Talk:List of The Legend of Zelda characters

Tatl Companion
I feel like Tatle should be mentioned, she is very different from Navi, and although she performs the same gameplay role, she has a much bigger role in the story of the game. 162.208.6.25 (talk) 07:10, 25 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Agreed, it's on my to do list. Fieryninja (talk) 07:31, 25 June 2023 (UTC)

Opinions regarding making significant cuts to article
Simply put this article is massive, bloated, and seems to fall under Too much detail & PLOT. It's mass and bloat hampers it's encyclopedic use, and it's so excessive to the point where it seems to function as more of a place for fans to write about Legend of Zelda characters rather than serving any practical purpose. The reason wikis exist (such as the Zelda wiki) is for just this reason.

I don't know if I'm being harsh, but as an outsider the article is so long it becomes borderline incoherent - and it's hard to tell what characters might have any actual import and which ones are just characters that particular editors liked. Compare to something like Starship Enterprise - which lists several notable Star Trek ships but focuses more on their production and use in the series. Each one has more detail, but the focus is more limited. I think this page would benefit from nixxing much of the content, and I believe that perhaps regular editors of this page would benefit from taking a step back and asking outside editors to look things over. A MINOTAUR (talk) 16:55, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
 * This article has been massively bloated for a long time and largely unsourced before I started working on it. Slowly, the excessive amount of unsourced, in-universe fan cruft has been reduced and it is still very much a work in progress and takes an awful lot of time to source. It's interesting that you bring up a page like Starship Enterprise, which seems to be very specifically focused on a particular aspect of Star Trek, but I see that as a very different type of topic mainly because The Legend of Zelda characters are numerous and very few recur within the large number of games in the series. I see this article akin to Characters in the Mario franchise but those characters recur more frequently. So the question is, how should we decide which characters survive and which do not? There are only three main characters, some major antagonists and a few recurring characters but does that mean we remove all the side characters? List of Star Wars characters for example seems to be listing every character in the universe, even the minor ones and many are unsourced. If you have any suggestions on how to improve, happy to discuss. Fieryninja (talk) 20:01, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Perhaps a simpler way to organise this page would be to categorise the side characters by race e.g. Zora, Hylians, Rito etc. That would probably make the article easier to navigate. Fieryninja (talk) 23:07, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for the response and comparisons. That Star Wars page is definitely intimidating! Lists are often a tough thing to pin down on wikipedia. Managing characters by race could be a decent idea - but I think that for most casual readers it may only confuse and make things harder to navigate. I have played 2~ Zelda games rather casually, and I don't think I could name or identify a single race from the games. Perhaps sorting by introduction year - with in-page divisions based on console eras (eg. "Characters introduced in 1985 - 1998" would cover NES and SNES, using your best judgement to determine how long these 'eras' should be). You could then list characters in order of relative importance from inside those eras.
 * This would both make things more intuitive for casual readers - they would be reading chronologically as characters are introduced, and also assist in sorting by importance. Most major characters (Link, Ganon, Zelda) will be listed first and foremost in the article, but major characters from their own era will also be listed at the top of their subsection. For example, Epona would likely be located near the top of the "N64" era, and Midna would be located near the top of the "Gamecube-Wii" era. This confers their importance fairly intuitively. One can expect to see most major antagonists near the top of their respective era. Characters that recur will be listed in the section of their first appearance - and simply have what games they recur in listed in their description.
 * Let me know if that makes sense to you. If you like I can try to take some time to put this in place myself, but you're likely more experienced to the task. I may also try to trim down some text/characters that come across as a bit unneeded, regardless of organization. You are more than welcome to revert any of these changes - I promise I won't be offended! Thanks, A MINOTAUR (talk) 23:28, 15 August 2023 (UTC)
 * hmm that's an interesting idea and one I had not considered before. I have been struggling with the structure and it's not working in its current format, so really appreciate your input. I like the chronological nature of your suggested structure and you are right that it would help people who don't know Zelda. It's a major overhaul but I think it's achievable. I prefer it if we don't trim the characters for the moment because it has been a lot of work, so maybe we could get to the detail afterwards. In the meantime, I will have a think and start planning it in my sandbox. Thanks for your help on this. Fieryninja (talk) 06:02, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Of course, thank you for hearing me out. I have high hopes for the new system.
 * I'll hold off on any edits myself - another benefit of this system is that it may reveal what characters/aspects are maybe a bit too minor (as if you have a character 30 slots or whatever down in a particular "era" it's a bit telling).
 * Looking forward to seeing how you manage it! You've clearly put a lot of work into these articles so far. Do feel free to shoot me a reply any time, I'd be happy to see any changes.
 * A MINOTAUR (talk) 12:08, 16 August 2023 (UTC) A MINOTAUR (talk) 12:08, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
 * @Fieryninja Working on this big article would cost a lot of time. You could probably already have improved couple of other articles if youre half finish with this, which would be mess again in the future. 2001:4455:68D:5500:B9DE:9315:C30A:C144 (talk) 13:08, 16 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes it's a valid point and I'll be honest, this has been a bit of a grind and I won't be able to work on it next week. I would prefer to spend time on getting some of the main character articles to a better standard, so if anyone wants to get involved in restructuring it, I've started a very basic structure here There are some characters that are still not sourced, but that's just because I haven't got around to them yet.  feel free to work on it as you see fit and I will help where I can. Fieryninja (talk) 14:31, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 21 January 2024

