Sandbox/How to Create a Character Page

I noticed we don't have any administrivia pages explaining how to make a character page, and we've got some really bad character pages. So I made a sandbox based on How to Create a Work's Page.

Any opinions or obvious problems?

I think an example character folder should be added to the page for visual aid.

Otherwise looks pretty good, if a tad excessive with rule reminders.

Especially since some of said "rules reminders" are actually recommending things that are against the rules. (Spoiler policy is the big one there.) Also the page is a blatant clone of the other one and didn't change some of the parts from it.

Discar, is it fine if I edit the sandbox to fix the obvious problems or are you still working on it?

I like the idea of putting up an example.

It otherwise looks really nice. Very clear on the rules with more than enough links to rulesets. This should make it vastly easier for users to read up on the various style rules and such.

After how awful many of the pages were, I agree with the immense amount of rules being noted here. It's a very difficult set of pages to clean up, especially with ZCE being one of the bigger issues alone.

Also agreeing with the amount of rules. The spoiler policy, ZCEs (or examples reliant on page images or other tropes supplying info), and even the English as the primary language thing get forgotten by new tropers. If anything I'd emphasize How to Write an Example since people often see a character with Elemental Powers and then proceed to incorrectly subbullet each power (or do that with Five-Man Band, etc).

The page overall looks like a great resource for Character pages, and linking to a few healthy existing Character pages would be enough IMO.

Yeah, the rule list should be that long.

The long list of rules was intentional; as noted, character pages have a lot of problems, so I wanted to emphasize the rules.

I'll put up some example folders, but should they be just generic Alice/Bob/Charlie, or grabbed from real character pages?

Alice/Bob/Charlie will do.

Agreed.

Okay, added generic characters. I can never tell if I'm putting too much or too little detail in this sort of thing, so I'd definitely appreciate someone else to take a look.

I went ahead and changed the Walking Spoiler part of the page to conform to the rules. I also changed some of the leftovers from when you copied it from How to Create a Work's Page.

Looks great, that could be helpful. I think one thing that is missing is that character pages usually display the actor/voice actor they're portrayed by, usually under the character's name.

Edited by BlackMage43 on Aug 18th 2019 at 4:19:26 AM

Well, tons of characters don't have that as well. Books, etc. But yeah, that's missing as a "optional" part.

Thanks for fixing the spoiler rules, Rallybot 2.

I put "actor" under there, figured that would cover "voice actor" as well.

Whoops, forgot about this.

Any objections to swapping it in?

Well, swapped it in. Other than the Administrivia index, where should it be wicked? Most of the pages it should be wicked on are locked, so I'll need to make another post in the thread, but that's fine. Just want to get them all at once.

I have a question, pertaining to something that I did over the weekend, that may need to be addressed in the rules. On this page, since there are nearly 100 tropes that fit multiple characters, I pulled those out into their own folders, with each character's examples for those tropes listed. However, after some discussion with the other mods, this may not have been kosher. My way of thinking is that this is more efficient from an organizational standpoint and eliminates unnecessary redundancy. What do you think? Is there another thread that this question would be better suited to ask in?

At least, the multiple characters folders could be moved to be above individuals so they're seen first by the reader. The section is sort of like pages with "tropes pertaining to the organization" folders followed by the characters in the organization (except they don't all apply to the organization).

They were above them, originally, but I moved them below thinking that establishing the characters would be more important so the references are more clear. I'm good either way, but it needs to be clarified whether this is a correct procedure from the get-go.

If there's a trope that applies to multiple individual characters, isn't the thing to do to put one entry under each character? Or just put it on the main page, if it's a particularly pervasive feature of the work?

I've always preferred to put tropes that apply to multiple characters on the work page, but that's just me...I don't think that's codified anywhere.

As discussed with Willbyr privately, it's a question of organization and clarity vs redundancy.

If a trope applies independently to multiple characters, such that each would have a distinctly written example, then it's fine to list those examples with each character. It's where someone would expect to find them, and there's no improvement to organization to write them all together, as they'd make multiple bullets anyway.

If a trope example applies collectively to multiple characters or to a defined group of characters, such that there would only be one bullet for it, then it should be put on the main page or in a portion of the Characters subpage dedicated to the group in question.

If you think about it, this follows the principle of Clear, Concise, Witty by having "one example per example".

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 17th 2019 at 9:40:13 AM

I would say that having multiple instances of a trope spread across a page is the complete opposite of "concise".

I guess the fundamental question is, should Character pages be treated the same as work pages when it comes to organization of tropes? If every trope on any given Characters page was rolled back into its work page, and there were tropes that applied to multiple characters "independently [...] such that each would have a distinctly written example", the trope itself would still only be listed once, with the individual usages noted either in paragraph or bullet form depending on what would work best. There's a conflict in consistency, and if we're going to have codified guidelines for creating these subpages, we need to establish how the content will be handled.

Edited by Willbyr on Sep 17th 2019 at 9:49:15 AM

In the sense we are talking about, each character section is like a mini work article. Each characterization trope that distinctly fits a particular character can have an example in that character's section. Don't think of this as one giant article that's split into discrete chunks. That way lies madness.