Talk:Universe of Avatar: The Last Airbender

Article History

This article was a conglomerate of several articles. I'm posting the history links here to preserve GFDL.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bending_in_Avatar:_The_Last_Airbender&action=history
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Air_Nomads&action=history
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Water_Tribe&action=history
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Earth_Kingdom&action=history
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fire_Nation&action=history
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spirit_World_(Avatar:_The_Last_Airbender)&action=history

NuclearWarfare _(Talk) 22:53, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Possible DYK Hooks

1. ...that one of the four nations in the the Universe of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the Fire Nation, drew its inspiration from the volcanic islands of Iceland and the Pacific Ocean?
2. ...that in the Universe of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the bending types are a variation of ancient Oriental martial arts

Free free to expand. I'm just throwing these out there. NuclearWarfare _(Talk) 05:11, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Congrats NW!! Great job!-Dylan0513 (talk) 01:41, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks :) NuclearWarfare _(Talk) 02:58, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Improvement

This article needs:

• To be edited so that it doesn't seem to sound like large sections of Avatar Wiki.
• More images.
• To be shorter. 100kb? Too long. Avatar Wiki can afford to have long articles for every single thing. Wikipedia can't. WHSL ^(Talk) 06:48, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
  • As the primary writer, let me say that a) It was much worse before (150-175kb) and b) You are welcome to help. Pruning this has been one of my goals for a long time. I'm just trying to go section by section and cut things; it just might take a long while. NuclearWarfare _(Talk) 15:29, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I've seen your nice work shortening it. I'm trying to shorten it as well. WHSL ^(Talk) 23:47, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Air Temples

If you ask me, I don't think we really a section for each temple. One section for all of them is enough. One that starts with something like "There were four Air Temples...the Northern and Southern Temples housed male Airbenders, and the Eastern and Western Temples housed female Airbenders etc. etc." (or something like that). WHSL ^(Talk) 00:37, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Since a lot of the material is repeated, that is probably a good call. NuclearWarfare _(Talk) 00:49, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Reorganisation

Okay...here are two options to reorganise (and therefore try to shorten) this page...

1. Forget sections for nations, and instead have sections for "Geography", "Architecture", "Cuisine", "Society" etc. We should be able to cut more repeated info by doing that.
2. Keep organised as nations, but merge all smaller sections and cut unimportant facts.
   

Thoughts? WHSL ^(Talk) 06:34, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd personally prefer option 2 myself, as that would allow for the general organization to stay the same, and not have a big must of everything. I'll continue this conversation tomorrow, when I am not about to head off. :) NuclearWarfare _(Talk) 06:37, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm, I personally prefer option 1, I think we can cut more that way, but I'm happy to continue how it is organised now if you want. WHSL ^(Talk) 07:39, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with File:Avatar world map.jpg

The image File:Avatar world map.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check

• That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
• That this article is linked to from the image description page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --15:09, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Image problems

There are 11 non-free images on this article, only a few absolutely necessary, and only two properly captioned. I didn't check the individual rationales, though, but I propose that the emblems and a few screen caps be removed. They are unnecessary and violate Wikipedia's fair-use policy. --haha169 (talk) 05:35, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Go ahead. That is something that I forgot about. I'd prefer to keep the top two, but the others should be OK. NuclearWarfare _(Talk) 21:13, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I added back 2 images that I think are helpful and qualify under fair use. I've never seen the show so I have no idea what airbending looks like, and without that image I would still have no clue.. Rreagan007 (talk) 03:57, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Double Standards?

This article really needs to be split up, it's ridiculous. I'll agree that the previous pages where excessive, the spirit world is not nearly prominent enough to warrant its own page for example and the four nations could certainly be merged. But this is just not big enough. You're simply not going to be able to edit this down to a reasonable and non-convuluted length while retaining a useful summary of all the topics covered.

If every obscure comic book character can have their own article (and they can and do) then I see no reason why this article can't be split into around 3 separate ones. I'm thinking one for bending, one for the cultures and geography, and one for misc stuff like the animals and spirits. Bending in particular needs its own page, it's a unique and central concept to the series. 198.138.40.141 (talk) 05:51, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

It might be a fairly excessive article, but there is no reason to not apply notability arguments to even the bending article. I have always disliked how every "comic book character" has had their own page, so I figure that it is best to combine everything, where they all gain some notability after everything. In addition, this article is currently 62686 bytes long. This is not excessively long compared to some other articles, and I know that I could easily reduce that by a third if I set a couple days to it. I'd oppose any split really, and the community has in the past as well; for example, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Avatar: The Last Airbender creatures. NuclearWarfare _(Talk) 10:16, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, a whole page for unexplored secondary elements such as flora and fauna is certainly excessive, no arguments here. In fact, scratch my suggestion for splitting this into three pages, animals and the spirit world work just fine as subsections. What really needs its own article is the concept of bending. It's easily as central to and characteristic of the series as any other single aspect, including any of the main characters. Rewriting the article to have bending be one cohesive section rather than split up amongst the national sections would work too I guess, but I feel like at that point it'd just be two articles pretending to be one. Which is worse, one excessively broad article or two cogent and focused articles? 198.138.40.141 (talk) 16:23, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Did someone suggest splitting the article? It's certainly a desirable idea. I've taken a quick look at the article history, and I've found that nothing anyone has done has shortened the article. I think it's safe to say that it's going to be nearly impossible to shorten this page substantially without huge objections. But certainly, having an independent article for Bending is a viable idea. It's a concept central to the Avatar World; it's essentially what the series is about. I think it's notable enough. WHSL ^(Talk) 10:23, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

