Pokémon by X-type (after mergers are done) to colve this problem. Any reponses? -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 04:02, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Content

So, what do you recommend placing under each pokemon's main header? I'd suggest the following.

  • Its infobox, first and foremost
  • Characteristics taken from the Dex and in-game sources (such as the Cinnebar Diaries, for example), supplemented by non-conflicting characteristics noted in the anime, in the manga, in TCG flavor text, or other official sources.
  • Basic in-game information. That would be:
  • Which games they are featured in.
  • If the stats are noticeably polar (like Alakazam), rounded (like Glalie), or otherwise notable (PorygonZ having the highest non-Legendary Special Attack, Shedinja having 1 HP, Slacking having the highest overall non-Legendary stats) that should be briefly noted.
  • If its ability is notable (Shedinja's Wonder Guard, Kecleon's Color Change), if it has any signature moves or items (Lugia's Aeroblast, Palkia's Dimensional Rift, Pikachu's Light Ball, Farfetch'd's Stick), if it has any battle gimmick (Ditto's transformation style, Wobby's trap-and-retaliate style), or if it otherwise has a distinguishing quality (Smeargle's Sketch, Ditto's omnibreeding), that ought to be noted.
  • Notable roles in the games (Being a starter pokemon, Kyogre/Groudon being Aqua/Magma's target, Slowpoke tail incident, Red Gyarados incident).
  • Notable roles in the anime and manga. If the creature was owned by a main character or otherwise played a large role, that should be the priority over the monster's other appearances.

That's my recommendation. Thoughts, complaints, arguments, or explatives? You Can't See Me! 09:49, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

expletive? ok.... !@#$% ... i assume by main header you mean the section that their redirect will be pointing to if they don't have a main article. i like your list a lot, it represents the result of many discussions on this subject (perhaps WP:PCP/S will need to eventually be rewritten). there's only two problems i have. the first is that it is really unneccessary to list every game in the main line that the pokemon appeared in. take a look at the older version of Pinsir before i edited it. the other is that there should also be the opportunity to discuss the pokemon's real-world impact, if any. a good example would be Porygon or Jynx (Pokémon). -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 14:31, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. I don't know how I forgot about Real World impact. That ought to go without saying. As for the other, I suppose listing the games would be cumbersome to read through. Do you think a list of main-series games that the monster does not appear in would be appropriate (for instance, rather than listing Porygon's appearances to be Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver, Crystal, Fire Red, Leaf Green, Diamond, and Pearl, simply note that it was absent in Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald)? You Can't See Me! 08:44, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

no, i personally believe that availability, for the most part, is something that constitutes extraneous info. Others may disagree with me, and instead agree with you. It adds to the understanding of Porygon to mention it was in the first generation, or that Groudon is only available in Ruby. The best context to put Porygon's appearances in would be something like, "Porygon has been available in every handheld game except those that take place in Hoenn," not a list. Lists are bad unless the word appears in the article title. But now whether this sentence should even be included... that's really something for the future rewrite of WP:PCP/S. This talk page is really only meant to discuss the merger aspect. Why don't we continue this conversation at Pidgey evolutionary line? i think that once we've perfected that article we'll have good style guidelines figured out. -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 14:50, 23 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Sectioned Articles vs. Generally Descriptive Articles

It seems pretty much established that merging Pokemon by evo-line is a great plan because covering related Pokemon that are not-so-notable by themselves together provides more and better material to make uncontroversial Good Articles out of, is more interesting to readers of Wikipedia who aren't Pokemon fas but are curious about the Pokemon, and it provides better context to describe Chingling and Chimecho together because one is esssentially an advanced form of the other. However, I think perhaps the biggest point of debate that could possibly occur over this merge-by-evo-line concept is how the evo-line pages should be structured. There are two general ways of structuring that have been proposed and supported by various users.

  • Example 1: A sectioned evo-line article where each of the Pokemon get their own sections with infoboxes and the like, as if they are somewhat miniaturized versions of the original separate specie pages.
  • Example 2: An article that describes the species in the evo-line as if they are being covered together as one subject. Note that they wouldn't be able to have effective-looking infoboxes when arranged this way.

