Board Thread:Wiki discussion/@comment-18014300-20200504004330/@comment-18014300-20200517210308

I was actually supposed to close this thread with the final results yesterday but neglected to do so. While I am glad to see that a fruitful discussion is still taking place here, it doesn't seem to be directly related to the questions posed by this thread which it seems everyone has had a chance to provide their input on by now.

Voters

For the purposes of these results, the following users have been counted:

1. Soranin
2. Lacrossedeamon
3. Zero-ELEC
4. Cristophorus
5. Master Sima Yi
6. Cyfiero
7. VilkaTheWolf
8. Vetinari
9. RShepherd
10. Sadelyrate

If certain users left a question unanswered, their position is treated as neutral or ambivalent for the sake of keeping the total count of votes consistent. (i.e. makes it easier for me to keep track of and verify my counting).

Votes

Here are the final results:

Should Hidden Ones be treated as Assassins?: YES
Should Templars be treated as Order of the Ancients?: YES

Extended proposal: Should those preceding the Hidden Ones who are honored as Assassins in older media (e.g. Darius, Wei Yu, Itani, etc.) also be called Assassins?

1. Merging the pages

(a) Should "Hidden Ones" be merged with "Assassins"?

3:4:3

(b) Should "Order of the Ancients" be merged with "Templars"?

4:4:2

NOTE: I counted Lacrosse's vote for 1(b) as "neutral" because I wasn't sure whether his opposition extended to OoA with Templars.

2. Is the name "Hidden One" limited only to the Egyptian and Roman branches?

We seem to all agree that we should wait for Valhalla to clarify this, but several people stated that in the meantime, we would still refer to Scandinavian Assassins prior to the 11th century as Assassins, not Hidden Ones.

3. Moving Persian and Babylonian branch pages

(a) Merge "Artabanus' group" into "Persian Brotherhood of Assassins"

2:4:4

(b) Move "Iltani's Order" to "Babylonian Brotherhood"

5:3:2

4. Call Kassandra a proto-Assassin?: 7:3:0

I wasn't sure whether to count Vetinari as a vote for yes or neutral and ultimately went with the latter. You said that the category would be redundant if Kassandra is a proto-Assassin, which I agree with, but it's unclear if you agree that she herself should be treated as one or not.

5. Support Zero's proposal to call Darius, Iltani, Wei Yu, etc. Assassins?: 9:0:1

Conclusion

Based on these results, here are the conclusions:

• We are henceforth going to treat Hidden Ones as Assassins and Order of the Ancients as Templars. Individuals who predate the Hidden Ones but who we know of to have been honored posthumously as Assassins will also be treated as Assassins. (In other words AC2 mentioning them as Assassins will not be treated like it has been retconned away). The Cult of Kosmos will continue to not be treated as a Templar or proto-Templar group.
• We remain unsure if "Hidden Ones" refers only to the Egyptian and Roman branches prior to the 11th century or also to any Assassin prior to the 11th century. Because of this, we will prefer "Assassin" over "Hidden One" for Assassins outside of those two branches prior to the 11th century.
• Kassandra will be treated as a proto-Assassin, probably the only one so far. The category for proto-Assassins may indeed be redundant now, but we can discuss that more another time.
• We will not be merging "Artabanus' group" into "Persian Brotherhood of Assassins", but we will be moving "Iltani's Order". I wish to verify which name we will move this latter page to, whether to "Babylonian Brotherhood of Assassins", "Babylonian Brotherhood", or "Order (Babylonia)" as Sima suggested although I think everyone else has already expressed their support for the former two.
• We will need to revisit the questions about whether to merge "Hidden Ones" with "Assassins" and "Order of the Ancients" with "Templars" on their respective talk pages. The former is a tie, and the latter is too close for me to be comfortable doing the merge especially since its because Soranin divided his position on both.

P.S.

I recognize that this wasn't really formal voting. As of yet, we still don't have a formal voting system for this, and hopefully, this can be a step towards developing one. Some wiki like to have a preliminary discussion thread before opening up an official poll, but I thought that this two-step process would be too complicated for you guys. I wasn't sure if you guys would remember to come back for official voting. We have had issues with users having to gather "votes" based on the input in the past due to potential misinterpretations, and I hope everyone's positions were accurately presented here when I gathered them this time. Feel free to let me know if there were any errors that weren't caught! :)

If you guys have any serious concerns or lingering questions regarding the results, please contact me on my talk page or open up a new thread.