Honestly, while I was arguing in favor of their being sheet-exclusive, it really does depend on page size. If the page is tiny, there's no big deal about putting them in both places.
Infinite Tree: an experimental storyI have the feeling that this may be tricky to get a one size fits all solution. I'd still like if possible some more specific guidelines than we have just now (of the "if this happens/if the page gets to roughly this level, do this, etc".
Battle Royale for example is a page I curate and I've no intention of moving the character tropes back to the main page because there's over 40 characters and the tropes for all of those (the character page isn't complete) would probably be a dozen times longer than the main page.
That, however, is the sort of extreme example that doesn't apply in most cases I think (in that work the characterisation is, even aside from sheer numbers, more important than everything else in the work put together.
My name is Addy. Please call me that instead of my username.I personally like seeing all the tropes on the main page. The character page is where I go if I want to learn more about specific characters, or get familiar with the cast of a series/work. If I'm just generally browsing (I love the random page button) I'll just look at the main trope page (and these days the YMMV tab, because the main page doesn't give the full whack anymore [/deadhorse argument
]), so if some non-YMMV tropes are character specific then I wouldn't see them if they are segregated. The character sheets, to me, are more for people really interested in getting into a fandom or for fans than people just doing a Wiki Walk as I often do.
Plus you can go into more detail as to how those tropes apply on a character page, the main page just notes they exist and #bob/alice is an example of it.
edited 19th Jun '11 4:56:46 PM by CrypticMirror
^^ If it's not an organizational extension of the main page, then what is it?
And speaking purely unofficially, you aren't likely to get an admin fiat, set-in-stone, "all pages are to be handled like this" rule from Fast Eddie for two reasons.
The first is that he really hates making set in stone rules unless there's no other way to handle a situation.
The second is that there's no one solution that will work on all pages. Some works pages are small enough that even with all of the characters and all of the character specific tropes listed on the main page, it's still a short page. Others are massive — some have multiple character pages.
edited 19th Jun '11 10:19:47 PM by Madrugada
My opinion is the same as Madrugada's. Unless the size of the article becomes an issue, there's no reason to make a hard and fast rule that characterization tropes belong exclusively on the Characters page.
The major problem with having them in both places is that frequently a troper who edits one place won't also remember to edit the other.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Small pages probably won't be hurt by having the character tropes in both places. For really big pages with lots of characters and lots of tropes for the characters (Evangelion and Naruto immediately come to mind), it's a much better idea to have single character-specific tropes on the character page(s) and have tropes that relate to more than one character on the main page. In the latter case, the main page should have a note to go to the character page for the more specific tropes.
edited 20th Jun '11 9:01:39 AM by Willbyr
And some pages are so small that they don't even have character sheets yet. Making a rule that character-specific tropes must go only on the character page means that they either need to be removed from those small pages, or someone needs to make character pages for them.
My personal preference is that if a work has character pages, character-specific tropes should be on the character page rather than the main page, unless it is a trope that affects the work as a whole. Then they should be on both the character sheet and the main page. Superman is an Action Hero. That's a character-specific trope, and should be on the character page for him. But it also defines the flavor of the work as a whole, and thus should also be on the main page.
edited 20th Jun '11 9:59:39 AM by Madrugada
Like I said in Ask The Tropers, I always saw it as a different way of looking at tropes. Rather than looking at it from an overall view of the story you are looking more specifically at the tropes each character embodies. Rather than being just "Here's these tropes" and "Here's the other tropes", it's "Here's a list of all the tropes in the work" for the main page, and the Character pages are "Here's a list of the characters, and detail on what character tropes apply to them."
I don't know if I'm making sense, I woke up 5 minutes ago >_>
"The fact that your food can be made into makeshift bombs alarms the Hell out of me, Scrye." - CharlatanSee, probably the reason why I was so against putting them in both places at first is because I've never understood why a page would have a character sheet if it wasn't ready for a split.
Infinite Tree: an experimental storySame here, I've always gone under the MO of "Everything in Main, until the page is large enough that a split is needed to improve readability."
Under that scenario, there should never be a need to have Character tropes in both Main and Characters. The question is whether this method is being used in practice.
Visit my contributor page to assist with the "I Like The Cheeses" project!Character sheets are a different way of organizing tropes. Really, that's about it. There is no fundamental reason, other than maximum article size, why they have to be exclusive to one page or the other. There are organizational and consistency issues, certainly, but good curation can handle those.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Personally, I prefer to divide it up such that tropes go to the character page if only one character displays the trope in question. It drives me a bit batty when I see the same trope linked to under five or six different characters (Berserk Button is a frequent example; plenty of series have multiple characters with one).
I find this mainly because it actually defeats the purpose of the page to have it listed multiple times - if we're splitting the pages due to needing them to not exceed a certain size, shouldn't we keep it from having the same trope listed multiple times?
Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.
Some people do list it as such, and some list it as a sequential list all on one line. I personally prefer the latter - it helps avoid the cascading bullet points that can be mistaken for Natter even when they're not.

This post follows this thread in Ask The Tropers: Hang on, can't link to specific threads. It's the thread by callsignecho, time stamp 04:16:39 PM 19th Jun 2011
I believe this has come up before - the question of whether or not characterisation tropes should remain on the main page of a work if a character page exists. I don't believe official opinion has ever been given, but someone has asked on ATT whether tropes should be moved, and a difference in opinion has surfaced. The following are the main arguments either way:
In favour of moving all character tropes off the main page to the character page
In favour of having all tropes on the main page, as well as character pages if applicable
That's the main arguments I think. I'm trying to be neutral here, but I support the latter case for the reasons stated in the above section. As this has come up before without a clear resolution, I'd like if possible for a formal policy to be decided on this so we can view the issue consistently going forward.
My name is Addy. Please call me that instead of my username.