Forum:Characters category

Forums: War Room → Characters category

Note: This thread has been unedited for 3726 days. It is considered archived – the discussion is over. Do not edit this thread unless it really needs a response.

This discussion is closed. The result of this discussion was:
Fanon-centric categorization will continue; canon categorization preserved as status quo.
Please do not edit this discussion.

As Rassilon of Old suggested here already, I propose to get rid of some of the -like Rass called it- "incestial categorization". Almost all of the characters are categorized as "nation character", "minor/major/... character" and then again as "characters".

I suggest we remove, or more accurately, ask a hidden bot like 888th's or Thailog's to remove, the "characters" category from the individual character's page because 1. we get that it is about a character and 2. both the "nation characters" cat and the "minor/major/... characters" cat are sublinks of the "characters" category, so that page would become a nice redirection page to the more specified categories.

And now that I'm here talking about categories anyway, shouldn't the Fire Sage category be renamed to "Fire Sages" as all the other categories are plural? If this is indeed the case and my/Rass's suggestion above gets consensus, that bot could also easily rename that category as well. Lady Lostris /  SOAP 10:38, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

As per my suggestion, I support. Incestial categorization is a problem on Avatar Wiki, especially the Fanon Portal. My Bot has been running around a lot on the Fanon Portal fixing that up, and the same should be done here. If the rest of the categories are plural, I'm going to go ahead and rename that category anyway, seeing as it doesn't comply with standards. Rassilon of Old ^{(Wall - Help)} 10:41, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

*coughs* This is actually something I did. I was the one who put the character category on every single character article in January this year. This is not a problem. It is an improvement. I've elaborated extensively on various channels of communication about fully utilising categories for ease of navigation, and not for organisation based necessarily around pure logic. In terms of navigation, saturation of this category around the wiki reduces the amount of clicks users need to find what they are looking for. What if a person is looking for a character, but not one that is also from the Earth Kingdom? If we only show "Earth Kingdom characters", they'll need to go to the bottom of that category and click another link to return to the wider characters category. And what if users go straight to the character category from our main navigation menu? If articles are not directly categorised there, the category gallery does not appear, which makes finding the most popular characters on the wiki inordinately more difficult for those not starting on the main page. Sorry, but this gets a very strong oppose from me, and a further proposal to reverse recent fanon categorisation actions. The 888th Avatar (talk) 11:33, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

I understand both points of view here. Essentially, I agree with Lady Lostris. I does seem redundant to have grandparent categories in every character. I usually avoid this type of categorizing in the Wikis I contribute to. But I understand 888's logic too, in the sense that it facilitates search. However, I have to wonder how effectively does having every character in the base category help someone to find a character they are looking for? If someone knows who they're looking for, they should be able to find it via the subcategories. And if someone doesn't know who they're looking for, does it really make a difference having everyone crammed into one category? ― Thailog 12:55, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

While it may ease a user's navigation, most articles have plenty of links that would lead them to another nation's categories. I'll have to agree with Lady here. --I'm The Bos - ^{Talk - Guardian} 13:02, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

I know what you mean Wjxhuang, but I think it is redundant, and if a user is looking for a character, there's this amazing feature called a search bar. ;) And that user can just navigate themselves through the categories in order to thin their search. For example, say a user is looking for Fong. This user knows he's a character (durr) and knows that he's an Earthbender, and so can thin the options with the sub-category. How's an entire collection of pictureless names going to help this user? Unless he knows the name of the character, it becomes useless, in my opinion, and therefore I'd also like to oppose the request to undo the fanon uncategorisation. Rassilon of Old ^{(Wall - Help)} 13:35, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

I'm with Rass and Thailog here. A long list of names isn't beneficial for navigation in my opinion. If a person is looking for someone is particular, I think a list of nearly 400 pages isn't the best way to search for someone. If they are searching for a specific character from the series, I think it's easier to search through the nations character cat than the main list as the main list also contains the characters from comics etc.

