Self-Written Articles?

I'm noticing this more and more: fictional characters are writing their own articles on TV Tropes. I'm all for welcoming these individuals, and I think we should honor them by giving them their own index. A sub-index of Self-Demonstrating Article would do nicely.

Autobiographical articles include Dr Doom, Jonathan Crane, Lex Luthor, The Joker, Deadpool, and Sinestro.

edited 20th Jun '10 6:31:13 PM by SNES

I generally like all of the "fun" things on the wiki, but I generally find those bizarre and lean towards cutting them.

However, I have to admit to finding it it amusing when some troper created the Kafuka Fuura page as one of these, although that one predates the others by a while.

edited 19th Jun '10 7:00:36 PM by Jordan

Why do we even have a GLaDOS article?

Because people don't know about stopping wiki words and kept creating a redirect to Portal.

The Doctor Doom page is another one, and so much fun to write for!

Ok, that page is funny enough that I vote to continue to allow these.

They should all be killed.

I mean cut. They should all be cut.

Like self-demonstrating articles, some of them work. Some of them work very well. However, like self-demonstrating articles, many of them are trying so hard to be clever that they fail at making the information clear.

A character page should explain who the character is, what works they appear in, and which tropes they embody, use, practice, or rely on, as well as any tropes that they provided the trope namer for. The Doctor Doom one is one of the good ones. Lex Luthor is good.

G La Dos is a bad one. It assumes that, of course, anyone who's reading the page knows all about who/what Gla Dos is, where it came from, and in general, what the deal is.

Deadman is poor. The conversational style is difficult to read, and there are no tropes at all listed.

There's another thread like this lurking around, specifically about the Alan Rickman page, with pretty much the same opinions.

I don't think they should be cut. I mean, it'd suck if we got rid of the Deadpool article out, because I suspect it's one of the more popular pages on the site. The whole transition from third-person to first-person is mostly the work of one or two editors and could be easily changed back by someone if they dislike it or whatever.

A couple of them aren't very good. Like the Gla DOS one, but the Doctor Doom one is one of the few exceptions of these that are funny.

I just hope whoever's doing this doesn't do this to all the character pages. That'd just be overkill.

edited 20th Jun '10 8:14:39 PM by DocStrange

The ones that work tend to be the ones where the personality of the person shines through in their speech patterns. That's why the Joker and Dr Doom pages work and Alan Rickman's doesn't.

Personally, I find all the first person pages jarring and wish we didn't feel the need to be so quirkily expressive on the wiki.

I don't mind quirky if it is well done.

I think we need to lock either the Alan Rickman discussion or this one, it is like have a conversation in two different rooms with the same people.

I don't think they should be cut. I mean, it'd suck if we got rid of the Deadpool article out, because I suspect it's one of the more popular pages on the site.

The difference is, Deadpool is a magazine, a work. His is actually a work page disguising as a character page. Glados is a character. Ergo, it shouldn't have a page.

^ There Ain't No Rule that says characters can't have their own pages.

edited 21st Jun '10 7:55:37 AM by Superior

Rule 36?

edited 21st Jun '10 8:46:27 AM by Jordan

^^ There Should Be a Law

Characters should only get their own page (rather than being onthe Character sheets for the work they're in) if they are both widely used across many works, and vary according to what work they're in. The Joker qualifies, because he's not only a Batman character, he's shown up in numerous other, non-Batman titles, and the way he's portrayed varies wildly from psychotic Complete Monster to Affably Evil clown.

Gla Dos doesn't qualify on either count.

^ what this guy gal said.

EDIT: Thanks, Cid. Sorry, Madrugada.

edited 21st Jun '10 12:49:50 PM by GGCrono

Gal.

Same with anything innit? Can be done really well, usually done really badly, but throwing out the baby with the bathwater isn't the best solution to anything.

The Dr Doom page for example is excellent - and the character is himself (rather than a medium in which he appears) a Trope Namer. So I see no reason to object to it. The Joker, likewise as stated above.

G La DOS however is just plain bad, and I say that even as a Portal fan.

I think the one with G La DOS was the first, and it was Just for Fun, because people kept Wiki Wording her name, so someone wrote a few lines on that page, just to make it blue, explaining in Glados style that it is just a mistake page. Apparently, later when character pages became common, someone partially reworked it to be one of these and added an example list to it as well.

Just goes to prove: give people a meme and they run with it, often regardless of its applicability to the medium. Put another way, on a wiki or other public forum, existence is frequently taken as permission, in the absence of moderation.

edited 21st Jun '10 1:37:12 PM by Fighteer

G La DOS has been fixed in the obvious way.

It was created because apparently redirecting to portal wasn't good, so.... we've come full circle?