Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/GoBots

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1 GoBots on this wiki

GoBots on this wiki

All the key discussions over the years about GoBots, and their place on the wiki.

2009

Executive Summary

A huge discussion about how much GoBots is appropriate, and why. After 4 months of discussion, a compromise that everyone can agree on, starting a GoBots sister wiki on the same server with the same code, is reached.

Canon

This conversation originally took place on the Gobots franchise page.

A note should be said in the article about canon. What is canon? I'm guessing it is like G.I. Joe: the whole universe is canon, but only the bits that appear in Transformers fiction is Transformers Wiki-noteworthy. Or is it like crossovers such as Star Wars: only the bits that appear in Transformers fiction are canon. Or (I don't think so) does Hasbro's purchase of them retroactively drag everything in, cartoon and all, as a "continuity family"? - Starfield 17:07, 6 April 2009 (EDT)

Personally, I think that the GoBots should be covered here IN FULL.Khajidha 00:19, 7 April 2009 (EDT)

It is indeed like G.I. Joe or Death's Head, where the only stories that count for the purposes of our wiki are the ones that include Transformers.--ItsWalky 00:20, 7 April 2009 (EDT)

I'm not sure I agree. The Gobots cartoon has effectively been subsumed, in whole, into the Transformers mythos. This is a fundamentally different case than Death's Head, who left the Transformers multiverse explicitly, or G.I. Joe, which has implicitly diverged. Due to the legalities surrounding GoBots, the only licensed future stories set in the Gobots multiverse will be Transformers stories. We could certainly choose to catalog the 65 episodes and one movie of Gobots as effectively another Transformers continuity family, which it basically is. I'm not sure what the downside would be to that, other than it'll take a while for it to be up to the wiki's usual standards. I'd be happy enough to go through and start with character pages and episode guides though. --Jimsorenson 23:10, 16 October 2009 (EDT)

As much as I'd fap to the idea of having full-blown GoBots coverage on this wiki, I'd just like to get straight how deep we'd go with the coverage. Would we cover just the cartoon? Would we also cover the Robo Machine comics published in the UK? Would we do articles for each character along with complete toy write ups? Just curious. I wouldn't mind slogging through the cartoons myself, or maybe even calling dibs on the Rock Lords movie, but I'd just like to know exactly how much GoBots we'd be willing to cover.

And just to throw it out there for reference, Counter-X is probably our best source for GoBots research on the entire interwebs. --DrSpengler 23:31, 16 October 2009 (EDT)

Also, would we be able to cover the toys, or just the fiction? -- Semysane 23:47, 16 October 2009 (EDT)

I think that we'd only cover the part of GoBots that are canon for Transformers. That'd be the cartoon, basically. IMO, the toys (as something owned by Bandai) are outside of that purview. Things like Machine-Robo and associated fiction have not been brought into the Transformers canon and pretty much cannot be officially, legally, brought in. --Jimsorenson 00:35, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

If we can do it up to our usual standards, I'm for it. I just think it's a metric assload of material to be adding.--Rosicrucian ^Talk 00:00, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

Hey, we've all got plenty of time. What's one more metric assload? --DrSpengler 00:06, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

I welcome the challenge. --Jimsorenson 00:35, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

Initial kick-off

This conversation, and all others unless explicitly noted, originally took place on Community Portal.

This idea is getting some traction over on the Tonka GoBots page, so I thought I'd replicate the discussion here. It's certainly a big enough change that it should get broad exposure. --Jimsorenson 11:44, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

A note should be said in the [GoBots] article about canon. What is canon? I'm guessing it is like G.I. Joe: the whole universe is canon, but only the bits that appear in Transformers fiction is Transformers Wiki-noteworthy. Or is it like crossovers such as Star Wars: only the bits that appear in Transformers fiction are canon. Or (I don't think so) does Hasbro's purchase of them retroactively drag everything in, cartoon and all, as a "continuity family"? - Starfield 17:07, 6 April 2009 (EDT)

Personally, I think that the GoBots should be covered here IN FULL.Khajidha 00:19, 7 April 2009 (EDT)

It is indeed like G.I. Joe or Death's Head, where the only stories that count for the purposes of our wiki are the ones that include Transformers.--ItsWalky 00:20, 7 April 2009 (EDT)

And just to throw it out there for reference, Counter-X is probably our best source for GoBots research on the entire interwebs. --DrSpengler 23:31, 16 October 2009 (EDT)

I, uh, I'm not sure that really fits the TF Wiki's "mission statement." I mean, this is a Transformers wiki. We shouldn't start making ourselves cover entire other properties just because there was a crossover. --ItsWalky 12:24, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

Depth of coverage?

Also, would we be able to cover the toys, or just the fiction? -- Semysane 23:47, 16 October 2009 (EDT)

Machine-Robo etc would probably fall under the same classification as Diaclone and Microchange, ie general mention but little detail. I am confused by your statement that "the toys (as something owned by Bandai) are outside of that purview." Taking that statement at face value the original Jetfire, Roadbuster and Whirl toys shouldn't be here either. Khajidha 18:35, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

Not at all. Those toys were all released as Transformers. Other Takatoku and Bandai toys wouldn't be fair game, and aren't. The reason that the GoBots CARTOON can be on this wiki is that it was effectively bought by Hasbro when they acquired Tonka, and then integrated into the Transformers universe by licensed stories like Withered Hope. There has been no comparable action regarding GoBot toys. They were licensed to Tonka by Bandai. That license has long since expired. Hasbro has no claim on those toys, and there has never been any attempt to integrate the toys into the Transformers multiverse. At least, that's the way I see it. --Jimsorenson 19:32, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

Okay, now I understand your point. For the other side, it seems to me that the toys are the source for the cartoon; if one is fair game for this wiki so is the other. Since this site is not part of Hasbro, the licensing is irrelevant. That is, while Hasbro can't use the toys; we (as archivists) are free to use them. Khajidha 20:19, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

Some initial chime-ins

If we can do it up to our usual standards, I'm for it. I just think it's a metric assload of material to be adding.--Rosicrucian ^Talk 00:00, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

Hey, we've all got plenty of time. What's one more metric assload? --DrSpengler 00:06, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

I welcome the challenge. --Jimsorenson 00:35, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

I could definitely help out. (Dibs on swooping in and taking care of any spelling or punctuation mistakes.) ---Blackout- 11:49, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

I'm a little indecisive - the entire point of Withered Hope, etc. was that the GoBots exist OUTSIDE of the TF universe. While a given number of GoBots have since moved in, until further notice, it's unclear how many GoBots actually have integrated into the larger TF milieu. Now, if someone from Hasbro said, even in passing, that the GoBots stories are now considered part of the TF multiverse, I'd be all for it. Maybe it's something to think about for BC or the next Q&A. Hooper_X 12:45, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

A while back there was a discussion where it was said that nothing that was once canon can be removed from canon later on, even by Hasbro. Is the reverse also true, can a block of fiction be retroactively added to canon that wasn't canon at the time? I'm thinking not really. I'm thinking only the glimpses of the GoBots universe in TF fiction belong. - Starfield 13:14, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

They're not really reciprocal arguments. Imagine this scenario: Hasbro kills off G2 and is soured on Transformers. They let their new acquisition, Kenner, start their own brand of Transforming robots, called Beast Wars, and they don't use the Transformers name in conjunction with it at all. No mention of Cybertron. No character named Megatron - call him T-Wrecks. It'd effectively be a completely different toyline and cartoon, not 'canon' for Transformers. The whole first season happens, more or less as we saw but without Starscream or the few mentions of past continuity. It's a big hit, so Hasbro decides to add the Transformers logo to the Beast Wars packaging. Then the second season starts up, and lo and behold, they make a big plot point out of The Ark, and the Predacons being descended from Decepticons. They would have changed the status of the S1 stories from non-canon to canon for Transformers.

Now imagine that it wasn't until Beast Machines that this transition happened. Different logo, different writers, but a continuity of characters and ideas. It'd STILL retroactively pull all of the Beast Wars into Transformers canon. So, sure, stories can be retroactively made canon. Hell, what about this scenario - Alignment is republished by IDW, under the Transformers banner. Boom - non-canon becomes canon, just like that.

It's possible, is all I'm saying. --Jimsorenson 13:25, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

It's totally feasible, I'm just not sure it's actually HAPPENED with the GoBots material yet. Hooper_X 13:41, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

Yeah, my thought too. I don't really have a problem per se with the idea, it's just that I don't think GoBots is officially Transformers canon as a whole; just some individual characters that have shown up. Kind of like how various Marvel characters have been shown to be a part of canon, but we don't go and then write up the entire universe they hail from. --Jeysie 17:24, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

But... but... when I was a kid GoBots were decidedly not Transformers. Back in the '80's that was kind of a big deal. Not a logical argument, I know. If Alignment were published as a Transformers story, sure it would be canon. If the GoBots cartoon were published as a Transformers story it would be canon. The Beast Wars example is interesting. - Starfield 13:49, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

IS GoBots Canon for Transformers though?

Yeah. Honestly, I don't know about this... at least, not now. There's still a lot of TF stuff that needs deeper exploration and suchlike, including Club materials. I'd think a focus on those things before we delve deep into GoBots' non-TF-direct stuff would be in order. --M Sipher 14:45, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

I share this thought. I think if people have enough time to be writing up a bunch of GoBot stuff, surely it's better spent (for now, at least) on writing up the TF stuff we already know we need? --Jeysie 17:24, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

There is no need to have articles here for Defendor, Destroyer, Tank, Fytor, Hans-Cuff, Jeeper Creeper, Wrexx, Pincer, Pumper, Vamp, Creepy, and probably 99.1% of all other GoBot characters and story events. We have the e-Hobby team, Withered Hope, the various Crashers and Cy-Kills and a few other circa-Dreamwave easter eggs, because they actually existed in some form in the TF multiverse. Trying to add in every other character that never did anything and doesn't matter just because we can would be about as fruitful and necessary as adding in every other G.I.Joe character ever that also never appeared here. That Eskimo Quinn dude could always use another write-up, right? --Thylacine 2000 17:51, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

Im free, I'll do the GoBots. --206.253.51.107 21:14, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

Yeah, I'm not sure how the GoBots non-TF backstory is any more canon to TFs than the entirety of GI Joe, or Death's Head's other stories, or Spiderman comics, or X-Men, or the Incredible Hulk, or... -- Repowers 22:07, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

Leaving the above joking around aside, the difference between GoBots and the other crossovers is that GoBots is tending towards convergence, where as all the other cases listed are tending towards divergence. Gobots has been, de facto, merged into the Transformers line. It started with Transformers names and lines named GoBots. Then GoBots names and likenesses started to show up, again and again. Then toys were made to represent specific GoBots. Stories were published involving GoBots, not just as new Transformers, but as GoBonaughts from their cartoon continuity entering the realms of Transformers.

This is a fundamentally different situation from the other crossovers. Death's Head started out in Transformers (leaving High Noon Tex aside) but then left for another multiverse. G.I. Joe started out in the same multiverse, really, but has slowly but surely diverged to the point where future crossovers cannot exist as a part of the main lines. The Marvel stuff, again, very briefly started out in the same multiverse (rather, the TF comic briefly started out in the Marvel universe before diverging.)

That's the real underlying reason. GoBots are being absorbed into Transformers, literally (by the acquisition of Tonka) and figuratively (as seen in Withered Hopes.) That GoBots are about a civil war between shapechanging robots (well, cyborgs, but then, Beast Wars were cyborgs too) means that it works very well thematically. That all future official GoBots stories will come from Hasbro or its licensees makes it work on a practical level. It's a finite amount of non-Transformers-branded story to catalog, a mere 65 episodes, 1 movie and some 100 characters of note. If we assume maybe 2 extra characters or devices of interest per episode, that's about 300 articles. With the 10,000 we already have, that's hardly a daunting task. Heck, it even benefits Hasbro. It gives them easier access to the information and trademarks that they've already acquired, and thus lets them better protect their intellectual property.

Basically, that means that we CAN choose to catalog GoBots. The precedent is there in the form of the Beastformers. That doesn't necessarily mean we SHOULD, but we have the option. I for one would like to exercise that option, but only if enough people think it's a good idea. --Jimsorenson 00:52, 18 October 2009 (EDT)

Marvel Continutiy side-discussion

All of Marvel 616 is totally contained within the IDW G1 continuity! Wolverine sure didn't warp from that reality to his own later on. --ItsWalky 22:39, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

Wolverine appears in three solo titles, four team books, and a spattering of guest appearances every month. If there isn't SOME kind of reality warping that helps him get around, I'd be surprised. --Xaaron 23:24, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

For me, it's like kinda minor continuity within the 616 reality, since there are too many contradictory. --TX55^TALK 23:48, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

Who owns what Vis-à-vis rights

How much of GoBots Hasbro owns, I thought, was subject to debate. Heck, Sipher and Trent go out of their way to not mention anybody in Withered Hope that either didn't have a Hasbro-owned name or wasn't based on a Transformers figure. That's why we have "Doctor B" instead of Doctor Braxus, why they name Leader One and not Cykill, and why they describe Turbo but do not name him. This indicates that the GoBots cartoon, as a whole, is not something that the "Withered Hope" story itself declares is open to us. Hasbro owns Tonka... but does that really mean they now own the CotGB cartoon? They may just own some trademarks and some likenesses. That whole situation is kind of an intellectual property clusterfuck. Bandai owns the toys, Hanna Barbara may still retain rights to portions of the show, and Hasbro probably owns what little remains. --ItsWalky 01:25, 18 October 2009 (EDT)

That's a really good point. I got the impression from the IDW editors that it's all on the table, but then it hasn't come up much in my books (yet) so that hasn't been put to the test. Sipher, could you shed some light on the process? Did you restrict your use of terms because of a Hasbro missive, or was that you being proactively cautious? --Jimsorenson 03:46, 18 October 2009 (EDT)

Legally it could be an abandoned copyright. Transformers has spent the last several years walking along the train tracks to go poke it with a stick in increasingly invasive ways... and it (or whoever owns it) has not reacted as we've had Transformers toys released that are Go-Bots characters, featured them in increasingly-large roles in Transformers stories, slowly transitioning to full-on (albeit minor) characters instead of cameos, taken measures to lock out their copyrights... and finally openly acknowledging "yes, we consider Go-Bots part of our multiverse, and intend to use them." It's not even a separate universe-- the rock lords stuff is showing up in the same universe as Cybertron. (In Multiple universes, right?)

Whoever owns Go-Bots seems to have just given up. Go-Bots was never popular enough for a DVD set, even during the Maximum Nostalgia period. And with Hasbro owning their trademarks-- not just character names but the name of the damn line and species-- it's functionally impossible for them to market Go-Bots as a nostalgia property. When they didn't bring Machine Rescue Robo over to the U.S., the last real hope of a revival or relaunch died. (and most fundamentally... He-Man and Thunercats died. If they can't sustain revivals, Go-Bots doesn't stand a chance. The perception that all nostalgia properties are money-mines seems to have finally died out.) They just... what are they going to ever do with the part they own? Convention-exclusive comics that can't even be called "Go-Bots," it'd have to be "Guardians vs. Renegades" or "Challenge of the Guard-Bots"?

A fine distinction... TF does not own the Go-Bots fiction-- that's © whoever owns it separately from the property. (This might be why Dead End (Armada) couldn't be called "Gobotron," Hasbro owns Go-Bots which is enough to prevent Tonka from using "Gobotron" as a replacement name, but AFAIK the name itself comes from the fiction and wasn't a trademark Hasbro acquired-- it's owned by Warner Bros., and a handful of other fiction-producers who did books and records.)

In theory all the Go-Bots we're getting is a new universe that may resemble some past incarnation, but is actually based on the cardback bios... or something. (Which I don't think we actually have the rights to either... or maybe as part of the packaging they were part of the rights Kenner owned-- I dunno.)

(Someone who knows more than I do about Go-Bots could probably figure out better than I who owns what part of the brand, which has been sawed up and redistributed like one of Dexter Morgan's victims.)

Critical point: The 'abandoned copyright' thing I said above? It's a theoretical classification. No one relies on that, ever. It's even worse than Fair use. It is incredibly hard to abandon a copyright simply through neglect-- it basically requires an explicit declaration by all owners that they choose to do so, so all of the above theoretical musings are just that-- legal theory, and the law operates differently in a vacuum than it does in the real world.

This would make a good question to ask in our Hasbro Q&A. Not who owns Go-Bots... they won't answer that because it's too legally fraught. Ask a simple question like "we know you got the trademarks via Kenner... does that include the cardback bios?" (Because I'd like to be able to fill out the Narliphant page using its go-bots bio.)

Hypothetical aside-- remember the "Duck Dodgers meets the Green Lantern Corps" episode a few years ago? I'm not entirely sure, but I think WB could have had him meet the Go-Bots. Drop him into the full-on Hanna Barbera cartoon, using the names under a grandfather clause like Captain Marvel. ...they just have no reason to-- the trademarks effectively lock out their ability to create a new cartoon, sell toys, etc etc etc. I'm just pointing out how screwed up the rights are. -Derik 13:06, 19 October 2009 (EDT)

Interesting musings. The missing piece, though, is what kind of agreements Tonka structured with Hanna-Barbara, which have since passed to Hasbro and Warner Brothers, respectively. It's well known that Hasbro was savvy-enough to put legal agreements in place that ensured that new elements introduced in Transformers fiction continued to belong to Hasbro. Hence the manoeuvrings of Marvel with characters like Circuit Breaker and Death's Head. I don't know how Tonka structured their agreements, but that'll have a huge impact on where the rights stand now. I'm not sure, thought, that the failure to use 'Gobotron' for Dead-End had anything to do with legal wrangling.--Jimsorenson 20:38, 19 October 2009 (EDT)

Sorry if I'm beating a dead horse here, I'm just rather interested in the whole situation. I went and dug up the posted copyright notice for GoBots. Note that the actual episodes ARE indeed copyright Hanna-Barbera. On the other hand, GoBot names, characters and property is definitely copyright Tonka corp. So, the episodes themselves may not be kosher. The characters, and especially the character names, should be fair game.--Jimsorenson 02:36, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

If we do come to the conclusion that the GoBots cartoon is fair game for us, I think we should go ahead and do it. As to why someone would "waste their time" on GoBots stuff when they have regular TF stuff they could write about, well, a few reasons. First, they might have access to the GoBots episodes but not a lot of TF stuff. Second, they might decide a lot of people would be willing to write TF, but GoBots, not so many. Third, they might be more a fan of GoBots and use this as an "adoptive wiki" for the show instead of starting a brand new one just for the GoBots. Thanos6 03:40, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Ok, so by that image Jim has established that GoBot names and most importantly characters are definately Hasbro's and the Toon epsisodes themselves are pretty certainly not. It seems the logical thing to do then would be to include GoBot characters in this wiki when they appear in TF material. Cover the characters personality and personal backstory in their main bio paragraphs at the top of of the page, as that IS their character. But leave the "Fiction" section for things that happen in TF stories or are atleast referenced there. That fits the way the material is owned AND the interests of the wiki. --76.28.72.27 08:20, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Anonymous McBunchanumbers pretty much sums up how I feel about it. The GoBot characters and the GoBots property are Hasbro's now, but the cartoon isn't (and I wonder about the other ancillary stuff - there was a GoBots Magazine that I remember seeing as a kid, it was done by the same people who did the official He-Man Magazine, and that's without getting into the Machine Men stuff). Cover what Hasbro owns and has acknowledged owning, leave out what isn't available. Hooper_X 08:59, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

ETA: The GoBots Magazine was published by a company that now is owned by Time Warner. So it looks like most, if not all, of the ancillary GoBots media is owned by TW. Hooper_X 10:02, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

I think the problem hinges on what we mean by official. Do we mean "owned by Hasbro/Tomy" or just "produced under license from Hasbro/Tomy". For TFs those are basically the same thing, for GBs they are two different things. The first would exclude all the toys and media from the classic GoBots, leaving only those appearances under the TFs banner. The second definition would include the toys and media as they were produced under license from Tonka or by Tonka under license from Bandai. Khajidha 10:27, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Not exactly the same thing - while Hasbro always had the ability to make any derivative work they pleased from the G1 cartoon (hence the Marvel comic quickly adopting the cartoon models, and the various toys along the way - compare to He-Man, where Mattel can't touch any of the Filmation cartoon designs), they only acquired the cartoon itself in the past couple of years. I don't think they even own the actual BW, BM, RID and TFA cartoons now, and they certainly don't own the 2007 and 2009 movies. - SanityOrMadness 19:42, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

The Tick is a better example. There's the "base license," which includes all the character, setup and the story of the original 12 issues.

This was the basis for the cartoon.

When FOX went to make the live-action Tick, they licensed the base-license again-- the character, setup and original 12 issues-- and discoverered they did NOT have the rights to the characters that only appeared in the cartoon.

This is like that, except that the "base license" is much smaller-- the characters, names, likenesses and (presumably) their cardback bios. (Possibly also a series bible.) No fiction at all.

And that's assuming that Hasbro even owns all of that... I thought it was just the Trademarks, but the increased willingness to reference Go-Bots material in recent years, beyond the "nudge-nudge, wink-wink" level would seem to indicate that Hasbro believes they have a right to the characters, not just the trademarks. -Derik 11:20, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

What Derik said, Khajidha. Basically, this wiki covers things officially Transformers. That includes things owned by Hasbro and things made under license from Hasbro. There is no transitive property for things now owned by Hasbro but made under license from the previous owner. Though, Derik, I'll point out that we don't actually KNOW the Ts & Cs of the GoBots license. It's possible that Tonka had even more draconian license terms than Hasbro. The characters, names and property is just about the most conservative case possible. Which, as 'sharecroppers' on Hasbro's farm, is probably the safest position for us to take, barring new information.--Jimsorenson 11:42, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

The G.I. Joe Counter-Example

The thing is, G.I. Joe is also owned by Hasbro. What makes GoBots different from Joe? --ItsWalky 10:37, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

See my above argument starting with "Leaving the above joking around aside." --Jimsorenson 11:42, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

In the future any GoBots appearances are likely to be under a TF banner. They are not likely to carry their own franchise again. GIJoe is likely to continue making many appearances apart from TFs. TF/Joe stories are going to be rare, TF/GB stories are going to be the norm. Khajidha 10:48, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Canon or not-canon

So that just means Hasbro owns the characters, names, etc. like they own G.I. Joe. The way I see it, that says nothing of the TF canonicity of those things. TF canon is TF fiction. The characters, names, etc. are not TF fiction. As the characters are used in TF fiction, they get into canon. What we need is a TF profile book with all of them in there. It shouldn't really matter to us who owns what. We cover Spider-Man's comic appearance and Roadbuster's toy because they were in TF fiction. - Starfield 11:35, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Hasbro ownership lays the foundation for POSSIBLE inclusion. It was further stories that pulled the GoBots multiverse into the Transformers multiverse.--Jimsorenson 11:42, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Possible inclusion does not equal actual inclusion - let's say Hasbro made a TF of one of the Air Raiders vehicles - would that warrant adding the Air Raiders as a concept to the Wiki? Does the Allspark Almanac mentioning the existence of the Darkling Lords of Prysmos require us to do a full entry on the Visionaries universe? Right now, we limit our coverage of "Darkling Lords of Prysmos" to "There are these dudes called the Darkling Lords and they live somewhere called Prysmos." Even though we all know WHO they actually are and WHY they matter, it's not immediately relevant to TF fiction. If Leoric or whoever were to show up in a future TF story, we'd do a page for him, but not necessarily for Merklynn or any of the other Visionaries characters, unless they appear in the story too. Hooper_X 12:22, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Agreed, 100%. However, for reasons sketched out above, I feel that criteria HAS been hit for GoBots. A mere throw-away reference is one thing. A crossover is more, but still not enough. A years-long pattern of name usage, toy creation and eventually official stories that specifically pull the existing GoBots fictional universe into the Transformers multiverse is something else.--Jimsorenson 18:47, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Eh. Even if that's true, I still kind of think it's a waste of time. Write up whatever GoBot characters/items and referenced stories show up in TF fiction, and that's it. I really don't see why we need any more than that, as that's all that is required to be informed about Transformers fiction, and that's ultimately what we're here for. A full-on GoBot wiki is a nice idea, but... really not our purview. Maybe if folks wanted to start a sister wiki instead? *shrug* --Jeysie 18:58, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Damnit, Jeysie, way to reply while I was replying! Withered Hope brings the GoBots into the TF canon, but it does so by explicitly saying they exist outside that canon - they're unknown to the Transtechs (whose entire POINT is that they know everything), etc. As it stands, I think the current setup is an adequate compromise. We cover the GoBots characters/concepts that have appeared in TF fiction, but the rest are beyond our purview until such a point as something happens to integrate the two franchises (which I figure will happen, eventually (current most likely scenario in my mind: Someone at IDW introduces GoBotron, full of GoBots, and then promptly blows it up/has Unicron eat it/some other puerile "joke." Second most likely: We finally get a sequel to "Withered Hope" that somehow merges the realities - or retcons that there IS a variant TF universe where the GB stuff happened, we've just never seen it until now.) Or eventually Hasbro just does something akin to the Matt Trakker figure from the Joe line, where it's mentioned in passing that "Oh yeah, MASK was part of the Joe universe all along, we're just now connecting the dots." At that point, I'd be totally cool with it. Hooper_X 19:02, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

There's a certain driving frustration behind this (one which I share,) the Go-Bots aren't ever gonna get a proper wiki, and the cartoon will never be cataloged unless it's done here.

...yet you could say the same of G.I. Joe, and no one's suggesting we go back and start adding every G.I. Joe comic, cartoon, etc.

The question unique to GoBots is the possibility that they have been, essentially, "folded into" the Transformers property to a degree greater than Inhumanoids (a dead property which TF references, but which remains separate.) But we don't know that that's happened, that it legally can happen, and what part(s) of GoBots TF Hasbro does own.

And even if we knew that... it does not automatically follow that we'd treat it as part of the TF Franchise for documentary purposes. Or that we wouldn't. There'd have to be a discussion about it.

The TF Multiverse (Which you could really call the Hasbro Brands Multiverse, incorporating TF, Joe, Jem, Visionaries etc...) is the 5th largest fictional shared-universe every created. (And it keeps gobbling up other franchises-- G.I. Joe has annexed MASK and Action Man in recent years.) There has to be a sane limit on how far outside the Transformers franchise you 'follow' information... otherwise we end up documenting C.O.P.S. episodes. And of the 4 fictional multiverses larger than TF... TF has crossed over with 2 of them! (Marvel and Star Wars.) And Marvel has crossed over with the other two. (DC and Star Trek.)

So... yeah. Knowing our limits is important. (I'm not even opposed to documenting Go-Bots... they're certainly closer to TF than anything else... but I'd want to have a serious discussion of the implications first.) -Derik 19:10, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Marvelverse side-discussion redux

Hell, given that Marvel published a SW comic for ten years or so, you could argue that Marvel and SW are part of the SAME multiverse. Thanos6 19:20, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Not even all Marvel's wholly-owned stories are in the same multiverse (I'm serious - Marvel have multiple multiverses. Thank you Mark Greunwald) - the New Universe in particular is explicitly in a separate multiverse which works by slightly different laws. The "big" Marvel/DC stories (Marvel vs. DC, Amalgam and JLA/Avengers) worked on a similar principle, although some of the smaller (Spider-Man/Batman, etc - along with Image crossovers like Spider-Man/Badrock. Again not joking on that one) crossovers just played the "imagine they lived in the same universe" game. [New Avengers/Transformers was an example of the latter].

Marvel's most significant overlap on that front is actually with Doctor Who - besides Death's Head, who met the Seventh Doctor at least three times, there's been several references to characters meeting The Doctor, and a Doctor Who Magazine (published by Marvel UK at the time) comic story which included a multiverse-spanning splash page included the "Spider-Man recognises the Burglar" panel from Amazing Fantasy #15. - SanityOrMadness 19:42, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

IIRC, one of the Access minis clarified that sometimes universes (even between multiverses) simply collide and temporarily overlap, or a character crosses from one to another. (Crossover, present-overlap, full-history-overlap, amalgamation.) The first 3 just... happen, naturally, and usually sort themselves out, though it's Access's job to help unsnarl them. (It's a bit like icebergs colliding. In a low-speed collision, there's some mashing-effect on the border, but they'll separate themselves out eventually... more or less.)

And in fairness to Grunewald... his multiple-multiverses thing seems more like a recognition of the fact "it's harder to cross from some realities than others." Earth 616 does not "border" the DCU in the same way it borders Earth-712 (Squadron Supreme's Earth.) In both Earth-616 and 712, there are Skrulls, a Sorcerer Supreme etc etc etc... the larger metaphysical "structure" of the universe is the same, regardless of the surface expression. But in the DCU (and the New Universe) they are fundamentally different.