As for the fanon portal, I also support Rass. Again, a long list of random chapters/charecters isn't very helpful. We are striving for easy navigation, what could be easier than searching for a specific chapter/character in that specific fanon's category instead of having to go through an incredibly long list of all the chapters/characters? Lady Lostris /  SOAP 13:47, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

As the Avatar fandom's largest and most popular resource and community site, we must cater for all audiences looking for information on the franchise. The arguments you are all presenting here largely only make things easy for a subset of the all the visitors who come here — those who are very familiar with the franchise. Considering that a staggering three-quarters of all visitors to the wiki are "passer-bys", this is the wrong approach.

The real point of categorising every last character into the character category is not so that users can be left staring at a huge list of 400 pages. Rather, it is so that every character page has a link to the top character category, to save the amount of clicks or scrolling/menu-opening to find it. Then, they can either visit the most popular character articles from the gallery, or find a relevant sub-category. Yes, your regular user will know the tree back to front and will know how to go all the way back to the top category, but that's asking too much of the casual reader. In terms of usability, this can be compared to having a link straight back to My Documents on your Windows computer when you are layers and layers of folders in. Minimising the amount of clicks or scrolling is absolutely essential from a navigation point of views — web research commonly shows that each extra click will cut 50% or more of viewers — and that is what this is all about.

"Most articles have plenty of links" is simply foolish. You presume that, when people are looking to navigate to another page, they will actually read over the article again to find the link? Enough said.

"Redundant because of search bar" similarly fails to take into account the casual reader. Everyone who edits here will know the names of most characters on the show, and spell them correctly. You can't assume that readers will have the same kind of specialist knowledge. When people in real life talk to you about the show who aren't as big fans as you guys are, don't you notice some will say "that old guy, the uncle" or "that crazy king of the big city on the hill" before you correct them?

The Fong example is fundamentally flawed. Good job, you can navigate down sub-categories to find him. But how do you get to the top category so that you can navigate down to the sub-categories? By making the top category itself easy to reach. Again, it's about making it easy to get to the top of the tree and navigate down, rather than hoping the masses will get to the top and come back down again.

I must reiterate my total opposition to a reversal of our current content categorisation and navigational practices. This is something I feel extremely strongly about and will steadfastly defend. Say what you will about the prettiness of having more categories at the bottom of each page and having a huge list, but the consequences of ignoring even potential usefulness in favour of being neat are not trivial. The 888th Avatar (talk) 14:32, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

I agree with 888. I thought everybody knew the reason why he had added the category "Characters" to all character articles. This may not seem beneficial for navigation, but it is for many new users; it's useful to have a list where every character is included and have all the links together instead of chaanging the category to find an article of a character from a different nation or a different relevance in the series. So, if this may be beneficial, not only for navigation but for editing also, why not have both types of categories? This is not redundant, it's a way of categorization that allows users to find pages easily. Dcasawaang1 (talk) 15:18, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm.. I can understand your reasoning for this and you do have point indeed...for the main space. Sorry that you had to repeat your whole argumentation for this, I wasn't actively around when you made this change based on those grounds :-)

Okay, I can see now why it could be helpful for main, but not for fanons. People don't look for a specific chapter in a long list, they look for the fanon they're reading and then to the specific chapters. Your strongest argument for keeping the general cat on every page was aiding the passer-bys and that is true, but those passer-bys often don't make it to the fanon portal, so I think that Rass' adaptations could stay there. Since there are so many stories and so many chapters/characters there, I think that have 1 long list isn't beneficial for anyone. Lady Lostris /  SOAP 15:31, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

On a side note from me; I've actually used the setup 888 has myself without even realizing it. I've went to "Category:Characters"/etc similar pages, and perused the full list there in the past. Typically it's due to fanon purposes, such as wanting to see all the character's in one shot regardless of if they are an Air Nomad/etc. Doesn't have to apply to only Fanon ofcousre. But still...anyway just tossing out that I have used it as a navigation feature before. ^^" Vulmen (talk • contribs) 03:19, August 29, 2011 (UTC)

I think I may have a compromise that might work well. I've been a Wikia reader since 2005, like - I was young when I first started reading up on info on wikis. And yes, I had this problem with finding particular pages, but never did I ever look through categories, as 1) I didn't know they existed, and 2) when I did discover them, I just found it all a bit too complicated to be honest. So I propose that we remove all character articles from Category:Characters (like originally proposed), and for character navigation, we create an article entitled List of Avatar: The Last Airbender Characters. The title really speaks for itself, and all characters would be listed in alphabetical order, with a brief description for each character, and if space allows, an image.

