Suggestion for the Characters board

[SuperBabySimba]

[quote="Moka"]The wiki is for factual information. The forum is for discussing anything relating to The Lion King -- factual or otherwise.[/quote]

All the more reason to make the line between the official facts and the fanon clear on this forum's side too. Becuase the readers can not trust the Wiki page is accurate when the forum related to it doesn't make as visible and clear line between the facts and the fanon as possible - while the forum is inhabited by the very same people who have the right to edit those Wiki pages.

[quote="Moka"]The description of the characters forum is "Discuss the canon characters from the films, books and comics." This leads me to think that members don't even pay attention to the characters forum before they post their theories or questions. I personally don't think this solution will solve the problem you're describing.[/quote]

Actually, that line gives the impression that also the books and comics characters are canon because the books and comics are mention directly after the films without any addition. If you rephrase it into "...the canon characters from the films, and also the non-canon characters from the books and comics." - it would probably help a bit. But you're right, chances are everyone don't bother to read the board descriptions - but I do think the sub-board would make people pay attention. As in, they might think 'Wait, why is there a sub-board? What does its description say?' In my experience people do care a whole lot more about the descriptions of sub-boards than about the main boards' because sub-boards always have some special purpose.

[Moka]

[quote="SuperBabySimba"]All the more reason to make the line between the official facts and the fanon clear on this forum's side too.[/quote]

That would be a complete overhaul of the entire forum. We would need judges to determine whether or not a topic is deemed truthful or made up. Personally, I'd rather have people make up their own minds, but present the tools for them to do so.

[quote="SuperBabySimba"]If you rephrase it into "...the canon characters from the films, and also the non-canon characters from the books and comics." - it would probably help a bit.[/quote]

Characters from Disney-made or -approved books and comics are canon The ones that conflict with the movies, such as Kopa, are not strictly canon, but are still considered canon characters as opposed to fanon characters.

Though I could see how it might be confusing. Perhaps we should change it to "Discuss the canon (official) characters from the films, books and comics."

The fact is, we've always had two categories for characters: canon and fanon. If it's fanon, it doesn't belong in that forum.

[Panda-chan]

[quote="Simbaholic"]It's fine as it is, deal with it.[/quote]
I read the entire post and I still agree with what Simbaholic said.

[SuperBabySimba]

[quote="Moka"][quote="SuperBabySimba"]All the more reason to make the line between the official facts and the fanon clear on this forum's side too.[/quote]

That would be a complete overhaul of the entire forum. We would need judges to determine whether or not a topic is deemed truthful or made up. Personally, I'd rather have people make up their own minds, but present the tools for them to do so.[/quote]

I realize that. That's why I just meant that to make the line clear in the main section for the characters on this forum, which is the Characters board. Because that's where people are going to look here first, if they want to read something about the characters. And if the Book/Comic characters were in a sub-board, it would already in itself tell that they and the movie characters are seperate cases from each other. Not to mention if the sub-board's description also stated so. I think it would be good if this forum's organizing supported the Wiki at least to that extent, if the Wiki is hoping to gain credibility as a factual source when it's being edited by the users of this forum.

[quote="Moka"]Characters from Disney-made or -approved books and comics are canon The ones that conflict with the movies, such as Kopa, are not strictly canon, but are still considered canon characters as opposed to fanon characters.

Though I could see how it might be confusing. Perhaps we should change it to "Discuss the canon (official) characters from the films, books and comics."[/quote]

You just said it yourself there; the most official canon is the film universe and most purely the first film alone. I might add that because of that fact, people do first and foremost think of the original movie when someone mentions the word 'canon'. And thus for many, everything that's refered to as canon without any specifications means that it officially exists in the actual canon that is the film(s) even if they didn't see it in them. But in this fandom's officiality - evidently - they don't exist in it and that is why the characters shouldn't be meshed into one board without somehow making clear the books' contents don't exist in the same sub-universe.

I'm still standing by my opinion that having the sub-board would serve the good and credibility of the entire MLK so long as the lot of users of MLK are the ones who run the Wiki.

How about "Discuss the characters of the official/canon movie universe, and the official characters in the book/comic universe"? That would make clear(er) that there is two sub-universes in the entity and the book universe is not an official part of the main canon that is the film.

