Quantum Manipulation: A Broken Relic of Old

[Crabwhale]

Alternative thread title: if this takes 5 years like that last power revision, I'm wandering off into the Black Hills woods and never emerging again.

So, we have this page, Quantum Manipulation, yeah? Quite a ubiquitous power in several verses, mainstay staple of the wiki and complete and utter nonsense. I am not exaggerating when I say that the page about this power says essentially nothing about what it does, using the vaguest terms possible and in fact outright making terms up.

Ability associated with the manipulation of tiny indivisible portions (quanta) of a particular physical quantity.The range of applications is almost unlimited (from the [URL='https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Matter_Manipulation']manipulation of matter[/URL] to [URL='https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Reality_Warping']reality warping[/URL] on a multiversal scale).

"Quants" is mentioned primarily in the description of this power, and as far as I can tell it is not a legitimate name for fundamental indivisible particles. Furthermore, the wording of "particular physical quantity" seems confused and disjointed. And this is all there is to this page. One paragraph, about thirty words. That's all the explanation you get for what should be one of our most complex powers, given the implications of its name and the general circumstances of its placement on profiles. A profile as simple as Fire Manipulation is better elaborated on than this page.

It should surprise nobody therefore that Quantum Manipulation has not been seriously updated since the mid 2010s. In fact, the best version of it is located within the Matter Manipulation page, underneath the section with the same name as it. So, as it's plenty evident, this state of things cannot continue. The question now becomes what exactly should be done with the Quantum Manipulation page and how would it affect any of the character profiles that link back to it?

 

[Ultima_Reality]

Delete it, yeah.

 

[Planck69]

Yeah, it can go.

 

[Antvasima]

Are you certain that we cannot rewrite this page instead? A massive amount of other wiki pages link to it.

https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Quantum_Manipulation?limit=1100[/ulr]

 

[DarkGrath]

We should rename the page to Crabwhale Manipulation, first and foremost.

On a more serious note - I felt the first course of action to identify what kinds of issues Quantum Manipulation can/has caused on pages was to look through what pages currently link to it, and see what their justifications have to say.

There's more pages than I'm comfortable with that don't really explain why they are given Quantum Manipulation at all, but I can see a few that actually explain themselves, which I'll list here:

Odin (Marvel Comics): Has Quantum Manipulation for creating blood out of "quantum foam"

Spongebob Squarepants: Resists Quantum Manipulation for being unaffected by Squidward's "quantum negatrons"

Bernkastel: Has Quantum Manipulation because she can manipulate the "quantum mechanics" of the Human Domain

Alucard (Castlevania): Has Quantum Manipulation because he can alter the properties of "quantum space barriers"

Plutonian: Has Quantum Manipulation because he can manipulate "quantum mechanics" with his mind

Vampire Hunter D: Has Quantum Manipulation because he can control a "quantum realm" of infinite negative mass and volume

So, I think the pattern here is obvious. The vast majority of pages I can find that actually explain why they have quantum manipulation simply list it because some aspect of the power used "quantum" in the name. Some of these don't even make sense within the definition provided on the Quantum Manipulation page, but it seems this is the primary reason why people link to it.

To be fair, this isn't the case for every page, but it is troubling. Pretty much every page I can identify on the list falls into one of these categories:

1: It lists Quantum Manipulation seemingly just because the word "quantum" was used in the power somewhere.

2: It lists Quantum Manipulation without explaining what relevancy Quantum Manipulation has to the feat (usually by joining it together with something like Reality Warping and just providing a generic Reality Warping justification).

3: It lists Quantum Manipulation with an actual justification, but doesn't explain the relevancy well enough to clearly identify why it was chosen as the ability in question (Henry Stickmin does this)

4: It lists Quantum Manipulation without a justification.

1 and 4 make up probably 80-90% of pages I can find, albeit from a brief search. And when you look at this in the context of the original page itself, I think it's obvious why this has happened. The Quantum Manipulation page is incredibly unclear about what it is actually describing. It seems like it has largely been a throwaway power added because it's easy to find "quantum manipulation" if you're trying to describe a feat with our list of powers and abilities and the feat contains the word "quantum" in it somewhere. And I'd say the problem with the rest of the pages isn't that they don't explain their relevancy to the power in any coherent way, but that they can't. It's too ill-defined to know whether manipulation 'zero-point matter' - or what have you - qualifies for it.

