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Return Galleries to Their Respective Main Article Pages
Similar to the topic just above, when a reader visits an article page, there is a general expectation of what information should be present on a wiki page. Galleries are one of those expectations. The proposal is to restore galleries to their main article pages as they normally should appear on; to get rid of collective broad topic gallery pages. On a case-by-case basis, a specific individual external gallery subpage may be created if the gallery is determined to be too large to be hosted natively.
Affected broad topic gallery pages include (but not limited to):
- Gallery: Flora
- Gallery: Na'vi Weapons
- Gallery: Pandora Locations
- Gallery: Pandoran Creatures
- Gallery: RDA Vehicles
- Gallery: RDA Weapons
X20ArchAngel09x (talk) 02:23, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
Votes
- In favor X20ArchAngel09x (talk) 02:23, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
- In favor Elia0224 (talk) 08:15, 18 March 2025 (EST)
- In favor, but only if the subject has less than 40 images Skorch (talk) 03:50, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
Comments
For some unknown reason, an ill-advised decision was made several years ago to seemingly pull almost all galleries (not just large galleries) off of their main article pages regardless of: the amount of content on the main article page, that main article page's length, and the size of the gallery. These galleries were then pooled together by broad topic and placed on separate article pages. I.e. Gallery: Flora, Gallery: Fauna, etc.
(From what I can only speculate, it was a messy round-a-bout way to try to mass-edit and 'categorize' images without actually adding a category tag to the image file to properly categorize the image). This created a coordination problem in conjunction with not properly categorizing images in which images where now separated, with some still on the main page, while others were on the gallery page, with the gallery page also containing duplicates of images currently being shown on the main page.
The overwhelming mass majority of these main article pages and their galleries were very small with little content, making the removal of any content from the main page completely unnecessary, as the images were originally able to be hosted comfortably on their main article pages without issue.
In creation of these broad topic gallery pages, many galleries were removed from their respective article pages and replaced with a link to redirect the reader. This can frustrate readers as, 1) they can't see everything on a single page, and 2) it takes them unnecessarily to a separate page for only an handful of images. As mentioned just previously, with a lot of these redirected small galleries containing duplicate images, it doesn't make sense for readers to be redirected to see the same images again.
Broad topic gallery pages do not serve a functional purpose on a wiki, as majority of users are not searching for a broad topic. Most users only look to a broad topic category in order to find a singular narrow topic (i.e. Category:Flora to find a particular type of tree). Having thirty plus small galleries included on these broad topic article pages is in itself defeatist, as it wildly balloons the length of the article page, straining both the servers and personal devices in trying to just simply load such enormous pages. With future additions to the Avatar franchise, this strain will only be exacerbated as more and more topic entries are created. X20ArchAngel09x (talk) 02:23, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
- I think 40 images is a reasonable maximum number of images, and anything more than that deserves an independent gallery. Skorch (talk) 03:51, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
I am not sure if I am in favor of the idea or not. In general, the idea is good. However, the few gallery pages that aggregate galleries for multiple articles have proven quite helpful in the past for editing purposes, especially in the case of flora and fauna. Given that a lot of them look pretty similar, it can be hard to assign an image to the correct article if an image you found on the web has no useful name attached to it (e.g. screenshots, concept art, any images shared by artists on social media) and if you are not a walking encyclopedia. A page that lists all images of a type makes it much easier to put them in the right place. It may also help readers discover other interesting articles just by scrolling. Do you guys think that aggregated galleries as an editing tool for image identification are negligible or would be helpful?
In case of the latter: One idea I can imagine is having a couple of auto-generated aggregated galleries if we implement the /gallery subpage approach proposed below. A bot script could query all pages in a given category, check if they have a /gallery subpage or a gallery section with a <gallery> tag, collect those images and generate an aggregated gallery page similar to the existing ones mentioned above. A gallery page showing all flora images obviously does not make much sense at 250+ flora articles, but it would make sense for a selection of subcategories. Example: Category:Trees gets an auto-generated gallery page Category:Trees/gallery containing all gallery images from all tree articles, grouped by article of course. The bot script that generates that page could be run on a schedule (e.g. weekly/monthly) to pick up changes so that the generated page never needs to be touched manually. Next time you find a tree image, you can check the page to see if we already have an article about that particular tree.
In some cases, we have had images of plants or animals long before we had some actual info, so that they went to the "unknown" section of those gallery pages for a while until there was a name and some info to warrant an article. I guess the "Pandoran Flora" and "Pandoran Fauna" articles that we have since last summer serve as a suitable replacement for this purpose as most "unknown" images have already been copied there. Faern. (talk) Policies 23:10, 19 March 2025 (UTC)
- I think it is alright if we list Unused/Unknown plants/flora on the articles, probably near the bottom, so we could put stuff that needs to be identified there on the article. I think we're at a point in time where the loooong Galleries served their purpose, and it's time to move on. We are also at a point in time where Frontiers of Pandora has identified many flora already that was once unnamed. I put a lot of effort into Flora articles lately. It's time to build up the Pandoran Flora article instead, with one good image of every plant.
- I just finished making a pretty definitive Pandoran Fauna article, although I do not have the mental capacity to make a definitive version of the Flora article right now. It's too much effort for me, so I would appreciate assistance with that. Honestly, I'm feeling a bit cooked with the wiki and feel like I need a break, and would like to lessen my time here. Lastly, the auto-generated idea sounds daunting, for not that much pay-off imo. I like having custom galleries with captions we can manually edit. I would like to start with moving most of the Pandoran fauna back to their original articles. Skorch (talk) 07:38, 20 March 2025 (UTC)
Avatar Wiki / Disney collaboration
Hello fellow editors and visitors!
We are happy to announce a collaboration between Avatar Wiki, Fandom and Disney that we have been working on over the past weeks. As the promotion campaign for Avatar: Fire and Ash gets into its final phase, Avatar Wiki will get a new background image on Monday (November 24) that has been sponsored by Disney and shows a scene from the upcoming film.
If you are worried that this might turn Avatar Wiki into a big ad: We made sure it won't. The updated background integrates well with the wiki and is not too dissimilar to the current one. Disney did not request any change to other parts of the wiki design, including our progressively changing logo. Faern. (talk) Policies 21:55, 21 November 2025 (UTC)
- UPDATE: As you probably noticed, the Disney-sponsored wiki background went live a few days ago. Apart from the new background, Disney also sponsored a few gift cards to Avatar Wiki! To show our gratitude to you, the editors, who keep this wiki up-to-date every day, those gift cards will be sent out to some of our editors who made major contributions to Avatar Wiki over the years. Fandom staff will contact the lucky winners directly. So keep an eye out on your talk page, email or Discord.
- Even if you don't receive a gift card, we highly appreciate the time and effort all of you put into making Avatar Wiki the best encyclopedia on all things Avatar. Even if you are only here for reading our articles: Thanks for stopping by! Faern. (talk) Policies 01:03, 28 November 2025 (UTC)
I noticed the new background and I have to admit, it looks nice and real snazzy. I am eager to see what other changes Avatar will undergo in the foreseeable future but in the meantime, I hope to continue being a good contributor for this wiki. I have a few other ideas that might improve this wiki.
I do have one question if Faern. does not mind answering, did all the gift cards get given out already, it would be nice to know if they have so I know when it is over. Then again, if Faern. does not wish to answer this question, then that is fine. Elia0224 (talk) Policies 03:12, 05 December 2025 (EST)