Self-Demonstrating Character Pages

Agreed. I miss the Groot page that I created (it got a lot of attention), but I should have known to stop there.

I think Groot's page should be restored. His form of Pokemon Speak is unique among the other Marvel characters, he has a distinct personality and backstory, and he's said other things often enough to spice up the page with some gags ("I AM HELP! SEE GROOT HELP! GROOT AM....ow" etc.) Plus there aren't 500 versions of him as there are with Pokemon.

No. Main articles should not be self-demonstrating. Make one in the Self-Demonstrating namespace if you want.

He was talking about the Self Demo namespace, I think.

The last page we had was an endless repeat of "I am Groot", by the way. Too lame for my liking.

@Fighteer: I was indeed talking about the Self Demonstrating namespace. Like I said before, the idea of long, complicated ideas being communicated through "I am Groot." would be funny, and could easily be done through footnotes. Plus he's said other things that could be used. I'd need to learn some more about making/restoring a page before I could do that anyway, though.

I recently discovered SelfDemonstrating.Captain Falcon. Is all that CAPS abuse really necessary?

That article says "This page is best read in the voice of Ryō Horikawa with a humorously exaggerated American accent"... I don't know who that is or what he sounds like. It is a SelfDemonstrating/ article, it is written from a first-person perspective. If Captain Falcon always shouts when he talks (and I don't know whether that's true), fine; but that sentence should make sense to a reader who is unfamiliar with the character.

edited 25th Apr '15 8:33:54 PM by rodneyAnonymous

No, he does not shout everything he says. I think that the caps are supposed to represent him being a Large Ham, but it's way overdone. In fact, that's a problem with the page in general - the self-demonstration is heavily Flanderized. I don't know much about Falcon's home series, but AFAIK he does not constantly talk about how manly and muscular he is.

I just noticed that PikaPikachu.Pikachu has been reposted. In the exact same version that got cut in 2014.

edited 26th Apr '15 1:39:05 PM by SeptimusHeap

So what you're saying is, you want a page that consists 98% of "I Am Groot", 2% Hulk Speak, and an entire normal page hidden in its own footnotes?

That does not sound like a great formula to me.

FFS, I've only been a contributor since August '14, and I feel like I've seen enough Pikachu SD pages to make an entire Pikachu Wiki...

edited 27th Apr '15 7:53:00 AM by SolipSchism

Self-Demonstrating character pages always annoy the bejeezus outta me. I get that they're probably fun to write, but the fact is that most Tropers aren't writers. They come across as extremely amateurish, and gratingly self-indulgent, and unless you're already familiar with the character, they're just off-putting. They at the VERY least need normal versions which are prominently linked in big bold print before the tomfoolery begins.

Aye-aye. This.

Also aye-aye.

edited 29th Apr '15 8:49:17 AM by SolipSchism

The "normal version" is the Main page.

It's based more on his Memetic Mutation portrayal as an overblown Memetic Badass than anything. In Smash, we only have a few Engrish quotes and the fact that he's a Hot-Blooded Large Ham to go by, and the page uses this as a basis and expands on it. His F-Zero personality would make for a fairly boring page.

edited 10th May '15 9:11:20 PM by Darthrai

On Captain Falcon, if he's kept I'm not sure all-caps is the best way to handle it. You could just use exclamation marks and get something that I think less blinds the eyes, though you wouldn't be winning any awards for prose. I have a similar problem with the Hulk page.

On an entirely different subject, earlier in the topic, which is now admittedly about a year ago, someone suggested creating a non-Self-Demonstrating page for The Joker. There's a big write-up at the Batman Rogue Gallery page, one far bigger than anything the rest of the characters have, so the core of the article is moreorless already written (ideally, I'd take it and replace the Rogues Gallery with a much briefer paragraph or two). It's also different enough from the current Self-Demonstrating page that it wouldn't end up looking like just a carbon copy.

Partly, I think it's a question of whether it's worth making a third-person set of examples. I'd be willing to take the task, given some time. If it is, then the Joker's example list would probably put the rest of the page to shame, and he'd probably just end up deserving his own subpage on the Characters list. It helps that the Joker also appears outside of the Batman series, and that there's also a Two-Face page.

Self-demonstrating character pages should not be based on Memetic Mutation perceptions of a character, especially not when that means taking one trait and flanderizing it to hell and back. It's just off-putting, especially with the CAPS abuse. If there's not enough to a character to give them an SD page, they shouldn't have one.

Motion to cut for those reasons.

The issue is that Falcon is not exactly like that in his actual F-Zero appearances(not even the Anime which includes the Falcon Punch). He's actually far more calm overall, and while he does like being dramatic at times, that's not all he does.

Smash only takes a few of his outlandish style moments and flanderizes it to "all he's about", which is highly inaccurate.

Another problem is that Smash is completely non-canon by default. The "most popular" version isn't much of a good way to handle this namespace, as it simply can remove any character for a more popular variant that comes along later. I think that it should be actually a bit more guided to only include characters who have a personality shown off in their home settings/universe. Even if it's not canon specifically, it's still believable for them within their own universe and is more accurate due to that. Pikachu's most known personality is in the Anime. He only has personality otherwise in the Manga and a slight bit in Smash(mostly based upon his anime appearance here). Falcon is a poor example of this. And some characters have almost none, and their personality is completely devoid outside of Smash. Not all will cut it for an actual page if he apply more guidelines.

