Forum:Race Article Consistency

Forums: Index > Policy > Race Article Consistency

This page is for discussing a policy related to the Mass Effect Wiki that may or may not be passed by the community. The Form below serves to describe the Policy and what it is about, or what it will modify.

Policy:

Description of Policy: This policy will require that all existing and future articles for Mass Effect's various races will be organized into a consistent format. This format is as follows:

• Race Article
  • Introduction paragraph
  • Biology ("Design" for synthetic races)
  • History
  • Culture
  • Government
  • Military
  • Notable <insert race>
  • <insert race> Worlds ("Former <insert race> Worlds" for races that are extinct or have lost their worlds)
  • Trivia
  • References

Some sections cannot be added for every race due to a current lack of necessary information (i.e. we currently have no information about raloi culture). Otherwise, race articles must adhere to this format as closely as possible.

This policy is not justification for the creation of Trivia sections; those will continue to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
Notes:
Supporting links or images:

Other Notes

This is essentially an effort to organize all 20 or so of the race articles into something uniform and less confusing. The format shown here is made up of the sections that most articles had in common in some form or another. In my sandbox, I've collected all of the race articles and applied the format to them. -- Commdor (Talk) 22:32, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

Note: Per discussion, the policy proposal has been altered. -- Commdor (Talk) 23:14, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

Voting

Support

1. As proposer. -- Commdor (Talk) 22:32, October 4, 2010 (UTC)
2. I'll support this. Organization is our friend. Arbington 22:36, October 4, 2010 (UTC)
3. As it currently stands, I support this proposal. SpartHawg948 23:27, October 4, 2010 (UTC)
4. I also see it as a good idea. Lancer1289 23:31, October 4, 2010 (UTC)
5. Support. JakePT 23:53, October 4, 2010 (UTC)
6. silverstrike 00:19, October 5, 2010 (UTC)
7. Consistency is nifty. -- Dammej (talk) 18:44, October 5, 2010 (UTC)
8. Not much chance of a nay-spam, but I support this. --AnotherRho 17:50, October 7, 2010 (UTC)

Discussion

What's this bit about "A section entitled "References" which lists valid sources for content will now be required for a new race article to be created."? Not sure I'm in agreement with that. SpartHawg948 22:34, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

It's basically requiring that these articles all be sourced in some way. Most race articles already have reference sections (under the titles "References" or "Sources"). Making references a requirement shouldn't be detrimental; I'd think if you can't provide sources for a race, how do we know it exists and you as an editor didn't make it up? -- Commdor (Talk) 22:38, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

Simple. Ask on the talk page. What I'm getting at is this - say that in ME3, several new races are introduced (as they were in ME2). Are all those new articles required to have a References section listing Mass Effect 3 as a reference? I'm all for using reference sections if we have external sites that need to be referenced (as is the case with the vorcha article), but I personally think that having to list the games (or in-game sources such as the Codex) as references is asinine. SpartHawg948 22:42, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) What I intended is the same thing as what we do now. We list external sites where applicable, and have reinforcing links to the Codex. The only difference is that doing that would be mandatory under this policy. If you're that opposed to it, though, I'll remove that line. -- Commdor (Talk) 22:50, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, I really am. I wholeheartedly agree that if external sources are referenced, these external sources need to be listed (in fact, I've been meaning to take care of a few of those...). However, there is no reason to mandate that in-game sources be similarly listed. All those in-game sources are right here on this site after all, and the references listed (i.e. "in-game Codex") really aren't references any more than "In the encyclopedia" would be a reference. After all, we've done pretty well sniffing out fakes without having a mandatory system of in-game references. Just ask the garol. SpartHawg948 22:54, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

I don't really see how removing in-line citations improves articles in any way. Why would we want to make it harder for people to verify that information contained in an article is indeed true? -- Dammej (talk) 23:09, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

How is removing "In-game Codex" doing anything of the sort? It isn't telling them where the info comes from. It's like you asking me about where a piece of info is from, and me tossing you a book and saying "it's in there somewhere." Now, if there were links to the actual sections that the info comes from, or even the right categories of the Codex, that would be another matter entirely. But there aren't. SpartHawg948 23:13, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

I was referring specifically to your removal of specific page numbers as in-line sources on the Quarian article. Apologies for not making that more clear. But in general I would think in-line sources (perhaps even to specific sections of a Codex) are preferable to simply listing a book or Codex at the end of the article. -- Dammej (talk) 23:15, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, specificity helps. My issue there is that there was only one race article that did this, even though pretty much all of them contain specific info from books. One out of 19. If we stop and note every instance of info gleaned from a book with in-line citations like that, some of the articles will end up with reference sections nearly as long as the articles themselves. It was a consistency issue. One of 19 had these citations, the other 18 did not. And the one that did only had citations for some (but not all) of the info taken from the novels. SpartHawg948 23:20, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

Well then the other 18 articles are lacking, not the other way around. I see no point in making one article slightly worse for the sake of consistency. If a tag or category were added to a page that invited people to add in-line citations to articles, the other articles would surely get the citations they need.

I don't really see how a large reference section is a problem either. We could easily make it a scrollable box so that it doesn't monopolize the content of the page. -- Dammej (talk) 23:24, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

Seems like this has become a discussion for another forum altogether. One that addresses whether or not articles are better or worse with these citations (i.e. whether they are needed at all), and if so, implementing a tag or category. But it seems like this is getting rather off-topic on this page. SpartHawg948 23:27, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

Yup. Anyway: Would this proposal create a MoS page for Races? Having this proposal (if it passes) codified into 'official' wiki pages would be good. (Perhaps this is an unstated assumption of policy proposals, apologies if this is a question with an obvious answer.) If that's the case, I think a sandboxed version of said page would be beneficial, allowing wording to be refined, etc. -- Dammej (talk) 23:34, October 4, 2010 (UTC)

Didn't really see an answer to my question above. Ah well. I vote in support anyway, since it's a good idea. The details could be ironed out later. -- Dammej (talk) 18:44, October 5, 2010 (UTC)

Implementation

Well all that remains is to copy paste the information. Commdor, if you would... Lancer1289 17:05, October 16, 2010 (UTC)

Completely forgot about this. Had a busier-than-usual week. But yeah, I'll get on this right away. Won't be able to copy/paste though, I didn't realize until too late that my spell-check spree had also altered a bunch of British-spelled words, which we all know is against policy. So I'll have to reorganize the articles manually. On the upside, at least I know where to put everything in the articles now. -- Commdor (Talk) 17:40, October 16, 2010 (UTC)

Oh, well things like that happen from time to time. Anyway I also forgot about a few things so I decided to browse the forums to see what has stagnated. Lancer1289 17:42, October 16, 2010 (UTC)