Arstan Whitebeard redirection

[Omnievul]

Greetings everyone! Before starting, I'd like to warn everyone that this thread will contain spoilers for anyone who has not read the third book, so please do not read on if you have not.

I have never been on this forum before, I just made an account so I can voice a suggestion / complaint I had. I believe that it's a very bad idea to have Arstan Whitebeard redirect to Barristan Selmy. I believe I am not the only one who likes browsing google for portraits of the characters in the book, and it so happens that a wiki of ice and fire is always either the first or the second result, so I guess that people would eventually refer to this wiki. I'm pretty sure a lot of other people, including myself, have had Arstan's true identity spoiled by this redirection, and I think it's too much of a nice and important plot-wise surprise to have it spoiled. Perhaps a moderator could create a separate page for Arstan Whitebeard?

Thank you for your time and for any replies. :)

PS: At least I was lucky and I got it spoiled 1 chapter before the revelation. Imagine someone else knowing all along, that would be horrible!

[Scafloc]

You know it is impossible to make a wiki without any spoilers. In your post you mention Barristan <-> Arstan spoiler but how about the fate of Eddard Stark the main person in the first book? Or what about the relationships of Renly Baratheon? Or who the father is of Cersei's children.

There are countless examples of events that can be considered a spoiler up until somewhere in the books. The problem that it all depends on where each person is in the books. It is just not possible to take that into account.

Having said that we try to keep the first paragraphs from revealing too much information. Just who someone is, character and appearance and events that happened before the regular story of the books. However even there some revelations that can be considered spoilers can occur. For instance that Jaime is the father of Cersei's children is something we considered to be vital for the first paragraph of Jaime's page.

As for the Arstan - Barristan; the Arstan period is a relatively short time. Barristan joins Daenerys in the end of the 2nd book and reveals himself at the end of the 3rd book. Barristan's page certainly cannot do without the Arstan period and to make a separate page for Arstan would mean that the same story would have different descriptions because people would make changes on the Arstan page without doing them on Barristan's page and the other way around. So it would be impractical and in this case (in my opinion) overdone as the spoiler is not that big.