Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Pokémon/Layout

message: 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)
thread_title: Merging Pokémon species

message: 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)
thread_title:  Pokemon by type 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)

text: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)

text: Since the merger was proposed, I've had my doubts about it.  But seeing as the merger might go forward, I would have to say that I prefer the current version.  But I think that the etymology of the Pokémon names should be included in their respective subpages, and that the in other media/anime and the in the games section should be more expanded than what is currently on the Pidgey evo line article.--Tempest115 20:04, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There's not really that much more that can go on Pidgey's "In the video games" section without diving into gameguide. Other monsters might have more stuff, though. See Porygon evolutionary line and Gastly evolutionary line for examples. As for etymologies, I've been avoiding those like the plague because however obvious they may be, they are still OR by definition. Perhaps the most obvious of them can go on. You Can't See Me! 20:34, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Content 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
thread_title: Sectioned Articles vs. Generally Descriptive Articles

message: Continuing the topic just above, I understand that there needs to be some final consensus as to how the merged articles on evolutionary lines should be laid out and structured, before we recommence creating these pages. There seems to be two viable ways of laying out these pages: This way as preferred by  or this way as preferred by . Either of these would work in my opinion. I assume these are the only two merge plans that are up for consideration, and that when one plan is chosen over the other by consensus, that's what we use to structure pages about merged evo lines. If anyone else thinks there's another alternative merging plan that can be considered, I suppose this is where it should be proposed. Thanks. Erik Jensen (Appreciate|Laugh At) 17:24, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Since the merger was proposed, I've had my doubts about it.  But seeing as the merger might go forward, I would have to say that I prefer the current version.  But I think that the etymology of the Pokémon names should be included in their respective subpages, and that the in other media/anime and the in the games section should be more expanded than what is currently on the Pidgey evo line article.--Tempest115 20:04, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There's not really that much more that can go on Pidgey's "In the video games" section without diving into gameguide. Other monsters might have more stuff, though. See Porygon evolutionary line and Gastly evolutionary line for examples. As for etymologies, I've been avoiding those like the plague because however obvious they may be, they are still OR by definition. Perhaps the most obvious of them can go on. You Can't See Me! 20:34, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Which article layout is better?

message: ===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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
thread_title:  Specific Pokémon line articles 

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Tyrogue

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)

text: 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)
thread_title: Nidoran

message: 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)
thread_title: "Rejection" template