Forum:Appearances in various media.

There is always this recurring problem with the 'appearances' on character pages looking, well, extrememly messy. All because of one thing: appearances in different media is out-of order, for example:

DW:

DW:

TW:

DW:

SJA:

TW:

TW:

DW:

SJA:

I do believe that when putting down what appearances a character make sin any media, the media order should be more organized, like:

DW:

TW:

TW:

SJA:

SJA:

Not just left in random order. A good example is the Moon article, where I placed all the DW together, and all the, for example, DWM together, and didn't have anything between them. I looks a hell of a lot cleaner, and it easier to read that way. But the problem here is, people don't place them in media order (where the media appearances, such as DW, as all together), and then it looks messy and random. I changed the Supreme Dalek (from Victory of the Daleks) to make it tider, too, instead of:

DW:

VG:

DW:

it now goes

DW:

DW:

VG:

Am I the only person who can see how much easier it is to read when they're order in such a way, and how it makes the the artcile box look cleaner? Delton Menace 17:00, June 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * The appearances in the infobox are generally ordered by appearance.
 * Though when they're ordered in the complete 'List of appearances' article they're broken down into various media.
 * I think if we're to have some logic to the in-infobox list it needs to follow some form of logic, alphabetical by prefix? Grouped by media and then alphabetical?
 * We certainly need to settle on a some form of consistency that can be applied throughout all articles.
 * Also we should settle on how many stories that's listed in 'appearances' is the tipping point for a full 'List of appearances' article. --Tangerineduel 17:29, June 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * Ordered by appearance has one problem: It's not a total order. What happens if a novel comes out the same day as a BFA or episode or children's novel? And many novels, novelizations, BFAs, etc. are only listed as "September 2008"--is that before 1 September, after 30 September, ...?
 * If we're going to make the infobox broken out like the complete list of appearances articles, the sort order should be the same. Except that the list articles don't appear to be standardized either, so maybe that's the first step?
 * It looks like the articles are grouped by media, with some media containing subcategories, in an arbitrary order; then separated by line within each medium or sub-medium, mostly sorted alphabetically by category (but usually with VD before ST and TVC before other comics); sometimes broken down arbitrarily within each line (e.g., the Tenth Doctor's Christmas specials come after his regular episodes; some BF companions have their appearances broken down by Doctor, either sorted by Doctor number or by which Doctor they worked with first, and with BFCCs tossed in under one of the Doctors); and finally sorted by release number/chronological order/the obvious.
 * But, as I said, this isn't consistent (and neither is the lead sentence, come to think of it).
 * Here's all the media I saw in a bunch of random list articles (Doctors, companions, and races):
 * Television (and Monster Files etc. usually appear here, not where you'd expect)
 * Doctor Who Mini-Episodes (this is where Search Out Space and Dimensions in Time usually show up)
 * Video (or Direct-to-video or Videos)
 * Webcast (or Webcasts) (or BBCi Webcast instead of a separate category and line) (or sometimes "New Media" with a "Webcasts" subcategory and nothing else) (sometimes a subcategory of Audio instead) (usually has appearances directly underneath, with no line as a sub-heading)
 * Audio (or Audios or Audio plays or Audio stories)
 * Stage Plays
 * Prose (or Prose fiction) (often before Audio)
 * Novels
 * Novelisations
 * Novellas (sometimes together with the next as sub-subcategories of "Short Fiction"; other times the category is "Telos Doctor Who Novellas" instead of being a category with one line underneath it)
 * Short stories
 * Children's books
 * Interactive novels
 * Other (things like stories in RPG sourcebooks)
 * Comics (or Comic strips) (sometimes listed under Prose)
 * Online comics (but often these are not broken out as a subcategory)
 * Other (sometimes suffixed with "non-canonical") (which includes things like Devious and Extras)
 * One more thing: Should the list of prefixes be in at least a similar order to the list of appearances pages? (Because it's not.) --Falcotron 20:45, June 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * For what it's worth, I hate "List of Appearances" pages and think they should be banned outright. They're ugly, and they force you to navigate away from the page just to get a simple answer.  Logically, if the subject of the article has made a lot of appearances, the article will be correspondingly long, and therefore able to accommodate a full list of appearances within the infobox (though comic strip appearances can certainly be linked by simply Xth Doctor comic strip stories).


