Question about Character Sheets

"you did try to enforce another personal policy"

If you mean "that these are allowed", that's an actual policy, not personal. It's not subjective to say "there isn't a rule", when there isn't actually a rule.

Er, I made no reference whatsoever to things I think should not be on main pages. It is POLICY that JBM, WMG and Troper Tales not be on the main page, and any references to any of them should be nuked or moved to the right namespaces on sight.

In any case, none of them are actually tropes. The character sheets do contain tropes, and I believe there should be one page which contains every trope in the work. Recap and Synopsis are also not namespaces for tropes.

I'd say that NGE shows that some works do require separation, because IIRC the NGE main page broke due to the length. We split pages that are too long anyway, and how we do it is done on only one fixed basis - what is appropriate for that page. In NGE's case, that meant the character tropes. I see no reason however why that one example means character sheets need to become mandatory for all works with character tropes banned from the main works page - in the infinite majority of cases it isn't a problem, and splits by things like series work better if the page is too long.

In full they say "Hi. We have in depth descriptions but no trope list..."

"...except when we have stub-like descriptions and trope lists, or in-depth descriptions and trope lists, or no actual trope list, but a format that makes it clear that one is expected."

My experience with Recap/ pages is that they're more likely to have trope lists than not (though this may very well be biased, as it seems to vary a lot with series).

My experience is with the Doctor Who ones which always seem to be plot descriptions (potholed at relevant points). It is called "recap" after all.

It's been recently suggested by multiple people in a couple on this threads on this forum that, when a page gets too unwieldy, character tropes should be mostly moved to the namespace, and that pointers to the recap pages should replace episode descriptions on the name page.

Signal To Noise Train Wreck was the agreed formulation.

Agreed by whom? You and Triple Elation wrote the page, but I've not seen a moderator or admin give a view on this issue, and I don't trust policy decisions made by those who aren't them.

Look at the thread, and you'll see that Meeble also explicitly agreed, after being on the opposite side of the discussion, and that none of the people on that side raised any objections.

As I said, 'it really needs some input from people who don't think there's a problem', before we can call it a site guideline, which is why I'm raising it now, since essentially the same issue as come up again. The more people who contribute, the better, and input from those of contrary opinions is particularly valuable. Only when it's got reasonably broad consensus, and admin approval, would we stamp it as official.

For now though, it's just a useful reference point when addressing these matters.

Look, we have the Recap and Character Sheet and Analysis subpages for a reason. Why do so many people seem to be dead-set against using them? They're there to be used.

If you want to write a detailed explanation of the entire plot of an episode, put it on a Recap page.

If you want to list the tropes that a particular character uses, make a Character Sheet.

If you want to go into how well or badly the work uses a certain trope or family of tropes, that's what Analysis pages are for.

If you want to explain why you think the work is good or bad, write a Review.

Use the subpages.

It's not a question of having character sheets, it's a question of having Character sheets being the only place for character tropes as opposed to the main works page.

I have no problem with duplication, and see them both as useful. All tropes a specific character is useful, as is seeing all tropes for a work on the one page. Some people are determined to only have the character tropes on the character sheet though, and that's where there's a desire for an admin/moderator view.

The other types don't actually contain tropes, typically, so aren't really the same.

I find that for works that have a good number of characters it's usually best to move everthing over to the characters sheets. Otherwise you end up with half a dozen sub-bullets explaining how the same trope applies to seven characters in seven different ways.

Or you could just list which characters apply to it, and save the details for each character sheet.

edited 12th Sep '10 5:56:22 PM by DragonQuestZ

That seems unnecessarily complicated. Anyone looking for details still has to look at the character sheet, making the duplication largely pointless, while it requires a lot of work from whoever is maintaining the page.

How would it be pointless or complicated? We could get the general information the main page and the detailed information on the character page.

Having all the tropes in one place sounds nice, but eventually becomes unworkable. Other considerations aside, pages can only be so long. Putting character tropes on a subpage, with minimal duplication, helps, and we can easily but a clear statement on the main page, in big bold letters, telling the readers where to look.

Likewise, using the recap namespace can avoid the example list filling up with things that only apply to one or two episodes out of two or three hundred, and also help keep the examples on the main page reasonably brief. Rather than describing the plot of an entire episode in an attempt to provide context for one example, introducing a lot of irrelevancies, we can just link to the recap. The Doctor Who recaps do all already have trope lists, a precedent which can be extended.

How does it become unworkable? That seems to be just another word to throw around.

For one thing, beyond a certain length, the parser starts choking on the page. That's why some pages had to be turned into namespaces in the first place. There are other disputable concerns, but even ignoring them, there is a limit to the size of page the wiki could handle, a limit some series are bound to come up against, if we try to cram everything about them onto one page.

But that hasn't happened for just trope lists. And even if it will, we simply find a solution then and fix the problem pages. Such things have been done before. The site is actually good about solutions for things like this.

Actually, it has already happened, and been solved. That's why we got some of the subpages in the first place.

edited 13th Sep '10 1:19:41 AM by robert

I repeat, with the trope lists, not the other things that were moved.

I don't really see how much use a trope simply being listed without some detail is. Character tropes in particular usually require some explanation to mean anything. And requiring duplication makes editing more work. You're going to have people editing only one page, requiring someone to add it to the other, and others seeing the work involved and deciding against adding a legitimate example.

The other things that were moved were moved from tropes lists too. There were works that had accumulated long lists of Nightmare Fuel or Just Bugs Me examples, which got swept away to the subpages, part of the reason for their creation.

Treating character tropes likewise, where warranted, is no different, nor should duplication be a problem. A page popular enough for this treatment is going to be on a lot of watchlists.

No, subjective tropes are different than character tropes. The latter are still objective. Heartwarming and Fridge Logic are not.

But that difference isn't the only reason why they were moved, or even the main one. They were moved to keep the main works pages down to a reasonable size, and sideline natter (and one of the reasons that's a problem is because it bloats pages). That a specific criterion was used that time, namely being subjective, does not mean that criterion is the only one that can conceivably be used to address the root problem,.

If a trope applies to only one character, I see no reason why the trope shouldn't be limited to that character's entry on the Character Sheet.

We may need a clearer note on main pages to send the ignorant to the character sheets for more.

Nate, if it applies to a character in a work it applies to the work itself. Many character tropes only apply to a couple of characters, I see no reason to expel them except in very rare cases lime Naruto which did break. But the server can handle more than Robert seems to be implying so it's really not a big issue in most cases.