Template talk:Infobox comics character/Archive 1

message: Has the "infobox borderless" class been changed? There's something pretty funny going on with it's white-space. Until I find out what, the main class for the table will stay on the old one. Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 03:17, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Ever heard of trying to get consensus for major changes? - SoM 03:23, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I forgot the width parameter! That's what went wrong! Dread Lord CyberSkull ✎☠ 04:10, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  infobox borderless 

message: What happened that caused the image to be on the left as opposed to the center, like it was before? --DrBat 00:12, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I've reverted the most recent change. That seems to have fixed it. --DrBat 01:33, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't understand how making the image parameter optional broke the centering in Internet Explorer, but then IE's CSS rendering is, and always has been, screwed up badly. Showed up fine in Firefox. *makes note to test in IE next time...^ - SoM 05:41, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image centering? 

message: Hello, I came across this template on the Batman page, and see that the bottom half goes under the unlikely heading "Statistics". May I ask you to please think of another heading, guys? The word statistic (and its plural) have several distinct meanings; under none of them can "real name" or "special powers" be considered examples. I do appreciate that popularly (and erroneously), the word is sometimes employed in this way, but it shouldn't be in an encyclopedia. Thanks! —Encephalon 15:56, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds reasonable to me; any suggestions? dfg 02:32, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 'Character Information' or 'Additional Information' or ... 'Vital Statistics'? -- Ipstenu 15:17, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I just changed it to "characteristics".  --Doradus 12:54, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Statistics? 

message: Me and User:Lesfer think it would be a good idea, both practically (saves space) and aesthetically (less white space, especially since we want short powers descriptions in the Infobox), to change the template's Notable Powers section from a vertical list (with all the s in it) to a not-vertical list. We wanna reach consensus on it, too. Also, I believe most manuals of style state there's no need for punctuation at the end of a list such as this. dfg 02:35, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-vertical lists and punctuation 

message: i remember there being an official line on alternate reality relatives and teams here but can't find it.  relatives (in continuity) are listed and "notable" if they have a page on wikipedia.  but what about batman, who lists several of his alternate reality children, plus several out of continuity WWII teams.
his relatives look like this:  
Thomas Wayne (father, deceased), Martha Wayne (mother, deceased), Phillip Wayne (uncle and foster father, deceased), Alfred Pennyworth (butler and foster father), Dick Grayson (adopted son), Jason Todd (adopted son), Helena Wayne (alternate reality daughter, deceased), Ibn al Xu'ffasch (alternate reality son), Terry McGinnis (alternate reality biological son)
Not only, is there Earth-Two, and Kingdom Come info, there's continuity from television.
What's the deal?  Opinions anyone?  ---Exvicious 08:58, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alternate Reality in the Super-hero box 

message: I'm trying to rough out a page for Mister Fear, who's had 4 different people wear the costume.  None of these had particularly different powers or interpretations of the character, but had different identities/debuts/relatives.  I can't personally justify splitting the character into 4 separate articles, but if I put in 4 superboxes it doesn't look pretty.  I'm not aware of a way to make the superboxes line up with the content subsections.
For another example, consider the Serpent Squad article.  Are we going to put a bunch of superboxes in there?  How?
--El benito 19:55, 18 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Check out Mister Terrific (comics) 161.38.222.14 04:42, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That looks...er terrific, but the difference between Mr Terrific and the 4 Mr Fears is that at least for the moment, there isn't enough notable information to usefully pad the text column until it's as long as or longer than the superbox.  I could try adding whitespace to the entries (is that even possible on MediaWiki?), but that would only work well for people with the same text size --El benito 17:11, 19 May 2006 (UTC)

text: There's not much info in the boxes anyway.  i'd just throw in the relevant info in the article. 161.38.222.14 20:50, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  SupaBox usage on mult character pages 

