Board Thread:Administrative/@comment-4651179-20180806025410/@comment-61022-20180817033236

I remember the Minor Character template. It was used more often at the DC Database, but we used to as well back in the early days when our wikis were more alike. If memory serves me correctly, it created a lot of back-and-forth about who or what constitutes a "minor" character, particularly on the DC side of things where "Pre-Crisis" characters were being delegated into this category. It was a perspective thing, newer readers didn't consider them anything but minor characters since those versions of characters were apocryphal (at the time) or hadn't been seen in however many decades.

I think it was abandoned because it was too divisive.

That said, I think we should have clear criteria for characters who qualify for their own character pages. It should be very straight forward. Without making the policy overly complicated. I would suggest that it should be based on how much you can write about the character in the history section. If you can't write a paragraph about that character, then they don't deserve their own character page.

That would require a definition of a "minor character". That would be someone who you couldn't write at least a paragraph about. (Like the "man on the street" characters). I think we should adopt a policy putting a moratorium of noting these kinds of characters anywhere outside of issue summaries until other, more vital information has been filled in. (Issue summaries, information gaps in character profiles, eliminating plagerism etc.)

I feel that in recent years some contributors have been too focused on quantity rather than quality.