Wiki 24
Register
Advertisement
Forum: The Situation Room > Character headings (again)


Guess it's time to get into this again. I have two ideas for how to reorganize character articles - they're not one and the same, but the first leads into the other. Here goes:

  • Remove superfluous "Day X" headings for characters that are in one or few episodes of a single season.
I'm no longer in favor of completely eliminating "Day X" from in-universe articles; it would just make things more confusing and reduce the helpfulness of articles overall. However, I do not see the need to have articles where, immediately after saying "Character X was a Y in Day Z," there is a heading for "Day Z." It's stated no fewer than three other places near the top of the page - the season icons, the sidebar, and almost always in the introductory sentence. Personally, I find that it disrupts the flow of the article, and for navigation it's virtually never necessary since, for the most part, these articles are short enough to be read entirely without scrolling down very far. I know it's in keeping with how the longer character articles handle chronology, but it's simply not required for stubs like P. Collins or Joel Levine. That leads into the second idea:
  • Reorganize longer articles under a single h2 "Biography," with descriptive subheadings of the form "Day X{: Optional Description}"
I've never been a fan of the "Before Day X", "Day X", "After Day X" system. It makes logical sense - and admittedly, my idea follows the same basic principle - but in my mind it's not IU "enough," if that makes any sense. Plus it's not applicable to expanded universe characters. What I've done with Ira Gaines and Kevin Carroll is what I feel the character articles should aspire to - treating them as if they're biographies of real people, while keeping "Day X" in the subheadings so that readers don't get totally lost. Essentially: h2 for "Biography," h3 for "Day X" or "After Day X" (using better descriptors), and h4 for individual "acts" of each season. It's a bit of work, but I feel it makes a huge difference in quality, and the basic structure is already in place. --Pyramidhead (talk) 20:13, August 15, 2013 (UTC)
Overall my perspective is if it isn't broken, we don't need to fix it. I just don't agree that any of this requires attention at all. And the headings for the smaller character articles are visually consistent... there's nothing superfluous about consistency. They're major visual milestones and veteran editors look for them immediately. The idea that "Day X" isn't IU is accurate, I agree, but inserting some arbitrary text in there is, well, as equally arbitrary as a "Day X" heading. Blue Rook  talk  contribs 02:11, August 25, 2013 (UTC)
At the very least, I'd like to make it optional to use or not use the headings. It seems wrong to use the headings as some kind of automatic signpost regardless of whether or not the page is long enough to justify them. Remember that their main purpose is to organize and make it easier to navigate to a particular topic - something that's certainly called for on a page like Chloe O'Brian, but really not on one like Bannon. My view is that, since (unlike the sidebar) the "Day X" format doesn't easily apply for every character - all the mentioned and real-world ones, for example - it's not right to force it on them all. Trivial stuff, I agree, but I think it's a way to encourage more creative article writing and make it more case-by-case rather than relying on guard rails. Acer, do you have any preference on this? Just ask because I notice some of your edits recently go along with (or at least didn't undo! :)) what I'm proposing. --Pyramidhead (talk) 18:56, March 13, 2014 (UTC)
I was firmly of the opinion that having "Day X" headings for all the articles should be the standard, but after seeing some of the smaller pages being changed to without them, I think I'm now leaning towards being less dogmatic about having them on every article. I agree that some articles are so small that the heading clutters them up, and if the paragraphs have citations after them you can instantly see which season is being talked about anyway. I think I agree with the headings being optional, and a judgement call on whether or not they are appropriate for the article--Acer4666 (talk) 19:48, March 13, 2014 (UTC)
Pyramidhead your work has always been excellent, as all longtime editors will agree. But on this one point, we've always had a major difference. Please understand there's nothing superfluous about our headers. They are not strictly for navigation, especially since many editors turn off the TOC in their preferences Wikia-wide. They are also crucial visual mile-markers that we have had in this project since the wiki began, for all articles. To make arbitrary removals will erase the consistency. They are the biggest visual cues regarding just what season that topic is exactly about, bigger certainly than the sidebar, the little tiny icons, and the introductory sentence. You, me, Acer, and the veteran editors pretty much know every season/spin-off that all our content is sourced from... so we don't need the headers... but the vast majority of 24 fans generally aren't as rabid as we are. They need the cues, and so do the casual visitors we want to attract. Replacing them with "creative headers" will turn Article A into its own little microcosm of Editor 1's chosen headers, Article B into a little microcosm of Editor 2's preferred headers, and so on.
