Talk:Generic City Guard private (Waterdeep)

Page Name?
"Generic City Guard private"? What kind of article name is that? ~ Lhynard (talk) 20:32, December 26, 2014 (UTC)


 * This article was created by High admin BadCat... for basic NPC characters. Ask him directly, if you would like his response :) - Darkwynters (talk) 20:38, December 26, 2014 (UTC)


 * Hey, what's wrong with it? :p I hashed the idea out at Talk:City Watch (Waterdeep). Basically, I wanted a way to make articles for generic, unnamed NPCs: common bandits, soldiers and guards, typical members of organisations, etc. There is a lot of lore about for such generic NPCs: stats, rank names, standard equipment, typical descriptions and personalities, and we needed the capacity to output articles for them.


 * As for the name, consider "Unnamed" in place of "Generic". "Unnamed..." is for unnamed but specific characters, and "Generic..." is for non-specific characters.


 * So, I vote against the merger proposal. The aim of making separate articles was to be able to provide separate stats for each kind of member. Our Waterdhavian City Guard private might be a 2nd-level Fighter in 1e or a 2nd-level Warrior in 3e, but such details would needless clutter the main organisation article (since we keep stats in the sidebar, not in the main text). — BadCatMan (talk) 06:51, December 27, 2014 (UTC)


 * Second vote against merge :) - Darkwynters (talk) 22:19, December 27, 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for not taking my disdain of the title too seriously. :)


 * And thanks for the link to Talk:City Watch (Waterdeep). Had I been around then, I would have seconded Eli's comment. Even in the Generic City Watch sergeant (Waterdeep) article, the phrase "generic City Watch sergeant" never appears; instead, the natural article title, "armar" is what is bolded. The article itself looks great; it's just the title that I find confusing and awkward.


 * It just doesn't seem at all like the title of an encyclopedia article. (Wikipedia has nothing of the sort.) An article title ideally should be something that can be linked from a normal sentence. The exceptions are for ambiguities, in which case one uses parentheses to clarify.


 * But here is an alternative proposal not mentioned before, since I wasn't around when you discussed all this on Talk:City Watch (Waterdeep): Make Generic City Guard private (Waterdeep) a subpage of City Watch (Waterdeep) &mdash; something like City Watch (Waterdeep)/private. Clicking "What links here" reveals that nothing links to the current page except for the City Watch article and the other "subpages". Subpages can still be categorized, can they not? This seemed to me to be the major reason for making them their own pages. I also agree that there is a lot of information that looks cleaner isolated to its own page. Even so, that information (to me) makes the most sense in the context of a subpage.


 * ~ Lhynard (talk) 23:59, December 27, 2014 (UTC)


 * As I said then, it was still prototypical, but discussion died off and it seemed done.
 * I feel people put too much importance on article titles. They are really just bits of code for sorting and identification purposes. If we could make them invisible or if it was "GCGp(WD)", then they wouldn't be such an issue. I followed the format established here and at other wikis for unnamed characters: say "Unnamed City Guard private" becomes "Generic City Guard private". It's another kind of disambiguation. "Generic" makes the purpose of the article clear from category lists, search results, and the header/title of the article itself.
 * We can always use the formal names (amlar, armar, civilar, etc.) as redirects. They can be easily linked to. (Which I meant to do and didn't get around to.)
 * I do like your proposal for subpages, it makes sense. But I don't really see a problem with what I've got now. So, I'm on the fence. Let's see what others think.
 * I'll remove the merger notices since I think we're agreed not to do that now? — BadCatMan (talk) 03:04, December 28, 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, agreed re: removing merger tags. ~ Lhynard (talk) 03:06, December 28, 2014 (UTC)