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A Question

Does this proposal include a mergist component or is it just an effort to improve current articles? In my opinion not all pokemon are notable enough to have an independent article and that's why we were discussing mergers. BrokenSegue 16:47, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I'm quite certain this is supposed to be done with no merging. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 16:55, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
In my opinion, if all the pokemon had good non-stub articles, we wouldn't be debating whether to delete/merge/redirect them. Wikipedia has every right to not want articles that will never be more than substubs. The basic premise here is what has already been said above: that if we all stopped arguing and put the same time and effort into making the articles better, there would be no problem. I hope to let them grow beyond substubs, so that the vast sea of poke-stubs out there turns into an interesting, useful series of articles. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 17:21, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
The only thing that I insist on is that the article say that the word "fictional" in the introductory text. If you can get all of the articles ship shape without adding trivial information then more power to ya. This link is Broken 20:37, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I just thought that there are probably lots of pokemon fan forums. It might be a good idea to advertise wikipedia and its pokemon selection there if you want lots of peeps who can write knowlegably about the subject. IT'd probably be best to give them a specific task (an article for example) to work on so they don't mess up all of our articles (so they cna learn and some vandalism is possible). This link is Broken 21:32, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Good luck. It's been hard enough as it is for Bulbapedia, a wiki specifically for Pokémon and its fandom, run by one of the major fansites and supported by a large number of the other majors, to get people to contribute articles. (Granted, 1700+ articles after opening in Feb this year isn't bad, but a lot of those are our bulbabot auto-generated stubs.) There are certainly knowledgeable people out there, but the great majority of those are the mature age fans with university and/or job commitments. --Mukashi 08:13, 2005 Jun 2 (UTC)

Time Limit

Since it seems we've been given some good-faith leeway by the rest of Wikipedia, I think it'd only be fair for us 'status quo-ists' to give the 'mergists' something to measure our work by. Show them some good faith too, you know?

Right now, there are 250 articles in the Category:Pokémon stubs. Of those, about 200 are pokémon species. (The other 50 or so are video games, movies, locations, Digimon that have been given the wrong stub category, and a few minutae.) I propose that those of use in this "revitalized Project Pokédex" get 50 stubs cleaned up per month. So, by 20 July, we'd have 150 Pokémon stubs; by 20 August, we'd have 100 Pokémon stubs; and so on and so forth.

If this would work for everyone, I'd like to set that number as the 'official' yardstick to measure this 'adoption center''s efforts by.

(Now that I'm not in my finals anymore, I can donate more time to this project, so we can get back on track.) Almafeta 01:00, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • That sounds like a worthy goal to me, though I suspect that to cover that volume, we'll need a few more people involved. Feel free to promote this project outside of this page. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 01:41, Jun 21, 2005 (UTC)

Color concern

While we're discussing Pokemon anyway, I'd like to raise the issue of text color. Presently, all color-related (and many type-related) words in Pokearticles are displayed in said color, and reading that really hurts my eyes. Does anyone else have an objection to that? I don't mind fancy colors in templates or tables, but for main text I would prefer it changed to normal black. Radiant_* 11:31, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)

Yeah get rid of the colors they are too cutesy. We know what these colors are and if we didn't we could look it up. This link is Broken 14:55, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I would be okay with stripping out the colours. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 15:59, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
I'm all for it - the 'books doesn't use it, nor does it plan on using it. kelvSYC 17:04, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Look at this article. I can't bear to go through and remove the colors. Argh... This link is Broken 17:49, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Yes, please do. I noticed this the other day on a number of these articles. K1Bond007 04:07, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)
Go ahead. It's not like we're losing any information this way. Almafeta 04:08, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Okay. I'll notify the WikiProject about this. I'll see if I can drag a bot into there to do the tedious work. Radiant_* 09:16, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)
  • I think the colors look good. If someone thinks a few of them (like the bright color for psychic) are too bright, that can be changed.
And there isn't much tedious work, sinhce almost all the Pokemon types are done with type templates - that means almost all the work in 18 templates. And any Pokemon which doesn't yet have them should anyway.User142 06:37, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Merge by evolution?

