Forum:SH:Credits standardization

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Forums > Senate Hall archive > SH:Credits standardization

Credits, an often overlooked section of our media articles, is one of the few sections that is not that well defined in our policies. It was established in the Layout Guide more than ten years ago, but it's only since the start of the decade that it has gained serious interest, with editors like Ayrehead, Immi Thrax (who had done a great job on A New Hope), myself and others experimenting with the section. While the informal consensus is that we should strive to align as much as possible with the credits as they are in the media, the formatting on our end as been quite chaotic, and thus, there is several micro-issues that we need to solve and codify. And since there is still vast quantity of work to be done on credits, it's best to create consensus sooner than later.

To this end, I've checked a small representative sample of media and articles (Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens, Star Wars: Episode VIII The Last Jedi, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, The Search for Kaz, Kassa (episode), Part One: Master and Apprentice, Star Wars Rebels: Spark of Rebellion, Ambush, Chapter 1: The Mandalorian, Chapter 13: The Jedi, Chapter 24: The Return, Chapter 5: Return of the Mandalorian, The Young Jedi / Yoda's Mission, Aftermath (episode), Part VI, The Path of Fear, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor), to determine what exactly were those issues and possible solutions to even them out. Fell free to provide additional examples if you've yourself spotted discrepancy in our way to write credits and/or spotted an issue that could use some codification.

Issues

General formatting

In-media credits follow the same standard for cast and crew (which I haven't found a generalized exception to yet): Role then name, either vertically (role on top, name on bottom) or horizontally (role on left, name on right). Wookieepedia articles on the other hand diverge from this model; the current preferred format for Cast is '''[[Name]]''' as '''[[Role]]''' (in fact, I don't think I've seen an exception to this, too); Crew is a bit wilder, with some (most?) pages using the media formatting (role then name), and others going with the opposite (maybe to mimic Cast?), and also some bold the names. Personally, I like our formatting for Cast better than the media standard, but I think Crew should align with the media standard, without bolding.

We have a bunch of formatting variations on the "Uncredited cast" section. Some articles format it like Cast, some format it like Crew (dash, no bold). Personally, for consistency, I'd prefer we format it like Cast, but without bolding.

Wording and ordering

The current policy reads "should be ordered as described in the work's original credits", however I think we should push this further and requires that the exact wording and ordering of the media credits should be followed to provide a fac simile of it:

  • For certain major crew roles where authorship is meant to be denoted, credits use "by", such as "Music by", "Story by". In such case "by" should replace the use of the dash.
  • Errors with people names should be denoted using [sic].
  • Character names/roles should also be the same as in the credits, including the use of titles, incomplete names or simple roles (ex: "Fighter Pilot Bravo 2")
    • I have thought about the possibility of adding a new ID template ({{FN}}, for "Full Name") to refer to the full name of a character, if people want to see that added. Pretty neutral personally, so I won't mind dropping this if there little support.
  • Specific role (such as "Voice of", "Puppeteers") should only be noted as they are in the credits themselves. For example, Episode I credits list Kathee Smee as one of the three "Yoda Puppeteers" (under cast) and Peter Serafinowicz as "Voice of Darth Maul", but Frank Oz is only listed as Yoda (and not as "Voice of Yoda").
    • Additional information not listed in the credits should be noted with the use of {{C}} (examples: Voice only, Archive footage, etc). This includes the case of Temuera Morrison being present only in the credits of the Chapter 5 of BoBF, which should be denoted with {{C|Credits only}}.
  • Abrevations (such as ASC, BSC, ABC) following the name of a crew member denote appartenance to a guild or a similar organization, and should be listed whenever they are present in the credits, with a link to Wikipedia if possible. For example, ASC stands for "American Society of Cinematographers".
  • As we should follow the credits as best we can, we should list individuals with several roles (ex: JJ Dashnaw is listed as both Second Unit Director and Stunt Coordinator on Mando Ch.24) in the same manners as the credits, without attempting to congregate each roles into a single line.
  • We should not list stuntdoubles and similar roles in "Cast" if they are not located within the segments dedicated to cast member in the media credits. If Lucasfilm decide to list them within crew, it's not up to us to move them around.
  • There is often titled sections in credits, and those should be featured as well on our end, using ;Section title within {{Credits}}.

