User:iTocapa/Heroes

Preface

I have been working on Heroes articles for a short while now, and considering that the second season has presumably ended, I believe it is necessary to take a look at the entirety of the Heroes spectrum within Wikipedia, and take a look at what we need to do to make these articles respectable. However, my concerns are many, and cannot possibly fit into one comment on a talk page, or even many comments on many talk pages, so I have instead chosen to produce this essay regarding my thoughts for all editors to read at their leisure.

This essay contains all my thoughts regarding the Heroes articles on Wikipedia, and what I believe can be done to improve them. I recommend that you take everything I say with a grain of salt, and request that you do not rush to conclusions or judgement based on anything I say in this essay. Much of what I say will likely be disagreeable to you, or perhaps controversial. Nonetheless, I feel it necessary to say, and so I offer you this essay of my thoughts. I urge you to remain calm despite my often outrageous suggestions.

In addition, I would like to ask of you that you not think of me, as a result of this essay, as someone who is attempting to take control of Heroes on Wikipedia, or force his opinions on everyone. While I am regrettably arrogant and self-righteous (being the product of Seattle that I am), I know more than many that not everyone will agree with my point of view, and I often believe that few will in fact agree with my point of view. Regardless, I offer it as what I believe are reasonable beliefs on the state of Heroes in this encyclopedia. I do not intend to attack or offend anyone personally by this essay.

All that being said, please read, consider my suggestions, and attack me on the talk page.

Main article

While the main article (here) contains a lot of good information, I believe it is arranged poorly, and in some cases extraneous. After looking at the main article for Lost (here), I believe that we can bring the main article up to featured status by emulating many of the concepts of the Lost article. By this, I mean specifically emulating its structure, i.e., starting with "Production", then "Cast and characters", then "Season synopses", etc. I know many of you will suggest that we shouldn't copy from Lost, but I would argue that we are less copying, and more, as I said before, emulating. The Lost article is a well-written article with featured status. In addition, both Heroes and Lost are successful serial science fiction dramas, and it should be noted that Heroes would likely not exist if not for the success of Lost. I know this will cause a lot of problems, however, for some of the editors on this project.

To go into more specifics regarding the main article, I will start with the lede. I think that the first paragraph is good enough as is; however, I have started to have major problems with the second paragraph, specifically the excess of information regarding the strike. I believe such should be split off from the lede into a separate section under "Production", entitled "Effect of writer's strike" or something similar. A mention is necessary in the lede, but not all the information at once.

I will go in the order that Lost is arranged to explain the rest of my beliefs in regard to the Heroes main article, thus starting with "Production". Overall, the section is good as it stands, however, I would again take a cue from Lost, and attempt to write an explanation in prose, if it lends itself to it. Creating a separate article, as Lost did, may be something that should have to wait.

The "Characters" section has been, perhaps, the largest problem in this article, not because of how it is done, but because of the problem we have had regarding main cast members and deaths. For that reason, I would suggest, again, emulating the style of the Lost article. Rather than a full list of main characters, alive and dead (which numbers high right now), it has a prose summary of the characters and the cast changes throughout the series, leaving the list to the "Characters of Lost" article (here). I would suggest we do the same (more on characters in the "Characters" section of this essay).

In regards to the season summaries, we should again do like Lost and change the section to "Season synopses". In addition, we should keep in mind that we should not become too in-universe when writing these synopses. On a similar note, we should remember that the section is not supposed to be a replacement for watching the show, and that spoilers are necessary to providing summaries. For that reason, I believe we should avoid talking about characters' specific stories in the season synopses, but instead focus on whatever the most central plot of the season is. The end of a synopsis should explain the ending of the season as well. In addition, on an in-universe note, I am still up in the air personally as to whether or not I believe we should include volumes there. If we do, we should make sure we have a note explaining their significance.

In regards to the "Mythology" section (which should be changed back to "Mythology" rather than "Symbolism", as it deals with a lot more than just symbols), I again am not sure whether or not it should have a separate article. On the one hand, there is enough information out there to constitute one, but how much of it could be considered cruft? For the time being, I think we should restrict it to what it is, but keep in mind that if this series takes off, it will eventually be necessary to split it off. Additionally, I think that we can definitely make prose out of the current list, but I'm not going to be a stickler for that.

I don't think it's necessary to change "Reception" to "Impact" as Lost did, at least until we can create a "Fandom and popular culture" section in the vein of Lost. Additionally, I believe Kring's "Response to criticism" should include a paragraph explaining what the criticism was first (with sources), before there can be a response to it. The Isaac-related lawsuit can be moved to "Production", and perhaps even merged with the Emerson lawsuit under a single section regarding legal issues.

"Other media" is alright, but I think it's certainly possible to make prose out of it, as in the Lost article. There's not much for me to say about that.

I'm not sure what to do in regards to the "Promotions" section. I think it may be possible to incorporate the "Create Your Own Hero" promotion into an "Online interaction" section, or something similar, but I'm not sure how to go about it.

That's all I have to say in regards to the main article, as far as I can tell. I may expand on this later, but until then, I think I would like to go by this.