This could be set out as follows;

Following is a list of characters that appeared in Avatar: The Last Airbender.

A

46th Earth King

46th Earth King.

Main article: 46th Earth King

The 46th Earth King was the King of Ba Sing Se and ruler of the Earth Kingdom during the time of Avatar Kyoshi. His rule was unpopular with his people, and during his tenure there were several revolts against his leadership

Aang

Avatar Aang.

Main article: Aang

Aang is the twelve year old Avatar, and the last Airbender following the Genocide of the Airnomads. He was frozen in an iceberg for 100 years, until he was awoken by two Water Tribe siblings, Katara and Sokka, with whom he travelled the world to master the four elements.

Afiko

Main article: Afiko

Afiko.

Afiko was an Airbender from the Southern Air Temple who betrayed his people and sold them out to the War's instigator, Fire Lord Sozin, in 0 AG. He aided the soldiers in the horrific Air Nomad Genocide; however, in 5 AG, he was killed by the Fire Lord for "treason".

Air Nomad Boy

[[File:Nomad Boy.png|thumb|left|150px|Air Nomad Boy.]] {{Main|Air Nomad Boy}} Air Nomad Boy was one of Aang's old Air Nomad friends from before the war, though his name remains unknown. This Airbending nomad lived in the Southern Air Temple. He was a tall and slender boy around Aang's age.

How does that sound to everyone? I believe it satisfies the demands of all parties, as long as the page is easy to locate, I would request it be inserted into WikiNavigation. So, thoughts? Rassilon of Old ^{(Wall - Help)} 03:53, August 31, 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I cannot accept this proposal unless is created in addition to the existing system of categorisation. It won't work; it won't fulfil the aims you are proposing for it. A list is not the same thing as a category. With the vast number of characters in Avatar, any such list will be extraordinarily long — longer, in fact, than the 60kb or so limit we impose on article length. Long lists will not and cannot offer the same functionality that the category currently does, and certainly, it won't be linked from every article, which is the entire point of categorising every character in the character category. And if you split this long list into multiple lists of characters... well, I already made my point about the amount of readers you lose for every extra click required.

Your experience, while insightful, is the experience of one person. As I already alluded to in my previous comment, we should be maximising functionality and potential usefulness where it is not overly disruptive, even if it is not useful to every single reader that comes here. That's what the current system is about, and that's what would be sacrificed it is reversed. Your experience is also not equivalent to the current system. I only added the character category to every character article in January. Before that, the status quo was precisely what you now propose (and presumably that status quo was what you found too complicated). In fact, before 2008, categorisation was extraordinarily haphazard and unintelligible to all but regular editors. That's not how it is now.

I applaud your effort to find a middle ground, but I don't believe there is any middle ground to be found. In the meantime, my opinion remains unchanged. I will not support any effort to go backwards. The 888th Avatar (talk) 04:17, August 31, 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Lady Lostris that de-categorization on the fanon side should be continued as it is and separated by individual fanons. When people search for a fanon article it tends to be closely related to the fanon it is a part of as opposed to the canon side, which is a full encyclopedia of Avatar: The Last Airbender and all its characters/episodes/locations/etc. --AvatarRokus Ghost (Message me • Read my fanon) 04:28, August 31, 2011 (UTC)

I concede that greater separation of categories on the fanon side does have its substantial merits, as Lostris and ARG done a good job in promoting. Consider that particular proposal dropped. :) The 888th Avatar (talk) 04:33, August 31, 2011 (UTC)