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.