[SnowyCheetah]

I agree with Amanda and Simbaholic. Though if we really needed any indication (catering to the people who refuse to watch TLK and are here anyway, are we? It's not our responsibility to educate them.) I like Moka's tag idea, but just use [film] and [book] so they aren't intrusive. Ultimately though, I find the entire proposal completely unnecessary. Since when have any problems arisen from the current layout?

[quote="Simbaholic"]It's fine as it is, deal with it.[/quote]

Those are words of wisdom. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

[Azdgari]

I was just going to say what Snowy said. If it ain't broke don't fix it. What about our current system isn't working? I came in with no idea who Kopa was let alone all the crazy Mheetu and Ahadi and Chalka (and I still have no idea who they are) and I caught on in about five minutes. We don't need forums to spell out what's canon and what's not; if anybody's confused, we have plenty of members who can help them out. ^^

[SuperBabySimba]

[quote="Azdgari"]We don't need forums to spell out what's canon and what's not; if anybody's confused, we have plenty of members who can help them out. ^^[/quote]

You say it's not our responsibility to educate them but you wish to keep the endless need for us to explain stuff to them? Isn't that a bit of a contradictory? Basically it wouldn't be, but I mean in the light of the fact that obviously remarkably many who come around this forum, do not educate themselves by the Wiki or anything more reliable than a random Google search result. Either that or the Wiki out there isn't remaining factually correct. Which again I wouldn't be surprised for seeing to that it's editable by anyone who registers to MLK at any time. They come here with false impressions or downright questions and sooner or later have someone explain the facts to them and that someone may not even always be giving the accurate information. It is not our responsibility to educate them, so why are we holding on to the need to instead of trying to take a step towards the way when we wouldn't need to do it so much?

If the factual information was in a form of a sub-board, the information couldn't be edited by just anyone at any time they wish but would remain factually correct at all times, and it would be so easy to direct the confused/misinformed people to reading that description instead of needing to explain the same things over and over again. That is if they didn't spot it already by likely first checking the Characters board here [speaking of the situation if it did offer the factually correct information visibly enough.]

[Azdgari]

Well, I guess that's our different of opinions then. In my opinion, it's pretty easy to understand (I figured it out on my own pretty quickly, as I said) and if it's not, I think we have some of the friendliest members around who can answer questions. I also think separating movie characters from book characters sort of creates the idea they are, in fact, separate, which I think a number of people here don't believe. In fact I think this board rather thrives on the deeper discussion and speculation based on the combination of movie and book characters---without the book characters, it's an awfully small TLK universe, isn't it? It's certainly a valid opinion that they should be separated, however, if one that might take a lot of work to implement... ^^

[Moka]

Now you're exploding an issue that really isn't that big of a deal anyway.

I think it's silly to expect so much out of new members who join the forum. Some people are always going to join and ask questions without fully researching the matter. It doesn't matter which subforum the character topics are in, because they won't be looking at the character topics or the character forum.

Other solutions may be a FAQ thread for common questions that you see recurring. Or, we could have a note above the topics in each forum reminding members to check the wiki to see if their question can be answered in there. I don't think either of these...or anything at this point...is really necessary because I don't think this is an issue...but that's just me.

And don't say the wiki isn't factual because it can be edited by everyone. I and many others keep an eye on new changes to the wiki. Perhaps if you doubt its factualness, you could look it over and correct that which needs correcting. That is, after all, the idea behind wikis.

[Mike]

I think confusion here is arising because people are using the words canon and non-canon differently. In TLK, as in any extended universe with a fan following, there are different "tiers" of canon. The movies are the most concrete, "tier 1" canon, the director's comments and ect would be tier 2. Tier 3 might include the musical, or books like TLK6NA. At the bottom obviously is fanon. The question is whether we need to make more than one distinction between the tiers. Right now we just divide between canon, and fanon. The proposed board would include a middle ground of lower tier canon than the movies. I still think it's a perfectly reasonable way to organize the character board. At the same time, if people get any more worked up about what seems to me to be a completely trivial distinction, I might have to facepalm =3