Template talk:Birds of Prey

Re-purposing

I'm not sure there is enough to justify A Black Canary navbox. But there seems enough for a Birds of Prey one.

Any problems with moving a re-purposing this?

- J Greb (talk) 00:18, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Reversion

• The memo-ed out material is related to the potential destination of this template if re-purposed. The stuff is BoP relevant but not BC relevant.
• Sin is at best a minor character.
• Lady Shiva is DC's martial arts "measuring stick". At best she's Batman-centric. She doesn't get thrown into a navbox for each character she's faced off against.
• Count Vertigo is a Green Arrow-centric character, not a Black Canary one.
• The general rule of thumb for publications has been two fold: 1) Is the character named in the publication (indicia) title or 2) Is the publication strongly linked to the character without being a team title. Flash Comics fits neither case.

- J Greb (talk) 23:04, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

• Lady Shiva has appeared in Batman many times but has been a main character in Birds of Prey due to her rivalry with Black Canary and even traded places with her briefly and called herself the Jade Canary in honor of her rival. which makes a stronge case for her being a Black Canary villain.
• Count Veritgo first appeared in World's Finest 251 in a Black Canary story and joined the Injustice Society in JSA 9 to get revenge against Dinah, aswell as allmost all of his appearances in Green Arrow also include Dinah in one form or another, his main reason for fighting GA is to get back at Black Canary.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 139.67.222.65 (talk • contribs) 01:19, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

For the most part Vertigo is associated with Green Arrow, not Black Canary. That becomes the line here. These navigation templates deal with things that are core to a central topic. "First faced Black Canary but better know as an opponent to Green Arrow" isn't central to the topic. It maybe in a wiki aimed at comics fans or focusing solely on DC Comics, but not in a general use one. - J Greb (talk) 00:12, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Separating

I See no real reason there can't be both a Black Canary navbox which pertains to the specific character and her long history and a Birds of Prey navbox that details the team and it's related characters. Green Arrow is allowed his own navbox while the justice league has its own, they are separate entities and can be have useful information as two different things. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shallowgravy (talk • contribs) 19:46, August 8, 2011 (UTC)

The long of it?

Of the 21 "articels" you propose:

• 4 of the "Related Characters" really aren't. They are separate from and independent of the topic.
• All 6 of the "Enemies" are not topic specific.
• 1 of the "Publication" is not topic specific.
• Another 1 of the "Publication" is non-notable enough that it should be folded back into the main article.
• 3 of the "Related Articles" are articles on team. Given the nature of comic book teams, they are not included in navboxes.
• The remaining 1 of the "Related Articles" is not topic specific.
• On the notability issue, the remaing 1 of the "Related Characters" is a plot only mini article that, at best, should be redirected to a list article.

That leaves 4 articles for the navbox - all of which are sufficiently inter linked as is. There is no reason for this navbox to be recreated.

- J Greb (talk) 21:57, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Though I can see where your coming from I think that the simple reason that many of the articles don't fit into the Bird's of Prey navbox says a lot for the usefulness of a BC centric one. I'm sure it could use some tightening up, but to simple delete it makes little sense. As to the relevance I'm not too sure which ones you are referring to but at least some if not most are very relevant when it come to finding more information about Canary.

• Almost all of the enemies are very much related to BC in that they are part of her main rouges gallery or they frequently battle Canary and are mentioned on both her page as well as their own and linking them just makes it easier to find the information about each of them both as individuals and their connection to Canary.
• As to the specific characters, I believe Vertigo is one of her most recurring foes in both her solo appearances, Bird of Prey, and Justice Society. Cupid is a character from GA/BC who fights Canary over a sick obsession for GA, that seems to say that she fits at least to me, most important is that not all of this is discussed on BC's page and it would help to link these characters in a navbox.
• Lady Shiva I can understand maybe being put in the category of related characters instead of enemies for her time as the Jade Canary, though she and BC have fought on multiple occasions and is deemed her equal in many ways by both the writers and Shiva herself she works along side Canary later in the series as an uneasy alliance. but her inclusion in some way does seem important.
• I understand about the teams, it makes sense and I have no problem with taking that out.
• Sin is an important part of the Canary comic series so does seem relevant. Green Arrow is fairly obvious. Starman has some information as to his relationship to Canary's mother that could be helpful in understanding the character, as they were lovers and it shaped the lives of both super heroes children. Wildcat is a tenuous so that is rather debatable but he has played an important role in both her animated adaptions and is like a father to her in the comics, but i can see it not being very related. Doctor Mid-Nite was her long running boyfriend when Green Arrow was dead but also not very important as a whole, so I can see your point.
• All in all that leaves much that can be added or changed to make this a more useful tool for Wiki users in the future and at least deserves some reconsideration as a navbox on its own or some form of it added to the Birds of Prey nav box as a way of filling in many of its gaps. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shallowgravy (talk • contribs) 07:37, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

