Template talk:Character box

Death Date

I'm trying to get the character box to show a death date, but it's not appearing. (I mostly want to show that Mr. Petrelli died on April 25). Can someone help me? Ryangibsonstewart 15:31, 28 November 2006 (EST)

Try it now. (Admin 15:36, 28 November 2006 (EST))

Thanks you're brilliant! (Plus, I loved the "living impaired"!) Ryangibsonstewart 15:42, 28 November 2006 (EST)

"Last Appearance" issue

We have a problem. Jackie died in Homecoming, but was actually last seen in Six Months Ago. I'm changing her infobox to "Six Months Ago", because that is literally when she 'last appeared'. ---- 21:03, 28 November 2006 (EST)

• Agreed. That spot should be reserved for the last episode in which the character appeared. There is a death date spot in the template now, and that's where the death info should be... Ryangibsonstewart 23:02, 28 November 2006 (EST)
  • I tend to think we should avoid the "last appearance" altogether for now. As we've seen with Jackie and Chandra, mere death does not guarantee they won't keep showing up.--Hardvice (talk) 23:05, 28 November 2006 (EST)
    • I agree entirely. I originally eliminated the "number of episodes" field a while back for a similar reason. It requires a lot of maintenance, provides very little useful information, and in this instance can be misleading. Besides with the per-episode character histories it's somewhat redundant since you could just look for the most recent history. (Admin 23:12, 28 November 2006 (EST))
      • What happens if we just pull it from the template? Will it automatically eat any extraneous variables fed to the template call?--Hardvice (talk) 23:18, 28 November 2006 (EST)
        • I believe so. Try it out. What's the worst that happens, you have to revert? :) (Admin 23:26, 28 November 2006 (EST))
          • Totally agree - take it out. Superfluous info, and can get rather confusing. Ryangibsonstewart 23:32, 28 November 2006 (EST)
            • Seems to work OK. See High roller for example. Good to know...--Hardvice (talk) 23:39, 28 November 2006 (EST)
              • Great ... but now I'm wondering if the debut is even necessary? I mean, the same argument goes - with the per-episode character histories it's somewhat redundant since you could just look for the most recent history, right? Or am I just being silly? ... Ryangibsonstewart 23:46, 28 November 2006 (EST)
                • Well, at least the first appearance is pretty much set in stone. That said, it doesn't add much. I can go either way.--Hardvice (talk) 23:48, 28 November 2006 (EST)
                  • I say keep the "1st". It adds to the short character's boxes. ---- 00:17, 29 November 2006 (EST)

Minor Characters

• I'm thinking that there should be a MinorCharacter=True/False flag that (if true) does not create a reference to an actor page if an actor name is provided.... This may cut down on the huge number of actor/actress pages on the Special:Wantedpages where it's really a one-off character (like a "thug" or a "guard", etc) I can code this up if you wish. --Orne 09:53, 1 December 2006 (EST)
  • Never mind... I now see that the square brackets are provided in the character page, and the template does not implicitly add references to cast pages. --Orne 09:57, 1 December 2006 (EST)

Origin

Can a location Parameter be added like in Template:Infobox_cast? Level 13:33, 5 January 2007 (EST)

Powers

Quick question: I want to standardize a few things. If a character does not have powers, should we put "Unknown", "None", or nothing at all? There are instances of all 3. I suggest "None". Any objections or suggestions? - RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 00:45, 6 January 2007 (EST)

• I've always put "none" on anyone in Category:Humans, with the exception of people we knew were evolved but who hadn't shown powers (which was pretty much just Hana).--Hardvice (talk) 00:48, 6 January 2007 (EST)
  • And James Walker, and I guess David. And some people would consider Shanti and maybe Molly to have "unknown" powers. - RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 01:45, 6 January 2007 (EST)
    • Yeah, but Hana's the only one who was really confirmed to have unknown powers. Everybody else is just speculation. Even Micah used to say "None".--Hardvice (talk) 01:51, 6 January 2007 (EST)

Cleanup

This template could use some work. There's no reason we should be stuck with "child(ren)" and things like that. We have the technology. We can rebuild it! Here are my suggestions:

• leave the variable for "child(ren)" as is. Change the display to "Children". Add another variable for "child". Change pages for people with 1 child to use "child" variable instead of "child(ren)" variable. That way, Angela will have "Children:" and Niki will have "Child:"
• Same for parent(s)/guardian(s)
• Same for power(s). We could get away with "Power" for everybody if it wasn't for that pesky Sylar...
• Same for siblings

The end result is that if we use the right variable, it will display properly, and can stop looking like a government form. The difficult part is we will have to check each and every character page. Most won't need any changes; some will. This actually does give us an opportunity to do things more smoothly, however:

• Set up Version 2.0 of this template at "Infobox character". It's more in line with the other sidebar templates anyway.
• As we change everyone from 'Character box' to 'infobox character', we can make sure they're calling the right variables.
• We can use "What links here" to keep track of our progress, and the changes to the template don't break anything since only verified articles will have the new template call.

