Talk:Inheritance Cycle

Proposal for a Mass Merge

Given that we criticise WP for having thousands of articles on fiction, and given that at present all of the articles on CP relating to the Inheritance Cycle are relatively short, I propose that we merge them all into one large article, and leave the remaining pages as redirects. This way we promote greater accessibility to less verbose information, and reduce the number of articles related to fiction, hence the proportion of articles on scientific and sociological concepts will increase.

I have drafted an example of what an Inheritance Cycle merged article could look like at Inheritance Cycle/draft, please feel free to leave any constructive criticism there, while discussing the merge here. TheGySom 21:30, 27 March 2008 (EDT)

Completely agree with this proposal. Bold and extremely sensible! Go for it! Apart from reducing the proliferation of trivial articles, it would also be helpful to anyone interested in finding all the information on the Inheritance Cycle, who would be much better served by having it all in one place. Humblpi 05:43, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

I am completely against it! When we tried that idea with the Lord of the Rings article, it ended up being so huge it was unmanageable. I plan on expanding most of the articles over the summer and think you have a bad idea. WK literally has article for every book under the sun - that is why it has thousands of articles. I appreciate your ideas, but would prefer that you continue to edit the article in Category:Inheritance Cycle. Thanks, ~BCS^Talk2ME 08:05, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

The problem is that this is an encyclopedia, not a fan database, as such our articles are meant to describe the book series and give a brief overview of the plot, characters and setting in addition to information about publication, reception, and criticism. Yes WP does have articles on pretty much everything, and that is one of its weaknesses, it has become too trivial and we have criticised this overbearing influence of popular culture. If the articles are expanded then it is advisable to split them up into smaller but relatively broad articles (eg Characters in Lord of the Rings, Settings in Lord of the Rings, Objects in Lord of the Rings) rather than having an article on every single individual character, place and item. While I welcome and encourage an expansion of the present content, I believe it best to first merge the information and then split it into a separate article such as Characters in Ingeritance Cycle if necessary. TheGySom 08:12, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

As an example consider this entry, it expands beyond providing a simply description of the character in that it gives a (brief) expert analysis of their role in their series, rather than just talking about who their fictional parents were, what their fictional actions were, where they live in a fictional world etc. If someone is really desperate to obtain the latter information they can read the book or go to a fan site. TheGySom 08:39, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

Why don't we compromise. We can do Inheritance Cycle/draft, but I still think we should have an article per book at least. Perhaps some main characters. Is that good with you? ~BCS^Talk2ME 08:57, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

Yes, it is desirable for each book to have a separate article, as they have distinct plots and separate information relating to publication/reception etc. As for main characters, I'm inclined to leave them in a "Characters in..." article, albeit with a larger section (probably above other characters) simply because they aren't really that notable outside of the fictional universe of the books. That said, some characters such as Harry Potter who are well known outside their books probably deserve their own article as well, with a discussion of their impact on popular culture. TheGySom 09:01, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

If we have extensive info on the Character(which would make the article to long) mayhap we could make 'Main Characters...' and 'Lesser Characters...' is that better? ~BCS^Talk2ME 09:03, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

Sounds like a good plan :) TheGySom 09:08, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

Let's move forward!! :P ~BCS^Talk2ME 10:06, 28 March 2008 (EDT)

Mass Merge

Ok, it took a bit of time to shuffle everything around, and there was a bit of drama over a misunderstanding at the end, but I've successfully merged everything into three (instead of one) article.

At the moment the articles are pretty short, however as they're going to be expanded in the relative near future I felt it best to just go with three straight away, rather than go with one, more bulky one, and eventually have to split it. The three are:

• Inheritance Cycle - for general information about the series, its production, reaction to it etc
• Characters in Inheritance Cycle - when this gets expanded it may be prudent to split it into two sections: "main characters" and "secondary characters" (and maybe even a third "minor characters"). I've given a suggestion as to how a further split of this page can be handled if necessary.
• Settings and Cultures in Inheritance Cycle - pretty much a general article to cover the different places visited and mentioned and the different races/species, cultures/practices and languages.

I was wrong in suggesting that the individual books should be merged into the main article, they should rightfully stay as they are. I did a bit of formatting on them, but beyond that nothing has been changed. I am concerned about the category, however, should they be in the category books, a sub category or both? TheGySom 21:15, 29 March 2008 (EDT)