• Under the enemies... sorry, but they are exclusive or even prominently linked to Black Canary. Vertigo and Shiva issues are pointed out above. Everyman is a general DCU villain. Pistolera and the Twelve Brothers are BoP villains, and BoP is not "just" Black Canary. As for Cupid... you really don't want an answer to where that character belongs.
• Under "realted" characters... Wildcat, Starman, and Doctor Mid-Nite a separate characters, full stop. They are not defined by the stories they were in that also featured a Black Canary. As for Green Arrow, the unfortunate situation there is that the use of a Black Canary in stories and series featuring him have the notable connotation that she is a supporting character to him. The flip doesn't exist. And that leaves Sin, who is in the same boat as Cupid.

- J Greb (talk) 21:38, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Seperating from Black Canary

There seems to be enough of a difference between Black Canary and Birds of Prey to warrant two separate navboxes.

Shallowgravy (talk) 00:13, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Splitting

There seems to be a big enough difference between Black Canary and Birds of Prey to warrant a separate navbox, especially seeing as the birds of prey navbox has less links to relevant characters in her canon as well as titles and other media information that would help guide a reader around and find what information they may need.

Shallowgravy (talk) 00:23, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

See above. Nothing has changed. - J Greb (talk) 03:33, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

What has changed is that there is enough room for both as they are very much unrelated in many ways and the Black Canary navbox has a definite use. All things linked on the BC navbox seem relevant to me but if you see fit to make changes I could concede, but to eliminate it entirely seems rash and unnecessary. - Shallowgravy (talk) 04:14, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

No, nothing has change. The valid articles in what was recreated still hold at four. Everything else is fan-centric noodling for an extremely limited audience. - J Greb (talk) 05:50, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry but you're points seems to be more like fan bickering than mine. The point I'm trying to make is that the information is important and helpful not that it is opinion based, yet you give only opinion (and very little at that) for your reasoning. The list of characters are relevant to BC and would help a reader to widen their knowledge of the main article and help to navigate between the various related pages with more ease which is the purpose of a navbox; it is not just a list of a characters, its a tool to gain access with ease to the various related pages dealing with a main article. I understand your wanting to keep things tidy but you give very vague reasoning and little else. The fact that the navbox could be created with a breadth of information that it currently has (all of which pertain heavily to it's main article) then their should be no reason to decommission it merely because you fell its not important enough.

- Shallowgravy (talk) 15:40, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

And I point back to the above. The insistence to include borrowed elements and teams is not done. Period. This is to prevent overloading the bottems of the articles so badly that the navigation tools are useless. This is across the board, not just with regard to BoP and BC.

So far no reason, compelling or otherwise, has been put for ward to make this template an exception or to allow the creation os a near duplicate for BC.

- J Greb (talk) 17:03, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Your not really making a point, the criteria for the BC template is narrow and helpful other than senseless bickering about how important a character is you have given no reason to make the BC template irrelevant.

- Shallowgravy (talk) 17:20, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Its no problem to state some of the reasons and give a bit more detail to them, so here goes.

group1 Creators, its self explanatory and shouldn't be a problem.

group2 Supporting characters,

• Green Arrow, whose page contains an abundance of information pertaining Black Canary that couldn't be found anywhere else and shouldn't be an issue
• Starman, not as much here though there is some listed about their relationship (these characters also shared a feature in the Brave and the Bold which is referenced in the Black Canary (comic book) page which may or may not help) so its inclusion may not be absolute.
• Sin, though a minor character her article is filled with lots of information about Black Canary (the character is BC's daughter and appears in her self titled series) that would certainly be pertinent to a reader needing more information about the characters surrounding Black Canary.
• Wildcat, the main article itself has a little bit of information about its connection to BC here Wildcat (comics)#Ted Grant and here Wildcat (comics)#Post Crisis but the other media section makes a very clear case for its inclusion as most if not all of Wildcats appearances have been as a supporting character to Black Canary (see both Justice League and Brave and the Bold).

