Wowpedia talk:Appearances project

Please don't start adding appearance sections, except for testing, until the project is settled!

Location of appearances section
Where should it appear? Before external links and see also is a given, but should anything else come after it? See also WP:MOS. 15:40, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * My vote is that is should go after Quotes but before References. This seems to be right in between 'reference content' and 'direct information content' (pardon my odd terminology).-- 18:59, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * That makes sense to me. 19:36, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I concur. -- Ragestorm (talk &middot; contr) 20:43, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

What categorises?
At the moment only the games, RPG books and short stories/novels categorise. Art books do not, as any appearances will be fleeting. Fair? 15:42, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Fair-- Ragestorm (talk &middot; contr) 15:57, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Categories to change
Category:Game characters should be converted into individual game appearances via the new template. 15:55, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Category:Lore characters - would that also disappear? The subcategory of Category:Deceased could probably move up a level (and be renamed "Category:Deceased characters"). 16:09, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Order
Publication is probably best given the nature of the RPG books, but I think chronological would make most sense. Any thoughts?-- Ragestorm (talk &middot; contr) 15:57, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Chronological is possible, if it is only complex in a minority of cases. Are there many characters who have appeared in the RPG? I guess the other problem might be novels that cover part of, or the space between, games (e.g. The Last Guardian), but personal judgement could be enough for that. 16:02, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Been working on Appearances project/Order, to order them in various ways (fix/fill out if I've got stuff wrong!). Chronological does look possible, if we give a reference guide like this. If the appearances sections are split up into types as on that page, that may also help - certain sections could be by timeline chronology (novels/games), others by publish date (RPGs/TCG). 18:18, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Are you planning on splitting them up by kind? With regards to books set in multiple eras, we should go on a character by character basis. This doesn't apply to the War of the Ancients, THAT is first for all chars.-- Ragestorm (talk &middot; contr) 20:46, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Point of note, RPG books are "chronological", and each novel is set specifically to a chronological point in time as well (not counting the flashbacks). That being said people might find "by publication" a bit easier to follow as it is set up by our calenders, not in-world.Baggins (talk) 18:26, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Tracking
How do you think we could track progress? I think bots could do all the WoW NPCs fairly easily. Can the rest be tracked? 15:59, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Perhaps temporary categories for completed pages?-- 17:25, 4 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Not sure cats with work. I guess we can use a bot to do all NPCs easily enough, and major characters can be done individually - hopefully with momentum getting them all done.

"First appearance"
Ragestorm suggests a way of adding "First mentioned" or "Mentioned by name only" to individual lines. Is this a feasible possibility? 22:01, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Rough example:

- First mentioned


 * From further discussion, syntax:


 * First appearance is by publish date, not internal chronology. 22:19, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * And in action:


 * Great work, pcj! 22:26, 17 July 2008 (UTC)


 * yeah, great!-- Ragestorm (talk &middot; contr) 12:23, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Other kinds of appearances (RPG & Novel)
I'd suggest counting "hand written letters by a character" (or perhaps to a character) as a type of appearance. For example, letters written by Thrall, or Arthas, etc, if they appear in a book. While they aren't a physical appearance, they represent actual content specifically from that character (or too that specific character). Its a bit different than an off-hand remark about some random character, or references in historical context.

Also the Brann books, I see several kinds of "appearances" in those, besides letters mentioned above. Other "appearances" should include; Brann himself (of course), whoever he is interviewing, and anyone who has a specific article, or short stories.

Some examples; Brann interviews Eitrigg. Gazlowe is given a specific article in one of the books. Thrall is one of the major characters in one of the short stories.

In books like Shadows & Light, any character who is given a specific article should count as an "appearance".

In the novels, "flashbacks" should likely count. First hand memories to a lesser extent (For example Leoroxx only other appearance beyond WoW is in Beyond the Dark Portal, as a first hand memory of Rexxar's). --Baggins (talk) 18:19, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

While the project is being settled
While the project is being settled, I find it a good idea to introduce the various character lists of each source into his own category. That category could be categorized into the main category of appearances afterwards.

Some examples: Category:Warcraft:_The_Sunwell_Trilogy_characters Category:Warcraft:_War_of_the_Ancients_Trilogy_characters Category:World_of_Warcraft:_Ashbringer_characters

These categories include all the characters that appear at the corresponding media. Also, they are categorized into the category of the media itself.

Settling the project could be easier with all the characters in their own categories, couldn't it?

--Lon-ami (talk) 19:17, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Revival
Since so many people (or at least a handful of prolific editors) want to make entire articles into this, I wonder if bringing this back will placate them.-- 23:10, 4 May 2013 (UTC)