Forum:Merge policy/guideline discussion

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Originally a discussion about merging articles for buildings seen in the background or in skyline shots of real world cities. It spun out from there.

Initial discussion about buildings

It's been suggested that the discussion on buildings articles be a separate page, so here we are.

I don't think the appearance of a cityscape or other general image of a city is enough to get every building and street seen an article. We have decided in the past that the appearance of a map of the Earth in canon was not enough to get every location on the Earth an article. There is a difference between the Golden Gate Bridge (prominent in shots of San Fran, and mentioned a couple times, I think), the Eiffel Tower (again, prominent and representative of the city) than 101 California Street or One Maritime Plaza or 50 Fremont Center, which were never the focus of establishing shots of the city. I don't know what the exact standard should be in this matter, but that should have something to do with it.

Lastly, I think putting the architectural style of these barely seen buildings in the article is a stretch, unless it was mentioned. 31dot (talk) 12:01, October 8, 2013 (UTC)

I have been going through the references from the fourth movie. I have been adding delete tags on most buildings and other places that weren't named. The ones that I think have importance are the Transamerica Pyramid, the Coit Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, and the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge. These are iconic to the Bay Area. I am looking at the other references.Throwback (talk) 12:36, October 8, 2013 (UTC)

I agree with 31dot here as well. However, if articles are now being suggested for deletion anyway, it might be best to wait for that process to go through before continuing this discussion. --Cid Highwind (talk) 12:54, October 8, 2013 (UTC)

I disagree that the pages should all be tagged with deletes now that the discussion here has begun. The discussion should carry through before the deletion option is made. -- sulfur (talk) 13:01, October 8, 2013 (UTC)

I went through the references for the fourth movie. I have put a high number up for deletion. Some of them I made myself. I included references from a bag that someone saw at the Cetacean Institute that had illustrations of California landmarks. I have seen the film on bluray and I couldn't tell you what was on that bag. Aside from Market Street and Embarcadero, I have thrown the other streets to the "refuse pile". What else have I thrown into the refuse pile? Cars, for example. The rationale, this is stuff that isn't identified in the canon or in the script. It's stuff that people know from doing research or being able to identify immediately what it is.Throwback (talk) 13:08, October 8, 2013 (UTC)

To continue my thought, rather than adding it onto every single delete article that was just created, it is not original research to identify something seen on screen. If these were buildings on "other planets", we'd be doing our best to identify them if possible. Since a couple of films have focused on San Francisco on Earth, why should those be any different? Further thought... the library computer references in "The Cage" logically fall into the same line of thought (if you want to take it to its conclusion). Are we going to go through this same discussion for all of those? If it weren't for MA:POINT, I'd go add "delete page" templates to each of those items. -- sulfur (talk) 14:03, October 8, 2013 (UTC)

I can't confirm what I have seen for I don't have screen capture technology. And, frankly, I am testing the waters. There has been a subtle change in policy, and I am throwing the widest net possible to see what is permissible and what is not permissible. References in dialog are easy to write for. Do I create two articles, one for whale hunters and one for whaling? I find that creating one article for whaling actually answers the question, what is a whale hunter? When it comes to visual references, it seems that is when things begin to fall apart. Do I include only things for whose name I can see? Or, do I include what, through research, can be identified with certainity? Someone wrote a series of articles about places that were known by symbology on a bag that an elderly woman carried in the Cetacean Institute. As I have been unable to identify these same things for the bag is barely seen, I have to wonder how accurately his articles are. As there are no visual media accompanying the articles, I can only guess at what he is seeing. And, what is the test for visual acuteness? I have a 42 inch televison, so I might be seeing things that someone with a smaller tv might not see.Throwback (talk) 14:20, October 8, 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict, reply mostly to sulfur) Just to make that explicit: these articles have first been discussed in the lengthy Forum:Whale articles discussion as possible other merge candidates. My above comment does not mean that I necessarily want to see all those articles deleted (although some of them should be, in my opinion[*]) - but now that they have been put up for deletion besides also discussing their possible merging, we should not discuss in both places at once. One way would be to see which articles "survive" the deletion process and then discuss if those should be merged. Another way would be to discuss merging first, and then see if any of the remaining articles end up still being "controversial" and bring those up for deletion again. Discussing in too many places at once just adds to the already existing confusion. -- Cid Highwind (talk) 14:25, October 8, 2013 (UTC)

And you've hit the crux of my problem. It's already spread across two forums. Now it's also onto about 15-20 deletion pages. If that's not too many places, I really don't know what is. -- sulfur (talk) 14:29, October 8, 2013 (UTC)

Well, before Throwbacks last comment I was giving him the benefit of the doubt - but after that comment, it seems as if it is a case of disrupting MA to prove a point instead of a genuine attempt to get rid of articles that he himself thinks shouldn't be part of this wiki. After he also, suddenly told us, after 40KB of discussion, that the whale articles should be removed now, I guess I'll sit this one out until someone else settles the question of where and what to discuss in one way or another. For what it's worth, I just think that individual buildings that just were visible in a wide shot, and of which we don't even now a "canonical" address, shouldn't have their own articles. --Cid Highwind (talk) 16:37, October 8, 2013 (UTC)

First of, let me say I don't believe these pages should be deleted, but merged at the most. We strive for completeness so imo that's very clear. Secondly, I agree mentioning the architectural style is a big stretch. With such vague references, we should be very careful to mention only what is known. For the vast majority, not even the name is technically known, though I was basing it on our precedents for things like naming famous paintings that were seen but not mentioned. But I can see that's debatable. In any case, the key I think is to strictly limit ourselves to information that can actually be sourced from the episode, and then see if we still have enough information to justify individual articles. If not, or if we decide naming them is not justified, then they should be merged into something.

