Toy Bio[]
Very little about that toy bio reflects his appearance in The Gathering. Doesn't belong in intro bio. --Crockalley 03:09, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
- Dude, he barely has any lines. His appearance in The Gathering couldn't reflect his toy bio if they wanted to. There were FIVE MILLION CHARACTERS. --ItsWalky 03:19, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
- He was one of the main Maximal characters. He certainly didn't go running up and down trees in a rage like his toy bio says. He didn't use any of the weapons detailed in his toy bio. Dude. And we are once again we are in the situation of "where does this information come from?" Under the Toy Bio section, the info's origins are clear, but in the main bio section, it's like we made it up. --Crockalley 03:43, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
- I hereby suggest we remove Rhinox's profile, as his appearance in The Gathering did not touch on any of it. --ItsWalky 03:46, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
- All Crockalley is suggesting is that B'Boom's article be revised in the same fashion Optimus Minor's recently was, reflecting The Gathering as the primary portrayal of the character. Which, if he or someone else can put together a bio out of B'Boom's dialouge and activities in The Gathering, I see nothing wrong with. --KilMichaelMcC 04:54, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
- Yes, but Optimus Minor's personality in The Gathering conflicted with his bio. B'Boom's did not. There is nothing to suggest that he does not go into fits of rage. There was barely anything at all. He appeared more than most characters, but he still did very little of note. In the miniseries, of the Maximals only Razorclaw got any real characterization. I would keep B'Boom's tech spec information there until something directly conflicts it, like, say, the upcoming BW profile series. If you want, put a footnote link saying it's based on his toy bio. Until then, there's no point in removing it. --ItsWalky 05:14, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
- Okay, I get your argument now, and am persuaded by it. Would never have disagreed if you'd said all of that first instead of the sarcastic thing about Rhinox. --KilMichaelMcC 05:48, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
- Yes, but Optimus Minor's personality in The Gathering conflicted with his bio. B'Boom's did not. There is nothing to suggest that he does not go into fits of rage. There was barely anything at all. He appeared more than most characters, but he still did very little of note. In the miniseries, of the Maximals only Razorclaw got any real characterization. I would keep B'Boom's tech spec information there until something directly conflicts it, like, say, the upcoming BW profile series. If you want, put a footnote link saying it's based on his toy bio. Until then, there's no point in removing it. --ItsWalky 05:14, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
- All Crockalley is suggesting is that B'Boom's article be revised in the same fashion Optimus Minor's recently was, reflecting The Gathering as the primary portrayal of the character. Which, if he or someone else can put together a bio out of B'Boom's dialouge and activities in The Gathering, I see nothing wrong with. --KilMichaelMcC 04:54, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
- I hereby suggest we remove Rhinox's profile, as his appearance in The Gathering did not touch on any of it. --ItsWalky 03:46, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
- He was one of the main Maximal characters. He certainly didn't go running up and down trees in a rage like his toy bio says. He didn't use any of the weapons detailed in his toy bio. Dude. And we are once again we are in the situation of "where does this information come from?" Under the Toy Bio section, the info's origins are clear, but in the main bio section, it's like we made it up. --Crockalley 03:43, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
- That's not an appropriate use of footnotes though. On the internet, footnotes, like Endnotes in book, serve more to obscure than to reveal. Footnotes should be used to distinguish sources in interleaved entries.
- An italicised note at the end of the bio section woud serve better.
- Just littering your atticle with footnotes does not serve the reader. Especially when they're suppsoed to be links to a story. "Okay, I clicked on the little number, and it took me to a footnotes section. Great. Okay, so now i'll scroll all the way back up again and find out which number footnote i clicked on... this sucks. it's liek they're using footnotes, which are meant to provide clarifying notes, as general links or something."
- (that last scenario, admittedly, is more of a general gripe, and not spcifically applicable to this situation.)-Derik 05:49, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
- Um. In this circumstance, the footnote is exactly to provide a clarifying note. I don't know what you're on about. --ItsWalky 07:26, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
- I'm on about how an italicised note at the end of this bio would, in this context, make more sense than a footnote. (Much of the rest of my bitch was similar instances when footnotes are nto the right tool for the job.) Trying to jam every citation into footnote form is a poor use of footnotes. footnotes are good for some things, and not-so-good- at others. In this case, they're not-so-good. -Derik 07:50, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
- Wiki footnotes: you click the number to go to the footnot, but you can click the footnote to go back to the number. There's no scrolling involved. Anyway, here's my big gripe with this situation. We have a character here. We have a fiction section. There are three sources of fiction for this character: his toy bio, the 3H comic, and the IDW comic. I look at this page now and I say, "where is his toy bio?". It is as valid as the other two. It has been argued here that the toy bio has more personality to it than the other two comics. So why is there not a toy bio section under fiction?
- Too boot, we have an introductory paragraph that has no apparent origin. Someone reads B'Boom's article, and they're going to wonder where that information came from. It's actually very misleading having the toy bio infomation in the main bio section. I read this article as it is and I see a character summary. I look down at the fiction section and see those two comics, I'm going to think that info in the character summary comes from those comics.
- That is where I'm coming from. --Crockalley 13:30, 8 October 2006 (UTC
- See though, I can't think using the toy bio if his main bio is misleading- because in many cases that's the onyl constant. The two expanded biographies we got of, for example, Crosshairs, both agree with the toy bio, but not with one another. The Toy bios are, to an extend a 'default' for the character.
