On Friday 01 February 2002 01:25, Vicki Rosenzweig wrote:
The longer we discuss this, the more I wonder whether
we actually want
to encourage Wikipedia to be a guide to fictional characters.
Good, solid entries on [[Middle Earth]] and [[Batman]], yes. Separate
entries on every character in either are starting to feel like overkill.
A good question, Vicki.
I realize that these entries aren't really a
"waste of resources,"
because someone
who wants to write about Batman isn't necessarily going to say "Oh,
well, no room
for that, and we need an article about Tennesee/English line
dancing/Nero/peas...."
I'm not too sure about that. "Most wanted" got weeded out steadily until
it was swamped with dates, and I hope to see "Orphans" return
But I do wonder what impression people get when they
come to Wikipedia,
look at the lists of recent changes or new pages, and find so much on
secondary worlds.
Well, maybe they think "hey, this place is hip and happening" ...
Fictional characters are not exactly the staple fare of traditional
ecyclopedias. But wkp is something different - it can contain the
traditional stuff but it need not be limited by it. If people feel
compelled to write articles on Middle Earth then at some level it must be
real and important to them. Someone looking for info on accounting
practices in upper Sulawesi need never come across it.
As such, is it worth going to extra trouble--setting
up separate forms
or even namespaces--to make it easier to provide this information? Raise
(poker) and Java (island) and such make sense, but I think that's as far
as we should go.
As someone said yesterday, KEEP IT SIMPLE! Once you start creating
namespaces for content, it becomes too difficult for the newbie to add new
snippets and create new pages, or we may see people starting [[Utopians]]
blissfully unaware that [[Utopia:characters]] already exists.
Next, we can see a flood of new namespace requests. How about one for
[[Flashman:]], or maybe [[Davy Crockett:]]? This way lies madness.
clasqm
Proud originator of the [[Asterix]] and [[Batman]] pages.
--
Michel Clasquin, D Litt et Phil (Unisa)
clasqm(a)mweb.co.za/unisa.ac.za
http://www.geocities.com/clasqm
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