Talk:Characters of Lost (New Format Archive)

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I've moved this from the original Talk:Characters of Lost discussion, as the material has gotten quite lengthy. --LeFlyman 03:18, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Post-Season Edit Discussion

OK, the evening we've all waited for has arrived. I wanted to get a section for this set up, so discussions can begin at everyone's leisure. The questions we need to address include:

That's what I've got ATM. 15 minutes to show time, so I'm going to head out. Enjoy the finale! Baryonyx 23:48, May 25, 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps these suggestions need to be separated too! :) --LeFlyman 22:25, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

==How do we want to split the different types of characters?== Different pages, or splitting the mains to their own, or something else?

• What will be the new format of character sections we create?

Thanks for kicking this off. Here's mine: As the main characters each have long sections, I suggest 1) one master page of characters, with (very)short descriptions, such as what is used on the main Lost article page now; 2) separate pages for the each of the 14 main characters, linked from the master character page; and 3) additional article pages grouping the secondary characters, divided by "survivors"/and "others" (such as Ethan Rom, Rousseau, and potential new additions). As flashback characters tend to appear in only one or two episodes, they might be integrated into the episode guide, as a note about guest stars, rather than having every character listed on a page -- since their stories are the same as the episode.

==How will we manage the information content== and minimize repetition between the main page, this page, and the episodes page?

• What changes can be made to the three core pages to make this a more useful resource?

The main page could be simplified, principally being an overview and links to the other sections, and the more in-depth content (such as themes and theories) moved to their own articles.

• How will we address more minor characters, like Ethan and Danielle, whose biographies are practically identical to an episode description?

Ethan's bio, so far as it was, won't be growing. He likely should have only a short bio, and the main part be references to the episode summary

==Where should we have the information on the deceased== with characters or with trivia?

First I think we should just delete the "deceased" section entirely and at the top of the page link to the survivor section at Lost (2004 television series). It's duplicated information and the list here pales in comparison. Before making the decision on what I believe would be best for the page, I'd like to see a cleanup of the article with a lot of episode summary-like bios cut down. Currently I'm thinking that the page can be split into two articles: Main v Minor. The problem, however, is that we're way over 32K right now and I think the main characters might be over that on its own. I don't really wish to split the characters into seperate articles for a number of reasons. 1) I like the fact that they're together. I think together they get more attention especially for the lesser favored characters. A lot of popular television shows have seperated character pages for their main characters, but they don't get the attention that this page gets. 2) Some of the names aren't even final. Kate for instance. What would we name her? We're not certain at all. Kate Austin, Kate Ryan. (for this page I think we ought to just call them by what they're best known by specifically - Sawyer, Hurley, and Kate. For now, I'm of the opinion we should split the secondary characters on down to "Minor characters of Lost" and leave the main characters here until a solution for the main characters can be found. K1Bond007 04:44, May 29, 2005 (UTC)

I think the deceased survivors can be kept as part of a master page, since the writers/producers (particularly Abrams) have said that others are expected to be killed off; it would be worthwhile to track those. My feeling is that the main characters will need to get separate pages, as editors will continue to add info to them. The backgrounds will continue to get sketched out during the second season, and wikipedians will naturally want to incorporate new materials as it is broadcast. I see your point about worries about lack of attention to separated pages, but it may be a necessity, and prove beneficial in the long run. The main reason this page continues to get so much attention is that episode summary-oriented info is redundantly being added here, without heed for "big picture" overviews of the characters. Separated pages will allow the characters' articles to be edited easier, with more thoughtful and interesting material. The pages could start with something like Characters of Lost:Main (which I just created for demonstration) and then branch to the individual pages like this new Jack Shephard page. That's similar to the idea with Alias' character article which branches to more indepth pages, such as the one for Sydney Bristow.--LeFlyman 03:33, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Sure it's great to track the deceased characters, but we're doing that already on the main page. What we have here is just duplicated information. I guess you missed that part of my comment. Either we get rid of it here or get rid of it there, but one of them has to go because we don't need the same info twice. The one here doesn't seem nearly as good as the one there. Hence my decision on that. Additionally, the seperated character pages is a bad idea right now. As previously mentioned what do we call Kate? We can't say Kate Austin AKA Kate Ryan. How many times will that get changed for each sub-plot she has in which she creates a new name? I think we should move out the secondary characters to their own page first then worry about the main characters once this gets taken care of. Ultimately the problem with the direction of where we want to go with the page revolves around the main characters. We can deal with that later once the issues such as Kate are dealt with. K1Bond007 03:40, May 30, 2005 (UTC)

I'm sorry I didn't clarify: as I mentioned above, I believe the main page should be shortened, simplified and not have the list of deceased-- in my view, such a list could be part of the "master" character page. I do disagree that Kate's name is the stumbling block to making separate character pages. I think we'll find out that her name *is* Kate Ryan-- which is likely a married name while "Austin" was her original family name. We can certainly split off the non-main characters to another article first while we solve the issues with the main characters. LeFlyman 06:07, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

A few points:

