User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-24894325-20151119211902/@comment-24894325-20151228195301

I've been considering some partially similar although not as far reaching ideas as PicassoAndPringles. And I realised that I need to understand the intent of these pages. To make some kind of principled stand, I need to know either the existing policy (which we don't seem to have) or the goals we are trying to achieve. Let me give an example: I've been advised to create as many pages for in-universe entities as possible. If it is mentioned or implied, then create a page. And recently I've understood the intent of this. Because of the in-universe perspective policy, we need the DWU to be as large as possible to afford references to things not explicitly mentioned but strongly implied in the current story.

In the similar vain, I'd like to understand the intent of the anthology/box set/series pages. Note that they have not always been created, so someone was making a decision based on some criteria. What is it that we want from the Dark Eyes 2 page that cannot be put on the Dark Eyes series page? And does Jago & Litefoot Series 02 lack a separate page because it does not have this thing we want or by accident? Using Occam's Wiki-razor, we should not create more pages than is necessary. Thus, I am asking, in earnest, what is our objective in creating these pages?

My own thinking is as follows. A story is a basic, smallest unit and each story clearly should have a page. A range is the largest unit and should have information about the common topic of the range, peculiarities of its contents, available releases, etc. I could not so far formulate exactly in which cases we need the intermediate pages for ranges that have a 3-tier structure (and I know at least one case of a 4-tier structure).

As for (box set), I am not married to it. And (audio collection) would be an improvement over (audio anthology). But I like SOTO's approach of using the same terms as the production team. The main reason I like it is because it's bulletproof. No splitting hairs ever.

I think the policy for the cast is similar---state it exactly as on the release and in the same order---and for much the same reasons. We do not debate whether to put Lucie Miller or Brother Lucianus in the cast of The Book of Kells, and it's a good thing.

If somebody asks why we use, say, (box set) as a dab term, the answer is because <link to BF website where it's called that>. In particular, a discussion such as this would be prevented. Secondly, (box set) is almost connotation-free, unlike (audio anthology): any multi-CD release could conceivably be called a (box set).