Internet Archive Transformers

[Marylouise Colleen]

Mightas well kick this off while I'm here. Regarding the suggested merging of these two articles, I say thee nay. "Series" desparately needs to be cleaned up, and I've been meaning to do it for absolutely ages, but what that page should serve as is a master list of the assorted Transformers television series (some of which have their own articles to be linked off to). So in actuality, it should probably be renamed "List of Transformers TV series," or something like that). It's the same principle as "Transformers (comic)", which serves as a list of the assorted Transformers comics published - I don't see anyone suggesting that should be merged. "Transformers Universes" is a totally different thing from both of those pages, dealing in cartoon, comic and toy that lists how all those things are either separate, or how they inter-relate and form different fictional universes. - Chris McFeely 13:19, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm biased because I instituted it, but I think that the layout that the majority of detailed TF articles have at the moment is the way to go. The method suggested above is for a single-character-dedicated article, so it doesn't really work - we should really want to avoid having to create separate article for every single character who has used the same name, for example, "Prowl (G1)", "Prowl (BW)", "Prowl (RiD)", etc, etc. Let's keep all the Prowls, all the Mirages, etc, on one page. So, the single-character-dedicated method doesn't really work. The layout I've been used for a goodly while now works like this:

Then we get to subdividing by fiction - not by chronological toy release, hence, Alternators and things like that go under the section for the G1 character, because they're the same character. G1 requires the most sub-sections, and I advocate starting with the most famous version of the fiction which is best known in the minds of casual public, that being the cartoon. So it goes:

And then add the Devil's Due G.I. Joe vs. TF and the IDW Comics if necessary. The next series starts at 2, and similar subdivisions carry on as necessary. When things get a bit more complicated is when the same characters appears across a wide number of series - Mirage is a good example of this. So, for that page, I went with a format like this:

However, if a character appears in MORE than one, then I used the master heading of "Unicron Trilogy," and subdivide the section into smaller ones dealing with each series. Rather than splitting up any DW comics stuff, though, I put that under one sub-section, since it just ran straight from one into the other without a break:

(Mirage and Prowl were a rare exception to that, as there was two different Mirages and Prowl in Armada and Energon, and being separate characters, they got separate sections headed up by the name of the series they appeared in.)

Due to the insistence of one user in repeatedly inserting references to toys that were repaints of characters, but were not actually those characters (sometimes creating entire subsections to put in that one sentence of information), I later started adding a "Remoulds and Redecos" section at the end to cover things like that.

The Transformers wiki, though, only puts one character per article, whereas on Wikipedia itself, we've generally stuck to putting all characters with the same name in one article (save the Primes and Megatrons), so this MIGHT be a bit on the long side. It'd be worth trying it out on an article to see what it looks like - I might overhaul Mirage with this design to see what it looks like, since he's got one of the widest-used names. - Chris McFeely 18:30, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Okay, so, the Optimus Prime page has been a bit messy lately, so I've cleaned it up using a version of the "Fiction/Toys" layout. It works particularly well, since the page only deals with G1 Prime - it'll still need some work to make it apply to pages with more than one character, I think. - Chris McFeely 22:33, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Just wanted to give you guys a heads up, we can't use fair use images outside of articles, which excludes userboxes and Project templates. However, I noticed Image:Autobot-glow.jpg is a fan made image, and you might be able to use that. However, even that is unlikely, as WikiProject Anime and manga just went through a similar thing since we had been using a fan image as our "mascot". I know it seems strict, but that's apart of being a WikiProject too. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. -- Ned Scott 06:38, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Just so this is clear, cases like this are unacceptable. Bio text is copyrighted by Hasbro and cannot be used by Wikipedia. When editing Transformers pages, please do not add bio text or remove them when you come across them. Thanks. ' (Feeling chatty? ) (Edits!) 09:07, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Hi there. I've just joined, and I hope I can help some. But I have to ask - why have so many TF articles been tagged as unsourced? Example - Megatron/Galvatron. I'm looking through articles like these and I can't see anything that needs sourced, apart from the pictures and surely that's covered in the text? I've left a message on Madchester's page (the guy who cited it as unsourced) but he hasn't answered. Could you look through these pages and see if there is anything that actually needs sourced? Thanks in advance. --SMegatron 20:58, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually there are a lot of references to Transformer toys that could be linked to the appropriate source material from Hasbro or Takara. For example, where was the information for the Legends of Cybertron article obtained? Obviously, there's a specific page on the Hasbro site that contains this information, but there is no link anywhere for other editors and readers to follow up on it. --Madchester 02:01, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I noticed a lot of spoiler tags on transformers articles, but these are very vague. Like a spoilers tag at the top of the Optimus Prime page. I don't know if someone is afraid to let someone else know Prime dies in the movie, but I don't think this is appopriate - spoiler tag at the top of a page about the WHOLE article does nothing, since you don't even know what the spoiler is. I could maybe understand a big plot point being marked as a small part of an article. What are your opinions? user:mathewignash