  • Possibly. In the spirit of progress, I've combined Horsea, Seadra and Kingdra ( which was later moved to Horsea, Seadra, Kingdra), to give an example of a possible layout. Please leave this intact for a while to give people the chance to comment on it. (note that any information not present here was also not present in the original three). For instance, I was surprised to find out that Kingdra is #230 rather than #118, a fact which would not be immediately obvious from the three separate articles. Radiant_* 15:38, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)
    I like it. Is there an instance where the evolved state has a different type than the basic? That could mess things up (categories and all). I made a small change before reading you comment not to change it (sorry). BrokenSegue 15:59, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    I like it, too. It would get a little messy with the whole Eevee family and with Tyrogue and the Hitmons (Lee, Chan, Top). Off the top of my head, some Pokémon acquire new types as they evolve, but Eevee is the only one to change types altogether. SujinYH 16:05, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    I don't really like it that much. To me, it would seem to be too confusing when there are multiple evolution paths, such as with Gloom, Nincada, and Wurmple. Not to mention that this particular layout would create very wide tables, which would be bad for 800x600 users (they'd require horisontal scrolling, which is annoying). Heck, a few of them might cause problems at 1024x768 as well. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 16:46, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    We could solve the wide table problem by getting rid of them. Much of the content in the tables duplicates content on the wikibooks project, so we could shrink the tables and provide links to wikibooks. BrokenSegue 16:55, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • Eevee has been tried, and fits in a reasonable table. Please take a look! The text section needs some copyediting, but I found the result enlightening. Radiant_* 10:05, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
      • Eevee's looking great! Doesn't work for 800x600 (or below) though, unless, as suggested many times before, we move the stats to Wikibooks. Note that I've added an "Evolves With" row to show what is required to get each form. Other than that (and Vaporeon's picture not matching!) everything's looking great! Master Thief GarrettTalk 11:48, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
        • I've fiddled with the layout a bit, and it fits on an 800x600 screen now. Radiant_* 11:51, Jun 2, 2005 (UTC)
      • I can see Eevee, and... well, no offense Radiant, because it's good coding, but I don't really like it. It breaks continuity with the other Pokémon pages (where you can navigate by clicking upon the names left and right). Besides, wouldn't pages full of information for side-by-side comparison of video game stats go into Wikibooks, loathe as I am to say it? Almafeta 15:09, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)
        • Well, it breaks continuity because it's an alternate proposal. Basically, I'm proposing that (gradually) all existing Pokearticles change to this layout (most with 2 or 3 columns rather than 6, though). It seems from the above discussion (and Pidgeot's earlier poll) that most people like the idea, but I'd be willing to discuss it some more and/or vote on it.
        • Pidgeot's main concern was table size, which I believe I've addressed by reducing it. Adding links for left and right clicking would be easy if people want. And this merged article has equally much 'stats' information as the original six. It could be argued that such info belongs in Wikibooks. In fact, it's already there. But I'm not sure what you're getting at. If you propose that all such information be removed from the existing articles, please say so and we'd be happy to discuss it. Radiant_* 11:49, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
          • I also expressed concern about readability with multiple evolutionary paths. I personally find it hard to read with 2+ POKéMON of the same stage listed next to one another, since there's no easy way to follow the evolutionary path. And Wurmple would be worse - it splits evolution at Stage 1, but still has one more stage. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 14:53, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)
          • I agree with Pidgeot. While I think this is an attempt at compromise (which is good), I think it's being done at the ultimate expense of readability and accessability to the reader, which is who, ultimately, we all should be serving. What, ultimately, would we hope to gain by merging this information? I also strongly oppose any solution which involves the removal of valid information, such as the transwiki proposal. I hate to bring out the tired old "Wikipedia is not paper" phrase, but I think it really does apply here. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 16:21, Jun 6, 2005 (UTC)
            • Not exactly :) the merging-by-type proposal is a compromise. This is a suggestion that in my personal opinion makes the pokearticles easier to read, since this way you can tell at a glance what a pokemon gains in abilities and stats upon evolving, and since this removes the need for partial redundancy usually existing in the three separate articles on separate evolutions. By the way it wasn't me suggesting to move stats to WikiBooks, that was Alfameta and BrokenSegue. Radiant_* 07:44, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)
        • I agree that the clicking to go forwards and backwards is important. This is one of the reasons that I put in Stubs for Pokemon who didn't have pages, and added the tables to articles that didn't have them.
          User142 06:44, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC) (posted by User:Bulbaboy on June 6th as User142 was unable to edit Wikipedia - see Wikibooks:User talk:Bulbaboy)
          • Adding those right now. Radiant_* 07:44, Jun 7, 2005 (UTC)

