Ok, not too long back a policy went in place where lists in various pages were removed since they were redundant with categories. While the reason behind this is fairly strait forward and logical, I have found, in practice, it is waaaay easier to actually get information in an understandable way from the old lists. [[1]] serves as an example, in order to actually get to even the major characters one needs to go three deep. While one can do this, it's not very convenient, and digging is thus required if one wants to actually look through the membership of a number of categories. Compared to [[2]] the old page, where the names and ranks are nice and laid out and if I want to browse through lords or agents of the One Sith, it's quite easy (though maybe sans all the unimportant ones). Thoughts? ZeroSD (talk) 02:04, December 16, 2014 (UTC)
- I personally prefer the on the page list. - AV-6R7User talk:AV-6R7 02:07, December 16, 2014 (UTC)
- Anyone else? Should a consensus track topic be opened?ZeroSD (talk) 02:41, December 20, 2014 (UTC)
- Categories are preferred over lists because they are easier to maintain. Lists need to be manually updated, and therefore can easily become outdated. In addition, in the past, lists have often been a magnet for fanon. Hope this helps. Supreme Emperor (talk) 04:28, December 21, 2014 (UTC)
- Could always use the extension called CategoryTree, which embeds a list of all pages into a category wherever you want to embed them. That way it automatically remains up to date, and isn't a magnet for fanon. That assumes, of course, that this isn't just an opposition to lists in general. Otherwise, CategoryTree would overcome the issues you mentioned. - Brandon Rhea(talk) 05:29, December 21, 2014 (UTC)
- I get those reasons Supreme Emperor and I've engaged in some cleaning them myself, but if it comes at the cost of 'being able to find stuff out,' I'd rather spend the effort pruning fanon. Though Brandon Rhea's suggestion sound like it could fix the accessibility problem. I don't know much about extensions, but as long as the information is easy to get to without having to compare a half-dozen sub-categories in different tabs, I'll be happy.ZeroSD (talk) 08:28, December 25, 2014 (UTC)
- Categories are preferred over lists because they are easier to maintain. Lists need to be manually updated, and therefore can easily become outdated. In addition, in the past, lists have often been a magnet for fanon. Hope this helps. Supreme Emperor (talk) 04:28, December 21, 2014 (UTC)
- Anyone else? Should a consensus track topic be opened?ZeroSD (talk) 02:41, December 20, 2014 (UTC)
IMO, the question is: do average readers even know about categories? I know from my work on Wikipedia, that while some users put much effort into categorizing articles, only very few readers actually tend to happen upon those categories. For example: according to http:/ /stats.grok.se/ the article Wikipedia:Star Wars has been viewed 372708 times in the last 30 days while Wikipedia:Category:Star Wars has been viewed 468 times. And categories don't show up in the standard search results. So if I'm searching for a list of Sith Lords, my first attempt would be to search for "Sith Lord", leading me to the article Sith Lord, where I can't find any hint to the existence of any such list. And even if a minority of readers figures out that there are links to categories at the very end of articles, they only get Category:Sith_Lords, where all the characters are scattered over more than 20 sub-categories, but there's no comprehensive list where I can get an overview of all of them. It might make sense from an organizational standpoint, but the primary objective should be to make the wiki useful for readers, not just the small amount of editors. --95.90.51.227 23:05, January 2, 2015 (UTC)
- I would tend to agree with that. Lists could even go onto subpages, rather than the main article page, which would be easier to find. - Brandon Rhea(talk) 23:19, January 2, 2015 (UTC)
- It's too bad we can't have a gallery list, like the new Star Wars Databank (a list of images with the name underneath). I think that would be amazing for Wookieepedia.--Richterbelmont10
(come in R2!) 05:07, January 3, 2015 (UTC)
- Is there any specific reason, outside of some policy that's currently in place, that we can't? Or within some policy that I can't put my finger on off-hand? ProfessorTofty (talk) 20:57, January 3, 2015 (UTC)
- There is the Wikia "Read More" menu at the bottom of Wikia pages, but it's not on Wookieepedia primarily because the vast majority of Wookieepedia pages don't have images on them. So it doesn't look as good here. - Brandon Rhea(talk) 21:01, January 3, 2015 (UTC)
- Galleries of any kind are strongly discouraged for the most part on Wookieepedia, on the basis that a collection of images for the sake of having a collection of images does not qualify as fair use. While we do use galleries in a small number of limited cases (e.g. book covers), in general, images should ideally support the surrounding prose at some level. This is not perfectly adhered to, as some long FAs have several generic portraits of the character in sections for which no images of the events described exist, but overall we should be striving to do less of that (having an image for the sake of an image) rather than more. —MJ— War Room 04:42, January 4, 2015 (UTC)
- I should point out, as I have in the past, that Wookieepedia isn't in any danger of coming into copyright conflict with Lucasfilm because it would be against their interests to do so. Unless you were literally reprinting books or sharing download links or whatever. So if that's the only major reason for not having galleries, I'd say have galleries. (I say that knowing it's not the only reason; just making the point.) - Brandon Rhea(talk) 04:54, January 4, 2015 (UTC)
- MJ, my idea of a gallery list would be to use existing infobox images only. For example, in a gallery list, we would simply use the infobox image from the article with name underneath. Since we would ONLY be using infobox images, we wouldn't be adding any new images, since each article can only have a single infobox image. Nor would we be encouraging the addition of more images, since no orphan images may be used. I made a sample gallery list here--Richterbelmont10 (come in R2!) 17:20, January 4, 2015 (UTC)
- Images themselves do not determine whether they are fair use or not; the specifics of each individual usage of that image determine, for that usage only, whether it is fair use. The exact same image can be fair use in one usage scenario and not fair use in another usage scenario, even if only one copy of the image exists. So it does not matter that no other images would be uploaded. Usage in the infoboxes of the characters they depict is fair use; usage in a gallery that exists for the sake of the gallery (because a text list combined with the infobox images on the linked articles can accomplish the same purpose) is not fair use. —MJ— Jedi Council Chambers 21:21, January 5, 2015 (UTC)
- Though images could be fair use in certain galleries. For example a gallery of characters in the Mos Eisley cantina scene in ANH, where the images are quite necessary to identify the characters. Maybe galleries could be allowed only for specific scenes from movies and tv shows, like the cantina scene, the death star attack briefing scene in ANH, Ackbar's death star II attack briefing in ROTJ, the podracers in TPM, etc. --95.90.51.227 18:01, January 10, 2015 (UTC)
- Images themselves do not determine whether they are fair use or not; the specifics of each individual usage of that image determine, for that usage only, whether it is fair use. The exact same image can be fair use in one usage scenario and not fair use in another usage scenario, even if only one copy of the image exists. So it does not matter that no other images would be uploaded. Usage in the infoboxes of the characters they depict is fair use; usage in a gallery that exists for the sake of the gallery (because a text list combined with the infobox images on the linked articles can accomplish the same purpose) is not fair use. —MJ— Jedi Council Chambers 21:21, January 5, 2015 (UTC)
- Is there any specific reason, outside of some policy that's currently in place, that we can't? Or within some policy that I can't put my finger on off-hand? ProfessorTofty (talk) 20:57, January 3, 2015 (UTC)
