Talk:List of Star Control races

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Contents 1 Merge 1.1 Post-merge cleanup 2 Deleted articles 3 Mycon 4 Clear separation between games 5 Merge again

[edit] Merge

This article was merged from a ton of Star Control articles -- see Special:Whatlinkshere/List of Star Control races -- and they are preserved as redirects for page history purposes. Andre (talk) 01:13, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Post-merge cleanup

It might take a while to convert all the articles into encyclopedic sections of this article. Anyone reading this, feel free to help. We need to:

• Remove original research and unpublished synthesis of separate details
• Rewrite in out-of-universe perspective
• Trim a lot of unnecessary detail
• Remove game guide + ship strategy content (see WP:VG/GL)
• Eliminate redundant and repeated information (especially in the Ur-Quan part)
• Put more references
  • The game's manual
  • Stuff from the various Star Control pages on the web (they're the best we have even though technically they aren't that reliable)
    • Posted interviews with the Toys for Bob guys
• I think the infoboxes are probably unnecessary (I substed them all to regular tables already instead of templates), so merging their content would be a good idea

Andre (talk) 01:21, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Race articles for other games don't use infobox. That template is now deleted. If it still exists, it would be really easy to substitute it, just use "{{subst:template_name}}". --Voidvector 04:08, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I deleted the template and substed it already, I meant removing the actual table. Andre (talk) 05:30, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

This merge is in direct defiance of an AfD that finished four days ago. It was discussed in detail whether the articles should be merged or kept separate. Kept won, and the closing admin accepted that decision. I am not comfortable with another admin deciding that he can ignore that and do what he wants. I'm sounding much too harsh at the moment, for a deed done without malignance, but those are the principles and I feel quite strongly about them. --Kizor 05:10, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I left a message on your talk page but we can discuss here if you wish. Andre (talk) 05:30, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I think there's too much material in these articles to merge them all like this, it'd result in either way too much trimming or a "list" that's a huge mass of articles jammed end to end. The lesser species like the Burvixese and such, perhaps, but for the major races there should be separate articles and {{main}} templates leading there. Bryan Derksen 07:59, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Please see User talk:Kizor. I think the articles are going to need to be trimmed a ton to be acceptable. There are plenty of lists like this: List of Mario characters, for example. Andre (talk) 09:26, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I'd rather discuss article content here on the article talk page. Personally, I see no reason to trim merely for the sake of making them shorter. Wikipedia is not paper, it has no space limitations. Note that many of the entries on List of Mario characters consist of links to "main" articles with much more detail; this is exactly the sort of pattern I was talking about above. We can have the best of both worlds that way. Bryan Derksen 03:35, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

We can discuss here, I was just pointing to the statement I made on that page. The articles need to be trimmed to bring them in line with policy, not for just making them shorter. Andre (talk) 04:01, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Be that as it may, any shortening that might result would not be because the goal is to shorten the articles. Preemptively merging them all into an article that's clearly over-long would result in exactly that happening. If in the fullness of time and editing all of these articles wind up as short as the Burvixese example I listed above, perhaps then merging them might be warranted. Until that time, however, IMO it's just not appropriate. Bryan Derksen 20:23, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

There's no dispute that the races could use some clean-up. Andrevan's mostly general instructions are generally good, but I've gone through the matter and here are supplemental things:

