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Forums: Index > The Wizengamot > Merging Articles on Unidentified Characters



There's currently close to 200 articles in Category:Unidentified individuals and its three sub-categories. While some of these characters are notable enough to warrant their own articles, I think we're going overboard in many cases ("Unidentified Death Eater (VI)", "Unidentified Gryffindor girl (VII)", etc.), and thus I think something needs to be done to reduce the clutter while retaining the useful information these articles present.

I propose we take a page from Memory Alpha's book and merge articles on unidentified characters into a series of larger "hub" articles. See the articles listed under Unnamed Starfleet personnel and Unnamed Vulcans on MA to get an idea of how this would work.

I'm thinking that our "hub" articles could be:

  • Unidentified Death Eaters
  • Unidentified goblins
  • Unidentified Hogwarts employees
  • Unidentified Hogwarts students
    • Unidentified Gryffindor students
    • Unidentified Hufflepuff students
    • Unidentified Ravenclaw students
    • Unidentified Slytherin students
  • Unidentified Muggles
  • Unidentified portraits
  • Unidentified witches and wizards

As to which unidentified characters would be merged, and which would keep their own articles, I'm thinking that, if we don't have any unique information (job, relation to a named character, etc.) by which to distinguish a character in the title of their article, then they get merged. So, "Mayor of London," "Owner of the Railview Hotel," etc. would be okay, because those titles apply to a specific person in the books/movies/games. But "Hufflepuff boy/girl" is a description that could apply to dozens of characters, so "Unidentified Hufflepuff boy", "Unidentified Hufflepuff girl (I)," "Unidentified Hufflepuff girl (II)," etc. would all be merged into "Unidentified Hufflepuff students." Starstuff (Owl me!) 16:38, July 5, 2010 (UTC)

I agree, but we will have to keep a sharp watch out in case people start to add articles like this back. I'm certain that the DH movies are going to give us dozens more of these characters. --JKochRavenclawcrest(Owl Me!) 17:36, July 5, 2010 (UTC)
I agree, because films and video games gives us lots of students that are not identified, so we will have to do something like this.
--El Profeta Vespertino 17:43, July 5, 2010 (UTC)
Definitely. The list of articles on unidentified teachers is getting ridiculously long. --  Seth Cooper  owl post! 17:29, July 8, 2010 (UTC)
Agreed. It's the same thing the Wook do with anonymous sith etc. We need to discuss how the articles will be layed out, though. Jayden Matthews 18:15, July 8, 2010 (UTC)
I agree.Pol 871 18:27, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

I'm thinking something like this would be an efficent way of doing it. Jayden Matthews 18:40, July 8, 2010 (UTC)

The only layout issue I see cropping up is how to integrate "Appearances" and "Behind the Scenes" sections from several articles into a single hub article:
  1. We could have a single "Appearances" section and a single "Behind the Scenes" section covering all merged articles. However, these sections would likely become long and disorganized, making it difficult to quickly find information pertaining to a specific character.
  2. Each merged article would have its own section, and, at the end of each of these, there would be an "Appearances" and a "Behind the scenes" sub-section. However, having so many sections would make the table of contents very long, and would also make it difficult to tell where one character's section ends and the next begins.
  3. Each merged article would have its own section, but we would cover the "Appearances" and "Behind the Scenes" information in an inline box at the end of that section, like on Memory Alpha, rather than in two separate sub-sections, in order to streamline the length of the article. Starstuff (Owl me!) 19:16, July 8, 2010 (UTC)
What about creating a Template:Unidentified individual infobox , including 'Appearances' and 'Actor' (if necessary) sections in the infoboxes (most of the unidentified characters only appear in one or two books/films/video games)? We could do something like this (thanks Jayden) for Category:Unidentified Hogwarts Employees and include one Behind the scenes section for all of them, saying these individuals may represent Silvanus Kettleburn, Bathsheda Babbling or the teacher of Art, Muggle Art . .. .
--El Profeta Vespertino 12:53, July 10, 2010 (UTC)
I think we really need to push this forum forwards, judging by the recent changes page. There has been a flood of new articles on unidentified Death Eaters, some of which already exist. 86.145.92.161 17:45, November 27, 2010 (UTC)

I agree that this is a good time to return to this project, as there are many new articles springing up from Part 1. --JKochRavenclawcrest(Owl Me!) 17:47, November 27, 2010 (UTC)

Ditto. - Nick O'Demus 20:23, November 27, 2010 (UTC)
I've created test runs of the two proposals I laid out above in my userspace:
Which of these do you guys prefer? Starstuff (Owl me!) 14:17, December 3, 2010 (UTC)

Sections.--Rodolphus 14:20, December 3, 2010 (UTC)

Ditto, but I think each individual should have an infobox as well. Jayden Matthews 14:31, December 3, 2010 (UTC)
The sections were simply too short to support infoboxes. It created a domino effect: an infobox in section A spilled over into section B, pushing section B's infobox into section C, and so on. It was not very nice to look at and made it difficult to tell which picture belonged to which section.
Personally, I prefer the version with boxes, because I think it's more streamlined and less cluttered. Starstuff (Owl me!) 14:48, December 3, 2010 (UTC)
Tough call. Boxes is less cluttered and the divisions are clearer, but it leaves a lot of blank space in between. Also, since the names are conjectural, would it be better to divide the listing into sections by order of first appearances? - Nick O'Demus 16:00, December 3, 2010 (UTC)

Bumping. I really think we need to get back on this. - Nick O'Demus 19:50, May 19, 2011 (UTC)

Now I have plenty of time, so I will try to write an article on Unidentified Hogwarts employees. I will use the sections pattern. --RavenclawcrestThe Evening Prophet Ravenclawcrest (Owl Post) 22:15, May 23, 2011 (UTC)
Could anyone take a look at my Unidentified Hogwarts employees page, please? I would like to know your opinion about it. It's hard to put images on (we cannot put infoboxes), because they take up too much space. Thanks, RavenclawcrestThe Evening Prophet Ravenclawcrest (Owl Post) 13:02, May 25, 2011 (UTC)

Sooooo, who wants to create articles on over a hundread Snatchers? Not me, that's for sure. I really think we need to step up our game on this issue. Afterall, who's to say that the very very many Snatchrs that fight in the Battle of Hogwarts aren't as "article worthy" as the ones that capture Harry, Ron and Hermione? Jayden Matthews 20:19, July 17, 2011 (UTC)

Bumping as this is still an issue. -Shorty1982 14:32, November 9, 2011 (UTC)

Actually, discussion on this has moved to Forum:Notability Policy Discussion, where we are discussing a new policy being drafted up for notability of characters, wands, and fan sites. -- 1337star (talk) 19:10, November 9, 2011 (UTC)

Policy addition proposals[]

I have drafted a possible policy addition for coverage of unidentified characters below. Please feel free to add your own proposals below it so that we can vote on their adoption and get started on the merge project. Starstuff (Owl me!) 04:40, September 4, 2011 (UTC)

  • Seems pretty good to me. So, for instance, in the case of Hufflepuff students, we would have a Unidentified Hufflepuff students page, and list them there, much like the Memory Alpha crew pages? - Cavalier OneGryffindorcrest(Wizarding Wireless Network) 08:24, September 5, 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 1[]

An unidentified character can have a separate article if there is unique, specific information available that can be used to distinguish them from other characters in the title of their article.

For example:

However, if the only information available about an unidentified character applies equally to other characters, such as their gender and loyalty/affiliation (e.g. "Hufflepuff girl" or "male Snatcher"), then they should be covered in a "hub" article along with all other characters matching their description.

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