Character pages badly organized and soon broken: Characters.Mass Effect

To put it bluntly, the Character pages for the Mass Effect series are a mess. The original page was split because it exceeded the size limit, and so was separated into individual pages for each game and one for recurring characters. That was all well and fine at the time, but now there's a problem: this series loves its CallBacks. As a result, the recurring page is huge, and the page for the first game contains only thirteen characters, most of whom are dead or insignificant. And I have this little voice in my head that says that when ME3 comes out, the page for the second game will go the same way, with most of its characters transferred to the recurring page, and I have a nasty suspicion that it will proceed to burst at the seams.

I posted about this in the talkpage, but due to (my) laziness, we're not getting anywhere, and with the release date in less than a month, I'm starting to get nervous.

So, I think a complete reorganization of the whole system is called for. So far, the best idea that's come up is three pages: one for squadmates, one for friendly and neutral NPCS, and one for antagonists. Problems: I'm having trouble with figuring out if those would still be too large (I'm mostly worried about the Squad page), and how to organize things within those pages.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I think recurring characters should be for characters who have an equal (or greater role) in the next game from when they appeared. Wrex, for instance, is just a side character in ME2. He should stay in the ME1 page. If he happens to be a squadmate in ME3, add him to the recurring page. TIM probably won't have as big a role in ME3, and even if he does, we don't know that yet--keep him in ME2. Garrus and Tali both appear prominently in both games--they are recurring characters. Kaidan and Ashley are far more important in ME1. I think Liara probably belongs in recurring. She gives you sidequests, and plays a huge role in Lair of the Shadow Broker, and her characterization differs quite a bit from just ME1, as well has having quite a bit of tie-in material.

I'd rather not organize by antagonists and so forth--it might be very spoilery. Even if things were spoiler tagged, simply the fact that some characters appear in certain categories might give it away--for instance, in ME3, TIM is now an antagonist. Someone looking for him on the "neutral" categories would give it away, as he wouldn't be there. And keeping him in the neutral categories would defeat the purpose of dividing them as such.

I also think this solves the issue of the squad page being too huge.

edited 7th Feb '12 3:18:17 PM by helterskelter

But that's the problem. Hackett, for example, may have been introduced in 1, but he has a larger role in 2, even appearing, and he may yet have a greater role to play in 3. Ash and Kaidan can't move, since they're squadmates in 3. And trying to move or keep people based on their 'importance' is subjective enough that bad arguments have broken out. And again, I'm worried about the page limit once the third game adds even more tropes to the pages. Personally, I prefer things to be well-organized after a little hassle than to have them a bit messy for expediency's sake.

Hackett belongs on 1. The Virmire Survivor should stay on 1 until ME 3 is released. It honestly doesn't seem complicated.

Hackett actually appears on screen and plays a bigger role in the plot in 2. That, right there, shows the problem with trying to segregate it the way you suggested, as people will get confused when looking for characters in places they logically belong (in this case, under Recurring) because the characters were rearranged in a subjective, imprecise way. Besides that, going back to the Hackett example, there will be many spoilers for Mass Effect 2 and most likely, Mass Effect 3, on the Mass Effect 1 character sheet.

Although I prefer the OP's idea, that also has spoiler issues. What about a page for squadmates, and several pages for non-squadmates divided alphabetically? That should avoid insta-spoiling any antagonists, while keeping the squadmates (who get the most attention and hence page-inflating amounts of tropes) separate.

edited 8th Feb '12 12:19:41 AM by OJtheLION

How about just split it into three: Characters introduced in Mass Effect, characters introduced in Mass Effect 2, and characters introduced in Mass Effect 3. Then you don't have to quibble over who's role is "big enough" to be a recurring character - when a character is introduced is pretty unambiguous.

Alternatively, go the route of some other split pages, and split by Protagonists, Antagonists (with a note that it may be spoileriffic), and NPCs. Or some other dividing line that makes sense given the the story, as suggested in the post above mine.

edited 8th Feb '12 8:04:36 AM by ccoa

Not really. He continually gives you command in the first game. He has maybe two minutes of screentime total in the second. You just get to see him. Regardless, he's minor in both. If you want, put him in recurring. Hackett is a unique example. This really isn't complicated.