• Keep ship descriptions. Specific strategies are bad, sure, but the ships are a integral part of the series, which was literally constructed around them. Note that each one was deliberately designed to be unique; a reasonable and concise description will still take more space than if they were variants on each other, as ships tend to be in more mundane gaming. Also, many races are inextricably linked to the characteristics of their ships, making the latter vital for a usable picture of the former. Spathi, Shofixti, Kzer-Za, Arilou, Syreen, Slylandro, Pkunk, Druuge... actually, it could be most.
• Remove the repetition of Ur-Quan history, but that appears to be the extent of major redundancy.
• Quote the games, judging on a case-to-case basis where there's a need to inform the reader in such detail or to clarify. This was confirmed to be acceptable in a discussion elsewhere. I could link, but it's pretty clear from the existence of the dedicated {{tl:cite video game}}. There's a link to a very handy text repository below.
• One unmentioned resource is the unfortunately named "Role playing resource guide", an official sourcebook-thing that gives some amounts of background information, added details, and independent verification if necessary. The book is nowadays free to read. {{tl:cite book |last=Ford |first=Fred |coauthors=Reiche III, Paul |others=Illus. George Barr, Jeff Rianda |title=Star Control II Role Playing Resource Guide |publisher=Accolade |pages=pp. (pages involved)}}
• Use the game creators' chat logs. (Pay particular attention to real-world info - who made what parts of the dialogue, what inspired what, etc.) This is the iconic one, but there may be some other things here and there's a new one, not widely known, from this summer has some tidbits about the Orz et cetera - though that one isn't quite as clean yet.
• Give lower priority to races of Star Control 3, because (a) they lack the justification of being appearing in one of the most venerated works in video games, noted in particular for its plot and characterization, and (b) we hate Star Control 3 and can DO that. Ha! --Kizor 22:22, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Heh. An excellent to-do list and collection of resources, I agree. Though I wouldn't skimp too much on the SC3 races or events, since even though SC3 was not well received it was still part of the same franchise and is nearly as well known. The poor reception itself is notable, in the same way that Star Trek V is often considered the worst Star Trek film by fans. And since I never finished SC3 myself, places like Wikipedia are where I could find out how it ended. :) Bryan Derksen 23:42, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Quite irrespective of merging articles, here's something we might use for improving them. Coverage of fiction can use quotes from the work itself as primary sources (with all the associated cautions) where appropriate, as has been done in Final Fantasy X. We could apply this to Star Control, including quotes as references when doing so adds to the article in question, such as when the ref'd fact is clear but not immediately obvious, when the reader would benefit from a bit of context, and perhaps when the information is obscure enough, such as a detail of the Umgah that the Utwig have at the bottom of an uncommon conversation tree. This is intended to be the exception rather the rule - the other way lies madness. Sa-matra.net hosts what is either a complete selection of quotes or close enough to make no difference, so we do not need to trawl through the entire game, despite the ease our exquisite collections of save files would bring. --Kizor 00:45, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted articles

There are a few races whose article actually got deleted. Two examples are Gg and Lk. I am not sure if it is legal to recover them from Wayback Machine. --Voidvector 01:46, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

We can recover them using the admin deleted edits viewing ability. Andre (talk) 05:29, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

I just checked Gg (Star Control) and Lk (Star Control) and they were deleted for being a copyright violation, with no "clean" versions; they need to be rewritten from scratch. Bryan Derksen 07:59, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Now I've checked all the other redlinks on the table I just brought over from Star Control, and they were all deleted as copyvios as well. Nothing salvageable, alas. Bryan Derksen 08:07, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Damn. I knew that there were a lot of copyvios in these articles awhile ago, people copy and pasting from The Pages of Now and Forever. Andre (talk) 09:28, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mycon

Why is there no article for the mycon? Czolgolz (talk) 16:30, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mycon, a prime example of why I want to merge. Pagrashtak 17:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Clear separation between games

Right now, all the SC1 and SC2 races are mixed together. Wouldn't it be better to list all the playable races (races with their own ships) for each game in one row and then the list the "mentioned" races separately? --Voidvector 01:40, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

...Don't we do that already? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kizor (talk • contribs) 06:35, August 4, 2007

It looks as the original poster said. The SC1 and SC2 races are in the same column. The third column is for "races mentioned" in the first two games. --GargoyleMT 14:16, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

On the Star Control II list, it says "Races that are encounterable in the course of the game", but three of the races listed cannot be encountered during normal gameplay; their only direct appearance is in the freeplay portion of the game, where their ships (derived from the first game) are playable. My first thought would be to change that line to "Races with a playable ship", since this seems to reflect the original idea, but there is also a race listed that doesn't have a playable ship.

