User:Zappernapper/RatInfo

This page has been created for the sake of needing a page of centralized discussion.

The request for comment by the wider Wikipedia community is on the past decision to merge the 493 seperate Pokemon species articles into their current lists. Specifically, community-wide consensus is sought on whether the current state of the articles is appropriate/adequate and if not, then what would be appropriate.

Statement by Zappernapper

It is my proposal that consensus had been gathered by those interested (editors discussing at WT:POKE) that the previous state of 400+ articles was poor.

Many articles were full of original research, instruction, and excessive detail. The existence of such pages as WP:POKEMON suggest this was a Wikipedia-wide issue as well. The dicussion about what to do broke into three camps, expectedly. One side wished to merge all pokemon into lists, the other wished to leave them seperate, the third sought a middle ground of creating both lists and also shorter, more concise articles that grouped together 2+ related pokemon along source-defined lines.

It seemed discussion pointed editors towards the middle gorund - while not fully satisfying those who felt anything beyond a paragraph on Bellsprout was non-notable cruft, it still took away it's "article-worthy" status, treating it as a secondary subject; and while not claiming Bellsprout itself as notable enough for an article, to write anything one could think of on the Pokemon, it still allowed a safe space to give a fair amount of verifiable, non-instructional detail.

In the midst of working out the how (not the if) a group of editors reiterated their feelings about only having lists, reached consensus among themselves, and went on a merger campaign that several others repeatedly stated was in opposition to previous consesnsus. When shown link after link of supporting discussion, they pointed to their own three-day discussion, claiming consensus. Any attempts to disagree were met with, "No, you're wrong, it's already been decided."

And that is still how opposition is being met.