Trivia pages for Creators and Musicians?

There is need for discussion around Trivia and YMMV pages being allowed/disallowed for creator and music pages. What I noticed is that sometimes tropes associated with an actor or a band are simply listed on bottom of the person's page like on Creator.Robert Downey Jr and sometimes they are moved to a separate Trivia/YMMV page like Trivia.Steven Spielberg. I asked about the correct handling of this on ATT here but there was no conclusive answer.

The question should probably boil down to if RL entities like actors or musicians should be treated the same way as fictional works. The practice of moving this kind of content to separate pages is probably driven by the fact that the wiki treats Creator namespace as Main or any other work namespace, and it is therefore "marked" as incorrectly placed entry.

Opinions?

There has never been any ambiguity about Real Life people being treated as fictional characters for purposes of troping. Don't do this, ever.

The major points of confusion that I see are as follows:

• Q: Where does a subjective example (YMMV, Audience Reaction) about a creator's work go?
  A: On the YMMV subpage for the work that the example pertains to.

• Q: What if there is no article for the work in question?
  A: Then it can go on a YMMV subpage for the creator.

• Q: What if the example is about a creator's general body of work rather than any specific one?
  A: These sorts of examples should be discouraged because it's hard to keep them from lapsing into discussing the creator. Many also run afoul of the proscription against general examples. To illustrate: "Complete Monster: Used in many of [creator]'s works" would be a combination of a general example and a zero-context example.

• Q: Where does a Trivia example about a creator go if it isn't tied to a particular work?
  A: On the main article for that creator.

• Q: Where does a Trivia example about a creator's work go?
  A: Like with subjective examples, these go on the Trivia subpage for the work in question.

• Q: What if there is no article for the work in question?
  A: Then it would be treated as a general example and go on the creator's main article. It is acceptable to make a section for these sorts of examples if the article is lengthy.

Musicians are treated slightly differently than other creators. An article for a musician (in the Music namespace) is treated like a work article: that is, it may have Trivia and YMMV subpages, as long as the examples are about the artist's work and not the artist themselves.

These rules should all be listed under What Goes Where on the Wiki.

edited 22nd Nov '17 9:06:36 AM by Fighteer

The only grey area I see is that many musicians have a stage persona. That is, they deliberately invoke some tropes. I still wouldn't open the can of worms that's Audience Reactions on them, though.

In the AAT thread it was suggested that one could create a Trivia pages for a work even if the main work page is non-existing. Part of me would agree because lumping this with the creator is not categorically correct. On the other hand this isolated piece of trivia may never be read by anybody unless the work page gets off the ground as well.

Next question: What to do with all those misplaced Trivia pages for creators currently in existence? It may need a concerted effort to clean up the mess.

Stuff for works without pages probably doesn't belong on the page for one random actor who happens to be in the work—but it should be fine on the page for the writer or director. If we don't have a page for the writer or director, then we really don't have any place to cross-wick it until someone makes a page for the work (preferred) or writer or director.

The tropes should go with the person responsible for the tropes if there's no work page. Actors are almost never actually responsible for tropes. (The rare exceptions are the reason we have actors under Creator/, but they tend to be rare exceptions.)

How to organize the clean up? Would that be a case for Projects: Short Term? I have never worked on such stuff?

Orphaned subpages (ones without a parent article) should not be made, ever.