Separate pages for enemy group battles and individual members of groups

Wiki Discussion
1

With the release of Chapter 5, there have been many cases of minibosses involving battling against more than one opponent in a group. For individual characters that are involved in such battles, the wiki currently formats their battle sections as if they are a single enemy. This means that information about the group battle is spread across multiple pages, which makes it much harder to navigate through. Pages like Aqua sometimes have to fit multiple battles in a single section, further worsening this problem.

On the other hand, pages such as Lanino and Elnina and Sweet Cap'n Cakes have the opposite problem. A page for the group battle exists and is covered adequately, but the group page now has to fit multiple characters at once despite the group having individual members.

With our recent project that eliminated collective NPC pages, we were able to create individual articles for every NPC, regardless of how short or minor they were. I would like to propose something similar: we should make separate pages for each group battle and separate pages for each individual member of an established group. This way, specific subjects would be much easier to link to, and you would not need to scroll through a page, or multiple pages, of mostly irrelevant content just to access a battle or an individual character.

This has already (somewhat, still needs to be ironed out) been done with the Mikes, where each member of the Mike trio received separate pages and a collective page reserved for the battle. I have created a draft for the group battle against Susie and Lancer, and @Ceruleanwarbler2 provided a draft for the group battle against Blue and Yellow.

As outlined in an earlier reply to a related post, this proposal would be carried out as follows:

  • Susie and Lancer will have a separate duo battle page from Susie and Lancer.
  • Sweet, Cap'n, and K_K will each have individual pages separate from the Sweet Cap'n Cakes group page.
  • Lanino and Elnina will each have individual pages separate from the Lanino and Elnina group page.
  • Each flower boss fight will have their own page separate from the individual flower pages.

Please reply to this post with your thoughts on this proposal. As always, feedback is appreciated.

2

I have conflicting opinions on this proposal, as it lumps two separate ideas together.

On the one side, group battle pages are a VERY good idea, and I wholeheartedly support them. They'd help consolidate information and properly cover each individual battle. Each pair of flowers functions essentially as a single boss, and having that info cut apart in two separate pages makes it really hard to get a good grasp on their function.

On the other, I am highly opposed to using this good idea to split Lanino and Elnina and Sweet Cap'n Cakes without any further justification. We should be examining whether these characters would actually be better covered separately, instead of treating them being split as a de-facto good idea simply because other character groups got split as well. As I have said several times in the past, consistency for consistency's sake is not a good idea, and we should cover each subject according to its needs.

3

We can have this discussion here, then. Personally, Lanino and Elnina having separate recruit entries justifies at least them having separate pages. The infobox has to balance both Lanino and Elnina at once, which makes it heavily cluttered. The group page can just be about the battles.

The infobox on Sweet Cap'n Cakes has a similar problem. The infobox has five separate images, and there is already a separate discussion on that. Cap'n also has appearances that are separate from the rest of the group.

In addition, the individual members of both groups are frequently linked to. Having the reader be taken to a mostly unrelated mashed-together page would not be intuitive, nor would it be a good reading experience.

4

A minor problem I find with splitting between group pages and individual characters is that they might worsen the organization in the characters navbox template. However I think I have a solution for that: make a new navbox template for enemies and bosses, and leave the characters navbox template solely for those who are either not enemies or have an important role in the story (like Flowery or Queen)

Also the infoboxes for enemies and characters could also be splitted

5

Fully agree with this proposal. Also agree on DaniPine3's navbox idea.

This is also important for consistency; even excluding the Mikes, this is being done with Trashy Trio. We aren't putting that battle info on Nubert, Trashy, Ball.

6

My main concern is duplication of information; L&E's main role is one where they are literally interchangeable, and the SCC gang is together 90% of the time.

7

I think the Mike impersonator pages showcase. how this isn't a big issue.

They don't feel redundant, in my opinion.

8

This is exactly what I'm talking about. The Mikes are the Mikes. They have their own coverage needs. They don't represent Lanino and Elnina's coverage needs because they are different characters.

9

Was just made aware this was a thing! I am so for this. Very few wikis are this conservative with characters and it almost bewilders me!

