Anime Pokémon Articles

PAK Man

PAK Man

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I started a topic about this a while back, but it seemed to die without any resolution.

Anyway, we need to come up with some sort of system regarding the notability of anime Pokémon. It started out whenever Ash, Misty, Brock, May, Dawn, Jessie or James caught a Pokémon, they would get an article. That sounds fair to me.

Then, people started giving articles to the signature Pokémon of important characters. This included Harrison's Blaziken, Gary's Blastoise, Officer Jenny's Growlithe and Nurse Joy's Chansey. Personally, I see no problem with this, as they are recurring Pokémon and trainers.

Then, the signature Pokémon of Gym Leaders began getting articles. This sort of falls into a gray area, but I feel that Pokémon such as Lt. Surge's Raichu, Blaine's Magmar, Maylene's Lucario and Wattson's Manectric, having played substantial roles in their episodes, could use articles.

But somewhere after that, some people decided that every Pokémon belonging to every rival and trainer should get an article. Now, I feel it's getting out of hand. We have an article on Cheryl's Mothim, which I don't see making the notability requirements. We also have Santa's Delibird (I have no idea how that got created), Max's Ralts (which isn't even his) and that Wynaut that made one cameo appearance and played a very minute role during the Clair arc.

Additionally, we have articles on Harley's Octillery, Drew's Butterfree, and Gary's Dodrio (which, may I add, did nothing in its first appearance and next to nothing in its second).

Seriously, we need to draw the line somewhere when it comes to these articles. I know we've had this discussion before, but now I'm serious about it.
 
Why not just have a section in the Character's profile with their Pokemon in it.

As for lesser known Pokemon of major characters, can't there just be a single page for all of those lesser known Pokemon (assuming they have enough to actually warrant a page)
 
Every character does have a listing of all their Pokémon on their page. I know in some instances (such as Kenny) people have created articles about his non-notable Pokémon, and we've redirected them to his Pokémon section.

I just wanted to make that clear; I don't want the articles deleted, some I feel should just be redirect.
 
I've created a thread on this before but nothing was done. We have been holding back the slippery slope but whether we should push back has never been agreed.

Max's Ralts, in particular, is his Starter Pokémon. (So, yes, it is his. Kind of. Title naming is a different issue anyway - see Ash's Larvitar and Misty's Golduck.) That makes it more noteworthy than some of the others. But there are other cases where I would argue they don't deserve articles. Rudy's Starmie barely got any screentime, yet it still gets an article for being his "signature Pokémon" whereas the two other Pokémon used in the same battle don't. We need to apply more common sense here.

What I would like to see used more is the system in use on Casey, Paul and Maki's articles where the information is written below the Pokémon list.
 
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I agree with FabuVinny, the format used in those articles is much better than having all these pages on Pokémon of questionable notability.
 
Yeh all these articles are just gonna stubs
whats da point of them, when you could un-stub (is that a world?) them by sticking them together or something
 
Gotta chime in with the others here, the point you make is perfectly valid and I think FabuVinny expressed the possible solution very well in his post. We should scale back on unnecessary pages and include descriptions of the minor pokémon if it is truly deemed necessary on the owner's page as is done with Casey's page. Seems to be the best method in my opinion and it reduces clutter and puts less strain on the server.
 
Moldy Orange said:
I think we only have Rudy's Starmie because Rudy was a Gym Leader and every Gym Leader gets a Pokémon page, no matter how small.
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I thought as much, I mean it's a sensible idea really, but nonetheless thanks for clarifying it for all the non-Bulbapædists. Question is if it's worth doing for every single Gym Leader or not, I guess it is really.
 
Well every gym leader has their own special strongest pokemon that gets both a big game welcome and anime welcome!

Like Misty's starmie
Brock's onix
Lt surge's raichu
Norman's slaking

stuff like that
 
Moldy Orange said:
I think we only have Rudy's Starmie because Rudy was a Gym Leader and every Gym Leader gets a Pokémon page, no matter how small.
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Keep in mind the person who created that article has since disappeared from Bulbapedia, and they also created an article about Rudy's Electabuzz, which was promptly deleted.

Also, not every Gym Leader has a page for their Pokémon. Looking at the list, I can see Koga, Danny, Luana, Jasmine, Tate & Liza, and Juan don't have articles about their Pokémon. And most of the characters that do have Pokémon articles (ie, Pryce's Piloswine, Clair's Dragonair) had much more of an impact on the plot than just a simple gym battle.

Plus, it's because of that type of thinking that we got articles like Drew's Butterfree, Harley's Octillery, Harley's Wigglytuff, Gary's Dodrio, Zoey's Misdreavus and Kenny's Breloom (which is actually a redirect).

I think for lesser-known Pokémon, bios should be fine, as FabuVinny said. And perhaps a page for recurring anime Pokémon would cover that Wynaut, as well as that Hippopotas that appeared twice before disappearing. Spoink could go on that page as well, and just have the current articles redirect to that section.
 
