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Standarizing criteria for Top Navigation Templates

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Bobsican

Bobsican

He/Him
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As most may be aware by now, plenty of pages on the site have a template at the top of them, namely to feature other incarnations/eras of the same character in the same franchise, however, keeping track of the standards for when a page qualifies to be in one or not has been turning quite hard lately with how the whole deal is made of unwritten rules.

The following seems to be currently accepted for them:


What IIRC isn't allowed:

  • In-universe clones or derivatives (We'll probably also have to expand on whether this'd include canon "alternate timeline" stuff)
  • Shared IRL actors
  • Categories (Say, a template that lists every character of X verse, or every team member of Y, TBH that does put the previously mentioned Groups part in question when a category would already cover that, but in any case we'd need to draw a line between that and any arbitrary thing on those lines if that stays)
So yeah, currently there's quite a ton to grasp but no proper rules to keep track of this, so thoughts on the matter are welcome.
 
Examples of them would be nice. I have never seen any of them.


Regarding the other versions of a character in verse... They are fine. Don't see the issue with listing clones or something. It just depends on the context of the character. But ultimately, I don't mind them sharing a template at all. Cause ultimately, they are meant to be the same.
 
I'm sure I linked or mentioned an example on most cases. For the one of "Shared IRL actors", that was agreed on here (CTRL+F "actor", here's also an example page that had that), and for the Categories one there was this (agreement on that being a no here).

TBH I'd expand on what kind of context would be required for it to apply or not, for instance, Roxas is Sora's body and soul, yet a good chunk of the series' premise goes on him being a separate character altogether (namely the former becoming independant from the other, being different in general and even coexisting), but then there's also this Sonic being an alternate universe version of the original (And they share tabbers), although it's a weird case as it also "compresses" a past era of the character (time travel happened).

Perhaps we should just give priority to how much a character is separated from the "source" narratively in a case by case basis? Given the Sonic case perhaps it could also be mentioned that there can be exceptions for cases that meet other criteria or so.
 
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Why am I looking at pages that no longer has this issue? - and I can't even see an issue to begin with, especially the fandom pages, and the archive ones aren't loading. I am not understanding what you want to do here with that. Plus I can't see it on their pages anymore, so what's the issue?

But if it's such a big issue, can you link some profiles right now that are doing something like this?


As for sonic, I am not understanding his relation to the original post. If it has abilities issues, make a CRT for it.
 
This thread isn't for addressing cases out of standard, but rather to make proper standards to begin with, more specifically write them somewhere in the Editing Rules.

Anyways, AFAIK there aren't pages that currently do this, as they're "fixed" as soon they're found with such issues or so, which is also why I'm not going to be comprehensive on listing every case (not that I realistically could anyways).

Sonic is a case worth talking about as currently it'd fit in both, a page that shouldn't be in a template, yet also kinda fills criteria to qualify out of special circumstances, and so talk on the matter would be worthwhile.
 
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As far as I can see, the issue hasn't been around for a long time tho?


Personally, I think it's a bit of waste of space to write something that is just common sense. I still need to relook at the examples on a pc, because right now, barely seeing any issues.
 
Top Navigation Templates were informally introduced in the site just a few years ago, then eventually became a sort of standard to pages that are quite similar in terms of premise/content, and so the issue hasn't been around a long while as they're quite recent, and it'd be good to take action before it's too late and we have to basically allow about everything out of no proper rules on the matter being standarized already.

In any case, we'd need more staff consensus to go somewhere.
 
Can you list the members, particularly staff, that have been most prominently active in creating these navigation templates please, so I can call for them, and they can hopefully help with writing a standard format instruction page for these templates?
 
Antvasima said:
Can you list the members, particularly staff, that have been most prominently active in creating these navigation templates please, so I can call for them, and they can hopefully help with writing a standard format instruction page for these templates?
Click to expand...
Uh... Ant, can you please ping the users I've mentioned in my previous post? As I'm not staff they won't be notified if I'm the one doing so.
 
