Talk:Product Type Classification Tree

This represents a starting attempt at showing/documenting the classification of products in terms of product types. The intermediate goal is build definitions for each product type. The longer-term goal is that this classification tree and those definitions will facilitate consistency for those adding new product info articles and cleaning up old product info articles. Also as product lists are divided into different pieces: Fiction, BattleTech CCG, MechWarrior Dark Ages, Miniatures, and the List of BattleTech products, this may help visualize the global structure.

A second purpose of this document is to facilitate the discussion of these types, both at present and in the future. There are merits both in working from definitions to examples (top-down/deductive) and from examples to definitions (bottom-up/inductive). But having an organizational visualization in terms of a tree is helpful for discussion in both cases.

This document will no doubt need editing. I surmise that both this page and this discussion will be dynamic, particularly early on.— The preceding unsigned comment was posted by Dude RB (talk • contribs) 21:37, 1 July 2021‎ .

I like the general concept very much. We should seek to establish such article trees as Policy. It also occurs to me that they are a natural framework to build the category structure on.

For the specific tree at hand, I have a number of issues/changes and will revisit this later today or perhaps tomorrow. Frabby (talk) 02:39, 2 July 2021 (EDT)

I, too, support this effort. I will observe for the time being, as I feel others (Frabby and you included) have a firmer grasp at how to use these projects as tools.--Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 08:18, 2 July 2021 (EDT)

I look forward to your changes, comments, etc. I have one or two issues that I will enter in this discussion page under separate heading for discussion and feedback. --Dude RB (talk) 18:12, 2 July 2021 (EDT)

Product Type Convention - Prefer Singular

Certain products (e.g. miniature sets, map sets, posters, challenge coins), may have a single item or multiple items of the same type. It seems best to adopt one label that applies to both regardless on the internal item count. For example, rather than having `Poster' and `Posters' as two separate types, it would be better to simply have one term that identifies a set of one or more posters. This eliminates the need to count the number of items when copy editing plus it makes sorting by the type column more meaningful.

When both the singular and plural could occur naturally, I propose that we default to using a singular form of some sort, as a product itself is a unit. (One could argue that `Record Sheets' could be kept in the plural as a product consisting of simply one one record sheet would seem nonexistent.)

(Odd aside: This is simply for Product Type labels. For Category Tags, plurals make more sense.)

For miniatures, the term `Miniature Set' is currently defined as a product containing one or more miniatures. I have also extended this to the case of maps, using the term `Map Set' to refer to any pack of one or more maps. We could extend this to all the accessory product types as well. So a product consisting of one or more posters would be a `Poster Set', and a product consisting of one or more challenge coins would be a `Challenge Coin Set'. There is some advantage to this in comparison to the terms `poster(s)' or `challenge coin(s)', but one potential drawback is that some may be inclined to interpret a `Poster Set' as implying a product with more than one poster. If we define terms clearly, that reduces the strength of this drawback. I slightly lean towards `Poster Set' rather than `Poster(s)', but I think a second or third opinion would be worthwhile. --Dude RB (talk) 19:05, 2 July 2021 (EDT)