On a sidenote; I was the one who created the bag articles, based on blu-ray (which I borrowed so unfortunatly don't have right now if needed for discussion), and would really like there to be pictures but also don't know how to do that. Also note that while each article says, "seen on a bag", there were actually two people with identical bags, and not each article is sourced on the same bag. Before I've read this page (and thus unfortunate in defiance of the excellent point that the discussion would better be in one place), I've posted on why I've created them here. -- Capricorn (talk) 17:46, October 8, 2013 (UTC)

No one has come forward with an idea for folding this all into one place again, so let me give it a try. I think we can safely disregard the deletion discussions (for) now, since only Throwback suggested deletion as opposed to merger, and he seems to no longer stand by his reasons for that. Also arguably the issue of the whales specifically has come as close to a consensus as it's going to get, since 31dot said he could live with the articles as they currently are, and Throwback seems to have abandoned his stance that the whole lot of articles ought to be deleted. That leaves this page. But on the other hand, there's still other classes of articles that fall under this discussion. In the whale discussion, I for example brought up individual books, and even though no one picked up on that that is a genuine concern for me. I think we need to decide if we want to decide these things on a subject-by subject basis, in which case we stay here, or on a general basis, in which case I guess we best either make this about everything, or make yet a new forum page. -- Capricorn (talk) 16:33, October 9, 2013 (UTC)

For the record, I'm only not supporting some of these deletion suggestions because it has been requested to not make a bigger mess of this (and I think that is a good idea). These articles should not be considered having "survived" a deletion discussion - or else we we will have to discuss all those suggestions now. It doesn't really help this discussion that Throwback alternates between the two extremes of creating and suggesting deletion of all articles repeatedly. Regarding the rest, you are creating horror stories about all kinds of article being up for grabs again. If this is what you want to do, the least you could do is to actually suggest the kind of "objective guideline" you keep requesting. --Cid Highwind (talk) 20:50, October 9, 2013 (UTC)

We should at least merge those discussions together (someone let me know if that's cool and I can do it in a manner that should leave them understandable), or we could merge them all here ( I can do that as well). If we're not going to do either of those though, they should be deleted, since we shouldn't keep them open if this is the location they should be discussed, which I agree with, and we can't really close them in the "normal" manner either, since we shouldn't keep a bunch of archived pages that really only tell you to come to this one. - Archduk3 22:42, October 9, 2013 (UTC)

(edit confict - this is mostly in answer to Cid, but I'm ok with Archduke's proposal) First off, I don't consider those pages to have survived a deletion discussion either, even if I do strongly believe they should not be deleted but at most merged. As far as I'm concerned it's a special case; they were nominated because of a misunderstanding about where we were in the discussion.

Considering the book issue; I don't see it as a horror story, I was merely trying to point out that this for example this article (picture pending) which is part of a series of articles which I've recently put some work in, has exactly as much of little going for being a seperate article as the whale articles. (to summarise: It's one in a list of very short and similar articles, based only on being seen and the name being legible, with information which could easily be merged in the article about the class of things it is (book). I actually intended to create articles on more books when the discussion started, but halted that effort until we got more clarity. So for me it wasn't just a hypothetical, bringing that up.

As for the guidelines you kept asking, I didn't exactly ignore that, I said that unfortunately I didn't know. Not helpfull, I admit, but I was trying, just not getting very far. And I believed that in itself couldn't be taken as an excuse to just merge anything anyone feels has a vibe of insignificance.

But Oh Joy, then came a post in the whale discussion by Archduk3 which I think pretty much gave the answers you wanted, and was clearly rooted in existing policy to boot. Since you didn't respond when I pointed out that I believed that to be the case, I'll try to distill it in a more formal policy-like format. There's also a few refinements of my own. Incidentally I'm not the best person at writing these kinds of things, so please bear with me for this rough draft.

• All these conditions would have to be fullfilled to not be merged:
  • Articles would have to have a name referenced from canon. Maybe we could allow the usual types of permitted production sources for naming too, not that I can think of an example where that makes a difference. (this is the case for whales, but not the case for most of these landmarks, so the latter would be merged)
  • Articles would have to have to have a minumum size of two sentences. That's inspired by guidelines at Memory Alpha:Contribute what you know or are willing to learn about and our guideline as to what isn't a stub.
  • There must at least be some subject-unique information except for the different name. Archduk3 specifically suggested that different) pictures might be counted as unique information too, which I think makes some sense and is a excellent idea, but I guess that bit is debatable.
  • In case of the landmarks specifically, it has also been suggested that there ought to be an exception for "iconic" city-establishing buildings like the Transamerica Pyramid no matter what. As to what exactly counts as iconic, I don't know, but I agree that even if I would end up supporting a merge consensus, I'd be uncomfortable extending that to the Transamerica Pyramid.
  • Furthermore, there should also be an exception to make sure that for example even if the whales were to be merged in whale, Denebian whale would not be. I'm not sure how to word that exception right now, but it should be doable and from previous posts I bet the proponents of merging can help comming up with guidelines for those two exceptions.

Now, just to move this subject along, I also have another thought that hasn't been brought up yet. We're talking about maybe merging this in a page for SF landmarks, but based on certain shots from "Storm Front" and "Far Beyond the Stars", I'm pretty sure there's a bunch of NYC landmarks waiting to be documented. If there's a few those could be represented on a single page too, so far so good. But if landmarks were to be found in other cities (can't think of any examples though), with this approach we may end up with lots of pages like "Paris landmarks" which have exactly one entry. For that reason, maybe its better to abandon the "San Francisco landmarks" approach in favour of a more general "unnamed landmarks" page. -- Capricorn (talk) 23:05, October 9, 2013 (UTC)

Just to play devil's advocate for a moment:

Room 08-0669 was a room on board the USS Enterprise-D. In 2365, it was inhabited by Lieutenant B.G. Robinson. (TNG: "The Outrageous Okona")

That's two sentences of unique information and a canon name, everything necessary to allow creation of an article that must not be merged according to the suggested guidelines - yet I wouldn't want dozens of room articles to pop up where that information should clearly (in my opinion) be part of the Ent-D article. Before you or anyone claims that his is just a theoretical issue which would never happen, please note that we already have the redirect Room 727, which could similarly be turned into a separate article under these conditions. Do you agree that this shouldn't happen and can you suggest something that prevents it, or am I alone in thinking that these articles wouldn't be good? --Cid Highwind (talk) 23:35, October 9, 2013 (UTC)

I think rooms within specific article-worthy objects (like the Enterprise) are somehow different from buildings within a specific city. We woudn't have articles for the specific patches of a football too. And on a sidenote, 08-0669 isn't a name, it's an adress or a serial number. I can see a number of other problems with my proposed guidelines though, it's certainly not perfect yet. You asked for something, why don't you try to do something constructive with them instead of picking them apart by playing devil's advocate. (heck, you criticized me for bringing up "horror story" scenarios about books, and now you come up with a devil's advocate scenario about an article called "Room 08-0669". You can't criticize me for seeing flaws in your view, and then shoot down my views because they're not perfect.) -- Capricorn (talk) 00:42, October 10, 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and to answer a specific question, I do agree that the articles you describe woudn't be any good. -- Capricorn (talk) 00:53, October 10, 2013 (UTC)

The Transamerica Pyramid was mentioned in the script for the first movie. In the script, the writer wrote,