It's another big project, and I'm not sure it's worth it, but there are other possible cleanup items we can address at the same time (like putting the image call in the template itself, so you don't have to type [[Image:]] every time ... this will let us adjust the portrait size through the template should the need arise. Another trick we can add if people want is defaulting the caption to the character's name if left blank. Any other ideas?--Hardvice (talk) 14:15, 10 January 2007 (EST)

• Well, something popped into mind. If Admin could activate the WikiMeta:StringFunctions, we could use #pos command as a Find function, to detect if the children variable had a comma in it, then the title of the row could print plural Children, else print Child. Tricky, but makes the template much more dynamic. --Orne 14:26, 10 January 2007 (EST)
  • Hmmm. I wonder what "pos" returns if the character isn't found? Even if it's "0", there'd never be an article with a comma in position zero. We should be able to use it inside an ifeq:, test for the comma, and then display "Child:" or "Children:" as appropriate. Parent v. guardian is harder, but we don't really have anyone with a "guardian" yet (Claire's adopted, so they are her parents), so we could just add it as a separate variable for later use if needed. If the test works, we could make these changes without having to alter the template calls at all. For that matter, we could test the image= string for brackets to make it work whether the user supplies just the name of the file or the whole link. I like this idea...--Hardvice (talk) 14:33, 10 January 2007 (EST)
  • WikiMeta:StringFunctions is now installed here. Have fun! :) (Admin 00:37, 17 January 2007 (EST))
• I would kind of like to see "Place of Residence" on there. Not so much what house they lived in (although that's cool, too), but what city they live in.

  It's a big project, but I think it's worth it. You've brought up some great ideas. I'd be willing to go through the articles and search, change, etc. I'm not as much help in the templates department. - RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 15:37, 10 January 2007 (EST)

  • That would be another good add, and since there aren't any uses of the variable yet, it can safely be added to the existing template without breaking anything.--Hardvice (talk) 15:52, 10 January 2007 (EST)

• OK, StringFunctions works perfectly! I did 'Children' and 'Parents' (and added a separate variable for 'Guardians'). However, we're still going to want to go through and make sure that nobody with only one child/parent/etc. has a comma. For example, right now Niki has "Jessica, deceased" for 'Siblings'. We'll need to standardize these with parentheses instead of commas ("Jessica (deceased)"). Shouldn't be too bad. While I'm in there munching up the template, how do we want to label the Place of Residence/Place of Origin/Whatever? That way, we can fill that in as we check all the characters for standards compliance.--Hardvice (talk) 01:01, 17 January 2007 (EST)
  • Well, some places are cities, others are states, and others are countries. How about just "Place of Residence"? I think there's only a handful of people that lived in more than one place (Eden comes to mind), and maybe we cross that bridge as needed. Or, we could simply have a second "Place of Origin" for those cases. - RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 01:29, 17 January 2007 (EST)
• Ok, did some testing with StringFunctions, feel free to borrow this code for examples:

#pos: returns # if character found, zero-length string if not
{{#pos: {{{location}}} | , | 0 }}	Peter
{{#pos: {{{location}}} | , | 0 }}	Peter, Paul	5
together with #if, you can make a formula to return different text if the value contains a comma
{{#if: {{#pos: {{{location}}} | , | 0 }} | Comma Found | Comma Not Found }}	Peter	Comma Not Found
{{#if: {{#pos: {{{location}}} | , | 0 }} | Comma Found | Comma Not Found }}	Peter, Paul	Comma Found
As far as detecting if a variable is a link (which is different than detecting if the article exists for the link), the #ifeq: only allows comparison against single bracket ( [, not [[ ). There may be a trick to it, but I haven't found it yet.
{{#ifeq: {{#sub: {{{location}}} | 0 | 1 }} | [ | Is a Link | Is Not a Link }}	The map	Is a Link
Here's a formula to allow the user to enter any text they want for a location, without having to create a red link prompting a new page.
{{#ifexist: {{{location}}} | [[{{{location}}}]] | {{{location}}} }}	Las Vegas, NV	Las Vegas, NV
{{#ifexist: {{{location}}} | [[{{{location}}}]] | {{{location}}} }}	Albuquerque, NM	Albuquerque, NM

--Orne 10:48, 17 January 2007 (EST)

