Real Life People Cleanup Project

Other than suggesting names to be perused, that Sandbox looks good to me.

If you've got suggestions, list them here and/or add them to the sandbox.

In any case, here's my suggestion for what to do with the presidents:

• For presidents with enough media depictions to warrant their own Useful Notes page, strip the page of any tropes not related to fictional portrayals and move the page to the Useful Notes namespace. The presidents I can think of that probably deserve this treatment are George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama.
• For presidents that are creators in their own right, also make a Creators/ page for them and cross-link to their Useful Notes page. The only president I can think of would be Ronald Reagan.
• For everyone else, create UsefulNotes.The Presidents and have a short description of the traits most likely to appear in fiction about a given president. For presidents who have their own pages, obviously, link to their own pages.

I would add Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson to the list deserving of Useful Notes pages.

On Barack Obama however I notice a big admin note allowing some tropes. I don't think we can simply cut the tropes.

I might need to find someone to open the page. Tom Tomorrow 's Middle Man (Barack Obama in a funny costume) is too funny not to be included.

Also Mitt Romney needs a page for fictional portrayals.

OK, so in December, we'll have a page with basic info and works he's appeared in?

edited 23rd Jun '12 8:26:45 PM by animeg3282

That page won't get unlocked until the elections are over - in the best case. In the meantime, try the edit requests for locked pages thread in FAQ.

edited 23rd Jun '12 3:19:49 PM by SeptimusHeap

In the meantime, we can certainly work on the other presidents though.

Lyndon Johnson probably appears in a lot of works associated with the Vietnam war. Woodrow Wilson probably appears in a lot of works associated with WWI. Harry S Truman probably appears in a lot of works associated with the nuclear bombing of Japan at the end of WWII.

Wars are a popular topic for works. For that matter, Eisenhower probably appears a lot in his role as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during WWII—probably more often as that than as president. Ditto for Grant and the Civil War.

Nixon was already mentioned on the earlier list.

edited 23rd Jun '12 9:24:07 PM by Xtifr

Nixon is also a popular figure of parody.

Yeah, Nixon is certainly one who gets depicted alot - and he's one of the few presidents that has inspired a trope all by himself.

As for Mitt Romney - maybe this is my extreme bias against him showing, but just what depictions of the man in fiction have happened? I would expect much more than, say, a Saturday Night Live sketch.

BEHOLD THE MITTBOT!◊ Also see The Daily Show and The Colbert Report

The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are not fictional depictions of Mitt Romney. They are humorous analysis of the actual Mitt Romney.

This. SNL, TDS, etc., are comedy programs but they explicitly reference the real people in question and do not count for these purposes. A legit example would be George Bush appearing in The Naked Gun trying to memorize his "Thousand Points of Light" speech.

What about things like the Onion's version of Joe Biden?

For those not familiar with it, the Onion's depiction of Joe Biden intentionally has nothing to do with any actual characteristics of his (which is generally not the case for most of their political parodies). While I doubt Biden would pass the three-appearance rule anyway, would something like this count as an "appearance in fiction"?

edited 25th Jun '12 2:38:22 PM by nrjxll

In my Personal Dictionary, satirical news is still news. Others may have different opinions.

If satirical news are fiction, they aren't news.

The Onion is about the same level of reality as a Saturday Night Live sketch. Sure, both present fictional portrayals of real life figures. But they're really shallow, and they pretty much completely abandon them once the figure in question leaves the public eye. It's not like either does depictions of George W. Bush anymore.

I think the issue comes down to whether the fictional portrayal is merely for topical humor, or if it's one that has a lasting impression in culture. There's a big difference, for example, between Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon when you compare them that way. Johnson is almost never shown (and only occasionally referenced), but they're still making fresh depictions of Nixon.

Millard Fillmore actually has quite a few examples. The page currently has 21 of them—Fillmore is known for being unknown. You can go by technicalities such as "they're just passing references and he doesn't actually appear as a character in the series", but normal tropes are also often just used in passing.

