Question about Character Sheets

Trying to stick my head in here without getting it bitten off...

Forgive me if this was mentioned already, but why not have the BIG examples of character-tropes on the main page and the character page. For example, if one character had blue hair (or green hair, or neon yellow hair...), then You Gotta Have Blue Hair could be put in the character sheet for that character. Doesn't need to be on the main page.

However, something like Cursed with Awesome might go on the main page as well, if it were something major (like The Hero has been cursed to wander the world for a thousand years, but he's gotten awesome fighting skills from all the years of training) that affected the show greatly and/or is notable.

That said, if EVERY character in the whole (let's say anime) series fell under You Gotta Have Blue Hair, then that would go on the main page and the character page, where if one person was Cursed with Awesome that's something like "You can spontaneously generate pancakes. However, they all taste like anchovy" that's only mentioned a few times and is never used to any plot-significant point, then it could go on just the character page.

In short: If it's important or notable (or something the work is well-known for), it should go on the main page. If it's just a character trope that is used in the character but isn't that important then it goes on the character sheet and not on the main page

...So Yeah, that's probably all been suggested before. *shrug*

^ This is probably what's going to happen in practice, more or less. If show X "Loves this trope" or has the trope as a premise, the trope can probably go in the main page.

Spontaneously generating pancakes would be an outstanding superpower. Even if they did taste like anchovies. I love those salty little bastards.

I also agree with your analysis.

"Tropes that apply to the character also apply to the work."

With that logic, why do Character Sheets exist at all?

The reason Character Sheets were created was to shunt some tropes off a bloated works page.

Please explain your logic more thoroughly.

I thought the character sheets were to just note which tropes apply to a character in the context of the character. It would be the same information, but in context that different people want to see.

I don't see how offering more choices to see how the tropes apply (as long as they are legit of course) is a bad thing.

DQZ has it. Sometimes it's useful to be able to see which tropes specifically apply to certain characters without having to do a search on the character's name. But that to me should be choice. Much more often, I just want to see a list of all tropes in a work and would rather not have to go through several pages for it when it could all be on one.

edited 13th Sep '10 3:32:27 PM by AddyThePawnSlayer

All the tropes in a work would include all those already exiled to subpages, so seeing them all in one place simply isn't an option.

Why should they be exiled, and why isn't that an option? I keep getting to many what's and no why's.

It isn't an option because some tropes (which all happen to be subjective, though this isn't inherently required) have already been exiled in order to keep pages at manageable length and avoid needless duplication.

Part of the reasons involved, those, but those also were simply that those were subjective, and thus not properly in the work, just a judgment of the whole or part of the work.

True, but subjectiveness wasn't the sole reason either, which is why it's only the ones that mushroomed which got that treatment.

In there's a general feeling, or an admin ruling, that a page is becoming unwieldy, then it will get slimmed down. One way that can be done, without requiring new features or deleting anything, is exiling character tropes to the appropriate subpage.

But we don't just arbitrarily decide beforehand. There has to be a problem, and then identifying the best solution. You can't just declare this should be done when there isn't a need.

You don't wait until the building is on fire before building a fire escape.

It's pretty obvious now that some works pages will eventually become unwieldy - that's why the issue has been repeatedly raised on the forum, and why some of them have already received soft splits. Address the problem before it happens, rather than after, and we're rather more likely to come up with good widely agreed solutions.

You don't compare a site where just typing can fix things to a fire.

Robert - er, no.

Can you please tell me just what percentage, to the nearest 0.001%, of works pages are likely to become so huge that they break the server without removing character tropes? Or without subdividing more sensibly by things like series or individual entries within a series (for video games and films)? 200 tropes won't break the server, and I'd guess that at least 99.5% of works pages don't have even that many.

So far there have been perhaps half a dozen examples where it has categorically been a necessity to do so. In this case, the better maxim is quite clearly "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".

Subjective tropes are completely incomparable because for the most part they actively harm the Wiki. Just Bugs Me exists so as to eliminate Fridge Logic as a (non) trope altogether, ditto Wallbanger. Etc.

