Forum:CT:Call signs

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The result of the debate was No consensus. Exiled Jedi (talk) 01:16, October 30, 2015 (UTC)

I've never been a fan of our call sign articles, which are essentially alias articles with a bit of fluff. By all rights, they should be redirected or converted to disambiguations, while we've even got a few instances where a call sign article is pushing the character article to an unidentiifed X title. So, I propose the following rules about call signs for the naming policy:

  • Call signs that have been used by more than one individual should be converted into disambiguation pages.
  • Call signs that have only been used by one individual should be redirected to that individual.
  • In the case of individuals known only by their call sign:
    • If they are the only such individual known only by the call sign, that individual's article takes precedence over any disambiguation page.
    • If multiple articles are known only by the same call sign, a disambiguation page takes precedence.

For the disambiguation pages, they would not include Appearances and Sources lists as many of them currently do. Conversely, call signs should not be listed in {{App}}.

I've sorted the existing call sign articles into several groups depending on their status here. Individual cases can be debated on their talk pages if this passes; this isn't a firm list but we can discuss specific items elsewhere.

Voting

Support

  1. Cade GalacticRepublicEmblem-Traced-TORkit Calrayn 20:47, October 14, 2015 (UTC)
    Agreed.--Exiled Jedi (talk) 22:07, October 14, 2015 (UTC)
  2. Brandon Rhea(talk) 22:09, October 14, 2015 (UTC)
    Makes complete sense. - AV-6R7Crew Pit 22:24, October 14, 2015 (UTC)
    Never been of fan of these pages myself. Cwedin(talk) 22:53, October 14, 2015 (UTC)
  3. Ayrehead02 (talk) 10:41, October 15, 2015 (UTC)
    Supreme Emperor (talk) 04:33, October 16, 2015 (UTC)

Oppose

  1. Absolutely not. I'm not sure what day we woke up and decided that we wanted to make Wookieepedia less reader friendly. Call signs are no less legitimate research candidates than any other article. The biggest problem I have with this proposal is the plan to turn multi-pilot call signs into disambiguation pages. If someone wants to read through the complete history of the Rogue Leaders, for example, that article should have complete referencing and Appearances/Sources information. Rogue Leader and other similar call signs are legitimate in-universe topics and should be fully documented as such. Condensing these pages down to their bare minimums in the form of disambiguation pages and dispersing their information across other character pages does nothing but make it more difficult to find information. I shouldn't have to spend a half-hour or more skimming through the ten different Rogue Leader character articles, most of which are hundreds of thousands of bytes in size, to find exactly when and where those pilots served as Rogue Leader when that information can and should be compiled more practically in the Rogue Leader article. That's what articles are for. I'm going to touch on additional problems I have with the remaining proposal points:
    • "Call signs that have only been used by one individual should be redirected to that individual." What makes this impractical is the loss of the ability to find this information through categories. If we redirect Bravo Leader to Ric Olie, for example, Bravo Leader no longer shows up in any call sign category, and it's silly to add a call sign category to the Ric Olie page. The better solution, which I'm not necessarily advocating, would be to redirect each of these call signs to the larger squadron article, which could then more practically hold a call sign category. The reason I don't like that option is because it, too, makes it more difficult to find information. If someone is searching for all known call signs through the call sign categories, they shouldn't have to open up a larger squadron article to find all of that data; it should already show up in the category page. This is far more important to our readership than some of our core editors not being "fans" of these articles existing. Toprawa and Ralltiir (talk) 19:44, October 16, 2015 (UTC)
  2. I agree with Top. <-Omicron(Leave a message at the BEEP!) 19:47, October 16, 2015 (UTC)
  3. Tope has convinced me that the current proposal is not handling this situation correctly. However, I still think that something needs to be done to clean up these articles, especially in situations like Gold Leader, Red Leader, Red Two, and Blue Leader where multiple topics are merged into one.--Exiled Jedi (talk) 01:45, October 17, 2015 (UTC)
  4. After some consideration, Tope's argument has convinced me. I do agree that something should be done with articles like EJ's examples, however. Supreme Emperor (talk) 03:07, October 17, 2015 (UTC)
  5. - AV-6R7Crew Pit 03:31, October 17, 2015 (UTC)
  6. Most of these are contextualized just like most titles and such deserve their own article. Imagine a disambiguation page for Blue Leader. There's like a dozen blue squadrons from half a dozen different factions. One would have to give considerable context in the disambig page in order to make it comprehensible and that's not what disamb pages are for. Winterz (talk) 13:12, October 23, 2015 (UTC)
  7. Yeah I'm not a fan of how the individual pages are to be treated in this proposal. Corellian PremierJedi symbolThe Force will be with you always 16:52, October 23, 2015 (UTC)
  8. Cwedin(talk) 19:38, October 23, 2015 (UTC)

Discussion