The reality which has emerged is that while a Multiverse may have a certain fixed scope (1,000,000+ Earths in the Marvel Multiverse, 52 in the DC, 15,000,000,000,000,000 in the TF Multiverse) a universe can belong to more than 1 multiverse at a time-- like sitting in the overlap area of a venn diagram. -Derik 20:06, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

IIRC, the robot (Cyril?) who answered the letters page in the Marvel UK SW comics showed up in Robo-Capers --Emvee 18:27, 27 October 2009 (EDT)

There ARE multiple singularities in the MMverse. Stuff like the Living Tribunal, Otherworld, etc. They're just above it all/extradimensional locations/non-hostile. Galactus and even (most of?) the abstracts aren't (and the abstracts don't actually interact anyway, they use intrauniveral things called m-bodies to act for them). Mammalian Verisimilitude 22:34, 27 October 2009 (EDT)

Multiverse side-discussion

Buuuuut then we get into multiverse vs. omniverse, which I think we agreed some time back to avoid for the sanity of the wiki.--Rosicrucian ^Talk 20:43, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

DC and Marvel both lack an Axiom Nexus for a reason. They desperately want to avoid dealing with this.

No sane Multiverse has an Axiom Nexus. Hub realities like this are almost always confined to micro-fiction dealing with the Omniverse... because in a large functioning multiverse, they create incredible long-term headaches.

I have to believe there's a sticky-note in Marvel's Editor-in-chief's office saying "Don't let anyone destroy the TVA," because it's their only multiversal singularity, and they've (somehow) managed to avoid screwing it up-- despite employing writers and editors that don't understand their own Multiverse. Example: The supervillain behind Avengers: Disasembled was Steve Rogers. Yes, even on Earth-616, it's just that no one ever figured it out here. Oopsie! -Derik 21:11, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Derik, I gotta ask, you being you, how did you arrive at 15 quadrillion universes for Transformers? The highest number we saw was in the DW Armada comic at about 76 million. Even given that they found Optimus in a random universe, the expectation would be that they'd have to search about half of the realities to find him, which puts the figure at around 152 million. Granted, that's not a hard and fast figure, but with numbers that large (and the assumption that each reality was as likely as the next to contain their universe's Optimus Prime), it's likely to be close.--Jimsorenson 21:03, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Do you know that there are more than fifteen quadrillion concurrent universes? It's true!Bug Bite, "Games of Deception"

I arrived at it by remember a direct and explicit quite by someone who's actually a traveler from outside the Transformers multiverse, and thus in an even better position to know the length and breadth of it than the poor Transtechs, who think there are only 75 million, and are doubtless in for a Rude Surprise someday.

I suppose arguably you could say the Hasbro Brand Megaverse is 15Q, and the TF Multiverse is 75M... but that would require making a delineation between multiverse and megaverse that, while fairly clear in regard to other fictions and whose structures TF mirrors, is not explicitly laid out in TF fiction itself. (A Multiverse is defined by a touchstone that exists in all realities. A M'Kran Crystal, an 11th-dimensional snowflake, a "Cybertron, stable axis of the Multiverse...")

And of course, one is never entirely sure... was Bug Bite aware of the existence of negative-polarity universes?

(I tend to think that the Transtechs are simply vastly underestimating the size of the multiverse-- Bug Bite seemed to have a fair idea how the TF Multiverse worked, and there was some in-continuity reason why the Transtechs underestimating things make sense I'm currently blanking on. So assume there are 15Q, possibly 30Q universes with Cybertron in it.) -Derik 21:29, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Ah. I knew there was a reason. Though, at the time I read it, I took his quote to mean that there were 15 quadrillion realities in the Omniverse. One point of contention - the trantechs cataloged about 16 million realities. The 76 million figure listed on the web site comes from backtracking from the Armadaverse. And given that there was an episode of GoBots, "Transfer Point", where the guardians traveled to a universe where Guardians were evil and Renegades good, I think Bug Bite is probably well aware of negative polarity universes. --Jimsorenson 21:39, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Ah, thank you, yes, the Transtechs being aware of fewer realities than demonstrably exist in the Armada comic was the reason I think they've got their heads up their afts.

(Splitting... this section is far too long to not be sub-divided.) The number discrepancy between the Techs' catalog and the Armada search is not intentional. Frankly, "Worlds Collide" was so fucking forgettable, well, we forgot that bit of it. Had we remembered, the number stated in WH would have been far, far, far higher than Armada's. --M Sipher 03:01, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

And 15 quadrillion cannot be the number of universes in the Omniverse, because by definition the Omniverse contains everything ever, and Heinlen wrote about an Omniverse with 10.3 Octillion universes. The 15 quadrillion can be a Megaverse which Bug Bite has mistaken for the whole of the Omniverse, but not the thing itself. (The Heinlen Omniverse model is the largest AFAIK, and it shows up a lot in fringe fiction dabbling with the Omniverse. It pretty much has to have been used by Marvel or someone Marvel's crossed over with at some point.)

And good point about the negative universe. Bug Bite may have indeed been referring to a Megaverse with his number-- a "local group" in astronomical terms, which means that number would include realities not part of the TF Multiverse. But that really just means we have no idea how big the TF Multiverse is. If 15Q is the containing set, the minimum set is 75M, and the group who's supposed to know what's going on only thinks there's 16M.

*shrug* -Derik 22:00, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

15 Quadrillion concurrent universes doesn't necessarily preclude 10.3 octillion TOTAL universes. Concurrent just means "existing at the same time." We know that a couple million in the TF multiverse *alone* have come to an end. Of the 10.3 octillion total, how many have ended? How many are yet to come into existence? How many exist for seconds, minutes, moments, and are gone? If Forest is to be believed, the Fallen creates those all the fucking time. They exist, then they don't, like someone save-scumming a video game. Just the actions of multiversal singularities who exist and act nonlinearly would suggest that there'd be a shitfuckton of these hi-then-die little timestreams. Hooper_X 22:24, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Why do we care about what Heinlein says, again? —Interrobang 15:37, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

IS GoBots Canon for Transformers though, Redux.

I think my stance is... we document anything officially branded as Transformers toys or fiction, and what characters/concepts are contained within. So unless the GoBots cartoon (or toys, or whole line in general, or whatever) is ever officially stated as being Transformers fiction specifically, we should stick to only documenting what shows up in Transformers fiction. Otherwise, as previous posts indicate, we could start getting really crazy in what we should be documenting, especially since there's still significant amounts of definitely official TF stuff that needs writing up. --Jeysie 19:47, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

lost count:A years-long pattern of name usage, toy creation and eventually official stories that specifically pull the existing GoBots fictional universe into the Transformers multiverse is something else

The thing with "years-long patterns" is that you can never tell when they're over. Looking backwards across 17 years, yeah, there have been an awful lot of GoBots references in TF, and there will probably be more, but the only one of real consequence was Withered Hope and so far that just appears to be a one-off. We always hold off on including material that hasn't come true yet--unconfirmed rumors and stolen toy protos and such--so what is the difference between that and holding off on writing the TFWiki Jeeper Creeper article until after he appears, if he ever actually does?--Thylacine 2000 21:19, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

I'm not saying that we should document him because he might appear. My contention is that this pattern, culminating in a story that effectively says that yes, the GoBots universe DOES exist somewhere in the Transformers Multiverse, pulls the GoBots universe retroactively into the Transformers Multiverse. I'm saying it's ALREADY happened. --Jimsorenson 21:52, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Yes, but there's still lots of non-TF things that are technically part of the TF universe that we still don't document in full because not all of their bits are official TF fiction or toys. --Jeysie 21:58, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

And I'd say that GoBots is sufficiently different from them that they warrant inclusion. I'm having a hard time understanding what the 'cost' of adding in GoBots would be. I don't buy the camel's nose arguments here - if we decide GoBots are close enough and interesting enough to document, it doesn't force us to then add C.O.P.S. The benefits, on the other hand, are multitude. It brings us more pageviews, allows Transformers creators more access to this material and in general enriches the universe. If it costs us a few (hundred) hours of editorial time, is that bad? We may get new editors or more activity out of our existing ones. (Oh, and Thy, I don't think I'd call seven toys (almost eight, but for the rights) no consequence. Games of Deception was a solidly GoBot story as well.) --Jimsorenson 22:13, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

See, this totally is the "camel's nose" thing you just said it wouldn't be: seven or eight GoBots involved in two or three TF stories is now the rationale for adding at least 90 other characters, 65 episodes, and a feature-length movie that are of no significance whatsoever to the TF mythos. Even if we could magically press a button and have it all appear instantly at no effort--they still just wouldn't belong here. We don't know what "future stories" may ever exist, and longstanding precedent on this wiki has been that we don't base our coverage on future assumptions--even revelations of future facts through unofficial sources when we all know full well it is actually true, and that's certainly not the case here. While it may indeed be cosmically unfair for GoBots to have been so generally forgotten and without a wiki of their own, that really isn't necessarily our problem. I really think it would dilute the spirit of what we've put together here. It is canonically established that Visionaries takes place in the same universe as Animated--and frankly I suspect more people read the book in which that notion appeared than read Withered Hope. I think I can rather confidently predict that any future Visionaries story material would consist of more TF references like that and not an actual freestanding Visionaries revival. Withered Hope says the GoBots stories are being "folded" into TFs, but the Almanac says all the Visionaries stories were already taking place on a normal planet that existed normally in the Animated universe. There is at least as valid a reason to add Abraxas the Sun Imp to this wiki as there is for Zod the Super Gobot.--Thylacine 2000 22:41, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Jim and Jeysie engage in a truly pointless argument (sorry, everyone)

The cost kinds of boils down to...

This is a Transformers wiki. So far our purview has been limited to only official Transformers-branded merchandise and fiction, and we're hardly lacking for material to write up within that limitation. I see no reason to "dilute" our focus, or open up a can of worms of people with other pet fave universes connected to TF trying to argue for us writing up those franchises too.

Bringing in editors that are only interested in documenting GoBots (or other non-TF) material doesn't do us any favors, and having our existing editors working on it just takes time away from all of the Transformers-focused articles still left unmade/finished.

My thought: If people really, really want to write up GoBots stuff, just start a sister wiki somewhere. Best of both worlds, IMHO. That way it can really document all of the GoBots stuff (whereas if we forever have only a limited GoBots writeup here, that will either end up discouraging anyone who ever wants to start a more comprehensive wiki, or result in pointless duplication), and we can just do what we do with Star Wars/GI Joe and write up only what's relevant to TF here and provide links to the other wiki. --Jeysie 22:28, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

OK. I'm seeing two objections. Stop me if I'm unfairly characterizing them.

1: Time writing GoBots articles could be spent writing up Transformers articles.

2: Saying 'yes' to GoBots, which is admittedly a boundary case in terms of scope, means that someone may come along and argue about some other universe.

For point one, I think Thanos6 had a very good counter-argument. Most non-document Transformers stuff is pretty esoteric at this point. If you're not a paying member of the club, you won't have access to that sort of fiction. ARE there any other large swaths of fiction not covered? Some of our editors, myself included, have more access to GoBots material than Transformers material. I'm hardly alone in this, though I am the apparent champion. Rosicrucian, DrSpengler, BlackOut, and Khajidha have all expressed a willingness. There are some high-caliber editors here.

For point two, again, I just don't find it compelling. We shouldn't cover material because someone might someday start an argument about something else? Really? I can pretty much guarantee that if we don't do GoBots now we'll have another discussion about it within the next year when more GoBots stuff comes out. (That's not a reason to go forward with it, I'm just pointing out the futility of this argument.)

The visionaries counter-example is kind of a strawman anyway, Thy. The Almanac states that

1: There is a place called Prysmos

2: Some group lives there called the Darkling Lords

3: Speaking like the Angry Archer might be useful for dealing with them

You see how that's pretty different from a story set in their cartoon universe, where they use an existing technology to travel to our realm. As well as 7 or 8 toys. And another ten or so appearances throughout multiple continuities. AND another story featuring explicit GoBots characters. --Jimsorenson 10:12, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Re: Point one: There's still a large number of Generation 1 characters who need their Sunbow cartoon fiction sections written up. And there's also missing Animated and Movie-related info out there. And that's just for starters. There's far more than just the esoteric stuff that needs writing up.

Re: Point two: If we're going to write up GoBots merely because it's a part of the TF universe, then we'd at least need to do the same for GI Joe, Marvel, and Star Wars as well. If anything, Marvel and Star Wars would have priority because they actually factor heavily into officially-branded Transformers merchandise. I find the argument about which franchise will have more official TF fiction than another completely irrelevant as we don't care (in terms of editing) what a franchise does or doesn't do outside of how it's interacted with Transformers.

Nor is what it will or won't do relevant either, as GI Joe at least already has a large chunk of existing fiction that would make it important enough to worry about regardless of whether it ever gets more TF-oriented fiction.

I'm not biased against GoBots or anything, I just think we shouldn't be writing up anything not directly related to officially-branded Transformers stuff. We simply don't need to in order to be successful at our "mission" of providing info on all things TF. Maybe if Hasbro ever has a brain fit and decides to stop making new TF stuff, and we finish writing up all of the existing stuff, we might need to expand our scope to stay viable, but that point isn't any time soon that I'm aware of. --Jeysie 18:07, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Look, I don't want to be a dick about this or anything, but no. You are just flat-out wrong about that. We are not obligated to do anything. We can make exceptions. We can make judgment calls. We could, if we were so inclined, decide that the G.I. Joe Sunbow cartoon belongs in the wiki but the G.I. Joe comic doesn't. We could decide that ALL of G.I. Joe belongs in the wiki but M.A.S.K. (which has been subsumed into G.I. Joe) doesn't. We're not automatons.

And that's ASIDE from all the specific arguments I've made above about why GoBots are different. And I've got some new ones, which are hardly relevant given that I'm throwing my weight behind the compromise solution, but ... Withered Hope was NOT a cross-over story. It was a Transformers-branded story, not a co-branded one. That makes a difference, or we could deign it to. You've got a good six solidly Transformers characters, with toys and everything, showing up in a Transformers non-crossover story. And yet, that story is a sequel to, and set in the universe of, the Challenge of the GoBots cartoon. In effect, that pulls in the entirety of the Challenge of the GoBots cartoon in a way that a co-branded story might not.

And finally, you state that "I just think we shouldn't be writing up anything not directly related to officially-branded Transformers stuff." Well, GoBots is clearly 'DIRECTLY related to officially-branded Transformers stuff'. If 'related' is you criteria, then we've already met it.--Jimsorenson 12:34, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

It's less a matter of obligation and more that all of your arguments to include GoBot material here exactly apply to GI Joe, etc. as well. (Sorry, but IMHO none of your arguments make GoBots remotely different in ways that are at all relevant.) Ergo, if we decided to suddenly catalog non-TF GoBots stuff here, it would be completely and utterly arbitrary to not include all non-TF GI Joe, etc. stuff as well. And I think it's really pointless to actually include lots of non-TF stuff like that when it is completely unnecessary to understand the TF stuff that is our main focus (since we already cover non-TF concepts to what is enough to understand their place within TF fiction), and we're not lacking for material to add yet.

And, no, GoBot is not directly related to officially-branded Transformers stuff. The GoBot cartoon is, AFAIK, not officially-branded Transformers fiction. Only some of the GoBot characters are officially branded TF toys. Only some of the GoBot characters and concepts show up in Transformers-branded fiction. And... again, we already cover those toys and concepts that do show up in a sufficient enough manner to understand their place within Transformers-branded fiction and merchandise.

Basically, if the remaining GoBots fiction and toys ever become officially branded as being Transformers, then IMHO it'll therefore be appropriate to include.

Otherwise, I really think that the separate sister wiki idea is the way to go for a lot of reasons. It benefits GoBot fans in that they can catalog everything GoBots, not just what is "Hasbro-OK", and it benefits us in not taking our focus away from Transformers. There's really no downside there. --Jeysie 18:38, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

You do realize what the word 'related' means, right? Are you arguing that something needs to be related to officially branded Transformers fiction, or that it needs to be itself branded as part of the Transformers fiction. Those are two different positions. You're stating one position and then, as far as I can tell, arguing for another one. It's making your whole position schizophrenic and hard to decipher.--Jimsorenson 18:47, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

I'm stating I feel that it has to actually be a part of Transformers fiction or toys, or directly relevant and related to it like our out-of-universe articles on concepts regards the fandom and various aspects of creating and purchasing Transformers toys. Sorry if I fail to see what's so utterly difficult to comprehend about that. --Jeysie 19:01, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

So, you'd be in favor of removing Megatron's appearance in G.I. Joe #138, because that wasn't branded Transformers?--Jimsorenson 19:04, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

Er... last I knew, GI Joe #138 was officially considered a part of the Transformers-branded Generation 2 comic series, so I fail to see how that's relevant.

But in any case, my point is not at all hard to comprehend unless you're deliberately trying to be contrary. In which case, go talk to someone who hasn't had their patience for such things leeched out by the fandom already. I'm tired of being piled on that way because people can't just read what I wrote instead of putting words in my mouth or playing dumb. --Jeysie 19:18, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

I don't see a Transformers logo on this cover

I'm not playing dumb. I'm looking at your position - that only fiction that is 'officially branded Transformers fiction' and trying to poke holes in it. It's a totally legitimate strategy. So, looking at this picture, and actually reading the entire book, you won't find any Transformers logos or copyright notices. So, I assume you're going to champion its removal from this wiki, right? Or that you're going to modify your position.

And, as an aside, if you're tired of people who 'can't just read what [you] wrote', maybe the problem is you and not all the people out there who can't seem to exactly puzzle out the positions you so passionately argue for.

(The REALLY sad thing is, this argument is TOTALLY MOOT, since we both voted the SAME WAY on the compromise position.) Exasperatedly yours, Jimsorenson 19:26, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

We label it as "G.I. Joe Starring Snake-Eyes, Featuring Transformers: Generation 2 #138". It follows directly from a Transformers story. That set of GI Joe comics, according to our articles, then leads directly into the Generation 2 comic. It seems from our write-up to thus be a direct part of a Transformers-branded storyline. If that's not the case, then I would argue it doesn't have a place here.

Whereas the GoBots cartoon and the non-TF toys have zip to do with any TF-branded fiction or toys AFAIK. They're not considered a direct part of any TF storyline I know of. I don't have to watch or own any part of it to understand any TF story I know of. It's at best tangentially-related, and quite frankly there's a lot of stuff that's tangentially related to TF if we're going to go down that road, since that brings us right back to GI Joe, Star Wars, Marvel, etc.

And, no, I'm pretty sure the problem is people who can't simply read what I wrote and take it at face value. I fail to see what's so difficult about "If it's not a part of or directly related to official Transformers-branded toys or fiction, IMHO it's not our purview." I mean, it's one sentence, it looks like English, it seems straightforward. If you want to add your own things into it that I didn't say, then you've only got yourself to blame if you're confused, not me. --Jeysie 19:47, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

Addendum: But yeah, I realize it's moot. Just... hurgh. Tired of almost every attempt to have a debate on something in this fandom being an exercise in frustration. :P --Jeysie 20:10, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

We label it that, but it's not called that. Just LOOK at the cover! It follow three other G.I. Joes issues telling the same story and cameos a Transformer who had appeared in other Transformers stories, though in a different body. But it's not ITSELF a Transformers branded story. So, are you now changing your criteria so that non-transformers branded stories are sometimes ok for inclusion under some circumstances? Because that's NOT what you wrote earlier.

(I'm not trying to insinuate anything ... it was YOU who brought up the idea that you've had many other people before have similar problems with your positions. Maybe the whole world IS crazy and you're the only sane one ... it's possible, I guess.) --Jimsorenson 20:13, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

My criterion still stands as "a part of or directly related to official Transformers-branded toys or fiction". I, at least, would classify being a direct part of a Transformers-branded storyline (if it is in fact such-I have only our write-up to go by) as fitting that criterion. In that, you have to know/read it in order to not be missing part of a Transformers storyline.

(And, well, I've had TF fans have similar problems. Very seldom had the same problems in other fandoms.) --Jeysie 20:27, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

So, in your view, a non-branded story that leads into an official Transformers-branded storyline meets your criteria of 'directly related.' Well, boom, we're done. Challenge of the GoBots leads into an official Transformers-branded storyline, Withered Hope. So, I'm glad that you've come around to my way of thinking. --Jimsorenson 20:30, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

No, in my view, one of two things:

The GoBots cartoon is in no way a direct part of the plot of Withered Hope any more than the storyline of the universe Jackpot and Hubcap came from is a direct part of the plot of Gone Too Far, or all of Bulletbike's previous exploits are a direct part of I, Lowtech, or what have you. In contrast, it seems like the GI Joe and Generation 2 comics are actually all one single storyline all directly related. If you don't read the GI Joe comics, you're actually missing part of the plot of the storyline.

It's kind of like, say, imagine that All Hail Megatron had its first six issues branded as a non-TF story, and the last six branded as Transformers fiction. Even though it ended up branded as two different things, it's all directly related as one storyline. In contrast, while any story with Spiderman or another Marvel character in it obviously thus has that Marvel universe as part its background somehow, only that specific character and the aspects of him that furthered the story are relevant to our view of the fiction, not the entire extra universe he's a part of.

Or alternatively, if we did argue that anything that leads into a TF storyline even just as background is fair game, that still, again, applies to far more franchises than just GoBots, so there's still nothing special about that franchise that warrants singling out. Sorry, but your attempt at twisting my meaning around still isn't working. So, why not just go ahead and accept what I said at face value and call it a day? It'd certainly make my day happier. --Jeysie 21:14, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

Have you actually read Withered Hope or the G.I. Joe story in question, or even watched CotG? CotG has a LOT more to do with Withered Hope than G.I. Joe #138 has to do with the rest of the story that follows. Actually, G.I. Joe #138 is part 4 of a 4 part story that is a prequel to G.I. Joe #139-142, a 4 part co-branded Transformers/G.I.Joe story. Meanwhile, Withered Hope made reference to, and relied on, GoBots characters and technologies extensively. The Astro-Beam, the Dimensional Interfacer, specific character traits and backgrounds. I'm not trying to twist your meaning, I'm trying to parse it. There's a difference. I'm willing to accept that you don't like GoBots as a part of this wiki. I'm just not willing to accept that you have a logical, consistent reason for it that doesn't exclude other parts of the fiction. Then again, if you're not actually familiar with the fiction in question (and you've admitted that you haven't even read the G.I. Joe unbranded story), then that might explain a few things. --Jimsorenson 21:56, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

Actually, this is totally, utterly pointless. I don't care that your viewpoint is not internally consistent. I'm bowing out of this argument. Post whatever you like in rebuttal, and just assume that I disagree with you.--Jimsorenson 21:58, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

Yes, I've read Withered Hope; I didn't see any difference between the GoBots technology vs. pretty much any other technology from TF fiction insofar as understanding enough to get the story. Or how getting a feel for the GoBots characters was any different than getting a feel for Cryotek or Crystal Widow or any of the other TransTech characters that have pretty much only gotten their characterization through the prose stories. I didn't feel like, "Well, this makes zero sense/feels like I'm missing part of the plot unless I've seen the GoBots cartoon."

"Actually, G.I. Joe #138 is part 4 of a 4 part story that is a prequel to G.I. Joe #139-142, a 4 part co-branded Transformers/G.I.Joe story."

So, er. Is that different than something like Infiltration #0?

And, my viewpoint is perfectly consistent, as evidenced by the fact that I'm pretty much ending up finding myself having to repeat myself over and over again because nothing you've said contradicts my point. Again, the only reason you're confused is because you keep inventing your own meanings and whatnot that I didn't actually say instead of paying attention to what I did. I doubt most people are going to find anything remotely confusing about "branded as or directly related to TF fiction/toys" because most people aren't doing mental gymnastics to find a convoluted way that something that's "nice but not absolutely important" background info at best and a cameo at worst is somehow important to know to understand some TF fiction. Sheesh. --Jeysie 22:19, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

GoBots as a Multiversal Entity

How is this different than the G.I. Joe cartoon being in the same continuity as the TF one? -Derik 22:04, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

I feel like I've answered this. It's different because it's thematically closer to Transformers (civil war between alien robots and all that) AND because we can be about 99% sure that all future GoBots stories will be Transformers stories, whereas we can also be certain that the vast majority of G.I. Joe stories will not be Transformers stories. Also, G.I. Joe is a MUCH larger universe than the GoBots universe. Documenting it would take a lot more work. Maybe if Hasbro stops making new Transformers stories it would be worth it for us to go back and fill out that portion of the Transformers universe, but we haven't come close to hitting that point yet.--Jimsorenson 22:13, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

the only one of real consequence was Withered Hope

Which was a direct sequel to the toy-only fiction of the Go-bot 6-pack bios. Also "Games of Deception."

Also, you're discussing "Go-Bots" like their universe is a multiversal singularity. It's not. With Bug Bites running around, it's probably safe to assume that Fracture actually is Crasher too. Who knows... maybe all the Cy-Kills are Cy-Kill? The Go-Bot diaspora does seem to have scattered them across all points of the multiverse.

(It's not like Go-bots was ever 1 universe. They had comics, right? And storybooks, and audio adventures, and a negative universe...) -Derik 22:16, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

But we already cover all those characters you named, precisely because they had fully-realized appearances in TF fiction. We weren't just assuming them into existence by weight of related characters who had come before.--Thylacine 2000 22:41, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

(de-indenting) The problem is that if you treat Go-bots as part of the TF Multiverse, it doesn't create the amount of work you're describing. We're not just documenting it's characters, or it's episodes... we're also documenting storybooks, audio adventures, coloring books...

...plus the need for their own disambiguation, backstory, history... if the Go-Bots cartoon is "really" part of the TF Multiverse, then that means its description of the negative universe should be valid and binding for Transformers.

But I don't think the Go-Bots cartoon is necessarily part of the TF Multiverse. Quite aside from the fact it's owned by someone else... I think it's more likely what we're seeing are "new" Go-Bots universes similar to what's been seen before, but distinct from them. (Similar to how every post-BW G1 story includes Sparks-- because they're new G1 universes that adhere to how the TF Universe works.) So if the Go-Bots negative universe episode says that negative universes are shadow-universes that are 1:1 reflections of positive ones (as in the Xenaverse) that doesn't have to apply for the TF version of the multiverse... because the cartoon is not "canon" in the same way a TF Coloring book is.

And God damn it, if we're gonna take our rules for how negative universes work from outside the TF canon, it's gonna be from the goddamn G.I. Joe cartoon, not the goddamn Go-Bots! What are you, a communist? -Derik 22:34, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

I don't think we should pretend that the characters that do appear in TF fiction are blank slates. We could fill in bio type information but then act like the TF story is there first and only fictional appearance. The same might be true of characters that haven't appeared in TF fiction. No matter what, all the GoBot characters are assumed to exist in the TFGoBot continuity (no matter what that continuity looks like), right? Maybe bio-only pages for those guys? - Starfield 22:53, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Ultra Magnus seems not to have existed at all in Marvel US continuity. Presuming that all Go-bots exist in any single reality is... presumptuous. -Derik 23:37, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Actually, for reason above (arrived at in the "Who owns what Vis-à-vis rights" section), I'm with Starfield. I think that this wiki should, at least for the moment, only cover the parts of GoBots that Hasbro owns. That means that, while you're ABSOLUTELY RIGHT about GoBots having its own universe of coloring books and negative universes and whatnot, we could ONLY cover the characters. The fiction sections would have to remain blank, until and unless they show up in licensed Transformers media. (Or, of course, the two multiverses converge more.) This gives us AND our corporate landlord the maximum possible benefit while limiting our scope of work to a mere, I dunno, 90 characters. More than 10% of which have already shown up here. --Jimsorenson 10:20, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

A potential solution

We were talking about this in WiiGii! (omg hivemind) and while I don't think anyone is opposed to a wiki for GB info, grandfathering it all into THIS wiki seems a bit beyond the stated scope. One suggestion was to do a separate GB wiki, hosted on THIS wiki's servers, as a side project - the GoBots Wiki, presented by TFWiki, if you will. When necessary, they would share information, link back reflexively, share userbase, etc. If the stated event comes to pass where Hasbro or someone says "Yeah, all that GoBot stuff happened somewhere in the TF multiverse" then fuck it, we roll the whole thing back in. Given how unlikely that seems to be as per the conversations above, a dedicated GB wiki run as an official side-project of TFWiki is probably the best outcome I can think of. Hooper_X 11:24, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

I don't know how much work it'd be to set up and run (less than ours, due to the limited scope, but certainly some work) but I do like the idea on the whole and would definately contribute to such a wiki should it be born. (ZacWilliam, who really needs to log back in one of these days)--76.28.72.27 11:31, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

I could get behind that as a compromise.--Jimsorenson 11:54, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

If you guys created a separate GoBots wiki, I would gleefully contribute as much as I contribute here. Wouldn't be too hard, either, since a good chunk of the episodes are available online and Counter X has scans of most of the really hard to find comics from the US and the UK. --DrSpengler 13:02, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

I'd be for it as well. We'd need an inter-wiki linking schema-- "gobots:" and "transformers:" seem dangerous-- there's gonna be articles called "Transformers: Subtitle", which makes that... um... potentially fraught. How about "w:gb:" vs. "w:tf:"? That mirrors the interwiki linkign schema used by Wikia to cross-link their sites, and is nicely distinct. -Derik 12:30, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Honestly, I was about to suggest that myself, but I've been highly distracted as of late. Seems like the best solution to me... plus, it's a perfect excuse to haul out the GoBots bin and do extensive photoshoots of those. Of course, the big question... what do we name the band? GBWIKI to keep with TFWIKI's theme? That's where I'm leaning. --M Sipher 12:38, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Hrm... the toyline was just "GoBots," but the cartoon was "Challenge of the GoBots"... ah! But there were GoBot ancillary materials (like storybooks) not branded COTG, but simply "GoBots."

