Fictional Character

Ellery Queen: Split real from fictional

2008-05-16T08:44:56.0012Z

"[B]oth a fictional character and a pseudonym used by two American cousins"? Oh my. Split please.

Fictional Character: Add property: Date of Birth

2008-04-29T23:55:30.0000Z

Well there is somthing like that by user duck1123

Should it be a topic-based property or simply a text-based propert (there are some topics existing for some of the more well-known alter-IDs).

Fictional Character: Add property: Date of Birth

2008-04-29T23:19:45.0007Z

How about an alter-ego property? This would come in handy for superheroes. Seems that this is being stuck on as an alias right now, but there are enough superheroes that it might as well be a property, right?

Captain Harlock: This needs to be split

2008-04-18T20:09:01.0012Z

This wikipedia-article-spawned topic contains information about the character, tv series, ovas, etc.

Jigsaw Killer: Jigsaw's status as a killer

2008-03-09T06:12:36.0012Z

According to Jigsaw's view of the world, he hasn't killed anybody. He has put them into situations where they have to test themselves to see if they have the will to live.

Legally however, putting someone in a trap that will rip open your chest unless you are able to perform some act is considered murder in just about any court of law you'll find.

For this reason I have decided to attribute Jigsaw's victims to him.

Miles Straume: Merge to other

2008-03-04T20:47:24.0005Z

The other instance has the WP keys.

Daniel Faraday: Merge with other

2008-03-04T20:44:58.0012Z

The other instance has the WP keys.

Nicky and Alex Katsopolis: These are two separate characters

2008-01-31T18:30:50.0012Z

They should be split into two separate topics

Sharon "Athena" Agathon: Test post

2008-01-07T19:55:34.0012Z

Testing

Jean Harlow: bad merge

2007-12-31T19:19:58.0007Z

Don't merge -- this represents a fictional portrayal of Jean Harlow (which is linked to a real person via the "based on" property of the "fictional character" type). I've renamed the topic to "Jean Harlow" and linked the character to the person. No further action should be needed.

Jean Harlow: bad merge

2007-12-29T20:30:00.0005Z

Looks like this came in as a bad merge for Gwen Stefani's portrayal of Jean harlow (not Jane) in The Aviator - but really they're the same

Batman: Renamed from "Batman"

2007-12-28T18:44:27.0000Z

I agree with Faye that the superhero articles should not be renamed to their alter-egos' names. If the intent of the "primary identity" type is that it should be used for the non-super identity (e.g. Bruce Wayne), then it should be applied to the article for Bruce Wayne, and the "alternate identity" type be applied to the Batman topic. If no Bruce Wayne topic exists, it should be created as a primary identity.

Batman: Renamed from "Batman"

2007-12-22T02:01:53.0012Z

I really think this article is more appropriately named "Batman" than the renamed "Bruce Wayne". The article is more concerned with Batman as a character than Bruce Wayne. I see that the article for "Superman" has been renamed to "Clark Kent" as well. Only the Spider-man article retains its original name instead of being renamed to "Peter Parker".

I'm really curious: Why the name change? The thing is, more people think of them as the superhero identies than their more "normal" alter egos. For example, would you talk about the latest Batman movie or the latest Bruce Wayne movie? Are you a fan of the Superman comics or the Clark Kent comics? Is your little brother/cousin/son dressing up as Spider-man or Peter Park for Holloween? It also affects search because the way I see it, more people would search for "superman" than "clark kent", and if there's only one article for Batman/Bruce Wayne, shouldn't we keep the name "Batman"?

Speaking of only having one topics for these heroes with hidden identities, maybe it's time to consider splitting up the superheroes from their everyday alter egos as separate topics, especially if we want to use types like Primary Identity to link them to topics for alternate identities.

Borat: Merge please

2007-12-22T01:22:24.0012Z

Merge this topic with "Borat" please -- both are about the same fictional character; and merging them will make my relevance tests (and hopefully our users) happy.

Fictional Character: Add property: Date of Birth

2007-08-09T22:06:35.0007Z

(Sorry, meant to link to the other thread on historical persons.)