From this vantage, we can SEE all of twenty-third century San Francisco stretched out before us. In the b.g., the familiar forms of the carefully preserved Golden Gate Bridge and Transamerica Pyramid Building serve as our only reminders that this is, indeed, San Francisco. [1]

I know I have no credibility after what I did here. Yet, I need to raise a point. Sorry. Looking at the visual references from the fourth movie, we have articles about things that weren't named in the canon and needed original research to aid in their identification. This is one film. I am sure an examination of other films and episodes will have the same result. Whatever decision we take here, I think we should note that it will have an impact on all other articles. Are we talking about creating a means test?Throwback (talk) 01:26, October 10, 2013 (UTC)

I have to go to sleep, but just a very quick reply to that to one specific point; I'm worried that you might not have the right idea about what constitutes original research. Identifying something in a picture is certainly not. -- Capricorn (talk) 01:44, October 10, 2013 (UTC)

Why is is so hard to find anything on this site? The search engine is a joke. I had to do a google search to find what Wikipedia defines "original research" as. I did research to identity these things. I didn't know them by name. It might not be "original research", but it is research.Throwback (talk) 02:09, October 10, 2013 (UTC)

You know what, forget this discussion. I will just oppose and refuse changing my mind while someone else runs amok and suggests articles for deletion with "no reason" as the deletion rationale. There have been ten new suggestions after my last comment here alone. This either stops and gets sorted out by someone, or I will just happily play along and delete these suggested articles after the minimum time allowed by policy. --Cid Highwind (talk) 08:04, October 10, 2013 (UTC)

As someone said above, I was "making a point" initially. I did't have a reason to delete the articles, most of the articles anyway. I just selected the articles most likely to be selected for deleton by a moderator. Other than the items seen on a bag, for which I can not speak for and have not confirmed, a majority of the items weren't named in the canon. I threw in the streets because someone objected to their existence. I wanted to see if this policy was being extended to just the buildings and the whales, or was it expanding into other areas. Confusion began when 31dot didn't object initially to Capricorn writing these articles. I took that action as consent to name other buildings, and Capricorn added some more of his own. When it came to my attention that this act of massively selecting articles for deletion was fogging, not clearing, the issue, I had to take action to defog the situation, so to speak. As I am not a moderator, I don't have the authority to remove the delete tag. So, I chose the next best thing.Throwback (talk) 09:01, October 10, 2013 (UTC)

Upon further investigation, all those deletion discussions were invalid on their own, as the rationale was based on an incomplete discussion (namely this one), and edits like these made in violation of MA:POINT are invalid anyway. The history is preserved in the redirect to this page, though anything said there should have been, and I'm going to assume was, said here as well.

As long as were talking about not disrupting Memory Alpha to prove a point, Cid, take a look at your last few posts here (and in related discussions) and then check the examples of gaming the system. If the overlap in the two isn't obvious, I'll go though it point by point. If you're ready to get back on board with this discussion though, please feel free to.

Throwback, if you're going to tag more pages for deletion, though I strongly advise you not to until there is a consensus here, do not create more pointless deletion discussion pages. If the instructions for deleting multiple pages under the same, or very similar, rational aren't clear to you, pleases suggest ways they can be improved.

For the record, and in case sulfur didn't already say it here: "Identifying something by sight is not original research." This, what I hope is common sense, and the reference policy, pretty much make it clear almost none of this information should be deleted, since most, if not all, of it should be included somewhere, if not where it already is.

I also want to point out that I would be fine with room numbers being added to some sort of list article along the lines of the deck articles, or even a real world article about the sets. If someone wants to contribute that level of information, I say let's try and fine a way to present it so it's helpful to anyone who is interested before removing or deleting it, since "we want to cover as much information about Star Trek in as great detail as humanly possible". The same idea applies here. - Archduk3 11:35, October 10, 2013 (UTC)

@Capricorn, again, please don't understand my comments here as trying to be "unconstructive" - quite the opposite: you want to find an objective, clear-cut policy for which articles should or should not exist on their own. From being active on this and other wikis for over a decade, I just know that, after a policy has been created and put into place, it will be used for all sorts of good, bad and ugly wiki-lawyering, including using it for purposes that haven't quite been the intention when the policy was first created. As an example for this, look no further than the guidelines you quoted for article length. The spirit of these never was to allow articles that are two sentences long, but instead to prevent articles that are even shorter from being created. That's a difference. With that in mind, I'm not attacking your suggestions out of spite, or because I've got nothing better to do, but because I at least want a policy that is considered a necessity to be as clear-cut and "non-abuseable" as possible (truth is, I would prefer less cumbersome policy to more, but I seem to be in a minority here). So, constructive result of our last back-and-forth is that a new policy would need to make clear that

• sub-parts of "article-worthy" objects should not get their own article, and that
• specific kinds of "non-names", like serial numbers or addresses, are not enough to fulfill the "name requirement"

We would still need to clarify how and why the relation between a starship (or hotel) room and the starship is fundamentally different from a random building and a city, but at least that's getting somewhere. I have a problem with stating that a serial number or similar is definitely not a valid name, because that would pose a problem regarding, for example, the many articles we have for unnamed starships like NCC-1697. Should those be merged into a list article after this policy is put into place? If not, we'll need further clarification about how Room 727 (or any number of other "descriptive titles", mind you) is different from NCC-1697. And that clarification better be in form of a concise definition, not a pile of exceptions.

This is where we will run into problems, I think, because it looks as if there's already a good number of exceptions that would need to either be dropped, or a good general rule be found instead.

On the good side, I assume that, when this policy is enacted, we will never again have to go through lengthy discussions about splitting articles, like Talk:Constitution class model#Split (and, for better or worse, this would probably pop up again, too), or Talk:Klingon#Split, right? :) -- Cid Highwind (talk) 12:22, October 10, 2013 (UTC)

@Archduk3: Thank you for resolving the deletion discussion. Throwback, this isn't general policy, but if you ever feel a need to defog a situation in such a dramatic way again, and you're unsure how, maybe you ought to just ask a mod first.

@Cid: Your last post is very constructive, thanks for that. I'll adres the points in a moment. But do understand why I found your comments on these two pages to be unconstructive in general: while my proposed policy might be used for wiki-lawyering and thus end up with bad results, it is nothing else then an attempt put limits on the new way of handling information which you invite, and which too I feel may be abused. What bothered me is that you've consistently brought up the problems with regulating that practice, while almost summary dismissing concerns brought up about it happening without any guidelines in place. Since you don't see yourself as unconstructive I'm sure you didn't do that conciously, but it isn't a fair position, especially when the merging of certain small articles is the change rather then the status quo.

