Memory Alpha:Pages for deletion/Starfleet cadet uniforms

This is a page to discuss the suggestion to delete "". In all cases, please make sure to read and understand the Deletion policy before editing this page.
 * If you are suggesting a page for deletion, add your initial rationale to the section "Deletion rationale".
 * If you want to discuss this suggestion, add comments to the section "Discussion".
 * If a consensus has been reached, an admin will explain the final decision in the section "Admin resolution".

Deletion rationale
Delete. I don't think this page is necessary as a separate article. If there's anything of use on the page, it should be merged with another uniform article. -- Renegade54 04:09, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Discussion
Keep. Memory Alpha isn't paper, otherwise the asteroid would fill up real quick. :)--KrossTransmit on Holonet? 20:26, 19 October 2006 (UTC)


 * The argument isn't that we are running out of space, it is whether there is enough material to keep a seperate article. Delete. --OuroborosCobra talk |undefined  20:32, 19 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I, too, don't see the benefit of having a separate article each for 1. all uniforms in general, 2. uniforms by rank, 3. uniforms by era, even 4. uniforms by style AND 5. individual uniforms (identified, again, by rank, era and style). There has to be a better way to structure this data than to have dozens of stub pages linking to or even transcluding each other. At least, I suggest to start this whole thing like it is done in any other case - create one article, and start to split that up if it becomes too long - not create a web of articles with titles no one would ever search for and then try to build a coherent whole. If there even is original information at the moment, merge that to a central article (like, for example, Starfleet uniforms) - otherwise delete, if duplicate information. -- Cid Highwind 21:30, 19 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep the article..
 * i do see benefit for having an article for all uniforms in general.
 * i do see benefit for having an article for all uniforms by position.
 * i do see benefit for having an article for all uniforms by era.
 * i do see benefit for having an article for all uniforms by style.
 * thanks for your input however, Cid.. you are doing a lot to help curb Memory Alpha's possible growth and i credit you for sticking to your guns on this :) -- Captain M.K.B. 05:16, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep. The page has potential, even if it just ends up being a disambig page.  If every single Starfleet uniform seen was placed on the Starfleet uniforms page, things will get pretty crowded and quite complicated. -- SmokeDetector47( TALK ) 05:48, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Keep. Completely legit subject that shouldn't have been nominated for deletion. -- Krevaner 07:46, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks too, Mike. No discussion would be complete without an irelevant, petty comment by you... No, I'm not "curbing Memory Alpha's possible growth" by suggesting that related information should be placed on one article instead of two dozen, since the available information is the same in each case - and I think you already know that well and wouldn't have responded that way if it hadn't been "your" article that was suggested for deletion here. To anyone who suggested keep - I think keep is completely compatible with a merge (which has been suggested from the start). So, are there any good reasons to not "merge" this? -- Cid Highwind 08:39, 20 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I can't think of any. Mike, I don't think anyone is disputing the validity or necessity of the information, it's just the presentation that's at issue. I personally don't think that have a dozen or more uniform articles is the way to go, and feel that there must be a better way to organize the information. Do I know offhand what that is? No, not really. And as an observation about your growth comment... one of the reasons that the Star Wars wiki has passed us in size is that they have many, many tiny articles (and they also seem to accept almost everything as canon, as well). We have our own share of very short articles (not counting stubs that may or may not end up being fleshed out more), but I don't really think we need to "grow" by creating a myriad of little articles where a few larger ones would suffice (or even be better). I know Cid can handle himself just fine, but I really don't think his goal is to stifle growth... just manage it in a professional, organized, sensible manner. -- Renegade54 10:07, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
 * If this is possible, why not give it a little while, add it to PNA, and see if a full article can be made out of it. If not, merge it to another uniform page.  Sound equitable? --Six of Six 08:24, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
 * Comment: We also have Starfleet flag officer uniforms. So if the cadet uniforms gets deleted, the flag officer uniform page should also be turfed, as would Starfleet cadet uniform comparison, after which Starfleet uniform comparison (2350s-2360s) and Starfleet uniform comparison (2366-2370s) should be called into question. Personally, I don't see why cadet/flag officer uniform info can't be placed in era-specific uniform pages, but that's just me. --From Andoria with Love 13:49, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