message: Why should "Species" be optional? It should not be that way.
:Because now with species added, it disrupts the entire box. Ryulong 08:41, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I corrected the optional code on Species so it doesn't mess things up. It was commented out so it wasn't showing at all. -- Ipstenu (talk|contribs) 23:15, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Species 

message: I think it would be great if a character's Universe of Origin could be listed in the box.  This would be very useful for the DC entries to show where a character is originally from(Earth-1, Earth-2, Earth-4, Earth-8, Earth-S, Earth-X), especially since many of them have had memories from these universes returned after Infinite Crisis.  This could also be helpful for Marvel characters, though much less needed than DC. 69.182.118.34 01:35, 6 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Universe of Origin 

message: While I would like to think that this field can function as navigational tool, but I can't really think of a time I have used it. And it tends to lead to arguments over whether characters are related or how, and it's just fan BS that should be dealt with in the article (or talk page).
I have seen a number of other arguments, too, including whether alternate-reality relatives, characters without entries, or clones should be involved. And then there's the discussion about how to phrase "clones of alternate-future versions of children of clones".
A Man In Bl♟ck said on the WP:COMICS talk page, "I'm really tempted to remove the relatives field because of this, this, this, and let's not forget this. 95% of the time, this field is listing either wholly unimportant supporting characters (huh, Wiccan's parents are named Jeff and Rebecca), is insane fanon (Vision II is Wonder Man's nephew? WTF?), or requires the article to actually explain it (making the quick reference useless and indeed often misleading or confusing - e.g. Stryfe's convoluted backstory). It also encourages that sort of nonsense in other infoboxes, since the SHB is so visible and widely used; I've seen relatives fields in everything up to and including Mega Man infoboxes."
The SHB's repurposing as Template:WBToonChar has unfortunately led to this argument, about whether Plucky Duck is Daffy Duck's son.
We should really remove this unnecessary, trouble-making, cruft-encouraging field from the Superherobox  template. --Chris Griswold 08:14, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So...I'm gonna do that. Nothing gets an argument discussion started likte a little being bold. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 09:26, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relatives field should be removed

message: Okay, I've amended the real name field to display secret identity, although you can input the field using either real name= or secret identity= at present.  Eventually I'll look at migrating them all over. Steve block Talk 19:42, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: What if it the character's hero/villain name IS their actual name (such as the Runaways)? --DrBat 23:52, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Then that field can be left blank...if no value is entered, it doesn't appear in the box.  Postdlf 01:59, 12 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deprecating real name 

message: Well, shouldn't we apply the same changes to :Template:Supersupportingbox? I would if I knew how to make such edits. —Lesfer (talk/@) 17:16, 26 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that we should. That, and superteambox. I've started the discussions at Template talk:Supersupportingbox#Changes and Template_talk:Superteambox#Changes --Chris Griswold 19:17, 27 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Supporting characters

message: I would really appreciate it if more interested editors would join the discussions at Template talk:Supersupportingbox and Template talk:Superteambox so we can create an actual concensus and decide what to do about the fields there. --Chris Griswold 20:44, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Discussing new infobox changes 

message: Please take a look at the SHB in the X-Men article. It lists every current active X-Men member. --Chris Griswold 04:59, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  X-Men 

message: It has come to my attention that this box has been popping up alot, specifically in entries about cartoon characters. The problem is the box seems to be for comics, and the "Publisher" field seems to furthers that. Is there some other term that can be used, so it dosen't sound so akward on those pages?  Or it should it just be scrapped on those pages? Pacific Coast Highway (blah • I'm a hot toe picker) 20:31, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd say make another template, like a  or something that uses this one as inspiration instead of changing the "Superherobox" because other articles than those about superheroes have begun using it.  That's just my thought though. --Newt ΨΦ 20:39, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Usage in other than the comic book universe 

