Forum:Character information on novels, etc

Forums → Archive index → Panopticon archives → Character information on novels, etc

This thread has been archived.

Please create a new thread on the new forums if you want to talk about this topic some more.
Please DO NOT add to this discussion.

I have been creating article for character that appear in the NA stories. However, due to an error on my behalf (and I was correct by Skittle the Hog), I removed the character information that was on the NA page once the character article was created. In the MOS, it says that User may 'place information pertaining to characters that does not fit within the 'references' list. (Indent and bullet point by using :*)'

I actually see no point in doing this if the information is already been placed in the character's article. It's just duplicate information that is better of in the article page. We don't do it for television stories, so why for novels. It ultimately makes character articles a wee bit pointless IMO, as the information can just be put on story articles instead. Should the information on character not be removed, once a page is created for them? Mini-mitch\talk 17:10, March 15, 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I agree with Mini-mitch. Character pages are the best places for such information. Television stories and novels may be different media but the background info and whatnot which they convey as regards characters should be treated by this wiki in the same manner i.e. included on the character's page itself rather than the novel's pages. The same should apply for audio dramas, short stories, etc. GusF\talk 17:34, March 15, 2011 (UTC)

I think it's nice to have immediately interesting points like these on pages. The character pages Mini Mitch is referencing are no more than skeleton articles in that they are adapted from information of the novel's page. The problem with these pages is that people may assume they completely cover their topic...when they don't. Admittedly these "character points" are a bit unrestrained as shown by Happy Endings that seems to merely list the sexual encounters and preferences of the characters. I suppose it would be no great loss to lose them if you are strongly opposed to their existence. I removed them once before a long time ago but was told to resurrect them. It's nice to see it being discussed.----Skittles the hog--Talk 19:52, March 15, 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I get it! We're talking about additional subpoints about the characters in the character listings. I've been puzzling over this one for a few hours now. Yeah, if we take Happy Endings as our "model", we can easily see how sloppy this "habit" looks, I think. I've always hated seeing pages like this. I think the characters section should be a straight listing of the characters, period. The li'l subpoints are usually interesting, but they totally belong on the character page, in my opinion. I hate how they're done in such a lazy, ungrammatical way like:

• Bernice Summerfield
  • is getting married to Jason Kane

Seriously, guys, bullet points are usually lazy anyway, but this is just the height of bulletpoint madness. Uncontent to let bulletpoints destroy the good, old-fashioned paragraph, we now have moved on to destroy sentences with them. But even if the bullets failed to slice sentences in half, I really, really, strongly, completely feel that these annotations should be specifically outlawed by the MOS. As GusF so concisely puts it, above, "We don't do it for television stories, so why for novels."
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 20:37:44 Tue 15 Mar 2011 

Exactly. I also agree that bullet points are lazy. I actually find it more enjoyable to write in paragraphs rather than separating my points with an unimaginative dot.----Skittles the hog--Talk 20:47, March 15, 2011 (UTC)

I seem to recall two reasons behind the existence of this; that given the prose format these bullet points allowed readers to understand the characters better within the context of the single novel (given there are no actors to draw inflection and body language info from). And also this was to put information that didn't really fit into the "References" section. But this was back when we had less categories and therefore less sub-headings for the references section to organise stuff.

The bullet points are useful to state 'of the moment' information about a character in that novel which may be lost in a larger article. In this situation I think they still serve a point. But should it be decided they need to go, I think the information needs to go somewhere, not just deleted, either placed into the references section or onto dedicated pages.

I've also started a semi-related discussion which sort of feeds into this need to have extra information on the page Forum:Should novels & audio stories have a plot description?. --Tangerineduel / talk 14:32, March 16, 2011 (UTC)

I suggest that we create pages for these characters and the information that is bullet-pointed under that character's named is written up on the character page. We can then removed the bullet-points under the characters name. Until a character page is created, the bullet-points stay where they are.Mini-mitch\talk 16:19, March 16, 2011 (UTC)

Sometimes they can be quite interesting, as shown by Human Nature (novel), though obviously its one way or the other.----Skittles the hog--Talk 20:10, March 25, 2011 (UTC)

All of those on the Human Nature can be integrated into the references section. --Tangerineduel / talk 13:26, March 28, 2011 (UTC)