Board Thread:Wiki discussion/@comment-18014300-20170402100052

I was talking with Master Sima Yi about this. He told me that he took issue with articles like Plato, where we have virtually little to no information on—although I personally think the article on Plato has more information than a lot of other examples. It was his opinion, I think, that this article shouldn't even have been created in the first place because our information on it is so scarce that all we have to say about him is that he was referenced by a character, or with other cases, in the database.

Our conversation actually started when I pointed out that Star Wars has essentially been canonized as a fictional franchise within the Assassin's Creed universe itself, given multiple references to it in the Assassin's Creed: Assassins series of comics. He affirmed this, but told me he would not like an article created on it in our wiki, which I think is reasonable (though I also would not be against it).

However, while I might agree that articles like "Plato" or random historical characters mentioned in the database where we only have one line of information on are so insignificant, we might essentially be cluttering the wiki up with stubs, I am concerned that we don't actually have an objective way of determining when such articles are too paltry in information to include. In hindsight, it might seem obvious, but even if it seems obvious, it's still a bit arbitrary. Pelagius pretty much only has one line of information, but Plato has more than that. For articles with maybe three lines of information, some editors might think that is too little, while others might think that is enough. If we want to limit ourselves, I want to be sure that we really have an exact criteria for determining when a subject with a real-world counterpart has too little information to warrant an article.

Yet another issue, however, is that forbidding articles on certain subjects on the basis that we only have one or two lines of information on them might be in violation of the wiki spirit. There is a reason why the "stub" template exists. It's so that a subject who editors have so little information on hand about, but would still otherwise merit an article by other criteria (normally that it appears in a source whatsoever), would still have an article created for it. Part of the importance of this is because there's always the risk that an editor might preemptively assume that there isn't enough information on the subject to merit an article when in fact there actually is; the article could always still be created later to rectify the mistake, but it is more efficient if such assumptions aren't made in the first place, especially if we end up having a case where an article is constantly deleted or nominated for deletion simply because editors argue that information on it is too few. The very concept of "stubs", from my understanding, is to allow the creation of articles no matter how little data we have on them because there might always be more information on them lurking about.

I must note the example of pendle from Wookieepedia, an animal which in all of the thousands of Star Wars works out there, only appears in a single line in a rather obscure novel, but which still has an article. Rumbat is another example. (Both are articles I made :P lol).

I understand, however, that Master Sima Yi's concerns might only be relevant to subjects with real-world counterparts which we have very little information on, not Assassin's Creed exclusive subjects which we have very little information on.

In any case, I want to present one example that has sparked me to revisit this issue and bring it to everyone's attention. There has been one editor lately who has been creating many articles on subjects with real-life counterparts no matter how small the reference was in Assassin's Creed. For instance, the 1976 Argentine coup d'état, only alluded to once in Cluster 5 of the Rifts puzzles in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood with the following line "Argentina 1970s: 30,000 people Disappeared in the raids". We also now have articles on many states of the United States, even when they are only mentioned once or twice. As well, I personally am in favor of creating an article on Christianity and Islam. I think they have been referenced enough times to deserve their own articles if we have articles on people like Plato and Pelagius and the various states of the U.S. I think the issue with articles on religion might be more describing them in a non-controversial light, but I don't think that would be a huge trouble since we won't really be delving into their theology. I personally also think we need an article on Kingdom of France because I think it's awkward to reference the Kingdom of France only to be directed to the article of France which seems to refer to the French Fifth Republic, an issue I brought up in this thread.

All of this raises the question I really want to ask everyone: where do you guys think we should draw the line with articles with real-life counterparts?

Master Sima Yi seemed to suggest we shouldn't create articles on subjects we know are only briefly referenced. However, my main contention with this is that I fear that's an arbitrary criteria. Sure, Star Wars seems to be just a fun reference, and I'm personally not too comfortable creating an article on it either, but if we look at this objectively, it was mentioned more times than Pope Pelagius or Pope Honorius III. What about places that are only mentioned once? What about an ethnicity which is only mentioned once, like Nubians in The Secret Crusade?