I personally believe Example 1 is far superior to Example 2 for various reasons: 1) It better retains the individuality of each specie the way the original 493 pages did so, and the individuality the original articles provided was one reason that opponents of merging cited would be bad for the coverage of the Pokemon; doing it this way should keep them happy. 2) Having sections allows for section-redirects so that someone typing down Gyarados would get an article-ish section on Gyarados whose information is not corrupted by all sorts of information on Magikarp (that information would be in the Magikarp section above the Gyarados section); it makes it more clear and concise to readers. 3) The infoboxes for the species can be kept, helping distinguish the sections from each other while providing infobox information that might not fit as well in the article otherwise. I don't see infoboxes fitting well into Example 2. 4) Finally, it's a helluva lot easier for anyone to make; it took me a day to make my Example 2 mockup while it took me less than ten minutes to create Spearow evolutionary line by copy and pasting relevant material from the Spearow and Fearow pages. Looking at Example 2, its emphasis is almost on treating the species in an evo-line as if they are stages of what is ultimately one specie; while this would be true in the video games, where catching a Pidgey and then evolving it into Pidgeotto and then Pidgeot would be creating and growing one warrior for competitive play, I think each of the 493 species should be recognized as official video game characters, and Example 1 helps give each species this distinction.

Those're my opinions... Discuss. ^_^ Erik Jensen (Appreciate|Laugh At) 19:35, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Would something like this Porygon draft be out of the question? Individual sections are perfect for the pokemon themselves. Elsewhere, the game treats them as one entity, and if they are pokemon that had evolved under a main character's care (Charmander, Torchic, etc), I find a single In the Anime section to be convenient. Perhaps instead of large infoboxes, we might go with an image of the pocket monster, followed by something similar to Template:pokeinfoboxsmall with different parameters (for instance, evolves to/from should be obvious to anyone who bothers to read the article; rather, height and weight might go on). You Can't See Me! 07:21, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
That's very clever. Your way actually does not take that much more work to do than my Example 1, and it provides a more inspired layout for evo-line pages, and the individuality and section-redirect business I was thinking about gets taken care of just as well here. Gee, that layout is practically a miracle! What we need to do now, then, is to create a "medium-sized" Poke-infobox for use on the evo-line pages, in between the sizes of the normal infobox on the Pikachu and Mewtwo individual pages and the tiny boxes on the Lists of Pokemon. Erik Jensen (Appreciate|Laugh At) 19:10, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

IDK. Something about merging by Evo-line doesn't feel right to me...--Tempest115 19:20, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Admittedly, it felt that way to a lot of us when all this notability-lacking-in-Pokemon-Articles business began, which was why I originally proposed mega-merging all the 493 pages into 25 descriptive list pages covering 20 Pokemon each in relatively small sections. Obviously, that turned out to be a lot more controversial than this evo-merging plan that's been discussed recently. Erik Jensen (Appreciate|Laugh At) 19:24, 9 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
while there are obviously benefits to the Porygon draft... a couple things unsettle me about it. For one, there is not near enough information on each member of the species to fill up enough space along side even a slimmed down infobox. Is there a real way that all that information can be contained in space that doesn't bleed into the other sections, without using {{-}}? the other thing is that this format will logistically prevent anyone creating split-off articles. I know that some people prefer it this way, but I think that the idea that all articles (or most) could one day again be independent was a major reason why we were able to gain consensus. this last issue is the biggest concern. -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 01:33, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
another thing is that you're combining relevant information, but it might not be the easiest way to digest it. some people who only want to know about gengar will have to read through lots of unneccessary info to glean what they can. i still think it's more useful to disucss relations in a lead section. i'll play around with the Gastly evolutionary line to give you an idea. i sure wish more people would join in this discussion, i know that once everything's done, people will start asking why something was done a certain way. -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 11:55, 22 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Specific Pokémon line articles

Tyrogue

What to do with this evolutionary line..? What to do, what to do, what to do?

The standard is to name evo-line articles X evolutionary line, in which X is the first of the pokemon to appear in the National Pokedex. However, Tyrogue is at the center of his branched family. Hitmonlee evolutionary line would make little sense because he neither evolves from nor into Hitmonchan and Hitmontop, two other pocket monsters discussed on the article.

Any opinions on this? Would it be better to go with Tyroge evolutionary line and deal with inconsistency, or with Hitmonlee evolutionary line and deal with awkwardness? You Can't See Me! 01:03, 12 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose there should be a few exceptions to our agreed naming conventions to avoid awkward issues like this, and this is the only evo line that was introduced like that in the games, so I think it should be called Tyrogue. Erik Jensen (Appreciate|Laugh At) 06:31, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think I thought of this while re-reading eveything and i had meant to add something about obtaining consensus for naming conventions that go outside the guidelines. (After all, a guideline is not a policy, and not set in stone, we should exercise common sense) So in general, does that mean that if nintendo creates a pokemon that links two pokemon together by evolution that were previously not linked, the title should go by this new linking pokemon? i'm not saying we write that out, but that is the precendet it would set (imagining if Nintendo were to create a Burmy-like baby for Volbeat and Illumise). I had hoped we could come up with a naming scheme that was Nintendo-likes-to-fuck-with-us-proof and not have to move pages in the future. The only other way to solve this problem is to name the page Hitmonlee, Hitmontop, Tyrogue, and Hitmontop which seems like a horrible idea. -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 01:17, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nidoran