group3 Enemies

• Count Vertigo, The information as to vertigo is contained within the first section of his article and makes a decent argument for his being a shared enemy if both BC and Green Arrow and it wouldn't hurt to have the information at hand for someone who is unaware of the DCU or comics in general.
• Cupid, the article dealing with cupid is filled with information dealing with BC and even references titles and issue numbers from her shared series Green Arrow/Black Canary.
• Everyman, I admit this character could be axed, there is reference to events from black canary's wedding special one-shot and the Green Arrow/Black Canary series which he features prominently including issue numbers and story information pertaining in the section Everyman (DC Comics)#One Year Later.
• Lady Shiva, the page dealing with Lady Shiva has many pieces of important information dealing with BC included in its sections Lady Shiva#Shiva and the O-Sensei, Lady Shiva#A new Sensei, Lady Shiva#One Year Later, Lady Shiva#Brightest Day, and here Lady Shiva#Powers and abilities as well as in her pictures and references.
• Twelve Brothers in Silk, its Twelve Brothers in Silk#History section has a lot to do with BC but explicitly in Twelve Brothers in Silk#White Canary

group4 publications

• Birds of Prey, this article is mostly split between it two heading features BC and Oracle so no problem I can see. Though I understand that this is shared with the Birds of Prey navbox and if need be could be removed.
• Black Canary (comic book), although a shorter article it fills in a lot of information about the publication history.
• Green Arrow/Black Canary, the same reasons as above mostly

group5 other media

• Arrow, the article about arrow contains information about BC who is a main character in the series.
• Birds of Prey, same as above

- Shallowgravy (talk) 00:32, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

By the sections:

• Creators: Yes, there are 2 articles, Robert Kanigher and Carmine Infantino, that would be legitimate to include.
• Supporting cast: In general, comic book related navigation boxes are limited to characters created specifically for a topic or fundamentally related to a topic (a primary example of this would be Kingpin (comics) where the character is intrinsically linked to two different topics.) That a character is mentioned in another article can wind up being irrelevant for the purposes of a navigation box, especially when it is limited solely to plot sections.
  • Green Arrow: The character is a topic independent of Black Canary. Yes, there is a linkage, but GA is not the supporting character, BC is.
  • Starman (Ted Knight) and Wildcat (comics): Both are also independent of BC and the linkage is, in relation to a navigation box, trivial. Neither is fundamentally part of the core topic.
  • Sin (DC Comics): Yes, the character was created and positioned as an adopted child for BC and would fit. However, the article fails WP:GNG and WP:PLOT. At best it should be folded into either List of minor DC Comics characters or List of DC Comics characters: S (this is a case of the latter needing to migrate to a format similar to the List of Marvel Comics characters sets). At worst it is deletable. Neither result speaks well for its inclusion in a navigation template.
• Enemies:
  • Count Vertigo: Essentially the character is more an element in the topic of Green Arrow than Black Canary.
  • Cupid (comics): Is in the same boat as Sin.
  • Everyman: Another article that should be redirected. Additionally this is a general DC character that was borrowed in.
  • Lady Shiva: Fundamentally the character has become part of Batman as a topic. More broadly the character is used as a "martial artist test" throughout the DCU. Plot dump aside, including the character is as tangential as including Wildcat.
  • Twelve Brothers in Silk: A villain group introduced and limited to appearances in Birds of Prey. And in a boat similar to Sin and Cupid, though the redirect would be to List of teams and organizations in DC Comics.
• Publications:
  • Birds of Prey: General practice is to avoid including team books based on how large and fluid the "cast of team members" can be. There is little, aside from massive amounts of plot, to suggest this is a good exception.
  • Black Canary (comic book) and Green Arrow and Black Canary: These two would make sense to include since Black Canary is a titular character.
• In other media:
  • Arrow and Birds of Prey: Both are cases of "An adaptation of the character appears, but not as the titular character." The latter does have a version as part if the "team", but it still has the same issue as the team comic. With the former, the versions are supporting characters.

At best, that would be 5 (including the core article) articles included in the template. Something that is not reasonable to even have a navigation box for. Along with that two of the articles are already linked through {{Green Arrow}} as well places where Black Canary is included as supporting cast - Arrow and DC Showcase: Green Arrow. That leaves 3 - creators and publication - that are sufficently inter-linked in the articles.

