--- kelvSYC kelvsyc@shaw.ca wrote:

I apologize for the crosspost between two of Wikimedia's mailing lists in advance, as this is somewhat related to both Wikipedia and Wikibooks.

One of my pet projects is [[b:Pok�mon]], which attempts be a game guide for everything Pok�mon (some at Wikipedia have proposed that all of the Pok�mon articles be moved to the books, but that's not a relevant point here), and part of any good strategy guide is data and lots of it. Organizing this data is quite the problem. Here's an example:

One of the subprojects in [[b:Pok�mon]] is the guide to the trading card game, and I need to solicit opinions on how a list of trading cards should be presented. In particular, what would the Wikipedia convention be when dealing with large amounts of raw data? Here are a few ideas I had thought up:

• Each trading card should have its own page. This

will make categorization a trivial task, but will result in too many substub-quality pages.

• Each set should have its own page, with each page

describing the cards within that set. This will make categorization between sets of cards trivial, but categorization along other lines (such as the type of the trading card) a pain in the ass. This goes for giving a page to any arbitrary group of cards. My personal direction (not necessarily a good one) is a variation on this theme: the Pok�mon cards themselves are described in their corresponding entry in [[b:Wikibooks Pok�dex]].

• Wait until there's a real good Wikidata-like thing

before implementing such an idea.

Part of the problem, I guess, is the lack of contributions from anyone else in the Wiki community - thus the need to solicit opinions. Plus, this idea does not have to specifically apply for my project - this scenario may arise in any other project in the books or the pedia (for example, a good application of this idea in the pedia is episode guides for particularly well-known series).

Disclaimer first: I am not involved with Wikibooks. I am involved with Wikipedia.

Structurally, a page for each card makes a lot of sense. They could then be organized in a variety of ways: By card number, by set, by color, alphabetically, etc. each of which has its uses. In this case, having actual list pages (as opposed to categories only) would perhaps be useful. Such a list page could contain a brief summary of each card.

Whether to actually create a page for a given card may depend upon how much data you have for that card. However, it seems to me that a minimal amount of data for each card could be easily gathered to make a page that would at least make a stub.

Again, I don't participate (yet) in Wikibooks, but it seems to me that very short pages may be perfectly acceptable in some cases. I would think the criteria would be different there than in Wikipedia.

In this particular case, not to have a page for each card in a book about "everything Pok�mon" seems almost silly. I know that my kids have such books in paper, and a page is dedicated to each card. Glancing at Pok�dex, it seems at present to be almost entirely about the video game stats. Why not a separate page for each card?

Is there some reason I'm missing that suggests differently?

-Rich Holton (en:wikipedia:user:rholton)

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