I do have some issues worth talking about:

The Groups one conflicts with how Top Nav Templates for "Categories" aren't allowed as the OP and the first few replies expand on, so if it stays we'd need to draw a line from that to anything that'd be covered by a category already, in fact the current example has a category itself, so I'd support just removing it, as that's the whole point of categories to begin with.

There's also the matter on if we'd include "alternate timeline" stuff for the In-universe clones and derivative counter-criteria, and there's also on if we'd give priority to a page staying on a template if it meets criteria for being in a template, even if it also fits counter-criteria.

Classic Sonic is technically a separate character from another universe in the same canon as the "main" one (And thus being an "in-universe clone", unless we exclude alternate timeline stuff as suggested), yet the page also acts as an earlier era of the respective character out of time travel events (And thus falling as another era of the character), for example.
 
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Thank you for helping out here, Damage and Mitch.
 
Shouldn't we write a standard format instruction page for our top navigation templates, or do we already have one?
 
As far I'm aware there's no standard format page for templates on the site so far, let alone top navigation ones.

I could write a proper draft on their standards (Which is more on-topic with the thread) to add to the Editing Rules, but there's still some issues to sort out before that:

Bobsican said:
I do have some issues worth talking about:

The Groups one conflicts with how Top Nav Templates for "Categories" aren't allowed as the OP and the first few replies expand on, so if it stays we'd need to draw a line from that to anything that'd be covered by a category already, in fact the current example has a category itself, so I'd support just removing it, as that's the whole point of categories to begin with.

There's also the matter on if we'd include "alternate timeline" stuff for the In-universe clones and derivatives counter-criteria, and there's also on if we'd give priority to a page staying on a template if it meets criteria for being in a template, even if it also fits counter-criteria.
Click to expand...
 
Bobsican said:
As far I'm aware there's no standard format page for templates on the site so far, let alone top navigation ones.

I could write a proper draft on their standards (Which is more on-topic with the thread) to add to the Editing Rules
Click to expand...
Thank you. It would mainly be added to our wiki's relevant front page and wiki navigation bar lists.
Bobsican said:
but there's still some issues to sort out before that:
Click to expand...
I do not have any particular opinions about that. My apologies.

What do the rest of you think?
 
Bobsican said:
Bump.
If anyone's unsure what's left to do, read the above post.
Click to expand...
You or some other well-informed member would still have to help write a draft for an explanation page though.
Damage3245 said:
I don't think there's any real issues with what we have currently.
Click to expand...
I don't think that we have any official explanation page for top navigation templates yet, but I may misremember.

Further information from you would be very appreciated.
 
Welp, the draft I had got silently deleted, I guess I'll remake the rule idea from scratch based on consensus in here, we can then talk about any further changes or if it's fine as is.

Regarding Article List Templates, content featured in each one is limited on the following criteria:

*Article List Templates should only be used within the Intellectial Property in question, and as such shouldn't have content outside the permission of the respective owners. Disambiguation pages should be used instead otherwise.
*Main reasons for the usage of Article List Templates include, but aren't limited to:
**Characters with alternate incarnations within the same franchise (Link)
**Different time periods regarding the same character and timeline (Son Goku (Dragon Ball) to Son Goku (Dragon Ball Z))
**Alternate canons (Cloud Strife (Final Fantasy) to Cloud Strife (Kingdom Hearts))
**For verse pages it's for long-running series with multiple relevant continuities (Marvel and DC)
*In-universe clones and derivatives (such as merely being a family member) aren't allowed to be within an Article List Template for the given character, as they're simply considerable as their own individual characters without sufficient relation and similarity for the purposes of an Article List Template to the respective character, this also extends to alternate timeline incarnations.
**Alternate canon characters can be featured in Article List Templates, even if their alternate canon is regarded as an alternate timeline in relation to the main canon in question.
*Article List Templates may only be used for character profiles or verse pages, other cases should rely on a category to group them and/or a disambiguation page on a case-by-case basis.
Click to expand...