- J Greb (talk) 09:03, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I'm not getting this but this seems unbelievably true of every navbox, whether its small information or not if its tangibly linked to the main topic it seems totally relevant, your only argument tends to be that a character is small (which if the article was removed I could understand but they're not) or that you don't feel that they belong to Black Canary or belong to someone else, even though I have cited multiple in-page instances where they are, whether or not you like it doesn't change the fact that Lady Shiva's page makes an abundance of references to BC and their connections are easily determined and would be helpful to a reader who doesn't know about them, the same goes for Wildcat, Green Arrow (who has been a supporting character before himself it's a relative concept), and Cupid; I'll concede that Starman and Count Vertigo could go but that still leaves a lot of data left; the same goes with references to Birds of Prey, I get that they can go too, your not wrong they don't quite fit, but that still leaves Green Arrow/Black Canary and Black Canary (comic book) and in other media Arrow is still relevant as she may be supporting but she is still a main character unlike a show like Smallville where she only occasionally appeared. As to Wikipedia:GNG this seems to mostly pertain to sources and doesn't hold much relevance in the discussion but it does say " Significant coverage is more than a trivial mention but it need not be the main topic of the source material" which really helps my case more than it does yours as to Wikipedia:PLOT this details more to the creation of an article as doesn't weigh much into the creation of a navbox which has no plot details but can harken to them (as is evident by having a group called supporting characters or Batfamily which is based solely on plot).

- Shallowgravy (talk) 16:45, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Starting with GNG, read it again. The entire section. Closely.

I'll copy the line here for you that starts the section:

"If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to satisfy the inclusion criteria for a stand-alone article or stand-alone list."

For crystal clarity, GNG ignores: Wikipedia (non-reliable); most fan sites (same issue); press releases from DC (not independent of the topic or its owner); the comics them selves (primary source); promotional interviews (again, not independent of the topic); and so on.

True, this is not something intrinsic to the creation of a navbox, however looking at articles like Sin (DC Comics), Cupid (comics), Everyman, Twelve Brothers in Silk, Savant (DC Comics), Creote, Pistolera, Lady Blackhawk, Hellhound (comics), Panara (comics), and Film Freak, it is relevant to ask if they meet GNG or are likely to fail an AfD. In some ways it does get worse: Holly Robinson (comics), Huntress (Helena Bertinelli), Black Canary, Wildcat (comics), Count Vertigo, and Lady Shiva either out right fail GNG or come damn close to it. (A side note on this: A number of the articles in that last set bug the hell out of me for being there. They are signature DC characters that should have generated material in secondary sources - other than plot regurgitation - to justify a Wikipedia article. If all we can come up with is repackaging DC plots, we have a serious problem.)

Borrowed characters

Bringing in a character from another strip does not instantly mean they are integral to the topic. Whether Wikipedians have peppered an article with the term isn't necessarily relevant - especially with plot sections that have been puffed up without need. Using "Information is mentioned in article Foo" to add articles winds up including a lot of material that is extraneous to the topic at hand. (Using Wildcat (comics) as an example, the salient point is Ted Grant trained BC. Everything else in the Ted Grant article is irrelevant. Every thing the the remaining 6 sections of the article is irrelevant. That's a hell of a lot of irrelevant.)

- J Greb (talk) 23:51, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

I noticed that there are two navboxes on the Black Canary page and then, in my search for the reason, stumbled upon this discussion. I believe it would make sense to reinstitute the navbox (with a minor edit or two, of course), since it bares a great deal of difference to the BOP box.

- Friendly Lobotomy (talk) 04:35, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

It's still a recreation of your old template and it still has all the problems out lined above. Care to self revert and join the discussion? - J Greb (talk) 11:56, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

(And a general aside: If a self-revert of a template recreation is done, any transclusions done as part of the recreations sohuld be reverted at the same time. That avoids situations like this....) - J Greb (talk) 22:43, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

I’m willing to join in on the discussion, but I’m going to leave the box up (at least at the moment) in an attempt to generate some more edits that might improve on some the disputes, since removing it altogether doesn’t really do us any good. And since this whole situation is a bit tricky, I’m going to suggest that we try and come to a consensus on what content needs to stay in the navbox and what content might needs to be axed. When I recreated the box I removed both Starman and Sin, since in the discussion above there seemed to be some relevancy for their removal. I did this as an attempt to start moving forward with editing the page, instead of just reverting back and forth. - Friendly Lobotomy (talk) 18:16, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, I can see getting rid of Everyman (his article does have some information that fits here but its not very much), and adding back Sin (the article is very centric to BC and has some pertinent information) as to the reference to the two Birds of Prey pages, they seem relevant to me but I understand the redundancy and if repeating that is the breaking point, I can see them going as well; as to Starman I still feel that it meets the standards but since the article makes very little mention on either side (BC's page or Starman's for that matter) it should probably stay off of here, at least until someone can add more sourced information to either page relevant to both characters considering their long history of co-publication, until then its gone. Most of whats left still makes a compelling argument to keep the navbox around though.