Creative article writing is key to maintaining a quality wiki. If the content sucks, its wiki will suck. But suddenly undoing a system of clearly-understandable header consistency is not equivalent to creative writing! It's a shell of a substitute for creative writing. In huge articles, you can definitely make creative sub-headings. But the major ones should stay. Blue Rook  talk  contribs 23:17, March 13, 2014 (UTC)
I'm not trying to undo the system we have - it's simply the same system moved down a tier! - but it would benefit from a little flexibility. Whatever the interest level of the average reader, it seems to me that what's most important is that they can quickly tell what season or thing the article is relevant to, and 99% of the time that is done within the first sentence by writing "during Day X" or "before Day X." We obviously disagree on this point, but to me (and others, apparently) it's jarring and redundant to then have a header breaking up the page to restate that information, when the content of the article is no more than a couple sentences. Yes, using the headers everywhere is a long-standing tradition, but so was the spoiler policy, and after a great discussion we decided that it was no longer best serving the site's mission. Again, the basic article format stays exactly the same as it is now while allowing the freedom to modify or discard it for pages where it just doesn't make sense to use. Between the intro, the citations, the sidebar, and so on, there's really no danger that someone will be completely lost without this one element. --Pyramidhead (talk) 19:08, March 14, 2014 (UTC)
I don't know if we're just discussing character pages here, but other in-universe pages follow the same visual style as them, so I'd bring up as an example Edwards Air Force Base. The page has four 1-2 sentence long sections each from a different season, and as it currently is (without a separate header for each sentence) looks good and clear what comes from what etc. I think with the headings in it looks a lot worse and weird to have 4 sections with such a tiny bit of writing in each one. The effect isn't quite as bad with the small character pages (because they only ever have one section), but the argument of a consistent visual style would suggest that if we agree the Edwards AFB page (and other similar iu pages) benefits more from losing the headings when appropriate, then we can do the same for the small character pages too--Acer4666 (talk) 20:10, March 17, 2014 (UTC)
Good example! In general, I think it's fine to have separate paragraphs starting with "During Day X" or working in the season some other way. For pages that have either a lot of seasons or a lot of info on one particular season, we can use the History/Biography/Service record/whatever h2 and then use h3's for Day 1, Day 2, etc. like on United States Air Force. I think just using h3s instead of h2s goes a long way to making the pages feel less fractured. --Pyramidhead (talk) 21:03, March 17, 2014 (UTC)
I may not have been around so much recently, but if my opinion counts for anything I thought I'd throw it in! My immediate reaction would be to agree with Blue Rook because I can see the benefit of consistency, and a restriction of personal choice article titles - there certainly is something to be said for the difference between writing a creative article and a creative header. An article can be creative but a title needs to be succinct, and the best way to do that is to limit it to 'Day X'. That being said, Edwards Air Force Base is a good example. Do you propose that for single-season characters there would be no header whatsoever, or would they have a 'biography' header. I would argue that if it was the latter, it certainly seems like a lot of effort for very little gain, because we still have just as many headers so the TOC will still be there, but it will be a huge job to go and change them all. Furthermore if we come up with as frequent subsections for, say Charles Logan as you have done for Ira Gaines, the TOC would be gigantic.
So this is quite a roundabout way of agreeing with Blue Rook's initial statement that if it aint broke don't fix it: I don't see what real benefit this is to the site overall besides a huge re-chronicling job which will leave the Wiki temporarily disorganised as it will take a lot of time to sort it all out. --SignorSimon (talk/contribs/email) 22:41, March 26, 2014 (UTC)
Advertisement