Starring

This issue as given me quite a headache. Movies and series tend to list main actors as "Starring" (sometimes without this title) sooner in the credits than any other cast members, and often with each name taking a whole frame (it may vary, as Hamill, Fisher and Harrison could be seen sharing the same frame). It's an industry standard, sometimes negotiated by agents. This can be already observed in the original movie, with "Starring" followed by "With", and then the full cast list much later in the credits. More recent series (Mando, Obi-Wan, BoBF, Ahsoka) also have a "Starring" segment early in the credits, HOWEVER, they do not list the displayed actors in this segment later on, only featuring "Guest starring" (and "Featuring" sometimes) as soon as the main cast and crew have been displayed.

First of all, when a full cast list is available (like in ANH), I am of the opinion that we should default to this part of the credits, as it's properly formatted with the roles.

Secondly, in the case of the new series, it get more complicated. For example, Pedro Pascal never gets associated in the credits with the role of "The Mandalorian" (aka Din Djarin). Two path are open to us in terms of attribution, either we decide that we are ok with visual ID of the actor with a specific role (the easy path) or we decide that additional documentation is necessary (the hard path). I would prefer the first solution, but we have an history of over-complicating the referencing process in similar case, so I'm curious as to what the consensus would be here.

Also, in the case of Pedro Pascal, since we don't have formal credits, we don't know for sure if he would be credited as "The Mandalorian" or "Din Djarin"... and there is no clear solution, so... don't ask me :p . UPDATE: Per Imperators proposal, we could just default to our own naming convention.

Credited but not really

The reason I decided to finally tackle this SH today (it has been cooking in my brain for a while now) is that I recently spotted something on Star Wars Jedi: Survivor#Credits that had me perplexed: how should we handle cases where the person is credited in the game, BUT their role is not credited (a sin that video games credits are way too often guilty of)? Contrary to the above case of series where we could visually identify actor in their roles, voices are way more harder to identify properly.

Example: Yuri Lowenthal is listed under both "Cast" ("Yuri Lowenthal as Additional Voices") AND "Uncredited cast" ("Yuri Lowenthal as Rick the Door Technician"). All uncredited cast on this article are also credited with "Additional Voices", by the way. HOWEVER, as it turns out, "Additional Voices" isn't how the voice actors are identified in the credits. They are just listed without role under the section "Voice Talent", past the list of actors/roles (see this video), so it's something that will need to be corrected in this instance.

I personally don't think we should list the concerned people under uncredited, as it creates some kind of paradox to list the same name under credited and uncredited, and can mislead readers who would not push past the first listing. However, listing the role played by each individual seems important for our readers, and thus the information should be featured in the section, and to this end I think we should create an ID template ({{Uc}}, for "Uncredited") to clearly associate the actors with their roles.

But, like I said, there is a bunch of voice actors listed with nothing next to there name, akin to, the dreadful list under "Additional Voices Provided By" in the credits of SWTOR (see this video). A list which we mimic on our article. Hence why I think that we should explose the list-blob on SWTOR (and others similar articles) to list each actors individual with uncredited roles whenever available.

Others

The current policy says "This section is reserved for individual films, TV episodes, video games, audio dramas, and any other work with a similarly comprehensive credits section." However, I often see the credits section being used on seasons or series articles. Maybe the wording of this sentence should be edited to specify that series and seasons should not features such a section, with the exception of articles dedicated to future content.

Forum:CT:Updates to Credits template introduced a notability condition in relation to the Special Thanks section of credits: "Articles shall not be created for subjects exclusively noted in this section." However, this is featured only on the LG and not on the Notability policy, and thus I'd like for us to update it to acknowledge this.

