Referential Captions on Character Pages

so recently we've been having this conversation both in the caption repair thread and on ATT. it's time we dealt with this.

Characters.Kirby, Characters.Five Nights At Freddys, Recap.Fraggle Rock, and Recap.Avataro Sentai Donbrothers (and possibly other pages) have been given image captions that reference other works. the question is whether this should be allowed or not.

to me, this is a no-brainer. referential captions are regularly cut from work pages by the caption cleanup thread. character pages and recap pages should not be exempt from the rule. in addition, most of them are very bad, shoehorned references and even the ones that work rely on Fan Myopia. it's already a mess to clean up. furthermore, it's going to encourage people to add more bad captions to ensure that every character gets a reference whether it fits or not. if this is allowed to continue, it's going to be a source of nothing but headaches and unfunny "jokes".

i move to summarily cut all referential captions and prohibit them in any future cases.

I believe recently this happened with A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017) recap pages too. Can't remember if it was captions but it was something similar.

Anyway I agree that these captions should be cut as they are too likely to attract Fan Myopia and confusion.

Yeah, I agree more shouldn't be made either. Should've specified that I agree with that proposal as well.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Jul 30th 2022 at 3:25:05 PM

Gonna agree to axe the existing ones, and prohibit making more.

They're Fan Myopia magnets and detract from the overall page quality.

Couldn't we think of lines that match the characters? Maybe ones at least within the franchise? Case in point, Kirby characters getting lines from the anime?

within the franchise would be fine. memorable lines said by the character, or within the episode being recapped, are the ideal captions for those pages in most cases. we're talking about cutting the vaguely applicable pop culture references that don't actually have any relevance to the character or episode.

The issue being that not every character has a lot of lines though. Hence why I tried giving such lines from other franchises

Less can be more, if a character isn't really quotable, it's better to skip the quote entirely, rather than finding a sorta fitting line from a completely unrelated source.

it's better to have no caption than a bad caption, and referential captions are bad captions.

i think ive said all i have to say on the subject, at least until some more voices weigh in.

The best captions are direct quotes from the character or episode. The second best is narration, and etc. I think at least within the same franchise would be a good stopping line.

Also I don't like the "better than nothing" mindset. The website operates on quality over quantity, if nothing great comes up right away, just leavig it empty is always prefered.

Okay but, what about guest characters like Master Hand, who's a boss in a Kirby game. Wouldn't a line from Smash Bros. fit him well?

A quote from narration or an ingame source directly about Master Hand could work, but that's not exactly what people are talking about in this thread.

We're referring to giving characters quotes from totally unrelated works or characters just to fill the slot.

I get it. I just figured quoting Lifelight made sense for Master Hand

not even just to fill the slot; it doesn't matter if you genuinely think the caption is good and funny. if the referential pothole is necessary to make it good and funny, it's a bad caption.

I've replaced a few Fraggle Rock Recap captions with quotes and song lyrics from the episode, as I feel that is preferable to the "witty" captions. I still am stumped on what to replace many of the problematic ones with, especially on episodes I haven't watched in a long time.

Edited by AlmightyKingPrawn on Jul 30th 2022 at 11:00:25 AM

I do agree that captions should in practically every case be something like a character's official title or line they are known for. Though I do think we should not immediately dismiss them as unfunny, after all, humor is subjective. I'm mostly against them because who's to say that reference should be chosen specifically among other works, which is subjective in and of itself.

Characters.Interspecies Reviewers has an odd case where (most) of the captions aren't references to anything specific, but they are mostly jokes about the character, so I was wondering if they fall into this category.

i would say that's not as bad, as they aren't dependent on reference, but it would still be better to have them be quotes from or about the character.

it seems like we have consensus to cut the referential captions. im gonna give it till tomorrow, just in case anyone else does want to weigh in, and then start cutting.

Though it's near-unaniumous, for a wiki-wide action I'd be more comfortable to have even more people voting or have a mod opinion, since only 5 people explicitly said yes if I'm counting correctly.

Yeah, I don't think 5 people is enough for something that will effect multiple pages and caption policy. Do we need to do a crowner?

I personally don't care for captions in general but I think it more sense to source captions from the actual characters themselves.

Edited by MacronNotes on Jul 31st 2022 at 5:29:56 AM

i didn't think a crowner was necessary because so many people are in agreement (e: and also because cutting referential captions is already policy on work pages), but making one would get more eyes on this so we can be sure we have consensus, so if yall think it's necessary, go for it.

Edited by ChloeJessica on Jul 31st 2022 at 2:47:19 AM

"cutting referential captions is already policy on work pages" pls link to this policy for future reference. I've assumed this discussion started because it isn't.

Regarding the crowner, how to phrase it better? The more I think about it, the more is there to consider. For example on Trope pages have captions with music quotes and apparently people really like them as they are.

this isn't about trope pages. referential captions on trope pages are fine. it's just work page captions making reference to other, unrelated works that need to go.

i... actually don't know if the policy ia written anywhere. what i do know is that referential captions on main work pages are brought up frequently in the caption repair thread and universally get cut with consensus. i assumed it was policy because of that.

If referential captions on work pages are against policy, I haven't seen a mod say that and I can't find anything about it on the relevant Administrivia pages. I think it's treated as a valid reason to want to remove a caption as they rarely (if ever) done well but I don't think they are verboten as things stand now.

As for how to phrase the crowner, I thought we were only talking works and work subpages, not tropes.

Edited by MacronNotes on Jul 31st 2022 at 6:12:45 AM

I have never seen a specific policy on this point but I have no objection to setting a precedent. Referential captions on work articles and subpages add no value and are irritating.

Edited by Fighteer on Jul 31st 2022 at 6:12:26 AM

Probably because people just don't like these in general. And I may have missed the conversation was only for work pages and subpages.

Anyway, if it was made into policy, would a phrasing like that work out or have I missed something / too strict? What to Put at the Top of a Page and How to Pick a Good Image (this one has a section on captions) can be modified if needed.

Edited by Amonimus on Jul 31st 2022 at 1:23:49 PM