Real Life People Cleanup Project

Upon my daily routine of going through a Wiki Walk, I discovered yesterday that we have a page on Ron Paul.

Putting aside the question of just whether or not it's appropriate to have some of those tropes on a page for a real person, I'm more wondering why we even have a Ron Paul page in the first place. He doesn't make any works, and I know precious few places that have referenced him at all.

Also, I note that he, along with the pages for the various US Presidents, are on Main/. That seems a bit odd to me.

I guess the main question is, what are the guidelines for a page for a politician? Just how much of a profile do they need? I'd honestly be tempted to cut them all, but I could at least see the logic of allowing ones with an international profile (such as leaders of a country) stay.

I just worry that allowing pages for any politician that can get on a national debate stage would edge us closer and closer to dealing with political debates.

EDIT: Okay, after further discussion, standards have been made and this thread was moved from Wiki Talk to Special Efforts. Key points:

• Articles for Real Life historical/political figures belong in Useful Notes/. Any that remain in Main/ should be moved.
• To qualify for an article, a person must have a notable presence in fictional media. Per wiki tradition, we're applying a Rule of Three: there must be at least three examples of the person appearing as a character.
• The article for the person him/herself should avoid tropes about them as a person. It should only discuss tropes appearing in (a) their own work — speeches, books, whatever; (b) tropes appearing in fiction where they feature as a character.
• It should be written as a Useful Notes article. We aren't here to be dryly biographical; the point is to discuss fictional portrayals and how they relate to the real person. For the same reason, political soapboxing is absolutely verboten.
• If a person is better known as a creator of media than as a political figure, then they should have a Creator/ article instead.
• For people who have both a significant presence as a character and as an author, they should have both a Useful Notes and a Creator article for them, with Main as a disambiguation.

For purposes of determining trope worthiness, satirical depictions of the actual Real Life figure do not count. These would include depictions on shows such as The Daily Show or Saturday Night Live.

8/20/2012 EDIT: There is also a sandbox here. Please contribute both in evaluating those currently on there and any other nominees that you see belong.

edited 20th Aug '12 5:59:46 AM by 32_Footsteps

They are usually used like tropes. That's why they are in /Main/.

I really don't think they should be used like tropes. They aren't tropes, they're people, and they are only important to this wiki as they influence storytelling or show up as stock characters in media. I believe that all politician pages should be on Useful Notes.

edited 15th Jun '12 9:28:30 AM by Fighteer

And now, what of the corner cases of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan, who are not only well known politicians, but also have substantial backgrounds as actors. Would they be under UsefulNotes/, or under Creator/?

The Governator would go on Creator for his role as an actor. If it was found worthwhile to have a separate page for his political career, it would go on Useful Notes. Same with Reagan.

There's still the question of just when it would be appropriate to have a page for their political career. I can see the justification for Ronald Reagan, since he was President of the United States. But Schwartzenegger? I can see maybe a brief note about it on his Creator/ page, but I don't think that it's worth troping.

Right. Unless we're going to list every governor of the fifty American states, which we are not. We Are Not Wikipedia really applies here. If you want historical facts about a notable personage, go there.

Paraphrased:

"Schwarzenegger is an actor known for playing the Big Guy Action Hero in films such as Predator and an Implacable Man Killer Robot in the Terminator series. He later starred in Lighter and Softer fare such as Kindergarten Cop. He has also been governor of California."

edited 15th Jun '12 11:25:13 AM by Fighteer

So...split these pages between UsefulNotes/ for the politicians, Creator/ if they had careers in this sense, Main/ as disambiguations?

Works for me. Two small questions, though:

1. The trope list in Barack Obama - would that go to Creator.Barack Obama? (It's basically kayfabe, but for politics)
2. And Ron Paul - do we have a namespace for memes? He's basically one.

We officially do not like articles specifically for memes. The few that are grandfathered in should be held as the exception, not the rule.

Anyway, yes, Creator for their role in producing/acting in media, Useful Notes for their political careers, and Main as a disambig if needed.

With respect to Obama, I disagree vehemently with the notion that his (or any other person's) politically motivated writing is tropable, even in the spirit of kayfabe. I also don't like the idea of troping professional wrestlers as if they were real people, either, but that's a different topic.

I was only using the kayfabe analogy to explain the trope list - seemed very unnatural otherwise.

With Ron Paul, it's probably better to throw him to UsefulNotes/

And I notice that Politicians is already on the Useful Notes index, but not in the namespace.

Now, in other words, we just need a more thorough consensus to implement these proposals.

