Forum:CT:List of articles without appearances lists

Forums > Consensus track archive > CT:List of articles without appearances lists

This page is an archive of a community-wide discussion. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made in the Senate Hall or new Consensus Track pages rather than here so that this page is preserved as a historic record.
The result of the debate was no consensus. Graestan(Talk) 23:27, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I'm working on updating the appearances sections of the articles a lot and I must say it is always stressing to come across articles about generic "Earth" terms or fundamental terms of Star Wars galaxy, which by definition must include most, if not all, stories ever published, but instead include only a relatively small number of them. Aricles about popular subjects, like Luke Skywalker or clone trooper also have a huge number of appearances, which are incomplete, but they can at least theoretically be drawn near completion, unlike the appearances of water and energy cell. Seriously, we write Wookieepedia for its readers and it would be far more interesting for them to see, in which stories lightsabers or Humans do not appear, rather than scroll through a list with hundreds of stories, terribly incomplete anyway. I also doubt people will be looking for the list of appearances for such common terms as General or The Force (the latter is said to "reside in all life forms" and "bind the galaxy" together, so by definition it is present in every Star Wars story).

My, rather bold, suggestion is: to create a list (in the Wookieepedia namespace, of course) of articles, which should not have a traditional appearances section. Instead such articles will either lack such sections at all, have a brief explanation in its place (for example, for lekku: All stories, in which twi'leks appear) or include a list of stories, in which subject does not appear. Such lists, once created, will be a subject of constant expansion. The decision whether to include the article on the list could be done on each article's individual talk page. For the start, the list could be copied from the User:LtNOWIS/List of articles without appearances lists (I must also thank User:LtNOWIS for the idea). However, before even starting with such a list myself, I feel I must aks a community about such idea - I have a feeling there'll be arguments to oppose that, so I'm open to discussion. Mauser 10:54, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Votes

In favor

  1. Mauser 10:54, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
  2. Some articles simply to not fit the usual paradigm. Things like time and sentience are universal aspects of the reality, more than they are finite entities. For things like that, I don't see the possibility of a viable appearances list.-LtNOWIS 11:27, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
  3. This is a very interesting idea. Chack Jadson (Talk) 12:15, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
  4. Per LtNOWIS. Master JonathanJedi Council Chambers 17:43, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
  5. If something appears in all but a handful of stories, the information is carried more clearly by noting the exceptions. If something appears in every story, just say that rather than listing the whole of Star Wars canon in chronological order. —Silly Dan (talk) 21:37, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
  6. IFYLOFD (Come with me if you want to live.) 03:41, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
  7. Mecenarylord 14:34, 21 February 2009 (UTC)
  8. Appearance lists should be useful more than anything. If we're listing every single source for stuff like time, it's just filling space more than telling the readers of the articles anything. Ones in which only a few sources don't include it are even more useless to list every Star Wars work in existence except three (or whatever). Per Dan, basically. - Lord Hydronium 23:08, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Oppose