Fictional Character: Add property: Date of Birth

2007-08-09T22:05:30.0007Z

In this thread, they even have the same problem for real historical persons: "Take "Person": where their dates of birth and death are not known, the dates in which a person flourished is standardly used to disambiguate them." They want to specify the birth date as "Qing Dynasty". This will probably be solved by splitting out a separate type (like Living Thing) that defines Birth Date and which the Person type includes. (Then you could mix in a different type that defines the different kind of birth date that you need.) The relevance to "contextual assertions" still applies. If you have a type for real Living Thing (with a birth date), will a user be afraid to use it on a fictional character? Right now, they should be afaid because it implies the character is real like all the other topics with the property. But the problem is solved if the character uses the same type as real things, but asserts the birth date in the context of the fictional universe (so it doesn't come up ono searches for "real people born on this date").

Fictional Character: Add property: Date of Birth

2007-08-09T21:39:13.0007Z

I don't think this example would actually be solved by assertions, since regardless of whether we implement assertions or not, we still need a type to hold the data, and we currently lack a type that could be used for both real dates and dates in fictional calendar systems. It does seem like people want to enter this data for fictional characters, so it's worth trying to model a type we can use. A compound-value type with two properties might suffice -- one of type "datetime" for fictional characters in universes using the Gregorian calendar (AND who are born within the range 10,000 BCE - AD 9999), and one or two for all others. I have a bazillion things on my plate right now, but if I have time, I'll play around with it.

Fictional Character: Add property: Date of Birth

2007-08-09T20:10:11.0000Z

This came up on a couple Fictional Character topics where someone wanted to give a birth date so they had to make the character a Person too, which is a no-no. To beat the same drum again: This problem is solved by allowing users to use the existing types for Person, Education, Politician, Author, etc. etc. on a fictional character - just put the assertion for the bithdate or "term of office as president" in the context of the fictional universe. In everyday life, people put properties, not only on topics, but on assertions. Quotation: "President Bush says there are WMDs but the French prime minister says there are not". Citation: "According to the US Census, the population is 100,000". Fictional assertions about real things "In the universe the 'Independence Day' movie, the Empire State Building is destroyed on July 2, 1996". (Wouldn't it be great to put this assertion on the real Empire State Building topic without having to create a separate type for 'Fictional Building' when we have to make a separate topic?)

Fictional Character: Add property: Date of Birth

2007-08-09T18:50:51.0007Z

The problem here is that lots of fictional characters exist in universes that don't use the Gregorian calendar, so we'd need to find a way to capture Gregorian dates, Stardates, Middle-Earth dates, years A.F. (After Ford), etc.

Fictional Character: More on species

2007-08-09T04:52:30.0007Z

Would it be appropriate to remove cartoon characters like Dogbert, Snoopy, Satchel Pooch, etc. from the real Dog species topic?

Fictional Character: Add property: Date of Birth

2007-08-09T04:47:17.0004Z

Can you add a Date of Birth property (and maybe Date of Death too)?

Fictional Character: Rank vs title

2007-07-19T19:48:36.0007Z

Good suggestion. It can probably also be used for various other types of ranking systems that might exist in some fictional societies. I've updated the "what do I input" text to reflect this.

Fictional Character: Rank vs title

2007-07-19T18:43:17.0004Z

I thought the "what do I input" description for rank on fictional characters could do with being clarified to note that it is the place for titles of nobility as well. Although a separate property for titles might be another way of looking at it.

Fictional Character: More on species

2007-07-16T19:01:02.0007Z

I think that in universes where there is a species called "human" that is not the same as the real-world species of Homo sapiens, it's not unreasonable to have a separate type for that species (although it is a bit messy). But most universes that involve humans really do just imply the actual species, and therefore we shouldn't have separate types for each of those universes. The same would apply for dogs, cats, etc. The problem remains of preventing people from typing a character as the wrong type of human, and I'm not sure what the best way to do that is.

