Talk:Princess Leia

Name change proposal

Princess Leia is her former title and not actually her name. I think the title of this article should be changed to “Leia Organa.” That might just be me though. Thanks. 72.188.17.58 (talk) 17:11, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:COMMONNAME. To the vast majority of the world who want to find an article on this world-famous iconic character, "Princess Leia" is what they're going to look for. It's also what character Carrie Fisher is credited as playing in the closing credits of all six films where the character appears, including the sequel trilogy. oknazevad (talk) 20:31, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose per Oknazevad.— TAnthony^Talk 05:26, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Oppose per oknazevad Jazzy Jazz Jr (talk) 04:48, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

What has happened here??

@Wafflewombat: I’m perplexed by what I see as your complete destruction of this article. You have removed or minimalized content related to real world context, notability, impact, commentary and analysis. Simply the fact that you’ve reduced all plot coverage to a section titled “Fictional biography” with no real world context (films/dates) and from an in-universe perspective (MOS:REALWORLD) and have used past tense (see WP:FICTENSE) indicates to me that you have little or no current experience in editing fiction-based articles. Which is fine, but then I’m surprised you took it upon yourself to make such massive and potentially controversial changes to such a high profile article. Are there particular articles you have used for examples of what you believe are good quality? I suggest you look to Featured Articles like Khan Noonien Singh, which are the ultimate standard of Wikipedia article quality, or Good Articles like Tyrion Lannister, which are also a great basis for study. This article was rated C class and probably could have been assessed higher, but I think you have reduced it to a Start class. In any case, unfortunately the only realistic fix I see in this case is to completely revert your edits. I’m not saying this article was perfect in its previous form, but you went inexplicably overboard. I’m curious to hear your comments and specific criticisms of the article.— TAnthony^Talk 20:21, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the message. Could we have a discussion before you restore the entire page? I understand your point of view—that I've drastically altered the article in a negative way—but my belief is that I've made a lot of improvements, and I was hoping we could talk before my many hours of work are removed. Wafflewombat (talk) 22:45, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm sorry no one else gave you any feedback as you were working on this and the other articles, but your edits are still preserved in the history. I'm taking a stand here but I think I've shown restraint by not doing the same to Darth Vader, Chewbacca, etc. I don't want to come off like I'm attacking you and I certainly want to discuss your thoughts, but I'm really stunned here. Since my last comment, I remembered that Grand Admiral Thrawn was brought to GA status and thought you might take a look at that to see how that quality rating might translate to a Star Wars character article. I also don't want to come off as condescending, but I'm wondering if you've read some of the MOS guides about fiction and characters, or looked at Wikipedia:Content assessment. I do appreciate your efforts. I haven't assessed this article recently so I'm sure there is work to be done, but I don't quite understand why you thought it appropriate to remove so much content and reshape the article in this way. Looking forward to your comments.— TAnthony^Talk 23:59, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Also responded on your talk page but let's focus on this article for now. Normally I would have gone through your edits one by one and had comments, but in this case there have been too many over too short a period of time, and they kind of jump around. It's really like you wrote a new article. How about we start by you letting me know what you think is wrong with this article in general, and what articles you make have used as inspiration for your goals with it?— TAnthony^Talk 00:12, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

I apologize for not familiarizing myself with more of the guidelines before making drastic changes. That was a big blunder. I removed a massive amount of content and presented it in a different way without consulting anyone. I'm sorry. The reason was this: When I go to a Wikipedia article about a fictional character, I'm often looking for details about their life. The formatting of this page and others make it very difficult to find basic information about the character's life history. The Appearances sections are often massive and contain tons of plot summaries of works, which seems to me inappropriate since those works have pages of their own. All that being said, I edited these pages based on my own goals as a Wikipedia reader, and that was a mistake. It was selfish and stupid. Like I said before, we can entirely delete the Fictional Biography sections I've created and restore the Appearances sections as they were. But my question is, is there a way to more succintly provide a character biography? As it is, you have to sift through tons of appearances (often non-chronological) simply to get a sense of the character's life history. If that's not important to most readers, I honor that. It just seemed important to me.