Yes, it would have tagged spoilers. But you would not be instantly spoiled—only by your choice.

The pages for each game would be ungodly long.

edited 8th Feb '12 8:47:29 AM by helterskelter

The reason I'm objecting to your plan is because I'm saying the recurring page will expand greatly, maybe to the point of breaking, and that the setup as a whole seems disorganized, and you're responding by suggesting we move a single minor character who only has a handful of entries.

It is possible that the pages will be fine and I'm panicking for nothing. But I'd rather not find out the hard way, and would at least like to have a plan for major re-org if necessary. And I still maintain that the current setup is inconsistent.

For example, the Citadel Council. They were major characters in the first game, promoting Shepard and interacting with you regularly throughout the game. In the second game, they have a single scene with no lasting repercussions (that we can tell as of now). Unless their significance ramps up a lot in 3, they should go on the first game page, by that logic.

Or Nassana Dantius. In the first game, she gives you a quest. In the second game, she's the object of a quest, and only has a few lines. Does that mean she qualifies as recurring? If not, then should she be put in the first game, or the second? What about Shiala, the inverse? She arguably has more significance in the second game, since she actually gives you a quest. Unless you want to argue about what makes an appearance significant or not.

Based on the logic of the current layout, when the third game comes out, and the inevitable minor character cameos start happening, there's going to be a lot of characters moved from ME 2 to the recurring page. Wrex, for example; he all he did in the second game was point you at a couple of quests, but he's recurring now. Any party member who hands out a quest will probably be shuffled. And we know EDI's going to have just as significant a role in the third as she did in the second.

With all these complications, I think it would be best to discard with 'page for each game' system entirely. And if we're not going to do that, then we should at least lay down rules for who goes where and then follow them consistently. It's be more than what we have now.

Sorry for the long post, but I'm trying to get across why I think this is a big deal.

I think, while it may not seem complicated to you, that system seems quite subjective, and it creates a hassle for the reader. The fact that Hackett was even in contention shows the potential future problems it creates. We're supposed to be making it easy for the reader, after all. I do think the system I proposed is the most organized since there's no room for confusion. After all, you're either a squadmate or you're not, and alphabetically divided pages are used elsewhere on the site for games/etc with very long lists of tropes, for instance World Of Warcraft. It also makes discussions of the events of multiple games less out of place.

I think that's also a good suggestion. Nice and simple with no room for argument, especially since as far as I know, they didn't pull any of whatever the trope's called where the villain shows up in silhouette but doesn't actually appear until the next game.

I'd back this. It's what Soul Series does and seems to work quite well. The only issue with it is people reading the character page for ME 1 will get spoilered for ME 2/3(Shepard does what?!), but well, they shouldn't be reading the page if they don't want spoilers.

Some character sheets are spoiler tags off, with a big bold warning up top. I think it works okay on character sheets since you really don't have to read those to get a feel for tropes used in a work, you can use the less-spoiler prone main page.

If by game is too big, how about by game and by affiliation? Not having played the games, I can't speak about good groupings, but here's an example of what I mean:

• Mass Effect 1 Protagonists
• Mass Effect 1 Antagonists
• Mass Effect 1 NPCs
• Mass Effect 2 Protagonists
• Mass Effect 2 Antagonists
• Mass Effect 2 NPCs
• Mass Effect 3 Protagonists
• Mass Effect 3 Antagonists
• Mass Effect 3 NPCs

Perhaps with Shepard (the main character in all three, right?) on the index or his own page.

It would also be nice to have something like the X-men character sheet where it gives you an idea where to find what character (for people adding tropes from newly launched tropes that don't know the series), but I'd understand if this would be too spoiler-y.

edited 8th Feb '12 2:40:52 PM by ccoa

We'd probably only have to make different pages for the part members anyway. They're the ones with the serious text length.