My opinion, then, is that it's effectively a useless page in its current state. I'm not technically opposed to a rewrite of the page, but I can't conceptualise of how it would be rewritten in any way that wouldn't make it essentially just a closed subset of matter manipulation, energy manipulation, reality warping, or some combination of the prior. I don't think there's any need for the power to exist, and I don't think it contributes anything of meaning to the pages I've seen that link to it. I'd support a deletion.

 

[Colonel_Krukov]

Might be best to just delete it and have any useful information on the matter manipulation page.

 

[Tllmbrg]

I support deleting it, we really should cull our power pages more

 

[DarkDragonMedeus]

Quantum Manipulation is really just the most advance level of matter manipulation; in the form of reducing things all the way to quantum particles. But anyway, the page is really misleading and/or tends to be mixed up with other abilities here and there. With lots of characters having it on their profiles with little to no reason. So nuking it seems on table for me as well.

 

[Antvasima]

My opinion, then, is that it's effectively a useless page in its current state. I'm not technically opposed to a rewrite of the page, but I can't conceptualise of how it would be rewritten in any way that wouldn't make it essentially just a closed subset of matter manipulation, energy manipulation, reality warping, or some combination of the prior. I don't think there's any need for the power to exist, and I don't think it contributes anything of meaning to the pages I've seen that link to it. I'd support a deletion.

It seems like this is the best solution then, yes.

@Elizhaa @Starter_Pack @Abstractions @Colonel_Krukov @Just_a_Random_Butler @Dereck03 @Shadowbokunohero @QrowBarr @Crazylatin77 @Zaratthustra @ElixirBlue @Tllmbrg @Nehz_XZX @Therefir @IdiosyncraticLawyer @GarrixianXD @Catzlaflame @Vzearr

Would any of you be willing to handle it please?

 

[SamanPatou]

I agree with disposing of it in some way, as of now it's pretty much pointless and foggy.
I also believe that 99.9% of the fiction that uses the word "quantum" does it only due to it being a fancy scientific name that tickles the audience, without really caring for what it effectively means, let alone any possible implication.

Other times it's just used to justify some science - magic kind of mumbo jumbo to make it sound cool and imposing, resulting in all sort of different meanings and effects without any real sort of continuity, due to the concept itself being rather difficult to grasp and apply in a realistic way.

 

[Crabwhale]

If the consensus is that it should be deleted, perhaps we should have a bot run through the pages that have it and link them instead to the Quantum section of the Matter Manip stage.

 

[CloverDragon03]

DarkGrath pretty much summed it up perfectly. Not only that, but Quantum Manipulation definitely seems to be more like an advanced form of Matter Manipulation, making it very redundant - so I'd absolutely support the page's deletion

 

[Crabwhale]

If the consensus is that it should be deleted, perhaps we should have a bot run through the pages that have it and link them instead to the Quantum section of the Matter Manip stage.

Actually scratch this, perhaps deleting it outright with no further additions would be for the best. As Grath said, most examples of Quantum Manipulation are nonsense buzzwords.

 

[SamanPatou]

Adding Matter Manipulation to every page featuring it could be dangerous or misleading, given the many and loose uses that fiction makes of it, as also exemplified by DarkGrath.

 

[Agnaa]

Blindly deleting it with a bot also sounds like a bad idea. Some pages like this would have their formatting butchered by that.

I think it may need to be rectified manually.

 

[Theglassman12]

I wouldn’t mind deleting the Quantum page since it is tied to the matter manipulation page as its post potent version, though I feel like Quantum hax in general could benefit with a more in depth explanation of the ability on what it’s capable of or the applications in general.

 

[Crabwhale]

Blindly deleting it with a bot also sounds like a bad idea. Some pages like this would have their formatting butchered by that.

I think it may need to be rectified manually.

That leaves us with a headcount of 391 pages.

 

[Crabwhale]

So is the general agreed-upon idea that we delete every "vague" justification for Quantum Manipulation but redirect the examples that list stuff regarding quantum mechanics and the like to the Quantum Manipulation section of the Matter Manip page?