PAK, if you remember, I was the first one to create the Gym Leader ones after discussing it with you a little over a year ago. Allow me to quote from your talk page of back then. I wrote:

Hi again :) I've another "is it notable" kinda question: the Anime Pokémon section here is getting bigger and bigger by the day. Many contributers, including you and me, are adding Pokémon characters articles constantly. We have articles for minor Pokémon such as Drew's Butterfree, Paul's Azumarill, Vicious's Scizor, Nero, Orville, Pink Butterfree, Spoink (anime) and others. Some of them appeared in only one episode, or had extremely minor roles. The question is - when is it too much? Which specific Pokémon deserve articles and which don't? For example: many Gym Leaders used one Pokémon prominently, and that Pokémon debuted in the series under their ownership. Common examples are Lt. Surge's Raichu, Erika's Gloom, Sabrina's Kadabra, Blaine's Magmar, Whitney's Miltank and others. These Pokémon had a far more important role in the anime than, say, Orville ar Nero. Another example is Pokémon who were main characters in Pikachu shorts, such as Wynaut in Camp Pikachu or Larvitar in Pikachu's PikaBoo. I'd love to give them each articles of their own, but I just don't know if it's right. What say you? --ElectAbuzzzz 16:27, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
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What I meant was just that. Rudy's Starmie was definitely NOT what I had in mind. This is getting ridiculous. Not EVERY gym leader needs a Pokémon articles. Only those that had an important role.

~buzzzzy
 
I actually remember right after you posted that, I started discussing with a few other admins what "notable" would mean. In fact, I even recall telling you not to create ones about the Larvitar and Wynaut, because I felt they were not notable.

The Drew's Butterfree, Vicious's Scizor, and Paul's Azumarill articles are definitely not notable. I know for a fact Paul's Azumarill is now a redirect to his page, and I believe Vicious's Scizor was either deleted or redirected. Drew's Butterfree, in fact, was deleted but resurrected by someone else.

Nero and Orville sort of fall into a gray area. Orville technically goes against our "No Character of the Day's Pokémon" rule, but I created the article based on the fact that he was more important than Wilbur, who wasn't even named in the episode. Nero (another article I created) I can see people's points about when they say it's not notable.

I did observe, though, that many of the users that supported the questionable articles don't visit Bulbapedia anymore.

Sketch said:
What defines "Important role"? How long they stay around? How long the Gym Leader sticks around?
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Again, there's another gray area. My personal definition (which may not reflect that of the other admins) is a combination of how much of an impact it had on the plot, the frequency with which it appeared within its episode(s), and the importance of who owns it. Surge's Raichu was a major factor in Pikachu determining it wouldn't evolve into Raichu, which makes it stand out. Clair's Dragonair stuck around for many episodes and helped with a few plot points.

The movie Pokémon, on the other hand, are a slightly different story. I personally feel that none of the birds from the second movie, save Lugia, should have their own article. I also feel the Suicune from the fourth movie, the Mew from the eighth movie, and the Regis from the eighth movie do not need articles (the latter, by the way, don't have them.)
 
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Someone before tried to make "Bugsy's Gym Team". I think this is actually a good idea for the Gym Leaders Pokémon. It covers all their Pokémon, so no one will argue which one should be the only one with an article; it also would be long enough not to be a stub. I'm not saying we should do it, but it is an idea.
 
@Moldy: I don't think that's a good idea, actually. That stuff should just go into Bugsy's page. Not on its own page.

Okay, here's what I'm suggestin. I wrote down a few rules - how about we go over them, make improvements, and then create an official notability policy? Here it goes:

1. All Pokémon owned by the following characters are notable: Ash, Misty, Brock, Tracey, May, Max and Dawn.
2. All Pokémon owned by Jessie and James are notable, except for those that were only owned for one episode.
3. Pokémon owned by recurring characters and major rivals are notable if they had an important role in the PLOT and not just used for battle. These include Ritchie, Casey, Duplica, Gary, Harrison, Drew, Harley, Morisson, Tyson, Paul, etc. (when finalizing this rule, we need to set EXACTLY which character fall in this category).
4. Pokémon owned by Gym Leaders, Frontier Brains and Elite Four members can only get articles if they influenced the plot and were their signature Pokémon. Usually that means they were shown out of battle. In many of these cases, this was also the species' debut in the anime. No more than one per Gym Leader, but that doesn't mean one for EVERY Gym Leader.
5. Recurring wild Pokémon deserve their own articles only if they appeared in at least 3 different episodes. The others can be merged into one article.
6. Movie Pokémon can only recieve articles if they were main characters in that movie.
7. COD's Pokémon aren't notable, with the exceptions of cases in which the Pokémon was more important that the COD itself.

This needs work, but that's the way to go, I think.

~buzzzzy
 
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If you can write three substantial paragraphs about the Pokémon in question, without a play by play of its twenty second appearence, then it should be article worthy.

EDIT: Electabuzz has the correct idea.
 
ok then, PAK, how about you toss this to the other admins (in the private forum I'm assuming you have), and we can put this into BP's official notability requirements page.
 
Please note: The thread is from 17 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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