  1. I find this a bit pointless. For "the Force," the obvious thing to do is only list appearances where the Force is either mentioned directly or shown to be used. Lekku is the same as a breast - only list appearances where it is mentioned by name. If you want to make a list of works in which something doesn't appear and then add that as a note to the top of the list in addition to the appearances list, that would be fine, but this is just pointless. And, appearances/sources lists do not exist solely for the reader's sake; they're there for the writers, too, so they can know where to look for info to add. If someone was to try to FA General, then they would look at the appearances section. -- AdmirableAckbar (Talk) 11:02, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
    • If something is only for the writers, and is does not particularly help out a non-editor, than perhaps it does not need to be in the article itself. And really, a lot of sources for an FA'd breast or lekku would not involve mentioning the word itself; certainly, a lot of our image sources would not. Something like, say, beheading would involve a lot of visual observation of comics and so forth. So, I don't know that a verbal mention is the inherently correct benchmark.-LtNOWIS 11:27, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
  2. This is kind of silly and backwards. We would list appearances in which something doesn't appear? And, per the "Every work of Star Wars fiction" idea, I think rather than just assuming something does appear in every piece of work (which, I've found on a few instances across our site to be mistakenly placed in some articles), we should apply something like the Galactic Basic Standard article and only name appearances in which something explicitly appears or is identified. Sure, oxygen, for example, must hypothetically appear in every piece of Star Wars, but just limit it to the appearances in which oxygen is named. Toprawa and Ralltiir 17:45, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
    • The question is: do we really have to have a list of all stories, in which the word oxygen is spoken or mentioned in prose? Mauser 18:41, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
      • Do we really have to have any list of any stories anywhere? -- AdmirableAckbar (Talk) 18:48, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
  3. Per Acky and Top. Green Tentacle (Talk) 20:12, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
  4. I lean towards working at the level of the standards we set rather than lowering those standards for simplicity. The only things I see this serving to do is either shrink gigantic appearance lists (while making them equally prone to incompleteness by reversing the problem and subjecting them to assumption) or saving a little bit of work in listing sources people haven't bothered to include yet (at the cost of doing all the work to totally change the current policy). Even if I agreed with the overall theory here (which I don't), its implementation would be as much work as fixing the problem the right way under the current system. Wildyoda 20:49, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
  5. "It's hard work to figure out all the appearances" doesn't really seem to me to be a compelling reason to just give up on the appearances and drop them from the article. By this logic, we could also settle for "All Episode IV adaptations" in Luke's appearances instead of listing every comic and manga and junior novelization and novelization and radio drama and god knows what, but that doesn't actually tell the reader anything in any meaningful sense so instead we put the work in and build the list. This needn't be treated any differently. Havac 02:25, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
    • But what does it tell the reader, in a meaningful sense, to list all Star Wars works but the five (or however many) that don't include whatever the subject is? Or to list every Star Wars work ever? Something like adaptations don't compare, because that's a relatively small list (actually, it wouldn't be the worst idea to have a page of all the adaptations for each movie, and link to those for characters that appear in all of them, with something like Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and adaptations in the appearances list—but that's a different matter). - Lord Hydronium 23:16, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
  6. If the item isn't specifically mentioned, then it shouldn't be in appearances. Just because a book has Twi'leks in it, but does not mention lekku, or head-tails, or brain-tails, then that book should NOT be listed as an appearance for lekku. Same goes for everything really. Are we going to start having a "Non-appearance" section? Come on now. - JMAS Hey, it's me! 23:58, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
    • What if a concept appears significantly in a work, but is never mentioned by name? What if lekku are plot-critical in a comic book or TV episode, but nobody utters the word? For something like, say, Cho mok, or the Galactic economy, such sources would make up a big proportion of the article's content. The appearances list would thus be not useful. More importantly, it wouldn't be an appearances list. It would be a list of instances where the word is mentioned, calling itself an appearances list. That's just counterfactual. -LtNOWIS 03:12, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
      • If the item isn't specifically mentioned, but is indirectly mentioned, it gets a (Mention only) or (Indirect appearance) or even a (Possible appearance), and stays in the Appearances list. At least, that's how the GA and FA systems have been doing it for ages. Graestan(Talk) 03:14, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
      • I'm sure that if something was integral to the plot or oodles of new info was contained within exceptions could be made to add them to the appearances list. But, even if we did list all instances where Twi'leks appear, I would rather actually list every single one than say what Mauser is suggesting (which, anyway, is pretty silly: are you going to put "all works in which lekku appear" on the Twi'lek page? If not, the whole point of not having a massive appearances list is lost if you're just having it on another article). Ultimately, this is just not a practical idea. When do we start with things like "all works in which Luke Skywalker appears," or "all works in which lightsabers" appear? There is no problem with long appearances list, even if they're theoretically never going to be complete (the same can be said of this entire encyclopedia) - scrollboxes, however ugly they are, remove pretty much any inconvenience of having a massive list. If you can't load the page because they're on dialup or something, well, I should hope we're not going to compromise our encyclopedic standards for you. If you want to try sort out these massive appearances lists, start small. -- AdmirableAckbar (Talk) 11:24, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
  7. Per Acky, Tope, Wildyoda, and Havac—four very prolific users who have their feet on the ground when it comes to the articles. Thoroughness and common sense should be the pervading themes on this wiki, as they have been in the past. The system as it stands already works, and pretty much everyone has and continues to adhere to it, so I don't see the point in changing it at this time. Not to mention the huge loophole that users of less honorable intent than Mauser would have to perform halfassery in. Graestan(Talk) 04:13, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
  8. Pranay Sobusk ~ Talk 15:00, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
  9. Muuuuuurgh 22:07, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
  10. Only if we list appearances when they are specifically mentioned by name, however. If we're going to list all SW media for the Force, I'd prefer it done Mauser's way. SoresuMakashi(Everything I tell you is a lie) 05:21, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
  11. --Skippy Farlstendoiro 11:58, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
  12. Grunny (Talk) 12:02, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
  13. While I do see the merit of this idea, I nevertheless have to agree with what has already been said by the other users. Cylka-talk- 12:56, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
  14. Strong, strong opposition. Jedi apparel will pay dearly at the next Inqmoot. — Fiolli {Alpheridies University ComNet} 18:21, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
  15. DC 18:54, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Comments

