Self-Demonstrating Character Pages

Talk about taking a good idea and running with it beyond all reason.

That said, Link does talk in official appearances. They're just not canon. The CD-i games and the original Zelda TV Show. It's not any different from Mario either(and he does have phrases he says throughout the games, so he's more talkative in general).

However, he's known for being silent in general since his canon appearances are the most known, so I vote cut as well.

I think that the first thing that should be done is removing redirects to Selfdemonstrating pages! E.g. Deadpool redirects to Deadpool for no reason. While Deadpool and Deadpool have their own, non-redirecting, non-Selfdemonstrating pages. We do not have a writeup for Deadpool at the moment, but I think a good way to start would be removing the redirect.

edited 24th Aug '15 3:08:21 AM by Rjinswand

I really think these have gone too far. If the character doesn't have a strong enough personality to make a wiki page about them interesting then it's basically just first-person fanfiction being hosted on the site.

Compare the one for Mitsuru from Persona3 versus the one for Mojo Jojo from Powerpuff Girls—one is just a girl saying "I am Mitsuru and these are my tropes", and the other actually doesn't go far enough with his characteristic repetitive dialogue, the dialogue he repeats over and over, constantly explaining the point which he, MOJO JOJO, has already sufficiently explained. And since it's really a Just for Fun page we can go overboard with the repetition.

If the character has a strong enough personality to make the page fun, these can work and are pretty harmless. But it's gotten really ridiculous with pages of Cloud Strife saying "I'm Cloud, I had a Heroic BSoD" or "Fullmetal Alchemist" not even having the character's actual name or even any tropes.

edited 25th Aug '15 10:09:32 PM by Rotpar

I think the Brian Blessed page is a good litmus test for SD character pages—it's not just a page for an actor saying "I am Brian Blessed and these are my tropes", he's known for being LOUD and HAMMY and the page gets LOUDER AND HAMMIER THE LONGER IT CONTINUES, demonstrating his persona.

I personally think the namespace should be locked, preventing the creation of more of these until mod approval is given. This is assuming the article is written it up in a Sandbox first.

Also a clean-up effort is probably in order since this seems to be a recurring issue.

Imma throw the new Self Demo pages into the YKTTW Crash Rescue if they are fishy.

Do we have a "how to write a self-demonstrating page"? It could be useful.

Seems like rules creep to me, honestly.

Some self demo pages are under discussion here.

I posted this in the YKTTW crash rescue, but posting it here to get some feedback:

SelfDemonstrating.Mitsuru Kirijo.

This is bad. Really bad. And Persona 3 is one of my favorite games of all time. It makes no attempt at a unique voice for the character, the entries are just "This applies to me."

Some of which are hilariously out of character anyway.

Also, no one else has commented on the various Adventure Time SD pages (Ice King, Princess Bubblegum, Self-Demonstrating/Marceline, Simon Petrikov).

The Adventure Time ones should be cut for lacking a distinct voice.

edited 31st Aug '15 10:44:22 AM by Karxrida

Mind chiming in on the YKTTW Crash Rescue thread? My posts on them kinda have been getting drowned out so it'd be appreciated.

Alright, now that all of my Adventure Time pages have been deleted, its time that we check up on the other Self Demonstrating pages from top to bottom, and determine whether or not they will be deleted.

• Fullmetal Alchemist: Complete stub, does not feel like Ed at all, and makes no references of him being short, easy cut.
• Freeza: He seems to act like the Freeza I know but whether it is distinct enough depends on what you guys think.
• Jonathan Joestar: Vanilla page, not distinct enough, propose a cut.
• Kamina: He looks quite distinct and interesting enough, I suggest keeping him.

VideoGame.Deadpool needs a complete overhaul. I started it, but it's pretty drastic. Is there any way I can get some help?

We should make rules for Self Demonstrating before we have to nuke more pointless pages. No characters that have a boring speech pattern, no characters that don't speak, and no characters that speak nonsense.

edited 16th Sep '15 4:43:02 PM by hamza678

And no redirects from other namespaces. Please.

I found this thread after I noticed that the pages for Jin Kazama and Kazuya Mishima were deleted, and it looks like I found out why. Yeah, those pages were honestly kinda cringeworthy and they read like a normal article (just in first person), but then again I wonder if it's really fair for non-hammy or out-there characters that a character has to speak in a standout way to get a self-demonstrating page (they don't have to be overtly hammy to be interesting). Do we have some kind of "how to create these and not suck at it" page for this yet?

edited 28th Sep '15 6:48:20 AM by RavenKingSage

The more pertinent question is, "Why do we want these at all?" If the answer is "to have fun", then there still needs to be an underlying rationale to avoid every single character in every work getting a completely pointless self-demo page.

Also, there's been a problem of people using the self-demo page as the main article for that character, which is completely wrong.

I had to specifically remove a paragraph from ComicBook.Magneto because it implies that his self-demonstrating page is supposed to be the main one.

Seriously, there seems to be major misuse of Self-Demonstrating character pages of the "being treated as the main page"-type variety. The pages, themselves, aren't a problem. The problem is the sheer fact many tropers apparently think the Self-Demonstrating character pages are the main ones. Thus, they'll treat it as such, up to and including Potholing to those pages instead of the intended namespaces. And then there's cases where tropers had the idea to turn the intended namespaces into redirects for the self-demonstrating pages...

Ran across SelfDemonstrating.Sunset Shimmer, created Nov 16, on the untyped pages list. It has the bare minimum of 3 tropes, but not being familiar with My Little Pony: Equestria Girls or its follow-ups My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks and My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Friendship Games, I don't know if Sunset really has enough of a unique personal voice to justify an SD page for her.

Unless her voice drastically changed in My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Friendship Games, I don't think so.

SelfDemonstrating.Ike

Lack of distinctiveness of voice aside, I don't think that it's wise to have a Self Demo page on a character whose characterization is so controversially interpreted.

Yeeeeesh. Cut that. No distinct voice, and for some reason half the entries contest each other.

That's because some of them have to be Out of Character to bring up the trope (such as Badass) and others are about an element of his characterization that has been and still is in dispute with no clear answer (here's a hint, it starts with an "Ambiguously"). Yeah.