Wikipedia sometimes runs into a dilemma where (using a made up example) there are 12 ski resorts in an area and 10 of them are proven to be notable. It would be stupid to create 10 articles and leave the other two out.

If we are going to require that since presidents aren't works, they have to be notable, enough presidents are notable that we really should list all of them, even if they aren't all notable individually. There is no rule for this; it's just common sense.

As for Ron Paul, he's probably got a page because he's also a prominent libertarian and thus gets talked about on the Internet a lot by people who otherwise don't care much for the Republican party at all. I would be very surprised if the Ron Paul page didn't predate the Republican campaign.

I would agree that people like Arnie should only get creator pages with brief mentions of their political career. For someone like Reagan who can legitimately have full pages both as a politician referenced in the media and as a creator, I'd say to put it all on one page. Yes, you can make a separate Useful Notes page and creator page, but most people don't think that way and would expect a single page. Pick one to put the page on and have the other one redirect to it.

edited 29th Jun '12 5:18:03 PM by arromdee

I added a number of politicians to the sandbox list, many of them former dictators.

Other politicians listed on the Politicians page should also be looked over.

edited 9th Jul '12 7:14:33 AM by khalini

I don't think we should cut the ones that we judge as not qualifying as Historical Domain Characters. There's always the possibility for them to be used in fiction, and it's a waste to cut the pages and make people recreate them, especially since they would probably have to get the page unlocked, too. If we cut a page on Ron Paul, and then later we need one due to the existence of fictional portrayals, it will impede the page from getting started because the vast majority of tropers will be discouraged by having to find out how to unlock a cut page and then write it all themselves.

Instead of worrying that people will misinterpret a People/ or Historical Domain Character/ namespace as an excuse to write non-tropeable people articles, how about, I don't know, clearly explaining what these pages should and shouldn't be used for (which we already have a good idea of) using a banner and/or linked administrivia page?

Have we agreed upon a 3 references in fiction standard here, so that only execution is needed?

I would say that such a criterion fits with our "three rules of three" paradigm for trope articles, so it's worth applying.

Hmm... to give thoughts on the non-US Presidents listed...

• Dale Earnhardt - Cut. I can only think of one ESPN biopic about the man, and no fictional portrayals of him whatsoever beyond "someone popular with NASCAR fans," which doesn't seem all that tropable.
• Josef Stalin - Keep, although the application of tropes about the man himself should go. If there are common tropes in portrayals of him, though, those can stay.
• Vladimir Lenin - As is, cut. I imagine that there probably are enough portrayals of Lenin to make something worth keeping, although I don't know them personally.
• Vladimir Putin - Cut. I think he mostly falls under the "most depictions are from satirical programs like The Daily Show" issue.
• Muammar Gaddafi - I'm a bit surprised that the fiction section had as many examples as it did. Keep.
• Adolf Hitler - As much as I'd love to go down in history as the man who got Hitler killed from the wiki (I'd totally brag about killing Hitler), let alone anywhere else, he might have more fictional portrayals than anyone else on this list. Sigh. Keep.
• Fidel Castro - Cut. I don't see many fictional depictions of him.
• Josip Broz Tito - I lean towards cut, since those fictional portrayals seem mostly just to namecheck him. I'm willing to change my mind if someone can show otherwise.
• Mikhail Gorbachev - I know that there's a couple of mentions that didn't make the page (like The Naked Gun) - it'd need expansion, but he could be kept.
• Ron Paul - I just added this page. Given that this was the page that inspired me to make this topic, I would cut.

edited 9th Aug '12 12:26:52 PM by 32_Footsteps

While I agree with you, I was asking has this criterium been settled down already? I.e are we now no longer in the rules-drafting but in the execution stage? I was asking because the latter thing would be more appropriate for Special Efforts and I am currently running a project on keeping things sorted.

Agree on most things there.

While I would probably agree on that being a reasonable criterion, I'm not exactly sure we have a consensus.

Agree on those being reasonable as well.