The TV IV:Proposals/Actor Pages

Linking

Since there are virtually no Actor Pages and filling them would only be repeating information from other sites, how about for now linking to their IMDB page (or alternativly Wikipedia) instead? --RoToRa 07:05, 12 Sep 2005 (PDT)

Comments

1. I agree, but we could also have links for the series in an "External links" section as for Wikipedia articles. We could also use the same IMDB template. Corti 08:58, 13 Sep 2005 (EDT)
2. I disagree. Having separate pages for each actor, even if it's just a small bit of info and a listing of other shows, allows the user to stay within the site instead of having to leave to IMDB or wikipedia to find other shows the actor has been in. Radnor 15:18, 14 Sep 2005 (EDT)
3. I agree with Radnor. Having separate actor pages with better pics and info would give us a good advantage over imdb and other online sources. --Thinine 21:42, 14 Sep 2005 (EDT)
4. I haven't done any cut-and-paste from other sites so that there won't be an issue with copyrights, but is it okay if we cut-and-paste from wikipedia.org? I noticed that several actors for Red Dwarf are in wikipedia.org. --Spock 12:31, 22 Oct 2005 (EDT)
   1. No, it is not. That would violate Wikipedia's GFDL. --CygnusTM 18:51, 22 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Major vs Minor Roles

What should the criteria be for a major role versus a minor role? Number of appearances seems to be the easiest way to determine, but how many? Radnor 08:06, 17 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Comments

1. Billed, regular roles versus recurring guest-star roles? --Hawkman 08:23, 17 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Roles format

I was thinking about the current format for listing the rolls. A few points I've considered:

1. Film roles, I noticed that on the Kriten Bell page films and TV rolls are mixed up and there's no telling which is which (unless you know). As this is a TV resource I don't think we need to go into too much detail about films. In fact it might be sufficient to just give a link to the imdb page. We don't want to fill up actor pages with film information, especially when there's actors with a lot of film roles. So I'm not entirely sure what would be the best route to take with films, but we need to decide.

2. I feel that with the current template there is too much unnecessary information. I don't think it's relevant to put an episode count, as if someone wants to know that they can just click the character link. I also think that we should keep the pages as spoiler free as possible. ie I'm not sure whether it's right to put their duration or the start-end episodes of their run due to the fact that it might spoil for someone who doesn't know yet when someone will die/leave the show. Again the character information page can inform you about that if you need to know. That said it is useful to know how long they were in a role. So there's two sides to the arguement. Maybe just the years they were in the show?

3. I think that with minor roles we should list what episodes they were in. I'm not sure how it should be done though. We could have the character and then list the episodes underneath as I have tried with Ricky Gervais, although it's difficult to judge as he was only in one episode of Alias (I was thinking of just putting commas between episodes in one line instead of taking up a lot of space giving each a bullet like with Mira Furlan). Or we could do it the TVtome way, which was to list each appearance (eg http://web.archive.org/web/20001207203500/www.tvtome.com/servlets/PersonDetail/personid-540). I'm not sure which is better, or if it's even a good idea at all.

So yeah, discuss. --Kash 11:08, 17 Sep 2005 (EDT)

Comments

Sorry, stole your comments header. I've been thinking about this, and I think it can get really hairy to list every credit for some actors, especially unbilled voice actors on the Simpsons who are in almost every episode anyway. One way to handle it is to link to a search that results in only those episodes, if that's possible, though probably more of a strain of the server than if we listed them all. I suppose there could be a threshold where a minor character is one who appears in a certain percentage of episodes, and beyond that they get their own page with a full appearances list. As for movie credits, forget them. --aenematron 21:38, 28 Dec 2005 (EST)

"Triple Threats"

So, we have the Actor template and now a Director template. What about actors who direct, or write, or produce, or all of those? Should we have alternate pages for the same person, or should we figure out how to combine the credits for all of these? I think it would work as long as we can identify what a person's best known for- Directors can have an "Acting Credits" section and actors can have a "Directing Credits" section and so on. The question remains, however, whether these credits should include just the title of the show written or directed or if it should include a full list of every episode they've written/directed. Or maybe those should go into an in-depth page.--aenematron 19:03, 28 Dec 2005 (EST)

Comments

• If it's something minor, I think we can do what you're suggesting. For example, Joss Whedon has a very minor acting role in an Angel episode. If it's something big, I don't see why we can't just create another template for it that encompasses possible combinations. Joss Whedon is a very prominent writer and director, and neither is more prominent than another, although if we're being nitpicky here I guess he's more well-known for writing Buffy/Angel episodes than directing them. Just to give two different takes on the same person. --Wizardryo | ✎ 20:13, 28 Dec 2005 (EST)
  • Interesting. Can we do a multiple template that allows people to include or exclude credits, so we only have one that can be used for every permutation of actor/writer, actor/director, etc? If not, we have to make a whole bunch, including for acting, directing, writing, producing, scoring... Unless we just do one for a triple threat that's general enough, with a "best known for" slot or something. --aenematron 21:33, 28 Dec 2005 (EST)
• I personally would suggest using seperate pages for the different roles, and just modify the templates to allow links to the other pages. This allows for a) More customization of templates without the mess involved in creating umpteen new templates b) it allows us to talk about their careers in different contexts, for example there are directors out there who can't act and vice versa, and describing their abysmal talents would, in my opinion, make their acheivements in other fields appear less impressive. -Philoetus 23:57, 5 May 2006 (EDT)