Talk:Ancient Minister

Merge with R.O.B.
This was a subject that came up in the Smash Bros. Articles: What Stays and What Goes? proposal (I was waiting for the full Switch SSB(U) announcement to discuss this and Meta-Ridley - since MR appears to be a skin or attack of playable Ridley, I'll wait for a bit more detail on that) - given that we consciously decided to limit our SSB coverage to less than full Mario games as part of that proposal, which includes folding most of the Subspace Emissary into pages of wider scope (e.g., merging all the one-shot enemies on Subspace Army to that page), it feels incongruous to have this page split off from R.O.B.:
 * R.O.B./The Ancient Minister isn't a Mario series character (he doesn't use the Super Mushroom emblem, nor W/DK/Egg for the other "full coverage" series), so we have no need to document all his forms, moves, etc on their own pages (the proposal was largely about avoiding doing so for every character who happened to appear in a Smash game. If it had been Toad under the hood, it would be a different matter.)
 * Nor is it an entirely unique character, like Tabuu - while story relevance might support keeping it separate from a "List of..." page, we have a R.O.B. page. It's the same character, in the same story (in a non-playable form that has not and - outside the odd background reference or trophy - is never likely to appear elsewhere) to the point you have to jump from one page to the other to follow his part at the moment
 * Finally, we don't concern ourselves with spoilers, especially not for a decade-old game. While it's a big reveal that the Ancient Minister is "the" R.O.B., that is not itself a reason to avoid merging the pages.

Proposer: Deadline: June 28, 2018, 23:59 GMT

Support

 * 1) I approve this message
 * 2) A persona that only appears in the context of a game whose series we decided wasn'T worth full coverage. idk seems pretty clear-cut to me
 * 3) Reboot's arguments are actually pretty good ones, so I'm inclined to support. Of course we should keep Tabuu's article because of Mario's role in his "demise" (don't know how else to put it), but the Ancient Minister barely even interacts with Mario characters throughout the course of the game, so...yeah.
 * 4) Per all. We're limiting our coverage of Smash content, and this is a prime example of what should be limited.
 * 5) Per all. It'd be like having separate Mario and Jumpman articles.

Oppose

 * 1) Given he has two separate "appearance subtitle" things, they seem like distinct enough personas to be split. Of course, I oppose lessening Smash coverage in general, but that's neither here nor there.

Comments
@Doc: I feel like the entire reason for your vote is the fact that you were the only one to oppose the original proposal ("I will not be moved on that."), even if you say "it's neither here nor there...". Are there any talk page proposals which lessen Smash coverage you WOULD support? I feel the "multiple appearance subtitles" is rendered irrelevant by "not a Mario character".

@YoshiEgg1990: When SSB got "full Mario game coverage", yeah, it was enough to give it its own article. Now, it doesn't. Also, it's not like Toad/Toad (species), because the R.O.B. page isn't a "R.O.B. (species)" article in the first place, it's more akin to Toad (Toad House Host) and Toad (SMB2 playable character). And yeah, the proposal originally said Ancient Minister would stay, but Time Turner also said in the comments "The [Ridley/Meta-Ridley] matter can be settled in the future with a talk page proposal, where it can be discussed in more depth; the same applies to Ancient Minister." - Reboot (talk) 09:45, 14 June 2018 (EDT)
 * Actually no, I was on ban when that proposal went through. Anyways, like I said, it's neither here nor there regarding my feelings on Smash coverage; my reasons here are solely my views on whether an alternate persona has enough of an impact to get its own page. I believe that the "Ancient Minister" acts distinctly enough from the more general "ROB" identifier to receive its own page. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 19:46, 14 June 2018 (EDT)