On Splitting

I think that the split of grouped boss encounters should have come with the elimination of collective NPC pages; it is essentially the same idea. If someone wants to find information on a given character, the last thing they want is to be put into a collective one where they need to sift through other information. It is the exact same issue. This is a scenario where consistency is not for its own sake, as the Sweet Cap'n Cakes and Weather pages are slowly becoming silo pages.

I want to express my love for the Mikes and Trashy Trio pages, as they are a gold standard of how to handle these situations: Collective pages for covering the boss fights in particular, individual pages for covering the characters. Use that to shift information about the individual characters away from the group page, so it doesn't silo.

In the interests of aiding the discussion, I drafted out an individualised Elnina page:

https://deltarune.wiki/w/User:大佬233/Elnina

Of course, this does not include Main story stuff (you get the idea of how that would play out), but I did chuck in a few unique parts of her character and story events to get across what someone who is interested in Elnina would actually be looking for. I am one such person: I think she's awesome, but don't care as much as Lanino at all. I am sure someone feels the opposite way, and this applies to anyone else.

Now, there are some benefits that come to their group page by doing this: You can remove the paragraph about playing as Elnina, cover her interactions with Miss Mizzle, and focus on her post-breakup meltdown, without interrupting flow. There is very little reason not to do this, and it future-proofs that page for any future instances where the characters exist separately, which has already happened at least a few times.

To quote what I said in the Merging Irritable ghost + Pink page thread:

Elnina and Lanino's pages can discuss the characters as, well, themselves. Boss fight HP in the infobox, with a main article thing for a boss fight header. This gives an opportunity to discuss the characters themselves; how about Elnina absolutely loving Miss Mizzle and Lanino getting jealous? Plus, Elnina implies she still likes Rouxls Kaard, but Lanino doesn't really feel the same. I'm Elnina's biggest fan and think she's awesome and cool, but don't care much for Lanino at all, so when I read the Elnina & Lanino page that's giving me irrelevant information. See what I'm getting at? Everyone has a favourite character.

As for Sweet Cap'n Cakes, you'd have the same principle; main page discusses the underground band that does microtracks like it's Warioware Inc or something. Now unfortunately, I do...not care for these characters broadly, but you can totally talk about Cap'n as a sweet talker and K_K as constantly talking like he had a lobotomy. You see Sweet doing some unique stuff later on that would be incredibly awkward to put on the Sweet Cap'n Cakes page too. Doesn't he conduct Tasque Manager at some point, or am I crazy? I guess I am writing paragraphs about page management for a video game wiki, so there's some crazy there anyway.

I think the notion that Elnina, Lanino, Sweet, Cap'n, and K_K are not individual, unique characters, is a bit silly, and can only really come from not paying attention. These characters are all more major than Nubert.

On Names

When conducting the Lanino & Elnina split, I think renaming the boss page "The Weather" could be good to increase clarity. The two seem to refer to themselves as "The Weather" in their catchphrase, and Tenna says "nothing can stop the weather" at least once:

https://code.deltarune.wiki/ch3/gml_object_obj_elnina_lanino_controller_step_0#L974

This avoids the awkward Lanino / Elnina / Lanino and Elnina page naming, which is a little smelly. The Dojo does refer to them as Lanino and Elnina, unfortunately, so I have a strong feeling this won't happen, but I woooould prefer it very much. We can talk about that!

—

Likewise, I think Susie and Lancer's duo page could be "Dark Party" as opposed to the Party page. They call themselves it here based on response:

https://code.deltarune.wiki/ch1/gml_object_obj_susiebadguy_event_step_0#L149

So this would avoid the same awkward search appearances when trying to find the individual pages, and the awkward "For X see Y" headers. Get what I'm saying?

10

I like this draft. I like this message. I like seeing people want to split L&E because they should be split, and not because other pages are also split. I'm more convinced that splitting them would be a good idea now.

As for those group page names, I think those are a bad idea. There's no need to dredge the depths of the dialogue dump for the sake of picking a group name that is worse than listing the two characters involved. just "Susie and Lancer" and "Lanino and Elnina" would be perfectly acceptable page names.

11

Are they such a bad idea? Lanino and Elnina constantly call themselves The Weather - "The Weather always sticks together". I'm pointing out that Tenna also calls them it because it implies it is more than a self-reference.