I've noticed a lack of uniformity amongst pages here. Some seem to have no links whatsoever, some have maybe one or two, and others, like Eevee, have this huge list of links to various Dex's of varying actual value. Shouldn't there be some sort of standard on these? --Mukashi 00:41, 2005 Jun 4 (UTC)

My standardised templates bear only links to Serebii and Pokémon Forever; perhaps this should be "the" standard? CNash 10:31, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Pokémon Forever yes, but the link to Serebii seems pretty pointless. The site may be the most popular fansite around, but the high level gameplayers avoid it like the plague, and the information in its dex there is fairly basic. Instead, perhaps links to Eevee's Pokédex and/or the Smogon PokéDex might be appropriate? --Mukashi 07:03, 2005 Jun 9 (UTC)
I've been avoiding adding Pokédex pages, since Pokédexes are notoriously unreliable, considering as they're essentially large databases which are expensive and difficult for a hobbyist to maintain. I don't want to add Pokédex links to any site just to find out 6 months later that that site went out of business, and that some of the pages most viewed by children on Wikipedia are now linking to a URL that was purchased by some guy to redirect to HotHardcorePorn.com. Almafeta 22:22, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
In the old days, they may have been somewhat unreliable, but have you been keeping up with the online fandom at all? A large number of 'dex's are now highly reliable in both uptime and completeness. They're a lot less expensive to maintain than you'd think (The majority of the display on a well crafted dex page is pure text afterall), and there's no difficulty in their day to day maintence whatsoever, only in their initial setup. Fair enough, if the site has only been around for a few months, don't link it, but ones that either have been up for several years (The previously mentioned Eevee's Pokédex, as well as the PokéFor Pokédex), or are, while fairly recent, part of a site that's got a history stretching back several years (Serebii's PokéDex, or the PokéDex Project pages on Bulbagarden's Bulbapedia), then it shouldn't be a question of if dex pages should be added, but which dex pages should be added. --Mukashi 22:50, 2005 Jun 21 (UTC)

Moves/Attacks

I have noticed that a few Pokémon, (Snorunt for example), have a list of all the attacks they can learn. However, some may argue that they are not encyclopaediac. Some cases, such as Mew, or even Pokémon only learning a move through Purification in Pokémon XD, deserve to have it mentioned. Yanma is an interesting example of a more encyclopaediac way to write about the attacks. So what are your opinions?

I'm not sure. On one hand, I generally believe that when it comes to infortmation, more is better. As long as it's verifiable and not trivial (stuff from fanfics, etc.), information is good. On the other hand, huge lists of attacks and stats might give more ammunition to those who feel that the articles themselves aren't notable. Ultimately, I would hope that attacks and game moves to be included should follow these two guidelines:

  • It's probably best to include such things if they're universal to that pokemon, and appear in most or all of the various games featuring that pokemon.
  • It would be greatly preferable if such information was included after the article has progressed past stub length already. We don't want deletionists believing that we're including moves and attacks simply as filler to pad out the articles.

That's my 2 cents on it, anyway. Additional opinions would be more than welcome. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 13:32, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)

Here's how I've been doing it:

  1. If it has one movelist (like Hoothoot), I listed that movelist, with the ability types and their elements.
  2. If it has multiple movelists, but there was only a slight variation (like Slugma), I listed the first movelist, then summed up how they changed.
  3. If it has multiple movelists, and if how it changed can't be summed up in a few sentences or if just repeating again would be easier (like Stantler), I list each movelist and what game or games it was used in.

However, I've been excluding things like egg moves, TM/HM lists, Move Tutor lists, et cetera. That's a lot of space and a lot of error-checking for little benefit, and would more be the realm of a dedicated pokéwiki. Almafeta 18:24, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Abandoned assignments?

It seems that both User:Kappa and User:Android79 have either forgotten about or abandoned their assignments - they were assigned a POKéMON a month ago, but seem to have done little work on those articles since then. I've left a note on their talk pages asking them to let us know if they've decided to quit (Kappa's note) (Android79's note). I've threaded both notes for easy reference.

