What goes to Character Sheets?

Since it keeps being asked, I'll start. See this post and this post for details.

How to Create a Character Page needs clarification of what goes into Character Sheets. So far commonly:

• Characters/ pages shouldn't be made until the work page is sufficiently large (but smaller than the too-long limit).
• The format is Folders for characters, headers for groups, not the other way around.
• Ther eis no need to subpage a Characters/ page unless there's a too-long warning, Loads And Loads Of Characters or Character-Specific Pages.
• Base:
  • Folder name should use their most known name. No spoilers. If the name is a spoiler, then a pseudonym should be used.
  • Description, even if it's one sentence. No spoilers. If it gets more than 2-3 paragraphs, it's a bad sign of recap slipping.
  • Trope lists. Tropes should be relevant to characterization, one-time occurances should remain at the work page.
• Optional:
  • The header can list the full name and secondary names.
  • Portrait. About Images and Copyright still applies.
  • Caption. Should not have references to unrelated works.
  • Quote.
• Trivia:
  • Voice actors
  • First Appearance
  • Every other appearance in a multi-work franchise
  • Artist
• Gameplay biodata
  • Character stats
  • Class
  • Affiliation
• Profile biodata:
  • Age
  • Birthday
  • Blood type
  • Likes
  • Spieces
  • Plot counters

The rest of the thread can be used to hash that out.

Edited by Amonimus on Oct 30th 2023 at 8:58:48 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

So just in case, this specific Wiki Talk might help updating the How to Create a Character Page administrivia page again and reviving the Cleaning Up Lengthy Character Descriptions project?

I for one, am fine with the need for a project to clean-up lengthy character descriptions by the way... Some works have already been affected by the existing clean-up thread (the first ones that got hit by it are character pages of Gacha Games like Fate/Grand Order: Merlin)... It would be unfair if only one specific work page, or only one "type" of ficition (Gacha Games) are affected.

My own ATT query and the month-long kerfuffle on "character descriptions" from Honkai: Star Rail do indeed prove that tropers have debates on how "short" or "long" character descriptions should be.

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I'll try continuing from where I left off from the "Cleaning Up Lengthy Character Descriptions" project.

There is a good reason for a "Character Description Clean-Up" project like this to exist, yes. But honestly, this specific debacle shouldn't have escalated if this thread didn't cut all "biodata", because there can still be justifications to keep at least some lines from them.

How exactly does "pinging" work invite a troper here again? How do we invite multiple tropers to participate "again"? Several other concerns (which are not mine) have been raised by multiple tropers in response to the original ATT query and the "Cleaning Up Lengthy Character Descriptions" project.

~Hello83433, there has to be some detailed guideline on character pages first... There are still plenty of things that needed to be clarified in this thread's pinned "guidelines", and in the updated part of the How to Create a Character Page administrivia page. If you know how to suggest creating an entirely new administrivia page like What Should Be In A Character Description, it will be appreciated... because we don't know where to start writing a draft or suggesting edits for one.

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Yeah, we could start off by looking at this thread's pinned "guidelines", and in the updated part of the How to Create a Character Page administrivia page.

Though I may have to split my later replies into multiple comments as they may end up a wall of text if lumped together.

Edited by DanteVin on Nov 1st 2023 at 3:25:42 AM

With Great Power, Comes Great Motivation

For crossover works, the work of origin should be permissible under Trivia.

~ @ / {{ Username }}.

Also nobody is arguing that the cleanup isn't needed, cuz duh it's needed, the point is that we can't cleanup if there are disagreements what to cleanup from. This thread is for those guidelines.

As I've mentioned there, if the info doesn't help with tropelist or Wiki Walk and can't fit All There in the Manual or other trivia, flat no from me, but I saw that's not a popular take.

Edited by Amonimus on Oct 30th 2023 at 9:05:24 PM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup

I'll reiterate what I once said under another thread:

At minimum, if the work has an official "biodata/profile" for characters, then this site can simply pick them up & put them here wholesale

Any "extra" information can be added to said section as long as it's 1) relevant and/or 2) not delving too "deeply" into the work, i.e non-fans can understand what they're referring to

^ Wouldn't it be plagiarism to transplant them wholesale?

Anyway, I don't have a major horse in the race; personally I just want everything to be relevant to the purpose of a character page, which is, to describe how the character is written in the work and provide character tropes to shrink big work pages. I can be persuaded on some things being relevant to narrative and tropes, though a lot of it wouldn't be, and I'm of the opinion that we shouldn't go too far out of our mission.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

First off... How do you define the line between "Optional" and "Trivia" on the pinned comment? Seems like there are some "Trivia" items that can also be "Optional", depending on the circumstances.

