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 Miniseries. 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)

Wanted Pages

Elements of the character data template are now occupying the top slots of the wanted pages. Is there anything we can do to "fix" those links to keep them from showing up on that list (so that unwritten user pages can regain their supremacy)? --Steelviper 09:07, 10 January 2006 (EST)

Can you link to an example? --Peter Farago 12:20, 10 January 2006 (EST)

Template:Character Data/Marital Status is one. These were delete by Joe as "obsolete". --Steelviper 12:26, 10 January 2006 (EST)

Yes, all you need to do is click the edit tab on each page that links to the obsolete templates and then save it -- you don't have to actually edit anything. Without resorting to some weasley technobabble, you are just resubmitting the content that's already there. (And, consequently, removing the requests for the deleted elements of the character data template.) Make sense? -- Joe Beaudoin 16:22, 10 January 2006 (EST)

By your command. --Steelviper 17:03, 10 January 2006 (EST)

Using the Age Field?

I remember that there a big discussion against the use of the age field since we really cannot verify the ages of anyone in the series until there is a calendar system and we get birthdays and the like. Sure we can extrapolate, but that's all that is, and it looks awfully sloppy. I've been dicing away this information for now from character bios, but after I hit the Saul Tigh page I thought this warranted a formal review. Should we dispense with the use of the age field entirely for now or allow the sloppy approximations? --Spencerian 15:46, 19 January 2006 (EST)

I'd say drop it. Is it really all that relevant anyway? Joemc72 15:54, 19 January 2006 (EST)

Concur. Anybody can "guess" ages, but I don't think it adds anything to put guesses there. One step further, I'm not sure if it really even matters if it is a known fact, other than perhaps establishing timelines, etc. --Steelviper 15:57, 19 January 2006 (EST)

I was thinking, naughtily, that if even if Roslin and Admiral Adama are ten years apart in age, he's still going to get some anyway. :) We'll need to adjust the specs on the template main page, although the code can remain just in case. Let's wait for more dissent/consensus first, in any case. --Spencerian 16:04, 19 January 2006 (EST)

I think, for most people, we shouldn't keep the age thing (though I support leaving it in the template since so many of us use that template on our user pages). Saul Tigh is a bit of an exception. There's been a considerable amount of time spent on doing math to figure out Tigh's minimum and maximum possible ages. I don't think any of it is guess-work, though I may be forgetting a step (I didn't do the work, just read about it). I think, if we've gone to enough trouble to be reasonably sure based on math, not guessing based on the actors' ages, then we could include it on a Character's page. --Day 17:31, 19 January 2006 (EST)

Tigh's age mathematics, while good, is still an approximation. "Pi" is not "a little more than 3." The more I see ages, the worse they look. I say to keep the field, yes, as eventually we'll see a birthday in an episode and an exact age will give a reference, but for now, we really don't have diddly-squat. Further, I want to get a standard policy in place (do or do not), and not make Tigh the exception--until another one comes along. They should all age, generally accurately, or not. --Spencerian 18:52, 19 January 2006 (EST)

I disapprove of guesses, but Tigh's age can actually be constrained to a fairly narrow field based on on-screen evidence. I think when we have the information, we should supply it. --Peter Farago 20:03, 19 January 2006 (EST)

"Death" field for Cylons

It occurs to me that I was a bit short-sighted when I made the infobox. Indeed, the Cylons don't "die" per se (unless they are away from a Resurrection Ship, which in case they *do* die) and are resurrected. Therefore, I would like to solicit views on how a copy's "death" should be handled in the infobox -- or if we should at all. Thoughts? -- Joe Beaudoin 10:26, 7 March 2006 (CST)

I think we should note the deaths of any reletively prominant versions that don't have their own articles. Like Doral's suicide bomber version, say, and the Six that Kara fought in Delphi. Maybe not even listing the manner of death, but just an episode link (if you're real curious and it was important enough to link, it's probably in the sumary and maybe even a picture on the episode's page). If a specific version that has its own page dies (like Boomer) we should, of course, note that there. --Day 23:35, 7 March 2006 (CST)

Image Size

Since Day appears to be altering this, I want to go on record as stating that while I prefer thumb sizes to be at the discretion of the viewer, I think that the fixed-width on the character data template improves the visual consistancy of the site and should be retained. --Peter Farago 01:27, 14 March 2006 (CST)

To Day: To make sure that the image stays the same size through out the template mayb eyou should put [[Image:{{{1}}}|200px]] in the template code instead of having someone type it all it. Then all they need is the imagefile name in the field. I did that with Template:Star Data and works pretty well. Could also be done for the any number of templates that have image size requirments. --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 12:36, 22 March 2006 (CST)

First Introduced

I was working on the Star Skeleton template and I just relized. We should have a "First Apperance" field so we know when this Character first showed up in the Series. It be pointed to the Episode. Any thoughts? --Shane ^{(C - E)} 14:07, 19 March 2006 (CST)

bump. --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 13:23, 26 April 2006 (CDT)

I suppose that would be nice to have. --Peter Farago 06:48, 27 April 2006 (CDT)

White Space

This template adds a line of blank space to the top of any article that transcludes it. OTW 20:01, 21 March 2007 (CDT)