message: Moon Knight has dissociative identity disorder and thus his "aliases" Marc Spector, Jake Lockley and Steven Grant, could be considered alternate egos (personalities) and so qualify, I would think, as fodder for the Alter Ego field.  Thoughts?  --NewtΨΦ 15:35, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good to me. --Chris Griswold  (☎☓) 17:29, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Names in the Alter Ego field are currently not showing up. Some of the others have setup a working kludge for high profile pages in the meantime. --Basique 10:33, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Alter Ego issue 

message: There's been a lot of discussion about how to deal with characters who have had multiple superhero names (Hal Jordan or Jean Grey, for example). I think a field with all the superhero names a character has used might be a good idea; does anyone have any suggestions on how it should be named or used? - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 22:52, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It looks like people are putting them into the new aliases field. Is there any way to do a robot assisted replacement of all the old boxes, or will we have to do manual upgrades? --Basique 10:36, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the aliases field is perfect for this.  But the 'upgrade' will need to be either AWB or manual :P Anyone got AWB to figure that out? -- Ipstenu (talk|contribs) 13:29, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Please please AWB you're our only hope. : ) --Basique 14:49, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Superhero names field

message: Readd info like Relatives and Status. For remove Notable powers and add Powers/abilities (Not all Superhero have Superpowers). For relatives make it Marriage and Kids.--Brown Shoes22 15:50, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Readd or change info ! 

message: Why were the colors for their comicbook company and their alliance (hero/villain/neutral) removed? --DrBat 01:07, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done and done. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 03:35, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Damn that was quick. Thanks! --Basique 10:30, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Colors 

message: Don't you think it could be just a little bit smaller? Just like in ? —Lesfer (t/c/@) 05:18, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a result of shifting from the "toccolors" class to the "infobox" class. I'd rather not override the general style sheets if at all possible, since many of the variant Wikipedia skins and some people's personal style sheets use these named classes to customize the appearance. - A Man In Bl♟ck (conspire | past ops) 05:49, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Font size

message: Since when is the invsable woman a picture of some man?Lego3400: The Sage of Time 13:21, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not just any man, Jimbo Wales. I guess not to have this showing up in the "what links here" of her pic?  I dunno. -HKMarks IS FROM SPACETALK ♦ CONTRIBS 13:30, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Example 

message: Can we please have a singular colour where there used to be alliance colours, as it is not as good-looking without it? --Jamdav86 19:20, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's currently being discussed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Comics#The_template_color_scheme
So far most votes seem to go for blue. Please feel free to add your vote Dizzy D 20:35, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Colours 

