Marvel Database talk:Character Template

From Marvel Database

Moved the older (resolved) issues to the archive page which can be found here: Archive 1 (2006~2008)

Please make suggestions/comments below and any "ToDo's" in the "To Do List" section.

Template: To Do List

• Would it make sense to divide the "Affiliation" field into:
  

| Current Affiliation

| Former Affiliation

and have the template auto-categorize them as members (and ex members) of ... whatever? That way, no pointless makings of lists and stuff.

Roygbiv666 23:45, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

• Add Template:Tabs to the template. -- Hold off until the character names and such are updated and a consensus reached on how to approach.
• Power Bars???
• Add ToDo here...

Affiliations instead of Group affiliation:

I think it's simple and practical to use Affiliations instead of Group affiliation because sometimes a character is not associated with a group but only with a certain well known character. And other times characters are affiliated with a group and with certain characters. I found this format on wikipedia] and I think it's sweet. Copycat989 14:43, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I like the format...and I will change it on the "test" page @ User:M1shawhan/NewCharacterTemplate. Let me know what you think. I also wanted to know how everyone feels about the userboxes, like the one on the Wikipedia sites. I actually like them a lot and they make things look less cluttered. Plus, I think there is a lot of "lost space" on pages and putting info into a userbox would greatly be more efficient on space while making it look good.

--M1shawhan 00:57, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

I like the userbox idea it can make things look less cluttered. I'm kind of clumsy with them although I have some experience with editing on wikipedia and marveldatabase. I think they're pretty difficult to use and I it's hard to add more than one picture for a character because they seem to get misplaced

Copycat989 09:36, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Noted and agreed. Less clutter, more of an eyesore on multiple pics. One pic looks good though.

M1shawhan 00:55, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Would it make sense to divide the "Affiliation" field into:
| Current Affiliation
| Former Affiliation

and have the template autocategorize them as members (and ex members) of ... whatever? That way, no pointless makings of lists and stuff.

Roygbiv666 23:43, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

We (and by we I mean Peteparker) are trying to come up with a way to deal with this one. I know it has come up to try separating out the teams by semicolons (;'s) but in doing this it would HAVE to be entered exactly like this or it will not sort it right. We have somewhat of the same idea on the "Marvel Database:Staff Template". Check out the pages that have pseudonyms or aliases and see if this is the idea you are looking for. --M1shawhan 00:21, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I started using the semi-colon thing on the 'Creators' field, and had a bot go through and separate most of them out, (though I haven't "fixed" all the Creators fields yet), and it seems to be working in general. I think teams could be harder because there are a lot more things that can exist in a team name. We do need a way to separate the team names, and by utilizing the semi-colon, we're limiting what can be put into the field, weather that be good or bad. Definitely doable, as long as this is what we all want.

--Nathan Elliott (Peteparker) (Earth-1218) (talk • contribs • email) 01:53, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

That brings up a recurring challenge on wikis like this - people are able to just stick info in the template fields however they choose, without necessarily knowing the "correct" way to do so. Someone (somewhere) mentioned that it might be possible to have the template "instructions" populated in a new entry as a guide to filling it out. Not sure if that would work. It's too bad we can't have drop-downs for fields.

Roygbiv666 12:09, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Adding a Summary?

So how about adding a summary of sorts to the top of the template? After the name, but before the History and Table of Contents? That way the first thing the person sees is the name/codename, the summary, and the infobox. If someone wants to know more, he/she will read the entire bio, but if he/she is just curious about the big picture, he/she sees it straight after entering the page. The summary gives a short description about that character, what he/she does, and what type of history he/she has. Having the summary would also help making the TOC appear between two sections instead cutting in the middle of the History section. Should it be calle the Summary, or would another name be more appropriate?

Ouchmaker 13:01, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I personally think the page is laid out clearly enough to find information quickly, but does anyone else feel this way about a summary?

