On 12/5/07, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
In particular the articles on "Characters in [whatever]" or "List of murders in [some series]" have always seemed to be enormously helpful in keeping things straight. The more obscure the minor characters, the more we need an encyclopedia.
There's definitely a line somewhere. There's "having an encyclopaedia article about" and then there's "exhaustively documenting". There was an article recently with several huge paragraphs documenting, in minute details, everything that had gone in a single episode of a Big Brother episode. Who had said what to whom, how they responded, why the first person was upset, then how they played with whatever by themselves singing whatever...
And of course there is the problem of "in universe" styles - the difference between "Joe appeared only sporadically throughout the second series, chiefly as a comic device to..." and "Joe is seldom seen, as he is working in his laboratory, but whenever he turns up he is sure to crack a great gag..." Vomit, vomit.
Steve