Talk:Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Proposal for restructuring subpages

Apropos of this this discussion I was wondering how people felt about streamlining the subpages - ie. creating more broad ones and then placing extra subpages inside them. As it stands we've got this sort of system -

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

BtVS/Buffy/Spike
BtVS/Buffy Summers
BtVS/Little Bad
BtVS/Poetry

etc.

but I was thinking we could make things a bit more elegant/uncluttered than that, with room for expansion and more general meta overviews of sections, ie. -

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

BtVS/Characters
- BtVS/Characters/Buffy Summers
- BtVS/Characters/Willow Rosenberg
BtVS/Relationships
- BtVS/Relationships/Buffy/Spike
- BtVS/Relationships/Buffy/Angel
- BtVS/Relationships/Spike/Xander
BtVS/Glossary
- BtVS/Glossary/Little Bad
- BtVS/Glossary/Soul
BtVS/Poetry

etc.

What do people think? - Quinara, 20:38 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I think it would be a nightmare for the list of subpages of the main article. /o\ For example, if you have a lot of pairings, you would have trouble seeing the pairing you are looking for (or anything else, really) between all the repetitions of the word "relationship". Before the display settings were changed, the Stargate Atlantis page already ran into that problem because every single subpage began with "Stargate Atlantis". Incidentally, that's one of the reason why I don't think glossary terms should be subpages of the main article and why I would prefer *one* glossary subpage with links to all the articles that happen to be glossary terms. That way they wouldn't clutter up the subpage list.--Doro 21:14, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, ack, does it list all the sub-subpages on the main page as well? I was kind of hoping all you would see on the main Buffy page would be 'Relationships', 'Glossary' etc, with the others appearing when you clicked through. But of course in that case Buffy/Spike wouldn't be displaying properly right now. Sigh. I still fear the mass cloud that will come in the future. I suppose concrete prefixes to otherwise-unconnected pages are the way forward? - Quinara, 21:41 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Here's an example of how third-level subpages display on the main page: see Chakotay/Paris on Star Trek and on Star Trek/Voyager. Not too pretty. I think someone even proposed making character and pairing pages be top-level (or maybe that was just me) and being more restrictive about what we used subpages for, but so far, we've been putting all characters and pairings directly under the main page. I'm not sure there is a perfect solution for subpages, given our nomenclature for romantic relationships (/).

What do you mean by prefixes? The current way to connect unconnected pages is just to use wikilinks, especially in the infobox, if applicable. Someone created a "related links" template that can be added to any page, but I haven't seen too many examples of it in use. I have seen a lot of "list" pages used to group large numbers of related pages, like this one: Stargate Atlantis/Lists and Communities--Æthel 22:11, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Whoops, bad list example. Try this one: Newsletter/Newsletter Communities--Æthel 22:14, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

That does look a lot better. I suppose it just feels odd to have the pages technically floating around without any clear affiliation to a fandom in the title. But I suppose that's what the 'see also' bit is for. I suppose I propose we put relationships/characters etc. in lists then. :D - Quinara, 22:39 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Moving charcter and pairing pages to top-level pages

I've attempted to clean up the character subpages (or at least start to), creating a new main list for them, creating pages for Buffy, Spike, Willow and the Scooby Gang ((ETA 19:25 (UTC): + Angel too)) and fixing the various wikilinks everywhere. Does everything seem sensible - ie. should we continue with the relationships etc. as well?

(Sorry I spend my whole life chatting about things BTW and that I keep leaving not-very-professional asides/fillers everywhere in double brackets. I'm not really sure how to go about this whole wiki-editing-lark...) - Quinara, 19:06 12 August 2009 (UTC)