Nidoran♀ and Nidoran♂ are clearly different species in the game, but their dex entries and other flavor text (and their names, most obviously) suggest that they are simply different-gendered members of the same species. When it comes time to create the Nidoran article(s), should we go with Nidoran♂ evolutionary line and Nidoran♀ evolutionary line, or just one joint Nidoran evolutionary lines article? All together, that would be six pocket monsters in one article, less than Eevee evolutionary line and any of the Legendary Pokemon joint articles. You Can't See Me! 01:03, 12 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good thing to debate over, one that would probably need several opinions to form a consensus to make a decision on. For my two cents worth, I would support covering all six of then in one Nido Kingdom article, because they all have the best context together, there may be enough material to craft a Featured Article from the page, and we'd avoid the untypable Male and Female symbols in the page title. Erik Jensen (Appreciate|Laugh At) 06:31, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I say De-Artist-Formerly-Known-As-Prince-ify It. Put them all in one article to avoid the untypable symbols (♀, ♂) -Jeske (v^_^v) 22:22, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
that seems to make sense to me... it's just like a Legendary group article. Enough can be written about their connection to justify keeping them in the same article. -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 01:23, 19 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

"Rejection" template

Noticing the template on the project page, this actually doesn't mean much because the poster is a user who posts templates on many project pages like this whenever they seem inactive, but we'll be active at this project later, right? Details seen here. Just to let you know. Erik Jensen (Appreciate|Laugh At) 07:26, 16 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Does this actually have any benefit?

Other than doing a small amount to appease those who don't like the sheer number of Pokemon articles, this looks like it won't actually change anything.

What it will do is create a non-intuitive organizational system that actually requires more duplication of info than previously, since we now must have list articles to sort Pokemon by type and number and generation and evolutionary line rather than simply categories for most of those things. Even then, since the majority of complaints I've seen have been having detailed information about every single Pokemon at all, reorganizing them into lists probably won't help you much in the PR aspect either. --tjstrf talk 17:58, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)while i don't think the organization is overly complicated, the rest of your points are definitly worth considering. despite what some may think, i'm not overly zealous about this merger. I do, however, want to limit wasted effort. to let you know, this merger will deconstruct many articles, and it's misleading to say everything will be kept. by going through all the current articles we'll basically be "starting over" with many of them, trimming them down and hoping that they'll grow better next time. it is thought that in this format it wil be better to guide editors to include only the vital, reliable, pertininet information. -ΖαππερΝαππερ BabelAlexandria 18:21, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A valid concern to be sure, but what it basically boiled down to is that 493 separate pages on the species had many fans wanting it kept like that unconditionally, and any outright deletuon attempt at any of these pages is absolutely out of the question to most of them. Seemingly the sheer will of a good proportion of Wikipedia's Pokemon fan readers to keep Pokemon species covered on Wikipedia like this will prevent any deletions of any sort from ever happening, even if Jimbo Wales himself came down here and ordered them all deleted. (Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration...) Therefore, a light-ish merger seems to be much less of a bumpy road.
It took several months of debate to gather consensus to implement this merge plan, which would effectively lower the number of articles on Pokemon specie characters from ~500 to ~200, so this currently seems to be the best way to tone down the issue with the Pokemon project's coverage of the species while avoiding ugliness. Toning down the number of pages to around 200 would achieve what this is mainly supposed to be: a mass improvement to Wikipedia's coverage of Pokemon species, not necessarily a complete fix of it. Otherwise the only other alternative to keep Wikipedia's Pokemon fan population happy is to keep the 493 specie pages as is. I don't see any other alternative that will not involve a lot of potential ugliness... If you do, please share. Erik Jensen (Appreciate|Laugh At) 18:17, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

About those Pokemon that don't evolve...

Okay, so at this point it's been pretty much agreed on by consensus that merging the 493 species by their evolutionary lines, a concept kinda first proposed by You Can't See Me! (talk · contribs), constitutes a pretty good content improvement over the stub-ish and badly-sourced nature of most of the 493 separate articles on Pokémon species that have been on Wikipedia previously. Among other benefits, the fact that such merged pages feature more material to work with means that we won't have to rely on "filling them up" with info that many consider badly sourced, such as Game Guide, Original Research, and what not; this was a main problem with the species when they existed independently. I believe that such content as game guide and OR is what most of the subpar sourcing built up around on the Pokémon pages; the fact the merged material on such evo-line pages will be rid of much of that unhealthy content, with their unhealthy sourcing attached removed along with the content, is what the merger's main effect in the name of "improving sourcing in articles" consists of. As this merger does not aim to be an outright fix to the specie articles (and I shudder to think what outside admins would consider a mass fix to these pages... mass deletion? x_x), but merely a mass improvement, this merger should only be considered a good step in the right direction for Wikipedia's coverage of the hundreds of Pokémon species.

