Hmm... I'm not sure which year would be the most likely cutoff for a "x to present" page, I think it could be feasible to still do them per year, but instead merge the species? No "2014 chickens, 2014 dogs" etc, just "2014". That might be a solid middle ground for keeping pages short.
The more I thought about it, the more I feel like trying to give every pet a name is tackling the issue backwards.
Most pets that exist on the site now will never have an iconic "you-know-it" name like 'Moonswirl' or 'Hollyfox'. And they don't need to!
Popular pets usually acquire a name because of how often they get talked about. The majority of pets aren't "important" enough to get widely recognized names.
So if you need a name for them, you wing it. "Descriptive word, year". I can go to a random archive page, scroll to a random litter, say "
2020 button horse" and nobody is gonna complain that this isn't clear enough, y'feel?
But if I want to know what a "TODODAG" is? Now
that is something I'd like to be able to enter into the wiki search and get a result on.
Disclaimer, you can do that, it works as intended.tl,dr maybe we dont actually need to name every pet. maybe we just need to make sure people can search for the names that
are non-intuitive, and give them the option to quick-scroll a year to check
if their pet has one
Fun CS history fact: Giving pets names back in ye olden days was something of a necessity due to the lack of an on-site archive. Now you have the luxury of being able to check an official archive for "ok which 2020 horses have buttons on them", and even filter the search to only show you horses.
Not to mention on-site wishlists and the ability to see if xy pet is on someone's wishlist. [shakes cane] BACK IN MY YOUTH......