Prompted by a suggestion on Twitter, thought it would be a good idea to start a discussion about whether or not folks would be interested in seeing an OOU section added to our IU templates to capture information like first appearance or actor. Traditionally we've always kept the infoboxes in-universe only in order to align with the idea that everything above the Behind the Scenes section is in-universe and I'll admit that my gut reaction was against changing this; however, I think that comes more from a place of opposing breaking tradition rather then any practical reason and so I'd encouraged anyone who experiences a similar reaction to look past that and think about the actual pros and cons of the idea from both an editor and reader perspective, something we could perhaps all stand to do a little more often. That said I'm not personally strongly for or against this idea yet, but more wanted to hear the community's input.
In terms of pros, I'd imagine that actor especially is one of the pieces of information that people most commonly want to quickly find from a character's page, certainly the most common OOU info. Currently this information is only present at the bottom of the page, which can take a while to scroll down to, especially on mobile or for those unaware they can navigate via the table of contents (assuming they'd even know that the BTS heading in that list has what they're looking for). The feature is fairly common on other wikis, and I know I've personally used it for first appearances a lot on the Marvel wiki. For stubs that lack a BTS it can also be easier for someone to quickly add the actor to the infobox so that the information is present, which might help where new users aren't confident about adding entire new article sections.
Cons-wise, adding an additional section to the infobox, especially something like first appearances that would appear on practically every article, would increase the size of the infoboxes and often result in them overlapping with the body more. This could result in disruption of current image placements and possible fewer images overall and would mean that while the actor info is more quickly available for mobile users, they also have slightly longer to scroll down before they reach the body of the article. For shorter articles it would also mean that the first appearances infobox section would likely often be alongside the actual appearances section where that info is visible anyhow.
When briefly discussing this post with other admins, alternate solutions included looking at Fandom's quick answers feature to provide this info upfront, having an OOU section that's by default collapsed, or having two tabs on infoboxes so that while the OOU information is there the infobox still remains IU only through default viewing. I'll let the users who suggested these go into more detail below, but also happy to hear any other suggestions for alternate solutions. Curious to hear everyone's thoughts, additional pros and cons, and suggestions for other parameters that might be included in a potential OOU section so please feel free to jump into the discussion below. Ayrehead02 (talk) 10:43, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
Discussion
- While I'm personally a fan of keeping the infobox IU only, I'm not against the idea, if it makes the reading experience more convenient. (especially on a larger article like Anakin Skywalker.) Making the OOU section collapsable is a good compromise IMO. Bonzane10
(holonet) 10:57, 1 March 2024 (UTC) - I really like that we separate IU and OOU so neatly. It bothers me when I visit other wikis and the two seem intertwined together. So on a personal grounds, I'm against. From an editing the Wook perspective, I'm unfortunately also out. For a franchise as large as Star Wars, we have a lot of different people portraying a lot of different characters. Take Anakin Skywalker as an extreme example: James Earl Jones, David Prowse, Jake Lloyd, Matt Lanter, Hayden Christensen, Scott Lawrence, Mat Lucas, and Frankie Ryan Manriquez have all contributed to the character (I'm very much against only 1st because they all contribute to forming the character) (And don't get me started that I think we should do better about listing a character's illustrators outside of first appearances). Listing first appearances can also get messy (Look at Ruescott Melshi as an example). There's been talk about an OOU infobox to go in the BTS but, while I do like the idea, I don't think it solves the scroll issue (but does cut out the digging issue). What could solve the scroll issue is if the main infobox could detect the BTS infobox and offer an anchor link to it. Unsure if that's possible. NBDani
(they/them)Yeager's Repairs 12:05, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
- I think an anchor wouldn't be hard to do, just one additional parameter in the main infobox (bts= with 1 if there a BTS infobox) and it would have link formatted like {{C|[[{{Pagename}}#Behind the Scenes|See behind the scenes infobox]]}} or something like that, right above Source. NanoLuukeCloning Facility 12:15, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
