Forum:Removal of deceased from info boxes

Forums: Index > Wiki DiscussionRemoval of deceased from info boxes

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I’d like to propose that we remove the note about any characters being deceased (currently denoted by a cross, which will be in parentheses if they're only deceased after making certain game choices) from all info boxes, as this can potentially be a spoiler.

This mostly has to do with family pages, such as Howe family and Theirin family. On the former page, Rendon Howe is listed as deceased. Rendon’s death doesn’t occur until really late in Origins, so this feels to me to be a major spoiler. Cailan’s death listed on the latter page is not quite as major of a spoiler as it happens early on in the game but it’s still a spoiler.

Deaths of characters are almost exclusively things that we would put under a spoiler in the main body of the page, so I don’t think they belong in the info box either. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kelcat (talk • contribs) 21:40, 18 October 2013‎

Sounds fine to me. I don't think it's so important to note if they have died or not, especially considering it may be up to the player (although I'm aware that it's being differentiated with the parentheses). ··· d·day! 22:33, October 18, 2013 (UTC)

This change has mainly to do with conflict pages. And I am still unconvinced if it is proper to do such thing. 22:38, October 18, 2013 (UTC)

This is the first time I’ve seen a dispute about deceased being in the infobox, so I’m unaware of any other mention of it. Can you tell me why you’re against it, exactly? As far as conflicts and battles go, the death of certain characters seems to be covered in the body of the article, as far as I can tell. But they're also kind of a unique situation, as well. The pages in that category are to do with battles and wars, and are completely made up of spoilers, which is why there are no spoiler tags on the pages. It's not out of the blue to see that some of the characters involved in the conflict died, so leaving the deceased notation on those particular pages would be acceptable.

But this proposal affects more articles than just the conflicts. I’m mainly concerned with pages that have both spoiler and non-spoiler information in the articles, with all of the spoilers under cuts. Family and House pages are the ones that stood out to me the most, as well as some character pages, and I think those are the ones where the deceased demarkation should be removed. Kelcat (talk) 02:46, October 19, 2013 (UTC)

Your reasoning of these lines providing spoilers a few times is understood, however removing the deceased info would also create new issues. A novice reader who would look on the family infobox would then see a family/house with 2-3 leaders and 2-3 heirs as well. This will clearly create a lot of confusion. 07:20, October 19, 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it would be all that confusing. Maybe the answer lies, then, in altering the format of infoboxes? Just an idea. 72.196.14.33 (talk) 23:55, October 19, 2013 (UTC)

I'd have to agree that having multiple leaders wouldn't be that confusing. It's pretty much understood that any family/house that's been around for a long time obviously has had more than one leader over the years. Personally I think that not having those kinds of spoilers in the infobox is more important than the issue of confusion regarding leaders. Kelcat (talk) 05:57, October 22, 2013 (UTC)

I would support the removal of the "Deceased" tag from any character not dead before the first game.-HD3 (talk) 06:10, October 22, 2013 (UTC)

I am fundamentally against with any attempts to decrease the quality of the articles in favor of keeping away spoilers. That is because I generally believe that the complete presentation of the information about an article, in a practical and non-confusing way, should continue to be considered a more important goal than the concerns about possible spoilers in an article. My vote is against this proposal in its current form. 06:28, October 22, 2013 (UTC)

I am not in any way attempting to decrease the quality of articles. I wouldn't be editing on the wiki if I didn't care about quality. It's just as confusing to see a major character marked as dead as it is to see 3 leaders of one family. Especially when those characters are only potentially dead.Kelcat (talk) 06:42, October 22, 2013 (UTC)

No it's not. When a wiki reader goes into "deeper" lore pages (ie. straying away from character/quest pages), it is in fact expected to find spoilers. For example, a user who is in the Act 1 or 2 of Dragon Age II and visits the Second Qunari Invasion of Kirkwall page, I'm sure he will find every bit of content of this page as spoiler. How would you propose to make the aforementioned page less spoilerish? Removing the cross from the lines of Viscount Dumar and Arishok, would not really prevent people from noticing the severed head of the Viscount in the image, or perhaps the title of the article itself -- both of them being large spoilers. 07:03, October 22, 2013 (UTC)

I already mentioned above that I would be fine leaving deceased markers on those types of pages. Conflict, war, battle, etc -- those pages are, as you said, completely spoilers, to the point where nothing on those articles are under cuts. I also have no intention of ridding the wiki from spoilers. But info boxes are the first thing your eyes go to when you open a page, so I don't think that spoiler should be in the box, and instead should remain in the body of the article itself.