- Shallowgravy (talk) 20:04, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

As a subnote I made some trial changes to the BC navbox that should warrant taking a look. I changed in other media to related articles and moved Birds of Prey there, as it is more of a team-up book and less of a full on book starring BC, i got rid of Arrow and Birds of Prey tv series and instead added a new page called Black Canary in other media, I also added Flash Comics (since it has information about some of her publications in this title from about issue 86 till the series end in 104) but this ones sort of iffy and can go if its a major problem. All in all its just a trial run to see how it looks and works if either of you want to just revert it or make changes that's not a problem.

- Shallowgravy (talk) 21:22, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

Supporting Characters

As a team book the Birds of Prey has a large cast of characters (both recurring and temporary) and it seems that the best use for the supporting characters group would be to accommodate the more steadfast and related articles that would help to bolster ones knowledge of the book. As such many of the characters who's pages have significant information regarding the birds of prey or detail events or information about the team should be added to this group.

- Shallowgravy (talk) 04:26, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Dressing up additional/temporary team members as "supporting cast" is not a valid tact. To avoid large, un-navigable masses of templates on articles, team templates like this are limited to the initial core characters. They also avoid actual supporting characters and antagonists characters borrowed from other places. (This is why I noted that Lady Blackhawk could, and likely should, be removed.)

Additionally, the overriding bulk of the articles that could be added would be purely on plot grounds since that is where the "significant information" resides. Wikipedia limits the amount of plot detail poured into articles. This treatment can be seens as trying to side step that.

- J Greb (talk) 05:46, 23 February 2013 (UTC)`

Perhaps what it needs is a change in structure to allow information that it currently can't hold, maybe a list of current members and past members such as what the secret six navbox has? It just seems so bare bones at the moment and is a bit unhandy when all the information it contains is basically contained in the articles it links making it somewhat pointless. A restructuring may help a reader find the information they need about the main article and widen its horizons at the same time.

- Shallowgravy (talk) 15:46, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

No.

Going down that path allows for all of the team templates to mushroom content to the point of uselessness. Pointing to examples like Secret Six are more likly to get "Thanks, that template needs to be fixed" rather than allow the bloat here.

- J Greb (talk) 17:07, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes.

Merely limiting the navbox to what has been already stated at the top page of the main article limits it to near uselessness especially to a person who is reading the page and wants more infromation and is not as well read in comics as you are, its not for fans its for wiki users.

- Shallowgravy (talk) 17:20, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Just for some general clean-up the section labeled initial characters should probably only contain Black Canary and Oracle, Huntress didn't join the team till around issue sixty or so when Lady Blackhawk also came along; she should probably be moved to supporting characters with Blackhawk. It also wouldn't hurt to add Cheshire to the list of enemies maybe under something that would look like this - the Ravens (Cheshire* Pistolera) to include the team the ravens who have a third of the team already listed, its just a suggestion but the Huntress issue seems pretty obvious.

- Shallowgravy (talk) 21:39, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

• Huntress joined in the second story (this is akin to Defenders template using a quartet instead of a trio). Birds of Prey: Manhunt #1. That said, the character was more or less dropped for 4 years when the first ongoing volume launched. That makes a good case for removing the entry based on how team templates are handled.
• Non-link text in navigation boxes is to be avoided. Red links more so. Shooting down both the Ravens and Vicious. As for Cheshire - This isn't [[tl|Teen Titans}}.

- J Greb (talk) 22:58, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh... and Pistolera is another of those articles that is fit to be redirected to a list. - J Greb (talk) 22:59, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

You're right, I should have said fully joined around sixty, that being said she still wasn't an initial character since she first appeared in the book about 5 issues in (about 4 or so one-shots and an appearance in Showcase 96' where Lois Lane was a member, weird right?) and didn't become recurring till much later. No unlinked text in navbox seems reasonable, but Cheshire might still be viable even without Vicious (thanks for that, I couldn't remember that characters name), though Pistolera's still there so it's not the worst idea but, it was just that, an idea. Any other characters to add to the supporting would help if they're relevant, Gypsy at least since her stint would be the longest next to on and off characters like Catwoman (who probably doesn't fit but also joined in the Man-hunt mini).

- Shallowgravy (talk) 23:22, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

See the above bit re borrowed characters for Cheshire.

As for adding team members under "Supporting cast" - I'm sorry, but that's an end run on a standing consensus on comic book team navigation boxes.

- J Greb (talk) 23:53, 26 February 2013 (UTC)