--Your Friendly Neighborhood Peteparker (talk • contribs • email) 21:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

This idea seems to be lost...anybody think this is should be done? Should we address it in the forums? --M1shawhan 00:21, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I still feel the same. :)

--Nathan Elliott (Peteparker) (Earth-1218) (talk • contribs • email) 01:53, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Adding Power Bars

Like it was mentioned in the Forums, should we add the power bars used in the Official Handbooks? Can they be done in graphical forms? Should we alter them, include other statistics? For the latter two I'm against, it would be less confusing if we were to use the same statistics and numbers as previously used. Comments? How do we make it work in graphical form (in power bars)? Discussion, please.

--Ouchmaker 09:35, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I think this would be possible...we would have to integrate a template of some sort...have uploaded graphical icons and link those to individual template options 1-7. Separate out the categories and then end up with a link like this:

|Strength = 1 |Power = 2.....Doing this would make it link anything equaling a 1 to have the graphical-bar "1" attached to it and so forth. I think it could be done. Wish I was better at coding and I would do this. I can get the bar off the UHOTMU pages or we may even be able to use a mediawiki bar-graph. I will look into this more and let you know. --M1shawhan 17:27, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Good to know, this is promising. I know, I wish I had better coding skills so that I could do it myself, but I guess I will have to wait for someone else to do this. The tricky part would be the so-called Yellow bars and Green bars, which could be troubling to make into graphic form. -- Ouchmaker 22:06, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

If what I plan on doing "works", then it shouldn't be too hard. Just tedious. --M1shawhan 01:13, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, if you manage to get something that works, I would be happy to apply the numbers to the profiles. I have the updated list of given bar numbers on my page, so it's just about adding the correct numbers on the correct profiles. But where should the bars be added on the character template? And how would you plan on solving the issue of more than one bar number on a single bar-space? (for instance teleporters can have two separate numbers on the Speed bar, and some entries have had as much as three separate numbers on a single bar-space). -- Ouchmaker 13:17, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

• Here is my plan --

1. get a pic of "all bars" singles 1-7 & any combinations...should be able to get all these from OHOTMU issues.
2. assign each "pic" a number value. (Prob 1-7 & then 1/2 or 1/7 for the combos...we'll see)
3. put this into a template to use these "pics" for each assigned value you enter (ex. you put a 1 - you get the single "1" bar-pic
4. Test it out... ;) --M1shawhan 17:51, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Most of the OHOTMU's use different colors as their Power Bar colors, so it wouldn't be the same for all the profiles. Simply the single bar choices would give us forty, and all the double bar choices would give us fifty choices, so we would have to use about a hundred different pics with single and double bars only.

• We could possibly use these things instead:

Problem with this one is I have no idea how to transform this so that it has Intelligence, Strength, and others written in there, or how to change the color, or how to even change it from a timeline into another type of a bar. and it doesn't show the scale of the bars, since it's a timeline and not an actual power bar. I modified it a bit, but it's from here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Images_and_other_uploaded_files

Intelligence
Strength

Then there's this, which is a lot simpler, now we just need it to change the color, It's not as fancy as the first one, but works. And that one is from here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Formula -- Ouchmaker 20:52, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I found this help page on timelines that can walk you through making bar graphs and timelines. The question then becomes whether or not you can template them. -- WhyBother 06:57, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

SWEET!!!! We might be able to make this work. Does anyone know if a template can be "integrated" into a template? Like maybe we have a "power bar" template that we can put in the character template or have attached under the picture or something...hmmm ---M1shawhan 01:07, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Should be able to...

Let me know if you have troubles with it.

--Jamie 03:00, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Still have not even attempted this, but it is "on my list". ;) --M1shawhan 00:21, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Would this work? ;)

{{Power Grid
| Intelligence      = 
| Strength          = 
| Speed             = 
| Durability        = 
| Energy Projection = 
| Fighting Skills   = 
}}

— Nathan (Peteparker) (Earth-1218) (talk • contribs • email) 05:26, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

/Appearances

I still think it's silly to have two pages for the same thing. If we set up the Category:/Appearances page to have ==In Chronological Order:== on top, then the "written in" appearances", then ==Alphabetical==, we can have all of the Appearances information on the same page, which will help for cross referencing, and will consolidate the amount of pages and links for each character. --Your Friendly Neighborhood Peteparker (talk • contribs • email) 21:37, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

I actually agree with this. It is annoying that we have to change it when it is both the same thing...appearances. I have been going off the fact that we linked to 2 places in the character page and we've always "used" 2 different links...well more recently. I think we should consult Jamie on this one though. I think we made a question or two when the category came into being and he had a valid reason that I can remember.