The first part fixes a rising issue of disambiguation pages becoming redundant with Article List Templates, while also raising professionalism on the site, namely by upgrading organization over mixing up stuff, after all, an user usually would want to see pages over other works related to the same owners of the franchise and stuff, rather than "fair-use" parodies or alternate public domain interpretations in-between. We could still link to the disambiguation page in the template if anything.

The last part handles the whole inconsistency to the "groups" and "categories" stuff mentioned in the OP while also bringing up alternatives.

Some stuff could have better wording, but it gets the main premise up.
 
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Well, it seems to make good sense to me at least. What did the other people who have responded here think?
 
Bobsican said:
The first part fixes a rising issue of disambiguation pages becoming redundant with Article List Templates, while also raising professionalism on the site, namely by upgrading organization over mixing up stuff, after all, an user usually would want to see pages over other works related to the same owners of the franchise and stuff, rather than "fair-use" parodies or alternate public domain interpretations in-between. We could still link to the disambiguation page in the template if anything.
Click to expand...
Bobsican's opinion seems fine. For professionalism, I would ask for how we VS Battles Wiki deals with different works following different Creative Commons licenses.

If applied, I propose for deletion of templates such as
vsbattles.fandom.com

Zhao Yun

vsbattles.fandom.com vsbattles.fandom.com
vsbattles.fandom.com

Cthulhu

vsbattles.fandom.com vsbattles.fandom.com

There is also a thing which should be clarified: characters such as Winnie the Pooh have the original version entered the public domain but the Disney version is clearly copyrighted. In this case, I feel that the top navigation template for Disney Winnie the Pool should not include the original Winnie the Pool and should only focus on Disney versions (Kingdom Hearts).
 
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Mariogoods said:
Bobsican's opinion seems fine. For professionalism, I would ask for how we VS Battles Wiki deals with different works following different Creative Commons licenses.
Click to expand...
I'd rather focus on if they were authorized by the original owner(s) or not in such cases, as otherwise we'd eventually end up with a weird case like the classic shorts Mickey Mouse not being addable within an Article List Template (namely by that one entering public domain soon) even if there's other versions of him fully within regular copyright by Disney. It's also good futureproofing as technically anything whatsoever will enter public domain over time.

There may be some potential gray areas I'm overlooking even with the above, so further discussion is welcome.
 
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Bobsican said:
I'd rather focus on if they were authorized by the original owner(s) or not in such cases, as otherwise we'd eventually end up with a weird case like the classic shorts Mickey Mouse not being addable within an Article List Template (namely by that one entering public domain soon) even if there's other versions of him fully within regular copyright by Disney. It's also good futureproofing as technically anything whatsoever will enter public domain over time.

There may be some potential gray areas I'm overlooking even with the above, so further discussion is welcome.
Click to expand...
I hold the same view too.
 
Bobsican said:
I'd rather focus on if they were authorized by the original owner(s) or not in such cases, as otherwise we'd eventually end up with a weird case like the classic shorts Mickey Mouse not being addable within an Article List Template (namely by that one entering public domain soon) even if there's other versions of him fully within regular copyright by Disney. It's also good futureproofing as technically anything whatsoever will enter public domain over time.

There may be some potential gray areas I'm overlooking even with the above, so further discussion is welcome.
Click to expand...
Mariogoods said:
I hold the same view too.
Click to expand...
This makes sense to me as well.

@AKM sama @DarkDragonMedeus @SomebodyData @Celestial_Pegasus @Wokistan @Andytrenom @Mr._Bambu @Elizhaa @Qawsedf234 @ByAsura @Sir_Ovens @Damage3245 @Starter_Pack @Abstractions @LordGriffin1000 @Colonel_Krukov @SamanPatou @GyroNutz

Would any of you be willing to offer input here please?

 
I don't think that the top navigation links need to be exclusionary to be honest. Different versions of Cthulhu being listed together in the same template, even if those incarnations are created by different people/companies, doesn't seem like a problem to me.
 
Agreed with Damage. The templates make navigation so much easier and getting rid of them would be both a waste of time and more detrimental imo
 
Thank you for the replies. I am personally uncertain though.
 
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