- I had a similar idea half a year ago that I hastly presented over on Discord. The idea was based on the postulate that the main infobox should/would be kept IU-only (mostly because of editors preference), with a secondary infobox introduced in the BTS section, with parameters such as "Interpreted by", "first appearance" (may be divided between Canon and Legends) and "Created by". There was some exchange on the subject, notably how it would affect the BTS section that are too short (on this, I would say that we may not want to have this infobox active if the BTS section is too small, as it would be too redundant anyway). I was supposed to create a prototype, but I got sidetracked (as I often do...). NanoLuukeCloning Facility 12:09, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
- My thoughts generally echo Dani's on this. It is somtimes complicated to list first app/sources, and also the multiple signifact actos issue. In addition, there is the sheer weight of precedence for this. We have had infobox IU only for well over 15 years, the amount of work this would require to implement would be staggering, without a significant benifit. Also there is an issue of small articles that would have pointlessly redundant information. I would be okay with a bts infobox with an anchor in the main infobox, but only if the article has a large bts, and so an infobox would actually be useful for quick reference. We wouldn't want a infobox when the bts is literally "x was mention/appeared in y" with an infobox also saying that. ThrawnChiss7
Assembly Cupola 13:38, 1 March 2024 (UTC) - Per Dani, personally I would prefer if infoboxes stay IU only. Though a seperate one to go in the BTS could be useful. Rsand 30 (talk) 13:38, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
- For aesthetic reasons, I do not want an infobox in the Bts. That would cause so much work. Every Bts section on the wiki would need to be re-arranged to fit an infobox. I think tabs in the infobox is the best solution, with a default-hidden OOU section of the infobox being the second best option. We could have the tabs default to IU and require the article be formatted according to that default. Master Fredcerique
(talk) (he/him) 16:38, 1 March 2024 (UTC) - One thing to keep in mind if we implement tabs with text in infoboxes is that text will no longer be easily visible when, for example, text-searching something on the page. Imperators II(Talk) 16:52, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
- Fred's words are my thoughts exactly after my initial suggestion of infobox tabs. Our readers would want to see key OOU info easily accessible at the top of a page, and the best way to do that without clutter while still differentiating clearly between IU and OOU stuff is to have a tab system (similar to but separate from our ongoing proposal of having an image gallery in the infobox). It's certainly possible, as seen here on the Fallout wiki, and perhaps a more prominent button would make things even more clearer to readers; some readers have not been aware of even our existing Canon/Legends tab, so some extra eye-catching UI might help. We should also make sure whatever we do works on mobile; a large majority of site traffic is via mobile, and we already know there are bugs with existing infoboxes on mobile. The table of contents toggle is also not very visible on mobile. OOM 224 (he/him) 17:33, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
- Per Dani. - Thannus (DFaceG) (he/him) (talk) 18:41, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
- Similar to what many have said, I'm very against mixing OOU with IU in the infobox. I don't really see why that's something that needs to happen – for our live action/animated characters, the actor is one of the first things mentioned in the bts, and first appearance is pretty clear from the appearances/sources sections, so it's not like this information is hard to find. JediMasterMacaroni(Talk) 19:04, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
- I think it's worth understanding that the majority of our readers view the site in mobile, and so finding Bts info on a major character might actually take a lot of scrolling, especially if they don't realize the sections are collapsible. Master Fredcerique(talk) (he/him) 20:42, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
- I think it's worth understanding that the majority of our readers view the site in mobile, and so finding Bts info on a major character might actually take a lot of scrolling, especially if they don't realize the sections are collapsible. Master Fredcerique
- I too appreciate Wookieepedia's hard separation between IU and OOU material, as both reader and editor, and don't want to see this diluted. Asithol (talk) 00:33, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
- Pretty much per Dani, for practicality reasons. We could pursue making a template (or amendment to the mediacat) that links to the "actor who portrayed [character]" categories though imo.—spookywillowwtalk 04:29, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
- I agree with what others have pointed out, infoboxes of in-universe articles should remain in-universe. I can easily call back to removing the publishing eras parameter for partly this reason. --Vitus InfinitusTalk 02:49, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