There is no clear delineation that corresponds to the portion of the brand Hasbro may own. Calling it "Challenge..." would implicitly limit it to the cartoon and exclude other things. "GoBots" is probaby what we want to hit. So yeah-- "GBWiki" since the reason we're "TF" instead of "Transformers" is to avoid Hasbro's trademark-- and they do own the trademark on "GoBots." -Derik 12:43, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

I could likely whip up a take on the GoBots logo for it when I get home.--Rosicrucian ^Talk 12:49, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

I am particularly thinking: "GOBOTS - MIGHTY ROBOTS, MIGHTY WIKI" as the tagline.--Rosicrucian ^Talk 12:56, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

"Challenge of the GoBoxes!" Naahh, of course not. I just wanted to say it. --DrSpengler 13:07, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

On that note, it wouldn't be hard at all to throw together a version of the Go Boxes using the GB logo's "GO" instead of our usual Prime-trailer-inspired one. --M Sipher 13:15, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Heheheheheheheheh. -M Sipher 13:12, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Some surely practical suggestions:

Interwiki schema: [[w:gb:Crasher]] / [[w:tf:Crasher (G1)]]
site url: http://gb.tfwiki.net (avoiding "Gobots" in the url since it's trademarked)
Example article url: http://gb.tfwiki.net/w3/index.php?title=Crasher
.htaccess cleared url: http://gb.tfwiki.net/wiki/Crasher

"w3" is arbitrary... sub-domains won't actually overlap the file-structure of the existing wiki. (But I feel like installing multiple wikis on one db-server might require a prefix.) Sub-domain feels like a good idea-- both because it's free, and because it enforces our co-branding. Anyway, I'm throwing those parameters out.

There seems to be consensus on this, but if we genuinely intend to spin off another wiki, I feel like there should probably be a formal community vote on the matter. You know-- since TFWiki isn't run by a cabal of #wiggii members?

Say... Measure passage requires 50% of voting editors and 2/3 of voting administrators voting "yea"-- with at least 1/3 of all administrators participating in the vote? -Derik 13:11, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

How many admins to we have?--Jimsorenson 13:14, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

I count nine. How many are actually active right now is another matter. Also, we need to do this. GoBots won't get a wiki at all otherwise. ---Blackout- 13:37, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Yeah, it'd require at least 3. Which is reasonable, given that TFWiki has some fairly inactive admins. (In a proper 'security council' scenario you'd want 6 of 9 admins participating for any measure to pass. 3 of 9 with at least 2 yea just ensures minimal oversight.) -Derik 13:40, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Hopefully, we won't need a "security council" anytime soon. ---Blackout- 13:44, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

We don't have a lot of big votes like this one. AFAIK, the move from Wiki and re-licencing have been it.

The admin-requirement really only exists to keep a bunch of editors from proposing something silly/crazy on a dead weekend and declaring it passed. (Not that the community would go along with it, but having a bare-minimum administrator rubberstamp requirement heads off potential mischief.) At least, this was the arbitrary requirement I came up with when we passed the relicensing vote, since I'm not an admin and I was the one proposing it, it seemed important as a means to establish the legitimacy of the vote. (We only got 3 admin voting for that... it was in the middle of convention season and half our people were gone.) -Derik 13:54, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Is this what we think we want to do? -Derik 13:54, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Those links link to wikia. Odd. - Starfield 14:00, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Yes, very odd. KILL THEM NOW. ---Blackout- 14:06, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

On an interwiki schema... why not just [[tfwiki:*]] and [[gbwiki;*]]? It has the advantage of simplicity. - Mammalian Verisimilitude 13:48, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Yeah, to me this seems the easiest to remember.--Rosicrucian ^Talk 13:55, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

*shrug* Forward-compatability? Site names are fine for everything we link to now, but a future sister-site could overlap existing article names. Frankly, my real motivation is that w:subject: names mean I could type "w:starwars:" instead of constantly misspelling "wookieepedia:" (I always forget the double-e.) -Derik 14:12, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

And yeah, I think "w:name:" is currently set to link to wikia. Hrm. "ss:subject:"? (Sister-site?) "p:subject:"? (partner.)

Wikipedia has a buttload of arbitrary prefixes for interwiki linking. A single consistent schema seems better. -Derik 14:12, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Actually, this would seem to be a good opportunity to kill all the wikia interwiki links (except for the link-exchange deal with Wookieepedia). If a wikia page must be linked to, let it be an external (nofollow) link.

And the proposed gbwiki would be a sister/subproject, not a true external wiki like [[Wikipedia:*]] (and note the lack of a secondary prefix there). - Mammalian Verisimilitude 15:04, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Regards an interwiki schema, why not just "h" for "Hasbro"? h:tf: and h:gb: And I second killing all of the wikia links except for Wookieepedia. --Jeysie 18:41, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

Not to be a bummer,I love the idea of a GoBot sister wiki, sounds like a lot of fun creating and reading, but an important point has been raised in the Allspark discussion of this: Can we afford it? Our Wiki apparently dosen't always quite pay for itself ad-wise and is basically kept afloat by Walky. Yes, a GoBot wiki would be smaller (and hopefully cheaper) but it also would likely be less popular a draw for adds. (GBs being much less mainstream than TFs now are). Again, it just seemed like a point that should be raised before we dive into the cool project... --ZacWilliam 14:28, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Well, I offered to make a donation in that thread. Walky said that this wiki costs around $160 a month to maintain, with around $130 being covered by the ads, with those numbers fluctuating every month, obviously. A GoBots wiki would be only a fraction of the size of thise wiki, even when 100% completed in every way imaginable. With ads factored in, about how much do you think we'd need a month to cover the remainder? I could throw in $10 to $20 every month or thereabouts, and if a handful of people sporadically felt the urge to donate equal or less, you think we'd be covered or at least took the brunt of the financial burden off of Walky's shoulders?

If we CAN do a GoBots wiki, it'd be nice if money wasn't what kept us from making it happen. But hey, I understand that that's the way the world goes 'round and all. Just sayin' that if a fraction of us skipped McDonald's once a month and gave that fiver to the wiki, we might be more or less financially secure. --DrSpengler 15:04, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Of course, we could just run the theoretical Gobots wiki on the same server, with the same ad boxes. Unless somehow we got a MASSIVE spike in traffic from Gobots fans that aren't Transformers fans (which I am somehow not seeing), it would probably work out to be exactly the same. (Not to discourage anyone from helping the wiki financially. You can do that also and it would help regardless. I'm just sayin'.) --Suki Brits 16:06, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

This is good news. This would be ideal, if possible.--Rosicrucian ^Talk 16:14, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

What about a donation drive? We could have a meter on the frontpage, and after the donations reach an amount that could keep the wiki afloat for a while, we could launch GBWiki. -- Semysane 16:17, 21 October 2009 (EDT)

Opposition

Do we have the time or "manpower" for this? This wiki still needs a lot of work. For example, The Unicron Trilogy articles (especially Armada Mini-Cons) and the Beast Wars/Machines are more or less still a mess, and not up to the standards of more recent articles or more frequently-updated articles. I think we should work on getting these pretty important eras of Transformers up to scratch before our more frequent contributors divert (some) of their attention and free time to GoBots. And yes, I have recently put work into updating Armada and Beast Wars articles where possible, since our other members are most ably handling everything else. And no, I'm not suggesting the wiki should be work, I just think we should get this into order before we start doing something else. Maybe it's my probable Aspergers talking. --FFN 07:50, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

You're assuming that people who would be working on this have any real knowledge or familiarity with UT materials. Someone may absolutely hate Armada/Energon/Cybertron and have no material to add there, but have much material to add to GoBots. Khajidha 08:17, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

From what I've seen, a good number of the people in this discussion or have discussed it elsewhere are those who have no problem with the UT or actually like it. But there's also Beast Wars - if everybody here likes BW, why are the articles so bad? :p I mean, if I was a newcomer to Transformers (or a returning fan because of the movies), I'd be pretty dissapointed if I came here looking for information about this "Beast Wars" other fans are always raving about. --FFN 08:25, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

At one point finishing all the BW or G1/RiD articles seemed like a pipe dream. Effort over time did it.

Frankly, I think the potential for such a split to draw in new editors outweighs the negatives of potentially splitting people's attention. -Derik 08:29, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

Yeah, maybe I'm worrying over nothing, and of course, I can't make people do things they don't feel like doing. Still, concerns are concerns. --FFN 08:37, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

Wasn't trying to say that any particular person hated UT or BW, just that the assumption that the editors who would be working on GB would be drawn away from other parts is not necessarily true. Some people may become more active on mainstream TF articles even while working on GB articles. Something different often energizes people, and that energy can carry over to other things.

Yeah, you can't force people to work on articles that don't interest them. If the spirit moves them to work on BW and UT they will. Adding a GoBot "section"/sister-wik wouldn't stop anything from happening (especially if it isn't happening to begin with). And it might just draw in new contributers or set someone off on a wiki-fying binge that gets a bunch of TF stuff done too. (ZacWilliam, logged out again, dumb laptop)--76.28.72.27 08:52, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

People will work on what interests them. People doing productive work in one area will naturally discover other areas to focus on. Broadening our scope thusly will most likely bring in new editors, or at least reinvigorate old ones. Frankly, the whole argument that we shouldn't allow our editors to work on what they want in the hopes that they work on what someone else wants them to do is pretty flawed. --Jimsorenson 12:18, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

Oh come on, this is like not letting a kid eat dessert until he's finished his broccoli. "You want GoBots? Well you can't have em until you finish your Unicron Trilogy!" "But I haaaaate the Unicrooon Trilogyyyyy!" "STOP WHINING!" --DrSpengler 12:34, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

Hell, the original The Transformers cartoon episodes still need a crapton of work (basically, if the Errors sections aren't several screens long, then we aren't doing our job!) Still, I don't see why any of that should stop us. Manpower may not be infinite, but it's not fixed, either; a wider net of subject area will likely attract a few more editors. And people who would work on UT stuff will probably do it anyway sooner or later, even if they do get distracted by GoBots for a while. -- Repowers 20:52, 22 October 2009 (EDT)

You'll ALL see once I complete these sections by myself and spend hundreds of dollars importing DVD sets* for shows that I don't like YOU'LL ALL SEE!

*This is a lie. --FFN 16:59, 24 October 2009 (EDT)

The Vote

Well, um, let's do this thing.

Jim Sorenson, votes aye.
I'm in support of this.--Rosicrucian ^Talk 12:27, 22 October 2009 (EDT)
Aye - Starfield
I support this. ---Blackout- 12:29, 22 October 2009 (EDT)
YES. I'm all for it. --DrSpengler 12:31, 22 October 2009 (EDT)
Go for yes, if there are no major problems. --TX55^TALK 12:51, 22 October 2009 (EDT)
Oh hell yes. A GoBot wiki sounds awesome, and how much time/manpower can that really take? There's a really tiny amount of GB stuff compared to TF, after all. -Mazenoise 12:53, 22 October 2009 (EDT)
Definatly a Yes, if we don't do it who will? --ZacWilliam 13:19, 22 October 2009 (EDT)
Aye. This place is volunteer-based, let people work on what they want. --Cattleprod
Why the hell not? Hooper_X 15:07, 22 October 2009 (EDT)
I say Go for GoBots. - Semysane 15:09, 22 October 2009 (EDT)
User:Derik votes to affirm the proposed extension. -Derik 15:18, 22 October 2009 (EDT)
Support. Khajidha 15:36, 22 October 2009 (EDT)
Sure, why the heck not? I doubt I'll have much hand in it, but it's a good thing to have, and it would definitely be unique! - Chris McFeely 15:42, 22 October 2009 (EDT)
Another yes here. --Apoc 16:10, 22 October 2009 (EDT)
Now that it seems to be its own entity, I am now in support of this addition. --Bluestreak7 16:35, 22 October 2009 (EDT)
Oui. --Xaaron 17:51, 22 October 2009 (EDT)
Yes. Best of all worlds for everyone, IMHO. (Although I personally won't end up contributing to it.) --Jeysie 18:42, 22 October 2009 (EDT)
Why the hell not. -- Dark T Zeratul 20:36, 22 October 2009 (EDT)
A GoBots wiki? Yeeeeeess. (have you ever noticed how people always try to transcribe BW Megatron's "Yes" with a lot of Ss? But it's not the 'S' that he stretches; it's the short 'E' sound. "Yesssssssssssssss" would be like a snake hissing. I suppose it's in reaction to the English rule that turns two consecutive Es into a long E sound. "Yees!" ) -- Repowers 20:58, 22 October 2009 (EDT)
- That's technically a long "i" sound. Sure to whatever we're voting for! —Interrobang 15:21, 23 October 2009 (EDT)
Fo' shizzle. --M Sipher 22:21, 22 October 2009 (EDT)
Aye me hearties! Thanos6 06:31, 23 October 2009 (EDT)
Yep (and M.A.S.K. has been subsumed into GI Joe somebody said? Since when?) Drmick 13:31, 23 October 2009 (EDT)
- Matt Trakker got a Joe toy this year and the bio card featured the revelation that VENOM was a sub-unit of COBRA and that MASK works for GI Joe. --DrSpengler 13:35, 23 October 2009 (EDT)
Heck yes. (Also, MASK sucked) --Detour 13:54, 23 October 2009 (EDT)
Yes. (If MASK is part of G.I. Joe, we'll just have to eventually make another sister wiki for G.I.Joe, and then that wiki can have its own sister wiki for MASK. It'll be Tfwiki's cousin wiki. lol.)--Ascendron 14:03, 23 October 2009 (EDT)
- G. I. Joe has a Wiki, it's just not well maintained.--MCRG Again 15:26, 23 October 2009 (EDT)
Well, if there's that many people who want to work on the thing, Yes for me.--MCRG Again 15:26, 23 October 2009 (EDT)

Results

OK, I'm calling this thing. With 27 votes for yes and 0 votes for no, including votes from four admins, there is clearly overwhelming (unanimous, in fact) support for this endeavor. Awesome. Technical-minded folks, what are the next steps from here?

(Just for fun, let's see ... 88K! If this discussion were an article, it'd be the 16th largest on the site, so it's actually longer than 99.8% of the content we've produced.)--Jimsorenson 16:43, 24 October 2009 (EDT)

Sweet. And, we really probably should archive this whole discussion as a "topic" thingy, I think... --Jeysie 19:23, 24 October 2009 (EDT)

Yeah: this discussion is giving insane length warnings. ---Blackout- 09:20, 25 October 2009 (EDT)

Seriously, what are the next steps we need to take? --Jimsorenson 13:30, 26 October 2009 (EDT)

I believe it waits on Scout and McFly having the time to set up the changes on our server. (Which, since I think that might involve Squid configuration might take awhile.)

If people want to get started I suppose I could set up a placeholder mediawiki install on my domain, and when GBWiki-proper was ready I'd just hand them a database backup. -Derik 13:57, 26 October 2009 (EDT)

Would you be willing? I think keeping the momentum going while enthusiasm is high is a good idea. --Jimsorenson 14:30, 26 October 2009 (EDT)

Sure. I'll set it up this evening. -Derik 14:54, 26 October 2009 (EDT)

Per request, a temporary home while TFwiki's hosts get their ducks in a line. gbwiki.covertutopia.com/ -Derik 20:48, 26 October 2009 (EDT)

So...um...we can get started, then? On the "early draft" stuff? I see no one's made any changes since you put that up, so I'm hesitent, that's all. Can I start on articles there now? --DrSpengler 13:38, 11 January 2010 (EST)

I get the feeling from the edit summaries that folks can get started, it's just that everyone's been too busy/waiting for someone else to do it first. --Jeysie 15:14, 11 January 2010 (EST)

Getting Under Way

Random thoughts: 1) Do we know for sure the "tech folk" (whoever they are) have seen this discussion, vote and result and are working on it, or planning to? I only ask cause I'm not sure who exactly "they" are and I don't remember seeing anyone saying anything like "we're on it". 2)Once things are definately underway, shound there not be an announcement or link on this side of the wiki somehere letting folks know about the new section/sister open for editting? And if yes, where would be good? --ZacWilliam 08:05, 28 October 2009 (EDT)

I think it's a good idea, once we finalize some of the real basic stuff over on GBWiki's end. As it stands, we don't even really have a skeleton over there - there's a "list of Go-Bots episodes" page and that's about it. I think we need to get at least a rudimentary framework hung up - both in the sense of A: at least some stub articles for major characters and stories and a general "franchise overview" page to direct people around the site and B: getting all our formatting templates put into motion (character appearance boxes, episode navigation, etc.) At this point, I wouldn't really want to announce it on the front page because there isn't anything there to look at. Hooper_X 09:35, 28 October 2009 (EDT)

Why does gb.tfwiki.net redirect to transformers wikia? --ItsWalky 12:32, 28 October 2009 (EDT)

I'm guessing it's an artifact of when tfwiki.net originally pointed to Wikia. Any subdomain you type in other than www goes to Wikia right now, apparently.--Rosicrucian ^Talk 12:35, 28 October 2009 (EDT)

It's fixed! --67.149.197.71 12:56, 28 October 2009 (EDT)

Realize that I'm asking this out of a profound ignorance as to how the wiki "mechanically" works, but I assume that it just redirects to us now right, still not to edit-able GoBot-pages-to-be?--ZacWilliam 13:04, 28 October 2009 (EDT)

Hmm, now all subdomains lead to tfwiki.net, but they're returning valid pages rather than redirecting to the "real" URL. If people link to "blah.tfwiki.net" then the search engines will start indexing the whole site a second time under that domain. The other subdomains should redirect as www.tfwiki.net does. --abates 00:26, 14 November 2009 (EST)

[1] [2] See? --abates 15:30, 11 January 2010 (EST)

2010

Executive Summary

There is no GoBots sister wiki.

What happened?

http://gbwiki.covertutopia.com/wiki/Main_Page

"GoBots Wiki has a problem

Sorry! This site is experiencing technical difficulties.

Try waiting a few minutes and reloading.

(Can't contact the database server: Access denied for user 'emopanda'@'localhost' (using password: YES) (localhost))"

I was slagging ecstatic to see that there was going to be a Go-Bots wiki, because I knew next to nothing about 'em and wanted to learn about them. This is just disheartening. Antimatter 19:21, 27 September 2010 (EDT)

It's Derik's server, so check with him, though ISTR there hadn't been much info added to the GoBots wiki when it was up. The original intention was to run it on the same server as TFwiki - don't know what happened (or didn't happen) there. --abates 20:17, 27 September 2010 (EDT)

My impression was that Derik's was only set up as a stop gap till the wiki got the one everyone voted for up. That never happened. I got the impression that though the community voted a big yes for it, the powers that be weren't that into it so the vote ammounted to nothing. Which is a shame cause I was really excited to see it happen. :P --76.28.76.206 20:48, 27 September 2010 (EDT)

The powers that be are busy getting married next month. --ItsWalky 20:53, 27 September 2010 (EDT)

It was voted "yes" a year ago. I mean no offence meant, but that's a long time to get a ball rolling. With no appreciable news or announcements in that year I think assuming the big "yes" vote amounted to nothing is kinda understandable. --76.28.76.206 21:01, 27 September 2010 (EDT)

General lack of interest. I suspect the number of people who can recite chapter-and-verse of every single Gobots episode, the way we here do for TFs, is very small. Of that small group, fewer still knew this project existed. "It might be cool" works for a half-hour download, not for creating an entire website devoted to about 70 hours of programming and 200 toys when you aren't already really into it. --Thylacine 2000 21:40, 27 September 2010 (EDT)

Yeah, I was interested at the time because I thought doing an episode guide might be fun. But Counter-X came out with one recently and has about the most thorough collection of info on GoBots toys, merchandise and media; basically everything that would be up on a GoBots wiki, anyway. So I sorta lost my enthusiasm. --DrSpengler 22:47, 27 September 2010 (EDT)

For me, and I have to imagine some others given the widespread enthusiasm in the vote above, it has nothing to do with loss of enthusaism or lack of interest at all, but everything to do with no place to start. The vote was for a "seperate but linked" wiki meaning not just writing up gobot stuff and posting it here but waiting for the apropriate seperate framework to be given. If the OK was given to add Gobots just to our current wiki I'd start constructing GoBot articles and Character pages right away. Without it there's nothing for a potential poster to do but wait on the ptb to start things rolling. I am definately still enthusiastic about the idea and would definately still contibute if it ever comes to pass. (As a side note, the whole GoBotron is Primus thing from the Allspark Almanac 2 makes me want to add this stuff more than ever.) --ZacWilliam 03:10, 28 September 2010 (EDT)

I admit that I don't know all that much about GoBots, but by god I would learn as much as I could just so I could help contribute to a GoBots wiki. Without a wiki like this there really isn't any one place to find out everything about GoBots, without having to shell out for a book that probably doesn't have a very wide distribution. -- Semysane 03:16, 28 September 2010 (EDT)

The Counter-X GoBots page that Spengler mentioned is quite detailed. I spent some time a while ago reading though some of the pages, and it kinda made me wish the show was out on DVD. I don't think it ever screened here. --abates 03:28, 28 September 2010 (EDT)

As good as Counter-X is, it doesn't have the integration of information that we have here. For example, toy and cartoon data are on separate pages. Also, having multiple contributors means that things each individual is missing can still be covered if other individuals have access to them. Just because there is a decent Go-Bots site doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to make our own, it just means that we should try to make ours even better.--Khajidha 09:39, 28 September 2010 (EDT)

2011

Executive Summary

Newbie brings up the idea again.

Cartoon?

This conversation originally took place on the Cy-Kill (GoBots) page.

Why didn't we add info on Cy-Kill's appearances in the cartoon?71.255.164.136 01:52, 8 October 2011 (EDT)

We have already added info on all of Cy-Kill's appearances in the Transformers cartoon. --ItsWalky 02:00, 8 October 2011 (EDT)

Where? I only see his appearance in the timelines comic, not the gobots or transformers cartoon.

I refer you to what I just said. This is a Transformers wiki, not a Gobots wiki. We do not catalog Gobots fiction, only Transformers fiction. If Cy-Kill shows up in Transformers stuff, we catalog that. And we have. --ItsWalky 15:23, 8 October 2011 (EDT)

But Gobots and Transformers were both created by Hasbro, and Gobots are related to Transformers somehow. If you watched the documentuary Triple Changer, then you'd see that Gobots inspired Transformers. So basically, more info belongs here.71.255.164.136 15:47, 8 October 2011 (EDT)

Read GoBots#Pre-GoBots and get back to me. --ItsWalky 16:23, 8 October 2011 (EDT)

They are CURRENTLY in the same company.71.255.164.136 16:28, 8 October 2011 (EDT)

No they aren't. Hasbro doesn't own all of Go-Bots. They merely bought Tonka. That doesn't mean they own all of the intellectual property involved. Rival toy company Bandai still owns the toys and Hanna-Barbara still owns the cartoon. At best, Hasbro owns some names. --ItsWalky 16:45, 8 October 2011 (EDT)

Not to agree with this guy per say, but I just want to remind folks: 1) We did hold a vote of users, who at the time overwhelmingly approved that they wanted to do a separate-but-linked Go-Bots wiki as a sister thing under the TFwiki.net banner. And 2) Since that vote the Allspark Almanac officially established that the much interlinked franchise is a part of the TF Multiverse (if there was any doubt) and MORE that GoBotron is their universes body of Primus and the Go-Bots are their universes TFs. Soooo... Why keep them out? It's not like they'd even add THAT much. They've had nothing to talk about that's not here already in 20 years, and were fairly small then. I really can't think of a valid reason to ignore the retcon that they are and have always been TFs. I kinda feel they belong here. They didn't always, but now? Yes.--99.103.104.77 17:04, 8 October 2011 (EDT)

The AllSpark Almanac may claim that GoBots are fictionally linked to TFs, but that only makes that statement canonical, it doesn't make a cartoon that is not licensed fiction and does not belong to Hasbro canonical and Wiki-worthy. As for the GoBots Wiki... it was attempted, but nothing really came of it. --Detour 17:17, 8 October 2011 (EDT)

G.I. Joe and Jem are also in the Transformers multiverse. Probably also Spider-Man and Avengers. The AllSpark Almanac connects like a dozen series to the Transformers multiverse. WE ARE NOT ADDING ALL OF THOSE SERIES TO THE TRANSFORMERS WIKI. --ItsWalky 17:19, 8 October 2011 (EDT)

It linked a lot of series Hasbro has ZERO rights to as well. So um... yeah. --71.70.225.1 19:18, 8 October 2011 (EDT)

I remember being told that the GoBots wiki still had some technical details to work out before it was really ready to go live and then never heard anything more. Was it ever actually open for general editing? --Khajidha 18:22, 8 October 2011 (EDT)

Derik had one set up on his own site (before it died) as a temporary measure while one got sorted out here. A GoBots wiki doesn't absolutely have to be hosted in the same place as TFWiki. If there's sufficient interest, one could be set up elsewhere. --abates 19:05, 8 October 2011 (EDT)

Well, 1) the retcon did more than place GoBots in the TF multiverse. It said they ARE Transformers and Primus IS Gobotron. That's different in my opinion than a crossover with Spidey or JEM. It's an apotheosis., which makes them and all about them valid material for us retroactively imo. But hey, I'm not gonna argue with the powers that be if they disagree. 2) Yeah, the GoBot sister wiki wasn't really tried as far as I've heard. It was voted for. Approved. And there was then never any movement to make it as far as I ever saw here. Derik was cool enough to make a placeholder site, but nothing ever moved here. Not a criticism, just saying If it had started I would have, and totally still would, contribute. --76.28.76.206 19:37, 8 October 2011 (EDT)

If AllSpark Almanac claimed Pandora was another body of Primus, that wouldn't mean we'd start putting Avatar stuff in the wiki. The claim is canonical, but the fiction isn't. Simple as that. --Detour 19:42, 8 October 2011 (EDT)

I completely disagree. But I also don't care enough to argue the point. So... Meh, I guess. I'd rather the discussion moved to the voted for sister wiki. Cool idea I would have loved to have happened. --76.28.76.206 19:53, 8 October 2011 (EDT)

http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Transformers_Wiki_talk:Community_Portal/Archive49#Gobots_on_the_wiki..._again --Thylacine 2000 23:28, 9 October 2011 (EDT)

2012

Executive Summary

More of the same.

Integration

Okay since this discussion shut down and the wiki seems to be dead I thought I'd bring this up. Via the Club Fiction and the stuff seen in the Almanac, can we do an integration of the GoBots and Go-Bots based on them canonically having Universal Streams and being Transforming Robots? (I suppose this would also cover Robotix)

No. There are almost no GoBots characters, no GoBots fiction before about 2006, and no Robotix characters or fiction whatsoever, to have ever been published under the appropriate brands required for inclusion here. The very small amount of material appropriate for inclusion is here already. The TFs canonically exist within some version of the Marvel universe, and yet we don't include every single other Marvel character on this wiki. --Thylacine 2000 23:45, 12 January 2012 (EST)

Ah, but that's my point, if the GoBots and Bo-Bots have been retroactively canonized as altverse Transformers, does that not make them under the proper brand? (Unlike , let's say Captain America, who's never been revealed to be a Transfomers within the Marvel Comics Continuity) This isn't like the Sunbowverse, where non-TF elements are ignored unless pertinent to TF, this is a whole new kit n caboodle which has been declared to be TF under a different name. Just my five cents, since it seems this discussion just sorta petered out.

Discussion has petered out because we've explained a bojillion times why it's not going to happen. --ItsWalky 10:28, 13 January 2012 (EST)

I ask again about the sister GoBots wiki seperate but connected to ours that people voted an overewhelming yes for doing way back when but then no one ever it set up. People seemed very interested in doing that when it was voted for during the first time this came up. People were still interested in working on it last time this came up. Just saying'.--76.28.76.206 10:45, 13 January 2012 (EST)

It is impossible to retroactively brand something. Hell, there are parts of Darth Vader that actually have been declared and marketed as a TF of some kind, but his prior 30 years of personification beyond those very limited branded appearances do not count and do not appear. It is exactly the same with name-dropping Robotix and then pretending it counted.