Fictional Character: More on species

2007-07-16T18:18:58.0011Z

I've noticed that when folks type a character as human, they seem to be frequently confused which Human topic to use. As an example, Trillian was typed as a human from the Star Wars universe...which, while not impossible is highly improbable. I'm guessing that many folks want to just be able to say "Trillian is a human", and not wade through a quickly growing list...only to find that Human - Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy isn't on the list, and they'll have to create a new topic for humans in that universe. I'm not sure what the solution is here - there are detailed articles about, for example, the qualities of humans in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, v. humans in the Babylon 5 universe. These seem like very appropriate topics...but there are many more universes where humans have not yet been described. Do we want a generic fictional character species 'human' that can be used when the universe doesn't need it's own article describing humans? (e.g. the 'West Wing universe IS different from the A-Team universe...but I'm not sure we'll ever need topics to describe humans in each of those universes). Conversely, if we DO want each of {West Wing, Diff'rent Strokes, A-Team, Days Of Our Lives, 24, Law & Order,...} to have it's own fictional universe, and we want a 1:1 ratio of fictional universes to Human topics, we'll need to find a better way for someone to wade through the hundreds or thousands of human topics - something like filters on autocomplete. What do folks think is the best solution here?

Fictional Character: Gender

2007-07-02T18:04:38.0007Z

Oversight I believe, corrected to be an enumerator with values female , male and none.

Fictional Character: Does it apply to figures from mythology?

2007-06-27T00:25:23.0000Z

To follow up on this thread, we have since created the Religion Domain , with a general purpose Deity type. Feel free to co-type "mythological" gods as instances of Deity, if they're worshiped as such.

I don't think fictional religions or fictional gods should belong in the Religion Domain. To me they are fictional first, and as such are part of the Fictional Universe Domain. So the FSM (which immediately made me think of Finite State Machines ...) would be considered a fictional creature.

Fictional Character: Gender

2007-05-18T18:41:32.0006Z

wbecker: "Why if it is done for people/person, is it not done for fictional universe/fictional character?"

Probably an oversight. The longer answer is that similar types may be developed by different people, and may not initially have the same schema. When we see two types that could be modeled the same way, we can get the two type creators talking to each other to decide whether there's a good common model.

Fictional Character: Gender

2007-05-18T18:27:42.0006Z

Seems like it should be changed to an enumeration. I'd do it but am not an admin for this domain.

Fictional Character: Gender

2007-05-18T06:02:13.0006Z

I see: it's nice and easy to do it for people, but trickier for fictional chars. Why if it is done for people/person, is it not done for fictional universe/fictional character?

Fictional Character: Gender

2007-05-18T05:20:50.0006Z

You can mark the property as enumerated, as /people/person/gender does. When the values of a property are from a closed or at least very small set, enumeration makes sense, as users are presented with a fixed list of values from which to choose, with no option to create a new one. If they really need a new value, they must go and create it separately.

Fictional Character: Gender

2007-05-18T04:31:26.0011Z

I accidently put in as a gender Male (the album by some obscure band), instead of Male the actual gender. Shouldn't this limit this (or at least deambiguate) to only the acceptable topics? Else there are going to be oodles of people mucking that up.

Fictional Character: Does it apply to figures from mythology?

2007-05-18T04:29:08.0006Z

Tristan: FSM worship, and if one were to look at a fantasy book in which made up gods are worshiped then I think that is another (different) type of fictional relgion. Is the FSM a fictional creature or mythological?

Fictional Character: Does it apply to figures from mythology?

2007-05-14T17:04:04.0006Z

Modern day neo-pagans often worships "mythological" gods.

Anyways, it may make sense to distinguish between "fictional" which are stories that are expressly said to be untrue by the author, and "mythological" which are stories tied to religions that people may or may not practice any more.

Fictional Character: Does it apply to figures from mythology?

2007-05-11T23:38:49.0006Z

Hmm, Greek mythology is considered a religion? My apologies then. I was taught myths and legends in literature classes.

Anyway, what I was trying to get at, was a type to assign to figures such as Zeus and Apollo and Hercules and Paris. Perhaps if the topic that applies to the goddess Paris has a person-like type, people would stop mistyping it as a City/Town.

How about a "Mythological Figure" type outside of the Fictional Universe then? Either in Religion or Book/Publishing?

Fictional Character: Does it apply to figures from mythology?

2007-05-11T22:41:04.0006Z

That would open a whole can of worms. Which religions are fictional?

Fictional Character: Does it apply to figures from mythology?

2007-05-11T18:15:12.0012Z

Hi, is this the right place for adding the various gods and goddesses from Greek mythology? Technically they qualify as "fictional", but most of the time we tend to think of them as "mythological" instead. Would a new type just for figures from myths and legends make sense? They rarely have a known creator, but are usually associated with a culture, properties that are not currently in Fictional Character.