User talk:Gboyers/archive8: Difference between revisions

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Gboyers

Executive Manager, Managers, Executive Managers, Interface administrators, Administrators

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 Hey Gboyers, there is something very strange going on at this wiki. My articles "[[The Businessman's Bodyguard]]" and "[[New Haitian Ganglord]]" have been flagged for deletion, with the reasons being that "these pages will never have any interesting information at all about the character(s) as there is none to be found. It's just retelling what happened in the only mission he/she is featured." However, the [[Carl Pearson]], [[Mrs. Dawson]], [[Mike Griffin]], [[Dick Tanner]], [[Marcus Hammond]], [[Franco Carter]], [[Nick Kong]] and [[Charlie Dilson]] articles all fall under the same flag (ie. these pages will never have any interesting information at all about the character(s) as there is none to be found. It's just retelling what happened in the only mission he/she is featured.), have less information than the two articles that I have created yet they are not proposed for deletion. Can you please explain why this is the case and is it possible to create a policy regarding this issue to avoid confusion?--[[User:MrLanceVanceDance|MrLanceVanceDance]] 01:13, 6 October 2011 (BST)
+:I'm not sure that qualifies as a "very strange thing", it's just that we've reached a point where we need to discuss and decide between two different ways of doing things. I've not read every single page on the wiki, which is why I've only marked for deletion the ones I've read that I think we should ''consider'' deleting; and it has nothing to do with who created it.
+:As I explained, I marked [[New Haitian Ganglord]] for deletion as the character is unnamed; not specifically identified as ''the'' sole leader of the gang; and not mentioned outside of one mission. The entire information about the character is in the mission page. Now, because the character is unnamed, nobody is going to look up their name and expect to find a page there. The only way people will know about this character is through that single mission, so why not just leave it in the mission page? My point is exemplified by [[Special:WhatLinksHere/New_Haitian_Ganglord|WhatLinksHere]] - the only pages that link to it are discussion pages. The Haitian Ganglords potentailly qualify as slightly useful as they could be linked to from the [[Haitians]] article as well as the mission, but that's all, which is why I suggested having one page about them both.
+:The other issue was that you had to resort to inventing obvious/redundant content (such as "At some unknown time he joined the Haitian gang") because you realise there isn't enough real information to make a cohesive article. We shouldn't have to do that.
+:You might argue that the article is "harmless" and there's no point deleting it as it's not as if we pay per-page. I agree to an extent, but if it's a pointless page then it dilutes our other content, fills up categories/lists, and makes extra work when we come to change things (such as replacing/updating infoboxes). I'm happy to keep pages if they're useful, if visitors will want to find them, or if they are needed for other things to make sense. Whether we keep "useless" pages is a decision we could make.
+:Applying the same logic to the other characters, the same issues arise with unnamed characters (that nobody would look for), and particularly ones that have absolutely no identity or background information whatsoever. Where characters have names or voice actors, then there's straight away a chance that people could be looking those names up to read about them. Where unnamed characters are important to a plotline or a number of missions, then they are useful pages to have, where the information makes a lot more sense to be on that page than spread across lots of other pages (or nowhere at all).
+:This is a bigger issue than just about those articles, or even about character pages. There have been many discussions on whether to have a page for every shop/business, where they are nothing more than one texture on a wall. For a long time I said this would be better in a table than a page, but it's surprising how much information people can pull out.
+:Personally, I'm undecided. I don't think we should have dozens of articles about every irrelevant detail or variation. But I think we are big enough to be able to cope with people expanding the wiki like that - so long as it is managed properly. This is something we have done carefully ever since the wiki started - we start off with a small number of high-quality articles, then expand when we're ready. We're ready for a lot more than we used to be, and I don't want this wiki to become stale/empty. That said, I really don't want to end up in a situation where someone goes and makes 1,000 empty stub articles for pointless things (like a page for every grass texture and wheel type); nor where the wiki is so big nobody can use it. Long story short, if there's no content, there should be no page.
+:As I've said - happy to discuss this to figure out what is in the best interests of this wiki, please don't take it personally at all. [[User:Gboyers|gboyers]] <sup>[[User_talk:Gboyers|talk]]</sup> 02:22, 6 October 2011 (BST)