• This being Wikipedia, the name of a character not being exact is not a problem. If, at some later date, Kate's name changes (and I believe she's the ONLY main character whose real name is still up in the air), the page can be moved and the old name page deleted or used for redirection. I would concur with Leflyman that the main characters will probably be eventually on their own pages anyway, so if the only reason to NOT do it is because of issues over Kate's name, that's not enough of a show-stopper. However, what is a show-stopper for me is this: if we are seeking to prevent episode overviews in character biographies, the separated main character pages would, at this stage, be trivial. That is, I don't believe we have anywhere near enough information to sustain 12 separate pages (I'm assuming Boone will not factor in for separate pages, but would be included with Shannon's, and, for now, Walt/Michael/Vincent would have to go together), and last thing I want is for these pages to come up on VfD and be decided that it should be re-merged.
• I think it would be a good idea to separate main characters vs. minor characters. I think we're all in agreement there.
• I think the main page for Lost can be shortened to include only a show overview, a brief season overview (removing the list of episodes), a listing of the major cast only. I have always debated the merits of the trivia section, since that section tends to breed non-encyclopedic additions and seems like something more appropriate for a fan page than here. That said, if we're splitting characters off into Major and Minor, and trimming down the main page, I'd say that the deceased section from the main page should move to Minor Characters. Baryonyx 18:32, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

Point 1 - I can agree with merging families together as you said. Boone and Shannon. Sun and Jin. Walt, Vincent, and Michael with redirects etc. I still have a problem with the naming though. If we do seperate into seperate articles, I still maintain that we should go by what they're best known as for the title (ex. Hurley (Lost), Sawyer (Lost), Kate (Lost) - something along these lines). I agree with the rest of your points. K1Bond007 19:10, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

I would disagree with those page names, especially in light of how this site usually handles such things. The page for Fox Mulder isn't "Mulder (The X-Files)" it is Fox Mulder, with a redirection at Mulder. The main page for Tony Soprano isn't "Tony (The Sopranos)", it is Tony Soprano, and no redirection at Tony (since doing so for first names is a bit overdoing it). The main page for Homer Simpson isn't "Homer (The Simpsons), it's Homer Simpson. This holds for most characters. Sure for some characters, like John Locke, we'll have a disambiguation issue, but that also has examples, as in John Sheridan (Babylon 5) for Capt. John Sheridan (who was referred to as Sheridan far more than John) and a listing for the character on the disambiguation page for Sheridan. If we're going to split the main 14 (with Vincent) apart, we should use the full names, and add "(Lost)" where we'll have disambiguations as well as redirector pages set up for the common nicknames, as needed. Some examples would include:

John Locke (Lost), Jack Shephard, Kate Austin (for now!), Hugo Reyes (redirector is already up on Hurley), Michael Dawson, with Walt Lloyd redirecting to him, Shannon Rutherford, with no Boone Carlyle redirect, etc. Only one I can't decide on would be Jin and Sun... both are solid characters standing on their own. In that instance, I'd probably defer to the creators: Jin was created as a character after they created Sun specifically for Yunjin Kim, so I'd make a page for Sun-Soo Kwon and have Jin on that.

Of course, this is assuming we even go so far as to split the main characters into individual pages. I still don't (at this time), see enough meat for these pages to merit the individual page treatment, especially since we're limiting these sections to very short discussions of "on-island" events. Baryonyx 19:35, Jun 1, 2005 (UTC)

As I suggested above, to allow better organization, we might use a subset article name (if allowable), such as Characters of Lost:Main (or similarly Characters of Lost:Minor) and then branch to the individual pages like Characters of Lost:Jack Shephard. Personally, I don't like having "top level" encyclopedic entries for TV show character names. I also believe that the character articles shouldn't be limited to just "on-Island" events, as their past is revealed in tandem with the "present" -- which often are inter-related, and wouldn't make sense separated. --LeFlyman 03:18, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I don't like having top-level entries either, but that is what seems to be the Wikipedia standard. While I don't think Wikipedia has a policy on how to handle these things, I don't think we should be doing something on this one topic that is inherently different from the rest of the site simply because we prefer something different. These edits should not be about what we personally prefer, and should instead be with an eye to how Wikipedia and the general use would expect these pages to be made. As far as the "on-island" issues, some were saying that there is too much duplication of information between the episode and character pages, so that's why I bring it up. However, it should be noted that the character biographies I have written have attempted to place key events from the flashbacks into linear perspective, removed from the "triggering events" on the island, because of the stated desire to avoid excessive duplication. Ultimately, however, something must be done seeing as this page is the 179th largest page on all of Wikipedia].

I do have one concern with your proposal, besides the "standard" argument. Does making subsets mean that out there somewhere will be a monster page (still called Characters of Lost) that holds all the information in these subpages? How does that work exactly? Baryonyx 14:45, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

Since this hasn't been commented on, I'll re-open the discussion: in looking over the Wikipedia formats, I don't see anything to indicated that a colon-ized (":") title generates a "monster page" -- so far as I see, only sections ("==") create such a beastie. Thus, the demontration stub articles I created titled "Characters of Lost:Main" and "Characters of Lost:Jack Shephard" do not appear to have any impact the plain Characters of Lost article. Redirect or disambiguition pages such as currently in place for John Locke (disambiguation) can be used to point to the right place in Wikipedia. --LeFlyman 28 June 2005 19:16 (UTC)

OK... so, in other words, the colon option will create several pages all with "Characters of Lost:" in the titles? In that case, I do not agree that this should be our method of redesign, since it is not the method used by other Wikipedia pages. As noted in my last post of a month ago, not liking creating top level pages for characters is insufficient cause for not doing it. In this instance, I firmly believe we should defer to the dominant style on Wikipedia, OR go about changing the style. Again, our eye should be to how this information is normally handled in Wikipedia, and with an eye to the typical end user. To that end, I see little choice BUT top-level pages with disambiguations on ones with other references. Baryonyx July 1, 2005 14:15 (UTC)