We would have to correct out the following:

1. Templates that use both chronological and unordered links and change the "Appearances Page Needed" auto-category off.
2. Disambig "ABCD" links will need to be adjusted to just 3 options
3. Possibly even move the current Appearance pages to their respective category pages using the page-links on the Category:Character Appearances.

Other than that, I am all for it. :) --M1shawhan 00:00, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Not sure if this was ever addressed, but I know it has not been changed. --M1shawhan 00:21, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I can pull this off fairly easily, a bot to move all the stuff in the /Appearances page to the Category:/Appearances page, and a template tweak to remove the /Appearances page for the templated ones.

--Nathan Elliott (Peteparker) (Earth-1218) (talk • contribs • email)

Alive/deceased status field

I think there should be a status field for the character's live status with options "Alive", "Deceased", "Resurrected" "Body is dead, consciousness is alive" (or something shorter). The automatic First/Last handling thingy is not working very well with resurrected or "half-dead" (a la Dream Girl) characters. The Clever Guy (Talk • Contribs • E-Mail) 14:15, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

If we come up with a category, say "Category:Resurrected Characters" we can make this work. We would have to make a new section for the template (I can't even think of a good name) but if used with specific words or at all, we can have it tag the page with the category or whatever. Let me know if you can think of any ideas for this... --M1shawhan 00:21, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't think we need autocategorizetion of death upon 'Last' being filled in. Sometimes a character stops showing up in comics, but doesn't die, and it'd be nice to put their 'Last Appearance' in 'Last'.

--Nathan Elliott (Peteparker) (Earth-1218) (talk • contribs • email) 01:53, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Other Universe Characters

I know we have disambig pages for this and stuff, but you think we might need a section strictly for "other universes" that the characters hail from? Maybe we could have it be a section that uses the []'s and we give a short blurb, or we just enter in character names and it lists them out in a table or something. Thoughts? --M1shawhan 00:21, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd like to see an example of this.

--Nathan Elliott (Peteparker) (Earth-1218) (talk • contribs • email) 01:53, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

/Quotes

This shouldn't be a category. It should be like [[{{PAGENAME}}/Quotes]]. C Teng ^[talk] 18:01, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi C,

Having it as a category lets us do special things, like automatically insert all the quotes attributed to that character. If you have further questions, please leave me a message on my talk page. :)

--Nathan (Peteparker) (Earth-1218) (talk • contribs • email) 15:51, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Notes / Links & References

I think that the "Notes" section should be renamed "Notes and references," and the "Links & References" section be renamed to "External Links." C Teng ^[talk] 16:32, 21 September 2008 (UTC)

How about we move the references into the 'Links and References' section? That way we can have references in the Trivia section too. — Nathan (Peteparker) (Earth-1218) (talk • contribs • email) 00:40, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that would work. I say we do that. C Teng ^[talk] 00:42, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Okay, good, it's a lot better this way. C Teng ^[talk] 12:40, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Mainstream

There should be a "mainstream counterpart" link on the infobox. C Teng ^[talk] 02:58, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

That's a pretty good idea. Anyone else want this?

— Nathan (Peteparker) (Earth-1218) (talk • contribs • email) 03:38, 28 September 2008 (UTC)

If we put it on, it should be on the infobox as an optional link, only for pages that aren't from (Earth-616). C Teng ^[talk] 12:42, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Creators?

Could we have a Creators2 section there for notes / references? C Teng ^[talk] 17:48, 28 September 2008 (UTC)