Aside from the Biography/Appearances issue, what are your main concerns? Here are the things I feel made the Princess Leia article better:

1. The infobox is massive and very messy. I cleaned it up so it's easy to read and find information.
2. The Creation and casting section begins with a long verbatim quote and doesn't really tell me anything notable about the creation of Leia specifically. Going into the intricacies of Lucas's various script drafts and all the "might have beens" doesn't seem notable enough to include. But I may be wrong.
3. Most readers are not going to care about all the little details of the Legends narrative universe. Most readers care about the official story canon. We should include some of the Legends material, but it should be kept to a minimum. It seems excessive to include plot summaries of novels from 2003 that aren't canon anymore. Most people don't care about that stuff. But again, maybe I'm wrong. I removed a lot of the Legends content with the intention of giving things "due weight."
4. The feminist analysis comes from people who are not experts on feminism. They are ordinary newspaper journalists. My understanding is that feminist analysis should come from people who analyze feminism for a living.
5. Most of the Cultural Impact content that I removed was trivia. My understanding of how to write a Cultural Impact section comes after discussing the topic with an experienced editor. You can view our discussion here. I'm not suggesting that you have to read our entire discussion. I'm merely letting you know that, unlike the Bio sections I edited, my editing of the Cultural Impact section was based on research and discussion. If I and the other editor were wrong about how to write these sections, then I apologize, but I felt I understood the topic well enough to remove trivia which was not notable. There were almost no secondary sources that claimed "Princess Leia is notable because X". It was mostly original research and mere mentions of places the character has shown up in pop culture.
6. The Princess Leia's bikini page had a similar problem. There were almost no sources claiming the notability of the outfit. That's why I saw fit to merge the pages. Once all the trivia and original research were removed from the bikini article, it was small enough to be included in the Leia page. Also, much of the bikini article did not seem notable in general. It seemed to me that only die-hard Star Wars fans or costume designers would care about the nitty-gritty of what went into the creation of one costume. Maybe I'm wrong, but it just seemed like most of the content wasn't notable enough for Wikipedia.
7. The Character section is mostly quotes from Carrie Fisher. That seems inappropriate to me. Also, the Appearances section contains a lot of huge verbatim quotes, which is not appropriate.
8. The section about Leia's hair cited two sources that I deemed unreliable. I spoke with another editor and found that the website Mental Floss has been considered by others to be unreliable. Another site, Kitbashed, is run by an armchair researcher who has no credentials. These two sources are cited multiple times. I did a lot of research into Leia's hair and I re-wrote the section based on facts and reliable sources. It's probably the section I'm most happy with and most proud of, and the one I would be most upset to lose.
9. A lot of content was false according to the sources. I did a lot of fact-checking. For example, one line says that Lucas was "burnt out" and this altered how he approached his filmmaking. When I checked the source, that was inaccurate.

That's a lot of content, so I'll stop there. Would love to hear your thoughts. Wafflewombat (talk) 00:50, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Hey there, thank you for this thoughtful and detailed message. I appreciate your receptiveness to my criticism and again, please do not feel attacked in any way. Give me some time to look it over, you've made good points and I'm sure we can restore and incorporate some of your work, and remove some stuff that is there now after my revert. I'll also put some thought into your questions about making character info more discernible. The issue there is, Wikipedia has a strong focus on real world context. In-universe perspective and any lack of sourcing for notability puts articles in danger of deletion. The entire reason that a Woookieepedia template exists and is placed at the bottom of nearly every SW article is because Fandom and outside wikis are proudly in-universe and overstuffed with plot. Honestly that's where you should look for a complete and chronological character biography LOL. Also, I've been doing this since 2006 and Legends material has been a HUGE deal ... trends have likely changed since the Disney acquisition and "new canon", but I don't think we can just presume no one cares to the extent that we completely erase Legends. We're talking about 25 years of material that was devoured by fans.— TAnthony^Talk 04:23, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the friendly reply. Take as much time as you need to look things over. In the meantime, I'm going to restore the Appearances section on some pages. I started with Chewbacca.

