Needs Help: Five Man Band

I want to lock the subpages because otherwise it's hard to convince people to come to a thread without someone hovering above the articles with a banhammer all the time.

We can try commented out notes before, though.

Well, I see very little editing activity on the pages I've cleaned up so far; only one page has had a few cut entries replaced. I'm not sure what the "page locking policy" is, if indeed we have one, but personally I would prefer seeing evidence of a real problem before we lock a page.

I think locking is always a bad idea, even when it's a good idea. It may be effective at keeping bad edits away, but it does much the same for good edits.

Right here, the problems just aren't significant enough to make the sacrifice worth it.

I think it's borderline. A short-term lock while we try to get people used to the idea that the five man band isn't just any-group-of-five-or-more-people-that-can-be-shoehorned-into-these-categories might actually help, but I'd be opposed to a permanent lock.

I actually think Sixth Ranger should also be disallowed as a separate listing for two reasons:

1. I've seen it misused for "sixth team member that doesn't fit into the five proper categories, but I'm determined to put this team on the page".
2. Sixth Ranger is, by definition, an additional team member who takes the team out of one team dynamic and into a new dynamic. So a Sixth Ranger added to a four-person team could create a Five-Man Band, in which case it could simply be noted in description that Character E is a Sixth Ranger (as well as whatever Five-Man Band position they actually occupy). Or a Sixth Ranger can be added to a Five-Man Band, at which point the team is no longer a Five-Man Band, and thus the Sixth Ranger isn't entirely relevant to the trope; in such a case, though, I would be fine with a note along the lines of "When Sixth Ranger Character F joins the team, Team Y stopped fitting this trope".

I certainly think we need at least a note on each page. I'd be willing to try just a note, but I think we'd need to make it clear that not going to the thread will warrant mod attention. Which is why it might be easier just to lock them.

If you guys want to define this as "a team of 5, members are A, B, C, D, and E (allow for a Sixth Ranger), I will start a subtrope whenever an instance of this is disrupted for some reason.

Actually #1 is a good point, yes.

Hm, we're in the middle of cleanup already (which is to say, I'm slowly working through all subpages by myself now). Perhaps we should wait until this finishes before redefining Five-Man Band a second time?

Okay, so do we have enough consensus to start axing the extra character listings, or do we need to put it to a crowner?

I'd like to discuss further whether examples should list Sixth Ranger. Specifically, that they shouldn't.

Entries for Five-Man Band that mention The Sixth Ranger treat that trope as "the sixth member of a group of five." That isn't what the trope is. If a group has a genuine sixth ranger, I see no reason to list it along with the members of the Five-Man Band.

This. So much. I was doing cleaning today and I came across an example listing a Sixth Ranger, which then went on to state that "When [the character] briefly dropped out of the group, [this other character] filled this role."

edited 2nd Aug '12 11:52:52 PM by Nocturna

Has there been any effort directed towards writing a new description? I think it would be really helpful.