At this point I am comfortable determining that nobody gives a shit about GoBots beyond the context of their minimal TF crossovers. It's been like 2 years since the vote and nothing has been done, and no one seems to be trying it anywhere else on the entire Internet either. The Almanac cannot create licenses retroactively, it can just say things and we can go on rightfully ignoring them. It's 2012 and wiki software is easily available - if anyone cared it would have been done. Sorry if I come off too strong, it's just that the non-licensed-hood of every pre-2006 scrap of GoBots fiction and characterization is incredibly open and shut and I really don't see why people keep coming here to try to wish that away. --Thy, not logged in

Thy, the vote was to start it on our serves as a linked but equal thing and then our folks would fill it once it existed. Every time this comes up as it has multiple times. Folks say that they'd loved to edit and add to it as a companion to ours if it existed. But no one has set it up for them to do it. Basically the interest is there in the community whomedit the wiki but not in the folks who administer the wiki, yes? That seems to be what I see.--76.28.76.206 12:03, 13 January 2012 (EST)

Gotta agree with the anon here. When the GoBots wiki was to be set up I was told that there were some problems to be worked out with the underlying programming and we would be told when it was ready. The next thing I knew, it was no longer accessible at all. --Khajidha 13:04, 13 January 2012 (EST)

June, 2015

Executive Summary

Things heat up, as Ask Vector Prime starts to generously include information regarding GoBots

GoBots articles

Is there some reason why we're not having full coverage of the GoBots characters' exploits in GoBots fiction? It seems kind of silly to acknowledge their existence in Transformers media and then... not really provide relevant information. It's not really like there's any cohesive GoBots site with all information in one spot, you know? Saix (talk) 03:43, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

There is such a site, and its existence has been cited in the past here as one of multiple valid reasons why adding GoBots to this wiki has never gotten off the ground. http://counter-x.net/gobots/ --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 08:34, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

As good as that site is, it doesn't go into nearly as much detail about its topic as we do about ours. Also, it is maintained by a much more limited set of editors (maybe even just one?). Our larger editor base could bring more eyes and viewpoints to the material. --Khajidha (talk) 09:07, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

It's been discussed in the past with some trepidation, and the idea of a "sister wiki" for GoBots content was floated, but nobody really seemed into the idea and we haven't talked about it since. At this point, though, with more and more GoBots stuff working its way into TF fiction, along with the complete release of the GoBots cartoon on DVD, perhaps it's time to talk about giving the GoBots show and characters their full and proper due on TFWiki again. - Chris McFeely (talk) 05:29, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

I don't actually know all that much about the GoBots *coughthatswhyweneedinformativearticlescough*, but I'd be more than willing to help with article maintenance and setup if we ever decide to go ahead with it. Saix (talk) 05:46, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

As I've said before, when the GoBots wiki was proposed I was told that there were technical issues to be taken care of before it could be opened for editing and that the community would be told when it was ready. The next I heard about it was that it was being shut down as not having attracted interested editors. I am still fully supportive of either option, a sister wiki or integration. --Khajidha (talk) 07:12, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

A sister wiki seems like an weird excuse to overcomplicate things. Is there really any reason to not have all the information in one spot? Saix (talk) 07:26, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

At the risk of overcomplicating things further, since we'd be including Go-Bots because the characters were retroactively made into alternate universe Cybertronians/Transformers, would we also provide complete coverage of Robotix since it was retroactively altered the same way? --DrSpengler (talk) 07:59, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

I'd say no, because we wouldn't be covering GoBots specifically because they were retconned to be alt-universe TFs, we'd be covering them because involvement of their universe and characters has become a recurring thing, and the two franchise have always been paired in some capacity or another. Maybe when Robotix actually does something that matters and isn't just a winky in-joke; otherwise covering them would amount to covering something like Jem or Inhumanoids in full. - Chris McFeely (talk) 08:04, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Oh god please no to Robotix.--Jimsorenson (talk) 09:00, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

For the sake of argument: TFWiki don't have complete coverage of G.I. Joe, despite it's many interactions with Transformers. TFWiki has relevant articles, but not complete coverage. Why do so for GoBots? --Crockalley (talk) 08:10, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Can you REALLY not see a difference between G.I.Joe, Jem, Inhumanoids, etc and GoBots and Robotix? Really? GoBots and Robotix have both been said to be counterparts of the Transformers. Joe, Jem, and the Inhumanoids haven't. Covering GoBots and Robotix fiction IS covering TF fiction, covering Joe, Jem, and Inhumanoids fiction is not. --Khajidha (talk) 08:15, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

For the love of God, NO. We already feature all the GoBots characters and stories that were published under the TF brand label, just like the relevant Avengers and G.I.Joes. We don't pull in all of the everythings that all of their colleagues ever did in unrelated, non-Transformers stories. It will never belong here. Adding 80 characters and 100 hours of programming? No. As someone said in one of the prior iterations of this, if Vector Prime said that Pandora was a transdimensional embodiment of Cybertron and Eywa was its Vector Sigma portal, we wouldn't fill this wiki with every character and animal from Avatar. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 08:26, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Avatar isn't a property owned by Hasbro nor something that's been constantly involved in the Transformers multiverse, so I'm not seeing the comparison. It also has its own dedicated fanbase and resources, which isn't really something you can say for GoBots; its presence in real life almost wholly overlaps Transformers. (It'd be around 26 hours, to be accurate.) Saix (talk) 08:46, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

And, ultimately, why does it matter that much if we make one exception for this? It's not going to result in a full-blown biography of Spider-Man from Earth-616 (which exists elsewhere in plenty of places) or full coverage on G.I. Joe (which has its own fanbase that can make a resource if they want to). We're talking about a small subset of articles that you aren't required to work on. Saix (talk) 08:54, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Why wouldn't it result in a full bio of Spiderman? The distinction between the two offtopic properties is arbitrary and insignificant. If you want to talk about ownership, Hasbro owns Visionaries and we know they canonically exist in the Animated galaxy. Shall we bring in articles on Leoric and Heskidorr and the Pig Imp? If you break down the rule of "TF branded material only," then the only thing keeping all the Inhumanoids out is personal preference and "oh, come on!"-ing. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 09:20, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Logic. Any potential revival of Visionaries is not going to be done under the Transformers brand. Spider-Man does not exist under the Transformers brand, G.I. Joe does not exist under the Transformers brand. GoBots now, for all intents and purposes, does. A full revival being hilariously unlikely, anything Hasbro does with the IP in the future - as well as everything it is currently actually allowing licensees to regularly do with the IP in a capacity beyond "referential nudge-nudge wink wink jokes" - is under the Transformers brand. - Chris McFeely (talk) 09:31, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

On the contrary - the only published Visionaries story material in 29 years was under the TF brand. It is far more likely that like Inhumanoids, the Visionaries will continue only as a hanger-on of Tramsformers fiction Easter eggs forever. And all of the GoBots material that was published under the TF brand, and is in any way related to real TF characters and stories, is already here. Which is all that belongs here. Hasbro owned Battle Beasts from the start and we currently include all the actual TF branded appearances of Battle Beasts / Beastformers. But we give only the most sparse coverage to the American comic book and American Battle Beast characters because it wasn't a real, branded, linked TF story the way the Japanese material was. We have to stick with standards and not just what people might personally find fun. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 10:40, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

That's why I stipulated a capacity beyond referential in-jokes for fans, which is all the Inhumanoids or Visionaries references amount to. I think where the disagreement lies is in whether or not we think of GoBots as another franchise that is being "referenced" or having "crossovers" with Tranformers - that's what Visionaries is, but my stance is that it is no longer the case with GoBots, but that GoBots is now part of the Transformers franchise and warrants broader treatment than Spider-Man-style articles where we pretend we don't know who Leader-1 is. - Chris McFeely (talk) 10:52, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Also, slippery slope arguments are silly, unless the people involved are idiots with no judgement capacity, computers, or state legislatures. You're concerned about things that no one is advocating or interested in. Regardless, I think everyone gets that you're against the idea.--Jimsorenson (talk) 11:00, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

That's not a slippery slope argument. That's pointing out that putting in Go-Bots would be inconsistent with how we treat other non-Transformers franchises. And, frankly, I think Jim Sorenson should probably recuse himself from this discussion since he's the guy trying to use official means to marry TF and Go-Bots with rubber bands, Elmer's glue, and footnotes. It feels a little disingenuous. --ItsWalky (talk) 12:23, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Fair point. I'll bow out. (Though I'm far from the first or only person to play in this sandbox. In fact, expect more from others in the very near future.)--Jimsorenson (talk) 12:55, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

IF we decided to do this, I think we'd want strict guidelines from the start about what is and is not in scope. Since the toys were mostly licensed from Bandai, a Hasbro competitor, I would say they should NOT be included. Also, ancillary media has been pretty much ignored by TF fiction.

My gut says that The Challenge of the GoBots cartoon (65 episodes, 1 movie) is about the extent of what we'd want to include. No coloring books, no Machine Robo, none of that. It's the easiest bit to do, the most influential, and the bit that Hasbro mostly has claim to.--Jimsorenson (talk) 09:16, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Hasbro has a claim to the cartoon? Then how come Time Warner sells it, no probs, without any Hasbro logos anywhere? --ItsWalky (talk) 12:08, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

The text on the back of the original mini-series DVD refers to "Hasbro's GoBots". - Chris McFeely (talk) 12:20, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

And the newer ones? --ItsWalky (talk) 12:24, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

They don't mention it, no, but I'm just pointing out that Warner's put it on there. Hasbro don't own the cartoon, we know that. I think we can all at least agree GoBots is a weird case, where Hasbro own the "idea" of the property and the characters and story and such but none of the actual physical assets. It's my contention that those "ideas" are now a part of the Transformers brand, and not guest-stars from another franchise. - Chris McFeely (talk) 12:27, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

As far as I can discern, they own the name, what other trademarks they've maintained, and that's about it. They don't own the character likenesses and they certainly don't own the toys, and it's confirmed they don't own the cartoon, either. We're not going to catalog a non-Transformers cartoon Hasbro doesn't own on this wiki, no matter what Vector Prime says. If you want to cover the "idea" of what they own, that can be accomplished by adding to the already-existing "Gobots" article. Hasbro owning part of a sliver of an idea of GoBots doesn't mean we need a "Scratch" or "Sparky" article. --ItsWalky (talk) 12:35, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Agreed. - Chris McFeely (talk) 09:31, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

I'd still like to see all the other stuff done up, but am willing to leave that for another day if it helps get this moving along. --Khajidha (talk) 09:43, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Same. Saix (talk) 09:50, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

This has been asked about 6 times in the recent past, including after the Gobotron incorporation, and it loses every single time. I think it's insppropriate to seriously discuss going ahead with it after about 2 hours of talk. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 10:01, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

I'm not sure what you're defining as the "recent past", but the last time I can find was in 2010. We're obviously going to wait for more input before we start pumping out articles. Saix (talk) 10:17, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Here's 2011: http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Talk:Cy-Kill_(GoBots)

Here's 2012: http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Transformers_Wiki_talk:Community_Portal/GoBots --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 10:51, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

I am with Thy. This has been argued to death a billion times over, and nothing has changed. We're not about to start cataloguing stuff that isn't Transformers media on our Transformers wiki. That's the opposite of what this wiki is about, and no amount of Vector Prime answers will make some Hanna-Barbara series into a Transformers one. Folks who want to catalog Go-Bots should make their own wiki, and if they can't drum up the interest to do so, and have to piggy-back on ours in order to get it done, maybe that should tell ya something. --ItsWalky (talk) 12:13, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Full agreement with Thy and Walky. And I'd like to point out that I'm one of the bastards who created the lion's share of TF-branded GoBots material. --M Sipher (talk) 15:02, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

If we can't document that time Cy-Kill dressed up as George Washington, what's the point of cataloging any of it at all? --Monzo (talk) 10:27, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

Well, you just made my day.--Jimsorenson (talk) 10:44, 4 June 2015 (EDT)

October 2015

Executive Summary

A full-on GoBots Facebook pages prompts multiple proposals, resulting in several votes, ultimately opting to... make no changes to existing policy

GoBots 2015

Hey guess what - people are using AVP to try to settle this internet score too. What a shock, I know, right? Multiple wiki editors said the scores of new one-sentence-one-source GoBot articles should all be made into a single list, read commentary here: http://www.allspark.com/forums/topic/101932-tfwikinet-thread-30/page-96

Before very many more one-sentence-one-source articles get installed, I think we should at least have some discussion here. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 13:38, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

I say make an exception and do a full coverage on Gobots.--Primestar3 (talk) 13:48, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Completely sold on combo pages by Tindalos: we already do include Related Characters on pages like Susan Hoffman, Collins (Movie). We could easily do a Guardians#Minor Guardians and Renegades#Minor Renegades for people who haven't got enough to them. (Like, Cop-Tur and Zero gets a lot said about them but Fly Trap does not) Groups like Puzzler could be all stuffed under the Puzzler page. (The Axiom Nexus Renegades, I'd cheat and say keep them on their own pages since these are meant to be Transformers in-universe.) --Charles RB (talk) 18:49, 18 October 2015 (GMT)

Most of the Gobots described by RR are getting more than one note name mentions. History, alt-modes, personality, the works. I wouldn't just conglomerate them all together. Escargon (talk) 13:59, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

However, I wouldn't be opposed to consolidating articles like Puzzler, since he's practically a drone, and the Dread Launchers and Secret Riders, since all of them share history. Escargon (talk) 14:07, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

I think making a list page is better than having numerous pages with short texts.--Primestar3 (talk) 14:15, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

If we don't do them all, combining Puzzler, Launchers,and Riders is a good idea anyway.Charles RB (talk) 19:18, 18 October 2015 (GMT)

Proof-of-concept page for if we want to list 'em up: put it under fiction (so that's easier to find), put the main Gobotron and the in-universe TFs up top, and stick the details of the minors under that. tfwiki.net/mediawiki/index.php?title=Renegade&oldid=1016174 Charles RB (talk) 19:20, 18 October 2015 (GMT)

I've been doing most of the Renegade write-ups and most of them seem to be more than just name drops. Generally we get a name, a personality, an alt mode, and often an adventure. That's easily enough for an article. For the exceptions, like Puzzler, a single overarching page isn't a bad idea, but maybe not a necessary idea. The information on the Guardians is much more sparse, and having big lists for most of them could probably work. I haven't been writing them up due to how little there is on most of them.

I am not sure where the idea comes from that having eighty small articles is a bad thing, though. The Wiki has always erred on the side of inclusiveness, which leads to pages like Spike's booty call and Moe (RID) and DeForest High, things which are also one or two line articles about people and concepts that only appear in one source. I'm not sure why this is any different. If anything, there's way more interest in the GoBot material, as evidenced by how many people are asking questions about the Renegades and how many likes and shares those pages are getting.

I'm also seeing, both in this thread and in the thread linked to, lots of interest in wikiing up the entire "Challenge of the Gobots" cartoon. McFeely, Khajidha, Saix, Sorenson, originally, and now Primestar and Gearshift all seem to be in favor. On the other side, Walky, M Sipher, Thylacine. It seems odd to me that, with the momentum apparently leaning 2:1 towards documenting all of "Challenge of the Gobots", we're talking about curtailing the bits and bobs that are definitely for sure Transformers canon. --Giggidy (talk) 15:49, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Logistical question: Do enough people have the GoBots DVD (or, cough, other sources) to write them up? (We are still lagging in fleshed out UT character pages, after all, and I think more people own those shows). -- Charles RB (talk) 19:20, 18 October 2015 (GMT)

Well, episodes are on the internet.--Primestar3 (talk) 16:01, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Episodes aren't licensed by Hasbro, so we cannot write them up and place them here. Ever.

Giggidy: this is different from the silly jokes you refer to because at least those jokes are contained within licensed Transformers material. The GoBots AS PEOPLE REMEMBER THEM - the cartoons, characters, and toys - were never released under a Hasbro license, except for a tiny minority of exceptions in text stories. Even IF we settled for allowing independent articles for everything AVP said, it could never, ever contain any material more than that, because Hasbro didn't publish it and doesn't own it.

All in all I am extremely disappointed by the... I guess, poor sportsmanship, pettiness, and entitlement... of the pro-inclusion side. This has been rehashed and reargued and relitigated year after year after year after year with very clear reasons why they do not belong, and for some reason people think none of that matters because GoBots were just cool! Well, Samhain and the Bogey Man from the DIC Ghostbusters cartoon were just cool and we've got the Ghostbusters in here as an in-joke, but we don't freaking add in Samhain the demon from a DIC cartoon through overeager bootstrapping. We also don't add in the very awesome and well-loved Dark Phoenix by extrapolation just because the Allspark Almanac mentioned an M'kraan Crystal.

The MOST that could EVER be included about any of these GoBots is the stuff AVP writes, because at least that IS put out by Hasbro. I and quite a few others think that even that much material isn't much at all and since it's coming in a rapidfire slew for a lot of characters I think a list format collection is worth discussing. If a lot of people really really really disagree, then I could rationally grasp the argument that through the loophole that has been cheated into existence they have grounds on which to disagree and the articles containing the AVP material could hypothetically each stand on their own. But that's ALL that can go there. Only AVP. No cartoon, nothing else. And even that should not be taken for granted by the pro-inclusion side. They really have to sell their case, because from here it's STILL way too heavily predicated upon "oh-come-ON!"-ism. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 16:18, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

This isn't about winning arguments from years ago-most of us weren't even signed up when the AAII came out and everybody got into a whole mess over that. Many of us honestly think that documenting the series is something that we should do and within the jurisdiction. You can disagree with putting it up on the wiki, but don't just throw about terms like "pettiness" and "entitlement" cause you don't like the opposing sides argument or the fiction causing it in the first place. Escargon (talk) 16:46, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

I would suggest Hasbro's ownership or non-ownership is irrelevant. We document many things not owned by Hasbro but merely associated with them, including the entire Japanese franchise (owned by TakaraTomy) and the entire film franchise (owned and copyrighted by Paramount, with only the Transformers elements used under license from Hasbro). --Giggidy (talk) 16:50, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Ownership by TakTom is just as legitimate as ownership by Hasbro, and licensing is just as legitimate as ownership. Things that are neither owned nor licensed by a company that actually produces real Transformers, such as a Hanna-Barbera cartoon, are not legitimate for inclusion. Otherwise we'll be throwing in fanfic and third-party toys and Family Guy episodes with TF "appearances." --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 17:04, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

There is a possible justification for their inclusion that would still bar those other things. We could decide that having had the GoBots declared to actually be TFs in a multiversal sense means that any material that was officially produced about them is now open for inclusion (the fact that it was officially produced under the auspices of Tonka would be a mere detail). This would not open the floodgates for fanfic, 3rd party materials or Family Guy. --Khajidha (talk) 17:47, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

That concept has been decided-against, here, many times. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 18:19, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Saying that we've voted against something in the past is not a strong argument for why we should vote against it now. Things change, the population of editors change, our understanding of the material changes. Gay marriage was illegal, now it's legal. I'm not saying you're stomping on my civil liberties, but you really need a more compelling argument than "we've said no before." Besides, you're the one who jumpstarted this conversation.

My point with Paramount was that there are elements that we document fully that aren't owned by Hasbro. They're owned by another corporation, and are used adjacent to Hasbro material. Hasbro doesn't own, say, Seymour Simmons. Paramount does. But we document him because he's a Transformers character. Likewise, Hasbro doesn't own some elements of Challenge of the Gobots, Hanna-Barbara does. But Kenner did license certain elements to Hanna-Barbara to make the GoBots cartoon, and Kenner is now Hasbro. Effectively it's the same situation legally. We do the same thing with other crossovers, like DreamMix TV World Fighters or the Avengers book.

And even if it wasn't, our decisions about what's in scope and what isn't is just that, our decision. It's reached by consensus, after reasoned debate. If the consensus is that Gobots is close enough, passes the squint test, we certainly could choose to include it. You're acting as if your statments are akin to "it's obvious that water is wet", a fact, when in fact they're closer to "marriage has always been defined as being between a man and a woman," a social convention. --Giggidy (talk) 18:35, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

I just saw this in the morass of text, and fuck you for equating "not including GoBots cartoon" with "ban gay marriage". REALLY tempted to drop a ban on you right now for that little act of vileness. Holy fucking shit. --M Sipher (talk) 18:53, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

I am not purporting to cite stone tablets from a thousand years ago - I am referring back to the conversation FOUR MONTHS AGO directly above this one. Your reference to DreamMix proves my point perfectly: we include things that had an official Transformers creator stamp at time of publication, like Simon Belmondo, and NOT ancillary same-universe stuff that DID NOT, like Sypha Belnades. Ditto for Avenger characters that never had the stamp like the Brothers Grimm or whatever. We don't get to enjoy our way past the clear concept of who really owned and licensed what and when. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 18:55, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

So we've got the two positions:

a) GoBots the cartoon is not Hasbro licensed or involved in any way; we should only properly cover GB stuff in Hasbro-approved stuff like Fun Publications, AVP, comic homages etc

b) Approved stuff has now made so many GoBots nods and explicit references to the show (all the way back to 2007 and almost 2004) that this is no longer a big jump but a natural thing to do.

without much budging. We could put it up to an editor vote? --Charles RB (talk) 18:49, 18 October 2015 (GMT)

It might be a bit off topic, but are you sure about Simmons? Hasbro put out a Human Alliance toy with Agent Simmons. I don't have the box and didn't read all the fine print, but the front of the box has "Agent Simmons™" next to a Hasbro logo. One movieverse character that might be wholly affiliated with paramount and not Hasbro might be Bendy-Bus Prime. - Gimmick (talk) 19:00, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

We include stuff that includes Transformers even without an official Transformers stamp, like Unfoldings!. And the conversation four months ago looks like it was 4 in favor, 3 against, so it's not really a great argument for you. --Giggidy (talk) 19:10, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

How in the world can you imagine an issue of the GIJoe comic starring Transformers to NOT BE official licensed product? --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 19:24, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

I didn't say that it wasn't licensed. I said it didn't have a Transformers stamp. --Giggidy (talk) 19:39, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Also by my count of the last conversation it was 2 in favor, 4 against, 1 seemingly not strongly decided, and 1 recusal due to professional conflict of interest. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 19:50, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

My count: McFeely, Khajidha, Saix, Sorenson, for, Walky, M Sipher, Thylacine against. Sorenson's position was clear. And M Sipher also worked professional on GoBots, so if we're discounting Sorenson, we should probably discount Sipher as well. --Giggidy (talk) 20:22, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Unfoldings is Hasbro-stamped though, and we don't describe much of the Joe plot.

Either way, if it was that close a call last time, should we just aye or nay it?--Charles RB (talk) 00:14, 19 October 2015 (GMT)

It's been like four hours. This is a big decision and should have at least 2-3 days debate. Honestly, I haven't even decided how I feel, I just think Thy's arguments are pretty weak. That doesn't mean there aren't some strong ones. Let's not go calling for votes just yet. --Giggidy (talk) 19:18, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Help:Official info: the first sentence under "What constitutes official information?" seems relevant here. There is no way anything included in the movies is anything less than relevant to this wiki. --abates (talk) 19:26, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

"Simply put, anything coming either directly or indirectly from Hasbro and/or TakaraTomy, or from other official parties such as (currently) IDW Publishing, Paramount Pictures, Fun Publications or other companies officially involved with the Transformers brand."

Right. And since Kenner is wholly owned by Hasbro, then despite being owned by Hanna-Barbara, GoBots was (retroactively) coming directly from Hasbro as much as the movies are. Then the only question becomes is GoBots a Transformers subline. Hasbro and FunPub seem to feel that it is, and have been using the name and concepts for decades.--Giggidy (talk) 19:39, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

The key - and wrong - word being "retroactively." Takara's Diaclones became Transformers, and there are occasional Diaclone references we catalog. But we do not catalog 1970s-80s pre-Transformer content as anything beyond curiosities and footnotes; they don't get their box-back name-dropped characters and events covered here; in fact the "Cymond" content we have is new, not vintage. The same goes for Macross and Beetras and Brave as well. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 19:57, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Also, I feel that I should point out that some members of the Wiki are at TFCon at the moment and unable to take part in this discussion. --abates (talk) 20:05, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Another excellent reason not to rush into any hasty votes.--Giggidy (talk) 20:16, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Well I'm back and guess what? Fuck individual articles. Stuff them all into a single "Renegade" article. The idea of a ton of two-sentence articles from a singular source that is blatantly doing this to ramrod shit we have repeatedly and recently said "no" to remains goddamn stupid and counter-productive. There's better arguments for documenting everything G.I. Joe than GoBots, and we're not fucking doing that. MAKE A SEPARATE GOBOTS WIKI. --M Sipher (talk) 20:29, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Except since the whole thing's started, it's moved on from name drops to actually expanding the histories of the characters, which is why many are turning back to the idea of individual Gobot articles. There's plenty of G.I. Joes and Cobra members who do nothing of note in the series they appear in with the TFs, but the only consolidated one is the Dreadnoks since they share most of their appearances together, which could work for Puzzler and others like that. Escargon (talk) 20:54, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Making the separate Go-Bots articles doesn't take away anything from the rest of the wiki. And if they're short articles, well, they are what they are. We have recorded the entirety of Transformers fiction covering their subject on one page, and that fiction is very sparse, but it is accurate, and faithful to the wiki's mission of documenting information. Beyond that though, I'd say I'd vote against merging in information about non-Hasbro/Takara/whatevs owned properties into the articles, such as the Go-Bots cartoon. A sister wiki seems like it would be the best idea, though I can't volunteer my services to completing it as of right now, as I'm pretty thoroughly engaged on other projects on THIS wiki. --Ascendron (talk) 21:13, 18 October 2015 (EDT)

Call for Vote

It's been a week since this last came up and I know there are people still pissed that GoBots stuff is added at all, so can we pull the pin and decide? We all know the arguments by now. Whether we should reduce most of the existing GoBot pages or leave them (this seems to be all they're getting now Renegade Rhetoric's ended) is an important but I think separate issue to: include GoBots fiction in its entirety on this wiki or do not include anything but what comes out under Hasbro material.
At this point I've swung round to being against adding Challenge material; it should have its own wiki, which could be created tomorrow if people wanted. --Charles RB (talk) 01:19, 26 October 2015 (GMT)

I vote for leaving the Go-Bot articles as we have them now. They're hardly "two-sentence articles" for the most part, and whether we personally like something or not hardly has bearing on its inclusion in the wiki. Lots of people hate The Beast Within, but its here. And AVP has more people involved in its production, and more research put through it than that comic did. When there's going to be a Go-Bot's wiki, we'll link it in the articles like we do to other outside wikis. --Ascendron (talk) 21:36, 25 October 2015 (EDT)

I'm in favour of keeping the existing AVP, FunPub stuff too. Just draw the line there and all. --Charles RB (talk) 01:40, 26 October 2015 (GMT)

By the way, thanks to all the editors who have been working hard to keep all the Guardians and Renegades articles updated! It's a big help, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who appreciates it greatly. --Ascendron (talk) 21:44, 25 October 2015 (EDT)

I've been thinking on this and, despite the relatively weak arguments against including Challenge material, something about including it feels off to me. I think intellectually the case for inclusion is very strong, but I think emotionally it'd probably feel better somewhere else. I'd agree with Charles about voting on against full-on-wikifying Challenge. I've also been one of several people writing-up the GoBots articles and I'd strenuously disagree with deleting them. There is plenty of information on even the scantiest of them, including at the minimum names, factions, actions taken. The wiki is replete with articles for less. In the case of virtually every Renegade, we get at least two adventures, personality, and alt modes. Some Guardians get similar treatment. A few characters have visuals. It'd be silly to torch them.

As I said, I've been thinking on this and I think there may be a compromise solution between the two extremes, one of a big list due to a relative paucity of material, the other of wikifying everything from Challenge. I propose we only wiki up what's actually been said about the characters in a Transformers medium... but, to give the articles a little more oomph, we add in a main picture from Challenge if (and only if) there is no official Transformers image available. We've in the past shown a willingness to use these images in the notes section, so we'd only be bumping them up to the top. The copyright shouldn't be an issue, Challenge of the Gobots sports a Tonka copyright, and Tonka is wholly owned by Hasbro. This way we're still limiting to the "facts" of Transformers, but the articles will look and feel a little more robust. Only one image per character, and then only if they haven't gotten an official illustration. Thoughts?--Giggidy (talk) 21:45, 25 October 2015 (EDT)

It is unacceptable to catalog "Challenge" here. It is not and never has been owned by a Transformers license-holder, and I can't fathom how this could be seen as a weak argument. Even if AVP made every GoBot article 20 pages long, the cartoon never had the stamp and so any form of systematic involvement should be out. If that means a whole slew of articles with no main images, then that is the price for creating so many individual articles instead of a list. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 21:55, 25 October 2015 (EDT)

http://machinerobo.wikia.com/wiki/Gobots

Have fun. --Monzo (talk) 21:57, 25 October 2015 (EDT)

I feel like everyone's forgetting that even before AVP came into play, we had images from COTG on the wiki-Cy-Kill, the E-Hobby pack, Doctor Braxis, all in the notes section. The ones that didn't, I think nobody just felt like adding them. Fracture had Crasher's image in her notes section, and Deadlift had Spoons. So, yes, as long as they're in the notes section, with the images having all the copyright information. they'll probably be fine.