What has always been my main concern about this merger, however, is what is the most potentially troublesome issue about arranging all of the species of Pokémon by their evolutionary lines: the fact that there are 77 separate species who do not have any evolutionary relatives, including the 35 Legendary Pokémon. Therefore, there isn't any merge-target for those species that is obvious enough to prevent controversy about where and how they should or shouldn't be merged. At the moment, I can identify four obvious pairs of Pokémon that otherwise aren't evolutionary related, so they can easily be merged together in the following articles: Plusle and Minun, Volbeat and Illumise, Zangoose and Seviper, and Lunatone and Solrock; the number of unevolving, hard-to-merge species is lowered down to 69.

But these 69 non-evolvers still remain a problem to a mega-merger effort based on evolutionary line; it will not be okay to have these 69 pages remain independent and virtually untouched by the mega-merger, with the exact same content problems as before the mega-merger was first proposed. Because it has been decided by consensus that these such Pokémon's pages can hardly ever be expanded past stub status without relying on game guide and other content that upsets Wikipedia's content policies, some way to condense this number of pages while giving these species their due coverage needs to be found.

This is where the "List of Pokémon" series of pages had come in. As Zappernapper (talk · contribs) proposed here and here, to give the species their due coverage without them being in their own stubbish pages is this plan: Basically, 25 relatively descriptive list pages, covering 20 Pokémon each, would exist in a chain, and each would be a short section about a Pokémon with a Main Article link to that Pokémon's section in the appropriate Evolutionary Line merge article. When this series of pages gets over to the section of an unevolving Pokémon, that would be the space where the fully comprehensive section about that Pokémon would reside, and searching for that Pokémon would section-redirect to that Pokémon's larger section in that appropriate List of Pokémon page. This is an admittedly controversial concept, as it essentially duplicates info about all the species all around, and we already have one master directory over at the proper List of Pokémon, and Tjstrf (talk · contribs) has called this an unintuitive system. I'm not so sure if this is the best idea myself.

As for the 35 Pokémon that are considered "legendary", Zappernapper stated that they should be merged together by generation, so that all five First Generation legendaries be merged together, all six Second Generation legendaries be merged together, all ten Third Generation legendaries be merged together, and all fourteen Fourth Generation legendaries be merged together. I don't think this'd really work for the third and fourth generations; there's too many Pokémon on one page. The maximum number of Pokémon on a page should probably be eight, because that's the size of Eevee evolutionary line.

I believe I have come up with an alternative plan that takes care of both of the above prickly issues: scrap the Lists of Pokémon section and merge the unevolving Pokémon cleanly and clearly together, grouped together by generation and by whether or not they're legendary. The pages and what Pokémon they cover are shown below.

Farfetch'd, Kangaskhan, Pinsir, Tauros, Lapras, Ditto, Aerodactyl
Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres, Mewtwo, Mew (Mewtwo's section will be a Main Article link to Mewtwo)
Unown, Girafarig, Dunsparce, Qwilfish, Shuckle, Heracross
Corsola, Delibird, Skarmory, Stantler, Smeargle, Miltank (Better to have 2 pages of 6 than 1 page of 12, I think.)
Raikou, Entei, Suicune, Lugia, Ho-Oh, Celebi
Sableye, Mawile, Torkoal, Spinda, Castform
Kecleon, Tropius, Absol, Relicanth, Luvdisc
Regirock, Regice, Registeel, Latias, Latios
Kyogre, Groudon, Rayquaza, Jirachi, Deoxys
Pachirisu, Chatot, Spiritomb, Carnivine, Rotom,
Uxie, Mesprit, Azelf, Dialga, Palkia (These are the five legendaries one can catch during the main D/P quest, and are related together in mythology)
Heatran, Regigigas, Giratina, Cresselia (These are the high-level legendaries one can catch in D/P after the main quest)
Phione, Manaphy, Darkrai, Shaymin, Arceus (These are legendaries associated with "events")

This more direct and easy-to-comprehend merge plan for non-evolving Pokémon would provide far less controversy, and it's not bad to have pages that seem like multiple articles in that one seems stacked another. For an outside example, Meta Knight is two articles in one: Meta Knight himself has his big section above and his ship The Halberd has its big section below. This is what I now support as a component of the mega-merger to deal with non-evolving Pokémon effectively, and if there's enough consensus for this, I will support deleting List of Pokémon (1-20) and List of Pokémon (21-40) (pages that I created in the first place). This has been a presentation from Erik Jensen (Appreciate|Laugh At) 20:36, 22 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Not a bad idea, though I'm not all too crazy about the nomenclature. You Can't See Me! 20:52, 22 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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