Thread:MutantMenace/@comment-2051886-20120314020153/@comment-2051886-20120325173914

It was the same. ProfessorKilroy said "Anyway, I don't think it's at all overwhelming to press the down arrow button, but it's overwhelming to soak in all of the information, or at least, pick out which bits are really important and soak them in. I don't really want to "skim" the page as such, just make a very very compact version, that only highlights important events. I am proposing to keep the history of the character pages, but have them moved to an "Expanded History" page, so that all the detail is still there. I would possibly enjoy reading through piles of history, but often don't have that kind of time (or understanding of some involvements with other characters, leading me to search through their character pages to find more about them, and so on). "

I responded first "Isn't that the point of the discombobulation page? If you want to simply know a brief overview of any character, there is a description of said character on the discomb page..." "...Look at the Cyclops page, then check the Scott Summers page. Cyclops page gives an overview, while the Scott Summers give the detailed info. Is that not what you were asking for?"

GrnMarvl14 chimed-in with "We've discussed your idea in the past, Kilroy, and honestly, that's as far as it has ever gotten..." "...Really, I'd consider the ideal situation to be the first paragraph of character histories (large ones, I mean. If a character's history is just one or two paragraphs, this obviously doesn't apply) as a summation of the article itself, then the following paragraphs would expand on that. This way, people could get a quick overview of the character (similar to what certain disambiguation pages, such as Captain America, have). While repetitive for certain characters, it would be beneficial to characters like Ultimate Spider-Man or characters who lack disambiguation pages because there's no alternate version of them."

Kilroy responded "...But I think I was looking for something a little more, you know, just a couple of paragraphs. Enough to go into some detail, but not too much. It's just a suggestion, but I think it's still worth trying it or discussing more, even though it's already put in place on the Ultimate Spiderman page. But hey, I want the info as well. I like the hugely detailed stuff, and enjoy reading it. But sometimes all I want is the general idea of the character, like its origins, famous or regular villains, etc..." "...If the link to Expanded History was at the start of the history section, they could click it and go there straight away. Perhaps, if you wanted it all on the same page, maybe there's a way of literally expanding it on the page itself. Perhaps the idea of the overview section (first paragraph or so of the history section) would be better and easier to coordinate."

GrnMarvl14 suggested "What I would suggest doing is copying a character's page into a sandbox (something like User:ProfessorKilroy/Sandbox) and then doing the overhaul you think would be best in the sandbox. That way, you can illustrate your point in a very visible manner without altering the normal page and leading to conflict there. Would allow you to make whatever changes you feel would be best (or merely map out what changes you think would be best using dummy text and pictures) in a safe area, and if people have minor changes they'd make, they can show you (and, then, if you don't like those changes, you can revert them). That way, this could be less of a discussion of what might be, and more of a show-and-tell (and by using a sandbox you're, again, not going to risk upsetting anyone by messing with the character page itself). Nothing helps people understand things better than graphic illustrations (and pretty pictures). Because, honestly, I'm not entirely certain what you're saying (I get it, and I don't get it. I get the basic idea, but not what your end goal is)."

And we all ended with Hassar's idea: "Perhaps the simplest solution would be to add a new section in the character template, "Overview" or something, which will be displayed before "History" section and will include a summary of the character. Section should be optional, so as not to clutter the page with empty headers."

We had the same discussion. ProfessorKilroy said that there was too much info on a page for a person that didn't fell like looking through all of it or wanted a single bit of knowledge, but the difference was that he also wanted to keep the entire knowledge, for the characters he didn't fully understand. We discussed and came to a compromise of the "Brief Overview". MutantMenace is saying that the entirety of the articles are too much to sift through and wants to delete all of the info he/she considers insufficient. I am not mad, I'm just informing everyone that this has been brought-up before and we came to a compromise. I'm trying to suggest we go along with what we decided and when we re-open the discussion and over-turn it, we can do it MM's way.