I'm way too tired to make any sorts of tweaks to this proposal right now, but maybe an amalgamation of people's ideas would work. Kelcat (talk) 07:35, October 22, 2013 (UTC)

Ah... I thought we would in fact remove the symbol from conflict infoboxes as well to keep that consistent. But, yes, the spoilers are rampant on the conflicts page... but even as a new user on the wiki, you may think there would be tags or those spoilers would be better hidden as we do tag almost everything, and exclude spoilers from the article's lead, regardless if it's an important part of the character. We do not note the death of family members in characters infoboxes either (e.g., Hawke), although we could. It's not consistent. How do we decide which pages should be free of spoilers or not? I'm inclined to say that all articles should make use of the spoiler tags. As far as I know, it's been an ongoing trend to remove spoilers from infoboxes (discussion spoilers, and discussion).

As for the image on the infobox, which is a spoiler, it can be changed.

I was discussing this with Viktoria, and related to the infobox itself (though not necessarily the problem), but I am a bit confused about the use of "leader", particularly for just a family (like Brosca). I'm not sure how it is decided that one is a leader. For a house, I can understand if important decisions are taken by the head of the house in political situations for example.

Because of that, I'm actually a bit unsure if we should keep that information at all (it would, altogether, remove the spoilers regarding the death of said person), but I may be alone on that one. A different solution would be to separate the current leader and the former ones... by simply noting that, e.g., "Current leader", and "Former leaders". That way, it does not necessarily spoil the character's death, although it may give you a hint that they are no longer in capacity to be the "leader". ··· d·day! 02:03, October 24, 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, my original intention was definitely to remove that connotation from all pages, though admittedly I wasn't even thinking about the conflict pages when I brought this proposal up. The infoboxes on those pages are so cluttered and overwhelming that I feel like that's a whole different kettle of fish--the deceased connotation isn't the only problem with them.

To be honest, I don’t really like the “leader” section either. That’s something I was actually considering bringing up as a possible solution/compromise--to just get rid of that altogether. Leadership is often debatable, especially with houses and families where the current leaders died during canon. Same with “heir.” Kelcat (talk) 02:27, October 24, 2013 (UTC)

Heh, I just realized that the little note of death for the conflict pages should be removed as it is redundant, since they can be listed in the casualties (which is a spoiler itself, but I feel the symbol is way more obvious). The idea is still to make the infobox less spoilerific if possible.

"Leader" and "heir" should not be used for families; for a house, it's debatable (I'm not opposed to remove it for houses). For example, Howe family, I'm not sure how the heir was "decided" to be Thomas and/or Nathaniel (regardless of Thomas's death), and not Delilah (unless it's just the editor not adding these).

It would be possible to make certain sections collapsible, but the presentation and implementation would be a bit complicated (not for the conflicts infobox, however). ··· d·day! 03:45, October 24, 2013 (UTC)

I should add here that adding individuals in the casualties section, and not whole troops is quite unusual. This practice does not happen in wikipedia and I think it should not happen here too. 03:58, October 24, 2013 (UTC)

I just checked, and yeah it's weird. It's actually not within our documentation, so I don't think it was ever intended to list individuals. That being said, I don't think it's necessary to list whether individuals have died or not on the conflict pages anyway, as it is not essential to the article. ··· d·day! 20:42, October 24, 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to keep the notations of deceased information for characters on the wiki, too. People come to the wiki for information, and there is only so much we can cut or hide under a spoiler tag. It's been workable for years as is without removing them and has seemed to be fine with the wiki's viewers.--67.162.215.80 (talk) 00:13, October 25, 2013 (UTC)

As the unregistered user above pointed out, as a wiki we are inherently documenting the game. As such, the wiki should move along with the game releases and make assumptions that the events of Origins are in the past. As such, the information about such characters should note that any events that may have led to their demise has already taken place. Secondly, I think keeping information in a spoiler tag for older games should be depreciated except for the biggest spoiler. -- tierrie talk contr 19:59, October 25, 2013 (UTC)

Just a note: the information regarding these characters' demise (even potential demise) is documented on the wiki. I'm not proposing we delete the fact that, say, Rendon was killed by the Warden. All I'm proposing is to remove the symbol from the infobox. And if it's not that big of a deal, why isn't that notation used on the individual character pages as well? Nathaniel's page shows Rendon as being his father, but the fact that he's deceased was at one time there but then removed as it was considered a spoiler. How is it any different to treat the family and house pages similarly? That's at least consistent. And the argument that it should remain since no one has ever complained about it before is rather thin in my opinion. If we used that argument, there would be no reason to ever propose or make changes to the wiki.Kelcat (talk) 20:18, October 25, 2013 (UTC)

And as far as depreciating spoilers, how exactly are you going to determine how old a piece of canonical material (game, comic, etc) needs to be before it's no longer considered to be a spoiler? Three years? Four? And how are you going to determine which spoilers are "big enough" to keep and which aren't? That seems to be a whole separate issue that should be proposed outside of this one. Kelcat (talk) 20:35, October 25, 2013 (UTC)