Now onto your specific points. The idea that "sub-parts of "article-worthy" objects should not get their own article" is sound, but how do you define that? Starfleet HQ is as much a sub-part of San Francisco as these buildings. An eye is a sub-part of a humanoid, the lunar colonies a sub-part of the moon... That is the biggest problem with what I've suggested as far as I can see it. Though thanks for finaly thinking about it. As for the "specific kinds of "non-names", like serial numbers or addresses, are not enough to fulfill the "name requirement" - I absolutely agree. Though a minor note, I didn't know if you understand this from earlier comments, but building names in the format "[number] [street name]" aren't just adresses, that's how the buildings are actually named. You'll see those terms on their sides and their websites and I suspect their letterheads. (Then again, the names aren't canon, so according to my proposal in that specific case it's still not a reason to have seperate articles on them)

Concerning the specific article of starships defined by their registry, I could be wrong here, but I always thought that was one of those things where it functioned as a kind of a placeholder article title that had specially been allowed in lieu of a canon name, not that it was accepted as a valid name. I suggested earlier that production sources be accepted as canon names, but maybe in light of that concern it would be better not to.

ps: I've had to write this in a hurry, hope I haven't overlooked something. -- Capricorn (talk) 13:16, October 10, 2013 (UTC)

@Capricorn, regarding the "sub-part/article-worthy" clause, I was paraphrasing what I assumed to be your suggestion for a definition there. I agree that there are still problems to be solved, basically the same you put up: Room 727 is a part of the article-worthy Hotel Royale just as much as Enterprise-D starboard warp nacelle would be a sub-part of USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D), or Golden Gate Bridge of San Francisco, or Starbase 47 of Federation starbases. Obviously, we want to write an own article about the "sub-part" in some cases, but not in all. That means that the clause is missing some necessary detail. The length or name requirements, as suggested, don't help much, as there are examples of long/nameable stuff that we wouldn't want articles about just as much as there are examples of the opposite. We could turn the length requirement around and, instead of stating that anything longer than two sentences can have its own article, state that anything below, say, ten sentences can be merged if there is a possible merge target. However, that would only shift, not solve the problem. We could go the route of trying to measure "on-screen importance", which would hopefully lead to correctly merging most of the city-part articles and non-creation of room articles, but might also lead to merging of the whale articles (because, let's face it, they weren't important to the story) and incorrect creation of other articles (hey, Worf's spine was an important detail in one TNG episode ;)). I still say that, whatever strict rule we find for this, there will always be examples where that strict rule will lead to a bad result. So, I still advocate leaving at least some wiggle room by, first and foremost, not trying to define the exact line between "mergeable" and "non-mergeable" articles but instead by stating examples for cases that are clearly one or the other, and also by calling the end result of this a guideline instead of a policy. -- Cid Highwind (talk) 14:04, October 10, 2013 (UTC)

After rename to "merge policy discussion"

Regarding the recent rename of this, and the general "goal" of this page for that matter, I don't think we should be trying to create a policy/guideline for "merging" things, since we already have one, but rather we should be thinking about what information would be best presented as a "list article" (see Earth spacedocks for example). By only identifying what we want our list articles to be, instead of what can or can't be merged, we should be able to avoid most of the problems already mentioned. - Archduk3 21:30, October 10, 2013 (UTC)

Right, there is some merge policy, but that only deals with how to merge, not what to merge - except for, perhaps, the implicit idea that merges are suggested and discussed on a case-by-case basis. Now, this has worked well enough for years until all hell broke loose recently, and if your comment is supposed to be understood as support for that way of doing things, I agree. In fact, this is what I've been saying the whole time. I'm not sure how discussing something else instead would help, because the merged whale article that caused this whole mess would not have been a proper list article, but still an article about earth whales in general, with a very small list added to it. The suggested "locations" article would basically be a list, yes, but if we only agreed on what can be a list, it probably still wouldn't help Capricorn who thinks that there's an attempt to merge (non-list) articles further than reasonable. If that understanding of Capricorns position is wrong then, by all means, let's decide on what makes a good list article and leave case-by-case merging alone. That would be great. --Cid Highwind (talk) 23:52, October 10, 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I am pretty much saying I think we should still deal with merges on a case-by-case basis, though clearly something needs improvement or at least clarification. I think if we work at a guideline on what information we would rather list than create separate articles for, regardless of if the list itself is its own article or just part of another, then we might end up at a solution that addresses what happened recently, with a minimum of unintended consequences.

Generally, we have drawn the line at what is listed and what gets it own article at named and unnamed, though there are exceptions to that on both ends. Things that are "alive" tend to be to separate articles if we can find a way (Chef (Enterprise NX-01) and Viceroy (Reman) come to mind), while things that aren't tend to go the other way. The reasoning why we don't have a ton of "Character (hologram)" articles but still have Reginald Barclay (hologram), or even why we have just Silver Blood instead of a bunch of "Character (silver blood)" articles seems like a better place to start with this than the buildings, or even the whales. This is all pretty much food for thought rather than a clear suggestion right now. - Archduk3 23:24, October 11, 2013 (UTC)

Another factor that may play a role is how "important" something has been, story-wise. Useful questions in that regard could be:

• Has the item in question itself been a story element?
  • If not, has it at least prominently been used to depict some story element or progress? (For example, Golden Gate Bridge has been used both to show the Breen attack on earth and Voyager's arrival back at earth).
• Have the characters interacted with the item in question?
  • If not, is it not possible to sensibly mention this item in some "parent article"?

This list of questions is not necessarily complete, but I think it shows a possible direction. The more "yes"-answers we get for some item, the more necessary it might be to give that item its own article - while those with no or only a few "yes"-answers better stay list items or parts of a merged article. For example, Golden Gate Bridge would get 3 points here (NO, YES, YES, implied-YES), while many of the articles that started this discussion would get 0 or 1 points.