But yeah, I support the guideline of "They need to have a personality to create this particular page within their home series, no matter what the media or spin-off". I think this actually makes us work for having a quality page better than just throwing in whatever. A huge issue right now is that pages don't have much quality because memetic mutation is overused to make the actual pages more than a real personality. It works decently for Falcon but only because his memetic mutation is specifically based around his personality, not just some silly action they're known for. If it was just the Falcon Punch, it would mean nothing. But his outlandish style is a real one that people know of and can recognize. But it's still inaccurate to how he acts in the F-Zero series.

You made some really good points there. I agree.

In any case, Falcon's one written quote in Smash wasn't in all-caps, so if the page ends up staying (because of what you mentioned about the Memetic Mutation being based on what's been shown of his non-canon personality), it's probably a good idea to convert it to proper capitalization (with some Bold Inflation for his name and the Falcon Punch).

edited 12th May '15 7:20:01 AM by Darthrai

The Falcon Punch in itself is entirely canon. It'd noted in GX's ending theme for him, and the Anime adaption is incorporated into the games as well. So that can easily stay.

But yeah, yelling/bold inflation doesn't help. Exclamation points are pretty useful though. Likewise, the original meme with the music playing during the Falcon Punch is from the F-Zero Universe itself.

Can we redirect the main and Comic Book redirects for The Joker to someplace other than his self-demonstrating article? I'd be willing to throw together a non-self-demonstrating version based on his coverage elsewhere.

While it's one of the less unfunny iterations of this meme, the problem is that people learn what's appropriate for T Vtropes by what they see. Having the main Joker article redirect to Self-Demonstrating gives the impression that this is an "official" way to represent characters in mainspace and encourages people to try and make self-demonstrating versions themselves.

We can keep the page, of course; the whole purpose of moving those jokes to their own namespace is that that lets us keep them for old time's sake. But I think it's important to ensure that it not get potholed by The Joker anymore, since I suspect that's what led to a lot of the abuse of self-demonstrating articles before.

(This also applies to any other self-demonstrating pages currently redirected from non-self-demonstrating space, of course; I think it might be worth establishing a general principle that a Just for Fun page should never be the target of a redirect from 'serious' namespaces.)

The other problem with having main pages point to self-demonstrating versions is that many of these characters are broadly-used enough to support their own pages; but with all the potholes pointing to their self-demonstrating version, that version is effectively "sucking up" all the Wiki Magic that would usually produce a normal page — people follow the link to there and expand the meme-joke version rather than working on a serious version.

edited 17th May '15 5:47:38 AM by Aquillion

If you can write a non self demonstrating page for The Joker, by all means do so. The reason we have this mess in the first place is because of the lack of non-selfdemonstrating versions.

Also, for future reference, here's a list of self-demonstrating pages that currently have a redirect from a 'serious' namespace...

Deadpool, which extends to every subpage and would be a mess to untangle...

Doctor Doom

GLaDOS

The Joker

Sinestro

Wheatley

Adam West (from Creator namespace.)

Dead Man (from Comic Book namespace, also linked from a Main disambiguation page.)

The Riddler (from Comic Book namespace.)

A few of these — G La DOS, Wheatley, and maybe Sinestro — might not be worth their own article, since they have almost no non-trivial appearance outside their home franchise, and only one version in that franchise; additionally, all of those characters have places on character-pages or character-subpages for their franchise. In those cases, would it make sense to point the redirect to their home franchise's character page instead? Characters/Portal and GL - Sinestro Corps seem like entirely valid places to direct them to me (and Sinestro is the first entry in GL - Sinestro Corps anyway.)

A special case: Magneto has a disambiguation between the character's self-demonstrating page and the comic book. The problem is that most of the potholes are to Magneto, the character; and the page currently instructs people to correct such links to point directly to his self-demonstrating article, which is probably not desirable. Presumably the Self-Demonstrating article used to be main, and when the namespaces were shuffled into their current form, there was no clear way to handle this one. I'm unsure what to do with this; we can't easily create a non-self-demonstrating Magneto page and point the link there, because the Comic Book namespace is taken. Is Franchise/Magneto appropriate?

The character page for X-Men just links to his Self-Demonstrating version. Arg.

Also, since I went over them to make that, here are a few that appear awfully flat to me, although it might not matter as long as they're just in their own namespace:

Albedo Piazzolla

Fred Fred Burger

...they're full of Zero-Context Examples. In a Self-Demonstrating Article! Who puts a zero context example in a self-demonstrating article, let alone writing an entire self-demonstrating article composed of them? What's the point? Both also fail to provide enough details to figure out where the character is from if you're not already familiar with them.

Another odd one is Bum Reviews — it just reads like, well, randomness. I suspect it's an editor trying to mimic their style and failing.

edited 17th May '15 6:07:17 AM by Aquillion

I've also offered to make one, if you want. All I need to know is if it's worth taking his description on the Batman characters page and transplanting it or if it's worth making a new description from scratch.

edited 20th May '15 3:01:21 PM by Lavaeolus

I think Dio Brando needs a self demonstrating page. Just tossing that out there, I was so surprised he didn't already have one.

Dear god, Link has a self-demonstrating page now. Link of all characters. It isn't implausible for him to talk, but just like the deleted Pikachu and Charizard pages, it's a huge stretch to write entire paragraphs of dialogue for him, so I nominated it for deletion. Mario has one too, but at least he's had a few fully-voiced official appearances (most notably that Charles Martinet-voiced "interview").