I am going to change the title to include both groups: "Races encountered in gameplay and/or having playable ships". I think that will make it a bit long and tedious, though, so if anyone can think of a better solution, please feel free to change it. ~ Korejora 23:04, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge again

Why was this article split up? The individual pieces, or at least most of them, don't satisfy Wikipedia:Notability and probably wouldn't survive AFD. Is anyone willing to help merge these? Pagrashtak 21:40, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

It survived last time. I think it has been a few months now, so prolly can be submitted again.--Voidvector (talk) 19:44, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't intend to submit to AFD, as I'm not seeking deletion. I'm proposing a merge. I thought I'd bring it up here before I go tagging 50 articles with Mergeinto. Pagrashtak 19:53, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

I've tagged the articles with the merge proposal. Pagrashtak 15:52, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi, just looking through the history, I gotta say, the last time this got merged it looked pretty awful - a huge, monster page with endless sprawling text and graphics all over the place. And that's the final cleaned-up version. No disrespect to the people who worked on that project, they did a great job straightening out all that data after the original merge, but I've got to agree with whoever reverted it; there's so much data, it's just more accessible on separate pages. It also looks far better. Plus, I'm on broadband and that monster page takes a good couple of seconds to load - god help anyone trying to get that on dial-up - having it on separate pages with a menu allows the viewer to choose more specifically what they want to see. Hence it loads faster.

I have no real stake in this as I've never done anything to any of the pages, but I honestly think it's better separate. Notability claims that the article requires notability, but this does not directly limit content. I'm not clear how they mean to divide 'article' and 'content'. If 'article' literally means "distinct url page" - then clearly there should only be three articles, SC1, SC2 and SC3, as these are the only things with any real world notability. But this would mean having a lot of the same redundant information - eg. ships, races, etc - needlessly repeated on three big, cluttered pages. This would also apply to a lot of other games such as Deus Ex, Doom, Half-Life, The Elder Scrolls to name just a few. I think this would result in a lot of awful pages, and would be counterproductive to Wikipedia's goal of being a useful, relevant source of information. So I don't think this is what 'article' could mean. If I'm wrong though, please correct me. (I'm still new!)

I would argue that all of the information on these pages you've indicated is actually content for the Star Control articles, it's just spread across a few different pages to make it more accessibile. I argue this pragmatically, because I think merging it again would involve a lot of work, and result in making the article worse (i.e. less accessible, ugly and less informative) solely because of a very literal reading of some Guidelines. As such I'd be against it. Though it really is your choice.

(I certainly won't revert you, but unless it looks Great quickly, be aware that someone may) The Zig (talk) 21:13, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

You're right about those other games, this is a problem not limited to Star Control. Fiction cleanup efforts have been ongoing for each of those series, and merges like this have often been a good compromise between having individual articles with plot repetition and outright deletion. When I merge, I'll try to pare down the material as best I can. I'll also ask Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Cleanup for help with this. Pagrashtak 21:37, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

So, with everyone being against merging, and you being for it, you're just going to do it? Wasn't this tried before? Do we not care if the article is big, bulky, and unreadable? Precisely what are we trying to prove? Mentor397 (talk) 07:18, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

