Forum:SH:The future of Canon and Legends subpages


 * NOTE: This is not an official vote. This is just a discussion thread to see what the current feelings of the community are.

This is a discussion that I know some people will not want to have, and that some will not take part in, but I feel it is important that we get the ball rolling&mdash;even if it's just an initial discussion that doesn't necessarily lead anywhere yet&mdash;on the future of how Canon and Legends subpages are set up. I would ask right off the bat, whatever your opinions are, that you please remain civil.

Right now, we have policies in place saying that the Legends page is the default page. That means, for example, Luke Skywalker is the Legends-oriented page for the character, while Canon-only information is to be placed on Luke Skywalker/Canon. That was decided here, by a 2 to 1 margin. At the time, that was probably the right idea, considering the lack of Canon-only pages on the site. However, that vote also contained an important fact:


 * "At a later date, when the site's coverage of canon subjects is to an extent where they can be showcased, we can reverse the decision and move Legends material to subpages."

Although I wasn't here at the time, there seems to have been an acknowledgement, however reluctant it may have been, that Legends would not remain the default. Nor should it, in my opinion, as it is not official Canon. We need to remain objective, and to do that we can't be weighing Legends in a more prominent way than Canon, whatever the personal feelings of the community may be towards the Canon/Legends split. This is especially important now that Star Wars Rebels has aired, we have multiple comics coming up, 2 books have been released and at least 3 more are on the way, and the new movies are on the horizon. Legends will always be a huge part of Wookieepedia, and will make up the majority of Wookieepedia's content for many, many years, but, for better or for worse, the future of Star Wars is in the official Canon storyline and we need to be prepared for that.

Let me give you an example of a statistic to show how big of an impact Canon will be having over the next few years. After the trailer for The Force Awakens was released a few weeks ago, Wookieepedia's page views shot above 1 million per DAY (before that it was generally between 600,000 and 700,000). Since then, there have been more days above 1 million than not, and even the days where the views have not been over 1 million have still seen over 900,000. On a smaller but no less impressive scale, the page Crossguard lightsaber (which is Legends) saw nearly 300,000 views on November 28th alone. From November 28th to December 2nd, it saw over 594,000 views. (Note: this was before the creation of Crossguard lightsaber/Canon.) And that's just from an 88 second trailer. It's pretty clear that people are going to be searching for Canon information as a result of The Force Awakens marketing and eventual release, and even Rebels has let Wookieepedia see an uptick in readers and editors.

The way I see it, there are two ways we can move forward, and I want to see what peoples' thoughts are on these options. The options are as follows:


 * 1) Make Canon the default. That means that Luke Skywalker would be Canon-only information, while Luke Skywalker/Legends would cover the Legends story of the character. Pretty self-explanatory; it's the inverse of what we're currently doing.
 * 2) Make Canon AND Legends subpages, and make the main article a disambig. In this option, Luke Skywalker would be a disambiguation page. I envision it as having a bit of information on it, maybe a paragraph of in-inverse content and maybe a brief infobox + a picture, and then it would contain links to Luke Skywalker/Canon and Luke Skywalker/Legends. If we were to add additional tabs, such as Luke Skywalker/Infinities, it would link to those too.

Please share your thoughts in the Discussion section. If you have other suggestions, please feel free to share those as well. - Brandon Rhea (talk) 23:20, December 16, 2014 (UTC)

Discussion
My preference is option #1. I think option #2 is interesting, but ultimately a weird/confusing user experience. We should assume that the majority of people who are going to be coming to Wookieepedia as a result of major Canon stories, like The Force Awakens, are not going to have much knowledge of Legends and are not going to have much of an understanding or awareness of the Canon/Legends split. That's more of a super fan thing, and I think it's a safe assumption that the nearly 900,000 views on the crossguard lightsaber page, for example, were not from people who landed there with knowledge of what Legends is. So to me, it's important to put Canon front and center as the default page. Option #2 requires some knowledge of what Canon and Legends mean, and we should not assume the majority of the millions of daily views that we will eventually consistently maintain as a result of Canon will be from people who have that knowledge. - Brandon Rhea (talk) 23:20, December 16, 2014 (UTC)
 * While I believe that Legends should remain the default, I prefer option 1. Perhaps we could get more editors on Canon pages using this strategy. Option 2 is just strange. -  AV-6R7 User talk:AV-6R7 02:24, December 17, 2014 (UTC)
 * I also prefer Option 1, but Option 2 isn't that strange at all, IMO (despite my reservations based on the reader experience). Marvel Database uses a method similar to this, considering how many versions there are of comic book characters. Check out their Iron Man page, for example, and you'll see it's essentially an image-based disambiguation page. Obviously we'd have far less pages to link to, but if we did go with Option 2, we could eventually grow it if we introduced third or even fourth tabs for additional kinds of content. - Brandon Rhea (talk) 02:27, December 17, 2014 (UTC)
 * The tab system works in my opinion, though we should maybe start thinking about a third infinites/non-canon tab. Option 2 is strange IMO because we don't currently have enough versions for any character to warrant a list like that at the moment. -  AV-6R7 User talk:AV-6R7 02:40, December 17, 2014 (UTC)
 * Option 2 would still, presumably, keep the tabs in order to navigate between articles. - Brandon Rhea (talk) 02:46, December 17, 2014 (UTC)