Board Thread:Site Discussions/@comment-4533965-20140813192809/@comment-167456-20140816211208

A few factual innacuracies in original post: The banner adds "Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie)" to "Category:Archie Comics characters", not "Category:Archie Comics groups". The page is in "Category:Knothole Freedom Fighters", not "Category:Freedom Fighters", and neither of those categories are sub-categories of either "Category:Archie Comics characters" or "Category:Archie Comics groups" (and shouldn't be, because they span multiple continuities).

As said, even where this is a problem (and I see some different examples where it might be), it can be fixed by removing auto-categories without necessarily removing the banners as well. I personally think that keeping the "Characters by continuity" and "Characters by group" categories separate would be beneficial, and that the categories currently added by the banners are appropriate and should be kept.

(I dislike having separate banners for pre- and post-Genesis Wave on the Archie pages, but that's a different issue. Only have separate banners if you split the pages up as well. Anyway, off topic...)

The real question is: do people like the in-your-face presentation of which continuity something is in? It is next to impossible to get confused as to what continuity a character is from, or to think two characters might be from a shared continuity when they aren't. That's the idea behind the banners. And people used to get confused a lot, so it's quite important.

Some people have added "appearing in such-and-such a series/continuity" to the intro paragraphs of pretty much all characters I've seen. That wasn't necessary when using banners, but has the same function but less ostentatiously. Is that better? What do people think?

I am not necessarily opposed to removing banners, but I want people to understand what they're arguing for. The categories is one problem, and has one solution; existence of the banners is something else.