Forum:Name and Design Leads

Do we want to have more in-depth coverage of the etymologies and design basis for Digimon species
Right now, we give a very glossed-over one-sentence coverage that gives pointers to the name and design sources, without backing itself up a lot.

On one hand, this leaves some readers often confused about why we claim that a character has these basis, especially if they don't follow the wikipedia links we provide (ex. Majiramon). We also get complaints that the etymologies are sometimes redundant (ex. "Metal Greymon"), for when the etymologies are mostly obvious.

On the other hand, (and the primary concern to me), this means that we don't overplay our hand by claiming specific links as meaningful where it may just be an incidental detail. For example, if we don't make claims about Lilithmon's beauty mark being based on an obscure manga character who embodied lust, Leviamon being based on a character from the SCP website, or Vulcanusmon's octopus design being based on the myth that he was raised in Neptune's palace, we don't have to be worried about having lied, and we don't get made to look foolish if Bandai later releases something that shows this to be wrong. I know I've certainly recieved flack from Digimon messageboards for stretching myself a bit too far on stuff like VenomVamdemon or Belphemon Sleep Mode, so it is something we recieve criticism on. If we just say that its design derives from a certain character, without making specific claims about which details those are, it's much easier for us to defend, and much less likely to be criticized.

Those are the two extremes, though, which means there's room to tweak the balance slightly without falling into either pitfall. There's also the option of doing what Wikimon does, which is to just give a list of basic etymologies for the name in the infobox (in the style of definitions), and give an additional design editorial also in the infobox, where it is not visible on first glance. So, we could hide these in the infobox, and mark the design notes as editorials to make it clear that they are our theories, and not facts. (Of course, then we have to undo the redundancy removal we've done when a profile explicitly states the basis of the name and design, as with Arukenimon or Ballistamon.)

We also have little to no coverage on the etymologies for other versions of the names (ex. WonsiGoburimon), so using a definition-type infobox coverage at least for the etymology would help solve that problem. That still leaves how we cover design, though. 17:30, December 6, 2012 (UTC)

My habit of linking any use of real living things as derivations to the most practical species article
So, this is something I've been doing because I didn't want to have to deal with wikipedia deciding to change the name of an article, esp. when wwwjdic and wikipedia disagreed on the English name of an animal. In addition, it seemed like a good across-the-board level to take the design basis down to, since we're talking about Digimon species.

However, I'll be the first to admit that often this requires me to choose between a host of species and sometimes genii based on little more than which looks most reminiscent of the Digimon (ex. Kuwagamon), or which one would be best known in Japan (ex. Gomamon). Sometimes, it's little more than which species is the best holotype (ex. Myotismon).

In short, this is me kind of taking a double standard towards what I said in the previous section. We do have the "ws" template to solve the issue of code length that I've seen some people complaining about, but the larger issue of why we're even doing this at all remains.

So, do you guys agree with my actions on this? I can certainly see the arguments for both sides, and I'm willing to restrict the etymology stuff to the least-guessworky level of classification if my penchant for using species is unsatisfactory. 17:30, December 6, 2012 (UTC)