Talk: Shoreside Vale

This article is a perfect example of overcomplicating things and needlessly dividing an already small volume of information into even smaller bits and pieces, serving only to make the information harder to work on and navigate through. This article gives a very short blurb about each district, then links to a seperate article for each district, most of the which only contain a few additional sentences that would easily fit in the original article.

So what's my point? In this case, I propose we merge Cedar Grove, Wichita Gardens and Pike Creek into this article. Those articles contain very little information and don't need to stand on their own. Francis International Airport is significant enough to have it's own article, so that should be given a short description in this article with a {{main|article}} link to it.

At the same time, I think we should make some kind of policy on this issue - to keep related information like this together in one article rather than scattering it all over the place into dozens of stubs that will never be expanded (because there's often little or nothing more to write about the subject), and only giving individual list items their own articles if they're sufficiently large/detailed. I say so because this kind of thing has gotten out of hand, and this article is just one of scores of examples I've seen here. --MattyDienhoff 09:34, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Matty. Thanks for your comments. I agree that a great deal of clean-up needs to be done with articles and subject matter such as this. If there is too little information on any given locale, then I agree that it should be subsumed into an article that describes it along with adjoining locales to give an overview, if that is all that is required. However, in many cases, one article covering an entire area subdivided into distinct districts can get cumbersome, and the more information that arises, the larger such an article becomes, and subsequently the more difficult it becomes to navigate. So far, I agree with you: there seems paltry information on any one given topic under this article as it stands. However, that does not mean more information won't arise.

For instance, I can envision including storyline details relating to the role each of the districts plays in the respective game, weapon/item and vehicle spawns, hospitals, police stations, etc. The best solution here might be to endeavor to provide a short synopsis of each neighborhood contained within Shoreside Vale (better than that provided), along with an overview of the area and how it relates to the story. Then, each district within Shoreside Vale should have the same information, but more detailed and specific to the locale, along with spawns and other interesting tidbits of interest to gamers. It seems to me that adding the {{expand}} tag might be a better option than deleting articles that might be created yet again later on due to increasing amounts of information. What do you think? Eganio^Talk 12:00, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

That's solid thinking, but like I already said above, I think we should institute a policy of creating articles like this one as lists of locales with a short description of each item, and only creating sub-articles (like Cedar Grove) if and when they become too large and detailed for the list. (And, just for the record, I consider more than two paragraphs to be 'too large' in this situation, though even that may be a bit too large) If that were the case it would be foolish to leave all of these exisiting, tiny sub-articles lying around hoping they'll be expanded to the point that they're justified, as - depending on the circumstances - that may never happen (for example, just what else is there to write about Portland Beach that hasn't already been written? Nothing.).

That said, it is true that, conceivably, these particular sub-articles we're discussing now could be expanded in the future, but I feel the best and most logical short-term solution in this case is to merge them into this one, otherwise we're back at square one. Anyway, it's not as if it's difficult to re-create the sub-articles as needed. --MattyDienhoff 12:49, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

In fact, now that I think about it, we can simply change those existing sub-articles into redirects. No deleting or re-creating required. --MattyDienhoff 13:33, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Believe me, I understand your point, and I agree that right now, the information is fractured, incomplete, and messy. However, I feel I must stand by my opinion here. I am really quite loathe to undo something that will likely be redone later. It seems a waste of time that would be better spent beefing up the articles that are sorely lacking information and relevance. You mentioned the article on Portland Beach as a good example of something that could be subsumed into this article, but doing so would not only remove the categorizations (that would be useful to someone looking for beaches, for instance), but also all the links to that page whose context may depend on it possessing a separate article.

But that aside, the real meat of my argument is this: if something can be identified as a separate, unique, individual entity within any GTA game, then it deserves its own article on this Wiki, regardless of how much content can be added. The idea is to pinpoint as narrowly as possible a given subject so that someone reading about it gets as much information from the Wiki as can be garnered. This is why I have subdivided all the San Fierro districts into separate articles instead of just listing them on the San Fierro page, and attaching descriptions underneath. From the start, many of these districts already had separate articles before I got here, but they contained very little or no information. So instead of just subsuming them into the main article, I simply went through the individual articles and beefed them up so that all the information contained under each topic wouldn't turn the main page into a long, jumbled mess of residents, businesses, stationary vehicles, weapons, storyline relevance, etc.

So my point is this: it's a lot of work, but IMO, it's worth it to keep all of the articles separate as they are, and to expand each one. I know it seems silly to "sit and wait" for other editors to include missing information, but this is the idea of the Wiki, i.e. to let everyone have a stab at adding content. That having been said, the {{expand}} tag is the best tool to use in this situation, as it attaches the page to a list of articles in need of expansion, thereby alerting all editors to the article's need for attention.

And regarding creating policy on this issue, I would suggest leaving a post on the Consistency discussion page, where we and other editors can hash this sort of thing out. :-) Eganio^Talk 23:23, 14 June 2008 (UTC)