Forum:A number of major issues

First off, I'd like to thank some of our relatively newer members like Opark and DragonDemands for their hard work on the Wiki. The Wiki looks far superior, far more professional and is far more cross-referenced and indexed than it was just a few months ago. This has contributed to a significant rise in profile and traffic for the site. At EasterCon 2012 I was told by several people, including the creators of the Thronecast TV show for Sky Television, that they use the wiki a great deal for referencing information, and they wished to extend their thanks to everyone who works on it.

That said, there have been a significant number of changes to the formatting and indexing of the Wiki. The majority of these are for the better (such as image indexing making finding images much easier). However, a small number are problematic, and I invite everyone to contribute to the discussion on how to address them. The issues I think need to be addressed are: --Werthead 13:23, May 30, 2012 (UTC)

Image usage
We have almost 2,000 images on the Wiki, the overwhelming majority of them screencaps from the TV series (though we do also have a large number of maps, which is fine). Considering there's only 20 episodes that's quite a lot. Whilst HBO have not so far voiced a concern over this, I do feel we will soon be pushing the limits of our permission to have a 'reasonable' number of images on the Wiki, especially given how many of the images are repeats of others at different sizes, or people uploading new images because they cannot be bothered to look through the full database (which of course only makes the problem worse). I think we need to establish a number of ground rules for image use on the Wiki. These should include immediately deleting orphaned images not used on any page, or finding uses for them; deleting images which are duplicates of others and fixing the resulting link issues; and setting a sensible limit on the number of images used per episode and episode recap page. I myself suggested the idea of one image per scene, but this has proven more image-intensive that I thought, with some episodes having more than 40 scenes. 40 images per episode is certainly too high IMO, and very short scenes warranting a couple of lines can go without images. Thoughts on how we should limit the images to a more reasonable number are most welcome.--Werthead 13:23, May 30, 2012 (UTC)

Season-specific character pages
There is no need at all for characters to have multiple pages. Pages such as 'Daenerys Season 2' and 'Yara Season 2' should - in my view - be deleted and the information on them folded back into the main character page. Extremely detailed synopses for the activities of each character per season are not necessary, and can be condensed down to briefer summaries with links to the appropriate episode pages or even directly to critical scenes on the episode recap pages.--Werthead 13:23, May 30, 2012 (UTC)

Very minor speaking roles should not have individual pages
This is something I feel we need to move on before it gets completely out of hand. Whilst acknowledging the contributions of minor castmembers is worthwhile and important (and certainly we should have individual actor pages for them, and kudos to those editors who have identified so many of these actors), having a confusing morass of 'Lannister soldier', 'Singing Lannister soldier', 'Wounded Lannister soldier' pages is not really of much value. I proprose the creation of either a single 'minor role/unnamed character' page with these roles listed on it or, since such a page would likely get very large very quickly, the creation of a number of catch-all pages (such as a variation on 'House Lannister followers', 'House Stark followers', 'King's Landing smallfolk' etc) with each role listed on there.--Werthead 13:23, May 30, 2012 (UTC)

Naming of unidentified characters
Where minor characters have names which are not mentioned on-screen, I think we need to be more diligent in listing the sources of them: Imry Florent is so-named because he is listed as such on his online CV, whilst Maege Mormont is called that by the producers in the commentary for the final episode of Season 1 on DVD. Any situation where characters are named through supposition from the novels should be avoided. For example, I do not believe any of the Valemen or Freys (bar Walder) from Season 1 are named in the script or on their casting websites and were named by guessing who they are supposed to be based on the books. Given that our wiki's motto is essentially 'A Wiki for the TV show, not the books', we are being inconsistent in making such guesses, educated or otherwise. We should stick to names exclusively revealed through the TV show or official sources and unnamed characters folded into catch-all pages as outlined above.--Werthead 13:23, May 30, 2012 (UTC)