Why character tropes specifically anyway? If it's just because we already have a page type for it then create a request for setting, plot or whatever else and start trying to cut them out. Or don't, but if you don't you could do with explaining your irrational grudge against the character tropes.

edited 14th Sep '10 9:37:56 AM by AddyThePawnSlayer

Only 2 that I know of Negima and Bleach and those are kept watched over by watchdogs to no end on what goes where.

Rule of thumb I go by for those is if its about one or more charecters it goes there if its about an event or such its on the main page anything inbetween we talk about it.

Charecter pages for them are kind of treated like a profile.

edited 14th Sep '10 10:00:13 AM by Raso

"Only 2 that I know of Negima and Bleach and those are kept watched over by watchdogs to no end on what goes where."

BTW, I put those in folders at least.

But it might be good to split off any spin offs, adaptations, and other things, and move tropes specific to those if applicable.

I don't know making pages for each of the Negima spinoffs might be a little much since there are like 6 now and outside of 1 or 2 per charecter there are rarely spinoff only tropes (it would be mostly copy, paste edit out the manga examples... outside of Nekane, Makie and Zazie) and it wouldn't reduce the size really at all.

Err well now that I think about it, it would allow Motsu to have a charecter entry.

God that would be a lot of work.

Negima manga (Main Page) along with the OADs, Negima!, Negima?!, Negima!!, Negima Neo, Negima Babies (or whatever the title really is).

Also keeping the hate or the fandumb off the spinoffs

edited 14th Sep '10 11:09:27 AM by Raso

Addy, accusing people of being irrational doesn't exactly help your case. Besides, I've explicitly said the only reason I'm suggesting moving character tropes, in the currently rare cases when action is necessary, is because there's already somewhere convenient to put them - not because of any inherent property they have, let alone any irrational grudge.

To answer your questions, over time the number of such pages will tend to increase without limit. For most works pages, the number of examples is only increasing slowly, true, but that is all that is required. How the actual percentage will change depends on the distribution of page lengths, but for the kind we'd expected to see, the general pattern for the number above any given size is an exponential rise.

If you disagree, believing that size will never be a problem for the vast majority of pages, why do you care about the existence of guidelines for the rare pages that do need special handling? If such are agreed, it help when that situation does crop up, and it harms absolutely nothing.

The most fundamental answer is that we're (meaning Fast Eddie is) against hardcoded policies for most situations. When a page causes a problem is when it's time to decide what to do about fixing it.

Certainly the trend on the wiki is for an increasing quantity of examples. However, this must be measured against the general capacity of the site to handle the data, recognizing that if we do reach some sort of plateau beyond which a statistically significant number of pages begin to reach the site's limits, it makes more sense to upgrade the site's capacity than it does to take what are effectively arbitrary steps to trim pages.

Looking at it a different way, if you build every new page on the assumption that it will require splitting, and therefore force Characterization Tropes, Setting Tropes, etc. into subpages from the getgo, it will impose a much greater burden on the page creator and thereby discourage new articles. On the other hand, a page that's approaching the limits will by implication have a large pool of interested tropers presumably willing to share the work of repairing it.

I see nothing wrong with setting forth general guidelines on How To Manage A Large Article, but I can guarantee you that restricting examples on the grounds of perceived quality is not and will not ever be part of those guidelines.

'Restricting examples on grounds of perceived quality' is not being suggested, nor is 'building every new page on the assumption it will require splitting.'

All that is being suggested is that guidelines on How To Handle A Large Article would not be a bad thing. A potential starting point already exists, at Signal To Noise Train Wreck, and some of the same ideas have been raised in this thread, but all this does only apply to large articles, and it could never be more than guidelines.

As for what actually counts as a large article, server capacity is one consideration, but another is the proportion of people willing to actually read it end-to-end. That though is really a discussion for another time.

Robert, you have flat out stated that you want to stop it happening before it does, in other words, fixing it before its breaking even though the vast majority of the time it will never be broken.

You are saying you want to move the character tropes for the non-site breaking pages. You have done in this thread anyway.

Sounds like most of what we're talking about is already covered under Signal To Noise Train Wreck.

I still think having (most) character tropes only on the character sheets would be better. I like it when tropes are categorized.

Why should having it also on the main page mean the are not categorized on the character sheets?