Original-Rebuild: Chinese Walls

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I've been doing a little browsing on the Wiki and it's not clear that we are making enough of a distinction between the original series characters and Rebuild counterparts/additional characters. For example, "Mari Illustrious Makinami" is present in both the Evangelion Characters category and in the Character List template.

In addition, character pages usually contain a lot of rebuild information, with and without spoiler tags. Asuka's page mentions a new surname given to her in Rebuild, and there are even links or qualifying links with that name elsewhere on the Wiki.

Given the unavoidable divergences that will exist between the original canon and the Rebuild canon, I think it may be best if we make a distinct separation between original character and Rebuild characters by creating separate pages and lists for each set. This "Chinese Wall", for the main topics at least, should essentially treat the canons as running in parallel (though mass copy pasting similar content is of course fine).


For example, Shinji would have two pages
[url]http://wiki.evageeks.org/Shinji_Ikari[/url] Would link to the original series character page and
http://wiki.evageeks.org/Shinji_Ikari_(Rebuild) would link to the relevant rebuild page.

Likewise Asuka, would have two pages
[url]http://wiki.evageeks.org/Asuka_Langley_Soryu[/url] and
http://wiki.evageeks.org/Asuka_Langley_Shikinami_(Rebuild)

And any new characters would simply have one page
http://wiki.evageeks.org/Mari_Illustrious_Makinami_(Rebuild)

While this may seem pedantic and potentially a lot of work, I think in the long run we are better off making this distinction. I'm not familiar at all with any of the Rebuild material, but I suspect that the eventual divergences will be obtuse enough to cause confusion if they are left on the same pages. What are people's thoughts on this?

EDIT:
Phpbb does not like brackets in urls. Sorry about that.

[UrsusArctos]

We thought it wasn't worth creating separate character pages for the same characters' Rebuild incarnations, especially since the amount of new information that we have now is very limited and barely enough to justify creating whole new articles. Besides, wouldn't that mean creating new character pages for all the different character avatars from different continuities- such as Shinji in the Manga and Rei in Eva Anima, for instance?

Asuka's surname in Rebuild isn't classified as a spoiler because it was available on posters for the movie well before its release, and those were publicly accessible.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I think a whole new namespace would be overkill. Namespaces are usually for more technical things and to be honest, we've probably overused them as it stands. The usual bracket convention would be more suitable and extensible for things like the Manga, video game, etc.

At the moment, I think the Rebuild canon is the most major alternative version of Evangelion. It's debatable whether or note we have, or will ever have enough Rebuild material to build very large pages for Rebuild Character version. However, I think that making the distinction clearly might be the best way of avoiding future confusion.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I'm shortly going to try separating out the Rebuild material from the regular character pages. We'll see how this goes. My way of thinking currently is for the Rebuild pages to be supplementary to the regular character page, where they are not completely contradictory.

In addition, I may work on decanting rebuild material from site templates and the like.

[Sailor Star Dust]

I think the pages are fine as is. There are spoiler tags on the wiki for Rebuild parts, and I doubt at this point Rebuild characters have enough mateiral to be seperate pages (you might as well make manga and anime pages seperate too, which would just be messy). Mari`s fine as is too, I think. Down the line, maybe china-walling will be needed, but not yet. /My two cents.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I'm aware that the rebuild pages will be neccessarily scant, but given our current stance on Rebuild material, it's difficult to have such information on main character pages.

I'll try making the chnage for a few characters, and we can see how well(or not) it works before editing everything(Edit: else).

As to the templates; I really feel we need to make separations there.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I've just changed the Shinji and Asuka pages on the wiki by moving Rebuild material to seperate pages. I must admit it feels like a dreadfully ham fisted exercise.

Perhaps we would be better off moving ALL the "$CHARACTER in other media" material off the main page and onto a separate page. After all, the main character pages are for the characters in the series, and spoilers for other material are at least as important as those for Rebuild.

In fact, that's what I'll try to do next. Watch this space.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

The "Other Media" pages have been created for the Shinji and Asuka pages. You can see the results here and here.

I've just noticed that even other pages like the Unit-01 page have Rebuild sections. Perhaps these would be better treated using "Other Media" pages as well.

[Sailor Star Dust]

Putting Rebuild with other media looks good. Seems the best approach to this.

[The Eva Monkey]

I vote for a page for the character from the original anime, and then a page for the character as they exist in other formats.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Separate pages would either lead to a hard to manage collection of stub pages, or else duplication of content across pages.

That said, I suppose for something like the Manga, and eventually Rebuild, there could be enough information for a full character page, complete with Media screenshots. In fact, it would be better to put such other media information in its own place.

Could someone come up with a complete page for, say, manga Shinji as an example? If the pages are "stand alone" enough, we could potentially even have a parallel series of character, eva, angel, issue pages etc, for the manga. This also gives me an excuse to make new template.

[Ornette]

Could someone come up with a complete page for, say, manga Shinji as an example? If the pages are "stand alone" enough, we could potentially even have a parallel series of character, eva, angel, issue pages etc, for the manga. This also gives me an excuse to make new template.

Manga Shinji page would just be a link to the original Shinji page with a short list of differences. What else can go in a standalone page for Manga Shinji?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Well, there might be enough in the manga to make at least a mini-character page. We could also have "volume" pages giving a synopsis of the managa like the ones in the current episode pages.

[thewayneiac]

The "other media" links for Shinji and Asuka look good to me. They keep the main character pages from being too busy. The Manga and Rebuild sections on the main character pages were sort of information overload.

[UrsusArctos]

The Shinji and Asuka pages are a start, but a good start. They keep spoilers away from the main pages, if nothing else.

Could someone come up with a complete page for, say, manga Shinji as an example? If the pages are "stand alone" enough, we could potentially even have a parallel series of character, eva, angel, issue pages etc, for the manga. This also gives me an excuse to make new template.

This will likely prove excessive. The original series pages can be considered standalone because they give us plenty of material to work with. Information from other media is relatively scanty, and of lower importance compared to the old series and Rebuild.

Rebuild information may have to be shifted to separate pages in the future, depending on the outcome of 3.0 and 4.0. At the moment, there isn't enough Rebuild material to necessitate standalone Rebuild pages.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Yes, I think Rebuild material should be left in the Other Media pages for now. When more data becomes available, we may end up creating Rebuild character pages, parallel to the original series ones.

The rest of the characters have all had "Other media" pages added to their pages and any such information moved to the new page. In the cases of some characters, this didn't make an awful lot of sense. Still, I think it's cleaner this way.