• • Excellent. I made several adjustments so far:
    1. Plurals for labels are handled properly for Nicknames, Aliases, Siblings, Parents, Guardians, Powers
    2. I widened the box a bit and put nonbreaking spaces in the labels. Just looks better to have them on one line.
    3. Image accepts either a linked (e.g. [[Image:claire.jpg]]) or an unlinked (e.g. claire.jpg) entry.
    4. Added home. It will link to existing articles but won't create red links. This also means we can force things like [[Brooklyn, NY]], formerly [[Madras, India]] if we want. We can change the label to display whatever we'd like.
    5. Italicised debut and made it accept either linked (e.g. [[Episode:Genesis|Genesis]]) or unlinked (e.g. Genesis) entries.
  • I've added Home to the Main Characters and verified plurals are behaving properly for everybody but the Minor Characters.--Hardvice (talk) 21:20, 17 January 2007 (EST)

Issue with not having a character image

I noticed that the page for Shanti Suresh was completely messed up and I finally managed to track the problem down to a missing image. As a fix I explicitly added the Blankperson.jpg. If you go to the article in question and delete the explicit reference, you will notice that you get a page full of code, and no the character box. Could someone who knows this template check that out? -- Cuardin 16:25, 24 January 2007 (EST)

OK; looks like it was a temporary glitch somewhere. The article looks fine right now. -- Cuardin 16:28, 24 January 2007 (EST)

I was adjusting the whitespace the template was creating at the beginning of articles that are neither spoilers nor noimage articles (i.e. most of them) and inadvertantly broke it for noimage articles. It should work fine now.--Hardvice (talk) 16:36, 24 January 2007 (EST)

Other Relatives

Should an "Other Relatives" field be added? Jebriggs98 tried to add nephews and nieces to Peter Petrelli's box, and I've thought about Grandparents on some. also I would like links to Family and to the family name disambigs but I don't know if they should be in here or in the article. -Level 12:39, 7 February 2007 (EST)

• I think this is a great idea. I'm not so interested in the nephews and nieces links (as that can get pretty hairy, especially with the Petrelli Family), but think it would be especially helpful for grandparents. It's too bad we can't add Mohinder's grandmother to any infoboxes because we don't know if she's related through Chandra or Mohinder's mother. The same applies for Hana's grandmother. I don't think we need to have a separate field for grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, third cousins once removed — "other relatives" is sufficient, in my opinion. — RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 12:48, 7 February 2007 (EST)
  • Cuardin mentioned something about gender for relatives in [an edit] to Kaito Nakamura, maybe a small icon could be added. -Level 13:32, 7 February 2007 (EST)
    • I worry about cluttering up these sidebars with too much information that's not about the character. I think if somebody wants to know a relative's gender and can't figure it out, then they can click the link and check that character's sidebar.--Hardvice (talk) 13:54, 7 February 2007 (EST)
  • I'm kind of weakly opposed to adding an "Other relatives" field. While there are cases where it could be helpful, I can just see people adding everyone that anyone's even remotely related to, accompanied by an oversized description (Heidi will be something like Claire's "biological step-mom", which is oxymoronic; Paulette Hawkins will be Jessica's "sister's mother-in-law", etc.) But if we keep on top of it, it's fine, though I don't think it adds that much value.--Hardvice (talk) 13:54, 7 February 2007 (EST)
    • Right, and I'm only weakly in favor of it. I think we should somehow keep it limited to direct relatives, if we do it at all. It's not necessary, and I'm personally only interested in the variable for grandparents. — RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 14:15, 7 February 2007 (EST)

First "Television" appearence?

For characters like Hana and Thompson... this might help people who don't view the comics understand when they started showing up? --Riddler 22:29, 26 February 2007 (EST)

• Hmmm... I like that idea. Although it might go the way of "Last appearance" and become superflous Heroe 22:48, 26 February 2007 (EST)
  • Personally I would say it's good enough to just leave it as it is and use the first appearance whether it be through graphic novel or episode. The first appearance info there isn't even very important since by just reading the character histories you can tell when the first appearance actually was. Since the graphic novels are listed in the histories as "Graphic Novel:" you can also just skim down and find the first episode they're mentioned in. But let's see what others say on the talk page. (Admin 22:46, 26 February 2007 (EST))
    • If it were up to me, I would leave out all first or last appearances altogether. I think the history, as we've set it up, serves that purpose quite visually already. — RyanGibsonStewart (talk) 07:29, 27 February 2007 (EST)

Gender

Technically, "Gender" is notin the right useage. "Gender" is the behavor of the different sexes, while "sex" is the physical differences. Thus, the Gender area should be changed to Sex. Heroe(talk) 20:42, 21 March 2007 (EDT)