As for the wiki, I feel like a great many of us would rather have a sister site than some ad-filled mess of a page. My computer can't even handle going on it for a full minute without making me restart it. Escargon (talk) 22:02, 25 October 2015 (EDT)

What Thy said. This is not fucking up for debate. All the AVP end-run wank isn't going to change the FACT that large swaths of the GoBots IP are NOT owned by Hasbro, including the cartoon and toys said cartoon was derived from, the latter being owned by a direct competitor to both TF-owning companies. Frankly, I'm not even sure what, if anything, Hasbro DOES own from that IP, given they haven't used an overtly-GoBots Trademark in what, a decade? At best they MIGHT still own the name "GoBots", and I mean "own" in the sense that "nobody's bothered to challenge it so far". --M Sipher (talk) 22:15, 25 October 2015 (EDT)

My two cents is that despite my personal wish for all GoBots information to go on tfwiki, I say that as long as this wiki's rules are based on Transformers information (Hasbro, Takara, etc.-only), then the non-Hasbro owned CotG cartoon and such doesn't go on this wiki. In addition for convenience of navigation for GoBots fans, a sister wiki for GoBots would help for finding strictly GoBots information. Also, if we were to put CotG on the wiki, then on principle would we have to add in Robotix and all the Cymond Cluster franchises (Brave, Zoids, etc) because they're in the Transformers multiverse?

With regards to GoBots material in Transformers works ("Withered Hope", Renegade Rhetoric, the hopefully upcoming "Spatiotemporal Challenges", etc.), I say that it goes on the wiki because it was distributed through a Transformers medium. And gets individual articles as does G.I. Joe or anything like that. And given the influence of GoBots on Transformers, I agree that we make the exception to use limited CotG screencaps as the main pictures for GoBots characters on the wiki since we've been doing that for years in notes sections. S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 01:42, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

I vote against turning an EXCEPTION from like 4 pages into THE RULE on a hundred. "Challenge" screencaps should not be used as main pics on every single GoBot page. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 11:21, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

Reiterating this point: since the individual articles already exist it's probably just easier to leave them. However, I strongly suggest a total block on any further use of any unlicensed GoBots media appearances, of any kind. No more "Challenge," no more coloring books, not even as Notes, let alone as main pics. If folks want to leave up the small handful of longstanding examples we've got, eh. But since there a very real distinction between GoBots IP that is allowed / available and that which is not, we should draw a firm line, stick with it, and prevent any further inclusion of material that doesn't pass the usual rules of ownership / licensing. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 19:03, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

Oh, yes, nothing past the requirements should be included. I do agree with that. And I doubt we'll have any more Gobots related stuff for AVP. Escargon (talk) 19:08, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

Nays are having it so far.
Giggidy's suggestion of putting screencaps in Notes for some pages seems like workable, unless there's acopyright issue o people will consider it thin-edging the wedge --Charles RB (talk) 08:04, 26 October 2015 (GMT)

I might've been in favour of it before, but I too have swung around to thinking the Challenge cartoon doesn't fall within our remit, as a piece of media that was not ever, and is still not, owned or licensed by a Transformers rights-holder. I'm not averse to using screencaps from the cartoon for pictures, though. I'd also say we can definitely merge the components of Puzzler and Monsterous into singular articles under the combiner names. - Chris McFeely (talk) 06:49, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

Much of the story information that AVP revealed about the GoBots characters is straightforward recapitulation of episodes of CotG. Do we need/want to put a note to that effect on the character pages? If so, should it just be something general like "events are adapted from the CotG cartoon" or should we note the episode titles for the different events? Should/could we link to Counter-X's episode summaries? --Khajidha (talk) 11:19, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

Most of the AVP stuff seems to be original. Where it's not I've been mentioning the episodes. Linking to Counter-X is a good idea. --Giggidy (talk) 11:51, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

Not sure how much of a vote is actually happening here, but me and my seven years worth of contributions vote No to Challenge or further GoBots additions to the Wiki. I would remove or block any individual pages for GoBots characters due to AVP. I already think tongue-in-cheek reference pages like Harrison Ford and Indiana Jones are silly, and probably contributed to the all-inclusive mentality people are fighting against here.

Has/Tak only owns a small fragment of GoBots IP. This Wiki, like every Wiki and every fan website on the internet, exists at the sufferance of the property's owners. So while there are in-universe, multiversal collaborations between Marvel and DC continuity, you'll notice they still retain separate Wikis. It doesn't matter how closely related Transformers and GoBots become in the fictional realities -- real world reality has to govern this site.

Personally, I like the way the Marvel Wiki deals with Transformers -- each issue of the Marvel Comic contains an issue summary and cast list of the Marvel story, but the individual links on that page leave the Marvel wiki and go to the Transformers wiki (albeit the wrong TF Wiki, but they are on wikia). There is no Bluestreak (G1) page on the Marvel Database, even though he appeared in a Marvel Comic...just a link to a Transformers wiki that can actually cover the character in-depth as he deserves.

My recommendation is to reduce all of Renegades Rhetoric to a single story page, chronicling the many adventures and details provided by Has/Tak owned Axiom Nexus's Cy-Kill in one place, with no individual Guardian or Renegade pages on this wiki. If and when a functional Gobots Wiki is created, link the characters and concepts to THAT wiki where they can be covered in full. --Xaaron (talk) 11:50, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

That tactic gets my vote. The "minor joke article" was a bit of harmless fun back when the franchise was much smaller, and we do not need to kowtow to it when something comes along to abuse the wiki's "system" to do something of dubious legal standing. (Really ought to look at how the GB page addresses Hasbro's "ownership" and elaborate.) For the quadzillionth time, our "rules" need to be flexible and typically ARE, but some people really just can't handle the idea of not treating everything with the same ironclad law at all times, no matter what affect it has on the overall wiki. --M Sipher (talk) 14:41, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

I vote against it. Ultimately passing the buck off to another wiki isn't my idea of being informative. Where others would do that, we work hard to cover as much as what falls within our realm to cover. (Which, as it happens, does NOT include the COTG cartoon) That's what makes us stand out, in terms of both content and quality, above many other wikis out there. And I don't even think the franchise was ever even that small. That was just an illusion created by the fact that a lot of it had gone on undocumented for a long time. People need to stop making this out like its some kind of personal attack against us. What's it gonna harm that there are a few pages out there like the Harrison Ford page article? Are people gonna flip out and swear never to use our wiki again if they stumble across it? Are we going to be sneered at and ridiculed by some internet aristocracy because our "credibility" will be in doubt or something? I doubt its eating up much space in terms of bandwith or whatever. And no one will make any legal advance that has any ground here. Wikis wouldn't exist as a concept if that would regularly happen. Where is the harm? --Ascendron (talk) 14:49, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

That's a "nay" from me on cutting the small number of deliberately silly pages: we're long past the point that this wiki can say that's not on, unless we can say that it puts people off visiting. Casual fans and browsers seem to like them. -- Charles RB (talk) 20:22, 26 October 2015 (GMT)

I wasn't actually advocating removing the Harrison Ford-style joke articles. (Not a fan of taking a whole article to say "Somebody mentioned Broadside (SG) once!", either.) Just pointing out pages like that contributed to the mind set of including articles for every person, place, or thing mentioned in Transformers fiction. The difference, of course, is that no one is trying to write up full articles about the Indiana Jones franchise here instead of making an Indy wiki. --Xaaron (talk) 17:30, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

I wasn't either. I'd have thought the intention was clear: that the allowing of "harmless fun" articles of small references from when the franchise was VASTLY smaller was now being intentionally abused as an end-run around something that was decided against long ago for being not-HasTak-owned/licensed, one of the few pretty concrete rules we do have, and a fundamental one at that. Therefore I have no compunctions about making an exception to the general guideline (which we often have to do anyway) and compacting the information to a minimal number of pages... especially given the dubious nature of Hasbro's "ownership" of the GoBots IP (among other IPs mentioned in certain sources). --M Sipher (talk) 18:32, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

I actually expected more arguments for adding COTG material - check up the page and there have been more! Interest seems to have collapsed. -- Charles RB (talk) 20:34, 26 October 2015 (GMT)

Honestly, at this point, most-if not all-articles for the Gobots have been created. I really don't think it would hurt anyone to just leave them up. We can argue about all the IP ownership all we want, but as Ascendron already pointed out, we have other articles that don't exactly line up with Hasbro-owned stuff either-Hasbro certainly didn't shout at IDW for including Transformers in a Crossover that also involved a rival company (Playmates and Ninja Turtles). Escargon (talk) 18:39, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

...Are you actually contending that IDW didn't run the scope and parameters of the giant crossover by Hasbro at all before doing it? That the crossover wasn't extensively okayed by every rightsholder involved beforehand? Because there's no other way to interpret what you just said, and that's a staggeringly stupid premise. --M Sipher (talk) 18:49, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

Stay classy, M Sipher. --Giggidy (talk) 19:06, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

classy? is this the part of the thread where we equate gay marriage to gobots being on the transformers wiki --ItsWalky (talk) 20:17, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

I don't believe he was literally equating the two-he was using a recent example of rules changing from previous. Could he have used a better example? Yes, probably, but I understood what he was getting at, and I say this as someone who would be affected by said laws. Escargon (talk) 20:44, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

No, of course not. However, what I can say from experience: as our audience grew bigger, we did go back and make changes to the older gobots-involved answers. A couple model sheets here and there were deleted, because Warner Bros could have potentially sued Hasbro. I don't think we would've even gone through with Cy-Kill if it hadn't been without someone giving us the okay first-and even then, we made sure to delete an old avatar with Cy-Kill Hanna-Barbara face on it. Escargon (talk) 18:55, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

I'd be okay with a separate wiki that we could just link to when GoBots came up. I mean, the GoBots franchise has been basically dead for thirty years outside of a few winks from Transformers (with the exception of the Cy-Kill thing that started this whole debate), so I don't think it'd ever get too out of hand. Obviously time, money, and access to the show are factors in this solution, so it might not be 100% viable. Grum (talk) 19:57, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

Sorry if this is a really dumb question, but if the whole not-Hasbro IP thing matters for this wiki, then what stops sites like the Machine Robo wikia from using any GoBots material at all? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 20:55, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

The rules of this web site have no relevance to any other wikis, and the Machine Robo wikia does indeed include GoBots material. --abates (talk) 22:12, 26 October 2015 (EDT)

I was debating with myself whether or not to make this post, but it's going to bug me if I don't. Here goes. Obviously, a lot of us have become pretty emotionally involved in this topic. People say hurtful and stupid things when emotions run high. But if you're going to debate with someone, its important to challenge their arguments, and not attack the debater themselves... Despite whatever slip-ups may happen. I don't really know any of you. I can't really call any of you friends, because I'm not involved in any forums, and I don't attend conventions... But I respect many people's work ethic here, especially since we're all volunteering our time for the wiki. For the information itself, I get it that people are getting upset that information is being "snuck in" as a deliberate attempt to get it documented on the wiki. But if someone else got the job of getting to create fiction related to the Transformers brand, and used it as they saw fit, well I'm hardly in a position to debate that. They get to do stuff I never will, and as an adult, I have to concede to such defeats. Ultimately, it comes down to this: I believe that, for the most part, keeping the information on separate pages as they are currently is the best and most informative way to share it with whoever chooses to browse our wiki. (Some of the combiner components can be combined, as their importance relates wholly to the fact that they're components to a more important character). If anyone is able to prove me wrong by presenting even a crude mock-up that shows a better way of accomplishing that task, I will gladly change my stance on the issue. But we can do that by being civil and respectful. --Ascendron (talk) 04:40, 27 October 2015 (EDT)

Bottom line, GoBots shouldn't be treated any differently, and certainly not any better, than G.I. Joe on this Wiki. The Joes are a fully owned Hasbro franchise with decades of interactive history with the Transformers brand, BUT...all the images of Snake Eyes or Cobra Commander on the TF Wiki are from TF stuff, not from the Sunbow cartoon that was not connected to Transformers. No one is trying to explain Snake-Eyes' Vietnam origins in his Notes section, unlike the Doctor Braxis Notes section stuffed with COTG references. Because people understand that if you want to read about G.I. Joe, you go to a G.I. Joe website...which this isn't. --Xaaron (talk) 13:02, 27 October 2015 (EDT)

Vote Results

It's been more than 24 hours with no movement one way or the other, and even then, the stuff from yesterday seems like rehashing old arguments. Is now a fair time to tally? The voting is complicated because there are multiple proposals on the table.

Proposal: Complete cataloging of "Challenge of the Gobots"
- Supporters: Khajidha

Proposal: Condensing all Ask Vector Prime GoBots pages down to just one or two master pages, probably Guardians and Renegades or Renegade Rhetoric
- Supporters: Xaaron, M Sipher

Proposal: Expand coverage of Ask Vector Prime GoBots to include "Challenge of the Gobots" screen captures
- Supporters: Giggidy, Chris McFeely, Escargon, Charles RB, S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47, Khajidha, tentative Riptide

Proposal: Expand coverage of Ask Vector Prime GoBots to include link to Counter-X website
- Supporters: Khajidha, Giggidy, Riptide, Saix

Proposal: Treat Renegade Rhetoric like any other source, no condensation but also no expansion such as screen captures
- Supporters: Thylacine 2000

Proposal: Pics from outside media goes in the notes section on character pages. Some Go-Bots pics can go there, otherwise wait until Transformers media includes original art of these characters.
- Supporters: Ascendron

I think I got everyone's position represented. Grum, I'm not really sure which camp you fell into. Regardless, it's clear that there's a solid majority in favor of documenting everything from Ask Vector Prime fully, with exceptions when it's sensible to do so such as with Puzzler and Monsterous. The good news is that this is exactly the current state of the wiki. No further action is required. Though it's ironic and a little sad that it took so much acrimony and name calling to get to the point of doing nothing different than we are now.

I'm less confident declaring victory on the screen capture question. M Sipher, Thylacine 2000, and Xaaron have all made their position against clear, as have the five supporters. I'd be curious to hear from ~~Khajidha, Ascendron, and~~ Grum on that issue before we go expanding them. I'm not sure if their silence indicates indifference, lack of awareness, or simply opposition to that proposal. --Giggidy (talk) 15:43, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

Didn't say anything until now since I didn't really have anything new to add, but I would vote for Counter-X and... maaaaaybe screencaps, but I'm indecisive on that one. --Riptide (talk) 15:53, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

I'm divided about the screencaps... My gut instinct says that it would be a good addition to the pages... But I almost would feel, I dunno, hypocritical giving my full support to their inclusion, seeing as I'm usually very steadfast in my stance of only including stuff that's official. I suppose I can justify it to myself, as their inclusion would do more good than harm as far as how informative they would make the articles... Let's just not go overboard with it? One pic for each guy, maybe less if a single picture does a good job of showcasing multiple characters? --Ascendron (talk) 16:31, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

Yes, that was my original proposal. One and only one, less where possible. Couldn't agree more. --Giggidy (talk) 16:42, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

Actually, I'm in favor of complete GoBots coverage, but have bowed to the overwhelming opposition on that score. TOTALLY opposed to the wholesale reduction approach. Favor screen caps (but expect that not to come about). Favor Counter-X links. I would prefer that the combiner members have their own pages, but the limited information available currently makes the redirection to the combined form page at least as viable a solution.--Khajidha (talk) 16:30, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

If we do include these screencaps, I would also like to request that we make it explicitly clear that they are not owned by Hasbro, and are not official Transformers images on the image's page itself. I was almost tempted to say in their captions on the characters' pages, but even I think that's a bit too extreme. So long as someone can learn quickly that the images do not come from an actual Transformers source if they make the effort of looking up the image's information. --Ascendron (talk) 16:44, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

For full coverage on GoBots as given in any Transformers media. Counter-X links seem like a no-brainer. Saix (talk) 17:46, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

I said on Oct.26, 19:03, that it would probably at this point be best to leave all the articles up as they are. So if the only issue actually up for decision now is whether to include COTG screenshots, then I firmly vote against that, and see it as sufficiently against our rules of documenting official HasTak material that I'm not entirely sure a vote is even appropriate. We agree on AVP - well AVP itself says COTG screenshots aren't HasTak property and couldn't be used, hence why they themselves took down the first Cy-Kill picture. I think people should be satisfied with what they got. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 18:49, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

Sorry, I missed that. --Giggidy (talk) 19:00, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

It's true that it's not in line with our policy entirely, but it would be nice for people reading the pages access to an image on the page, just so that they don't have to go hop over to google or whatever other website to see a visual representation of them. That's my main reasoning behind supporting this idea despite not being 100% behind it. --Ascendron (talk) 19:19, 28 October 2015 (EDT)

At first, I think we could include Gobots cartoon here but now I changed my thoughts. They are not owned by Hasbro. But I wonder if Hasbro buys the rights to the cartoon, can we include the cartoon on this wiki then? I'm just curious.--Primestar3 (talk) 07:12, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

I'd still say no because it's not Transformers. Like I said with G.I.Joe, we don't use images of Joes or Cobras from their 80's cartoon -- only from Transformers-related crossover media. --Xaaron (talk) 10:34, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

<<<<<Not mentioning the Joe franchise character that actually has a non-TF related main pic....>>>>> --Khajidha (talk) 13:58, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

Well we've got Transformers-branded visuals for reference for G.I. Joe characters. Less so for GoBots characters. Would it not be prudent to have visual points of reference for the GoBots who have appeared in Transformers fiction? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 14:25, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

It absolutely would. But we don't HAVE visual points of reference for those GoBots from Transformers fiction. We would have to take images from other fiction/mediums. And if we did it for GoBots, why not add some pictures for Jem, the Inhumanoids' Earth Corps, or the Darkling Lords? The aforementioned Harrison Ford and Indiana Jones pages don't have visual references either, for that matter. The Fantastic Four could probably use a better visual reference than that cropped cover border, so...

Do you see how this snowballs out of control? --Xaaron (talk) 16:08, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

My initial suggestion of just putting a picture in the note section is still out there, by the way. I kinda dropped it because no one really seemed on board... But I figured if we have the leeway to put up pics outside of Transformers fiction there, like we did for the Beast, and for that matter, Cy-kill, we could just do the same for all the Go-Bots characters. I know it's kinda seem like a silly game of working our way through loopholes, but it still is what I would personally prefer... Best of both worlds kind of thing. We still get a visual representation of the character in the article itself, most articles are short enough that the picture would be apparent immediately, but we'd still be sticking to our policy of only using official pictures in the body of the article. The picture is there as an aside, an addition to a note of "by the way, this guy is from this cartoon not owned by Hasbro." Like, look at the Night Ranger article. That's a great article right there! All the Go-Bots articles should be formatted like that. --Ascendron (talk) 16:21, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

That Night Ranger article actually turns me off the idea of putting pictures in the notes section. There's a huge unsightly gap of white space there between the external links section and the box with the categories in it. --abates (talk) 17:02, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

But that's only because that picture is a character model, which is taller than it is wide. Screencaps are wider than they are tall, and wouldn't create nearly as much whitespace! And we could do what we did with the Zebediah Braxis article, where we go in a bit of a brief overview of the character's role in the cartoon/ "Made-up Guy filled the role of the impressionable young kid-appeal character in the Go-Bots cartoon, similar as how Bumblebee did in the original Transformers cartoon." Something like that. --Ascendron (talk) 17:07, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

...Which goes right back to doing what we were complaining about in the first place, which is detailing COTG on the TFWiki! This is how quickly it gets out of control. "Well, we're not allowed to cover Challenge of the GoBots, but these pages would look nicer with some images. Okay, we're allowed to put one image in the Notes section as a visual reference, but now it looks unsightly so we'll add some details about COTG to justify having the pictures. Okay, well, we're already talking about COTG in the Notes now, so..."

- Covering the GoBots material produced under the Transformers franchise...Yes.

- Adding non-TF GoBots material so that the TF GoBots pages look better...No. --Xaaron (talk) 17:24, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

I think it looking "unsightly" is really a minor problem. And I didn't mean covering their every appearance. More along the lines of a blip of information. I'm sure a few characters could have more notes that would be informative and interesting to "pad out" the note section if the white space is that big of an issue, (which I don't think it is... Ugly, maybe, but I'd rather have an article that is "unsightly" than uninformative or goes against the wiki's rules.) Stuff like "he was also voiced by this guy who voiced this transformers character" or "this Transformers character is an homage to him," if stuff like that applies. You know, things that we already do for other character pages anyways. --Ascendron (talk) 17:33, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

Honestly the more the argument for adding in hundreds of unlicensed, non-TF images comes to hinge desperately on "You did it 5 years ago for Dr. Braxis and 8 years ago for Cobra Commander!", the more it starts to be an argument for deleting those pictures from Dr. Braxis and Cobra Commander. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 19:12, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

It's not like there's a shortage of CC images from TF fiction. --M Sipher (talk) 04:04, 30 October 2015 (EDT)

Just to note here, with all the comparisons being made to our handling of G.I. Joe, we've always treated the Joes with more leeway than we have, say, Spider-Man or Godzilla. A lot of our Joe articles include real names and factoids taken from filecards and such, and yes, even in one isolated instance a piece of art that's not from a TF source, because there was no point to the "wilful ignorance" gag, since it wasn't funny - everyone knows who Spider-Man and Godzilla are, but nobody knows who Seymour P. Fine is. There's no need for such wilful ignorance on Go-Bots either, given how repeatedly tied-in to Transformers it has become - it's not a Simon Belmondo or a Solid Snake, it's as much part of the Transformers "family" now as Joe is, even if its situation is a bit thornier. - Chris McFeely (talk) 17:47, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

If I could make another suggestion. Could we maybe forestall this discussion until after AVP has wrapped up? It is what kicked off this whole discussion. I don't want to "encourage" the feature to "spam" a whole bunch of Gobots screencaps... But it has already brought in a little bit of artwork for Go-Bots articles anyways, and with both VP's return to the storyline, and contact having been made to a Gargent Universe recently, any number of things could happen to influence this discussion one way or another, or even render it moot. --Ascendron (talk) 18:06, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

Unless Hasbro buys Bandai and/or Hanna-Barbera, nothing in AVP could change that we're really not allowed to have systematic coverage of Challenge (and that includes screencaps on ~100 articles) here. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 19:08, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

We're allowed to cover whatever we decide is in scope. We have no affiliation with Hasbro. The fact that the copyright notice on the episodes themselves gives ownership to Tonka, a Hasbro subsidiary, is a bonus. --Giggidy (talk) 19:20, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

AVP already HAS posted screencaps that were are using... Not to mention some original art of Cy-kill. It's a longshot, but it's already happened once. --Ascendron (talk) 19:22, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

I actually don't like using most of those screencaps - they WEREN'T posted by AVP, they were posted by dickish users trying to game the system, and were only acknowledged by Cy-Kill. Further, a quick look back at the FB page suggests the question threads they were posted in were deleted. - Chris McFeely (talk) 19:28, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

Just checked, they're still there. However, I wouldn't use them outside the Src page. Escargon (talk) 19:37, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

Hmm... Should we use the pics AVP deleted outside of source pages at all? Thinking about the Cy-Kill profile pic. Not like we don't have another one to replace it with. --Ascendron (talk) 19:43, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

Escargon is correct, we haven't deleted anything recently. Chris is also correct, you haven't seen us post screen captures from Challenge in the pages of Ask Vector Prime. We have acknowledged art and captures that others have posted. Also, regarding this: "Could we maybe forestall this discussion until after AVP has wrapped up?", it might be a long wait. --Jimsorenson (talk) 19:47, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

I hadn't realized that AVP hadn't posted those pics themselves (not gotten to that point yet while working through it in my sandbox. In light of this, I've changed my stance, and changed up there earlier in this thread. I'm now going to stay out of this conversation, since I want to dedicate my energies to other stuff for the time being. --Ascendron (talk) 19:54, 29 October 2015 (EDT)

With no activity on this page for 3 days, I think we can comfortably assess the results. It looks like the vote was better than 2:1 in favor of including Challenge of the GoBots screen captures on the pages, but a healthy caution against overuse. One and only one image per page, and only when official images are not available.

I've also done some homework into the copyright status and it would appear that Warner Bros. is still acknowledging Hasbro's copyright claim. Each Challenge of the Gobots box set and disk is marked with text to the effect of "GOBOTS and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and (C) Hasbro Inc." The only thing Hanna-Barbera lays claim to is the actual compilation of the DVDs, and even that is in conjunction with Hasbro: "Program Compilation (C) Hanna-Barbera and Hasbro Inc." The DVD packaging, however, is off-limits. "Package Design (C) Hanna-Barbera and and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc." The episodes themselves give copyright exclusively to Tonka. Hopefully this reassures some of Xaaron's concerns, which seemed more legal than philosophical. There are links to photos of the copyright notices on my user page. --Giggidy (talk) 01:42, 3 November 2015 (EST)

Or maybe with 3 days of inactivity on this page, we can consider the matter tabled, what with how time after time the more people talk about it and actually listen to counterpoints the more they realize it's a bad idea and (as we see above) come to change their minds to be against it. If the character and animation likenesses are off-limits even to AVP in the last few days, that should give pause. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 07:05, 3 November 2015 (EST)

WHAT AM I ARGUING AGAINST AND IS ANGER AN APPROPRIATE RESPONSE?!?