For example... I agree with the decision to make "Actors" included as a part of a character information/description (it helps one crosswick the work into an existing Creator namespace page, after all)... but there has to be a disclaimer that some pages on this wiki actually discourage listing the "real-life" actor behind a fictional character. Virtual YouTubers' pages are one of them, and their own Cleanup Thread may have already covered it along the Real Life Troping issue that VTuber pages had, IIRC.

Edited by DanteVin on Nov 1st 2023 at 3:02:04 AM

With Great Power, Comes Great Motivation

It's not "some pages". It's a wiki-wide rule, not one that's selectively enforced depending on where you are. We shouldn't need to put up notices. People should just know the rule. We don't discuss things that don't have anything to do with the narrative; the V-Tuber stuff is just attracting special attention, but this applies to any creator.

...In practice it's been a bitch to enforce, though.

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 31st 2023 at 3:03:46 PM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Not being part of the original discussion, I feel like "profile biodata" should only be listed if it's actually relevant to the work. Something like "blood type" seems like it might only be worth noting if it's, say, a show about vampires. Age and species are the only things that come to mind, from that list, as universally worth noting, with likes and "plot counters" (whatever those are) possibly joining them if they aren't redundant with other tropes, and birthdays possibly being relevant separate from age in select works.

If there's an official source that lists that kind of trivia, that's for those sites to list. TV Tropes is not a place to list every bit of minutia that an official resource or fan wiki might list for a character; that's for those places to get into. TV Tropes is supposed to be about tropes.

I think the point was about not listing the actor's name at all, which is of special importance to VTubers because of the importance of kayfabe there. Not engaging in real life troping is a universal rule, but outside of VTubers it's generally standard practice to just mention who plays a character.

Edited by MorganWick on Oct 31st 2023 at 12:10:22 PM

There's a need to elaborate on the "Portrait" part, or character images.

I mean, if the "Description" part suggests a range of 2-3 paragraphs, then with the "Portrait" part... how many character images are allowed at most? What I noticed is that, around the time Gacha Games have been recently brought up as one of the fictional works on this wiki that need to have their "character descriptions" checked, as per the debacle on the "Cleaning Up Lengthy Character Descriptions" project, ~Mrph1 have also started going around the discussion tabs of character pages for Gacha Games, and creating some Image Pickin' IP threads for them.

Might as well have a note that "if there's too much gallery of images within a single character's folder/page, it may be worth opening up an IP thread to keep only the relevant images".

If there's an existing Administrivia guide that can be linked to justify limiting the number of character images, it will be helpful too.

I understand the reasoning behind ~Mrph1's actions, Gacha Games and Long-Runners in general indeed have the risk of containing an ever-expanding gallery of images for as long as the characters are receiving multiple "outfits".

Edited by DanteVin on Nov 1st 2023 at 3:26:44 AM

With Great Power, Comes Great Motivation

...Well, I think it was more or less decided that TVT shouldn't play into Kayfabe and that mentioning their names should be entirely OK. So people deciding house rules for V-Tubers are going against the rules (which is why it's such a hot button issue on the V-Tuber Cleanup Thread), and again this just needs better enforcement. But I digress.

I also lowkey hate the extra images that are just "character in different clothing" because it's like... why tho

Edited by WarJay77 on Oct 31st 2023 at 3:20:44 PM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

One very specific page where I wonder if it's necessary to specify a max number for "character portraits" (or leave them as is) is the Characters.Granblue Fantasy Gran Djeeta page... which has like 28 character portraits currently, most are hidden within "notes" that have to be manually clicked to display each portrait.

~Mrph1. I mean if you've already started making IP threads for Honkai Impact 3rd, and Arknights, you'll go over this one Granblue Fantasy page too?

With Great Power, Comes Great Motivation

First of all, as the person who removed the biodata for the GI and FGO pages, I'll like to apologize for that.

Second of all, if we are going to keep the biodata, then I would rather have us at least cut anything listed within the profile data section within the front post of this thread if it isn't relevant to the work in-question, as well as anything that won't make sense to non-fans of a work (like the FGO Command Cards). Everything else are stuff I feel like can stay though.

Also, if we are going to bring-up extra images, then I feel like all of the FGO ascension pics (and possibly the costume pics as well) can stay, but I can see an argument for removing Anniversary CE pics, and the April Fools pics.

BTW, please call me Jake.

It's one thing if alternate character outfits are purely cosmetic (e.g., Arknights, Fate/Grand Order, Genshin Impact), which I don't mind being expunged should the time come. Alternate outfits tied to a character's different gameplay styles, however, is its own can of worms (e.g., Granblue Fantasy, Fire Emblem Heroes, Honkai Impact 3rd), and probably needs a more careful treading.

