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Panel discussion: What should be on Bulbapedia?

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Zhen Lin

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Bulbapedia is a community-driven Pokémon encyclopedia.

The question is, what goes in to a Pokémon encyclopaedia? Articles about Pokémon? Sure. Articles about the trainer of a Pokémon? OK. Articles about the voice actor of a trainer of a Pokémon? Fine. Articles about the non-Pokémon roles a voice actor plays? No.

There is a very fuzzy, not well-defined line between what is relevant and what is not. The editorial board would like to solicit your opinions on the topic before formulating an official policy.

So, what should be in Bulbapedia?
 
Zhen Lin said:
Articles about the voice actor of a trainer of a Pokémon? Fine. Articles about the non-Pokémon roles a voice actor plays? No.
Click to expand...

To clarify on this one...

Articles about the non-Pokémon roles a voice actor plays? No. Mentions and/or a list about the non-Pokémon roles played in the Article about the voice actor of a trainer of a Pokémon? Yes.
 
I think right now we can rule out other series, like Digimon (which someone recently tried to make an article for, as well as some popular manga series which has even less relevance to Pokémon). Perhaps maybe one or two large articles for broader categories Pokémon falls under, like Monster series, but even that could be argued as too irrelevant to the Pokémon series specifically.

One major exception goes to the Smash Brothers series, which has Pokémon included in its mixed bag canon.
 
My apologies for double posting, but I have something else to add and also want to bump this thread for others to take notice.

Original Creations and Fan Websites - we really need to work out a policy for this. Currently, my rule of thumb is "If someone besides the webmaster/creator would make an article on this without being prodded by the webmaster/creator to do such, then it is significant enough to have an article on Bulbapedia." But still, that's a very rough measuring stick.
 
Do we have any articles on products, like toy lines and stuff?
 
I think we should include the Pokémon-related stages and moves from Smash Bros. in Bulbapedia, but nothing else from the game. The reason I think those few things should be included is that someone might hear the name of a stage, for example, and wonder from what Pokémon game it came, so then he/she could search Bulbapedia and find its source.

I don't believe we currently have articles about merchandise other than CDs.

I still say characters-of-the-days deserve their own articles so we can match a name to a face and episode.
 
^^^
Agreed, I believe I made on for Zachary once....

the guy with the Yanma...
 
Concur'd on the CotD. And I definitely think merchandise is worthy of articles, for the lines at least if not separate articles for the indivudual products - sets and pack for the TCG and TFG are included, after all, so why not?
 
...

I think a thread rename may be in order.

What should not be on Bulbapedia?
 
Yeah. The point of this is to define the line between acceptable and unacceptable, not to just list off things that should be on the Bulbapedia. I thought we were just going down the road of "How specific is too specific?", personally.

Does anyone have any input on the whole fan websites and original creations thing? It's one of our roughest spots when it comes to deciding what's significant enough to keep and what isn't.

EDIT: Also, to hook the interest of some other Bulbapedia people and look for the gray areas...

Should any TCG decks constructed by players be included? If so, which ones, since we certainly shouldn't just include every Tom, Dick, and Harry's deck - maybe ones which have won tournaments?

Several significant members of Bulbagarden have an article for them. But how significant should a Pokémon fan have to be in the fandom to get an article devoted to them? (And no, don't just say "Slightly less significant than me - now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go write an article for myself." That's what userpages are for.)
 
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Here's another include/exclude issue which has come to my attention on Bulbapedia lately.

We're getting a lot of information on the Brazilian Portuguese dub of Pokémon. We have more articles for Brazilian voice actors than Japanese voice actors, and nearly as many as we have for English voice actors. However, Bulbapedia, as an unwritten rule of thumb, concerns itself mostly with the original Japanese and the English dub - since, well, it's written mostly by the English-speaking audience. Therefore, is the information on the Brazilian dub relevant?

Personally, I feel that the articles on the voice actors should be kept - after all, it's technically relevant to Pokémon, and who knows, perhaps someone will actually want to know this information someday. However, I also feel that within the character articles, the information on the voice actors for other dubs besides Japanese and English should be moved to the "In other languages" section near the bottom as the names were. As it stands, the situation is already getting as bad as the name issue in terms of cluttering with just the Brazilian Portuguese voice actors - from what it seems to me, many of those characters were voiced by three to five different voice actors...

However, given that we're supposed to be having a discussion on the include/exclude issue at large anyway, I felt it would be best to offer it up for discussion as well.
 
Definitely move non-English, non-Japanese voice actors and names to the "In other languages" section.
 
Here's my take on it--I may be old and out of the loop, but, well, here's my two cents anyway.

Articles are created around the fact that they're related to the primary topic of the 'pedia: Pokemon. Thus, Veronica Taylor gets an article. However, the Veronica Taylor article, *to be a complete article*, should certainly include her roles in other shows. It shouldn't link to those other shows in the Bulbapedia. If somebody wants to go to task and Wikipedia those, they can. But it's a source of all information--if the subject falls under the header, from there, as long as the article is relevant to the subject, it doesn't necessarily have to be relevant to the header.

Another example? If someone has an article about a trading card (obviously relevant) and in that article includes information about its particular production characteristics (let's say it's a holographic)--that may not necessarily be Pokemon-specific, but it relates to the article at hand, so it's worthwhile.
 
Okay. To sum up so far, so we can stop going over the same things.

  • Non-Pokémon information can be included in articles on topics relevant to Pokémon. (Which was sort of a given from the start, anyway, so long as the overall focus is on the Pokémon relevance.)
  • Non-English/Japanese voice actor information should be in the "In other languages" section.

And things that I've mentioned which still need a response.

  • Should anything similar but not connected to Pokémon be mentioned on the Bulbapedia at all, even in large group articles like "Monster series"?
  • Pokémon fan websites - what should the policy be? When do they become significant enough to be a part of Bulbapedia?
  • Original creations - same issue as fan websites.
  • TCG decks constructed by players - same issue as fan websites.
  • Significant Pokémon fans - same issue as fan websites.
  • Should the non-English/Japanese voice actors have their own articles, or only be mentioned in articles?
 
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Here's an article of questionable relevance we've had for a while: Quinty. It may be made by Game Freak - but is it really relevant enough for its own article?
 
Please note: The thread is from 18 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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