SRSLY, though? If some user's posted screencaps make those screencaps TF canon - wouldn't the poster themselves also become canon? Wouldn't Facebook become canon? Draw the damn line, people; we're never going to be a comprehensive GoBots source unless we fully document the toyline and the cartoon. That ain't happening, not on this wiki at least. Accept that, and our mandate is back to recording only what's mentioned in official TF sources, even obnoxiously, willfully fanwankish ones like AVP alas. -- Repowers (talk) 07:41, 3 November 2015 (EST)

Why not redraw the line to include all GoBots materials? No, it doesn't fit the current definition of our mandate but it is a logically consistent one. No, we would not then have to include all GIJoe, etc materials because there is a fundamental difference. GIJoe is in the same universe as Transformers, GoBots have been declared to be Transformers. --Khajidha (talk) 08:34, 3 November 2015 (EST)

You answer your own question: It isn't within our mandate and it's not logically consistent because we really then should put in all of GIJoe but we won't do GIJoe because reasons. This has always been a push to change the scope and inclusion criteria for this wiki due to arbitrary personal favoritism. It could only be indulged through this sort of arbitrary personal favoritism. That's not what standards are for. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 09:36, 3 November 2015 (EST)

You missed my point. It's not within the current mandate, but we could redraw the line to make it our new mandate. --Khajidha (talk) 10:08, 3 November 2015 (EST)

I would further suggest that we've settled this issue, at least until something new comes along to change it, so this discussion becomes a distraction from a genuinely unsettled question. I'm not saying your arguments are invalid, Khajidha, I'm saying that everyone's heard them and there was a clear and convincing consensus against you. Sometimes when that happens, the adult and mature thing to do is concede that you're in the minority and move on. --Giggidy (talk) 09:41, 3 November 2015 (EST)

Go. Make. A. GoBots. Wiki. "Problem" solved. -- Repowers (talk) 19:31, 3 November 2015 (EST)

Vote Results again for reals maybe? Focus only on Screencapture

Proposal: No Screen Captures
- Supporters: Xaaron, M Sipher, Thylacine 2000, Repowers, ItsWalky, Nevermore, Chris McFeely, Ascendron

Proposal: Expand coverage of Ask Vector Prime GoBots to include limited "Challenge of the Gobots" screen captures, either in notes or main page
- Supporters: Giggidy, Escargon, S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47, Khajidha, Saix

Proposal: Screen captures on a case by case basis
- Supporters: Abates, Charles RB, Riptide

This is where the current vote stands focusing entirely on the issue of screen captures. Repowers, I took the liberty of adding you to the no column. Please feel free to remove if you like. Thylacine 2000, I respect your passion but there is a difference between "my argument convinced one guy to change his proposal from screen captures in every main page section to screen captures in every notes sections" to "my argument is so good I've picked up supporters in droves." You've said lots and lots and lots of words on this subject and you're still losing 2:1.--Giggidy (talk) 09:02, 3 November 2015 (EST)

And you've said some pretty outrageous and dishonest words on this topic, including immediately above this. At the very least, Ascendron, Escargon, and McFeely changed their positions to be against. This is the second time in a week that you have just happened to get the results wrong in a way that just happens to benefit your side. It is really depressing, though no doubt I only feel that way because I'm a violent gaybasher or however you choose to characterize this dispute. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 09:23, 3 November 2015 (EST)

I think including one image for informative purposes in the notes section is fine—just as a "this is what this character looks like". This isn't what I want, but I feel like it's a fair enough compromise. Saix (talk) 09:17, 3 November 2015 (EST)

I don't think I have misrepresented their positions, but if I do I apologize. Ascendron said he was moving to notes. McFeely came out in support of the screen capture proposal but didn't like the current way screen captures posted in the AVP comments and acknowledged by Cy-Kill were handled. Not sure what you're talking about with Escargon. But, to do due diligence, I'll follow up with all three. And I am not, and have not, and hopefully will not attack your character in any way. Also, as far as I can tell, going over the edit history, if I got the first vote wrong it was because I conservatively underestimated support for my proposal. --Giggidy (talk) 09:27, 3 November 2015 (EST)

I only said my vote on including everything from Gobots probably shouldn't count since I worked on the thing. Escargon (talk) 09:31, 3 November 2015 (EST)

Well, it would appear that an apology is in order. You, Thylacine, indeed had a better read on the vote than I. --Giggidy (talk) 09:04, 4 November 2015 (EST)

I'm in favour of CotG screencaps, but only in the notes. Main page inclusion is a step too far, I think, and would be more prone to "well we already do [x] why not include the whole thing". --Riptide (talk) 11:00, 3 November 2015 (EST)

Point of order: since the inclusion of COTG screenshots is still a potential legal issue, and one of the votes in the No column is from the guy who owns the Wiki, is a democratic vote really the proper resolution for this matter? --Xaaron (talk) 10:37, 3 November 2015 (EST)

Again, the DVDs (photos on my user page) recently released and still being distributed by Warner Bros. give copyright of everything Gobots to Hasbro, and gives the "program compilation" a shared copyright between Hasbro and Hanna-Barbera. But, this is ItsWalky's wiki. If he feels that a vote is out of order I will shut up and graciously concede defeat. --Giggidy (talk) 10:42, 3 November 2015 (EST)

I think the fact that AVP was not able to use screen caps from Challenge of the GoBots trumps any copyright notices on the DVD box sets, however in this case I don't think it's relevant to this Wiki being able to use them in the notes section of articles. We're talking about a bunch of articles about characters with very little fiction and no visual representation, so the question becomes a matter of "will including screencaps really make much of a difference to the information they contain?" I think screencaps make sense where a GoBots character has a visual representation like Bug Bite and we want to compare what they looked like in GoBots fiction to what they looked like in Transformers fiction, but not so much where the character has no Transformers representation to begin with. In this case I think it's more effective to just include a link to a GoBots site which would give more information about the GoBots character as well as visual representation. --abates (talk) 15:04, 3 November 2015 (EST)

TL;DR. My comment: Full inclusion of HB GoBots. Yes. Over my dead body.--Nevermore (talk) 13:59, 3 November 2015 (EST)

The "slippery slope" argument is winning me over. I'm still in favour of limited screencaps: the ones acknowledged by AVP, the model sheets and such for key people like Bug Bite, the original Cy-Kill profile (even if we scrap the rest I'd argue for this to come in under the same reason Cobra Commander's got that kick-the-dog one, i.e. it looks better). We're likely at the limits of limited already though. Who else could we reasonably add? --Charles RB (talk) 20:26, 3 November 2015 (GMT)

My suggestion would be screencaps, at a maximum of one per page, for 1) those characters with major enough appearance in Transformers fiction (e.g. the e-Hobby GoBots and Cy-Kill, probably a few others), and 2) those with visuals acknowledged by Ask Vector Prime. Otherwise, links are fine. --Riptide (talk) 16:02, 3 November 2015 (EST)

Another three days with no activity, and I'm big enough to acknowledge that the momentum has shifted. I count 8 against screen captures, 5 in favor, and 3 in favor of limited. Basically a tie, and I think ties need to go to the more conservative, i.e. not my, position. As with article creation, the screen capture issue seems to go to no change from our current policy. A long and and acrimonious road to get to the point of no change. I apologize if my arguments along the way caused offense. Hopefully we can move on. --Giggidy (talk) 08:49, 6 November 2015 (EST)

Fair's fair -- you help me dispose of Nevermore's dead body, and we'll call everything even. --Xaaron (talk) 09:06, 6 November 2015 (EST)

January 2016

Executive Summary

The first real change in 6 years. Transformers: Renegade Rhetoric is declared to be technically not Transformers fiction by ItsWalky, a proposal by Chris McFeely.

We're all sick of arguing about GoBots

But here we are again. I restate my position as detailed in an AllSpark post: since moving to its own page, with Cy-Kill returning to his own universe and talking exclusively about "unmade" GoBots episodes, "Renegade Rhetoric" has become GoBots fiction, not Transformers fiction, and we do not cover GoBots fiction. Events from Challenge of the GoBots "season 2" do not warrant coverage on the wiki, and I think that any events described from the original, actually-existing cartoon should be reduced to minimum, and all GoBots characters only mentioned in these stories consolidated into simplified "List of Guardian" and "List of Renegade" pages with only brief write-ups, linking readers to our archive of the Facebook posts if they want the full scoop. Characters such as Cy-Kill and those who have actually appeared in Transformers-universe stories should, of course, retain their own articles. We have editors actively working in bad faith, manipulating Renegade Rhetoric by asking leading questions to force the inclusion of GoBots on this wiki when it has been repeatedly decided that it won't be, and I am all for an exception being made so that this type of behaviour is not rewarded. - Chris McFeely (talk) 19:48, 6 January 2016 (EST)

THIS WEBSITE'S EMPEROR-KING AGREES --ItsWalky (talk) 20:03, 6 January 2016 (EST)

Thirded. GoBots fiction, and cheating, do not belong here. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 20:05, 6 January 2016 (EST)

100% agreement. --M Sipher (talk) 20:06, 6 January 2016 (EST)

EDIT: See BelowEscargon (talk) 20:07, 6 January 2016 (EST)

I'm in! -- Repowers (talk) 20:11, 6 January 2016 (EST)

I don't mind either. If nothing else, this entire debacle has taught us that GoBots and Transformers will never be able to peacefully coexist, on toy shelves or otherwise. Grum (talk) 20:50, 6 January 2016 (EST)

I vote yes. Consolidate the GoBots pages, keep the Renegade Rhetoric page and archive. I would argue that this is a case similar to how we only documented the issues of the GI Joe Marvel comic that contained Transformers; once it stopped being Transformers, we stopped covering it. Also, you know, hopefully this will mean people will complain about the Facebook pages less. --Riptide (talk) 02:47, 7 January 2016 (EST)

Changing my vote. The RR page links to the Club page. AVP references and comments on RR. This is canon just as everything else, gaming the system or no. I may be weary, but I won't buckle. Escargon (talk) 20:23, 6 January 2016 (EST)

I second Escargon. S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 21:21, 6 January 2016 (EST)

I don't think anyone will be surprised that I disagree. There seem to be two arguments. 1, it's not Transformers fiction. 2, editors working in bad faith. Going case by case, 1: I don't see how Renegade Rhetoric is GoBots fiction and not Transformers fiction. It's being broadcast on Axiom Nexus News, on Cybertron. It stars Cy-Kill, the hybrid Hanna-Barbara/TransTech version. It features a number of characters who are proper Transformers, from the Aligned continuity and the Unictron Trilogy, and more who are powered by sparks stolen from Mirror Alpha Trion's lab. That seems to be the main intellectual foundation for the argument, and I'll grant that it's novel, but I think it's flawed. 2: Were some editors (including me, I'll admit) asking leading questions? Yes, we were. It seems to have largely stopped, mostly because the column stopped rewarding it. But that applies to ALL of Ask Vector Prime, and that's undoubtedly canon. Are we going to start trying to look at the motivation of every creator now and altering coverage accordingly? Milne draws Hot Shot as dead to poke at Walky, should we undocument that?

And now, additional factors. I hate making slippery slope arguments, but really, the real reason we're having this conversation and everyone knows it is that there's a sizable block of people who don't like the content. That's what all of this boils down to. And if the wiki starts picking and choosing what to document, or at what detail to document, based on that, then it will have well and truly lost its way. Because if we decide that we can come up with a pseudo-logical justification to exclude this content, then we'll use it as precedent and do it again. All of Ask Vector Prime. Kiss Players. The Beast Within. That weird retcon about Cyclonus and Bombshell from a video. Big swaths of the Dreamwave run. I don't see it ending. Yes, people are sick of arguing, but this policy will lead to more, not less, arguments.

Another, lesser factor, is that these pages are already made. So we're proposing going through some 200 articles that are already created in compliance with this wiki's policies and changing them due to an exception, making more work for ourselves to make the wiki less informative.

And a third factor, is that these posts are popular. Ask Vector Prime's readership is in the thousands. Every post gets liked, shared, commented upon. People are enjoying it, and some of them will come here to see what we have to say about it. The cost of having a possibly extraneous article is negligible, but the cost of not having an article is real.

I also think that we should do what we always do on weighty matters, and have the debate first and THEN call for a vote. I would suggest that all the "seconded" to the proposal are premature. --Giggidy (talk) 20:38, 6 January 2016 (EST)

I'm with Gigs, I know we are volunteering, but this s still service, and we are still educators. There is a responsibility to inform the populace, if RR content was exclusively GoBots, there may be some argument, given we don't cover FunPub Gi Joe fiction or even Diaclone fiction(if it exists) even though the later is a TF universe technically. But given the bleed of TF lore and concepts I feel it is in our scope. Also it's kind of really petty to ignore like, reams of content because of a parliamentary beef. I vote to keep the GoBots season 2 stuff. Lush City (talk) 23:07, 6 January 2016 (EST)

the real reason we're having this conversation and everyone knows it is that there's a sizable block of people who don't like the content. That's what all of this boils down to.

NO. No. No no no. I don't give a rip about the content itself either way. (I mean, okay, I think the endless supply of numbering universes and other such non-story wankery is dumb and pointless and has made a Big Giant Thing of something that was meant to be just a sidelong atmospheric technical footnote in a couple of years-ago stories, but that's not the point.)

No. The point is that this content is being created explicitly and for no other purpose than to circumvent the wiki's rules, to alter its content and organization, by fans who otherwise were unable to get their way on the very content in question. It's not being done as part of a story in any meaningful sense. It's not a unintended side effect by some uninformed pro writer. It's not part of a carefully considered larger universe. It's not something dictated from on high within Hasbro. It's purposefully, transparently, and most of all pointlessly manipulative, seemingly all because a handful of OCD minds can't handle the thought of a 30 year old cartoon not being related to another 30 year old cartoon.

THAT is what I and, I presume, other editors don't like. Because it's bullshit. Canon generated by bullshit -- maybe we should consider treating it accordingly. -- Repowers (talk) 20:53, 6 January 2016 (EST)

This is true, but irrelevant, the wiki picking favorites with the AVP 2week limit was down the slope enough but using the out of universe background of something as an excuse to ignore fiction is totally hugged. Its not as if Jim and co are mindless robots, this is official fiction with all the research, skill, heart and passion that entails, blanking it out and other such special efforts is parliamentary minutiae. Who cares if people are gaming the system, the writers are big boys, they know what they are doing and in fact are often intimately aware of how this goes down. We have to stop acting like AVP is some puppet of a nebulous group of wiki villians instead of a dozen grown ass men and women making editorially supervised official fiction that happens to be done by fans like so many other franchises. We can't play diddle the lasagna with our rules just because the creators are iniated into our wanky insanity, if Ichikawa is going to make a Prowl 2 madcap adventure, Jim is going to make Cloud G1 for some reason and GoBots stuff starts bleeding, who are we to judge? That's basically with this whole thing, the wiki's "purity" is to be impartial, if snarky, recorder, we log it all and may be smart asses about it, but it's all in.

Besides the funpub stuff doesn't have the HB/Bandai legal issue anyway. Lush City (talk) 23:19, 6 January 2016 (EST)

I call bullshit on your bullshit. Because if you have been reading Renegade Rhetoric, it's hilarious. It's practically daily new episodes of an 80s cartoon that get the tone spot-on perfect. It's passionate, it has good stories, it even manages to have good characters despite most episodes being about 2 pages long. And none of it is about circumventing wiki rules. If it was, they'd have stopped doing it once they got everyone in, but they haven't. They're telling new stories, and they're quality, and I defy anyone who is actually reading them to disagree with that. Because, really, I'd love a show of hands, how many of the people who are voting no have actually read a single Renegade Rhetoric Season 2 episode? --Giggidy (talk) 20:57, 6 January 2016 (EST)

You yourself said you and others "were asking leading questions until you stopped getting rewarded for it." This is not the place for such a "reward." That kind of "reward" does not belong here and the entire mechanism for gaining it is what really subverts our rules for inclusion. Any alleged humor in Renegade Rhetoric now is just, as the saying goes, the fruit of the poisoned tree. Also, the debates have been had, since 2007 at least. Also also, "people will want to come here to see more RR/GoBots articles" leaves me quite unmoved. They can see RR on RR, they can read about GoBots on Counter-X, and in the year 2016 they can make their own GoBot wiki. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 21:20, 6 January 2016 (EST)

Your "fruit of the poisonous tree" argument leaves me unmoved. Because, according to this proposal, ALL OF THAT STUFF WILL STAY. Because that's all from the Axiom Nexus bit not covered by Chris McFeely's proposal. So you'll leave the poisonous tree, and get rid of all the fruit. Because that makes sense. --Giggidy (talk) 21:23, 6 January 2016 (EST)

This was created because the fans voted for it, after a whole month of guests colummist. Some of these fans have been taking advantage of it, yes, but that's not why it was created.Escargon (talk) 21:00, 6 January 2016 (EST)

The thing is that the RR stories are funny and clever and well-written, but fundamentally they don't have anything to do with TFs. They're using characters and settings that were never created by Hasbro/Takara. If, say, Renegade Rhetoric wrote a story where Cy-Kill was on an adventure and bumped into Optimus Prime, then yeah, that particular escapade could be added to the wiki, but fundamentally Renegade Rhetoric is Gobots fanfiction; well written fanfic, but basically completely outside this wiki's coverage sphere. Grum (talk) 21:20, 6 January 2016 (EST)

I vote no to this proposal as a whole. Whilst I'm not a fan of wiki gaming, the GoBots stuff happening these days is nothing like that. They're fun stories for the sake of fun, and I'd be sad to see them banished. (I could probably deal with "List of Guardians" and "List of Renegades" articles, though.) Sky Shadow (talk) 21:10, 6 January 2016 (EST)

Yeah, or at least group articles for a good number of them. Escargon (talk) 21:11, 6 January 2016 (EST)

If I say yes, will people actually go back to making significant contributions instead of complaining about everything AVP does? Saix (talk) 21:15, 6 January 2016 (EST)

No. If you say yes to this proposal, it will lead to more arguments, more complaining about AVP, and then Thy will say, "hey, it worked well for GoBots, let's undo all 1000 AVP articles." Remember, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." I urge you to vote with your conscience and not give in to a crowd to try to forestall an argument, for this change WILL open the floodgates. Plus, it will lead to people spending time UNDOING informative articles they don't like rather than making informative articles they do. --Giggidy (talk) 21:19, 6 January 2016 (EST)

It was really a rhetorical question. I don't give a fuck about GoBots being on this wiki because it doesn't impede my ability to edit pages I care about and I really wish people would focus their energies they clearly have on filling out articles and not complaining. Saix (talk) 22:01, 6 January 2016 (EST)

Just upthread you were saying that this is allegedly "really" about people just acting out of some low personal distaste for GoBots. Yet this is now the second time in as many days that you've posed your own actions as being some sort of reaction / pre-emption of me personally. Do not do that again. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 21:49, 6 January 2016 (EST)

Actually, I meant a low personal distaste for the FB content. Happy to clarify. And yes, I dropped your name with a probable course of action. That was probably crossing a line, and I apologize. On the other hand, was I wrong? Are you willing to commit to no further proposals, votes, or executive actions to try to minimize the footprint of AVP? --Giggidy (talk) 23:15, 6 January 2016 (EST)

I didn't even think about this, but it makes a lot of sense. Any breaking of the rule of putting What Is Canon before anything else (when that's been the wiki's entire modus operandi up until this started) is a dangerous path to follow. Sky Shadow (talk) 21:25, 6 January 2016 (EST)

I got Armada and Energon DVDs for Christmas. Sure. Escargon (talk) 21:17, 6 January 2016 (EST)

Like Escargon and Giggidy, I am against this proposal. -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 21:34, 6 January 2016 (EST)

So I'm only a recent editor of this Wiki, but I've been reading it religiously for years. And as a deeply devoted and long time TF fan, despite what some may feel, AVP, RR, and the collective of Club FB Pages have been some of the most entertaining pieces of TF canon. Yes, Go-Bots has a different lineage than the rest of Transformers proper, but at least since the Almanacs, and especially through these FB Pages, Go-Bots has become recognized as legitimate canon within the TF Multiverse. While I admit to being a completionist, and ideally, I'd love to see the entirety of Go-Bots, Brave, Zoids, etc. covered on this wiki due to their relation with Transformers; but worry not, for I understand that realistically, that truly would become far too distractedly cluttered - which is why I can even agree with not having extensive coverage for anything Go-Bots related that is outside of anything under the umbrella of Transformers. But as it was mentioned earlier, Renegade Rhetoric is treated with the same regard as Ask Vector Prime, Spacewarp's Logs and all the Axiom Nexus News Pages. It may not be "directly" Transformers, but it's far more intertwined than the 80's cartoon. No, people shouldn't be abusing to ability to have canon produced just for the sake of the Wiki, but that REALLY doesn't seem to be the case with what RR is producing currently. They're great stories in good fun, and I believe they should be treated as being just as much canon as any other TF media. I vote to include it. Hail Cy-KIll! IKY

I vote Yes for removal. Let the Talk:Main Page read forevermore: THE FUNNY STAYS. GOBOTS DO NOT. --Xaaron (talk) 22:24, 6 January 2016 (EST)

A lot of people seem to be in favour of retaining them because they're good, entertaining stories, but I don't think anyone on the "get rid of them" side is disputing that. The issue is they are GoBots stories, not Transformers stories. --abates (talk) 23:51, 6 January 2016 (EST)

I posted a detailed rebuttal as to how they're Transformers stories. The fact that it's done under a Transformers license. The conceit that, in universe, these are pirate broadcasts on Axiom Nexus News. The fact that many of the Renegades are, in story, Cybertronians. (Puzzler, Monsterous, Wendy's GoBots, more.) The fact that Cy-Kill is the TransTech design. The fact that Vector Prime comments on the occasional question posted on Renegade Rhetoric. It brings us to a fascinating philosophical question... what is a Transformers story? But these stories seem to fit. Just as a thought experiment, if one of the issues of Transformers: Sector 7 followed around, say, Rasputin for a whole issue, and didn't have any Transformers in it... would it still be a Transformers story? I guess I'm saying that yes, it would. --Giggidy (talk) 23:55, 6 January 2016 (EST)

If an issue of Transformers: Sector 7 did not have any Transformers in it, I think people would be asking IDW some rather pointed questions about WTF they were doing. Also I think the important part here is these are still GoBots characters, even if they have been relabeled Cybertronians. If the club started producing Voltron fiction where the Voltron lions were actually inert Cybertronians, I think we'd avoid detailing that too. --abates (talk) 00:31, 7 January 2016 (EST)

I don't think either hypothetical is helping the discussion. (The answer is that we would detail both because they unambiguously fall under the Transformers brand.) Saix (talk) 00:46, 7 January 2016 (EST)

Walky Calls It

So anyway, I see a bunch of votes in favor from people who've actually been on this site more than five minutes, versus mostly one folk who's admitted they've done exactly what was pissing us all off to begin with -- ie, asking AVP stuff for the express purpose of making stuff canonical. Like, literally gaming our decade-old website in bad faith. With that in mind, INCLUDING THE KIND OF IMPORTANT FACT THAT THIS WEBSITE IS NOT ACTUALLY A DEMOCRACY ANYWAY, I pass Chris McFeely's motion, as your Emperor-King. It is done! Discussion over, forever and ever and ever. The wiki is saved. --ItsWalky (talk) 06:14, 7 January 2016 (EST)

One person? I count at least 7, with only one who had just signed up. Escargon (talk) 06:21, 7 January 2016 (EST)

And just because you own the wiki, doesn't mean that all decisions are up to you, nor are they all necessarily correct. Ex: The splitting out of the G2 Gobots pages from their main G1 versions. Escargon (talk) 06:29, 7 January 2016 (EST)

I mean... it kind of does? He owns the place. He's the head admin. He has veto power. The userbase voting on things is just convention, not actual rules. --Riptide (talk) 06:59, 7 January 2016 (EST)

Sigh, "more than five minutes" was hyperbole. What I meant is editors who have been here since 2006 instead of WEEKS. --ItsWalky (talk) 06:33, 7 January 2016 (EST)

First recorded activity of Sky Shadow: August 2011. My first recorded activity: Febuary 2013. S.H.I.E.L.D Agent's: April 2015. Giggidy's: June 2015. Foffy's: December 2015. Escargon (talk) 06:41, 7 January 2016 (EST)

Thank you for helping me out! You're handing my own point back to me giftwrapped. --ItsWalky (talk) 06:45, 7 January 2016 (EST)

I doubt this counts for anything, but I've been reading the wiki since, like, 2011 or so. -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 06:54, 7 January 2016 (EST)

So, Chris makes a proposal at 19:46 on 1/6. This is something that he's specifically floated past the forum where old-school wiki editors hang out and driven up buy in, so they he naturally gets a slew of votes immediately, sans any discussion. I rebut, to the best of my ability, and over the course of (checks watch) eleven hours, votes start to come in on an admittedly hot-button topic. A disproportionate number of votes come in from the younger, newer editors, many of whom seem to have come in specifically because of an interest in the material being covered. (Which, in and of itself, might tell you something.) The vote starts to not go towards the proposal, so, again, after less than half a day of debate, Walky calls it. Not because he's so clearly winning, but specifically because he's losing. Well, yeah, I guess it is your wiki, but I never got the impression that this meant the rest of us don't have a vote. I find that highly dispiriting.

Now, again, I'll point out what I said above. Normally for big decisions, we have a discussion. There's a back-and-forth. People state their cases, other people answer them. And we have a bit of that here. But normally we'd debate this for two, three days, let everyone have their say before we even START voting.

As to the quality of the editors, you're absolutely right, we're a younger crowd. But three of us voting are in the top 10 for number of edits in the past month, and I'm much lower than I would have been before the 2 week delay on Ask Vector Prime. Hell, Foffy the Sheep ALONE has more edits in the past month than EVERYONE voting against him COMBINED. SHIELD too. We're the actual worker bees, keeping the wiki running.

I would suggest that our perspectives matter. I would suggest that it's normal and natural and healthy that the new guard looks at what the old guard is doing and says "we can do better" and vigorously attempts to do so. And, further, that it's normal and healthy for the old guard to look at what the new guard is doing, and say, "those crazy kids. They're ruining everything. Why, in our day..." And then the new kids can learn from the old, and the old can perhaps temper the new, and everyone wins. But short-circuiting that process because we're new and young is absolutely the wrong move, sends the wrong message, and will cause more harm than good in the future. I urge you to reconsider, and let the discussion and eventual vote run its course. Because, again, the cure may be worse than the disease.--Giggidy (talk) 08:28, 7 January 2016 (EST)

A bit of a digression, but I don't think what you said about me and several others being top contributors is very accurate. If I make 200 edits to fix a link (such as going through pages and changing every instance of [[Lightfoot]] to [[Lightfoot (Masterforce)|Lightfoot]], for example), have I really contributed more than someone who made one edit to write an entire summary? That's a matter of opinion, really. To clarify, I'm not saying that people who make minor edits are worthless, I'm just saying that the number of edits you make aren't necessarily a good representation of how much you've contributed. -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 13:55, 7 January 2016 (EST)

Chris, Walky, Thy, Sipher, Repowers, Grum, me, Xaaron, Jalaguy and Tigerpaw28 vs Escargon, SHIELD, you, Lush, Sky Shadow, Foffy, and... IKY, who I've never heard of before. That's 10 to 7 in favour, even without Walky's proclamation. I'd argue against Walky using veto power here if there was a clear consensus against it, but there isn't. --Riptide (talk) 08:49, 7 January 2016 (EST)

I'm, uh, late to the party, but I would definitely throw my support behind the McFeely Proposal. And that's coming from someone who'd fight tooth and claw to keep other AVP content on the wiki. But regardless, Walky still had every right to call it as he did. Jalaguy (talk) 09:12, 7 January 2016 (EST)

Also late to the party, and also in favor of McFeely's proposal. As he said it is effectively Go-Bots fanfiction. There's next nothing in the Rhetoric answers that actually ties it to Transformers fictionally. Tigerpaw28 (talk) 13:06, 7 January 2016 (EST)

There's not a clear ANYTHING, because the debate lasted less than 12 hours with many prominent voices having yet to weigh in. What we have is schism, and typically on an issue this big we want an overwhelming majority. The vote is extremely skewed by the front waiting, due to drumming up support for the proposition offsite. More than half of the yes votes came immediately after the proposition was made, with no votes trickling in gradually but steadily all night.

But, really, Riptide, your opinion doesn't matter on this at all. Neither does mine, or Escargons. Walky has decided that this topic doesn't warrant debate, so the only person whose opinion matters on undoing this decision is Walky's. I'm hoping he at least reads and consider is my argument. --Giggidy (talk) 09:02, 7 January 2016 (EST)

Well, yes, that's my point. We have a schism, which is why I think it's fair enough that the head admin gets to call it in the absence of an overwhelming majority. Should he have waited longer? Probably, but I don't think the concept is inherently unfair. --Riptide (talk) 09:06, 7 January 2016 (EST)

The seniority argument is a bit creepy though. Do we really want to say "you've only been here since last June, you count less"? I've been here since 2007, I don';t think it helps anyone if I can pull out the Old Guard card if I'm having a spat with someone more recent. --Charles RB (talk) 14:23, 7 January 2016 (GMT)

Giggidy, whatever you have to say on this matter is absolutely worthless to me. As you yourself have admitted, you tried to create canon on this wiki by gaming AVP for answers. The problem is you. Why would I listen to you? The weeks-old folks are in the top edits now? That's because the current AVP-heavy focus is discouraging all the other regular editors, because it's such an avalanche of bad faith canon addition that to some it just doesn't seem worth it any more to contribute. If there's a dispute? One side Asks Vector Prime. It's a fucking cancer. It's squeezing out the rest of this wiki. Nobody's here anymore to finish up articles that need updating, they're just here to create canon via AVP. That is how my limited time is wasted on here now, managing all this dumb AVP shit, and lately I've found it too aggravating to even bother. If you keep making this whole enterprise a worthless bad-faith chore? Yeah, the website's going to go away, because why am I spending fucking money on this? So, yeah, I kinda do make the final call! Super sorry, guy who's only been here since June and only does the shit that frustrates everyone else away from here! --ItsWalky (talk) 13:34, 7 January 2016 (EST)

That's...really meanspirited Walky. You have every right to make that call, but a wiki like any community is a evolving system, if the majority of the user/editor base has shifted to Y, then as a wiki, Y is the nature of the scene. The idea that the community doesn't matter because of what the owner believes is a real strike against the spirit of this all. A straight vote would have been fine, but the precedent that if the editors shift one way that the wiki tells them to hug off, instead of the wiki naturally evolving with it's users is a dangerous precedent. We all came here as a celebration and communion of our fandom, what fandom means and how we express that differs but we all hold the true heart of the fan within us, and no one deserves to be shut down because there passion doesn't match up totally with anothers. To a significant portion, that Ask Vector Prime shit is there Transformers, it's there fandom, and cutting it out or stomping it down because you feel it should not be here is to neglect the heart love and passions others have for this. I spent all of my college career and most of High School here, I have spent hundreds hours on this site being whisked away into this fantasy; seeing countless adventures and mythos and drawing connections and ties between lore like some comparative mythologist of old. That was my fandom, that was my passion, and I know it is not yours and I would never say yours doesnt have a right to exist; we are equal here and there is no reason why we cannot peacefully and respectfully co exist and give proper due to all facets of the fandom. This is a demographic shift, a culture clash, between the "original" community (itself not how the wiki began as) and a newer culture grown from the seeds sown by our for bearers and a shifting attitude in the media that has changed this little mystery cult over time. But that's okay. Fans have grown up gone pro, influenced fiction, beget fans of there own and now what they bred has come into it's own. I am not asking for a free pass on anything, I am not trying to fight for special treatment, all I am saying is that differing views and experiences of the fandom and the wiki itself should be allowed to exist , grow and change without one voice lording dominant because they are the owner.

You know what Tf means to us, you know what it means to all of us. We all do. So please dont declare this war, please, allow everyone on the wiki the right to act edit and function for the harmony of us all and our readers. We can do this, together. Lush City (talk) 22:19, 7 January 2016 (EST)

I, uh...

Huh.

I honestly thought I was helping. --Giggidy (talk) 14:55, 7 January 2016 (EST)

Epilogue: It's all over but the crying

This was supposed to be a short reponse to Lush City, but it quickly grew, and as it did so, I began to re-evaluating my initial opinion on this matter. Bear with me through this wall of text, won't you please?