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With regards to biodata, which were among the things axed during that... uh, contentious cleanup period, I could advocate trimming them according to context of a given work.
For example, for sports manga/anime (e.g., Slam Dunk, Haikyuu!!, Hajime no Ippo, Captain Tsubasa), I guess we can accept their jersey number, position, boxing stance, nationality, etc., with height and weight as optional details.
For idol franchises (e.g., The iDOLM@STER, Love Live!), while I am not too familiar with the Japanese idol culture, a few recurring "important" details seem to cover each idol's birthday, height, weight, and BWH.
Concerning gacha games (arguably the lightning rod for the contentiousness of the earlier cleanup), because they often have dozens, if not hundreds, of playable characters (or at least alternate playing styles) which are being constantly added, there are many valid methods of sorting them out. Right now it is most preferable to do so according to their position in the narrative, of which I am strongly in favor, but even I acknowledge it isn't always feasible, thus we can always fall back (entirely or as an auxiliary) to certain in-game criteria, such as rarity, element, weapon type, or combat role, which I can call "quasi-metadata" (to which story-based sorting also counts) because their promotional materials and/or official social media accounts often readily inform players of such details. Should the sorting order change, the old criterion can always be demoted to, and the new promoted from, the biodata section, which under the current setup would've gotten the boot (and thus risks confusion).
IMHO, whenever possible, deciding which biodata entry is to be retained, and which to eliminate, should be an internal affair discussed among the people deeply involved in a given work.

Edited by zero5889 on Oct 31st 2023 at 7:43:19 PM

Slowly losing my mind, Bocchi-style.

With mod-hat off -

Multiple images on Characters pages isn't just a game issue. We've had quite a few comic threads as well (Thor, Venom etc.) as they have the same tendency to try to show every costume variant.

The two IP threads were raised because they were spotted while looking at other things, not because there's a concerted effort to put game pages through IP. And IP has a 60 thread limit and is busy enough that we wouldn't be able to cope anyway...

The Arknights thread is because the two images for each character are nearly identical and that raised a question as to what, if anything, the second one adds to the page.

The Honkai Impact 3rd is because of the sheer number of images for some characters (10, in one case). Again, a lot of them are the same art and pose with costume or palette changes.

Are you referring FGO ascensions as well or just costumes? Because if we going to keep just one FGO ascension outfit, I feel like that would open a can of worms as well due to how different ascensions can provide characterizations (Like compare Oberon's first ascension to his third ascension), and a character's "default" ascension can varied between servant-to-servant if they even have one to begin with.

BTW, please call me Jake.

I don't have a lot of time at the moment with the holiday, but what I will say is that there have been other ATTs which have brought up this issue and the ruling was the same — that biodata is too far into the trivia category for it to be in a character's description — so there is some precedent. [1] [2]

Even in DanteVin's most recent ATT, there were people aside from myself that had also voiced support in cutting biodata.

(I also swear there was a forum thread, but I can't find it at the moment)

As for the image issue, I'd be fine if we had a limit (like, idk 3 or 5?) for each character and then the multiple images would be used to show other forms (like a shapeshifter or a boss) or appearances in which there's a major difference in the character's appearance whether that's a completely different costume or so much time has passed.

CSP Cleanup Thread | All that I ask for ... is diamonds and dance floors

Ascension artworks from FGO are fine IMHO, though I cannot speak for the others.

Slowly losing my mind, Bocchi-style.

~WarJay77

Re:plagiarism: if it's straight from the work (i.e official) then I don't think it's a bad thing? (If it's from, say, Fandom or other fansites then it really is plagiarism)

As for char images, my 2c: I can go with removing "costume images" that are just cosmetic. Some images that actually have gameplay (or story) relevance can stay though.

Even if it's biodata? It's the most basic info of a character and it's hardly meant to be a "creative writing"...

Should we require crediting/citation for that?

Edited by Ner0014reN on Oct 31st 2023 at 6:09:44 AM

Some more questions for now...

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Edited by DanteVin on Nov 1st 2023 at 2:24:58 AM

With Great Power, Comes Great Motivation

Not sure about the first two points, but regarding the point regarding a character's theme song, I feel like theme songs could be cut. Like Persona 4: Arena and BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle have theme songs for each of the playable characters, and none of their theme songs were listed in the biodata, so it's kinda inconsistent. If someone wants to find-out a character's theme song with this wiki, they can just try to find a Leitmotif or Image Song entry here.

BTW, please call me Jake.

For gacha games that list their writers, like FGO, I believe that crediting them should be listed under relevant biodata.

Edit:

Illustrators are also incredibly important. I have no clue why the illustrators were purged when they are relevant biodata.

Edited by Mewaddlee on Oct 31st 2023 at 2:57:50 AM

"If brevity is the soul of wit, then I simply have no soul." He/Him