Likewise the "Dark Fun Gang / Shit Squad / whatever" thing is made explicit with a whole special animation in Chapter 1.

It's a bit painful for this to be reduced to "looking in the depths of the text dump" when this is something made quite explicit in the game and I'm merely not restarting a save for screenshots!

12

I think you're giving that moniker a lot of weight by capitalizing it like that; it is pretty consistently formatted as "the weather" in lowercase. "The weather always sticks together!". I don't think we're meant to parse that their collective name is "The Weather" from any of these quotes, especially considering the game always calls them "Lanino & Elnina".

As for the other one, the fact that the name itself is not consistent in-game turns me away from it. They never call themselves "Dark Party", after all. Just "Susie and Lancer" would be a lot simpler.

In fact, if there isn't a clear, unambiguous, and indisputable name for the group (as with Sweet Cap'n Cakes and Trashy Trio), we should just list the participants in battle menu order, as a rule. "Seth and Aqua", "Orange and Green", "Blue and Yellow"... and yes, "Lanino and Elnina" and "Susie and Lancer".

13

I derived it from the way the Party is called on the wiki already; it is technically conjectural in that it's taken from there, but that's it. Fun Gang redirects to Party and so on.

https://deltarune.wiki/w/Party

I'd see The Weather as a useful reference. I see where you're coming from on it, don't get me wrong, but isn't the argument a bit...pedantic? The game does call them "the weather," collectively, at least a few times. These are all arguable, as I'll write here:

The weather always sticks together!
Predict the forecast and win!
(I guess this could be seen as a repeat of the catchphrase)

These two are a professional power couple!!! Nothing can stop the weather!!
(You could say this is Tenna referring to the concept..)

* Haha, nice try,
but the weather's
only warming up!
Elnina, tell them
what's next!
(Again, you can totally say the concept)

* If the weather guys are second-in-command, what does that make him?!

(And this would be counter-evidence to what I am giving, since Rouxls uses it as a descriptor)

Another interesting one:

  • Elnina!! Lanino!? You two!? C'mon, old friends, you can't leave...!
  • Fine!! Fine, you wanna go, GO!!
  • We'll see how far the Lightners get...
  • WITHOUT THE WEATHER CHANNEL!! HAHAHA!
  • How can they know the Weather without TV!?!? Hahahaha!!
  • What? Apps? What... What are those!? Everything's changing so fast...
  • M... Mike? Mike, you... you're leaving, too!?
  • MIKE!! NO!! ANYONE BUT YOU!! ANYONE!!

Here we see the Weather capitalised (which you said earlier doesn't happen!), which could imply Tenna is referring back to the duo. I think this is one of the more interesting bits for discussion, though I guess it's out of scope...

You've already decried me for going through the text dump to show you cases, but for supporting characters, I'd say it's fine and important, especially when going through the entire game multiple times just to check is annoying. I don't really know what you want from me when you decry it like that.

Anyway, I think it is useful to consider this as a useful term, at the very least. I think it appears too frequently to ignore.

14

I made a post in which I suggest basically doing this for Pink and her body/ghost. Thought it might be relevant to this discussion.

https://undertale.wiki/d/t/changes-on-the-way-the-wiki-covers-pink/8172

15

The whole "the weather always sticks together" is probably more ment as a play on the fact that they are "the weather guys" and their thing being love, I don't think its meant to be literally taken as their name.

Dark Party is 100% cojectural as they never use this specific wording. My opinion on conjectural names is that they should usually aim at being titles rather than actual names (exeptions being made for widely accepted fanon such as Card Kingdom and route names)

16

Ok! I can agree with that!

17

I have refined the Elnina page and made one for Lanino.

https://deltarune.wiki/w/User:大佬233/Elnina

https://deltarune.wiki/w/User:大佬233/Lanino

I think there could be some stuff in the Main Story but I am not entirely sure how to conduct that part, so I left it as a mainpage thing for now. If someone wants to contribute, go ahead!

I've also added Evie's suggestion for the Lanino and Elnina page as the motherpage name.

18

I think we should roll the proposed change out, since it's been a while and all discussion participants seem to have agreed.

19

I'm fine with my pages being mainspaced if you think they're ok.

20

Any updates on this?