By the way, other good examples for items that should just be a list are many of the Ranger 5, Nimbus 1 and Apollo Lunar Module (which itself is a component and already redirects to its parent) components that are being created as we speak. Those, too, get 0 points on the suggested test. -- Cid Highwind (talk) 11:20, October 12, 2013 (UTC)

NASA spacecraft parts

Those components are named in the canon. They are seen in the schematics, and work has already begun on them by others. The majority of the items I place a deletion on weren't named in the canon. There are several articles in "The Cage" reference that weren't named in the canon, ex. Dumbbell Nebula, wildebeast, or viola. Others are not readable, for example, some of the geographical references. I am not against the criteria. However, the question is, how much of a change do we want to do? Do we want a mininum amount of change, or a maximum amount of change, or somewhere in between? We could follow the example of the Mass Effect wiki, where the policy is the one outlined by Cid Highwind. (I am pausing on those component pages.) We have 36,381 articles. How many of those don't fit the criteria as outlined by Cid Highwind? And, who will do the work of excising these articles?Throwback (talk) 12:30, October 12, 2013 (UTC)

Something else, I did an article on the Atomic Energy Commission. This reference is lifted from the script. Into what category do we place script only references?Throwback (talk) 12:32, October 12, 2013 (UTC)

But it's the whale discussion all over again with these components and "components-of-components" - just, this time, I don't even see a possibility to expand all those articles so that they are not all the same with basically just the name of the component being replaced (which is what helped end the whale discussion). Things that we (individually) know nothing about should not have their own article, because they don't need an own article. They can just live as a redirect to a bigger article (whether that is a list as suggested, or something else), and everyone can be happy. Also, again, this is not as much change as you make it out to be - in fact, not writing articles about everything, even if unimportant and a part of something else, seems to be the implicit rule we've had for years, not a change to some different rule. Last but not least, if there is a wiki that already has a rule like this in place, please link to it. It might not help us much (because we can't just transplant a rule from one wiki to another and hope it works), but we can at least have a look at it. -- Cid Highwind (talk) 12:48, October 12, 2013 (UTC)

I just want to present what I think might be the "worst offender" in this new batch of articles: Cabin pressure relief valve control.

First of all, a valve control must be a part of the valve, so I guess it's a good thing we've not ended up with an additional article Cabin pressure relief valve. Then, the article states that this item is a part of both life support technology and an environmental control system. I'm not sure that these definitions are not original research - but if they aren't, these two are the first candidates for a merge/list. Then, it states that this item was part of the Apollo Command Module, which would be another merge/list candidate - if it weren't for the fact that we already don't have a separate article about that. Instead, someone thought it would be a great idea to have both "modules" (=parts) of a whole on a common page Apollo spacecraft, and I agree with that line of thought. So, basically, what we have here is a part of a part of a part of a part of the Apollo spacecraft, which was only mentioned in passing once, and was of no importance to any storyline whatsoever. I think that, if this gets its own article, we might as well give up and create articles for anything. -- Cid Highwind (talk) 13:17, October 12, 2013 (UTC)

It is written by Cid, Things that we (individually) know nothing about should not have their own article, because they don't need an own article. There were a great many terms that were used in Star Trek for which we don't know nothing about, but people wrote about them nonetheless. To flesh these articles out, people have resorted to bringing in information from real world sources. Again Cid writes, Also, again, this is not as much change as you make it out to be - in fact, not writing articles about everything, even if unimportant, seems to be the implicit rule we've had for years, not a change to some different rule. An outsider to this wiki, looking at the many articles that have been written about minor and trivial details of Star Trek, would not think this. Here is Mass Effect's Manual of Style, [2] Cid didn't address the amount of changes that would be needed to bring this wiki in line with his understanding nor did he answer who would be doing the corrections. Should we began the excision with the articles mentioned in connection with the spacecraft components and go from there? Should we analyze every article on this wikipedia? And, for those things that are readable, how we do we decide what the litmus test is? Must an item be readable only on a certain size TV, I have a large TV so I may be able to read things that a person with a smaller TV might not be able to? If we are able to locate the source of this graphic or the graphic becomes available on line, should we include that information in the wikipedia? The information is not readable in the film or TV show, but is readable outside the confines of the film or TV. How narrow or how wide do we make the scope for information? And, the number of sentences in an article. What is the smallest number of sentences that must exist for an article to be considered an article? Wikipedia has a rule, One sentence does not an article make They note that four sentences is the minimum. Both Mass Effect and Wikipedia speak about notability. This site does not. And that is what we discussing. What is notable? Who defines what is notable? How is an article notable? Why is an article notable?Throwback (talk) 13:20, October 12, 2013 (UTC)

As for the issue with life support and environmental control systems, has anyone taken the time to count how many redirects we have on this site? It's a minefield. On one page, I saw two redirects and one direct to a page.Throwback (talk) 13:28, October 12, 2013 (UTC)

...and back to policy

I'm not sure I have fully digested the above discussion, but I think Cid was on the right track with his suggested questions to be asked of these types of articles. There may be others but the ones he came up with are a great starting point(perhaps we could create a subsection of this page with them?).

I'm not sure how TV size came into the discussion, but I trust that people who have small or low resolution TVs are aware of that and would know that they cannot see details that could be seen on a larger or HD television. We aren't responsible for how viewers view Star Trek and glean information from it. 31dot (talk) 23:37, October 12, 2013 (UTC)

Cid Highwind, ecs is from the schematic of the Apollo Lunar Module. ECS is an acronym for environmental control systems. Instead of creating new articles for that schematic, I will be looking at ways to incorporate information from that schematic into existing articles.Throwback (talk) 02:25, October 13, 2013 (UTC)

Cid's idea for a bunch of questions forming a litmus test is interesting, and I acknowledge that it might be a promising way to go. The thing I don't like about it though is that that it implicitly grades information on an importantness or value spectrum. Our mission is to be as complete as possible, and while this approach without doubt doesn't violate that directive because ultimately we're only talking about moving information, not excluding it, it still feels like those two things don't gel well at all on a philosophical level. We work with just two categories, canon and non-canon, and our articles on minor subjects are technically just as important as our article on for example Kirk.

Otherwise I don't have much to say at the moment; I've never seen much sense in the way we've handled holograms at all, and as far as spacecraft components are concerned, I'm frankly just torn between the fact that these were very clearly and specifically labeled seen, and that except for that the reasons for merging them which are very sane. Until maybe I'll get more grip on that, I'll leave those parts of the discussion to others. As far as the Cabin pressure relief valve control goes, it is an extreme example, but also very rare. Would anyone really be oposed to a policy that is sensible in the vast majority of the cases, but happens to still leave that page? I could see that happen, and I would be ok with that.

@ Throwback; I don't think Wikipedia's ideas about how many sentences an article must have have much relevance here, since they also only cover stuff they consider "notable". One could say that if you can't even find 4 sentences of things to say about something, it can't be worthy of inclusion, but that just doesn't apply here.

