Forum:Infobox: Do we need a current actor variable?

A motion has been brought up at this talk page that we should add the variable to  in order to allow for the page on the Doctor to have Matt Smith in a featured spot in the infobox.

This motion was brought forward because of a disagreement about the interpretation of the variable, which renders as "main actor" in the template. In order to eliminate bias, this variable is interpreted to mean "the actor who played the role most often" — a quantifiable metric. Otherwise, we'd have people endlessly squabbling about whether Hartnell, Troughton, ad nauseum were the "main" Doctor, Tamm or Ward were the "main" Romana, Leeson or Brierley were the main K9 — not to mention the vexed question of who's the "main" Master or Davros.

So should we add a variable for "current actor" — which, honestly, would only apply to the single page of the Doctor – or is the potential for abuse of this one-use-only variable greater than the benefit of having it around for the Doctor? I mean, I know I don't want to see being used on any other page, as there is no reason that it should supplant. This possibility would, of course, be lowered by simply not including the variable in the instructions to. We could also call the variable, not , so that people would be disinclined to use it in other situations.

But the question before us remains: is the infobox at the Doctor actually confusing enough to warrant the introduction of a special variable just for it alone?

A secondary question would be: if you add would you then not use  on the Doctor? Would the infobox parse oddly to have Smith listed as "current" and Baker listed as "main"? 15:17: Thu 16 Aug 2012


 * Well, I think it is just confusing enough to add such a variable. The question I think is what qualifies as "current?" is it just on TV? Technically, for instance, Geoffrey Beevers has recorded stuff as the Master more recently than John Simm, so how would that work? Oh, and I completely support this idea, if it wasn't made clear. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 15:54, August 16, 2012 (UTC)


 * Isn't the number of times for the actor thrown off by Big Finish's audio stories? Or do we count (on screen) and  separately?
 * With the infoboxes, I usually point to the general idea of the infobox is that it summarise the article. So, does it do this? Not really. While you can certainly say that each incarnation is mentioned in the article, the article is about the Doctor as a whole. So having each incarnation's actor is only sort of useful. But that information is more useful on the individual incarnation pages. So I propose getting rid of the information in and  fields and the information presented in these fields from the Doctor page.
 * I think by not presenting this information we might present a clearer picture. The individual incarnation pages can then list the different incarnations and voice actors etc. --Tangerineduel / talk 16:10, August 16, 2012 (UTC)


 * For the purposes of the very general article on the Doctor as a whole, it stands to reason that people will be coming to that page for quick information. A blurb on the top could be made to say "This article is about the Doctor as a whole, for information on his current incarnation please see Eleventh Doctor." I do feel that the primary medium of Doctor Who is television. I am newish to the show so I will not debate canon/non-canon, though my idea of canon is influenced slightly by my time reading Memory Alpha (Star Trek wiki), but most people probably want to know about the TV show more so than the audio dramas, comics, etc. They can discover those things by digging more deeply into the body of the text and reading about specific incarnations of the Doctor. Even if mention is made or an asterisk placed by the current actor's name it would be less confusing than seeing a list of 12 names and not necessarily understanding who is presently playing the Doctor on TV. -- GuitarMan666 ☎  18:04, August 16, 2012 (UTC)


 * I second Tangerineduel's suggestion to have no actor listed in the infobox. Even if we agree that "main actor" means "actor who served the longest time", you will always have someone new to the wiki who will disagree and try to change it. Some will say it should be the First, some will say it should be the current, etc. etc. etc. We've already seen this kind of argument with regards to which Doctor(s) should be represented in the infobox picture. Shambala108 ☎  19:40, August 16, 2012 (UTC)


 * I think T does have a point indeed, but I'm not sure if it's a bit too much... OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 19:56, August 16, 2012 (UTC)


 * How much of a hassle would it be to change the variable to allow more than one entry? It seems to me that the most sensible thing would be to list the 11 "official" Doctor actors there, and have Hurndall in the  field. Similarly, we could have Tamm and Ward in the  field for Romana, with the blink-and-you-miss-'em bodies she "tried on" in Destiny in the  field (as the page actually does at the moment, though it doesn't display correctly). And at the Master we could have Delgado, Pratt, Beevers, Ainley, Roberts, Jacobi and Simm in the  field, with Gordon Tipple in the  field.


 * If there's some reason why we can't adjust the field to work this way, could we add another field for characters like this, who have significant appearances played by more than one actor? —Josiah Rowe  ☎  01:55, August 17, 2012 (UTC)

I certainly like Tangerineduel's suggestion the most. Since the doctor is a special case, treat it like a special case, and don't include actor information at all. That's definitely what I think we should do.

To answer Josiah, the field behaves in the smartest way possible for the overwhelming majority of use cases. Out of all the characters on the wiki, how many have multiple actors? I can't imagine it's anything as high as even .5%. And then, of those that do have multiple actors, most have someone who is clearly the dominant actor. You're only going to have a problem identifying the "main actor" on the Doctor, Davros, Borusa, Rassilon and Romana. It's not a (virtually) Time Lord-only problem and doesn't require alteration of the way that the behaves. It's far better for it to be an automatically linking variable that accepts only one entry.

As for your second paragraph, well, we already have, which allows multiple entries, and this thread was originally proposing o add the variable for this one, extremely rare case. There's no other character who really has a current actor associated. Julian Bleech isn't really the "current" Davros, as the character isn't ongoing. John Simm isn't the "current" Master until evidence of his return presents itself. Lalla Ward isn't the current Romana, since there are no known plans to bring the character back to TV, and the latest-recorded Romana audio adventures are known to star Mary Tamm.

This is a wholly special case, which is probably why TD's solution of just not using these variables at the Doctor is the simplest solution. 21:40: Mon 20 Aug 2012