Should we set up a little "rule" that if you don't do any edits to the article within a certain period of time (say, two weeks), we leave a friendly little reminder on their talk page? I realize we still have plenty of POKéMON to choose from, and there's no real rush, but if someone has abandoned their article, we might as well put it back up for adoption. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 1 July 2005 10:47 (UTC)

    • I agree 100% with leaving a friendly message/reminder on adopter's talk pages if the article hasn't changed. I think 1 month is a good time period for this, as it's easier to keep track of than 2 weeks. Exceptions will be made if the adopter specifically says in their adoption message that they need to delay writing the article for some reason ("I'll write it after I come back from vacation", or after exams, etc.). I also feel that we should keep this as a guideline rather than a rule (i.e. not put it on the main page) since more rules & restrictions might prevent casual editors from applying. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind July 1, 2005 11:04 (UTC)
      • Hence why I put the word "rule" in quotation marks :)
      • And of course, if the adopter has already reported he'll be inactive for a while, the message is not needed, since we already know why he hasn't edited. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 1 July 2005 11:56 (UTC)
    • I would note that leaving those pokémon assigned doesn't really hurt, since even with one or two of them 'on hold' for now, we've got plenty to work on as is. Almafeta 1 July 2005 11:27 (UTC)
    • Also, while we're on the subject, why did you never assign a pokémon to CNash? Almafeta 1 July 2005 11:30 (UTC)
      • Good question. CNash's message wasn't quite clear on whether he actually wanted a Pokemon assignment, or was just expressing support for the project in general. It sounded like he wanted to keep expanding stubs of his own choosing, since he had already been doing so. He posted it in the "Applicants with assigned pokemon" section instead of the "New Applications" section, so I assumed he probably didn't want one assigned, and it would be rude to tell somebody to write an article unless they explicitly said it was okay. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind July 1, 2005 11:39 (UTC)

Adoption Center Template?

I have an idea which might help us, but I want to hear some opinions on it first before forging ahead.

How about a template to go at the top of the stub articles still in the list, something like

Commentary This article is part of the Pokémon Adoption Center, a wikiproject intended to expand Pokémon stubs. It will be assigned to an editor and improved soon. At that time, this notice will be removed. This article may be edited normally.

This might help safeguard us from deletion problems between now and the conclusion of the project, as people are less likely to want to delete something that is actively being improved.

So, what do you guys think? Good idea? Why? Bad idea? Why? All suggestions or comments are welcome. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind July 1, 2005 11:20 (UTC)

  • Sounds good in theory -- but do you really want to add that to 180 articles?  ;) Almafeta 1 July 2005 11:27 (UTC)
    • Wouldn't be hard, really, just a quick cut 'n' paste (none of the text is article-specific). Probably take about 10 seconds each. Even less if I rigged some sort of script to do it.Andrew Lenahan - Starblind July 1, 2005 11:46 (UTC)
  • I ran with this idea, and now you can use it by copying and pasting {{PAC}} into an article. I think we should put them as the first line of the article, with a blank line underneath it, so this box doesn't interfere with the statistic template. Almafeta 4 July 2005 00:04 (UTC)

Adding basic data

This weekend, I plan to go through all 386 POKéMON articles and add the following things to the infobox (where missing):

  • Pokédex color
  • Shiny color
  • Japanese name (using official Game Freak romanization, not standard Romaji)
  • Metric height
  • Metric weight

This will let the editors focus on the article itself, rather than spending time on such minor details.

Oh, that would be great! It's true that fiddling with the infoboxes takes a lot of time. Thanks! Sinistro 2 July 2005 12:55 (UTC)
You're welcome - I figure it's the least I can do since I've been bad at expanding articles.
On a related note, I'm also adding both GF Romaji and standard Romaji to articles if the POKéMON has standard Romaji given in the infobox. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 2 July 2005 13:11 (UTC)

If I have time, I'll also try to find an article to expand. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 2 July 2005 04:21 (UTC)

Well, this is a slight disappointment - it seems that there are more stubs than we thought!
I've already found Clefable as an unmarked poke-stub and added it to the list. I'll go through them all one extra time after this and flag unmarked poke-stubs. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 2 July 2005 11:33 (UTC)
I've gone through the first 125 now, but I'm afraid I can't keep working right now. Please note that I have NOT added this info to Horsea and Seadra, as I'm waiting until we have those pages unmerged. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 2 July 2005 15:09 (UTC)
...and as it turned out, I didn't manage to get more of them done, but I'll keep working during this upcoming week. --Pidgeot (t) (c) (e) 4 July 2005 00:33 (UTC)

Nice work!