- Also, didn't we decide the whole 'how do you tell what's int he tech-specs' debate was covered by linkign to tfu,info, which has them? (Or when it doesnt', linkign to someplace that does.)
- I guess my thing is, in many cases, the tech-spec is redundant to the bio section. In other cases, it's completely contradictory. No one single solution seems to fit this.
- I want to say an italicised note after indicating this is the toy bio... but that seem... wrong somehow. We've used italic notes as special clarifications, not source citations. Do youw ant a special citation template, that maybe looks like this?-Derik 15:18, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
Bio-note is based on: Multiple Sources. Includes Marvel Comics, Panni Armada comics, and the Dinobots on Trial pack-in brocure
- No offence is intended, but please stop using "it feels wrong" in these discussions. It feels wrong to not have the toy bio in the fiction section. That's not going to win any arguments. Give me reasons.
- It's just I'd rather avoid a citation system all together by only putting info under a heading. For example, under the Toy Bio heading under the Fiction heading. I'm not going to win any friends by saying this, but I'm not fond of the opening paragraphs on character pages. The info in the Fiction sections is derived from hard sources. But the opeing paragraphs are our interpritations of nebulous sources. Any one person is going to write something different for any given character. For me, it all comes down to "Where does this information come from?" "That sounds interesting, I want to learn more, but I can't because I don't know where the author get this information from." When information is put under the fiction section, at least there is a heading to tell the reader where that information came from.
- Writing from an in-universe POV doesn't help. For long entries, like Optimus Prime's, I want to watch the episode where Megatron makes a clone of Optimus. But what episode is that?[3]
- That's all I have in me right now. --Crockalley 15:44, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
Notes[]
- In an ideal world, we'd have no bio at the top and the toys among the fiction sources below.
- However, the point of the bio at the top is to provide a thumbnail recap of the character so you don't have to read the entire section below, which can potentially stretch for pages. And that compelling necessity, to provide an at-a-glance summary, takes precedence. And sadly, often times no single version of the fiction offers a decent overview of the character, and so you get bio's like Springer's. -Derik 16:03, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
What Derik said. (Moving discussion to the left again, for readability.) If I'm going to look up a random Transformer out of curiosity, I don't want to have to read through pages and pages of fiction to piece together who they are. I've helped build this wiki to be be more user-friendly than that. We're not perfect at the moment, and we do need more sourcing, but we're not going to throw out the single most imminently useful part of a character's page for pedantics. We have to assume some sort of intelligence on behalf of our readers. If we pander to the absolutely lowest common denominator, then we're going to have nothing of substance on this wiki to offer; an unreadable sludge of information so compartimentalized and unreadable as to be of no use to anyone. We are not removing our introductory profiles. You're just going to have to live with them.--ItsWalky 16:17, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
Oh for crying out....[]
Furman and Yee's Beast Wars continuity hurts me so badly. [1] --Rosicrucian 21:32, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
- B'Boom's going to be in the book as well... - Chris McFeely 21:48, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
- But they're physically identical! I don't know, I can dig that they're trying to include every character they can, but it would have been much simpler to just say that B'Boom and Apache are the same character for the purposes of this, considering B'Boom hadn't had any fiction attached to him before they tossed him in Gathering.--Rosicrucian 22:07, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
- But that makes too much sense. ("Lio Convoy". Jesus Christ.) Interrobang 22:12, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
- At least "Apache" and "B'Boom" won't be on facing pages, unlike "Mantis" and "Manterror." --66.65.144.27 23:09, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
- But B'boom's existing characterization is completely at-odds with Apache's old man / cautious second-in-command characterization.
- Think about what you're saying seriously-- do you actually want to overwrite a US character with a broad Japanese character archetype?
- (I'm hoping there's a plot point about them being identical- they are the most identical of the US/JP characters since Claw Jaw's character model got turned all pink.) -Derik 23:53, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
- Personally I'd prefer Apache didn't exist considering we already got a B'Boom (albeit a fairly characterless one that got three lines before getting his tuckus kicked). But mostly I'm just grousing and angsting over how the heck Furman and Yee are going to pull this one off. Especially since he's named as a member of the "Pack" and closely associated with Lio Convoy, so it's entirely possible that Ascending will have both Apache and B'Boom. Such a headache.
- Maybe one of 'em is a clone. I dunno. I should probably just calm down for now.--Rosicrucian 23:59, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
- What they should have done is tweaked Apache's appearance to make him more viusally distinct from B'Boom. They also probably should have given a new, more sense-making name, but apparently they've decided not to do that for any of the Japanese characters. --KilMichaelMcC 00:10, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
- Well yes, I agree. They did that for ClawJaw. I'm hoping their identicalness is a plot point. -Derik 00:38, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
- What they should have done is tweaked Apache's appearance to make him more viusally distinct from B'Boom. They also probably should have given a new, more sense-making name, but apparently they've decided not to do that for any of the Japanese characters. --KilMichaelMcC 00:10, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
- But that makes too much sense. ("Lio Convoy". Jesus Christ.) Interrobang 22:12, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
- But they're physically identical! I don't know, I can dig that they're trying to include every character they can, but it would have been much simpler to just say that B'Boom and Apache are the same character for the purposes of this, considering B'Boom hadn't had any fiction attached to him before they tossed him in Gathering.--Rosicrucian 22:07, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
Triple Changer?[]
He seems to be called a "triple changer" in the IDW profile book. Does that make it official? 68.61.240.172 16:03, 30 August 2008 (UTC)