I agree with you. It should be like articles on comic book characters where the spoilers tag only applies to the most recent events (like the Civil War stuff with Spider-Man). Having a spoiler tag on the whole article is just stupid. --SMegatron 22:18, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Small question, I'd like opinions. I've often seen people use capitol letters for nouns like "Energon" (the substance, not the show), "Spark", "Beast Mode", etc. Are these really proper nouns? Should the be changed to lower case when they arn't the beginning of a sentence? user:mathewignash

Did he consult anyone? If he didn't then something needs to be done, like reporting him to the admins. I mean if we all voted for it then fair enough, but as we didn't...--SMegatron 19:49, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

I found claim that Ransack (Transformers) was deleted because it was similar to Ransack, which was ALSO deleted by Madchester a while back. I can't find any talk about why Ransack was deleted in the first place other than Madchester calling it "fancruft" and deleting it. It was no different than a hundred other Transformer articles on the Wikipedia, so I don't know how it offended him. User:mathewignash

Hmm. If it has been nominated for and won a vote for deletion then fair enough. How different was the current deleted article to the original deleted article though? --SMegatron 10:00, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. I can actually see alot of things that could be improved - an expanded Marvel comics section, an expanded Dreamwave section, plus at least one image(the one I added to the Insecticon page recently) that could go on it. Maybe a better toys and repaints section. --SMegatron 10:19, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I wanted to suggest that a few items could be added to the infobox. How about "I.D. Number" where you can list the Takara code number for a toy. Like C-1, C2 etc. ALso, a line for Cyber-Code for the Cybertron toys with codes. Also, some characters have multiple mottos, and it's hard to list them with the auto-quoting. Any recommdations? User:mathewignash

A while back I added a lot of comic book history for comics UT Optimus Prime, and it was written in the past tense with a note on each paragraph as to what issue each thing happened in, but then someone rewrote it in the present tense, and removed the references to which issue of the comics. So this is really two questions - should character histories be written in past or present tense, and should (and if so HOW) we mention the issue episode something happened in? There was been a lot of screaming and yelling for referenes and sources, so I can't understand why anyone would be going around REMOVING mentions of episode names and issues numbers from the character histories. user:mathewignash

In fairness that was probably me at least on some of the Decepticon and Terrorcon pages(specifically Energon Megs). I admit it's personal preference, but I always wanted it to read like a proper character history like the TV versions have, rather than a list of issue summaries - thats what the comics section of TFarchive and the like are for and they do it far better. Also I didn't think it would matter to the sourcing, as Madchester tagged quite a few articles with sections written like that. Maybe if in future I make reference to which issues the most important events happened in that would help.--SMegatron 16:08, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Is there an official call for past or present tense in writing a history of a character in wikipedia or in writing in general? I know you should be consistant, that seems obvious, but consistantly what? Present or past? I had been writing them all part myself, but if I'm wrong I will change. user:mathewignash

Hey guys and gals, lots of talk going on here. I don't really have anything constructive to say, but I just wanted to show my support for the project. I've got to transform and roll out to basketball... Dawhitfield 22:14, 13 August 2006 (UTC) I n s e r t f o r m u l a h e r e \displaystyle Insertformulahere

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