message: If I'm not mistaken, the field "Real name" was deprecated due to some editors feeling the field could be redundant sometimes, since several heroes and villains (eg: Zauriel) perform their customed activities using their real names. It was immediately replaced by "Secret identity", which was deprecated almost immediately after inception due to the civilian identities of many superheroes not being secret. However, for reasons that I'm about to state, I feel that "Alter ego", while a better replacement than "Secret identity", has some major flaws which indicate that we should probably revert the field's name back to "Real name", and I hope the majority of editors will agree with me. Well, here goes my rant:
The American Heritage dictionary defines "Alter ego" as "Another side of oneself; a second self". How does this apply to say, Darkseid (birth name: Uxas)? There aren't two sides to the personality of Uxas. Uxas is always Darkseid, and Darkseid is always Uxas. Therefore, the name Uxas doesn't belong under a field called "alter ego". I know that when a field does not apply to a certain character, we are supposed to leave it blank, but isn't the fact that Uxas is Darkseid's birth name important enough to be included in the box? Koriand'r, Stephen Strange, Samael and Hank McCoy are not the respective alter egos of Starfire, Dr. Strange, Lucifer and Beast, because they act and sometimes even dress exactly the same when being referred to by the former names as they do when being referred to by the latter ones. Should "Diana Prince" and "Kory Anders" (a name Starfire shortly used while she completed Earth studies, and the closest thing she has to anything which could be considered an alter ego) take precedence over "Princess Diana" and "Koriand'r"? I think not. With the name of the field being "Alter ego", the line between what should be considered an alter ego and what should be considered a "Notable Alias" is effectively blurry. Matches Malone is as much an alter ego to Batman as Bruce Wayne is. What should we do then? While some editors have been encouraged to move Moon Knight's disassociated personalities from the Alias field to the Alter ego field, determining what belongs under what will inevitably lead to arguments where subjectivity and biased opinions have a lot of weight, for example: "Was enough of Wolverine's true personality shining through during his time as Death that it can be considered more of an alias than an alter ego?". And I'm the only one who thinks that while "Real name: Kal-El (adopted as Clark Kent)" sounds OK, "Alter ego: Carl Lucas (legally changed to Luke Cage)" sounds like hell? Wrapping up, also consider that a casual reader without much comic book knowledge might be confused by the fact that, Adam Strange's article (for example) doesn't seem to list his real name, which the reader could easily not be aware is the same as his superhero name.
If no one posts anything opposing my proposed change in two days time, I will make the change myself. I anyone disagrees with the change after that, we can still discuss it here and/or leave it as it was until a compromise is reached. Whew. That took long.
--Ace ETP 23:37, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Seeing as how three days have passed and no one besides HelenKMarks (who seems to mostly agree with me) has posted, I'm going to go ahead and change "alter ego" to "real name" myself. Please understand that by no means I'm I blind to the flaws which led to "Real name" being deprecated, but also understand that "alter ego" simply doesn't cut it as the field's name. An alter ego, being another side of a person (a second self), isn't necesarilly something that has particular name or can be easily expressed with words (for example, Jamie Madrox has several different personalities, but they all operate under the same moniker). On the other hand, many comic book characters don't bother to develop a personality only to be used when wearing spandex, or even have a life outside their superheroic exploits (like at least half the current members of the JSA). --Ace ETP 21:44, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no disagreement. No one has posted anything opposing the proposed change. As you seem to be more skilled in editing the template without messing it up than me, I implore you to please take the time to change it so "Real name" is what's displayed rather than "Alter ego". Thanks in advance. --Ace ETP 23:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Never mind, I just saw you latest message in my talk page. I'll suggest the change at WT:CMC later today or tomorrow when I have the time. --Ace ETP 23:13, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should "Alter ego" be changed back to "Real name"? 

message: Should the name in the SHB be different from the character name used in the title? Examples: Carol Danvers, Kyle Rayner. It just seems strange to have an infobox at the top of the article with a different name from the article. --Chris Griswold  (☎☓) 09:04, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Strange, but normal. The article title is what their best known by. The SHB displays their stats with a preference on current and correct information. Some Character's don't use aliases, some do. Some are really stupid and forgetable. ("Starlight"? "Ion"?) However, those are their names. The intro alone should explain anyway any perceived inconsistancies. Besides, it's better than listing them "[article name] as [character name]", right? ACS (Wikipedian); Talk to the Ace. See what I've edited. 18:59, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name in SHB 

message: Hey. Anyone actually watching the template these days? No? Feh. Seems we have another problem. A user is trying to re-add at least one field removed with consensus and add an undiscussed field such as "voice actor." The user doesn't seem to realize others would probably want off these changes or that the former in made in opposition of a consensus. Ace Class Shadow; My talk. 18:27, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anyone watching? 

message: Readd info like Relatives and Status. For relatives make it Marriage and Kids. For the Superhero's Status isn't that much of a porilm to add --Brown Shoes22 05:58, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: However, the will still be misuse. You can tell people to do one thing and they'll do another. We can't regulate/micro-manage the use of a single field whose very need for inclusion is debatable. Plus, who decides these "rules"? Me? You? Ultimately, it's just not worth the hassle. Oh and qute frankly, anyone truly notible WOULD be mentioned. Ace Class Shadow; My talk. 04:27, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Readd ''Relatives'' and ''Status''