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved to List of The Legend of Zelda characters. (closed by non-admin page mover) –  11:31, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

Characters of the Legend of Zelda series → Characters of The Legend of Zelda series – "of The Legend of Zelda" is more common than "of the Legend of Zelda". Other options would include "Characters of The Legend of Zelda" or "Characters in The Legend of Zelda series". I am not married to any of the t three possibilities, but I think the current title is the worst option. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 19:44, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Move to List of The Legend of Zelda characters to be WP:CONSISTENT with the vast majority of our character-list articles and, yes, to capitalize the "The" in the title of the underlying work. There's no reason to include the word "series" since there aren't separate such lists for each game, and plausible titles for such lists should redirect to this page (several already do). Or I suppose someone could mass-RM all the "List of Foo characters" pages to lose the "List of" stuff, per WP:CONCISE. Should be treated consistently either way. PS: There does seem to be one separate one after all, presently at Characters of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time but more consistently moved to List of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time characters.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:29, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I disagree with the notion of removing the Ocarina of Time article, as it's being structured as more than just a list, which the project handles as articles separate from lists. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 02:56, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That said, I think List of The Legend of Zelda characters is also an acceptable target. I feel like it's far too broad to have specific coverage of creation and reception to be more than a list. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 03:56, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Support – Per nom. Svartner (talk) 01:10, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Move to List of The Legend of Zelda characters per SMcCandlish. Sorry, but this is very clearly a character list, and the current title is an end run around that. Lists should be treated as list articles, not regular articles. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 23:58, 23 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Can I get an opinion on it being "List of The Legend of Zelda characters" as well? It seems that the preferences are either "List of The Legend of Zelda characters" or "Characters of The Legend of Zelda". - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 22:07, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * For me, either option is valid, I'm in the position to standardize with similar articles as much as possible. Svartner (talk) 22:38, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * All right. For the closer, let it be known that everyone in the discussion believes in a move, some support Characters of The Legend of Zelda series, and all people support List of The Legend of Zelda characters. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 23:21, 30 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Actually, I don't support a move if it's not moved to my proposal. In such a case, "Characters of the Legend of Zelda series" is in fact correct. Otherwise it would have to be "Characters of the The Legend of Zelda series", which is clunky and odd. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 11:38, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * There is no such series as "Legend of Zelda"; it was once proposed that we rename the series to Legend of Zelda for such reasons, but that was denied in the end. Modifying the title for such reasons is not typical for Wikipedia either: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 And this is not me picking and choosing, my search of "Characters of the" did not bring a single example besides this article. Changing the case of 'the' or 'a' in a title for this reason is extremely atypical. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 19:30, 31 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Support SMcCandlish's proposal. Pages should have a consistent naming style and while yes, some use the current style, the vast majority don't. Let's not create for ourselves two competing styles for no good reason. Since this is already at RM better fix two issues at the same time. Gonnym (talk) 16:47, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Sidon vs Mipha
It's so weird seeing Sidon has his own article but not Mipha. Neocorelight (Talk) 06:33, 14 April 2024 (UTC)