Also, make it happen soon. Demo's out next week, people are going to start editing again, and things will probably get worse once review copies start getting sent out.

edited 8th Feb '12 4:32:22 PM by ashlay

And for clarity's sake, both the Recurring page and the ME 2 page are well over the 400k character page limit. So even four pages won't cut it, apparently.

I gathered up a few stats, but there are some facts to go with this: First, 400k is the ideal maximum. 500k is where the page will potentially cause the server to crash. I'm not sure if that's where it will physically prevent us from editing, but it should be treated as impossible to pass. And second, the numbers I'm giving are the basic formatting, what you get in the text box when you edit the page. Once that is posted to the server, the character size more than doubles. So, the Recurring page has a total of 470,000 characters, even though you can only edit 200,000.

If all squad members, Shepard included, were moved to their own page, that would be about 275,000 characters. 75,000 of those are Shepard's entry. For NP Cs (major and minor), 9,400. Antagonists, 5,400.

So, at the very least, one single squad page is out of the question, even more so once 3 rolls around. I think a variant of ccoa's suggestion: we make three pages for squad members, and just put them with the game they were introduced in. As for the NP Cs, I'm thinking two pages: one for major, one for minor. We can separate antagonists from protagonists or just random people on the page itself, and put notices in their summaries about which games they appeared in.

As for who is major and who is minor... initial thoughts? If they appear in more than one story mission per game, they're major. Just one or sidequests only, minor. For the first game, at least, you can make the major enemy for a story planet a major character, or if you can make a convincing case that they had special significance to the game overall.

Opinions?

Major and minor npcs may cause some initial issues. Take the Quarian Admiralty board for instance: Only featured in Tali's loyalty mission, which by the initial definition would make them minor, but clearly are being set up for another role in Mass Effect 3. So do we start them on minor? Pre-emptively move them to major? Similar questions with The Rachni Queen.

Also, should we say right of the bat the entire Normandy crew should be major? I feel like they should be grouped together, but EDI and Joker are clearly bigger characters than say Mess Sergeant Gardner.

secondary question: should there be a re-order of the characters? such as alphabetically, order of appearance in their game, etc?

edited 8th Feb '12 6:33:10 PM by ashlay

If you have orgnaizations that make sense to split them up by, why not use them? I heard the Normandy crew - that could be a page, right?

I just split up A Song of Ice and Fire, and I did it by what organization a character is associated with rather than if they're a POV, major, or minor character. It seems to make for a clean break.

EDIT: Also, someone needs to split the WMG page for Mass Effect 3 - it's almost to the "breaks the wiki" point. For a game not released. Wow.

edited 9th Feb '12 10:24:56 AM by ccoa

This series just has a talent for breaking pages. ><

The problem with breaking them up into factions is that one of the factions relies on brainwashed Manchurian Agents; they don't fit anywhere but there, but putting them there ruins the reveal. If we can find some way to work around that, it could work. Make one page for the Citadel, either those who work for the Council or those who live on it, one page for the Alliance, one page for the Normandy's crew, one for Cerberus, and one for other. The only real problem I can see is that the Other page would be huge, but there'd be no working around it. Also, we'd probably have to shuffle it once new factions are destroyed or created in the third game.

Okay, so as far as I can tell, these are the suggestions:

For the squad members, I think those should be addressed once we decide how to organize the rest of the pages.

We make pages based solely on the games themselves. We ditch Recurring Characters entirely and move the entries into whichever game they were introduced in. We'll have to make multiple pages for each game, which can go into the suggestions below. Probably the simplest solution, since you just slap the characters into the game they introduced in. It would definitely be the easiest to maintain. The downside would be that some characters would be stuck with the game the first appeared as opposed to the one they made the most impact in.

We split them into squadmates, major, and minor NP Cs. This one is the most subjective one. People would have to argue and hash out what makes a character major or minor. The advantage is that once those issues are settled, the pages can be organized however we want, and if it's decided a character is more or less significant later, they can be easily moved.

