Template talk:Character Data

Code

{{Character Data| |photo= |age= |colony= |birthname= |callsign= |death= |parents= |siblings= |children= |marital status= |role= |rank= |actor= |cylon= }}

Field Breakdown

Fields that can be rendered invisible are covered in their own section below.

Photo. A photo of the character, spaced 200 pixels in width. Insert a photo by typing in [[Image:person-photo.jpg|200px]]. Photo is automatically centered.
Age. The age of the character in relation to the events in the Mini-Series. Otherwise, if this age is somehow not applicable, put the age and, in parentheses, put the episode it relates to.
- Note: We have no definitive dating system in place for BSG as none has yet been established. This may change sometime in the future.
Colony. It is safe to assume that most, if not all, the characters of the series (sans the Cylons) are from one of the Twelve Colonies. For proper spelling of the Colonies, refer to the link.
Birth Name. Ditto.
Role. Ditto. For military officers, refer to their current position and the installation or vessel that position is held on. (i.e. for Lee Adama, you would type in: Commander Air Group, Battlestar Galactica.)
Actor. The name of the person portraying that role. Use an internal link for major actors. For minor actors, use the {{imdb name}} template.

Fields that can be rendered invisible

To keep the fields invisible, you must enter in the field with nothing to the right of the equal sign.

Example: |rank=

Callsign. For pilots.
Death. Since a definitive dating system does not exist for the BSG universe, put in the episode that the character died in. Be sure to link the episode using brackets.
Parents. Type in the names of the parents, followed by a notation in parentheses whether or not the person was a father or mother of the person.
Siblings. Same as the parents field.
Children. Ditto. If the children are deceased, note this in parentheses after the child's name.
Marital Status: Single, Divorced or Married. Note the spouse's name in parentheses.
Rank. For military or civilian ship personnel exclusively. For Lee Adama, you would type in "Captain". (sans quotes)
Cylon: Type a "Y" for if the character is a Humano-Cylon. Not to be used with robotic Cylons.
- Note: Actually, you can type pretty much anything in the Cylon field. It will not affect the end result. The only reason why Wikipedians are asked to type a "Y" is for human-readability.

Feature Request

Would it be possible to have the Cylon field actually discern what's entered? That way we could make note of people who are actually Cylons and also of people who are definately not cylons. This isn't something that's really imperative, but would be neat. It's not worth having to write a massive java script for or something. --Day 21:38, 12 September 2005 (EDT)

I don't think this is a good idea. That field should only be used for clearly confirmed Cylons. --Peter Farago 21:44, 12 September 2005 (EDT)

My thought was actually to, then, link to your "white-list" idea the way that the current functionality links to the Humano-Cylon page. Not even your "grey-list" of probably-nots. Whatever, though. No big deal. :) --Day 21:48, 12 September 2005 (EDT)

Revision

Since it's very tedious to go through all 70+ articles using this template, it would make sense to put together a package of revisions to do all at once. Here's my wishlist:

Age and Colony should be optional fields
We should have some kind of "assignment" field to distinguish Galactica and Pegasus personnel
The awkward "marital status" could stand to be replaced by "Partner", "Spouse" and "Former Partner(s)", "Former Spouse(s)", or something to that effect.
Serial number should be included as an optional field, for the few characters where it is known.
Optional nickname field, for non-pilots ("Dee")
Is there any way to make fields plural if they are fed multiple arguments ("Role" vs. "Roles")?
Is there any way to make the ref and ref_label templates work inside the character data template?

Any other thoughts? --Peter Farago 15:27, 9 December 2005 (EST)

Yeah. I think, rather than assignment, we should put that into Role(s). So, like, Lee would be, "CAG, Galactica" when he's re-instated. Bill would be, "Commanding Officer, Galactica" or something similar. See what I'm getting at? --Day 16:13, 9 December 2005 (EST)