I didn't mean to imply that we should completely erase Legends content, just that we should give it due weight in terms of what the majority of readers are interested in. If we have long summaries of all the novels, it creates an article of an intimidating length. Perhaps you can compare the previous Legends-related content with my (drastically) reduced version, and we can find a middle ground. I felt that if Legends novels have their own WP pages, we don't need to summarize them, or can at least make the summaries very short.

You are correct that there are other places readers can go for a character biography. While I would like a bio to exist on the character's WP page, I understand that it may not be feasible. But readers can certainly go to Fandom wikis or to StarWars.com for character bios. On this note, do you feel it is appropriate to link to the Fandom sites? Whenever I go to Fandom wikis, I feel bombarded by colors, shapes, random quotations, clean-up templates and all sorts of unnecessary info. Wookieepedia is, in my humble opinion, a hot mess. As an example, the canon page for Chewbacca talks about him in the past tense, as if he were dead, even though he only died in the Legends universe. I understand that people put time and energy into those sites, but I don't trust them for facts. With this in mind, I believe it damages Wikipedia's credibility if we link to those sites. I don't think we should be sending our readers there. Maybe I'm off base on that. Wafflewombat (talk) 05:12, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Obviously this is a popular character that appears in a lot of media, which makes the article longer and presents plot info somewhat out of in-universe chronological order. But I think the article does a good job in covering each appearance succinctly, with some real world context and then a Leia-centric plot burb. There were a lot of canon-related discussions here a decade ago, and although we keep canon and Legends separate for clarity (they often contradict each other plot-wise), canonicity is an in-universe concept, and you have to shake that influence from your thinking. Legends works are equally "important" as canon ones from a real-world, franchise point of view. Yes, the can films can be considered culturally more important than, say, the Legends Heir to the Empire novels, and yet I would argue that those novels are more notable and impactful than every canon novel or comic produced since 2012 in the Disney era. I get what you're saying about plot existing in other articles, but if we're just going to rely on referrals, then this article should just be an entry at List of Star Wars characters that says "Princess Leia is a fictional space princess, see the following 47 articles for info". LOL.

And yes, Wookieepedia is hot mess precisely because it has none of the content guidelines we have here. It contains extremely detailed but often cumbersome plot summaries that make it very unencyclopedic overall. Not to mention relatively few references back to which works the plot info is coming from. But that's fine, I've referred to Wookieepedia (and other franchise wikis) many times for clarification on details that can't be found at Wikipedia, and it definitely serves a purpose for fans. And I agree, its use of past tense for everything is unnerving! I believe the template links to it were an old compromise from like 20 years ago, but I don't think they're harmful. Wikipedia isn't supposed to be the single source for any topic, it's informational and refers readers to external sources. In this case, Wookieepedia has more plot info than we allow, so it's helpful to readers to link to it, and they understand it's a fansite.— TAnthony^Talk 15:24, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts! I've got this idea in my mind that lots of people who engage with Star Wars in some way (movies, TV, theme parks, merchandise), especially younger people, are going to come to WP looking for info about their favorite characters, and then get a bit confused when they find out there are two separate narrative universes. If they haven't engaged with the Legends content, or even heard of it (which is probably more and more common for SW fans by the day, especially younger ones), they are going to want to suss out the "true" (canon) story about the character, and are going to privilege that story over the Legends continuity. "Wait, what's the real story of Chewbacca? Is he alive or dead? Oh, he's alive, thank goodness!" That's just where I'm coming from in terms of wanting to "privilege" the canon content. Maybe I'm still a bit confused? I definitely understand what you're saying about certain Legends works being more notable and influential than recent canon novels, comics, etc. from a historical, encyclopedia perspective. Thanks for that insight. Wafflewombat (talk) 15:44, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

