Forum:Introduction of Portal Pages

Index → Panopticon → Introduction of Portal Pages

Spoilers are strongly policed here.
If this thread's title doesn't specify it's spoilery, don't bring any up.

Positives	Negatives
Easier to navigate	Will take time to introduce
Gets rid of "list" pages	Not al characters have pictures
More new-user friendly	Pictures have to be edited in size
More users = more editors
Brightens up the Wiki
Easier for visitors who can not remember character names
Can colour-code characters by dead/alive, type of media (tv/audio) ect.
Less white-space on the right of the pages
Used sucsessfully elsewhere (Lostpedia, Heroeswiki, Mass Effect Wiki)

This issue has come up a new times before but I think it should be brought up again. Portal pages could make this wiki much easier to navigate and more new-viewer/causal-viewer friendly. A lot of fans will not know the name of all the characters in the show, for example Astrid Peth is commonly known as Kylie Minogue due to the actress being more famous than the character and a picture of the character would show viewers that the character is played by Kylie. An example page can be seen here and the colour-coding is optional. I have included a table of positives and negatives of introducing this feature, feel free to add to it. --SquirrelBoy 15:29, May 4, 2010 (UTC)

To see the discussions already taken place on subjects similar to this see: Forum:Proposal for character portals and Forum:Feedback on a new idea wanted!.

The focus of this wiki isn't just the TV series, it's all of the Doctor Who universe and all the different media that is produced. It I think is a mistake to think people are coming here just because of the current TV series and know things just from pictorial representations of characters.

Your Astrid Peth point is debatable (and depends on what exposure an individual viewer has to popular music/popular culture throughout the 80s and 90s).

To explore this further: the First Doctor's companions were: William Russell, Jaqueline Hill, Carol Ann-Ford, Maureen O'Brien, Peter Purves, Jackie Lane, Anneke Wills, Michael Craze. Alternatively the First Doctor's companions were; Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright, Susan Foreman, Vicki, Steven Taylor, Dodo Chaplet, Ben Jackon Polly Wright.

Plenty of fans/new people coming to the site know the characters of the show but not the actors.

As I said over at Talk:Portal:Companions the examples there are broken up by sources, so that will mean in order to cover everything, TV, prose, audio, comics, short stories each image will need to be repeated at least four times, making for a very long page. Additionally there's the issue that not every companion has an image, meaning elements of this poral would always be incomplete. Also as I said over on the talk page, the examples given are all very visual based things they're all TV series' or video games, they're all visual sources (with plenty of places to grab images from), but the Doctor Who canon isn't, it covers a wide range of sources, many of which don't have pictures (and some of which images no longer exist). --Tangerineduel 16:04, May 4, 2010 (UTC)

Let me give an argument in favor of the idea. An acquaintance of mine came to this wiki to find "that companion of Tom Baker who ran around in skimpy clothes, spoke oddly, and waved a knife around". He had to go through all of the companions of the 4th Doctor one by one until he found Leela, or give up and ask me who he was thinking of (which is what he ended up doing). A picture would have gotten him straight there. (BTW, SquirrelBoy, Astrid wasn't the best example--if you're looking for "the one played by Kylie Minogue", you can go right to Kylie's page and follow the obvious link....)

I don't think such a portal should _replace_ the list, but I don't see why it can't be a supplement.

And, if it's used that way, it makes perfect sense for only TV (and maybe comics) companions to be listed visually. Even though most of the novel and audio companions do have pictures (from the covers, etc.), nobody looking for Benny will be looking for her by picture--not to mention that people who read the novels inherently have more tolerance for large chunks of text without pretty pictures.

The tricky part is how you guide people looking for a visual portal to the visual portal, without obscuring the fact that the TV (and comics) companions aren't the only ones.

One minor quibble: a reduced version of the picture from the article page isn't always the best idea. Someone looking for the main character of the Sarah Jane Adventures doesn't need a picture; someone looking for that reporter companion of the 3rd Doctor might not recognize a picture taken 30+ years later. The shadows obscure Ian's face much worse in a tiny thumbnail. Barbara would be much more recognizable if you first cropped her to a square before scaling. And so on. But I realize that this was just a proof of concept, not a finished work, and overall, it was well done. --Falcotron 16:21, May 4, 2010 (UTC)