There is instances (like Yoda in Episode I) where a role is listed several times, thus I also think we should update the Linking policy to note that a subject should be linked once upon its first mention in each line of the Credits section.

En or em dash (used with Crew), that is the question. Or is it? Looking at discussions (see Cade comment on this SH) regarding Index pages, it seems clear we should favor the em dash.

Formatting proposal example

To conclude, here is a mockup example with each case listed above:

By type
Cast Uncredited cast Crew Uncredited crew Special thanks

Cast

Uncredited cast

Crew

Uncredited crew

Special thanks

Updated on 2024/05/26.

Notes

  1. ↑ Standard "Cast" example
  2. ↑ Example of an erroneous name used in the credits
  3. ↑ Example of the use of a title/incomplete name in the role
  4. ↑ Example of the use of a role description rather than a role name
  5. ↑ Same example as previous, but ID the character name (as if using {{FN}})
  6. ↑ Example of the credits providing the details of a role
  7. ↑ Example of the credits not providing the details of a role
  8. ↑ Example for when credit are incomplete because of "Starring" segment not documenting roles
  9. ↑ Example for credited person with uncredited role (as if using {{Uc}})
  10. ↑ Standard "Uncredited cast" example
  11. ↑ Standard "Crew" example
  12. ↑ Example of the use of the "by" denoting authorship
  13. ↑ Example of a crew member belonging to an organization (NB: PMG, Property Masters Guild does not have a Wikipedia article... yet)
  14. ↑ Standard "Uncredited crew" example
  15. ↑ Standard "Special Thanks" example (from SWTOR)

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 Media credits
  2. ↑ Source for the identification
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 The media itself
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Supplementary references (used whenever a uncredited role is listed)

If people feel strongly one way or another, I will adapt this example to reflect the writing of the future policy update, which aim to add a new "Credits" section to Wookieepedia:Layout Guide/Out-of-universe#Article indexing. A draft will be proposed at a later date. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 22:44, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