One other note: Is it correct to cite Khan Noonien Singh as a stellar FA example? It hasn't been assessed for FA status in 16 years. Wafflewombat (talk) 16:20, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Agree to disagree on our target audience, it seems like you're arbitrarily deferring to younger Millennials and Gen Z, but this is an encyclopedia and we have to consider everyone from 7 year olds to 92 year olds LOL. And yeah I chose Khan for you because it was sci fi, but there are certainly other fictional character FAs. But not as many as I'd like to see, we need to work on that! The soap opera fans have been a little more proactive LOL.— TAnthony^Talk 17:03, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

And again, try to let go of the focus on canonicity. This is not an article about canon Princess Leia, this is an article about a fictional character that has been used/depicted in multiple forms, from films to Pez dispensers. Think about Batman and Spider-Man as common instances where it's obvious how canonicity can't possibly be factored in as a thruline.— TAnthony^Talk 17:09, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Good point. I guess with the younger audience idea, I was just thinking that as time goes by, the preferences and consumption patterns of Star Wars consumers is changing as the Legends content gets older and older, so as time goes by fewer (I'm guessing) people in the fan base are going to regard Legends content as notable. But I'll take your advice and stop focusing on canonicity.Wafflewombat (talk) 17:37, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Feminist analysis

Hey TAnthony, what are your thoughts on the Feminist Analysis section? In the previous thread I expressed my view that feminist analysis should come from authorities on the subject. I think we should remove feminist analysis that is conducted by people who are not experts on the subject, such as Rosenberg, Edlitz and Bushman. Wafflewombat (talk) 01:30, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

This is a pop culture article, not a scientific one. I think it's fine for reliable sources/journalists to make observations about the feminist impact, especially obvious points regarding female empowerment etc. I haven't picked over the section in detail yet, but I don't believe any of the claims are extraordinary or controversial. Remember, the article needs sourced statements asserting notability and impact. Otherwise she's just a well-used film character with notable hair.— TAnthony^Talk 01:40, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, TAnthony. I'm curious to hear what other editors think. I would love to hear from Darkwarriorblake, TompaDompa and Canterbury Tail, if you're able! Wafflewombat (talk) 01:47, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Without having looked into this particularly closely, my intuition is that it should not be particularly difficult to find much, much better sources for feminist analysis of this character than what is currently cited in the section in question. TompaDompa (talk) 14:04, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

If the writers are posted in reliable sources then I don't see an issue, as long as it's a staff writer or a professional, not a "contributor" or a source that has an agenda. There are probably better sources for analysis than The AV Club for example. You can also try Google Scholar for deeper analysis. Darkwarriorblake (talk) 16:55, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Canonicity

Wafflewombat, I've mentioned this before but I feel like I need to explain in more detail. Canon status of a topic is an in-universe concept, and essentially unencyclopedic. Articles should never be structured along in-universe lines. The mainstream reader does not understand or care about which storylines are considered "official" in the franchise and all that. If this article was written by someone who has never seen a Star Wars film, content would be covered chronologically without consideration for canon. And this would be technically correct. But as enthusiasts of the topic, we care about canon, and understand that it's ultimately less confusing for the reader if we separate out the material now known as Legends. The way to do that without the article looking like it was written by fanboys/girls is to rely on the Legends concept for differentiation, and downplay the use of "canon". This is why the SW character articles have been formatted the way they are for the last decade. I didn't come up with this myself. There were merges and deletion discussions brought on by "outsider" critics over our obsession with canon. And rightfully so. Grand Admiral Thrawn is actually the exception that proves my point. It's a Good article that is structured chronologically, but it works in that case because the character was created in Legends, so there is no canon" material before 2014. Anyway, it would be great if you could bring an article up to Good status and prove me wrong about my many criticisms before you reshape 10 articles in your image.— TAnthony^Talk 21:12, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Could you please point out the changes I've made that you find problematic? All the articles I've worked on had an Appearances section that included a Legends subsection, meaning that most of the content was already separated by canonicity before I started working on the pages. Wafflewombat (talk) 23:23, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I was explaining this and this and this and this and this and this. I'm sure there are more. But knock yourself out dude.— TAnthony^Talk 23:45, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