Pulling from real, outside sources
My conversation with Master Sima Yi is in turn related to the question of how much information from real-life sources we are allowed to pull to make an article more complete. I brought this up with the example of Madrid. We all know that it is the capital city of Spain, but if it's technically not explicitly said to be its capital in an Assassin's Creed source, does this mean that our article on Madrid should properly only describe it as "a city in Spain" or, if an AC source didn't even say it is in Spain either, "a city home to an Abstergo Foundations facility".

Now, it seems to be the consensus that obviously, very, basic information is fine. Master Sima Yi did affirm this as well with me. However, for the Ming dynasty article (a work in progress), he did take issue with say, the last line about it being overthrown by the Manchus that established the Qing dynasty. This, I disagreed because I think that it is acceptable, basic information what regime preceded and succeeded what, and since it is also basic information what people were the Qing dynasty, it is fine to say that the Ming were conquered by the Qing who were Manchu; this information cannot be changed by Ubisoft without radically diverging the Assassin's Creed world from ours because it would, one thing after another, lead to the revolution, the Chinese Civil War, and the events of Black Cross. The point here though, is that at a certain point, the line blurs, and it becomes debatable what is still acceptable as inclusion as "basic information". I have added probably way too much information from real-world sources for the Granada War, but I really wanted to make an exception there for the sake of quality writing and cohesiveness, and also because it helped us to understand how the film and Discovery could fit together.

See, if we were allowed to pull more information from real-life sources, articles such as the Plato might not just be a list of when he's referenced and be a bit more concise. Sima Yi noted that the Ming dynasty article needed a revamp because it only had information on Shao Jun's adventures, but the reality is that without pulling from real-life sources, that is practically the only information on the subject that we're left with. We would just have information on two emperors' reigns and in relation to Shao Jun. In the same way, the Granada War article would pretty much skip right to the last battle and the affairs of the day Muhammad XII formally capitulated, such that the article essentially isn't really so much about the war but how it ended.

How much information we are allowed to pull from real-life sources is a related issue with the problem of stub articles of subjects with real-life counterparts. Master Sima Yi's complaint about such articles, like Plato, is partly that it's only a list of when it's referenced. A lot of subjects with a single line or two come from being referenced once or twice in the database entries. If we are allowed to pull more information from real-life sources, just a bit more, these articles would have better quality and might stand better as actual articles.

My Proposal
So, because I think that this post wouldn't be that helpful without a proposal, I will present one now.

A subject is allowed an article if it fits any of the following criteria:
 * It is mentioned even once by name in an Assassin's Creed source
 * It appears at least once in an Assassin's Creed source, even if it is not named

I had an idea for an alternative to the first point, which is:
 * Any subject which is mentioned even once by name in an Assassin's Creed source is allowed an article, provided that there is at the very least, one piece of information about it, no matter how small, in an Assassin's Creed source.

My reasoning for this is because I think this is an objective criteria. I think the idea that a subject has too little information to warrant an article would be too arbitrary. Going by the alternative option, Nubians and Armenians would not deserve articles because even though they are mentioned by name in Assassin's Creed: The Secret Crusade, it does not explain what they are, other then the fact that Saladin's army included them in their ranks. However... on second thought, maybe this isn't quite right since that it can still be written that they were peoples that in 1176 comprised the ranks of Saracens?

I have been thinking that the following should be excluded:
 * It is referenced once in an Assassin's Creed source, but is neither named nor makes an actual appearance

However, I'm not quite sure about this, as I actually think the 1973 Chilean coup d'état should stay as an article. It is not mentioned by name explicitly, but it is pretty much described clearly in Cluster 5 of the Rifts in Brotherhood. Also, I don't actually remember one of the examples I had in mind for exclusion. So, I'm quite confused over this.

Ultimately, I'm really not sure about my proposal at all; I just wanted to have some idea on hand. We really need to look at actual examples. 