User talk:Fireangel

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Again, welcome to Sarna's BattleTechWiki!

*******Be Bold*******

List of named ships

I appreciate the work you put into the list of known ships in the Feng Huang article. But ever since opting for full articles on individual ships we've been using the categories instead of listing individual ships in the article about a ship class. This is far easier to maintain as the categories will auto-update whenever a new individual ship article pops up.

That's why I changed your edit back to a category link. Just wanted to tell you why. :) Frabby (talk) 15:13, 21 January 2016 (PST)

Thanks for letting me know! But it occurs to me... what about ships of that class that don't yet have articles? --Fireangel (talk) 14:31, 12 February 2016 (PST)

You should write them! :) ClanWolverine101 (talk) 22:16, 12 February 2016 (PST)

How can I write them, if I don't know the article is missing? A ship named in canon should be mentioned in the article itself without relying to the ship class category; if the hypothetical Aegis-class SLS Cumbersome (mentioned in the hypothetical novel Warrior: Reatreat!) does not have an article in Sarna, and does not get mentioned in the Aegis article, how would anyone know that the article is missing unless they already knew of the existence of the ship?

I posit that each ship class article should have a list of known ships of the class, rather than rely on the category page, in order to avoid this very issue. Why would the article itself not have a list of known ships of the class?

--Fireangel (talk) 06:51, 7 March 2016 (PST)

Hmm. I do see your point Fireangel. But ultimately, what you're proposing is adding redlinks to an article so that others will feel compelled to create those redlink articles. If you do that, what's keeping you from creating the article in question yourself instead of a redlink? We've got help templates in place that (hopefully) make it very easy to add a new ship article, with all the relevant category links in place (see Help:CreateWarShipClassArticle or more generally, BattleTechWiki:Spacecraft Portal).
I also have to say that I'm opposed to the idea of putting individual ships into the ship class article on as a matter of principle. That's exactly what categories are for, and I've taken care to provide a link to the category with individual ships of each class within each article about a given ship class. Frabby (talk) 04:34, 8 March 2016 (PST)

Not a redlink: the name of the ship can be in plain (black) text, listed among the links to other named ship articles. If the individual ship article gets made, then the link is completed in the ship class article. As to not creating the article in question, the reader might not be aware of the existence of the missing ship. The ship class article would be incomplete without the inclusion of these ship names if there is no article for them.

Look at it this way: If Ford created a car in 1953 called the "Ford Unheardof", it would be listed among the models of Ford cars of that year, whether it is by year, by type, by obscurity, or a comprehensive list on the Ford article or as a separate article. Whether the actual article for the Ford Unheardof exists or not, the model would have to be listed in order to be a complete article. If the Unheardof is not listed, then the article would be missing information, and unless the reader is aware of the existence of the Unheardof, the reader would be completely unaware that such a model ever existed.

I understand your objection to in-article lists, but it is not a viable policy; in this case, by using category pages in lieu of actual lists, the list becomes a list of articles, not a list of individual ships. The question that needs to be asked then is, what is the article about? Does it document the things in the fictional universe, or does it document only the articles in Sarna?

Categories exist to ease searching and navigation; they are not meant to be articles in and of themselves.

--Fireangel (talk) 09:13, 24 March 2016 (PDT)