As I said, the content was separated by canonicity before I started editing the pages. The edits you reference above are all the same edit on different pages, and they don't change the fact that the material is separated by canonicity. If you find the headings that important, I don't mind if they are changed in the way that you changed them, but I'm struggling to understand the attitude you are taking towards this. I changed the headings, and you changed them back. That's it, done. I'm not grasping why this change, which took a few minutes for you, led you to provide what I interpret as sarcastic and disrespectful edit summaries (eg. "Nah", "Sigh", "Seriously"). I also don't know what "knock yourself out dude" means. I don't understand how changing a few words in headings amounts to reshaping a page in "my image". I am currently feeling attacked by your repeated criticisms, which come despite my own repeated efforts to respond to your critiques.

P.S. The removal of the Saturn Award mention on the Leia page was a mistake, although it does need to be sourced properly, as the current citation doesn't mention it. Wafflewombat (talk) 00:17, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

You're not getting my point here, but that's OK. The bigger picture is that it's clearly your mission to revamp, by your own count, ten articles at once, and while I appreciate some (probably most) not your improvements, I personally don't have a huge amount of confidence in your grasp of what is "unnecessary" and what is going to help or hurt the article in a formal nomination. But that's fine, I'm not the King of Wikipedia or the King of Star Wars, and no one else seems to have an issue. This has just about hit the limit of my annoyance meter, so best of luck to you and your articles. No hard feelings here.— TAnthony^Talk 02:53, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

If you are feeling annoyed to the extent that you don't want to talk anymore, that's okay. But since I feel there are still improvements that need to be made on the Leia page, I'm going to continue to make constructive edits there. I will be extremely cautious, and will not make any edit that may be controversial without first posting on the talk page. I will also make my edit summaries detailed and clear, so you and others can have an easy time reviewing my edits. Even if you don't want to talk anymore, you and I are still going to have to interact as long as both of us care about the quality of the Leia page and other pages I am editing and you are watching. I'm hoping we can interact respectfully in this regard, and I will do everything in my power to allow that to happen.

I feel that through dialogue, people can often reach a point where the annoyance meters of all parties are diminished. You may disagree, but if you ever want to re-open any of the discussions we've had, please feel free to send me a message. Wafflewombat (talk) 03:19, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Carrie Fisher segment

I've taken a quote from Fisher in the article and turned it into prose, which is generally recommended by WP guidelines. I'll post the segment as it exists currently, and my revised version below. Please give your thoughts.

Current version:

Fisher told Rolling Stone in 1983, "In Return of the Jedi, [Leia] gets to be more feminine, more supportive, more affectionate. But let's not forget that these movies are basically boys' fantasies. So the other way they made her more female in this one was to have her take off her clothes."

My proposed version:

In a 1983 interview with Rolling Stone, Fisher described Leia's characterization in Return of the Jedi as more feminine and more affectionate than in the previous films. Fisher went on to claim that the Star Wars films function as boys' fantasies, and that the bikini-clad Leia was an important part of constructing those fantasies.

---

I understand that sometimes it's perfectly acceptable to include quotes, and that in some cases quotes can be more effective than prose. I'm not attached to either version of this segment, I just thought I'd try making it a bit more encyclopedic and see what other editors think. Wafflewombat (talk) 04:03, 17 June 2024 (UTC)