Forum:Temporary forums/Relaxing the past-tense requirement: Difference between revisions

:: Personally, my views on real world leads are complicated.

:: In theory, I fully, '''''100%'' support them'''; I remember, a while back, trying to figure out what relevance {{iw|lotr|Radagast}} had in [[J. R. R. Tolkien]]'s original ''[[The Hobbit]]'' novel; so I went to [https://lotr.fandom.com/Wiki/Main_Page lotr.fandom.com] to look into the matter. The Wiki, being written in the same in-universe perspective as this very Wiki... completely failed to answer my question. This frustrated me, so I went over to [[Wikipedia]]'s [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radagast article on Radagast], where the answer was presented to me in ''the second sentence''.

:: Now looking at my problem, and how it applies to this Wiki, I cannot even imagine just how many times [[Not We]]s have come to the Wiki, looking for similar information, only to be disserviced and then going to other websites such as Wikipedia. This is why I feel we need more concise and easy to access, real world information present on all articles.

:: However.

:: I strongly '''reject''' the idea of having an "out of universe box" on the top of articles. '''''Just no.''''' With the tops of articles, they are already cluttered with templates like {{tlx|character stub}}, {{tlx|ImageLink}}, etc. {{tlx|You may}}, {{tlx|for}}, {{tlx|dab page}} are the worst cases of templates at the top of pages, and while their clunky appearance will be fixed if converted to hatnotes, these will take up a lot of room at the top of articles. ''And this isn't even factoring in @[[User:Bongolium500|Bongo50]]'s tab template for [[T:SUBPAGE|subpages]]!'' We absolutely do not need another template at the top of articles. Additionally, I feel being limited to just three sentences will remove any ability to write with nuanced details, or even if we want to include last regular appearance dates, multiple actors, or character retroactively named or conflated, etc. And this won't even allow us to say if the character we're talking about was only a minor character in their debut story but was expanded upon in later stories or adaptions. Therefore, the only possible soloution I see is to have completely out of universe leads.

:: This being said, it doesn't mean we have to completely redo every single article lead. I still feel they should contain a brief summary of their biographical details, but if it is to be done from an out-of-universe perspective we can, for example, talk about the conflicting accounts of the [[Eighth Doctor]]'s life with an additional layer of detail than something like "''Leading a life of great temporal complexity, the Eighth Doctor was so frequently involved in time paradoxes and parallel universes that it was impossible to know with certainty how the major epochs of his existence fitted together.''"; we can briefly detail Eight's main series (e.g. EDAs, DWM comics, Big Finish) and how they all intersect (and not) and then explain that certain stories (e.g. ''[[Zagreus (audio story)|Zagreus]]'') attempts to reconcile the discrepancies.

:: Otherwise, I agree with @[[User:Jack "BtR" Saxon|Jack "BtR" Saxon]] about implementing tenses on real world people pages and on pages about future releases. I am a little unsure about using present tense on pages like [[yellow]] and [[arm]]. In understand where this idea is coming from, and it does make sense, but on the flipside @Jack "BtR" Saxon does have a good point about potential confusion.  

:: If needs be, I can draft what I feel would be best for an out-of-universe lead. {{User:Epsilon the Eternal/signature}} 19:53, 6 April 2023 (UTC)