User:BaconShelf/Sandbox9

Deleted material, cut content or "the cutting room floor" refers to content created during the development of a game, film, book or other media and ultimately removed from the product before release. This can be done for a variety of reasons including simple issues such as time and technical limitations or more niche reasons such as needs for page formatting - in the case of a book. This page covers a standard of guidelines for writing articles about cut content on Halopedia.

Does it need a page?
When creating a cut content article, first ask if the content in question needs a new page? Can it be covered in sufficient detail on an existing page's production notes section? For example, the article Guardian Forest discusses a lot of in-depth development information on the cut level, while a detail such as the Armalite logo found on an early rendition of the M392 DMR found in Halo: Reach can be easily surmised in a sentence or two on the page's production notes section.

Cut content vs. concept art
A common misconception that often arises in fanbases is the nature of cut content vs. concept art. In media production, thousands of conceptual images are produced by dozens of concept artists over a multi-year period. At the beginning of a production, many of these concepts are simply sketches or quick paintings done to establish art direction, mood, tone, atmosphere and convey key aspects of the game's visuals. In this stage, illustrations may feature armour, weapons, vehicles and characters which do not appear in the final game - it is important to distinguish these elements from actual cut content. In these cases, these elements were likely never intended to make it into the final product, and wouldn't count as cut content due to having never been cut.

In general, a good way to distinguish cut content is to consider whether any 3D assets, physical props, animations or footage exists of the content in question - or if it has been discussed in any capacity via interviews.

=Real persons notability= Based on discussions had in Discord last night

When creating articles on real-world people, a few considerations should be made. Due to the size and scale of the Halo franchise, many thousands of people have been involved in its development over the decades, and as such covering all of these people in detail is an unreasonable task - especially when considering the masses of outsourced work that goes to hundreds of freelance studios and workers across the world. As such, some notability guidelines to consider when making an article about a real person may include (though are not limited to) the following:
 * Tenure: whether the person in question has multiple credits to their name. A programmer who has only worked on one title may not be notable enough to warrant a full article, but one who has worked on multiple projects across the franchise may. This becomes especially applicable for writers and artists, whose work may also cross into Halo expanded media, such as books and comics.
 * Founder: staff members involved in the production of Halo: Combat Evolved or Halo 2 (or other media of the era, such as the original novels) are likely to be more notable on the basis that they were the ones that created the very principles that Halo (and by extension, much of modern FPS game design) is based on. These teams were also much smaller, and individual contributions much easier to note or track.
 * Seniority: those working in higher-up roles at their respective studios are more likely to warrant notable status than junior or contracted staff. Leads, seniors, directors and so forth ranging from disciplinary leads (IE Senior Programmers, Lead Artists, etc) through to creative/art directors, studio heads and the like are important to the franchise's overall direction and growth.
 * As a corollary to this point, Microsoft regularly relies on outsourced and contracted workers for much of its hiring policies. As such, someone who has only worked on Halo games for a limited period of time like this is less likely to be a notable figure for the series as a whole.
 * Contracted workers on expanded content, such as novel writers or comic artists, are more exempt from this consideration provided they are still noteworthy in other areas.
 * Public: some staff members on the Halo series are much more public-facing than others. This can apply to both senior staff who are more involved in interviews and press, or to community managers and writers. Team members who are generally well-known are more likely to gain notability here, though this attribute is difficult to quantify - and usually likely corresponds with the above characteristics too.
 * Also remember that Halo franchise developers are real people, and as such some people may prefer not to have a large spotlight placed on their lives, for plenty of valid reasons. As such, if there is little information about a given developer easily available - this may be for a reason. Halopedia will remove, rename, or replace articles and images about real people upon request.

When considering to make an article about a person, it may be worth keeping some of the above qualities in mind. Oftentimes, particularly in more recent games, a single person might only warrant one or two mentions across the whole wiki due to the sheer size and scope of modern games development. In the case of artists (in particular, concept artists), Halopedia does categorise artwork by their creator - as such it may instead be prudent to simply link to the artist's category instead. While certain artists such as Eddie Smith, Isaac Hannaford or Nicolas Bouvier have had huge sweeping contributions to the identity of Halo, some concept artists may only require a link to their personal categories. These category pages may be used to provide links to the artist's portfolio(s) of work or provide a brief summary of which projects they worked on.

When discussing contracted staff, rather than linking to a page on the staff member themselves, linking to the studio they worked under may instead be an option. Halo, as with all large game projects, makes extensive use of outsourced studios such as Certain Affinity or Liquid Development. In some select cases, linking to a given person's Wikipedia page (should they have one) may also be preferable.