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A Man, A Plan, a Project: Suikoden

The first thing that is clearly evident from these pages is that there are way too many of them. It almost breaks my heart to say it because I love Suikoden so much, but all of these characters do not need (and should not have) pages. Even the pages that are more encyclopedic than others contain a great deal of unsourced, in-universe information that wouldn't be appropriate for an encyclopedia. Unfortunately, it seems that a great deal of the information provided here on Wikipedia would be better directed to a Suikoden wiki, where the point is to gather as much information about Suikoden as possible - which is not the point here (per WP:NOT#INDISCRIMINATE). Information about the Suikoden characters is good, because they are such a focal point of the games - 108 characters per game definitely supports that; however, I think the pages for characters should be confined to Lists of Characters and should be in the format of Characters of Final Fantasy VIII, featuring things like:

• Cast Creation/Influences
• Central Characters

Suikoden 1: Tir, Gremio, Teo, Barbarossa ...

Suikoden 2: Riou, Jowy, Nanami, Luca Blight ...

Suikoden 3: Geddoe, Hugo, Chris, Luc ...

Suikoden 4: Lazlo, Snowe, Lino, Graham Cray

Suikoden 5: Prince, Lyon, Georg, Gizel,

Suikoden Tactics: Kyril, Andarc, Seneca, Yohn

The Suikogaiden characters draw almost exclusively from characters who already exist and, thus, would not be hugely necessary IMO

• Other Major Characters

Suikoden 1: Cleo, Pahn, Viktor, Flik, Odessa, Mathiu ...

Suikoden 2: Viktor, Flik, Shu, Apple ...

Suikoden 3: Thomas, Flame Champion, Destroyers ...

Suikoden 4: Elenor, Ted, Kika, Brandeau ...

Suikoden 5: Sialeeds, Lymsleia, Lucretia, Marscal ...

Suikoden Tactics: ...

The Suikogaiden characters draw almost exclusively from characters who already exist and, thus, would not be hugely necessary IMO

• Cultural Impact

The important thing to keep in mind here is, despite a deep love for all things Suikoden and a deep interest in all the information here, this should be less about providing a biography of the characters as it should be about their significance: to the series, to the genre, etc.

This is not going to be easy, and I think a lot of people are going to be upset because I am proposing to delete a lot of information that they have gathered over a long period of time. But I think it is clear that it is a bit more, if not completely, encyclopedic (and the preferred style of Wikipedia) to have articles more like List of Suikoden IV characters, List of Suikoden V characters than Flik, Viktor, and so on. (Moved this here to make the main page more coherent, and put it at the top because it came before all the discussion.) bwowen ^{talk•contribs} 03:58, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

If these articles have a "Creation and influence" and "Cultural impact" sections, then they shouldn't be called "List of ... characters" but simply "Characters of ...". Kariteh 07:25, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

It may defeat the purpose, but you can also group the notable characters (Stars of Heaven) by their actual star. --Noctrine (talk) 12:31, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Task Force

This sounds like a good start to a Suikoden WikiProject/Task Force. I'll try to find time to help, since I'm a Suikoden fan myself. Matter of fact, I beat Suikoden III this morning.

Since Suikodens are known for characters, creating some general cast of characters articles for each game, and then one for the recurring characters, will ensure that notability is established and an encyclopedic coverage is provided. — Deckiller 19:38, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I've discussed this project at length with Ben, so I feel capable of assisting despite having only played about 2 hours of Suikoden 2 for Suikoden experience. I might play some of the games in order to get a better feel for the series. Most importantly, I'm interested in helping reduce the apparent mountain of Suiko-cruft to a mangagable collection of well-sourced articles. Leebo ^T/C 16:37, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Glad to have you, Lee. =] bwowen ^talk.^contribs 17:24, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

As mentioned at the CVG talkpage... if this rallies up some interest in improving the Suikoden articles, then great, but I don't see much benefit to spending valuable time tagging talk pages or the like with Suiko task force project information when there are still major things to be done. I previously set out some suggestions on what needs be done at Talk:Suikoden#WikiProject?; any input on if these are good ideas is welcome, though I think most of it is pretty uncontroversial. SnowFire 05:03, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

I like what you have to say about the Suikoden project on that talk page, and I am glad there's someone else out there who sees the huge mess that the Suikoden character pages has become. I would be more than happy to add those bullet points to the Task Force overall ToDo list, and I would love to have you help with this project. It would seem that you have been having the same ideas that I have for some time, it just has taken me over a month to get this started and on its feet due to internet access restraints. Feel free to add yourself to the task force roster. This isn't about tagging talk pages, it's about getting major things done, so I agree with you on that one as well. Thanks. bwowen ^talk.^contribs 13:01, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

Great, then. It's a fair amount of work, but if you're willing to help merge the remaining Suiko character lists, that'd be fantastic. From experience before, I recommend trying to be sure to organize characters in a sensible way. As an example of what to (preferably) avoid, I did a "dumb" merge of the SuikoIV characters (compare the Table of Contents from [1] to the modern article), merely stacking characters on top of one another. Thankfully, 24.84.200.124 later reorganized and rewrote the list to a more sensible ordering (though it could still use some work), but things like incoming redirects have the wrong anchors set, and the 108 Stars of Destiny list anchors are off too (since they were set to the targets from my originally merge). Doing the merge "right" the first time means that such tasks don't need to be done twice (like was done when I merged the Suiko III and Suiko V lists).