While it may not look like the article has been shortened, it actually most definitely has. The size looks the same, but the prose size has shrunk dramatically from January 22, when it was at 99384 bytes. It is now at 62686 bytes, 63% from where it started. I think that is a pretty good improvement, and still vastly under the max recommended amount per WP:Article Size, which is actually rather outdated anyway. The problem I see with splitting is that TV series should not try to excessively have articles describing the background of the show. Even one is pushing it; if Avatar weren't such a complex series, I'd prefer it to just have it within the body of Avatar: The Last Airbender. What I would be fine with seeing, however, is reorganizing the article so that the different bending arts get their own section. That would make more sense than loosely associating them with their element. NuclearWarfare _(Talk) 15:12, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Bloodbending

I'm pretty sure that extremely powerful Waterbenders can do it without the full moon. When Katara used it on the man she thought killed her mother, the moon wasn't full (at least I don't think it was...). 69.205.173.170 (talk) 23:37, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

The moon was (interestingly enough) full that day, I believe. As Zuko and Katara are traveling to the village, you can see a full moon in the sky. NuclearWarfare _(Talk) 00:44, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

what

e —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.44.254.153 (talk) 12:46, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Energybending

I noticed something in the Energybending section. "Only Avatars can learn this technique" Two things.

1. The Lion Turtle bent Aang's energy in "The Old Masters".
2. In "Avatar Aang" you hear the Lion Turtle say "In the era *before* the Avatar, *we* bent not the elements, but the energy within ourselves."

Number one shows that not only the Avatar can use Energybending, and number two shows that it was around before the Avatar came into existence. I'd edit it myself, but, well, I suck at editing. Plus I thought I would get other peoples opinions of it. Chaotic70 (talk) 07:40, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Redirect

I have redirected the article to the Avatar: The Last Airbender per the delete arguments in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Universe of Avatar: The Last Airbender, which I did not feel were adequately addressed. Please reply here if you wish to contest this. NW (Talk) 01:40, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I have reverted your edit, changing the redirect back into the full article. My primary reason for this is based on the AfD ruling of "keep". I am not here to dispute whether or not the article should exist or not in the end (that is what the AfD's are for), only that for right now due to the "keep" ruling, I feel that your changing of the article to a redirect is premature and goes against that ruling. Looking over the AfD, even if "keep" was not the ruling, the next ruling would have most likely been "no consensus" which also would have resulted in no change for the article. — CobraWiki ^{( jabber | stuff )} 04:01, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

As Collectonian said, the article "fails WP:N and WP:WAF. Excessive plot and OR that would not be part of the series article, so it is not an acceptable spin-out. No significant coverage on the topic of the "universe" of Avatar in any reliable, third-party sources." Do you have anything to contradict that? If not, the article should be redirected, regardless of what the AfD went. See the the closing admin's comments about redirecting the article. NW (Talk) 04:10, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

Whether I agree or not does not matter. That's what the AfD was for, and I was not aware of it while it was going on as I only just now stumbled across the article. The point behind my revert is this: you created the AfD; it was voted "keep" (even if you feel it was the wrong vote); it should therefore be kept until another AfD is created that succeeds in voting that it should be deleted. What you have done using the redirect looks more like circumvention of that ruling. Concerning your conversation with the closing admin who "weighed the different keep/delete rationales appropriately" (which should have also included the vote/comments by Collectonian), I have doubts that by redirecting (since the article was left "keep") that it meant to do so while eliminating all information currently existing there. Yes, I could be wrong, but I instead get the impression that it was meant more like an option to move/redirect to a new name since "merge" was another option that was mentioned in that conversation. Using the same logic and process that you took, if I nominate Earth for AfD and it is obviously marked as "keep" then I have the right to redirect it (removing all information) to planet if there are a member or two who come up with a reson to agree with me on it. — CobraWiki ^{( jabber | stuff )} 07:28, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

AfD is not the be-all and end-all of merges and redirects. Local article consensus can still overrule it. And quoting from the closing admin, "If you wish to merge or redirect the article elsewhere, you have that option." I have done so. See Talk:Conrad Murray for another such example. Now, besides the outcome of the AfD (which doesn't matter for this case), what do you disagree with? NW (Talk) 12:35, 26 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Nuke on the matter. I have reinstalled the redirect. --Ghostexorcist (talk) 18:46, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Fair enough. The only point that I have been trying to get across is that it looked to me like one person's agenda and all other options/views be damned if they do not agree with that agenda given the fact that this started with an AfD that was rejected. The question now is how much (if any) of the material that was on this page should be moved back to the main article, or is absolutely none of it of any importance since we are solely basing it on failed WP:N and WP:WAF? — CobraWiki ^{( jabber | stuff )} 03:13, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

As the primary author, I can say quite confidently that there is nothing left to merge. However, the history is still there; feel free to dig back through to see if you can find anything. NW (Talk) 03:21, 2 September 2009 (UTC)