 * 1.) There is currently no information on here, and 2.) we don't need individual templates for individual bits of information. That's not what templates are for. This one can be deleted, while any information on any types of uniforms should be placed in their respective era-based articles as listed here. The only exception is the Starfleet dress uniform, since that has been designated on-screen as being specifically for special occasions and are not part of normal duty. (Having said that, and I hate to sound like John Kerry here, but a separate article for cadet uniforms might be okay, since those also don't pertain to normal duty... but individual templates for them or any other bits of information are not.) --From Andoria with Love 06:25, 5 November 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, suggestion time, as promised.
 * First, these pages that are up for deletion were referred to as "templates". They are not, they are article pages that are also used as templates. This doesn't change the fact that it is still information duplicated on several pages where it really shouldn't, but just for completeness sake so that we are all talking about the same stuff here.
 * Second, any suggestion by me here is not done to "curb growth" - this is a stupid notion, and you should know better. Valid information is not supposed to be removed - but that doesn't mean that we can't rearrange it to find the most useful way to present it. That should be our goal, not a maximum number of articles possible with a fixed amount of information. I'd rather have "few" articles that each present good and new information than "dozens" of articles that each present the same information in different arrangement.
 * So, how should the information be rearranged? The first search (or link) term that comes to mind when talking about Starfleet uniforms is, guess what, Starfleet uniform. That page should either have all information about all uniforms, or link to all available information - and it already does. There's some information about uniforms in general, and a navigation template that links to available "sub-articles" (and could be changed to whatever layout we decide to use). The next-best thing seems to be to have sub-articles based on the uniform's appearance. There are some "main" uniform styles (ENT, TOS, TMP, Movies, TNG, DS9.1/VOY, DS9.2) and, of course, some modifications or variations based on that. These styles should get their individual articles, each called "Starfleet uniform (X)", with "X" being some in-universe way to distinguish between those uniforms. Hey, we already have that, too, by using the timespan these uniforms were used in. Let's just keep that.
 * Anything else is, in my opinion, unnecessary. If we separate content by uniform style (7+) AND position (how many would that be? 5? 6?), we'd easily end up with 50 or more articles that each is either just a short stub, or duplicates much of the information.
 * As a first step, I suggest to merge each article with a title like "Starfleet uniform comparison (2350s-2370s)" to its "parent article" titled like "Starfleet uniform (2350s-2370s)" and in that process "subst" all content that is currently transcluded via a template call. All existing "template articles" could then be turned into redirects. -- Cid Highwind 12:46, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Aye. Are you volunteering?  -- Six of Six  Talk Ω 13:00, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me, Cid. Get to it. ;) --From Andoria with Love 20:35, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I'm not really sure that i understand what you intend to do. there's a lot of double-talk in this discussion and i must confess i'm not very cool-headed about it. i was trying to come up with a radical new idea for a structure of these articles and i was stopped cold by the extreme action of placing one piece of it up for deletion early in my intended process. I also really object to Cid's comment (in Ten Forward) that what i am trying to do is "against everything a wiki stands for". this is really the poorest comment i've heard from anybody around MA for a long time and i've distanced myself from the wiki as a result -- i'm quite frankly sick of that kind of broad-ranging, non-specific, roadblock when people should be encouraged to try new things and have the community help them rather than dressing them down. Congratulations, on reclaiming MA from my intended changes. i hope you guys come up with some great way to format your uniform articles. -- Captain M.K.B. 21:20, 5 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I stand by that comment - or rather, I stand by the comment I actually made, not the one that is attributed to me, here. "" (in quotes) as referring to "easy to add to, easy to remove from, easy to change", and if I might add, easy to understand what's going on in the source code of a page and easy to actually witness where content one tries to add will end up. Your way wasn't really that, and exactly "the community" you are referring to, now, was trying to tell you that early in the process. I'm not sure, but I believe it started with some comments made on one of the uniform talk pages. It continued with a forum thread, in which you replied to any constructive criticism with sarcastic remarks but not much else, then continued your way on the various uniform pages. Only after that, more than a week later, someone took the next step and suggested one single page of the whole bunch for deletion. It might have been a recently created page (haven't checked that), but the discussion surrounding that whole process was going on for at least 8 days at the time. Here, you again added a comment that I could have considered insulting, and just now did it again, this time addressing everyone who has a different opinion about all this stuff. It might help if we could actually discuss these things in a constructive tone, just once. -- Cid Highwind 00:27, 6 November 2006 (UTC)


