This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Ronnie: Honestly I'd choose a face that isn't Haruhi, solely because you cannot casually browse this wiki without picking up the basics of Haruhi Suzumiya. I'd picked them up without trying in my first 3 days here, from just reading some common trope articles spat out by Random Item. Point is, people in general here know her.
Terminus Est 13: Seconded. The previous picture/caption with the obscure anime character was perfect.
Some Sort Of Troper: Hell no. Try reading the page again, pay attention to the bit that says going "Oh yeah everybody knows this!" is a bad thing./
Terminus Est 13: Because clearly, those magic keystrokes made contributing to the page were entirely random and with blindfolds around our eyes! Returning sarcasm aside, please don't assume we didn't. The best way to demonstrate fan myopia is with a fairly obscure side character—one that the die-hard fans of the show/anime whatever love and would be flabbergasted to know that people don't know more of, instead of an insanely popular main character from an insanely popular anime based off a series of insanely popular novels and begetting insanely popular manga. This isn't me going "Oh yeah everyone knows this", I avoid almost all anime-manga—this is looking at basic sales figures.
Some Sort Of Troper: What I'm getting from that is "Of course everybody knows this. This is so well known. Look at this sales figures! Just don't subtract them from the total number of potential readers!" You know what's insanely popular? Jesus. Jesus is popular. Jesus is on the level where you can assume people know who he is. Do you know why somebody changed the pic to Haruhi? Because the character stuck out as the one who had this problem occur so frequently. Because a lot of people know that face as the face that pops up randomly on trope pages with a caption that promises she is an example. Probably an overstated case but that picture probably goes exactly right into the point. If you look at that and go "Ah but it's well known" then you're the person the page is for. You're the person to whom we are trying to say "We don't care, it's not enough."
Terminus Est 13: Maybe I misstated, sorry. Lemme rephrase. I'm not going "Oh yeah everyone know this", I'm saying it'd really better showcasing an obscure character to display the arrogance of fans in assuming people do know this character. To continue the religious analogy, it'd be the difference between using, say, a picture of Zeus and using a picture of Amphissus. Zeus's been parodied, referenced, exaggerated, explored, essay'd, etc etc etc, just like Haruhi. Again, I'm not saying everyone knows her/him...but I've had experience with people assuming, due to major popularity of the character, and ignoring the article entirely. Half a week or so ago, I had a bit of an edit war on the Yamato Nadeshiko page, with someone defending Belldandy as "not just a face and a caption", due to her "immense popularity". If we use someone popular as the trope image, people can easily go "Why DON'T people know her? It's got blah blah and blah!". If we use someone obscure, it goes beautifully with the idea of fan myopia over-promoting someone—people not in the fandom can look at the pic, tilt their head, say "Who's that supposed to—OH! Oh! I get it now!", and be enlightened.
Some Sort Of Troper: OK, I think I see. I still think though that there are benefits to using a character who a number of the contributors may still yet recognise because it's more of an example of the typical situation: a character well known to a particular subset who gets a lot of Enptry Pimping. "Yes, even she can be a poor image choice". And that's for those who like the images, another number will go "Yeah, I recognise the face, I hate it when that happens". Hopefully it all gets added to by the fact that it's also a really dull image.