*clears throat* I think part of the reason some many of the editors on this wiki, including myself, have grown to resent GoBots so much is because of the mass amount of bullshit that is generated every time they're discussed. This discussion grew more in a day than most others do in a week; even big, huge drawn-out arguments like the Grand Galvatron fiasco that have reached an ungodly length pale in comparison to this one, and there are several other GoBots discussions just like this one. You know what they all have in common? They NEVER. GET. ANYWHERE. This exact discussion has been rehashed several times over the course of the past 6 years or so, and I imagine that's pretty tiresome for the people who have been here to each and every massive GoBots bitchfest unfold one after the other. Hell, I've only had to deal with one day of GoBots discussion and I'm already sick of it! I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like to deal with this shit on multiple different occasions over the course of several years, but I bet it's unpleasant.

When we first starting mentioning the GoBots and making pages to discuss their relevence to Transformers, it was like taking a puppy we found on the street and bringing him into our house. He was so cute and harmless, how could we not let him in? So we fed him and played with him and took care of him. As we did so, that cute little puppy slowly but surely grew into a vicious 80 pound behemoth that had a trail of destruction following it wherever it went. It may be the cutest dog ever, but it's harassing the neighbors and covering the house in fecal matter. Not only that, but it ate the sofa. It's more trouble than it's worth.

Dog ~~metaphors~~ similes aside, seeing this discussion has really changed my tune regarding Go-Bots. It's fun to have it, yes, but not fun enough to justify the massive bitchfests that take place every time someone tries to discuss what the length and scope of GoBots coverage should be. When Walky said he was ending this argument, I don't think he was just talking about this one particular instance of the debate that took place over the last 24 hours so much as the entirety of the various GoBots arguments over the past six years. And perhaps it's for the best; it seems that the inclusion GoBots on Transformers Wiki has brought nothing but suffering. I think we should really only be covering GoBots stuff from official Transformers fiction, and if we're honest, Renegade Rhetoric no longer falls into that category. -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 00:42, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Somewhere around this point, I remembered that Walky had already kinda-sorta ended the debate. (I say "kinda-sorta" because it continued on in spite of this to some extent.). I took a look at what I'd written, said to myself "Well, shit. I gotta do something with that." So I slapped this note on here and posted the whole kit and kaboodle onto the community portal, relevance be damned. -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 00:42, 8 January 2016 (EST)

I get what you are saying, but does that make GoBots the problem, or the fighting? Even so, I don't see that as a necessarily bad thing. We come together, debate, and reason out the best course of action, then keep on it until the situation changes and we come to a new consensus. That's exactly what a healthy Parliamentary body should do. When RR came up we discussed it and came to a decision, what I was showing concern about was Walky using judgment calls to prerserve demographic integrity, it felt a lot like there is an image of who this wiki is for, and that it would be enforced despite the actual editor/userbase. The idea that a wiki, or any community is served by the people instead of the other way around is a dangerous precedent so I am concerned of what will happen with future "culture clashes." Lush City (talk) 12:41, 8 January 2016 (EST)

I say leave tomorrow's worries to tomorrow. We'll handle them when we get to them. --Ascendron (talk) 13:16, 8 January 2016 (EST)

You make a good point, Lush City. Yeah, we will have to get together and lay down the new rules for this or whatever, but it's best if we give everyone a little time to simmer down and take everything in before we do so. This will eventually all be worked out in good time. -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 15:24, 8 January 2016 (EST)

how unfair do i have to make this place for lush city to leave --ItsWalky (talk) 15:32, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Let's not be overly harsh. We shouldn't make people feel like they are unwelcomed unless they are being purposefully offensive, or disagreeable for its own sake. Or are outright breaking rules. --Ascendron (talk) 15:49, 8 January 2016 (EST)

I am being exactly harsh enough. I'm pretty sure I kind of said to end all this shit because it's strangling the fucking wiki to death! Being able to put a foot down like that is WHY WE HAVE ADMINS. But sure, by all means, let's argue GoBots for the sixteenth billion time and continue to alienate everyone, because having someone even nominally in charge is fascism i guess. --ItsWalky (talk) 16:13, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Isn't Lush City the guy who argued that IDW somehow wasn't G1? Escargon (talk) 18:20, 8 January 2016 (EST)

I'm sorry that I came off as disrespectful, that was not my intent. I just wanted to say that so long as people are able to abide by administrative decisions, and respective the of the hierarchy, I bare no ill will towards them. I didn't mean my statement to be seen as an attack towards you, or an attempt to undermine your authority. It came off that way though, so I apologize again. --Ascendron (talk) 00:58, 9 January 2016 (EST)

Questions and self reflection

So, Walky said basically that I'm the problem, or part of it. And I don't want to be. I've got a lot of energy and I find wiki editing a relaxing way to unwind. I like puzzling through the connections and figuring out those ah ha moments when I feel like I can glimpse into the author's head and guess what they were thinking. So. How do I use that to be useful? I've done thousands of edits since I signed up and I really thought most of them were welcome and appropriate. Please, someone, point me in the right direction. --Giggidy (talk) 18:03, 8 January 2016 (EST)

All I can offer is the same advice from our Ulchtar discussion: "Be helpful, don't just be busy." I mean this as helpful criticism, but you do seem to confuse the two. Above, when you tried to call attention to Foffy the Sheep's value by saying, "Look how many contributions he makes a day!", even Foffy pointed out most of that was just adding links. Valid contributions, no doubt, but it isn't what makes someone a VIP contributor. I've been here since 2006. I created many of the original G1 character pages, filled out the fiction sections for every Mini-Con in the Armada cartoon and every secondary character in Headmasters, but I still consider myself a mid-level contributor at best.

Part of the problem is you came in during the AVP flurry of activity, which wasn't a good example of how the Wiki typically operates. Moving pages back and forth, renaming articles, votes on content...these used to be extremely rare events around here, once every six months or so. So what you might have seen as standard, day-to-day activity here was really a rare hassle becoming increasingly more common and grating on the nerves of the admins and long-time contributors without you even knowing it.

I haven't read through your contributions section, so I don't know what besides AVP you like to contribute. I know some of the fiction sections have become drastically out of date. With so many contributors focused on using AVP or cleaning up after it, pages like Rodimus's IDW appearances haven't been updated in nearly two years! I routinely troll the character stubs section linked on the first page to find things to do. Depending on your preference, there's also Images Needed and Wanted Pages to create linked on the front page, too.

Only other advice I'd offer is, for the moment, work more on contributing to the Wiki in its current format, instead of questioning or trying to change the format itself. That's my advice. --Xaaron (talk) 18:50, 8 January 2016 (EST)

I've found that another good way to help is by going through Orphaned pages list and linking them to the relevant articles, or making sure that the disambiguation pages mention every applicable character. Some of the character disambig pages are missing links to their Angry Birds counterparts, and I suspect that the same may be true for some of the Kreon versions of characters. There's also this list of articles that aren't linked to enough; it might be slightly outdated, but it's pretty useful.
I thought maybe my experience as a fairly new editor might be helpful to you; I hope this turns out to be the case.
(Side note: I was unaware that moving articles and such used to be a rare occurence; I'll try to keep that in mind and avoid such things whenever possible.) -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 19:10, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Reviving the Sister Wiki

So, I'm not going to argue about getting Gobots information on here anymore. However, this has made me want to actually go ahead and make that sister wiki. Now, I have no clue how to work with anything more than the most basic softwear, but I'd actively contribute to such a wiki. Is there anyone else who would? And if so, is there anyone who could set up a site? Escargon (talk) 18:26, 8 January 2016 (EST)

I'd be happy to contribute/move pages and info over from this wiki to any hypothetical Gobots wiki. That said, I have no software experience either, so I'm in the dark there along with you. Grum (talk) 18:59, 8 January 2016 (EST)

Maybe we could ask abates or something like that. If Derik was here, he could probably set something up. Escargon (talk) 19:07, 8 January 2016 (EST)

http://www.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Main_Page I have no real interest in GoBots nor any particular technical skill, but this seems like your best bet for setting up a wiki. It's Mediawiki, so it should work pretty much the same as this site (just, you know, without templates. Or a custom skin, unless you can get someone to do that. Or a unique url. Or content.) --Riptide (talk) 19:10, 8 January 2016 (EST)

I'd love to help out with this. I think with what I've seen about fights on TFWiki about GoBots, this would be a good solution, and then the pages that actually would exist here could link to there. I don't know much about GoBots or site editing, but I've been enjoying Renegade Rhetoric and would like to learn more about the GoBots. If this occurs, please let me know and I'll learn/teach myself what I need to help. Would this GoBots wiki consist of the AVP and related stuff also? "SoundJack426 (talk) 20:40, 8 January 2016 (EST)"

Yes, which brings me to my next point: One more thing I want to ask about any potential sister Gobots wiki: would we add Rock Lords information there too? Cause they were marketed separately, but they pretty much exclusively showed up in Gobots fiction, aside from the random storybook. Escargon (talk) 20:09, 10 January 2016 (EST)

I've been amazingly busy, but I still want to come back to this. I did make some attempts at cobbling some stuff, quickly realizing I'm still stuck with my understanding of coding at Windows XP Microsoft word and having no understanding of what any of this stuff means. However, I do want to at least try to make this wiki happen. I'd have to wait till summer to make any real big push with this, but in the meantime, if anyone can offer any means or advice, it would be appreciated. Escargon (talk) 19:31, 26 January 2016 (EST)

February 2016

Executive Summary

Clarification of existing status of GoBots on the wiki. Crossover GoBots get full write-up, with brief Renegade Rhetoric summaries.

Question about GoBots....not the one you are thinking of

Is there any objection to my adding External Links to Counter-X's Challenge of the GoBots profile pages to the character pages here? --Khajidha (talk) 10:54, 3 February 2016 (EST)

I was doing it only in lieu of TFU.info links. TFU seems to be our standard for outside toys links and we typically don't do others unless TFU lacks them for some reason. But I dunno if there's a legit policy about it or not. (that said, Counter X is a great GoBot-centric resource and probably more informative than TFU, just my opinion) --DrSpengler (talk) 10:58, 3 February 2016 (EST)

Counter-X has actual cartoon bio pages to link to, not just toy reviews.--Khajidha (talk) 10:59, 3 February 2016 (EST)

I don't think there's any issue with adding informative links. Saix (talk) 11:31, 3 February 2016 (EST)

Okay, Renegade-related pages linked. I'll tackle the Guardians later. Unless someone else wants to do it. --Khajidha (talk) 12:27, 5 February 2016 (EST)

Guardian-related pages linked. I changed format a time or two, I will go back later and harmonize ALL of them. Unless someone else beats me to it. --Khajidha (talk) 11:52, 22 February 2016 (EST)

OK, just to clarify, what Chris McFeely proposed last month was this: "GoBots characters only mentioned in Renegade Rhetoric stories consolidated into simplified 'List of Guardian' and 'List of Renegade' pages with only brief write-ups, linking readers to our archive of the Facebook posts if they want the full scoop. Characters such as Cy-Kill and those who have actually appeared in Transformers-universe stories should, of course, retain their own articles." So, it's permissible to write up full articles for characters who appear in the crossover fiction, yes, detailing their adventures in said crossover fiction? Those who only appear in Renegade Rhetoric get consolidated into a list with brief description of their Renegade Rhetoric adventures with links to the RR/src archive. And for the characters who do appear in crossover fiction, their Renegade Rhetoric adventures get that brief description with link to archive. I don't want to do work that will get reverted or start an argument, which is why I'm double-checking what Chris proposed and the community agreed.

If my understanding is correct, I'll try to write up the crossover fiction stuff, and then take a stab at consolidating whoever's left. I thought I remembered seeing a sandbox of consolidation, did anyone make any progress on that?--Giggidy (talk) 08:55, 25 February 2016 (EST)

Considering that we now list it as "Transformers: Renegade Rhetoric", does that distinction still apply? --Khajidha (talk) 09:21, 25 February 2016 (EST)

Let's not bring up old wounds and rehash old arguments. --Giggidy (talk) 09:43, 25 February 2016 (EST)

Chris's proposal was based on the idea that Renegade Rhetoric wasn't Transformers fiction. --Khajidha (talk) 09:50, 25 February 2016 (EST)

Jim has stated before that the "Transformers" part of the title doesn't really mean anything and shouldn't be taken too seriously. --Sabrblade (talk) 09:53, 25 February 2016 (EST)

I guess I can't argue against that. --Khajidha (talk) 09:57, 25 February 2016 (EST)

I would, however, argue that the RR appearances of characters who have other TF fiction appearances should be on their pages and not just on the archive. --Khajidha (talk) 10:01, 25 February 2016 (EST)

I don't want to argue about anything. I just want to confirm that I am correctly understanding and interpreting what was decided.--Giggidy (talk) 10:10, 25 February 2016 (EST)

So... no opinions on this? I'm maybe 90% sure I'm right in my interpretation, but I'd love Chris or Walky to weigh in just to be certain. If no one cares anymore, I'll assume I'm right and get started. --Giggidy (talk) 09:46, 26 February 2016 (EST)

Yep, your summary matches what I envisioned. I started this sandbox for the Renegades but I've been busy. - Chris McFeely (talk) 10:30, 26 February 2016 (EST)

Great. I'll try to get some progress done this weekend. --Giggidy (talk) 11:20, 26 February 2016 (EST)

I would say, though, that it'd be worth linking to at least one of the TFU/Counter-X profiles from these list pages, given that they provide useful context without it being the wiki's coverage; in particular, the likes of Jack Attack and Decker Decker, who (on the sandbox as it stands) don't give any indication of which unused Machine Robo toys they're based on, meaning it would be pretty much impossible for casual readers to track them down. I remember that someone proposed using a table instead of headers for the list pages; maybe have a column in the table for Counter-X links? --Riptide (talk) 12:40, 26 February 2016 (EST)

March 2016

Executive Summary

After the publication of Echoes and Fragments makes the previous ruling on Renegade Rhetoric moot, the community declares that ALL Facebook GoBots material is off limits on the grounds that we simply don't like it / it causes too many arguments, whether or not it is Transformers fiction.

Echoes and Fragments

This conversation originally took place on the Echoes and Fragments story page.

Initial Discussion

If ever we were given cause to kill individual GoBots pages, this disgusting masturbatory horseshit is it. If ever there was doubt that these things were being done to end-run and abuse the wiki, it's dead. Jesus fucking Christ. --M Sipher (talk) 02:32, 1 March 2016 (EST)

Finding it hard to argue with you. I mean.. geez. This is a lot of effort put into something for inconsequential stuff... Imagine if people put this much effort into... making a Go-Bots wiki. --Ascendron (talk) 02:46, 1 March 2016 (EST)

Jesus. I mean, I was in favour of this story getting its own page, but this is just... not good. I might try clearing it up and cutting it down, significantly, because oh dear. --Riptide (talk) 03:04, 1 March 2016 (EST)

I admit that if this page were to be deleted, I would probably not care. S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 03:06, 1 March 2016 (EST)

I hate to bring emotions into my decision, and I might regret just posting this but, at this point, I want to suggest going one step further and just having the Gobots links just go to the appropriate pages on Wikipedia. If a Gobots wiki is ever made, we can change them then to go to that wiki. For goodness's sake, we're a Transformers wiki. That's what I WANT to do here. And it's starting to drain me being in the middle of this. --Ascendron (talk) 03:07, 1 March 2016 (EST)

For what it's worth, Jim told me not to bother writing up this article because the wiki had instituted its no-GoBot rule. I told him he was wrong, that it was only Renegade Rhetoric that was considered out of scope, and even checked on community portal. He said the community had decided it didn't like GoBots and just respect their right to ignore the bits it doesn't like. Is that what's happening here? Is this the wiki of all the Transformers canon except the parts we don't like? Because if so there's some really creepy misogynistic bits I wouldn't mind removing/just linking to Wikipedia for. --Giggidy (talk) 03:30, 1 March 2016 (EST)

The difference is, those warts in transformers fiction is still Tranformers fiction. This is like... really stretching the definition? There's a few other character's I've considered suggesting collapsing into a single list article. Kamen Riders being one of them. --Ascendron (talk) 03:44, 1 March 2016 (EST)

(Yes, I edited a part of my previous post because it came off WAY more mean than I wanted it to). Really, alright, saying we should link them off might be going too far. In my ideal world, where everything would be perfect, the Gobots wiki would be a sister wiki of this one in every way. It would have the same layout, the same policies, and you could segway from one to the other easy as pie. But no matter how much people SAY they want to make a GoBots wiki, no one actually DOES. Surely you can understand how frustrating it is that people seem so intent to just force this wiki to bear the load of TWO franchises? --Ascendron (talk) 03:55, 1 March 2016 (EST)

I don't think that's what's going on here. Jim seemed perfectly fine with this stuff not being on the wiki. I really think he just has fun writing GoBots stories and is happy that Hasbro lets him. I guess it's my own OCD that makes me want to write up the GoBots who meet Transformers here, just like we do with Marvel heroes and G.I. Joe characters.

And as to this "stretching the definition" of a story... does it? Did you read it? I laughed out loud at several parts and found the juxtaposition of GoBots elements with the overly familiar Transformers The Movie story rather clever. Blaster getting swapped for Blaster, Leader-1's corny response to "why throw away your life so recklessly", Fracture and Deadlift as Unicron upgrades for Crasher and Deadlift. It's a good read, and virtually every scene has a traditional Transformer in it. So, to call it not a Transformers story seems unfair. --Giggidy (talk) 04:13, 1 March 2016 (EST)

Forget it, you win. --Ascendron (talk) 04:16, 1 March 2016 (EST)

I was just waiting for this story to shit everything up. - Chris McFeely (talk) 04:58, 1 March 2016 (EST)

Okay, so... as an extended story, I think this warrants its own page, yes. (As Jim pointed out, the original is only slightly shorter than the upcoming Beast Wars: Uprising story.) And it is heavily Transformers-based, as opposed to being more-or-less pure GoBots fiction like Renegade Rhetoric is. But I think that, really, 70-80% of this article could be replaced with "events followed as in Transformers: The Movie, except with these GoBots replacing these Transformers", because... that's what it is. We don't need full descriptions of anything except the Sideways/Vector/Gong parts. (Also, the sooner we condense the GoBot character pages, the better. All those red links are making me nervous that someone's going to start adding them.) --Riptide (talk) 05:32, 1 March 2016 (EST)

And that's exactly what I'm advocating. The page SHOULD exist. But really. REALLY. --M Sipher (talk) 05:55, 1 March 2016 (EST)

I would also like to add that I don't consider this justification to give the GoBots who appear in it individual articles, but I don't know if anyone was claiming it was. Just felt important to say. - Chris McFeely (talk) 05:58, 1 March 2016 (EST)

No? None of them? I mean, some get a ton of fiction here. Is there any intellectual foundation for this position, or is it basically just "we don't like it." I see plenty of room to condense characters, but certainly this should expand the scope of who gets featured. --Giggidy (talk) 08:09, 1 March 2016 (EST)

Don't. Just... don't, dude. This is not something you will get supported on, I assure you. --Riptide (talk) 09:18, 1 March 2016 (EST)

Sigh.

Giggidy, I like you, I truly do. I appreciate your enthusiasm for AVP and co. But there's a point where you have to step back on some things, and wonder if you're going too far.

Now, as for the article itself, I feel that there's bits that are acceptable and bits that aren't. The notes section is fine, who's replaced with who makes sense. But the summary really needs paring down. Escargon (talk) 06:47, 1 March 2016 (EST)

It seems a bit narcissistic to insist that Jim shouldn't write what he wants to write because of the wiki or that it's the purpose of his work. Nobody's obligated to respect our idiosyncrasies when it comes to particular topics. Saix (talk) 09:32, 1 March 2016 (EST)

Delete

Why is this even an issue? I thought this was all settled two months ago. If the wiki doesn't want to cover GoBots (or any other piece of my writing, or anyone elses' for that matter) the wiki doesn't have to. I'm a big believer in engaging with the bits of the franchise you like, and ignoring the bits you don't. Giggidy, the reason I asked you not to write up this article was because it's evident which way the majority of this particular community leans. Just respect that. I'll write whatever I want, the wiki can cover whatever it wants, and other readers can read or not read whatever they want. It's not rocket science here. --Jimsorenson (talk) 11:11, 1 March 2016 (EST)

The issue is that this isn't unambiguously GoBots fiction like the majority of us consider Renegade Rhetoric to be; it's combination GoBots and Transformers fiction, a la Withered Hope. I don't think anyone actually thinks this shouldn't be covered. --Riptide (talk) 13:43, 1 March 2016 (EST)

Yeah, I definitely think this should be covered. The issue of how to handle the Go-Bots elements is something we'll have to deal with somehow. (I think we said they would all go in a list article or something? Am I understanding that correctly?) If there was a Go-Bots wiki, I'd say we should link to that, but... -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 13:53, 1 March 2016 (EST)

A different proposal

Since this story was presented by Vector Prime in universe as a document written by his student, Blueshift, what if we were to likewise treat this story as such? Instead of this article covering the events of a fictional story written by a real world author (Jim Sorenson), it would cover the contents of a fictional document written by a fictional author (Blueshift), thereby treating the actual story within the document as a meta-fictional story-within-a-story that we needn't cover in the same manner as real-world fiction, but still having it covered on here in some fashion. --Sabrblade (talk) 18:18, 1 March 2016 (EST)

I'm against it. There's no point being cheeky about it and trying to find loopholes so we can get to say "it doesn't count." The Go-Bots can still get one list-page. There's no reason list-pages can't be just as informative, interesting, and in-depth as anything else. And there's no reason why the existence of this specific fiction should change our approach to the Go-Bots being documented. It's not about whether the story is good or bad. I enjoy Sorenson's writing frequently. It's about the fact that we approach different franchises outside of TF on a pretty case-by-case basis, and I think the (mostly) list article is the fairest approach for Go-Bots. G.I. Joe has special "rules" that let us include a little bit more than we would for say, Star Wars. I know my reaction was based on the presumption of what it meant about other Go-Bots articles. I'm sure that's the case for other people. Everything should be documented in full, as it should be, but you shouldn't wind up on a Go-Bots page every third click of the "Random Page" button with the current proposal. Article stands. List of Go-Bot stands. That's what I think. --Ascendron (talk) 02:38, 2 March 2016 (EST)

Oy. Yes. What Ascendron said. TF fiction is confusing enough as it is. Proposals like that only complicate it more. --M Sipher (talk) 03:25, 2 March 2016 (EST)

Yeah, I don't think anyone was actually saying this should be covered in any way other than normal. It just need to not be used as an excuse to go back on our previous GoBots ruling. - Chris McFeely (talk) 05:59, 2 March 2016 (EST)

But our previous GoBots ruling specifically does not cover situations like this. I can see the case for using a list on the guys that get a one-off mention, which is most of them. But for big players like Major Mo or Zero, I don't see how it can be used with any degree of coherency. --Giggidy (talk) 07:38, 2 March 2016 (EST)

Fine. New proposal: extend the previous GoBots ruling to cover the GoBots characters in Echoes and Fragments. All in favour? --Riptide (talk) 08:02, 2 March 2016 (EST)

Old proposal was on the somewhat dubious grounds that "Renegade Rhetoric is not Transformers fiction." Is there any kind of intellectual foundation for this new proposal beyond "we don't like GoBots" that I'm not seeing here? And shouldn't a proposal like this be debated on Community Portal? --Giggidy (talk) 08:13, 2 March 2016 (EST)

Giggidy, please, let it go. "We don't like GoBots" is a PERFECTLY VALID and legitimate reason not to want to write about it. They don't NEED a better reason, so stop asking for one.

And, wiki folks, not for nothin', but I strongly recommend just adopting the stance that all GoBots are verboten and not try to contort yourself through intellectual hoops to justify their exclusion. I've had GoBots in my work since 2010 (though you can be forgiven for not realizing that [[Zero (Animated)]] and [[Zero (GoBots)]] aren't the same dude, since I hadn't introduce the concept of the diaspora yet) and I'm not likely to stop any time in the near future. I'll be happier if every time you see a Monster GoBot in Uprising or there's some new GoBot face in Axiom Nexus it doesn't kick off a big argument, and in the long run you'll be happier too. --Jimsorenson (talk) 09:27, 2 March 2016 (EST)

I don't think we want that, though. The solution of "all GoBots compacted onto a few pages for GoBots fiction from the Facebook pages" is a reasonably elegant one, I think, that lets us remain a comprehensive source of Transformers information without being flooded with individual GoBot stubs (due to the fact that a good deal of the Facebook content is as much GoBots as it is Transformers, and the wiki does not consider the former to be a subset of the latter). Scrubbing all GoBots content off entirely would be a bad idea; we shouldn't not cover the likes of Zero, Vamp and Creepy just because they originated in GoBots. --Riptide (talk) 11:28, 2 March 2016 (EST) (And I never want to say anything with that density of the word "GoBots in again".)

If we were a Beatles compendium, we couldn't get away with "Let's not include Yoko Ono at all because we don't like her involvement in the band." (and no, I'm not comparing anyone to Yoko Ono.) For better or worse, Go-Bots is part of Transformers fiction now, and simply turning a blind eye to it does little more than leave gaping holes in the website. --Ascendron (talk) 11:40, 2 March 2016 (EST)

Ding ding ding. Stop letting petty wiki grudges dictate our content. Saix (talk) 11:47, 2 March 2016 (EST)

Ascendron's right. While filling the site with GoBots stubs is undesirable, to ignore them entirely would be to ignore a fairly large chunk of recent Transformers fiction. I think the list article is probably the best solution, and it's one we had already agreed upon, if I remember correctly. -Foffy the Sheep (talk) 11:58, 2 March 2016 (EST)

Odds are, there will be a day when the list article will be abandoned, as every Go-Bots character will have enough meat to their appearances to warrant its own page. That will be then, this is now. --Ascendron (talk) 12:18, 2 March 2016 (EST)

Can't we just get past this bullshit already? Some people on the wiki don't like covering GoBots, but nobody is obligated to respect the supposed "consensus" of some website and we will just have to deal. Saix (talk) 09:01, 2 March 2016 (EST)

Individual Write-Ups

OK, we're definitely not deleting, which I agree with. But that brings us to this:

"simply turning a blind eye to it does little more than leave gaping holes in the website."

How is that not what we're doing by not writing up the characters who appear prominently in this story? Keeping in mind that the previous proposal specifically does not cover this story or anything like it. The intellectual foundation for excluding Renegade Rhetoric is that "it's not Transformers fiction." Leaving aside the sheer absurdity of declaring that licensed fiction about transforming robots published under this logo with these title cards is somehow "not Transformers fiction", we all, even M Sipher and Walky, agree that Echoes and Fragments is Transformers fiction. So none of the logic or reasoning for keeping them to one big list applies. The only person who seems to be advocating for "if you don't like it don't cover it" is Jim Sorenson himself, so I again ask, is there any intellectual foundation or argument to not cover characters appearing in this story other than "we don't like them"?

Ascendron, statements like this "Odds are, there will be a day when the list article will be abandoned, as every Go-Bots character will have enough meat to their appearances to warrant its own page." make me think that you're making some kind of notability argument. I went ahead and added Echoes fiction to the existing Major Mo page, as well as condensing the existing RR fiction and adding the very brief high-level summary of the RR fiction that hadn't yet been documented. I kept the Echoes to an extremely high level, like we're to do with RR fiction. Even with all of his appearances limited to just the bullet points, it's a real and substantial article. It would be much longer if we actually documented his appearances the way we do everything else. Is his article really less substantial than the likes of Harcourt or Marty Cooper or Roxy Sparkles or Brawley (ROTF) or Deep Earth Scout?