Did I mention yet that the PAC is a very good idea? Keep up the good work (gotta expand 'em all? :) ) Radiant_>|< July 5, 2005 12:51 (UTC)

  • I wanna Wiki the very best, like no-one ever was. To fill 'em out, my real test; to explain them is my cause... Almafeta 5 July 2005 17:43 (UTC)
    • I will travel across the site, searching far and wide. These articles to understand, the info that's inside...  :) Sonic Mew July 7, 2005 22:17 (UTC)

Future Work

I logged out (so I wouldn't see 174 pokéarticles on my contributions page @_@) and added the PAC template to the top of most of the undone articles. Doing that, I noticed that we might have a bit of work to do, even after we expand the stubs:

  • Many articles copy and paste pokédex entries directly. This is a copyvio, as far as I know.
  • Some articles have inappropriate images -- for example, Ponyta is animated, while Tentacruel is based on a CCG card.
  • There is more than a small bit of interwiki work to be done! This might take a bit of work with people who are fluent in other languages, and it might be a bit rough as some languages inconsistently merge pokémon into lists and leave them as seperate articles. (The French Wikipedia never had a Centre du adoption des Pokémons, unfortunately...)

But for now, let's just concentrate on expanding the stubs. Almafeta 5 July 2005 17:43 (UTC)

Both of the pictures you mentioned above have now been replaced with Ken Sugimori artwork by Luigi2. I added most of the pictures that are now gradually being replaced, but I think it will be better if they all use Ken Sugimori artwork. The choice of picture also came up on the Jynx article recently. As for the copyvio, I think we should be able to place any informaion from the Pokédex into the intro to make it more encyclopaediac. Sonic Mew July 7, 2005 22:24 (UTC)
I put all the Pokédex information in the 'Biology' section, so that way we could also have information from other canon sources (animé, manga, CCG) in the same place. Almafeta 11:20, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Template:Pokesectstub

Could someone look at the above template for me and see what's wrong with it? It's in the machop article, but instead of being 80% of the space available to it, it's trying to use 80% of the full article's width, and thus isn't going to the left of the statblock. Almafeta 11:20, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Too Much Information?

Some of the latest stub improvements, such as works of User:ErezR and User:Tavris have included a wealth of imformation such as list of attacks, breedable moves, technical machine compatibility, type affinities offensively and defensively etc. While I am certain this information is accurate and it is admirable that the contributors went through the trouble to locate and upload it, I must express my concern that, as Andrew Lenahan - Starblind noted in the Moves/Attacks section above, that including information of such a specialised nature might lead other Wikipedians to accuse us of simply padding the articles to avoid their deletion (a.k.a the "Wikipedia is not GameFAQs" argument). What does everybody else think?

In fact, I thought about going over my contributions and modifying the Video Game Availability info so that only one location per game is listed. Think about it: since the in-game Pokedex automatically shows the player where a Pokemon nests after you encounter it once, why not list only the place most frequented by the Pokemon or the earliest a player can find it, and let the player work the rest out for himself? Sinistro 20:39, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

  • I have mixed feelings about this issue. On one hand, I find it unpleasant and disturbing that there should even be such a concept as "too much information" here at WP. Our potential for depth of information is one of our chief advantages against other encyclopedia (the ol' "Wikipedia is not paper" routine) and information, generally, is a good thing. On the other hand, we must realise that all of these articles are potetnial deletion candidates simply because they are Pokémon, and some folks just hate Pokémon. The VfD masses are much much more likely to delete a stub than a full article, so depth of information is a powerful weapon against deletion. Unfortunately, it's somewhat nullified if the information looks like padding or nonsense to a casual reader. Therefore, heavy game information should be used with caution, and at the very least reserved for articles that don't "need" it (i.e. if the game information was removed, it would still be a full article rather than a stub). Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 12:27, July 16, 2005 (UTC)

Goals rewording: going, going...

Is anybody NOT happy with my reworked goals/stats proposal? (see "Goals Rewording" section on the main page for details) The main point of it is to put the focus on monthly goals and de-emphasise the final goal. If anybody *doesn't* think this is a good idea, please let me know. If nobody objects within the next couple of days, I'll make it official (or as official as anything gets around here :) and move all the related discussion and alternate proposals from the main page to the talk page. Speak now or forever fold your peas... Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 11:06, July 16, 2005 (UTC)

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