So far the character and pairing pages for all fandoms are subpages and I'm not quite sure why you moved the BtVS character and pairing pages. We were talking about whether glossary terms in a specific fandom should be subpages or top-level pages just like fanworks, actor pages, general glossary terms, meta, websites, people, communities, etc. Somewhere in the discussion on this page someone mentioned that the idea of making character and pairing pages top-level pages might have been floating around at some time, but there has been no consensus for that! --Doro 21:54, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh dear, sorry, sorry, I was clearly moving too quickly. To me it seemed like a natural logical leap (and an easier place to start); I'm more than happy for everything to be undone. Having said that, to me it really feels like having every character as a subpage in the long term will become a massive mess, especially with redirects to/from AtS mixed in. But in any case I'll make sure to sit on my hands for a while so more people can weigh in. :/ - Quinara, 00:19 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I think there's a happy medium between keeping big, high-traffic subpages in the cloud (because I hate having to click too many times to get places) and keeping it from getting too cluttered. I vote we put the major character and pairing pages back where they were, but create subpages for "Minor Characters", "Villains", "Rarepairs", "Fandom Glossary" etc. to deal with the rest of the 'verse. Those subpages can fill up with links to top-level pages for glossary terms and whatnot, such as "Soul" and "Scooby Gang". That seem sensible? Stultiloquentia 00:40, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

I like the Rairpair and Minor Character (perhaps "Other Characters" instead?) page ideas. It would keep down the clutter and might actually encourage wiki editors to add more info--it's less daunting to add a section to an existing page than to start a brand new page, especially if you can't think of too many things to say about a particular character/pairing. We might not need it for every fandom, but Harry Potter would definitely benefit ;) On the other hand, defining "minor" and "rair" could get dicey. Also, I can see a minor character page easily turning into a list of canon characters that fans don't necessarily have any fannish engagement with. --Æthel 01:33, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

So, in the absence of consensus, I started moving the pages back. Tell me if that's wrong--Æthel 23:53, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

That's probably for the best. I'm inclined to think that making a major/minor character distinction could get confusing, but an acceptable system of organisation will probably become apparent when there are more pages (either for BtVS or in another fandom somewhere). Have you got the undos, or would you like some help? - Quinara, 00:09 14 August 2009 (UTC)

How about you get dubbed a "minor character" if you never made it into the credits? Okay, with an exception for Faith, since she had such an inarguably huge impact on the fandom. Pairings I'm less fussed about; I think we can fret about that issue if and when it, y'know, becomes an issue. And I take back my "Villains" suggestion -- I think they're best left as minor characters, too. Stultiloquentia 00:20, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, but what about, say, Cordelia vs. The First Slayer? (Not to besmirch Cordy, but in terms of BtVS at least she's never struck me as a hotly debated character.) It just seems like it would be hard to predict what's going to become an in-depth and interesting page and what's going to stick with the basics. Having said that, you're definitely right that it's not exactly a critical bridge to cross yet. It's fair to say that linear thinking is not one of my strong points. - Quinara, 00:31 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Cordy'll get her own subpage on Angel, so she's fine, and the First Slayer is definitely minor, IMO. But! I thought the idea was that "minor characters" who deserve in-depth discussion CAN have their own pages; they'll just be top-level, i.e. The First Slayer (Buffyverse) and Soul (Buffyverse), which will be linked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Minor Characters and Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Fandom Glossary (which I've just started, so we've got something concrete to chew on). Stultiloquentia 00:57, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

My understanding was that we would put the information on the generic subpage (Glossary, Minor Characters) and add redirects from top-level pages. If the information for one term expanded too much, then we could turn the redirect into the main article and provide a brief summary on the Fandom Glossary, with a handy wikilink. But all individual character pages should be treated the same (i.e. either all subpages or all top-level pages) to prevent confusion.--Æthel 01:32, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Fanlistings

I added info about how fanlistings.org was founded by a Buffy fan, and the idea originated with a Buffy fanlisting. However I left the citation needed tag, as the sentence stating that the site was founded to find out how many Buffy fans there were needs referencing. I didn't find anything implying that in my own limited research! --Auntags (talk) 16:32, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Buffy Art Site

Another site I found while archiving some Yahoo Groups from Wayback machine to archive.today. William A. Hunter Buffy Portraits, I hope it's a good source for fanarts -- Ellakbhesse (talk) 21:09, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Talk:Buffy the Vampire Slayer

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Proposal for restructuring subpages

Moving charcter and pairing pages to top-level pages

Fanlistings

More possible topics for expansion

Buffy Art Site

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