  • While I'm here, I've been entertaining a bold idea for a while now: why not asking directly Lucasfilm (through the SMT) to share with us credits listing? Our credits coverage, on average, is disastrous at the moment, and this could even things out and save up a crazy amount of time. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 22:44, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
  • I think this looks good. If it passes, I definitely need some getting used to. Bonzane10 Sabine Starbird black belt in card-jitsu 01:09, 23 May 2024 (UTC)
  • I like these suggestions. Likely more well-suited for another SH but I also firmly believe the unverified Uncredited individuals under various articles need to be addressed; having unverified information on artcles in general is not super uncommon (that's why we have {{Fact}}, after all), but there is precedent of an "I was in [x] media but was uncredited" being misinformation in the past (*cough* that one FO trooper fiasco *cough*) and I feel it should be addressed as such. - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 00:12, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
    • We already discussed this a year and a half ago, and I stand by my comment then: while there still clean-up work to do on credits all-around, policies like attribution already provides the legal framework for managing those issues. HOWEVER, I would 100% agree that a collab/Creators sub-project dedicated to credits clean-up and improvement would be an interesting prospect. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 10:24, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
  • "There is instances (like Yoda in Episode I) where a role is listed several times, thus I also think we should update the Linking policy to note that a subject should be linked once upon its first mention in each line of the Credits section." - does this mean that in this example we'd be linking to the Yoda article multiple times? Imperators II(Talk) 08:20, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
    • Yes. In the case of Episode I, this would mean, in the cast section alone, Yoda would be linked four times (one for Frank Oz and three more times on each puppeteer). NanoLuukeCloning Facility 10:49, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
  • To me, the use of {{FN}} in the above example seems rather redundant to the pipelinking. And as for the Pascal thing, is there any reason why we shouldn't just fall back to using whatever is the Wookieepedia title of the character? Imperators II(Talk) 17:41, 25 May 2024 (UTC)
    • I'd agree on both account. If nobody wants {{FN}}, I won't include a subvote for it in the draft. And for the case of Starring actors like Pedro Pascal, yeah, defaulting to our own naming policy seems sensible. I'll update the example accordingly. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 10:12, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
  • Looking through this I agree with the majority of what you've proposed. Overall our aim should always be to match the credits in the source as closely as possible. For starring actors I don't personally have an issue with us adding the character names to match the the rest of the cast and just sourcing it to the episode itself since the starring characters will always be the most prominent unambigious roles anyhow. As to what name should be used, I'd say use the full name that's most prominently given in the source itself if possible and default to page title if that's not possible. For example, Leia Organa for ANH rather than Leia Skywalker Organa Solo since that name doesn't come till later. For actors not credited in a specific role like Yuri Lowenthal I'd say it'd be fine to just use the caption template next to their listing. Ayrehead02 (talk) 14:09, 26 May 2024 (UTC)
    • I don't think we should use ANH at all for an example on the "Starring" issue, since as as said in the second paragraph in the Starring section, we do have a full cast list in the credits and should default to it. In ANH, "Starring" is set at 2:00:28 and "Cast" scrolls up at 2:02:42, and Carrie Fisher is credited as "Princess Leia Organa". However, you raise an excellent point in regard to another actress who played Leia: Vivien Lyra Blair, in Obi-Wan Kenobi, is only listing as "Starring" (well Co-starring exactly), thus we need to decide on her name, and indeed crediting her as "Leia Skywalker Organa Solo" seems contextually incorrect, and should be indeed limited to "Leia Organa". Going back to The Mandalorian, deciding on the name of the character for Pedro Pascal can still be tricky. Up to Chapter 8, we only know him as "The Mandalorian", so we probably should credit him as such for Chapter 1 to 7, then switch to "Din Djarin" for any further appearance. Still, we need to codify this in policy clearly so we don't back and forth constantly on this. How about, roughly:
      Whenever an actor is only listed as "Starring" in the credits, their role must be identified with the name the character is know at the time, both in regard to in-universe chronology (Vivien Lyra Blair as Leia Organa, not as Leia Skywalker Organa Solo) and out-of-universe chronology (Pedro Pascal as The Mandalorian for Chapter 1 to 7 of The Mandalorian, and as Din Djarin for all later starring credits).
      NanoLuukeCloning Facility 11:29, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
    • Answering your second point, so I understand correctly, you'd be ok with just (I removed the ref for this example):
      '''[[Yuri Lowenthal]]''' {{C|as [[Rick|Rick the Door Technician]]}}
      NanoLuukeCloning Facility 11:29, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
  • Moving this from Discord. For credits on third-party games; would it make more sense for us to just list the people involved with the development of star wars content in them, or do we list the entire credits? I'm personally leaning towards the former Bonzane10 Sabine Starbird black belt in card-jitsu 10:42, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
    • Good point. I agree with you, we cannot assume based on the general credits of a game that that everybody in the staff worked on Star Wars content (SW DLCs, events, etc). Like for Fornite, we're not going to reproduce their credits list for the whole thing, as SW only represent a small amount of their content. For us to copy their general credits would lead to the creation of articles for creators who potentially had nothing to do with SW. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 11:24, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
  • I did a lot of work on the cast credits for Survivor, mostly in making articles for cast and finding their roles, and I agree it would be much easier to put their uncredited roles for confirmed actors in the credited cast area. It definitely felt weird to put actors in there twice. I do worry that the format used in the example for Yuri Lowenthal could present issues when we have an actor providing additional voices for many NPCs and we get, say, five examples of such characters. It could make for some lengthy parentheses, and without a stated role such as Voice Talent, I think things might look odd. Smartguy74 (talk) 04:31, 3 July 2024 (UTC)
    • I don't really agree that listing the uncredited roles (plural) could turn in some kind of cluter. In fact, not providing the roles would be a detriment to the readers. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 12:22, 22 July 2024 (UTC)