Forum:Single pages about multiple indistinguishable characters

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Question

Without going into too much detail; is it okay to make a singular page for two or more one-time characters who are indistinguishable from each other?

This is the sort of headache I find myself dealing with when doing pages for the countless, largely identical-looking Daleks that appear in The Daft Dimension. WaltK ☎ 21:18, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

Well, it's complicated. T:MERGE states "groups of individuals should never be covered on a single page", but there are, in fact, cases where giving some individuals individual pages. For example, Ruby and Daisy McKenzie are pretty much impossible to separate because we don't know which one is Ruby and which one is Daisy, nor which of the respective twins played which twin.

While I haven't created Guards (A Worthy Successor) yet, I can't feasibly create individual pages for the guards in A Worthy Successor as they aren't named and, as the reader, I don't know if the — as a random example — a nameless guard being killed is the same one from earlier which Giles met, but this information still deserves a page.

I also do not think pages like Cyberon 1 (More Than Human...), Cyberon 2 (More Than Human...), Cyberon 3 (More Than Human...), etc, are useful when we could just have Cyberons (More Than Human...).

Therefore, I feel it may be worth creating an exception to T:MERGE for instances where nameless groups of soldiers/aliens/etc are indistinguishable from one another, and instances like Ruby and Daisy McKenzie, which I do believe is an edge case unrepeated in the DWU.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

01:50, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Penguin (Once Upon a Time Lord) would probably be precedent here (although it should really be named to Penguins (Once Upon a Time Lord))? Even though all the penguins are distinguishable, it makes more sense to have a single page for them (also, none of them appeared before the other, so we can't really have Penguin 1 (Once Upon a Time Lord) etc.). Aquanafrahudy 📢 06:47, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

In certain cases like Penguin (Once upon a Time-Lord), yes, a single page can be used for a truly indistinguishable group. That being said, there are also cases where there's no particular point in creating such a page at all — Guards (A Worthy Successor) doesn't seem like a coherent thing to have a page about, really. It's okay to just cover these guys' history at Guard and/or The Vault (The Scales of Injustice).

I also strongly oppose Cyberons (More Than Human...). More Than Human… does not depict a single group of Cyberons in a single in-universe events, but rather a variety of Cyberons in several settings; grouping them together would be a failure to apply to the Tardis:In-universe perspective. If we can't cover them individually then we should just cover them at Cyberon. That being said, while an extreme case, I think the individual pages work alright in this case; many of them have specific designs and actions, after all. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 14:45, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough about that then, I suppose. Although I disagree about what you said about the AWS guards; if a single guard appeared, they'd get a page, but as soon as multiple guards appear, they shouldn't? These characters still live in a certain place, work for a certain employer, some die, some help other characters, etc, but these individuals deserve a page, even if we don't know which one is which.

And what about Ruby and Daisy McKenzie?

And if we allow pages on indistinguishable groups of individuals, shouldn't there be a section on T:MERGE to clarify that?

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

14:53, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

I've got mixed feelings on the McKenzies in particular — I would personally lean towards givine them two largely-identical pages, making it clear in BTS that we're not sure which is which — but yes, certainly there are cases of that broad shape where characters are best covered together, for practicality's sake. I'll update T:MERGE on that point later. Merely an oversight in the codifying process. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 17:45, 16 September 2023 (UTC)