I've been wondering... just how appropriate is it for picture captions to make references to different pages? I'll offer two examples.

One, the disambiguation page for Sonic the Hedgehog. The picture itself (showing both Sonic's originaldepiction as well as his current one) doesn't actually have anything to do with several of the tropes linked to in its description. That said, all do apply to the series in general.

Meanwhile, the page for Prototype 2 quotes the song "Hurt, " linking to both the pages for Johnny Cash and Nine Inch Nails. However, the song (either version) is not in the game, nor does the game ever make a single reference to the song or either performer. I won't even get into whether the song's actually thematically appropriate for the game (I'd say no, but YMMV on that).

Is either caption appropriate? Should I have taken this to TRS or Image Pickin' (since this is related to the images)? Should I even bother with this?

I think cross-wicks are always good. They are a big part of what makes wikis work.

The fact that the song is not in the game, in the given example, seems totally irrelevant.

edited 16th May '12 12:09:39 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Same here.

That about sums up my view.

I think that, given competing choices for a caption, picking one that's relevant to the subject matter is preferable. Yes, cross-wicking is good, but the ideal form is Work <-> Trope <-> Work, not Work <-> Work, if the works are not in any way related.

One caption that has been peeving me for a long time is Fruits Basket wut?

@5 In that case, the cross-wicks in the Sonic the Hedgehog would be appropriate, but the ones in Prototype 2 would not?

Using links like that in a caption struck me as a Sink Hole, but I wasn't sure if the rules were the same there as they are in the body of articles.

@6 That's another one that confused me (and given that Fruits Basket predates Metal Gear Solid 3, the former obviously wouldn't reference the latter).

I'm not excited about either of those captions, to be honest.

My basic take on it is that as long as the caption makes sense on its own without the crosswicks, having more links isn't a problem. But stuff like the Fruits Basket caption that makes no sense should probably be changed.

I tend to agree. I struck the Fruits Basket caption, I have no idea what that was supposed to mean.

It was something like their cat and rat forms can't be there at the same time as their human forms, but it still bugged me, since it had nothing to do with Fruits Basket at all.

The terrible thing is that the human forms being there simultaneously isn't a time paradox, it's bilocation - whoever did that caption had the wrong physics impossibility cited.

I'm personally inclined to zap the Prototype 2 caption (because I think that relevant cross-wicks, not cross-wicks in general, are what makes wikis work), while tweaking the Sonic The Hedgehog caption to link only to Long Runners (to get away from YMMV with KS on a main page and to better fit the caption).

"...relevant cross-wicks, not cross-wicks in general, are what makes wikis work..."

True. I think the problem described in the OP is picture captions making unrelated references, not picture captions making references. The flaw in the Prototype 2 caption I think is not that the song isn't in the game, but that those lyrics are not relevant to the image.

edited 16th May '12 5:21:42 PM by rodneyAnonymous

The lyrical quote for the Prototype 2 image was used in this game trailer, so it's not completely irrelevant.

edited 16th May '12 5:41:09 PM by ABNDT

I think I can say with authority that the OP specifically found issue with the fact that the song isn't in the game as well as the fact that the lyric doesn't actually fit... well... anything in the game. Seeing as I wrote the original post and all.

To put it bluntly - making references to things that don't actually get referenced in the original work just muddies the wiki up. It's like when Gurren Lagann first got big, and every single reference to drills in anything, anywhere got sinkholed to that series. There should be an actual connection between the works for a cross-wick like that.

Now, with that said, the fact that one of the official trailers (I poked around and found this article about its creation, including Activision's carte blanche on the concept) did use the song does change things a bit. While I still think that the creators of the video completely missed the point of the song (though this isn't the place to hash out just what, exactly, either Cash or Reznor meant in the original song), there is at least some tenuous tie between the game and the song. Still, one trailer that didn't get wide distribution isn't what I'd want for justification for using those lyrics as a caption.

Though I do think it'd be fair to cite to Never Trust a Trailer now in the trope list.

By "OP" I meant "original post" and not "original poster". It does say in the, not by the. I would put that differently, but would otherwise make no changes to that post. Didn't make any claims about what other people think. The "problem described" is the title and first sentence of this thread, and the flaw in that particular caption is not that the song isn't in the game.

edited 16th May '12 7:09:20 PM by rodneyAnonymous

Well, the Prototype 2 page was probably made before the game came out, with the trailer taken as reasonably accurate. Presuming that's the case, a line from the song would seem to be a good caption, and referencing both Johnny Cash and Nine Inch Nails is virtually mandatory if you don't want a flame war about whose version of "Hurt" is better.

Entirely reasonable for pre-release, but if the game's out and the trailer isn't a good encapsulation of the game and/or the page image, then there's nothing wrong with changing the caption. Find a Tag Line or something.