I get that some people don't like GoBots. I get that people are sick of arguing about it. But at some point, isn't it easier and simpler to just stop putting our fingers in our ears and shouting at the top of our lungs "LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU NO GOBOTS HERE" and just treat them exactly like we'd treat any other piece of licensed fiction, and stop making special rules and exclusions for them? --Giggidy (talk) 07:57, 3 March 2016 (EST)

Because GoBots is a special case, and one of the biggest cases of bad-faith manipulation of the Timelines Facebook pages, and it feels wrong to give characters full pages because they didn't show up in this given that we're not doing so for Renegade Rhetoric characters. It may not be entirely consistent, but it's also what the opinion of pretty much everyone except you, Giggidy, seems to be. So, if you can convince people to support you, great, but until you can show evidence of consensus we are likely to stick with counting the GoBots characters from this story as a Renegade Rhetoric appearance. --Riptide (talk) 08:31, 3 March 2016 (EST)

Is it? You and Chris have chimed in, and that's it. If two people on a random talk page is enough to not cover characters fully, why don't I go over to Kiss Players and start a talk page there and see if I can get two or three people to agree to de-wiki all that stuff?--Giggidy (talk) 08:51, 3 March 2016 (EST)

And Sipher, and Ascendron has indicated that he'd rather have all GoBots links have to go to Wikipedia than to let this "mess up" the wiki. And, you know, it doesn't even matter until the list pages are live, so I'm not going to say any more on this subject until it becomes actual furniture-shuffling, as opposed to just hypothetical. --Riptide (talk) 09:02, 3 March 2016 (EST)

Rather telling that so many folks vote for a "solution" and then make zero effort to implement it. Meanwhile I'd be done updating it by now if people weren't so busy advocating for special exceptions be made and extended rather than just treating this fiction the same way we do everything else, including the German bits that make no sense and the Japanenergy tentacle porn.--Giggidy (talk) 09:19, 3 March 2016 (EST)

I get that the consensus is that GoBots fiction from before Hasbro bought Tonka is considered out of bounds here (I don't AGREE with it, but I see no point in continuing that fight). What I DON'T understand is how, given that we've been told that GoBots are their universe's equivalents of Transformers, there is any justification for leaving out any new GB fiction. GBs are TFs now, so new GB fiction IS new TF fiction. --Khajidha (talk) 10:51, 3 March 2016 (EST)

I agree, but there's nothing we can do about it at this point. There's a reason the dissenters have stopped replying; they've won, and they know arguing about it futhermore is pointless. Saix (talk) 11:20, 3 March 2016 (EST)

Well, not really. If it's a vote about handling Echoes characters, there is at least as much support for treating them the way we normally do is making a special exception, so it's probably safe to go ahead and do so. On the otber hand, if you're talking about revisiting the Renegade Rhetoric decision, I agree with you that that would be a pointless discussion. --Giggidy (talk) 11:47, 3 March 2016 (EST)

And I don't think the "consensus" will change. It's still "eviiiiil maniac Jim out to destroy our poor wiki with GoBots", regardless of the specific label it's under. Saix (talk) 12:05, 3 March 2016 (EST)

I just wish someone beyond the people who wanted to keep it and those who only wanted it separated because of all the arguing would do something with this list idea, cause I sure as hell don't see anyone arguing against their inclusion since the beginning helping with that. Escargon (talk) 15:50, 3 March 2016 (EST)

So, at least 4 of us in favor of treating this like any other piece of TF fiction and not saying that it's not Transformers fiction as Renegade Rhetoric is. (Me, Saix, Khajidha, Ascendron per his talk page.) We know Chris disagrees, and Riptide because it feels wrong. Anyone else want to chime in? And is "feels wrong" a precedent we want to set as a reason to exclude content? --Giggidy (talk) 00:15, 4 March 2016 (EST)

All I really have to say is that if we treated it like any other piece of Transformers fiction, we'd have to give everyone who appears in it a page, as per wiki rules. It's kind of arbitrary to say "Major Mo and Alice and Bob appear in this more than anyone else does, so they should get pages but nobody else should". --Riptide (talk) 05:36, 4 March 2016 (EST)

But I'm not advocating that. I'm advocating that characters with a substantial role get a page. It's "kind of arbitrary" to treat this differently than any other piece of crossover fiction too, but I don't see that stopping you. --Giggidy (talk) 07:02, 4 March 2016 (EST)

There is no objective, wiki-rule reason for not creating pages and I personally don't mind, but the whole argument on GoBots keeps causing ill-feeling and conflict around here so I'm voting against. --Charles RB (talk) 11:33, 4 March 2016 (GMT)

The previous mandate handed down was about GoBots in general. No one could read it and assume it was specifically about Renegade Rhetoric and not about other Gobots-material creeping in, particularly not other Gobots-material from the same source in a slightly different format. NO, there should NOT be individual pages for GoBot characters who appeared in Echoes and Fragments.

And Giggidy, by leading the charge on this, you've really shown that you learned nothing from the last AVP fiasco about how to usefully contribute to the Wiki. This is...the worst thing you could have done. Honestly. The worst. --Xaaron (talk) 07:34, 4 March 2016 (EST)

The previous mandate specifically stated "since moving to its own page, with Cy-Kill returning to his own universe and talking exclusively about "unmade" GoBots episodes, "Renegade Rhetoric" has become GoBots fiction, not Transformers fiction, and we do not cover GoBots fiction. Events from Challenge of the GoBots "season 2" do not warrant coverage on the wiki" I don't see how anyone could read that as anything other than what it says. It says Renegade Rehetoric has become GoBots fiction which we don't cover. Echoes and Fragments everyone agrees is Transformers fiction. Ergo it has nothing to do with Chris' proposal. Note Charles above, "There is no objective, wiki-rule reason for not creating pages," or even Ripclaw on Allspark: "I... can't really come up with a cohesive argument against it, so...". I even asked Chris, who authored the proposal, if my understanding was correct, and he said it was. I cannot understand what possible reasoning there is beyond "we don't like it" which was explicitly rejected above, and apparently neither can anyone else. We're literally taking a story everyone agrees is Transformers fiction and not covering the main character, who is also on the cover, because some OTHER DIFFERENT GoBots story is "not Transformers" despite being branded as such. --Giggidy (talk) 10:29, 4 March 2016 (EST)

Upthread, Jim says he's been writing GoBots into his stories since 2010. The article says this story was published in 2008. The article was created 3 days ago. Something doesn't add up. I've watched with great appreciation as McFeely continues to develop his master list of GoBot pages. Once those go live, 90+% of the current GoBot stand-alone pages will get the immediate, permanent, and incontestable deletion they deserve, and there will be no more shadows of loopholes that might confuse new readers about our policies.

And honestly, if people keep pushing the envelope I suspect it would really fucking backfire. We were sick of this shit already YEARS ago. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 09:10, 4 March 2016 (EST)

The article says the story was published in 2016. I think Jim is probably referring to Transformers Animated: The AllSpark Almanac II.--Giggidy (talk) 10:09, 4 March 2016 (EST)

I capitulate

Fine. Even though there is zero intellectual coherence behind the position of not covering the characters in this story, I'll stop arguing because again I'm inexplicably in the minority. All I was suggesting was that we handle this story exactly like we handle every other crossover story. I didn't agree with the ruling on Renegade Rhetoric not being Transformers fiction, but I respected that there was a solid foundation for it. This decision has no foundation aside from "we don't like it" which is a terrible reason not to cover the licensed branded fiction. And since Sorenson has stated that there's more GoBots fiction coming in the future, I look forward to the NEXT argument when people try to stretch the fig-leaf of "we don't like it" to cover more and more. Because you know it's coming. --Giggidy (talk) 10:29, 4 March 2016 (EST)

Sick Of Arguing About GoBots II

The existing rule was: "I think that any events described from the original, actually-existing cartoon should be reduced to minimum, and all GoBots characters only mentioned in these stories consolidated into simplified "List of Guardian" and "List of Renegade" pages with only brief write-ups, linking readers to our archive of the Facebook posts if they want the full scoop. Characters such as Cy-Kill and those who have actually appeared in Transformers-universe stories should, of course, retain their own articles"

That caused a lot of argument over Echoes and Fragments, since most people did not want to create new pages for each named character even though 'legally' it's fine. This is going to come up again when new GoBots appears in a Transformers fanfic (and Macrocosmic Seekers is all about that).

At this point, might be worth altering the law to "who have actually appeared in Transformers-universe stories with a moderate-to-large role in Transformers fanfiction" i.e. Major Mo is fine because he had a big role in Echoes but Back Grounder the Rock Lord who was only mentioned briefly in a crowd scene is not. That seems to be the spirit of the law. - Charles RB (talk) 17:27, 4 March 2016 (GMT)

I vote no. "GoBots characters and concepts who have not appeared outside of Facebook-based media do not get their own pages" is a reasonable policy without loopholes. --Riptide (talk) 12:52, 4 March 2016 (EST)

That's the crux of this all, so if it gets people to shut up about this forever, please, for the love of God. Stuff that has appeared or been mentioned in other media will still get appropriate pages—nobody has ever argued against that. Saix (talk) 13:18, 4 March 2016 (EST)

Agree with Riptide. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 13:34, 4 March 2016 (EST)

I think this is a terrible, terrible rule and an awful precedent, but it is at least honest and non-subjective. --Giggidy (talk) 14:23, 4 March 2016 (EST)

So, that's the concensus. The rule is "GoBots and major associated characters who appear only on Facebook pages get the list treatment." The justification is that GoBots is a frequent source of arguments and the hope is a simple, unambiguous rule will curtail these arguments. --Giggidy (talk) 23:07, 5 March 2016 (EST)

I would like some clarification: once the master lists go up and many GoBot articles are deleted/redirected, what about the Renegade Rhetoric fiction sections on the pages which stay, e.g. Cy-Kill or Bug Bite? It is my understanding that we are minimizing Challenge of the GoBots season 1 content to summaries, but what of "season 2" adventures? Can any of it go on the wiki? S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent 47 (talk) 02:17, 31 March 2016 (EDT)

As I've been reading it, RR has been de-credentialed and will be purged, completely. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 07:01, 31 March 2016 (EDT)

I wasn't sure either, so I asked Chris up above in the Question about GoBots block, and he confirmed my understanding, which is this: For the characters who appear in crossover fiction, their Renegade Rhetoric adventures get a brief write-up with link to RR archive. So, Renegade Rhetoric adventures do count, but get written up in a truncated way. I've been meaning to get to everyone, but have been busy with school. When Puzzler got mentioned in High Noon I did a pass on him, which shows about the level I think was authorized for Renegade Rhetoric write-ups. --Giggidy (talk) 09:40, 31 March 2016 (EDT)

Does Echoes and Fragments count as a piece of crossover fiction? Because that gives... like... every GoBot a sentence or two of "screen-time", which might throw a wrench in the plan. Grum (talk) 10:10, 31 March 2016 (EDT)

We've decided that the Facebook fiction in general does not "count" enough to give GoBots characters their own pages, unless they have appeared in non-Facebook-based fiction. We probably should give Puzzler his own page, but ehh. --Riptide (talk) 11:34, 31 March 2016 (EDT)

It's a strange place we find ourselves in. The original justification of not wikifying Renegade Rhetoric was that it's somehow technically not Transformers fiction. That went out the window with Echoes and Fragments, so Chris basically said that the goal was to keep GoBots footprint to a minimum regardless of their appearances in unambiguously Transformers fiction. The new rule is that Facebook appearances don't count towards whether or not a character gets a page, because we don't like GoBots/they cause too many arguments. But if/when they show up elsewhere the Facebook stuff gets written up. So, I expect many more pages like Puzzler, where there's a one-sentence mention from some other fiction and then four or five paragraphs of Facebook stuff. --Giggidy (talk) 12:50, 31 March 2016 (EDT)

See prior discussion on Talk:Echoes and Fragments. --abates (talk) 15:28, 31 March 2016 (EDT)

TL;DR

GoBots (and related characters/ideas) who appear in non-Facebook Transformers crossovers get full write-ups, because that's how we handle all crossovers. GoBots who appear exclusively in FunPub Facebook pages (i.e. Ask Vector Prime), get no write-ups, because we don't like GoBots on the wiki / they cause too many arguments. GoBots who appear in both get full crossover write-ups, but only limited Transformers: Renegade Rhetoric write-ups because we consider Renegade Rhetoric to be non-Transformers fiction.

The current state of Shoutwiki and the IDW comic's impact on this discussion WARNING SPOILERS FOR THE IDW COMIC

So, with the Go-Bots comic and the current state of both of our sister wikis, I think it's time to re-examine our options. Now before this gets out of hand, I just want to clarify: I am NOT advocating for both of them to be folded into TFWiki.net at the time being. What I want is to look at what we have now and see how we can improve. Also spoilers for the Tom Scioli series.

So, first off, with the ShoutWiki bit:

For nearly a year, both of the wiki's have had very little activity. IDW Hasbro has had slightly more activity, but much of that has petered off recently, at least. Part of that, I have always felt, is due to a lack of good advertisement on TFWiki. It took, give or take, over half of a year for the GoBots and IDW Hasbro Wiki to receive any acknowledgement on our main page that wasn't the consistently changing "disambiguration" bit, and even then they're not particularly noticeable. Now, we could say this is due to a lack of interest, which for GoBots, I could have seen prior to the IDW comic, but I don't think that makes sense for the IDW Hasbro wiki. Additional issues include:

1. The mass amount of spambots and non-user editors. We have no control over ShoutWiki like we do with TFWiki. As such, spambots are still quite rampant in comparison, and IP address-based users are still active. This is undesirable for many reasons.

2. The problem of Wikia/Fandom. As we know, Gamepedia was recently bought out by Wikia/Fandom. Now, I won't pretend I have any idea how that works, but knowing how awful Fandom is today, I would worry about any possibility that ShoutWiki would suffer the same fate. And as we've seen with Mirage's posts on the Allspark Forums thread for the GoBots wiki, Fandom's current management is beyond screwed up.

On the comics front themselves (SPOILERS IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE COMIC FROM HERE ON OUT):

1. The comic connects them to the Transformers. As seen in the end of issues, the GoBots are depicted as the creators of the Transformers, connecting them once more. Now, when even the comic produced by Hasbro's main go-to comic company, written by someone not too heavily involved in the fandom, connects them to the Transformers, it's worth re-examining.

2. The comic's legal info. Now, a big part of the position against putting them on the Wiki is that it seemed that Hasbro was unwilling to use the GoBots beyond slight homages. Possible reasons for this include the idea that Hasbro only owns the names, and that other parts are still owned by Bandai and Warner Bros. Now, the indicia for the Go-Bots comic only has Hasbro listed in the legal bit. The comic uses characters from the Hanna-Barbera cartoon, and everyone is drawn faithfully to the Bandai toys. It would seem that Hasbro is much more confident on their ownership of the characters than they were 2-3 years ago.

Now, to examine our options:

1. We fold these wikis into ours. Again, I am NOT advocating for this. That being said, gained advantages include: better prevention of spambots; being on this wiki, my hypothesis is that there would be a lot more attraction to create these articles than there are now for the two out of the way ones; and we wouldn't have someone selling off out wiki to a ponzi scheme disguised as a "community".

2. We create new wikis we own ourselves. Personally, I'm all for that, but there are several problems. A lot of the people involved with the set up of this wiki aren't really around anymore or are inactive. There aren't very many beyond abates that I can think of who have good backgrounds in the more technical side of stuff, but I could be forgetting some. Additionally, there would be more money to pay to have 3 sites up, and I understand that is a lot to ask for. Additionally, without better advertising, we'd run into the same problem we haven now. There might be other stuff but again, I'm no tech wizard.

3. We get better advertising for our two Shoutwiki and hope for the best. Probably the easiest of the three options, and the least costly/headache inducing. The only problem is still the spambots and the chance that Wikia will buy ShoutWiki out.

In any case, I wanted to bring this stuff up after talking with several friends about the states of our 2 sister wikis; this is not me trying to reopen old wounds. I hope that is clear. If I am unclear about anything I am willing to clarify-been busy with final exams for school which is why I'm only now getting to this after having wanted to bring it up for a while, and it's hard to focus during this crunch. Escargon (talk) 18:18, 4 May 2019 (EDT)

Is the sister Wiki still a thing?

Just spend a day or two editing the Gobot wiki before I stumbled on this discussion... is the sister wiki still an ongoing concern or has it been abandoned by the admins? Part of me wants to do much, much more as the Gobots side of the thing really needs some work but I don't want to waste time on it (well, beyond that any wiki editing is a waste of time) if it's wound down.

Shadow XGX-9 (talk) 09:49, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

We still link to it on our main page here. It's just that there simply hasn't much interest in it as of late. Most of the activity was brought on in response to Fun Pub's Renegade Rhetoric generating a renewed interest in GoBots, but which has since died down. There was the IDW GoBots mini-series that sparked a new interest, but that's wound down since too. GoBots just doesn't have the fire and staying power to keep most people's interest in it perpetually ongoing, but that doesn't mean we've abandoned GBWiki. If you're interested in working on it, then by all means have at it. --Sabrblade (talk) 11:43, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

It's worth remembering that the people currently running TFWiki didn't create it--they found a dilapidated Transformers wiki in the wild, and nursed it to health, until it became the powerhouse it is today. Even if the people currently there have lost interest, there's always a chance that your work could give it the second wind it needs to become a vital resource. --Wack'd (talk) 12:31, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

As long as it's not going to somehow expire in a puff of 404s in a week's time (I have no idea how hosting of Wikias works) I'm more than happy chugging away, just didn't want to bother if I'd missed something. TVM guys Shadow XGX-9 (talk) 12:42, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

Revisiting our organizational schema

Over the last six years or so, we have had a steady influx of what I am going to call "outside" content that is only tangentially relevant to the Transformers franchise as a whole—MASK, Micronauts, Visionaries, Star Trek, Ghostbusters, Terminator, Back to the Future, and two My Little Pony crossovers with a possible third volume on the way. It is clear that Hasbro and its licensees are open to the idea of multiple franchises and outside properties coexisting with the Transformers, and our wiki policy up to this point has generally been amenable to the idea of treating these characters the way we would any other character: an individual wiki article that documents their characterization and their role in any given story, regardless of how major or minor that role is. (See also: Slywire, Arex, Killerwatt, Doctor Hooves, etc.)

There is one exception to the way that we treat these crossover characters: due to the controversies surrounding the "Renegade Rhetoric" era, we currently do not give the majority of Guardians and Renegades their own individual pages, and have currently amalgamated the vast majority of these redirects onto a single table.

It is true that our current organizational schema regarding the GoBots was born out of a sense of frustration regarding the ongoing "wiki-gaming" situation at the time regarding Renegade Rhetoric and Ask Vector Prime. However, with every new IDW crossover or Collaborative toy--and especially given the recent Go-Bots comic, which was not a strict crossover, but very strongly implied a connection between the GoBots and the Cybertronian race--the way that we handle GoBot coverage on the wiki feels increasingly unhelpful and antiquated. Now that we've had five years of constant crossovers and also time to look back on our decisions with a cooler head, I am proposing that we shift back to our pre-"Renegade Rhetoric"-era method of covering these characters by giving them their own individual pages and treating them the way we would any other faction.

I am open to discussion as to whether or not we should include "Renegade Rhetoric" writeups, or even possibly a fiction writeup regarding their activities in the Scioli series--though I will remind users that we do have the GBwiki established already as a way to absorb non-Transformers crossover information. However, I feel that "Echoes and Fragments" should absolutely be covered on their respective pages, the way we'd cover any IDW crossover. Grum (talk) 20:06, 1 August 2021 (EDT)

Yes. Escargon (talk) 20:17, 1 August 2021 (EDT)

I'm ambivalent as, like you said, the fact these characters are mentioned on the wiki at all is because of that aforementioned wiki-gaming, and I'm not convinced the pages would be worth much. I wouldn't fight it, though. --Riptide (talk) 20:25, 1 August 2021 (EDT)

Our system is just fine as-is and I see no reason to change it. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 21:38, 1 August 2021 (EDT)

What, if anything, distinguishes GoBots that makes the Guardians and Renegades unavailble for articles, but the near 100 ponies eligible? Escargon (talk) 21:43, 1 August 2021 (EDT)

There wasn't a decade of people ignoring and gaslighting our judgments, cheating the wiki's criteria, and personally insulting anyone who tried to stop them over My Little Pony. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 21:50, 1 August 2021 (EDT)

All of that is addressed in the post. The way it is now, we are actively limiting information due to fights from half a decade ago. If and/or when there is an IDW comic crossing over the two, we'll have to drop the facade, one that's already being called into question. Escargon (talk) 22:17, 1 August 2021 (EDT)

So let's wait for the crossover and change our system "if and/or when" it ever happens. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 22:24, 1 August 2021 (EDT)

Would "Gobots pages that would have more than just a single Renegade Rhetoric section can exist, while those that wouldn't stay in list hell until such time as they would" be an acceptable compromise here? That would pages that exist that have good reason to, without reinstating wiki-gaming from five years ago. -Foffy (talk) 22:34, 1 August 2021 (EDT)

(There's probably a case to be made for Echoes and Fragments being an exception, since it's essentially a full-on prose story rather than just "someone asked cy-kill if knew bob the go-bot and he said yes", but i'm not gonna argue that one too heavily) -Foffy (talk) 22:36, 1 August 2021 (EDT)

TFWiki's current policy towards GoBots reflects the franchise's status in 2004 - 2007, when it was seen as an external brand like My Little Pony or Starriors. Gobots were a separate species from a parallel universe with a different, partially organic physiology. But beginning in 2010 we saw the first hints of change as the Allspark Almanac 2 revealed that in some Alternate Universes, Gobots characters simply were Transformers. By 2015-2016 official publications revealed that they were just a highly divergent version of the Transformer species and started presenting new stories featuring them, generated by Hasbro and representing the brand in this new shared context.

Things changed. I'm not saying that we necessarily have to alter our policy, but we do have to acknowledge that the status of GoBots relative to Transformers has changed. If we do choose to integrate it any further into the wiki it will not be because the people demanding it all those years ago were "right," because the brand as it existed at that time did not warrant inclusion.

I have wrestled with this one and come down on either side but, for me, this is the critical factor: The Evil One from GoBots is the Fallen. Same dude. Multiversal singularity. They are Transformers, full stop. They merit inclusion.

(I'm also going to be a jerk and say the events of Challenge of the GoBots should not be covered by the wiki, just because I'm a difficult asshole. All of the important stuff from the cartoon was represented in Renegade Rhetoric anyway.) -Derik (talk) 23:16, 1 August 2021 (EDT)

I'm of the opinion that, bare minimum, the Scioli series should be covered here in full. The final issue makes it clear that the series *is* a Transformers story, and as fiction that was designed to tie in with Transformers from the start, it should be integrated by the same logic as post-Revolution Hasbroverse (which, I remind you, was unanimously agreed upon like a week ago). -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 23:24, 1 August 2021 (EDT)

Doing that would require pages for all of the characters. -Derik (talk) 23:30, 1 August 2021 (EDT)

And...? -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 23:33, 1 August 2021 (EDT)

I'm just clarifying -- if we choose to cover the IDW Go-Bots miniseries which includes non-trivial Transformers elements... then we have to make pages for all the Go-Bots characters. It's all or nothing, you can't just tiptoe in and do 'a little Go-Bots' because the test case literally REQUIRES you to go whole-hog.

I think that's the right thing to do FWIW. They're Transformers and all modern stories treat them as Transformers. There was a time when keeping them separate or consigning their appearances to trivia was appropriate, but that simply is not the case anymore. They need proper pages. -Derik (talk) 00:34, 2 August 2021 (EDT)

I'm not up to date with any of the current GoBots media, but from a toyline standpoint at least, Hasbro has shown countless times that they are willing to repurpose GoBots characters as Transformers, even if it is just as basic as a reuse of the name. I don't really have any particular stance on GoBots coverage on this wiki, but I do feel that it should be more of an "all or nothing" case. Unlike MLP or G.I. Joe or Back to the Future, which just drops in a few cameos from characters living in a shared-universe of some sort, GoBots has been reintegrated into Transformers as Cybertronians almost every time. Imo, it has become more of a US vs Japan Headmaster/Targetmaster-type situation. Sometimes they are a different race, sometimes they're not. At the end of the day, they are inadvertently Transformers by association. I would even go so far as to say that they are a reverse-case of Beastformers. Started off as it's own thing and became Transformers, rather than the other way around. --Fanofcoolstuff27 (talk) 03:56, 2 August 2021 (EDT)

I'm all in for giving pages to characters that appeared in Transformers-branded fiction or fiction that officially included Transformers (Scioli series) and not dictating our content based on weird Internet grudges over toy robots. Saix (talk) 09:52, 2 August 2021 (EDT)

Would this entail Robo Machine and thus Machine Robo through the fictional overlap the properties have, via the Robo Machines comic featuring Gobots and Machine Robo elements? Shadow XGX-9 (talk) 11:07, 2 August 2021 (EDT)

My instinct is 'no', but I would have to see the test cases. -Derik (talk) 18:51, 4 August 2021 (EDT)

Robo Machine started off as an import of Machine Robo but then turned into a partial import of GoBots, thought it still featured some 'original' (i.e. non-GoBots) characters like Carry-All and Apollo. The brand issued storybooks licenced from Hanna-Barbera for the Challenge of the GoBots material but also a comic strip that started off with a radically different origin and premise but folded some GoBots concepts in as it ran along. Robo Machine was however a Bandai line as Tonka only ever had the North American licence, and as such featured whatever Bandai felt like putting out, including Rock Lords, Godaikin, Winch Robo and even stranger stuff. So you'd be left with the dilemma of totally ignoring Robo Machine which includes officially licenced GoBots; doing a bodge job with footnotes or just doing Robo Machine, at which point you might as well do Machine Robo. And before you know it some poor bastard's having to watch Leina and Laika: Lightning Trap. Shadow XGX-9 (talk) 19:55, 4 August 2021 (EDT)

Incidentally anyone itching to profile the Scioli mini-series should leap over to the GoBots Wiki, as hardly any of the character pages have the events of the series covered! =) Shadow XGX-9 (talk) 19:57, 4 August 2021 (EDT)

Word of God

Include GoBots characters as they appear in Transformers stories, but we're not going to start pretending the original Gobots cartoon is now a Transformers story, even if retroactively some of those characters are now sometimes Transformers. Vector Prime can list their episode titles all he wants. --ItsWalky (talk) 23:48, 2 September 2021 (EDT)

Scioli Mini-series

Scioli 5 is the issue that says - and shows - the GoBots evolved into the Transformers. There's a reasonable case for including it. Scioli 1-4 don't say or show that, and there's just as reasonable a case for not including them. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 14:41, 14 September 2021 (EDT)

If we have 1 we should have them all, we're well past the days of doing things like giving Infestation 2 issue 1 an article but none to issue 2 just because no Transformers appear on panel in that issue. Escargon (talk) 14:54, 14 September 2021 (EDT)

I've already made my "We should cover Scioli in full" stance clear. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 15:06, 14 September 2021 (EDT)

It's a complete work that was split into five parts due to the mandates of the comic industry. If its first release was a TPB, it'd be immediately covered in full. Saix (talk) 15:36, 14 September 2021 (EDT)

I find the TPB argument extremely compelling. --Jimsorenson (talk) 22:09, 14 September 2021 (EDT)

But it wasn't a TPB first. The separateness of the issues, and whether those separate issues fit under our inclusion criteria, is the point. Unless you are suggesting there be one single article, for the TPB, with all its events and characters? We've never done that before, but we've also never done full write ups of issues with no Transformers in them at all; perhaps one exception is better than four. On further thought I would have no objections to that approach. --Thylacine 2000 (talk) 23:28, 14 September 2021 (EDT)

"We've never done full write ups of issues with no Transformers in them at all." Infestation 2 issue 2, Legend of the Three Wise Ones, etc. And that's definitely not what Saix is suggesting. Escargon (talk) 23:32, 14 September 2021 (EDT)

I also think the TPB argument is sound, and precedent has already been established. As I've said before, the series was written from the beginning with the intention of being a Transformers origin story. I see no reason why it shouldn't be covered in full. -- Cyberlink420 (talk) 23:35, 14 September 2021 (EDT)

I don't particularly care if it's one article or five. If it makes people feel better I don't think much gets lost if it's just one article. I think five is more elegant but I can see a case either way. --Jimsorenson (talk) 23:57, 14 September 2021 (EDT)

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Transformers Wiki talk:Community Portal/GoBots

From Transformers Wiki

Contents

GoBots on this wiki

2009

Executive Summary

Canon

Initial kick-off

Depth of coverage?

Some initial chime-ins

*IS* GoBots Canon for Transformers though?

Marvel Continutiy side-discussion

Who owns what Vis-à-vis rights

The G.I. Joe Counter-Example

Canon or not-canon

Marvelverse side-discussion redux

Multiverse side-discussion

*IS* GoBots Canon for Transformers though, Redux.

Jim and Jeysie engage in a truly pointless argument (sorry, everyone)

GoBots as a Multiversal Entity

A potential solution

Opposition

The Vote

Results

Getting Under Way

2010

Executive Summary

What happened?

2011

Executive Summary

Cartoon?

2012

Executive Summary

Integration

June, 2015

Executive Summary

GoBots articles

October 2015

Executive Summary

GoBots 2015

Call for Vote

Vote Results

Vote Results again for reals maybe? Focus only on Screencapture

January 2016

Executive Summary

We're all sick of arguing about GoBots

Walky Calls It

Epilogue: It's all over but the crying

Questions and self reflection

Reviving the Sister Wiki

February 2016

Executive Summary

Question about GoBots....not the one you are thinking of

March 2016

Executive Summary

Echoes and Fragments

Initial Discussion

Delete

A different proposal

Individual Write-Ups

I capitulate

Sick Of Arguing About GoBots II

TL;DR

The current state of Shoutwiki and the IDW comic's impact on this discussion WARNING SPOILERS FOR THE IDW COMIC

Is the sister Wiki still a thing?

Revisiting our organizational schema

Word of God

Scioli Mini-series

Navigation

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IS GoBots Canon for Transformers though?

IS GoBots Canon for Transformers though, Redux.