Hey folks!
I wanted to say first-off that I thought the forum games conversation went really well and I thank you all for your input.
Given the success of that, I thought we'd do it again but on a new topic: episode galleries.
Now to begin with, I want to address that this is just about episode, movie and short galleries, not character galleries, as they both operate differently.
So why have a conversation about this?
Episode galleries should be a place to showcase key moments from an episode. Readers will come to the wiki before or after watching an episode to read up on it. For those coming before, a reader shouldn’t be able to watch an entire episode through images effectively as surely that puts legality of our galleries in question. They also just went to get a flavour of the episode before viewing it. Those who come after have already seen the episode, they don’t need to see it repeated.
Furthermore, in “Band Geeks”, say a reader wants to find the image with Patrick asking if mayonnaise is an instrument. Do they want to trawl through 170 images to find that? Very likely not and the chances are they’re looking for a key moment, all the other images will be ignored. Over 100 images become noise, not giving the reader a clean reading experience. I’ve seen an argument that if images are removed they’re wasted, I’d argue many are wasted now as readers’ eyes are just skimming over them.
Here are a couple of examples of what I'm talking about where needless images can be cut:
Here, we only need to see Mr. Krabs and his Grandad had a chat. One image tells us that.
You Don't Know Sponge/gallery
Here, we see Gary got wet and Sandy had a conversation with SpongeBob. You can tell that from the images that were kept.
So really I wanted to ask some questions to kick off the conversation:
- What do you use our episode galleries for (if at all)?
- What difference is there between what this gallery offers compared to this one?
- If they were reduced, what should the maximum number of images be?
As per usual, let’s keep this conversation nice and civil. Thanks!
Edit: Important thing to consider.
Don't forget those EU laws passed that added strict measures on copyright. Furthermore, they switch the onus from the users of a site to the site itself (if you remember, memes may be banned on Twitter rip). This means the EU law may force Fandom's hand to make these changes in future. I'd rather make the change on our own terms, in a way we want. Chances are, as a result, we wouldn't have ages to make the change and the website may even have to be taken down while the change is made. Nobody wants that.