 * not likely. cheers, though, nice chatting with you kids about this. -- Captain M.K.B. 03:46, 6 November 2006 (UTC)


 * First of all, I was the one who put this particular article up for deletion. As Cid posited above, it was a new article at the time, by a new contributor, and was unformatted and had little (if any) useful content as created. Mike stepped in after I had nominated the page for deletion and totally revamped the page according to the format he had begun to use on some other uniform pages. His changes/enhancements went on from there. The page I put up for deletion was not Mike's page, but what was there before Mike revised it. It was not Mike's version that was nominated for deletion. Now, having said all that, I still agree that there must be a better way to present the uniform information without so many articles and so much duplication. I don't think anyone here is against innovation; quite the contrary. At the risk of entering into personal attack territory, Mike, I think you're being a bit childish about this whole thing. You're a valuable contributor to the site, and an admin to boot, and to take the attitude you've chosen is counterproductive. I do understand that this set of articles is your creation, and I do understand how it can feel if your creation is "rejected"; it feels like a personal rejection. It isn't, though; nobody is saying that "Mike's ideas are garbage" or anything to that effect. All we want to do is come to a consensus about how best to present this information. We've all had ideas rejected or reverted (perhaps nothing this wide-ranging) and it stings a bit at times, but you shake it off, lick your wounds, and either say ok, maybe it wasn't such a good idea, or... you make another go at it, and find a compromise that everyone is happy with. Why not do that now? -- Renegade54 14:15, 6 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Comment: Okay, so Mike tried something new and innovative. People didn't like it, and the result was having these "template articles" put up for deletion. Yes, we probably could have handled things a lot better (including myself), like actually contacting Mike first to try and see if we could fix the problem (or at least make a better attempt to do so if such an attempt was made). That said, the fact remains that these pages are up for deletion and have been for over a month, and they can't stay, at least not in their present state. So, do we get rid of them now or continue the discussion (which has actually been fizzled out for quite some time now)? --From Andoria with Love 12:52, 23 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I have merged all the template articles with their respective "parent" article. This page now only includes a one-sentence intro and a bunch of dead links. Shall we delete it now? --From Andoria with Love 20:36, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
 * OR, an alternative is, since we have Starfleet dress uniform, shall we make this and Starfleet flag officer uniforms into full-fledged articles displaying the various admiral uniforms? Or no? --From Andoria with Love 20:38, 1 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Cid? Mike? Anybody? (screams like Riker after beaming down in ) --From Andoria with Love 07:46, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Um, Im not realy in love with having  a page for the dress uniform, separate from the era pages... (all dress, duty, cadet and battle fatigues should be on the same page for the time frame that they are used IMHO) so by all means delete this. -- 6/6  Neural Transceiver 18:46, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Well the thing with the dress uniform article is that there is so much information on the page now that merging that into the the various uniform pages will cause the the uniform articles to become overly long, resulting in the dress uniform being given its own page again in the future. Personally, I have no problem (at least I don't now) with separate articles for uniforms that vary from the normal duty uniforms and have been featured prominently in various episodes (i.e., dress uniforms and cadet uniforms... maybe flag officer uniforms). If the topic has enough information to cover an entire article, then perhaps it should be given its own article. --From Andoria with Love 22:52, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Admin resolution
Since information from the various template articles were merged into their respective era-specific uniform pages, this page was no longer useful. All it was was a bunch of dead links, a pic of Wesley Crusher, a brief description of cadet uniforms (now found on the main uniform page for 2366-2373, I believe), and a few templates. Unneeded and deleted. --From Andoria with Love 07:47, 12 December 2006 (UTC)