Characters

List

Article: List of characters in Heroes

I think that again, we can emulate Lost, and change this to "Characters of Heroes". For the main characters, I would also suggest the example of Lost, in having a table with the character's name, starring seasons, portrayer, and short description, definitely including powers.

For the supporting characters, I will start by saying I do not think the "Other characters with special abilities" is entirely necessary, though I won't argue steadfastly for its removal (I will touch on this later in this essay, however).

For the family section, I think first of all we should separate out the Company founders, as they are very significant to the series's plot. However, with few exceptions, I don't think many of the other individual family characters are especially notable, and would suggest instead merging them all under separate family sections, i.e. a "Bennet family" section, a "Nakamura" section, a "Petrelli" section; you get the idea.

For the additional season-specific characters, I would suggest something not entirely unsimilar. In truth; I think besides Zach and Audrey Hanson season one; and Yaeko and Caitlin in season two; none of the other characters merit more than a simple mention in an "Other characters" section or something like it. The graphic novel characters, I believe, also fall under this jurisdiction, but I'm not going to go too far on that.

As an additional point, I am not sure what my opinion on the "characters with special abilities" list is, so I will not comment on it at this time.

Individual articles

Here's where, I believe, the meat of the problem lies. In all of the character articles, there is, unfortunately, far too much detail in their biographies. A point I often make is that Wikipedia should not be TV.com, in that it should not be a substitute for watching the series. In that sense, I believe the "Fictional biography" sections could be reduced to at most, two to three sentences per episode, and most of them reduced to one.

"Powers and abilities" sections are important to the characters, as long as they remain free of speculation (which all of you are already great at keeping out, I just feel the need to mention it). I haven't checked of all of them, but I'm sure if there are any significant problem ones they will be taken care of.

Returning to the condensing point, I have a proposal that I imagine is going to create a lot of ire in the editors, but I need to say my thoughts anyway. I believe that many of the non-main characters with articles, exceptions being the Haitian and possibly Bob, could seriously be reduced to sections in the central characters article. I know I'm going to meet a lot of opposition on this. I truly hope that you editors will take this into consideration before making judgement on me. After I wrote this essay, some steps were taken to resolve this problem, which I am glad of. I haven't had a chance to look over to see how far it has gotten, however.

Episodes

List

Article: List of Heroes episodes

No changes necessary, as far as I am concerned. The equivalent Lost article (here) does not include summaries under each episode, but I honestly don't care, so I'm not going to press that issue. thedemonhog pointed out that there are articles for each season of Lost which do include summaries; however, I remember this as a relic of a long time past, and do not think such is necessary here. Therefore, we should keep the episode summaries.

Individual articles

Much like the problem with the character articles, the problem with many of these articles is the overly detailed plots. I had hoped that my initial efforts in condensing the first three episodes would lead others to attempt cleanup on their own, but so far results have been disappointing. To use the condensed articles as examples, I suggest condensing each character's story (or group's story) into a single paragraph, with no more than four to five sentences describing the storyline for that episode. Again, Wikipedia should not be a substitute for watching the show.

On the subject of notability, while personally I believe that, in all honesty, with the exception of "Genesis" (article here), I do not believe each episode of this show is inherently notable, I believe that is an issue for the television WikiProject (here) to take care of, and it is not a major concern for us at this time. Until that project can decide, we should at least attempt to improve the articles that exist.

Other related articles

Graphic novels

Lists are fine, as far as I am concerned.

The Company

Article: The Company (Heroes)

As in the character articles, I believe we can condense the "History" section easily. Additionally, "Current activity" could easily be merged into the section as well. I think it's possible that sections such as "Developments", "Organization", and "Tracking systems" could be merged under a single section, though I don't know what it would be called. "Facilities" sections can be easily condensed, exception being Primatech, which is notable. I don't think Molly or even Isaac should be listed under "Employees", so perhaps it should be changed to "People" or something along those lines. Not much more for me to say on this.

Heroes: Origins

Fine as is.

Auxiliary articles

What I mean by this is, plot-relevant articles such as "9th Wonders!" and "Artwork of Isaac Mendez". I would suggest the removal of the comic article, perhaps merging some information into Isaac's article. On the same token, I would suggest either merging the artwork article, or expanding it to include Peter and Sylar's precognitive art, changing it to "Artwork in Heroes".

Heroes Evolutions

Other than merging "Heroes 360 experience" into it, don't care.

Unofficial supplements

By which I mean Heroes Unmasked and The Post Show. I'm not sure either of these are terribly notable on their own, but really aren't concerned at this point.

Miscellaneous

The Saving Charlie novel article (here) should be either reworked significantly or deleted until the book's release.

Conclusion and final comments

If you have gotten this far and read all of it, I commend you, as I have what I believe is an incredibly dense style of writing. I am amazed that anyone can even take me seriously sometimes. Nonetheless, I do think you for coming here and reading my suggestions, no matter how much you disagree with them. Again, the talk page is open, so please respond with your ideas. I hope that together, as editors of Wikipedia, we can develop these ideas into something strong and cohesive that can improve of the quality of Heroes articles as a whole.