Template talk:Narnia

When editing this template, please note that it is not meant to link to every article related to The Chronicles of Narnia. It links directly to the various Narnia categories and lists to allow access to every article. It is meant to link to only the most important articles within the respective categories. LloydSommerer 02:59, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Order Listed

Why are the novels listed in publication date instead of chronological date?
The author preferred chronological[1] and the current publications are in chronological order (and have been for a good deal of time). --71.94.78.226 (talk) 02:12, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Publication order has been the consensus opinion of the editors here. It seems to be an informed opinion, that is to say, I think people understand the issues (pro and con) for either choice. Probably the best way to get the whole story is to read this article[2] LloydSommerer (talk) 02:36, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Merge

There is 1 more template of Narnia.{{Template:Narnia characters}}.Should we merge the contents of that article to this template?.--SkyWalker (talk) 13:22, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

The idea when we merged several templates down to this one a few years ago was to keep it shorter than the sum of the other templates by providing links to lists and categories. The character and location sections are especially problematic in that you can add any number of articles to the. The idea in each section is to link to "Main" characters/locations only. Not even "Major" ones were included as that would quickly make the template unwieldy. There's still some question as to what constitutes a main character. Generally we've been going with characters that have important roles in more than one book and characters what play a major roll in one book. LloydSommerer (talk) 18:38, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Once there is 5 movies. We can make the template look more or like {{Harrypotter}} template?. I wish there will be more information about Chronicles of Narnia. I don't know much about it. --SkyWalker (talk) 05:22, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

cleanup

I made a number of changes to the template, and rather than list them in the edit summary, I thought I would put them here so that they can be discussed:

1. Changed all of the formatting so that the table elements are now 0.2em smaller.
2. Changed the order of characters to roughly the order they appear in the books. The old order seemed to be Aslan, humans, others. I could see doing a strict alphabetical as well.
3. Shortened a few links where doing so seemed to remove an extra lines (note that screen sizes do vary).
4. Removed some links to articles that are not as important. I didn't mess with the shorter lists as much.
5. Moved the portal link into Other instead of a separate footer.

There are probably others that I've forgotten. I agree with some other editors who don't like the new format with the books listed across the top, but there seem to be a roughly equal number who like it as who dislike it. LloydSommerer (talk) 16:47, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Lilliandil

user:JDJ39 added Lilliandil to the list of main characters. I reverted this, but on reflection have reinstated it. She is not, of course, a main character in the books, but the template covers the films as well, and she undoubtedly will become a main character in the films. Adding her as "Lilliandil" rather than as "Ramandu's Daughter" makes sense too, since as a main character she will become known by the former rather than the latter. -- Elphion (talk) 07:03, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

The character is Ramandu's Daughter. The name Lilliandil can be used when referring to her movie appearances, not book appearances. Also, the books take precedence over the movies. What if there is another adaptation in 20 years and they give Ramandu's Daughter yet another name? KitHutch (talk) 22:49, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't disagree with that. What is emerging, however, is an edit brouhaha over whether she belongs in the "Major Characters" list. As a book character she is not a major character. Can we develop a consensus over whether she belongs in the template? -- Elphion (talk) 18:37, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to chime in on the side of excluding almost everything from the template. It seems to me that more concise templates are more useful to users. We'll help 90% of users find what they want quickly, and link to where the remaining 10% can find what they need (I just made up those numbers). This is what we were working from when we first merged down to one Narnia template from the previous set of about 4 templates a few years ago:

...The idea in each section is to link to "Main" characters/locations only. Not even "Major" ones were included as that would quickly make the template unwieldy. There's still some question as to what constitutes a main character. Generally we've been going with characters that have important roles in more than one book and characters what play a major roll in one book... LloydSommerer (talk) 04:16, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Conflict on template format.

I have noticed that there has been a few edit conflict on how to format this template. I have purposed that any changes on how to format this template should be discussed here unless there's a task force on Narnia, then a discussion can go there. − Jhenderson ⁷⁷⁷ 21:33, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Here's one old look that some editors have approved while others didn't. You may vote for it if you prefer it.

