Topic on Category talk:Characters

I'm getting really sick of this inconsistency. One of our rules is "multiple works need separate pages". Yet, what generally happens is that when doing a characer page for a certain work of a series you get tropes for all works where he character appears, not just for the work of the main page. Not to mention people only do profiles for new characters, and not for the old characters.

My suggestion is that you when create character pages for new works, it doesn't matter if the character appeared on a previous work, you create a profile for him and fill with tropes they have on the new works. And if they have new tropes in those new works, you don't go back on the character profile on the old works and put those tropes there.

I'm also suggesting this so spoilers can be consistent. Series-wide character pages can't agree on what is a spoiler or not. Honestly, I see series-wide character pages as a lazy job of someone who did not want to creae individual pages for every work. I dunno what to do with them, bu in favour of at least excising tropes from hem entirely, so only works and creators page get tropes. Series pages aren't either.

"Honestly, I see series-wide character pages as a lazy job of someone who did not want to creae individual pages for every work."

...or they acknowledged that it would probably be a more sensible way of handling works with recurring characters as opposed to what's effectively busywork consisting of a copypaste job across multiple works. Not to mention it's less arbitrary navigation the reader has to do when you keep a character's info on one page/set of pages. It'd be also worthwhile to remember that ATT forked from TVT at a time when the latter was in a lot of organizational disarray compared to current times.

Anyway, tagging active editors and mods so they can weigh in as well:

@Robkelk @Looney Toons @GethN7 @HeneryVII @GentlemensDame883 @Goo Monster @Utini501 @Blakegripling ph @BeesFan12

My immediate thought is that series-wide subpages belong on Franchise pages, and should deal with elements that only exist in all works of the franchise. Lyrical Nanoha is a pretty good example of how I think it should work.

That's the rule of thumb for franchises. Everything that's common to every installment on the main franchise page (or appropriate subpage), and those specific to a particular work on that work's page. We should probably decide on guidelines for edge cases -- like characters that appear in more than one franchise work, but not in all of them. At what percentage of the franchise do they get promoted to the main franchise page?

Yeah, probably a good idea to get ahead of that.

I agree with Robkelk and Looney Toons, that seems to be the best course of action. Definitely the most convenient, since I've been at a loss for how to handle a character page that I created but stopped tinkering with due to running into this kind of issue.

I prefer having a franchise character page so as to avoid unnecessary redundancy for recurring characters. If they first appear in a certain instalment but make further appearances later on, I think they can be kept on that work's page.

So let's say that once a character, concept or trope appears in.... how's one-third sound? one-third of the works in a franchise they go to the franchise page/subpage instead of the work's page.

Thoughts, objections, alternate suggestions, anyone?

@Labster @Looney Toons @GethN7 @Robkelk @QuestionableSanity @Derivative @SelfCloak

One-third of a trilogy is a single book, and then we'd be back to having all of the characters of a trilogy listed on the franchise page. Which might or might not be what we want, depending on the trilogy.

I'd be hesitant to give a fixed fraction. If we need one, I'd say one-half at a minimum, and possibly more.

Fair enough.