Talk:Elizabeth Nichole

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Profession=Colonel? and Death Question

1) Why is Colonel listed as her profession? It's a rank, not a profession.

2) Her death is not specifically mentioned in canon. Should it be listed as "presumed"? I have issues with the appearance of this stated as fact with a year of death despite the text later clarifying. This likely affects a lot of entries. --Cache (talk) 11:44, 3 August 2019 (EDT)

Cache - Regarding point 1 - Understood. I put that in years ago, and certain things have been streamlined since then.

Regarding point 2 - I believe we are obligated, with certain articles, to carefully state items that are not necessarily explicit. There's a wealth of information about the Dragoons at this point, and the fact that Nichole is not mentioned is very telling. I'm very open to adjusting the language of that, as well as choosing appropriate references. Did you have something specific in mind? ClanWolverine101 (talk) 13:49, 3 August 2019 (EDT)

As for her profession being listed as Colonel, I have a few of reasons for that:

• The Template:InfoBoxCharacter uses the example of General in the official explanation of how to use the infobox.
• Currently we have at a quick guestimate about 2,500 character articles. Mercs and Solaris account for about 1,000, Clans for about 500 and all the IS factions about another 1,000. Officer / Clan Warrior, Mercenary, Noble & Arena Gladiator cover just about all of them, or if you really want to get into it MechWarrior likely covers even more under one profession, and it would broadly be correct.
• Currently we do not have a section for rank, position or title in the character infobox. Somebody holding the rank of Colonel, the position of Speaker of the Parliament, the title of Duke of New Ivaarsen to me is much more informative than Officer, Politician, Noble.
• in addition we currently use a system based on affiliation to organise our character articles, Mercenary is a kind of meta-affiliation, but if it is to be used in articles more prominently as a profession should we restructure how we organise our characters to reflect this?
• I spoke to CW yesterday about streamlining this a bit. Mercenary Colonel has the fact she is a mercenary implied by her only affiliation being Wolf's Dragoons, the best know mercenary unit in the lore. The same goes for when a character is listed as say saKhan of Clan Star Adder when their only affiliation is Clan Star Adder, I would assume that it is implied that they are not the saKhan of Clan Wolf.

CW stated yesterday that he was not sure he agreed with that application and with you raising the question here that you also feel that the current application is not to your liking.

At this point I feel the options are:

• Allow some flexability in the specific use of the profession box.
• Be strict on the use of said box and start work on converting all 2,500 character articles to correct usage.
• Develop new character box that includes Rank, Title, Position in addition to Profession and start converting character articles. (Very work intensive but also has longterm benefits).
• Develop entierly new system that is none of the above.

Now I have said all of that, I would like to make it clear that I am not against changing how our current system works, but I am against starting something that will not get finished. All three of us have been here since the wiki was about 5,000 articles and we could get things done in a few days. By the end of the year I would bet we will of just about hit 27,000. If you guys genuinely have issue with this then in all likelyhood we are looking at a couple of months work.--Dmon (talk) 15:23, 3 August 2019 (EDT)

Guys... i think you've misunderstood me? I have no real problem with removing the "Colonel" moniker from the infobox. (In fact, hasn't this already been done?) I feel many mercenary characters do deserve a more significant occupation description than "mercenary", but that's a policy question. Its not something i'm debating here.

I'm honestly far more concerned with how we deal with characters for whom it is overwhelmingly implied that they died at so-and-such a time, but is not explicitly stated. There were a ton of sources regarding what happened to Epsilon Regiment at First Harlech - many died in their barracks, the survivors were rolled into Beta Regiment, etc. It is true is not explicitly stated that Nichole died there, but in my mind, we simply need to present and reference the position appropriately.

Does this make sense? I had no idea this would be confusing. ClanWolverine101 (talk) 06:46, 4 August 2019 (EDT)

No worries CW, I was maybe over enthusiastic in making my point! As for the Death thing, in all honesty I think she is either dead or retired given that survivors where rolled into Beta, a Colonel is not going to be demoted or simply vanish whilst still in active service. If she has retired, she is as good as dead for story narative purposes I suspect. I am happy to leave it as it stands, or put likely or even (see text).--Dmon (talk) 07:07, 4 August 2019 (EDT)

1) I had not seen the infobox explanation for profession, and it does make sense putting "Colonel" in there. By why not put two words in the profession box? e.g. Mercenary (Colonel).

2) I thought about adding "(presumed)" after the date of death simply because not having it could accidentally steer the course of canon (or non-canon but official video games). From what I have read over the years, it has happened, and we want to avoid that. You can even link the word presumed to the section with the explanation.--Cache (talk) 12:19, 4 August 2019 (EDT)

1) For me the question isn't "Why not?" It is "Why should we?" Given that her faction affiliation is Wolf's Dragoons I can't find a single reason to include the word Mercenary in the profession box. It does not bring any new information that is not already in the infobox.

2)That Cache is actually a perfect solution I think!--Dmon (talk) 13:26, 4 August 2019 (EDT)

Dmon - Thanks.

I'm briefly going to discuss the retirement issue. I would avoid mentioning it for two reasons:

1) It is unbelievably unlikely that a Dragoon of Nichole's stature would quit at that point in time. Nichole lived through Misery. She wouldn't bail on the Dragoons now.

2) If she HAD quit, it seems likely that it would be something people would have been talking about. Again, there's extensive info about the Dragoons' status at this point, including first-person narratives in Shadows of Faith. If a Colonel with over 45 years of experience were just going to walk away, it seems it would have come up.

Again - i concede things aren't specifically stated, so the language and references we use should be carefully applied.

Cache - Regarding the infobox, i'm flexible? Maybe try "Mercenary Officer" ? Could that be a thing?

Thanks. ClanWolverine101 (talk) 17:06, 4 August 2019 (EDT)

I wasn't thinking retired as in quit, I was thinking more on medical grounds, especially after her unit being devestated the way it was.--Dmon (talk) 17:50, 4 August 2019 (EDT)

1) Profession: The reason why for me is simple, it is a matter of making the data make sense with the description given for casual viewers. The infobox states Profession and currently her last known rank is listed. That doesn't make sense.

2) Death: ClanWolverine101, I'm not doubting that she is dead. That's not what this is about for me. It is about being very clear to the readers that the information is a logical presumption based on canon data, and not actual canon data. Presumed dead and confirmed dead are two very different things, ask Tara Lucas.--Cache (talk) 19:34, 4 August 2019 (EDT)