My own opinion is that the main thrust of the majority of the articles on Narnia are book related, and that the template should reflect that. But the films are certainly currently culturally significant, and one could argue that the tv series are as well. I think anyone would be hard pressed to say that the soundtracks and games for the movies are as important. The only thing I have against throwing the films and tv series below the book titles is that there are only 3 films. It looks like the template is messed up. Linking to the section of articles that talk about future films doesn't really fix this, because it is not what a wikipedia user would expect when they click on a link that looks identical to a link to a full film article. We could do something like the Wizard of Oz template and not worry about the size making it hard to use. We could do something like The Lord of the Rings template and have everything hidden by default. The version of the template that we've been using for the last bit seems to be taken from the Harry Potter Template. The discussion on the talk page of the Harry Potter Template is quite informative. LloydSommerer (talk) 19:59, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Version as of 01:30, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

This version is OK. It's fairly compact and easy to navigate. In particular, there's not gobs of empty space around "TV series -- Film -- Game" between the book titles and the rest of the template. I don't really care too much about what links are there => as long as they're not visually distracting, so that the template is easy for the eye to take in. So it's important, e.g., that the horizontal sweep across the rows be consistent and not broken up so that the eye trips at each column.

I would also suggest that someone who cares about the movies and the TV series edit the general articles for those so that they give the reader easy, obvious links to the individual installments and so that they provide overviews of the films, rather than (e.g.) rehash all the minor plot points. The current movie article in particular is a real mishmash.

Also: would it make sense to add "BBC" to the second TV series?

-- Elphion (talk) 01:30, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh my goodness. You are right about the films. The film articles excluding Prince Caspian needs work. I have never seen such a terrible release section that the The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe has. I wish I knew what to do. I think I will discuss that on the article. And I am not sure I am following the BBC comment. − Jhenderson ⁷⁷⁷ 17:08, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I just meant that in the template version above there are links to two TV Serials, one identified as "ITV TV Serial", the other as "TV Serial" -- it would be clearer if the latter were "BBC TV Serial". ("TV" could be omitted from both.) And to un-grinch a bit: it's not that I don't care about the films, but the minutiae in those articles just go overboard -- and in the long run, the books are the touchstones and far more important. -- Elphion (talk) 18:43, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I see what you mean. I will fix that for you. − Jhenderson ⁷⁷⁷ 18:57, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Never mind. It looks like that's already been fixed. − Jhenderson ⁷⁷⁷ 18:58, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Version as of 13:53, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

[for reference -- the version Lloyd is talking about -- Elphion (talk) 13:53, 6 January 2011 (UTC)]

The current state of the template is why the second example in this section is not sustainable. There is no useful criteria for what should and what should not appear in those upper boxes. Just wait until people start writing articles about stage adaptations, and we have to include those as well. LloydSommerer (talk) 03:29, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Lloyd is right on target -- as long as there are just a couple of categories at the top, the column format works OK -- but just OK. Once the categories multiply, as in the 6 Jan 2011 version above, the layout becomes visually distracting and hard to navigate. And the equal billing given to the various adaptations is completely unwarranted by their quality and notability. -- Elphion (talk) 13:57, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi, just to give my reasoning for changing the template, I thought it rather odd that only the articles for the recent film adaptations (and their related spin-offs) were listed below each book title, but not the previous adaptations; that seemed rather arbitrary. So I added the links to each of the BBC TV serial articles for the first four books and the ITV TV serial and animated film for LWW. On reflection, I do kind of see Elphion's point about whether we should give equal billing to all the various adaptations for which there are currently articles. If we decide that's not a good idea, that would seem to me to suggest perhaps moving the link to the article for the ITV TV serial (of which only two episodes exist and which does not seem particularly well-known) back to the Other section. -Paul1337 (talk) 20:39, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Locations and Places templates; Redirects (posted in two new sections)

Template: Narnia places is not in the Narnia templates cat and does not carry the project banner. It is nearly redundant and seems to be deprecated. Boldly I have deleted it from the two articles where it was in use (Anvard, Archenland). Now, like Template: Narnia characters, it does not appear in article space. Maybe they should be deleted from Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Chronicles of Narnia task force? --P64 (talk) 23:06, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Redirects

By the way, I have been poking around to see how you all have approached a few matters, a couple days after revising The Foundling and Other Tales of Prydain and then observing the shabby of other matters Prydain (a fictional land) ...

One matter to approach is redirects. I suppose that many of them have replaced stub articles on minor characters, places, etc. By policy do you include some redirects in Categories, in the Navbox, or both?

Reading further, I see that WP: Redirect discourages redirects in categories but the main discussion shows some examples that provide a valuable perspective on lists of characters. Example: Category:Middle-earth horses, all redirects. --P64 (talk) 23:06, 20 December 2011 (UTC)