Talk:Portal:Evs Dropper-Related Graphic Novel Characters

Undo the merge

Since the summer is just beginning and there are already 27 characters listed and most likely many more to come, I think it's better to revert this merge and keep the portals/navbars separate as they were before. I don't see this merge as helping anything. My opinion is that a related-articles page for Evsdropr is probably a good idea, but merging the portals and navbars is a bad one.--MiamiVolts (talk) 23:04, 2 July 2008 (EDT)

• See Talk:Portal:Graphic Novel Characters for previous discussion on similar merges/splits related to the graphic novel characters portal.--MiamiVolts (talk) 23:25, 2 July 2008 (EDT)
• I actually think it's a very good idea. Peter Steigerwald created ten new characters for the summer. I count:
  1. Donna
  2. Thompson, Jr.
  3. Penny
  4. Connie
  5. Sabine
  6. Devin
  7. Julien
  8. Bianca
  9. Gael
  10. Felicia
• We could get into a discussion of whether The German and some of the others were part of the ten created by Peter, but that's really neither here nor there. The point is that most or all of the new major characters have already been introduced. There are lots of incidental characters who pop up here and there (I'm looking at you, Jamie Wu and escape driver!), and there may be a few more. I don't think that 27 characters--or even 37--is too many, especially since it's not likely that this portal will grow much after the summer. What will grow, however, is Portal:Graphic Novel Characters, which is already getting unruly. Eliminating some of those by combining them into one portal (namely this one) is a good idea, in my opinion. It also fits with the overall arc of the summer set of stories: evsdropr is the one thread that really ties most or all of the novels together since April 14. I wish the idea had been discussed first, but I think that grouping the summer characters under an evs-centric portal is a good idea. -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 23:46, 2 July 2008 (EDT)
  • If that's the case, then this should be converted to a master portal with the pre-merged portals as sub-portals underneath it. There's lots of incidental characters that come up so I will really be surprised if 37 is where we end up at the end of the summer; summer just began June 20th and we have at least another 11 graphic novel before the Fall premiere. I can't see keeping all the evsdropr characters to the same portal. It'll just be too big. That's what related-article pages are for, so I'm changing the tag suggestion to a split instead of a delete but keeping it as-is doesn't look good, imho.--MiamiVolts (talk) 00:10, 3 July 2008 (EDT)
    • Why? It seems silly to have a bunch of subportals when our designation is already pretty arbitrary. We're just trying to find the best grouping for a bunch of characters, and Evs seems like a good choice. I don't see any point in further breaking down the portals by characters. I don't think of Thompson, for instance, as being a character who was part of a Donna-related novel--I think of him as having been part of the summer arc that has to do with evsdropr. But even if we were to split this portal, or to create subportals within it, I'd much rather wait until it is actually "too" full than try to guess how many more incidental characters there will be. I don't think a split or subportals are good ideas at the moment. -- RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 10:23, 3 July 2008 (EDT)
      • There are plenty of other arbitrary groupings in the GN characters portal... And I realize you don't agree, but I already think this portal is too large. Imho, it's not how many are on a page that's important, it's that this is more than one page and the rest aren't. It just doesn't seem right to me to have one large evsdropr-related folder and the rest trimmed.--MiamiVolts (talk) 14:43, 3 July 2008 (EDT)
  • I am going to agree with Ryan here. I would much rather have this larger portal than the three small ones. In my opinion, it makes locating these people easier (By avoiding things like when the portals overlap) and it keeps the Portal:Graphic Novel Characters smaller. This will eventually stop growing, but the Portal will probably never see an end to its expansion. I also agree with Ryan that the subcategories are unnecessary, but I wouldn't care much if they were created. -- Lulu (talk) 14:58, 3 July 2008 (EDT)
    • I still say portals like this one should be single-page for easy browsing. Large groups for locating people, items and events are better done with related-article pages. I don't see any reason not to make a related-article page for evsdropr, so I've begun one in my userspace so you can see what it would be like. Most of the content is there, though the formatting needs a little work and some more sorting should be done.--MiamiVolts (talk) 15:59, 3 July 2008 (EDT)

Another alternative

If we don't care about size, we could switch to a different format for grouping graphic novel characters. NBC.com has been detailing the evolutions history by season in the official walkthrough (up to Maya y Alejandro for Season One, and the rest thus far in Season Two). We could group the characters and novels the same way, and then the distinction would not be "arbitrary" since NBC.com is doing the same. I'm not a big fan of the idea since the size would be much larger, but I would prefer something more equal than what we now have due to this merge.--MiamiVolts (talk) 14:43, 3 July 2008 (EDT)