Let's put it this way - what are the advantages of specifically keeping a page on Ron Paul? I note that other, more likely Republican contenders do not have pages (and Mitt Romney, the actual nominee, is currently locked to prevent one from being added). Other candidates along the levels of support of Ron Paul (such as Lyndon LaRouche) don't have their own pages. Heck, going up the ladder, it's not like we have pages on vice presidents, various cabinet ministers, governors, appointed leaders of legislative bodies, or the like.

If the argument in favor of Paul keeping a page is that his followers tend to bring him up at every opportunity (which sounds like a Forced Meme more than anything else), I'm thinking we might need a page called We Are Not Know Your Meme.

The last idea seems promising, but it goes to another thread.

I actually mostly said that as a joke... though if there is an Administrivia page about how we don't want memes, that'd be a good redirect.

Subject for a different thread or not, 32_Footsteps is correct. We are not Know Your Meme and we are not Wikipedia. We aren't a reference source for Real Life stuff. We are a reference source for Tropes in Media. Everything else is surplus.

The Main namespace is for tropes, indexes, and disambiguation. Real people are not tropes. That's pretty much it, as far as I'm concerned. We can discuss rules of notability as far as they apply to Useful Notes, but there is no question that a political figure doesn't belong in Main.

edited 15th Jun '12 12:58:28 PM by Fighteer

Well, the main topic of the thread is to discuss the relevance of politicians and Useful Notes, so that's the question that should be looked at.

At most, I'd be willing to accept a page on a major country's leader for a given time. They do tend to get referenced a bunch, and I can see how it might be helpful, for example, for someone who wanted to understand just what Margaret Thatcher was like and why she was such a symbol during the 80's.

That said, I'm fine with cutting all of the non-creators from the wiki. Even the completely non-controversial ones like George Washington - I don't care how often he's appears, he's really just used as a Colonel Badass or a Four-Star Badass anyhow. I don't think they add anything in terms of cataloguing and understanding entertainment - Wikipedia does it better than us and, frankly, I'm fine leaving it to them.

I am also in favor of moving all Real Life politician articles to Useful Notes. Always kind of found it strange that they weren't, to be honest.

Regarding when we should or should not have pages for a given politician: I think that at least the current or notable former leaders of major countries should have a Useful Notes page, since they're likely to actually be mentioned in tropable works. We don't have to go all Wikipedia on them, but we can at least give a summary of some of the more notable points. For American presidents, say, you would probably want Obama, Bush 43, Reagan, both Roosevelts, Lincoln, and Washington, as well as maybe other recent ones. I'm not sure I like 32 Footsteps' implication that once a president is done, we don't need an article on him anymore–after all, the works mentioning that president haven't ceased to exist, and isn't Useful Notes supposed to be about understanding how Real Life subjects are handled in media?

We do, in fact, have pages on every U.S. President. Behold. (It probably needs to go to the Useful Notes namespace too.)

edited 15th Jun '12 2:01:19 PM by TotemicHero

My implication isn't that we don't need a page on a president when they're done. I'm directly saying (not implying) that we don't need them at all, even when they're in office.

I could deal with keeping the top office holders past and present, but I'd still prefer to leave that to Wikipedia.

And why is the United States the only country to get the "every President" treatment?

Because they're the only ones the tropers have bothered to make pages for. If you or other tropers want to make pages for non-US politicians that show up in fiction often, go right ahead (assuming we keep the ones for US Presidents), though they should of course focus on how they're typically portrayed in fiction.

Partly troper inertia, and partly being mainly created before the whole namespacing issue really became a major concern.

Well, where to put Real Life people that aren't creators is a legit question, but the main one still stands - should we have those pages in the first place?

I've put my reasoning forth. Any other thoughts?

Well, they may appear as Historical Domain Characters. And I certainly think that pages on some HDCs is reasonable. Abraham Lincoln, for example, is a character in probably thousands of works, if not tens of. Useful Notes is where I'd put 'em, at least for the ones we want to keep. But I also agree that having every US president is probably overkill.

edited 18th Jun '12 9:55:56 AM by Xtifr

I'd think that we should have Useful Notes on some of the more noteworthy presidents:

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and JFK all come to mind at the very least. Also, the more recent presidents appear enough in modern television series and web series to merit a page.

I don't think we need a page on Millard Fillmore or Rutherford B. Hayes though.

Here's the way I see it.

• Historical figures should always be Useful Notes pages.
• Public Domain Characters that are fictitious (like Dracula) don't count for the above.
• We need a general statement on Useful Notes and indexes of Useful Notes like The Presidents that we aren't here to document every single person in the world and to go to Wikipedia for that.

edited 18th Jun '12 10:02:00 AM by Fighteer