 * And I don't necessarily agree that there's one single policy on how the appearances should be listed in the infoboxen. In some cases it's quite clear it should go according to narrative chronology.  Characters with relatively few appearances work quite well this way, regardless of medium. Alpha Centauri, for example, should, I think, have its appearances listed in the narratively chronological order that hops around between TV, book and audio appearances.  Doctors, companions and major villains, however, might well benefit from "chronological publishing date by medium", because narrative time loops, time paradoxes and an author's lack of chronological clarity make it impossible to do much more than that.


 * Even if you don't take to anything I've said in the previous two paragraphs, do consider this: who's going to implement whatever policy change you dream up?  Who's prepared to go through hundreds, possibly thousands, of pages to restructure the infoboxen according to a fairly nitpicky heirarchy, as outlined above?  Sorry to bring up the practical reality here, but someone's got to point out the cost in time of making up a policy like this.   Czech Out   ☎ | ✍  22:04, June 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * To start with the last point, my answer is the same as for any changes of this sort: Maybe nobody, or maybe a large number of editors gradually over a long span of time. We have no system, or an inconsistent system, today. If we set out the rules today, we can use it whenever a new article is written, or a major change is made to an existing one, or someone just gets a bug up his ass. So the wiki will gradually get more consistent. It can't be worse than "each one is different from every other because nobody's ever decided what they should look like."


 * As for the List of Appearances, the long ones are far too long to include in the infobox. Tenth Doctor is 14 pages long in my browser; Tenth Doctor - List of Appearances is 10 pages. An uncategorized list that long would be painfully useless. Even nicely categorized, it would extend the infobox from half a page to 10 pages. Besides making it difficult to find the rest of the infobox and the "Incarnations" box below it, think about what it does to the page layout to steal 250px of horizontal space. It makes the text wrap around pictures look much worse, and it extends the article from 14 pages to 21.


 * Finally, the current policy seems to be (I didn't find it officially stated anywhere, but I'm guessing based on what Tangerineduel said about the villain nav templates) that the list of appearances is supposed to include minor appearances, cameos, and maybe even mentions, but that main articles shouldn't be cluttered up with that. Personally, if we found a better way to deal with the actual appearances, I wouldn't have any problem with a separate page listing just the cameos, etc., but I can see an argument either way. --Falcotron 22:50, June 9, 2010 (UTC)


 * It's a practical reality I always think of, but Falcotron is right, fix it in place and slowly work to get all the pages in order (it can be one of those things that sits in the Tardis:To Do List that gets looked at occasionally by editors who want to do useful edits).
 * I also accept CzechOut's dislike of needing navigate away from the page to get answers. But a whole page does allow for information to be presented with more space, and for any of our major players you need a lot of space to lay it all down. Though if you're going clicking on a link that says 'Full list of appearances' exactly what sort of answer are you looking for? The title is pretty self explanatory, and on a full list everything is broken down into fairly detailed sub-headings.
 * I do think we need consistency across articles otherwise we'd need a note that states 'appearance in publishing order/in chronological appearance'.
 * In the individual infobox it says appearances, mentions shouldn't be anywhere in that. --Tangerineduel 14:38, June 10, 2010 (UTC)

Archivist's notes
This doesn't seem to have actually been taken up as any kind of policy. Certainly, it doesn't seem to be in use on pages in any kind of consistent way. So this is one of those proposals that have failed from disuse, even though there's an argument which seems to have been discussed and well articulated. 16:15: Sun 06 Nov 2011