One more small comment @ Cid specifically; a whole while back you implied I fear there's some kind of implicit effort to merge. That's not true, I just have concerns about where that approach would lead is, similar to how you have concerns about the opposite. -- Capricorn (talk) 04:50, October 13, 2013 (UTC)

I was one of the people responsible for the kerfuffle that lead to the infamous cities discussion. I had written the articles that were later deleted. I learned that if the term was readable in the canon, then I had permission to write about it. I, also, learned from watching this wiki's activities that things which weren't named in the canon could be written about if I knew its name from an outside source. My understanding has been turned upside down. No one is answering my questions. My questions are,

Q1. What is the criteria for writing an article? Is it notability, is it association, or is it something else?

Q2. Who decides that criteria?

Q3. How is the criteria defined? Will it be explained on the FAQs?

Q4. What do we do with the articles that fail this criteria?

Q5. Who will carry out the cleaning process?

Q6. How do we elevate a page from being not unique to unique, when one of the instruments for doing that is not available to some users and there is no way to communicate that the article needs that instrument? I am speaking of photographs, which elevated the whale articles. I have seen other wikis use a template that says, "This page needs a photo." Instead of being buried deep in the dark recesses of the wiki, it's located on the page instead, so that a reader who has screen capture technology is alerted and they have the permission to put a picture of the thing on that page.

I no longer know what is permissible, so I can't follow up Capricorn's suggestion to work on references or work on new pages. If I don't know what is permissible, how can I do either?

Capricorn criticized me for suggesting that the "Officers' Quarters" with the "Quarters" page. I suggested this merge because the former is a repeat of info in the latter, so the page is redundant. (And, frankly, the latter has far better language than mine.)76.21.54.57 20:18, October 13, 2013 (UTC)

I can't speak for others, but I didn't answer those questions earlier because I didn't see how they would add to this discussion. Q1-Q3 can not be answered at the moment, because it is exactly what is currently under discussion on this page. No one has the answers to these questions yet - or at least, we can't agree on one specific set of answers yet. Q4: obviously, articles that fail those yet to be determined criteria will be merged to some other article or list. Again, that is what is currently being discussed here. Q5: contributors to this wiki will do that. Q6: this question has been answered, elsewhere. If I remember correctly, Archduk3 told you three different ways to request images. In any case, this should not be discussed here, but where you first posted that question. Also, just as an aside, while having an image definitely "helps" an article, it is by no means something that completely and on its own "shields" an article from being merged. We do have items with image that solely exist on some list instead of its own article (the various "unnamed X" lists, for example). Last but not least, just to avoid another discussion: please do not simply add a note (in whatever form) just stating "please add an image to this article" to a big bunch of articles, hoping that this will stall an eventual merge discussion for all of them. You can, of course, request those images individually if you know they exist.-- Cid Highwind (talk) 21:28, October 13, 2013 (UTC)

And now that Wikia sorted out their technical issues, @Capricorn: If someone states that a suggestion is "promising", then cites a goal of this site that this suggestion doesn't violate - but then still turns around and argues against that suggestion "on a philosophical level" - I'm at a loss of words. At this point, I'm not sure that there's any hope for a conclusion of this, at least not as long as you keep disagreeing no matter what. If you disagree with the suggested test in parts, or completely, then make a proper suggestion yourself. Otherwise, this discussion will just continue to lead nowhere. -- Cid Highwind (talk) 22:58, October 13, 2013 (UTC)

The number of people discussing this issue is a handful. How can the conversation be productive under these conditions? Throwback (talk) 01:44, October 14, 2013 (UTC)

I have been working on a criteria for articles I will be writing for the future. They must be mentioned in dialog, no more of these visual references, and they must be mentioned more than three times. As for Cid Highwind's thought that I would attempt to protect articles facing the threat of merger with a picture protector clause, I won't do that. I don't have the energy to fight anymore of these battles. I am fighting for my 18 year old cat who is dying a slow death from lymphoma.Throwback (talk) 03:00, October 14, 2013 (UTC)

We cannot force people to participate in this discussion, and it may be a bit complicated for others who might not know what is going on here. Further, there is no issue with an article based solely on a visual reference- it just (IMO) needs to have more than "X was seen" if the subject is a smaller part of a larger item (and not seen elsewhere). 31dot (talk) 08:16, October 14, 2013 (UTC)

I am not suggesting that we force people to enter into this discussion. I do feel, however, that there aren't enough voices on this discussion. There is five voices in this discussion. We have two moderators, an administrator, and two members discussing this issue. I feel the discussion has become mired in a quagmire, and we are no closer to a resolution.Throwback (talk) 16:15, October 14, 2013 (UTC)

@Throwback, you're part to blame for that quagmire, as you've derailed the discussion I think four or five times now with concerns that weren't really directly relevant. As a huge cat lover I feel for your cat, I really do, but having us deal with your issues with this discussion rather then the discussion itself is the stuff quagmires are made of. Also it seems like you've forgotten how idents work recently.

Cid, I'm only disagreeing with you a lot because unlike you I haven't ignored three fourths of what I've read in favor of bringing up some unrelated new problem. However, I can see why you found my critique confusing; I tend to go for long and complex sentences which is not always ideal. Apologies for that. What I was saying was that while I thought it went against the spirit of the wiki, it didn't go against policy and might still be one of the only realistic ways to do this. As for actual proposals, I've been trying to further refine my earlier test to adres some of the concerns, and as it happens, your questions were very helpful. Though I've used them as tie-breakers rather then the core of the argument. Here's my proposed guideline, further improved:

• All these conditions would have to be fulfilled to not be merged:
  • Objects must be specifically named in canon, or we must known that they were intentionally put in to say something. (this lets us merge most building articles, but not the Transamerica Pyramid since it was in a script. It's a repackaging of the idea behind Cid's questions about notability; if it was specifically put in the scene to make a point, it can stay)
  • Objects must be more then an example of a specific type of thing, unless they are individuals. (Riker might be a specific example of a Human, but as an individual gets an article. Riker's quarters on the other hand are an individual example of quarters, so don't get an article. This also prevents Voyager Main Engineering from getting an an article on its own, since its just an example of a Main Engineering section. Room 727 is just an example of a "hotel room", which I guess if you can say enough unique things about it is worthy of an article, though "Room 727" is not. On the other hand, Fin whale is more then a specific example of a whale, since it's a species in itself. The whale seen cut up by whalers in the video shown at the Cetacean Institute would be a specific example of a whale, and hasn't got its own article.) - note that the specific thing something is an example of is not necessarily the most logical page to merge something in.
  • Articles would have to have to have a minimum size of two sentences, without non-canon fact being brought into them.
  • There must at least be some subject-unique information except for the different name. (Making pictures count as unique information was just an idea, but since people have picked up on that at this point it would be nice if you guys could specifically say if you'd be in favor of that.)

