User talk:Bobg

Hi there Bobg, a belated welcome to Wikipedia.

I notice you've created an article about Salvor Hardin, who appears to be a minor character in the Foundation Series. Is there enough material that a proper article can ever be written about him? If not maybe you should create an article "characters in the Foundation Series" and add information about minor characters there. --Robert Merkel 01:04, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I hate to butt in, but I noticed some people have even created articles about soap opera characters. It's hard enough to write articles on actors, but since there are soap character articles already in place, I don't see the harm in having a character article, as long as it's backed up by enough plot from the book. TheCustomOfLife 01:06, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

That's the question I was asking. If he only appears briefly on a couple of pages, he doesn't get his own article any more than, say, the elderly woman who asks Fiona whether she is a lesbian in Four Weddings and a Funeral should. --Robert Merkel 01:33, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I read the Foundation trilogy when it was still just a trilogy, and Salvor Hardin was a major character in the first book with probably more pages about him than about Hari Seldon. By now he's proportionately much less important, of course, especially since much more has now been written about Seldon. I'll defer to the judgment of more experienced Wikipedians (and better Foundation experts) on this question, but I would hesitate to call Salvor Hardin a "minor" character in any case. --Bobg 14 Jun 2004

Well, that's perfectly appropriate then. I personally wonder about the usefulness of some of the articles on fictional characters (particularly ones that only appear in a single book), but they do make a lot of sense when writing about fictional universes that span multiple books, films, and so on. --Robert Merkel 05:13, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)