Board Thread:Administrative/@comment-1713281-20130730145643/@comment-61371-20141207003521

ADour wrote: Well, you're right. Having a page does count in something.

But sometimes it doesn't do much else than showing the appearance of the character.

As an example, you are visiting the page for a comic you didn't read, and you realize there's a new villain. He's listed with "" and all that. And you see he has linked a page. You go check it to know more about this character. Who exactly is he? What are his motivations? Etc.

And as soon as you enter the page, you find the image of the villain (you probably even knew his appearance if he appared in the comic's cover or something). But as soon as you go read his bio to inform yourself, the only thing is "The history of this character is unknown." I'd say is a little bit discouraging.

Something even worse could happen with an alternate version of a character. You want to learn about this Spider-Man. You already know how will he look like (let's suppose he's from one of those "What If?"s were characters have no mayor changes in appearance), and you want to check his page, but there's nothing.

Having at least an image IS better than having nothing. But it's like having a flower when you could've been given a garden.

Or, to follow your analogy, it could be seen as fertile soil for someone to plant their own garden. An empty plot of land that's easily found is better than no plot at all. A blank page at least starts the journey. I'd rather a blank page than a red link (which is why I didn't always create links for characters. If I wasn't going to make a page and I wasn't sure someone else was, I just wouldn't create a link. Let someone who WAS going to do something do it. Of course, if that's what you're getting at, then I've somewhat misunderstood, and this is an entirely different discussion).

Nausiated wrote: Obviously there would need to be some exceptions to the rules. I would say that if it's an already established character (Peter Parker for example). I agree that with someone like the Red Hulk whose identity was secret for two years, we would let that slide, but that's because not only was he new but there was a substantial amount of things being done with the character where you could justify creating a profile and adding information.

I was speaking more specifically of people updating a character like Spider-Man every month before a story arc is completed.

I would even be so bold as to suggest we put edit locks on our most popular characters so that only wikia contributors that have been contributing for a long time or admins can update these pages (both of which can be done)

I know it sounds a little elitist, but I'm kind of tired of people who don't know what they're doing going in and updating these pages month after month just because a character is popular and well known. I don't think we should have quality suffer for the sake of having the most current information and if people are adding more current info, we know that they are tenured contributors.

Like I was saying, there are plenty of other pages that could use work and people should cut their chops on and earn the privilege to update the bigger name characters.

The only problem with limiting who can edit a page (which isn't a bad idea), is that it's those big characters that draw people here. If they come here and find they can't edit that character, they may leave before they get the chance to become better contributors. Do we weed out some problems that way? Sure. But we also risk losing people who genuinely have something to contribute (many of whom can be rough when they start, but given time and a careful focus can become valued contributors). And, c'mon, is it fair to limit crappy edits by people who are still trying to figure things out to the lesser characters? Don't we risk pages that are already not updated enough being made worse?