Personally I'm really hoping we've got something workable here. I don't see problems with it anymore, at least not at the moment. Though of course I welcome any critical thoughts on it. The only thing that I think can't be resolved with that is which holograms get pages, but a system seems to have evolved there which works well, even if it's still not always followed. I think since it's so different from the rest of the stuff we're discussing here it might be best to just take that as a special and separate case. Maybe something for another discussion, that. -- Capricorn (talk) 19:23, October 14, 2013 (UTC)

As it's apparent to me, and maybe to others,I lack the capacity for understanding what is being discussed here and this discussion is "above my pay grade". I am exiting the discussion.Throwback (talk) 19:50, October 14, 2013 (UTC)

I still don't agree with a strict "two-sentence minimum" for articles. More importantly, though, I think the introduction of the new term "example [of a specific type of thing]" clouds the issue rather than solving it, especially when "fin whale" is later used to describe it. "Fin whale" is an example of the more generic "whale", so if "being an example of something" means that it should be merged, then this is the case here. It is also a specific species of whale, yes, but there's currently no definition of what types an article must belong to to not be merged. To make use of the examples brought by you (don't put me on the cross for running with them, I can use others if necessary), it would need to be clarified why a "species article" can or should be kept while a "XO quarter article" or a "building section article" can not. As it stands, this still feels somewhat arbitrary to me, not really as "objective" as it is supposed to be. -- Cid Highwind (talk) 19:55, October 15, 2013 (UTC)

In the sentence "Objects must be more then...", I think your critique is based on overlooking the very important word "more". A fin whale is an example of a whale to be sure, but being a species of animal of its own it can clearly also be seen as a distinct subject. (any sufficiently extensive general encyclopedia would give it its own page, and biologists also see it as a particular subject rather then mixing all kinds of whales in their research). The terminology I used is of course new, but in my opinion is at least as clear, if not clearer, then some of our more often confusion-causing policies. Especially when accompanied with examples (and I could come up with a whole lot more of them)

Could you explain exactly what your problem with the 2-sentence minimum is? Do you think it ought to be more sentences, or do you think the whole approach of counting sentences is wrong? In case of the latter, note that this is only one of four criteria, and the others are strong enough I think that very few would change if the minimum amount of sentences was cut entirely. For the record, The two-sentence minimum was inspired by our guideline on stubs. That policy technically doesn't apply here of course, it only covers what to do with stubs, but I think the reasoning makes perfect sense here too.

Would you mind also giving your opinion on the image question? It may just be me, but reading your critique I have the feeling that your issues are resolvable and that we may be close to something usable. -- Capricorn (talk) 01:26, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

Come to think of it, maybe the two-sentence criteria could just be replaced with "the article should not be a stub". Just an idea. -- Capricorn (talk) 01:40, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

Regarding the two-sentence limit, it is both actually. It should not be used in a context to determine "good enough" article length, because it was not initially meant to be used in that context (I think we've been through the explanation for this, and that I don't need to repeat them. Let me know if I should.). Using that limit out of context here would mean that it would further "creep" into a position where, down the line, we might eventually have a policy stating the exact opposite of what was initially intended, namely that "all two-sentence articles are OK". If it can be helped (and I think it definitely can, here), such limit shouldn't be used at all - but if it needs to be used, it should at least be a higher number. I don't think that switching to "not a stub" helps, because that would actually be a more severe clause. An article can still be a stub with a whole paragraph of text, or it can be "not a stub" with a single sentence, if we simply don't know more.

Regarding the other topic, I did not miss the "more" - but the problem is that everything can be construed to be "about more than just X". "Riker's quarters" is not just a room, it is the room of the Executive Officer (the second in command) of a starship, and as such might be representative of other such quarters. I'm not saying that this is a good argument to keep that article (the opposite, in fact!), but if we're having such quideline, it should be fool-proof. Currently, the guideline as suggested has nothing to say against people who just come up with weird "more than"-arguments as I just did (and for a very random example, mind you - I'm sure better arguments could be made in favor of other articles although we feel that those should be merged).

Regarding images, I believe those should only be used in addition to, not as a replacement of, text. So, basically, if there's an image to be used, its relevant content (as is applicable for the article) should be described in the text as well. If we agree on a text limit, then the text "derived" from the image would count towards that limit already, so additionally counting the image itself might be unnecessary. If we don't use a text limit, then I'm not sure how having or not having an image can be a deciding factor for or against an article. -- Cid Highwind (talk) 09:54, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

I think you're asking for a higher standard of fool-proofness then is the norm. So what if some troll could construct a crazy theory for why Riker's quarters deserve an article on their own. It would violate the spirit of the guideline; wikilawyering, gaming the system. We have policies against that. That's the same standard that we've always been using too. Say our article on spaghetti lists a number of examples of bowls of spaghetti that were seen. Say someone suddenly decided to give one of those meals an article of its own. I coudn't point at the specific part of our content policy that forbids that, but everyone would agree that the bowl would have to be merged in spaghetti. It is obviously the way its intended to be, even if there's no fool-proof language in support.

Remember, this policy is designed to dramatically decrease the ambiguity about what is to be merged, and it does. We're working on an alternative for the situation where anything gets merged if people happen to feel it ought to be. Although of course if you have specific suggestions for improvement, our could propose a system of your own that meets the fool-proof standard, that would be even better.

And even if one or two articles ended up merged or de-merged that maybe shoudn't, that is not the end of the world either. We're not destroying information, or adding information that shoudn't be added. The only thing a wronfully merged or standalone article represents is a modest deviation from how we think the information would be most efficiently represented.

Concerning the two sentence limit, it seems to be that it does the opposite of what you fear: the guideline doesn't say that an article of two sentences is always valid (the other guidelines say what's valid or not), it is specifically intended to say that articles of less then two sencences aren't valid (ie ought to be merged), at least in this context, regardless of how the article is otherwise. It says nothing about what articles we should have but rather is an escape clause for preventing very short articles.