Also, though this is hardly necessary, when doing the redirects on the old individual articles I tried to keep the categories on the more important redirects, using 108 Stars of Destiny for stars and Suikoden characters for non-Stars (and both for characters in multiple games who appeared as both a star and a non-star). That, and obviously the {{R from merge}} and possibly {{R with possibilities}} as well.

As another comment, I speedy-merged a few minor articles that'd escaped previous notice (notably Chisato, which I assumed from the bluelink on the 108 Stars of Destiny page led to a spurious different article, but actually led to a Suiko article. Huh. Also Julie Latjke, which had a picture and basically nothing else.). Also, though there's some material worth merging perhaps, I really doubt the Silverberg family article can be salvaged long-term. SnowFire 16:40, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Actally i think that all of the characters should have thier own page, becuase when they are on a list it only has pictures of the most important characters and i dont think thats fair, people that want to know what norma looks like should be able to see a picture of her, especially becuase there arent really any pictures of her on the internet and then that person waits endlessly until he/she can get the game in order to find out what she looks like, also when on a list there is really not that much information about certain character like norma, like it will just say norma is a street performer, but there is more info about her but it just says that. -hotspot

The issue is this: "Can a good or featured quality article be written about Norma? Is it always going to be a stub without any out-of-uninverse information because no reliable sources discuss Norma's impact outside of Suikoden? Those questions should determine whether or not a character receives their own page. Leebo ^T/C 00:47, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

I hear you on principle, hotspot. As a huge Suikoden fan, I would like to give pages to Nei and Richmond and Sansuke - but the problem is that, like Leebo says, you can't make really good articles about them. These characters have little to no outside-universe information about them, and so they would better be suited to being on a list, because their articles wouldn't be able to meet Wikipedia's standards for sourcing and notability on their own. If you check out the pages List of Suikoden IV characters or List of Suikoden III characters, you can see that they cover people in a way that is appropriate to their notability within the game. Do you understand? Thanks for the input, bwowen ^talk.^contribs 01:01, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Good news for everybody: we have an anonymous benefactor who has created lovely List of Suikoden I characters and List of Suikoden II characters pages. He/she also vastly improved the List of recurring characters in Suikoden in the same fashion. He/she even made redirects to the page and a specific section for the old characters' pages. Thus, we can get to work on some of the more serious stuff as well. So make sure you thank User:24.84.200.124 or User:142.58.211.84 if you see them! bwowen ^talk.^contribs 00:16, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Uh... hi. I got your message on the talk page of my IP address (User:24.84.200.124). I'm afraid I'm also User:142.58.211.84 (sorta... it's a university's proxy). I'm sorry for not logging in... (aside from creating List of Suikoden II characters page) I have a tendency to forget. I hope the pages meet your satisfaction; I tried to redirect as many little undetailed pages as possible as well as incorporate what I thought would be a reasonable amount of images from them. I'd like to help out more in the future, since it seems like a shame for all those articles to be deleted. EikaKou 01:18, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

Hey! Welcome! Thank you so much for doing that, it was one of the big roadblocks for us to make progress on the Suikoden project. Feel free to add yourself to the Participants section of the Task Force page. I hope to have it (the task force) fully created and running at Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Suikoden. Thanks again! bwowen ^talk.^contribs 01:24, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind helping out part time, on something like writing/rewriting, copy editing, moving pages, or editting grammar, if that's okay. I'm not so good with stuff like tagging, but I'm glad that I've been of service. ^_^ EikaKou 20:54, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

How does one join the task force? Ask about it here? :P I've played most of the games available in North America, and completed some of them. Lejman 04:04, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

As a long time fan of Suikoden I am interested in Joining this Taskforce --Noctrine (talk) 12:28, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

Character articles

Hey, I just joined this project team. Presumably the characters who already have a lot of information in their article will stay seperate from the "list of characters in..." lists, I think?. I'm gonna go ahead and remove the list of weapons and statistics from these articles anyway as it's greatly effecting their quality, I believe. Mark272 00:04, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

108 Stars of Destiny CFD.

Suppose this might be of some interest- I've proposed this cat for automated upmerging at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007 July 15#Category:108_Stars_of_Destiny, though I'd be completely shocked if anyone bothered opposing it, as it's pretty non-controversial. SnowFire 06:22, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Suikoden VI

I removed Suikoden VI from the list of articles that fall under the scope of the Taskforce. It doesn't have an article, and that's primarily because it hasn't been announced yet. The only ghits it has are speculation on forums. bwowen talk•contribs•review me please! 04:12, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

27 True Runes and Harmonia

I recently noticed that the 27 True Runes page was deleted, apparently since too much of it was copied and pasted from suikosource. Any suggestions on what should be done? The page on Harmonia has also been deleted, though I'm guessing if anyone can re-find the information, it could be integrated in the Geography in the Suikoden series page. - EikaKou 12:02, 24 June 2008

Relevant information on Harmonia has been salvaged and integrated into the Geography in the Suikoden series page. Existing links with Harmonia (Suikoden) have been replaced with Geography in the Suikoden series#Harmonia instead. There is still the issue of the red links for 27 True Runes. 142.58.82.42 (talk) 00:38, 3 July 2008 (UTC)