The list I made in my user space was only a scattershot attempt at documenting the way people were addressing this already. But if it helped inspire ideas, than I'm glad.-LtNOWIS 11:27, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

  • There is already at least one example of this in use, the Jedi apparel article, which is an FA, lists it's appearances as All instances in which Jedi appear. --Jinzler 22:57, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
    • Well, that article is currently up for Inq review. So any kind of precedent there might not necessarily exist before too long. Toprawa and Ralltiir 23:43, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, I see now that the community, including admins, is mostly against the idea. I still think it was worth a try, though. You can close the thread now. Mauser 08:23, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

  • Some of us are for it, though. Maybe the initial proposal needs to be refined? —Silly Dan (talk) 22:25, 25 February 2009 (UTC)
    • The only thing I can think of is: instead of creating a list we define the rules for page's appearances section on the page itself. The examples would be:
  • Since lekku appears in all stories which include twi'leks, this list only contains the stories where the word "lekku" is explicitly mentioned.
  • Since the Galactic Republic appears in most stories which take place prior to the Declaration of a New Order, this list only contains the stories where it is explicitly mentioned.
  • Since Humans appear in most stories of Star Wars Saga, this list contains the stories where Humans do not appear.

and such. Mauser 09:44, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

    • Let me see if I understand your point, following the lekku example. Bib Fortuna is a Twi'lek. Sometimes, he is the only Twi'lek in a story. So, under Twi'lek / Appearances, you would add: Plus [[Bib Fortuna#Appearances|all the appearances of Bib Fortuna]]; under Twi'lek / Sources, you would add: Plus [[Bib Fortuna#Sources|all the sources mentioning Bib Fortuna]]. And then, some more lines with other noteworthy Twi'leks such as Aayla Secura, Mission Vao, Alema Rar, Darth Talon...
This I dislike. Firstly, we should need to define when is an entry (Say, Kopecz) a noteworthy representative of her Category (Kopecz might not be a noteworthy Twi'lek but he might be a noteworthy Sith Lord).
Not to speak about possible (and inevitable) overlapping of appearances mentioned both under Fortuna and under Twi'lek (because this comic-book featured both Fortuna and Unidentified Twi'lek Guy). About the non-overlapped ones, I might well forget about seeing them in chronological order; I have two ordered lists (in the best case).
And this could be done only beyond, uh, certain number of appearances? Kerkoiden does not seem to require this, although we could extrapolate and say "Assume that any future mention to the Battle of Christophsis must be at least an indirect mention to the Kerkoiden separatist commander."
Now, say I am interested in Lekku, but the article is a stub. I must be going from Lekku to Twi'lek to Orn Free Taa to discover his four-lekku feature.I think the problem is overabundancy of data hiding the real information, as in individual trees hiding the woods. But, the information I'm looking for might be different from the information other person requires. I personally think that the scrollbox used for long lists of appearances is enough. Again, IMHO. --Skippy Farlstendoiro 10:10, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
      • I'm sory, but this is not at all what I have in mind. This was never meant to affect any unigue or specific subjects (characters, creatures, species, locations, starships etc.) - only vague terms terms like water, commander, gravity; or things that are way too common in Star Wars galaxy: blasters, lightsabers, Humans and such. Lekku might not be a good example after all, since it was established to list only specific mentions in appearances section long ago. Mauser 11:17, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
  • Wait. If only a specific text mention is counted as an appearance, then Humans didn't appear in the OT and PT. SoresuMakashi(Everything I tell you is a lie) 07:01, 3 March 2009 (UTC)