User:Inktog/Consolidation of seldom-used creature types

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This is a proposal to merge many creature type articles with each other and/or into existing pages. It is not a proposal for deleting information, only for reorganizing it into more substantive and readable articles.

Rationale

Many creature type articles are sparsely written, with little or no room for growth. These are not stubs; they are complete articles, and they are tiny. Articles this small affect the readability of the wiki and its SEO. They can also encourage low-quality contributions (I'm guilty of this myself): many are padded with lists of cards and borderline-notable trivia. Here are just a few examples:

  • Antelope: Mostly a list of Antelope cards interspersed with taxonomical trivia. Even with this borderline-notable content, the prose is less than 150 words—hardly surprising, since there are only 10 Antelope cards.
  • Qu: A Final Fantasy subtype which appears on a single card. The non-prose content (header warning, infobox, table of contents, navbox, and one-item lists) visually overcrowds the page, impacting readability. Less than 150 words of prose.
  • Tentacle: A token-only subtype created by just two cards. Less than 80 words of prose.
  • Stained is a unique token-only subtype tied to Sagrada Familiar. So is Glass, but it gets its own—equally bare-bones—article.
  • Eye: At first glance this looks more substantive, with 400 words of prose. However, it mostly boils down to a list of Eye cards plus a list of non-Eye cards with "Eye" in their names. The Storyline heading is a single-sentence paraphrase of Eyetwitch's flavor text. If this stuck to notable information, I think it would look more like the above examples.

On the other end of the spectrum are creature types like Elf, Dragon, and Soldier. There's plenty to write about here—lore, gameplay, design history, all of the above—so they definitely merit their own articles.

There is plenty of middle ground, and figuring out where to draw the line wouldn't always be easy. In this proposal, I mostly stick to creature types with vanishingly little notable content.

Proposed merges

These proposals are organized in descending order of my confidence in them.

Real animals

Many real-world animal creature types exist only on a handful of cards, without any lore or other notable information to flesh out their articles:

Some animals are used more regularly but still have justifiably sparse articles: Crab, Horse, Jellyfish, Leech, Octopus, Ox, Scorpion, Shark, Starfish, Turtle, and Whale. Two animals, Echidna and Hedgehog, are unique to Sonic the Hedgehog but could easily be reused in the future.

Consolidate everything into an Animal creature types article (I'm open to a better name). This would be the main home for the subtypes listed above. It would also summarize other, standalone animal subtype articles like Dog and Bird. Animal-like humanoids (e.g. Aven) would be within the article's scope, provided that they use real-world animal subtypes (unlike e.g. Homarids).

Token exclusives

Create a Token-exclusive creature types article, merging Army, Balloon, Camarid, Germ, Graveborn, Orb, Pentavite, Pincher, Prism, Sculpture, Sand, Scion, Serf, Servo, Splinter, Tentacle, Tetravite, and Triskelavite. I don't think any of these currently warrant their own articles, but if that changes—if we get tons of Servo lore, for example—they can be branched out in summary style. Caribou is both an animal and token-exclusive; its main home would be the proposed animal article, but it should be linked to in this article as well.

Non-eternal

Create a Creature types exclusive to test cards article. Done!

Create an Acorn-only creature types article, merging the following articles:

Merge Attendee and Fighter into Heroes of the Realm, Present into Holiday card, and Reveler into Defeat a God.

Leave Bureaucrat, Chicken, Gorilla, Head, Mammoth, Mummy, Ship, Spuzzem and Townsfolk unmerged, since they cross the streams between obsolete eternal and non-eternal, or between two different types of non-eternal. Leave Aven unmerged since the article mostly isn't about the creature type. Mention and link to all these subtypes in the relevant merged articles (e.g., link to Ship in the acorn creature type article).

Non-Magic IP

Several creature types are exclusive to non-Magic intellectual properties. All of these articles are short—not always extremely short (see Cyberman), although they can be (see Gnoll). While some might be able to stand alone, I suggest always grouping them by IP for the sake of the articles that can't:

Jobs

Several jobs (classes) exist only on a handful of cards: Carrier, Coward, Deserter, Doctor, Flagbearer, Gamer, Minion, Monger, Mystic, Processor, and Rigger. Others are used more frequently, but still have sparse articles without much room for growth: Archer, Barbarian, Bard, Berserker, Monk, Nomad, Peasant, Performer, Ranger, Scout, Survivor, and Scientist.

Merge everything into Job. If that makes the article too long, make a separate List of jobs article instead. Either way, include an entry for every job, using summary style for jobs with remaining standalone articles (e.g. Knight).

Plane-specific species

Some creature types are unique to one plane. This often leads to a small number of cards, a small amount of lore, and sparse articles. When this happens, merge it with the article for that plane; maybe use the "Inhabitants" section, or maybe create a new "Unique creature types" heading.

Other

Not easily merged

I don't have good suggestions Cockatrice, Eye, Harpy, Hellion, Hippogriff, Imp, Lammasu, or Reflection. Even though they're bare-bones articles, I'd be okay leaving them alone until someone has a better idea.

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