Talk:List of Minor mercenary units

How to use this list

A word on what I've done here, and a request that other editors adhere to these guidelines:

• I have included each unit as a separate section, with an appropriate section tag. This will allow other BTW articles to directly link to individual mercenary units using a [[List of minor mercenary units#unit name]] link. I feel this is an important aspect, because some digests do contain nuggets of canonical information on the sidelines and may need to be referenced in other articles.
• This is also the reason why I decided against organizing the article content into a table. For this reason, there are (consciously) no superordinate headers in this article, most importantly no references section. Please put all references in a "Source" section with the appropriate merc unit.

Oh, and please leave this section at the very top of the discussion page. :) Frabby 22:18, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

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House Liao (The Capellan Confederation) page 80 - McCormack's Fusiliers - Lander's Landers brief devastating encounters on McCormack's Fusiliers and their payback on the Landers.</ref> Source: House Liao (Source book): pg. 80

Minor or not

You'll note that numerous not-so-minor merc units (such as the 15th Dracon, Dragon's Breath, Tooth of Ymir, Mobile Fire) are mentioned in the list. That is because I use it to collect snippets of information and references before creating a full-blown article on the units. Everybody is invited to create articles for individual merc units from this list (please remember to delete them from this list then, and make sure to include all that information in the article). Frabby 13:51, 14 February 2009 (PST)

Frabby - This sounds like a good idea. I'm thinking of adding Barber's Marauder IIs to the list. What do you think? ClanWolverine101 15:28, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

Barber's Marauder IIs is the same unit that used to be Miller's Marauders in the 3025 era, and it's another excellent example for a not-so-minor merc unit that doesn't have much fluff but keeps popping up. They certainly deserve their own article but if you want to collect bits and pieces about them, feel free to use this list. That's why I created it in the first place! Frabby 15:52, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

References

Frabby, I'm unaware why references should not use the established method with this type of article. Is there a precedent set on WP that influences your course? Secondly, if the references are kept as you've developed them, is there any reason why they can't be linked to their respective source material articles? Thanks for the explanation. --Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 09:04, 20 December 2011 (PST)

This has to do with both the nature and the purpose of this list. Every subsection essentially constitutes its own "minor" article, therefore a common references page makes no sense. It may even turn out to be detrimental to have: Imagine you try to take out an entry and expand it into its own article. Not only do you not have the references at hand; in the case of references that are used repeatedly (c.f. Liao Housebook), you need to look up the reference in another section where it was used first.

Or is there an established method for list-type articles that I have missed? Frabby 09:54, 20 December 2011 (PST)

'No' to the latter part (list-type articles). I meant the general references section presented at the bottom of each page.

As for the lack of references in the section, won't the intra-linked footnote (to the specific reference) solve that problem? To be clear, I mean where the footnote takes you to the reference 'House Liao (The Capellan Confederation), p. 78, "Blandford's Grenadiers".'--Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 11:15, 20 December 2011 (PST)

I would offer this : Redoing this article in the standard format would require a lot of work while adding little if anything to the overall quality of the wiki. I would agree, however, that some of these units are deserving of full articles. Some, meanwhile, were mentioned once in passing, and should be confined to this article for the forseeable future. So in terms of concept, I am all for it. ClanWolverine101 12:17, 20 December 2011 (PST)

To be clear, I'm not talking at all about the format of the article. This is a list, which by definition is different. I'm asking solely about referencing methods.--Revanche ^{(talk|contribs)} 12:26, 20 December 2011 (PST)

Team Venom

I was just wondering if we should delete Team Venom from this list due to the source that is cited for them is from the Apocryphal Product MechWarrior 2: 31st Century Combat. Thoughts on this? DerangedShadow (talk) 06:46, 5 July 2013 (PDT)

Apocryphal content such as this is explicitly welcome here (see Policy:Notability). The entry does indeed belong here, but it needs to be clearly marked as apocryphal (see Policy:Canon). Frabby (talk) 13:42, 5 July 2013 (PDT)