We make pages based off factions. This one would be somewhat easy to maintain. All we'd have to do is determine what faction someone belongs to and then move them to that page, with some minor micro-management. The downsides to this are that some characters like to faction-hop, and the simply being put on the Reaper faction page would be a spoiler in of itself. Also, we'd probably have to wait for the third game to come out to see what factions are destroyed or introduced, which means we'd have to find some way to make sure the pages don't break beforehand.

All of these things would be pretty spoilertastic in the end. I can't see any way of getting around it without whiting out half the entries.

Also, most of us seem to agree to giving the squadmates their own pages, no matter how we wind up dealing with NP Cs. Can I get some confirmations/denials on that?

Anyways, those are the ideas. Any got more suggestions/modifications? We should probably reach a decision soon, as ashlay said.

edited 9th Feb '12 3:56:26 PM by Tahaneira

edit: actually let's just go w/ factions for NPC and antagonists.

example: Party Members

• First introduced in ME 1
• First introduced in ME 2
• First introduced in ME 3

npcs

• Normandy Crew
• Alliance
• Citadel Space
• Terminus Systems
• etc

Antagonists

• Reapers
• Cerberus
• Other
• etc

edit2: anyway, I say go ahead with the 3 pages for the party members and drop the rest on an npc page for now. figure out what to do with them later.

edit3: easy way to deal with spoilers: use folders for each character, like on the re-occurring character's page. We can than just spoiler out the folder name. don't have to white out everything, and people will know ahead of time not to expand the folder if they don't want to know.

edited 10th Feb '12 10:44:11 PM by ashlay

Sorry about the inactivity, been sick.

Saw that you already took care of the NP Cs. Thanks for that; I'll go ahead and put the squad members on their individual pages. That should give us enough breathing room until we figure out the NP Cs.

On the subject of whether or not Shepard should get his own page, it seems tacky and a waste. But looking at the entries as they are now, that page is already huge. I think we should go ahead and isolate him.

As for the location suggestion, there are so many of them, and so many people who don't live on just one. I'll make a list when I'm done with the squad, see how it looks.

EDIT: Or you've already gone ahead and taken care of the whole schmear. Way to make a guy feel like a lazy bum. :P

Good job. I had my doubts about the by first appearance system, but it seems to work well. As long as some explanation can be put on the index page, it should be easy enough to understand. Unless anyone else has some objections, I think we can call this over bar the clean-up.

I'll go ahead and start turning the existing pages into redirects; they'll be easy enough to revert if plans change.

edited 11th Feb '12 9:30:19 PM by Tahaneira

That happened fast!

NOT a fan of this system. Shouldn't have to work out which game a character was introduced in. Much prefer the Squadmates/Antagonists/NPC breakdown without bringing the game they were introduced in into it.

Things are speeding up. Early copies of the demo are already floating around, better to at least do something, even if it ends up being temporary.

And it would be great if we could group all the party members/npcs/etc together, but there's length issues. They need to be split up somehow or the pages will crash.

I guess we could add folders/hotlinks of some kind so people could know if a character appeared in another game in the series? I don't know. But there's no reason we can't keep spit-balling solutions.

Hottips on each on the index, with a list of characters found on that page, would make things easier for people trying to find a specific character and not know which page to find them on.

This will work at least as a stopgap measure. I'll add the hottips.

For anyone who doesn't like the system as it is now, think of it this way: these pages get relatively little traffic now. Once 3 comes out, they'll be jumping. If they're truly that horrible, tons of people will start complaining, and then we can hold a proper crowner, or at least get a consensus on a better setup.

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who overhauled the character pages. It's alot more organized now and no one has to worry about the changes the old format would have demanded in a month's time.

question: what should we do regarding GuestStarPartyMembers? Do we want Jenkins/Wilson/Kenson included on the party member page?

Jenkins and Wilson should go on the party pages, I think, because that is their only purpose: to provide minor exposition and be stopgap party members until the real deals show up. Kenson should stay where she is, because her partying is incidental, and she's far more important to the plot after she leaves.