What do you mean "everyone"? There's only been four editors discussing here. I'm strongly for merge; Voidvector said I could resubmit to AFD, which I'm not going to count as merge opposition, as deletion is more severe than merging; The Zig says he is against it, but also says that he wouldn't revert the merge; and you. If the merged article is big and unreadable, the correct solution is to trim the article and conform to WP:WAF. I don't know what you mean by "trying to prove"—I'm just trying to provide an alternative to deletion. The individual articles do not satisfy Wikipedia:Notability and Wikipedia:Notability (fiction) and are heavily in-universe. If Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Playable races in the Warcraft series and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Warcraft humanoid races both resulted in deletion, I don't think the individual races in this series stand much of a chance. Pagrashtak 15:51, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Just to reiterate: I'm only against this in the sense that I think it will be effort that results in an article that's a worse experience for the user/reader (even if it accords better with guidelines). The reader's the bottom line imo. If you really think you can get all of this together in a way that works well, do it. It's decent that you made a discussion of it first. As you say above tho, it would certainly be wise to get some help in, there's a LOT there! As for me, I may try to help later, but I can't make any promises. The Zig (talk) 17:54, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Given the choice between deleted articles and merged articles, I believe the merge will be in the reader's best interests in the end. Pagrashtak 17:21, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough, I see your point. Merge. Sad wikipedia's got this slash and burn approach, especially when it makes WP worse (as demonstrated above, the mycon were notable enough for that person to seek the info, then to raise question when it wasn't there, but some AfD bloodhounds said delete and... ping) Such is life though, worse things happen. As I said before, I may be able to help later, though I can't promise (I have a transcontinental move coming up this/next month). The Zig (talk) 19:46, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

PS: on the plus side, thanks to the previous merge, the deleted info for the Mycon is still available on this page's history.

You mean the Mycon were popular enough. Notability and popularity are different. Often, merging several small articles on non-notable topics creates a stronger presentation and gives the reader a better understanding. After the articles have been compressed to the essentials, that very well might be the case here. Anyone who wants to read about details on fictional races can be directed to an outside wiki with that content. If no outside wiki has such articles, we can transwiki from Wikipedia's article histories. Pagrashtak 21:14, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia does not have a "Slash and Burn" policy. Pagrashtak might, but he is not Wikipedia, as much as he may think he is. If the rules result in making Wikipedia worse and less informative, ignore them. See WP:IAR for more information.--128.222.37.21 (talk) 20:07, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

In fact, due to that material being in the history, I am legally obligated to restore the history of the Mycon article for GFDL reasons. I'll restore it as a redirect to here for now. Bryan Derksen (talk) 10:24, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

From a user perspective I'd have to speak out against a merge pretty strongly. The articles as laid out currently are uniform and have a decent amount of information on them. I checked the history and I don't think the answer is an article that, last merge, was 160K. There could be an argument made that some minor races could be merged into this list, but perhaps a better approach is necessary. If we're dead-set on a merge (and I would be against it) I would recommend, for starters, that not all three games' characters be merged together. Sure, there will be repeats, but it'll have different context for each . SC1 will have the Yehat as allies, SC2 will have the Yehat as enemies and then allies. Secondly, we could merge races along faction lines. Anything to keep the page size down. When all of Half-Life 2 is 60K, you KNOW 160K for an article is a bit extreme. Taumeson (talk) 14:02, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

I think that separating the lists by game would be appropriate, as it reflects a clear real-world approach. The current articles are for the most part a cross between game guides and a very detailed paraphrasings of the games' plots and backstory. The combined articles should be of a reasonable length once each race is trimmed down to a brief paragraph that complies with WP:NOT and WP:WAF.--Trystan (talk) 18:23, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean separating this article into three sections, or having three separate lists? Pagrashtak 04:10, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Whichever would be more appropriate based on its ultimate length.--Trystan (talk) 16:51, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

I got here from K'tang, which is certainly a candidate for deletion if it isn't merged. --Doug Weller (talk) 10:33, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

If I'm the one who carries out the merge, I may be forced to merge into one list. Looking at K'tang for example, there is nothing to say in which game or games they appear. Pagrashtak 16:24, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I think separate lists for each of the games would be a good idea. Or at least lumping SC 1 and 2 into a single category, and <shudder> SC3 unto its own, as it really was a different animal than the Toys for Bob games. I would like to assist in whatever way I can. My knowledge of the games isn't encyclopedic per se, but I do know that the K'Tang didn't appear until the third installment. Mael-Num (talk) 02:56, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Two lists sounds like a good idea to me. I was the one who did the original, ugly merge and I am surprised the articles haven't all been deleted yet. Andre (talk) 06:51, 29 May 2008 (UTC)