Then again, I'm not aware of any of the creep you say is going on with that. But that we might theoretically one day have a policy that goes against the original policy doesn't seem relevant here in any case. That's something to deal with if said policy would threaten to arise. -- Capricorn (talk) 11:05, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

But isn't that just grist to the mills of what I have been saying all along, and what 31dot has been saying all along, and even, disagreement in other regards aside, what Archduk3 has been saying as well - that we don't need a too detailed policy about the exact borderline between a "mergeable" and a "non-mergeable" article? If you now use the argument of "its obviously intended to be that way, even though it isn't explicitly stated", then why are we having this 100KB+ discussion in the first place? It is obviously also not intended that all our articles are merged into some horrific single blob of text (and I have to repeat myself, no one has the intention of doing that), so if one thing can simply be implied from an existing rule, guideline or past behaviour (and exceptions to that be handled on a case-by-case basis), why can't another thing be handled like that as well?

I have said this earlier, but I will say it again: I don't want yet another policy to strictly define things that should better be handled by discussion and consensus - but if such policy is considered necessary by a majority (which, btw, I no longer really see), then I oppose such policy unless it goes all the way to remove the need for discussion and consensus instead of stopping halfway through. If we're just replacing one ambiguity with another, it is not a good policy. -- Cid Highwind (talk) 12:14, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

You're forgetting that your position is the one advocating a change. Handling things like they were would imply creating all kinds of articles again, with the occasional merge suggestions rarely and inconsistently succeeding. I can actually kind of live with that, but it seems that you can't. (and I'm guessing instead of taking peace with what you've achieved by rejecting a guideline you'd end up taking a less organised second stab at reigning in the articles by setting precedent through a series of merge discussions). Regardless if you think it's misguided or not, I've only been trying to create a compromise, something everyone can agree on. I've invited you to suggest the same thing, a way of knowing which pages to merge by more then a vote along personal preferences.

One more thing; with my ""its obviously intended to be that way" comment, I was not refering to this discussion, but only to that one specific absurd example I gave where it was indeed incredibly obvious. As far as I'm concerned, the implicit logic behind that case can be extended to the whale articles or the parts articles too. But obviously not everyone agrees, so I was trying to resolve that conflict. Lest the next discussion just goes back to square one, with a bunch of people saying "well of course it ought to be merged" and a bunch others saying "well of course it shoudn't be". Without some kind of argument, that will just come down to a popularity contest.

I agree this discussion isn't exactly a model of productivity anymore. Heck, the last few posts were just me and you, plus Throwback throwing in the towel. But the above reasons are why I'm still trying. And again, I'm not trying to replace one ambiguity with another, I'm trying to reduce ambiguity. And my guideline does, dramatically. To spell it out, your rejection of any guideline that isn't 100% unambigious would keep us in a more ambigious situation. As someone who believes their viewpoint is the obviously correct one, that may not seem to matter to you, but since not everyone agrees, it does. -- Capricorn (talk) 23:28, October 16, 2013 (UTC)

Okay, since their's no more answers to that last ditch thing, I think we can safely say this discussion has failed now. Which I guess means we ought to resume with the individual merges; we now have a number of articles that were suggested as potentially merge-worthy. Components are all discussed here. In fact, I think that's a good template for multiple merges; adding merge template to each article in a group, but then directing them all to a single talk page discussion. I'm suggesting this because I'm affraid that if a new topic were to be created on the forum, a more wider discussion would just start over again, like what happened when 31dot valiently created this very page to just discuss the buildings. Talk pages, with their more vote-oriented focus, might fare better. The building articles too ought to be brought up now too, and the whale articles seemed to have reached a very fragile consensus but if anyone wants to suggest a merge, go ahead and add the templates. I'll remove the merge suggestion for the car articles, since that deletion discussion did get picked up and among those participating there was unanimous support for keeping them. If someone has a problem with that, please bring them up again, given the less then ideal situation under which that discussion was held I'm sure something can be worked out. If anyone thinks anything more ought to be merged, based on this discussion or their own thoughts, I suggest you bring it up now. -- Capricorn (talk) 01:26, October 19, 2013 (UTC)

For the record, I'm still interested in discussing this, I just haven't had the time to keep up right now. I wouldn't say this has failed just yet, or at least that there isn't anything here worth salvaging. - Archduk3 20:35, October 19, 2013 (UTC)

I'm very glad to hear that, I've in particular been very curious to hear more about your ideas that maybe the right way to go is to look at what to list, not what to merge. However, since I personally I feel that I've exhausted my arguments for this discussion, Cid and 31dot are going ahead with individual merges, and Throwback has officially withdrawn from the discussion, I suspect any more progress will probably be down just to you, at least for now. – The preceding unsigned comment was added by Capricorn (talk • contribs).

Salvage work

It's been awhile, and I've gone through a number of drafts on this. I've got to say what I've come up with is a bit underwhelming when compared with what I hoped to be able to do:

The guideline we should be using to determine what should and shouldn't have it's own article is: Use common sense.

After all this discussion, the only thing I can take away from it is there is no hard-and-fast rule that we can use. There isn't even really a good set of questions or guidelines that work either, and if anything, we've somehow made it worse with the best of intentions. That said, I do think we can do this regarding the reason we first started this discussion:

• The "unnamed" San Francisco locations can be merged into San Francisco locations where they will be listed along with the named ones, à la Earth spacedocks. The reasoning is as follows:
  • These are locations in San Francisco.
  • These building are "unnamed", though the real world names will be the section headings since there really isn't any better way to divide them, though thoughts on that are welcome. Redirects will be kept.
  • Having an all inclusive list page is more helpful to the San Francisco article than having an "Unnamed San Francisco locations" page.
• As for the named ones, that really should be case-by-case for now, since clearly we don't have any all in composing guideline ideas that don't have major problems.

In the interest of closing the "deletion" discussion associated with this, I would ask that we mainly focus on that goal for now instead of creating a new guideline that solves everything. Who knows, solving the "smaller" problems might just suggest a solution to the "bigger" one. - Archduk3 06:54, January 19, 2014 (UTC)

That all sounds OK to me. 31dot (talk) 13:01, January 19, 2014 (UTC)

I had resolved to stay out people's way for this one, but since nothing has happened since January, maybe I can help it moving forward again by stating that I too am OK with the unnamed buildings being merged in such a page. Though, while I can live with the proposal as-is, I'd like to repeat my earlier idea that it could be named something like "Unnamed Earth locations" instead, so that a rabble of pages like "List of Paris locations" or "List of LA locations", containing just one or two buildings, don't pop up in the future. -- Capricorn (talk) 16:00, May 18, 2014 (UTC)

I would think that the number of IDable locations in other cities would be small enough for them all to be collected on an "Earth locations" page like you suggest, but the number of locations in San Francisco are still enough warrant their own page IMO. - Archduk3 02:59, May 22, 2014 (UTC)

Sure, that works too. -- Capricorn (talk) 09:36, May 22, 2014 (UTC)