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The TV IV:Proposals/People Pages/Archive 1

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People Templates

I propose that we make a slight alteration for our People (Actor/Writer/Director/Producer/Creator) templates. As it is now, the only official Person template (as far as I know) is for Actors - but many, many people who should have bios are not best known as actors, or even when they are, frequently wear other hats. I propose that the "Actor" template then simply be changed to a "person" template, which can be altered as necessary. The alternative is to create multiple templates, but as there are at least five jobs (six if Voice Actor is given its own category), that would require either as many as six bios for the same person - which is redundant - or, if Voice Actor is grouped in with Actor, a minimum of 5+10+10+5+1 or 31 separate templates which each basically accomplish the same task, which I feel is horribly extraneous.

My proposal, then, is to make one magical template for everybody. Assuming Voice Actor is grouped with Actor, the layout would then be:

  • Biography - Not "Actor Biography" as is currently shown.
  • Roles - For Acting work, same as it is now.
    • Billed Roles
    • Major Roles
    • Minor Roles
  • Writer
  • Director
  • Producer
  • Responsible For - Covers the "Creator" category.

Editors creating a page can then easily add or subtract fields as necessary. The layout also leaves it open for situations such as, say, Joss Whedon - normally a Writer/Director/Producer/Creator, he recently had a cameo in an episode of Veronica Mars.

The sidebar can remain more or less the same, even though the field is currently "actorname," because that's only seen by editors, not by someone looking at the page. We might want to reconsider the field "appearances" (or "Notable Roles") as it shows up, but I don't see a problem. We can always leave it blank, and if we do want to put a Writer or Creator's better known work in that field, technically, "Writer" or "Creator" is a "role" in the dictionary sense of the word. "Notable episodes" can also be left blank without a problem.

The other question is how to do the layout for the information under writers, directors, producers and creators. The way I did it for writers, directors and producers on the John Cleese page was:

  • SeriesTitle linked
    • Episode Count: x (Seasons [y linked] through [z linked])

Or, in cases of one season or only one episode:

  • SeriesTitle linked
    • Episode Count: x ([Season y linked])

Or:

  • SeriesTitle linked
    • Episode Count: 1 ([Ep# - EpisodeTitle linked])

Incidentally, I also used that same format for "Major Roles" (with the CharacterName in non-bold - linked if necessary - after the bold Series Title) to save space, as many young actors have only had one or two roles, but for Actors such as Cleese, who has been around for over 40 years now and has worked in TV most of his life, the old layout of:

  • SeriesTitle: CharacterName
    • Episode Count: x
    • Ep# - EpisodeTitle through Ep# - EpisodeTitle

Takes up a lot of space. For Billed roles, I switched it to:

  • SeriesTitle linked: CharacterName linked (Seasons [x linked] through [y linked])

Again to save space, and "Minor Roles" now read like:

  • SeriesTitle: CharacterName
    • [Ep# - EpisodeTitle linked]

Finally, Responsible For listings are a simple one-line

  • SeriesTitle

What does everyone else think of this basic format? --JCaesar 16:04, 15 Jan 2006 (PST)

Comments

  • Just some quick comments as I should probably be doing revision. The linking the first and last seasons in which someone appears seems a bit odd, I think either all the seasons they were in should be linked or none, otherwise it's just two seasons that they were in linked. Personally I also think that everything would look better if it was all on one line instead of two.

Two ideas I've mentioned in the past pertaining to minor rolls and such:

  1. We could do it like IMDB and like tvtome did, listing all of the occurences of characters that an actor plays in chronological order. It always seemed to work for tvtome, but then we might want to try something different. And again it would take up a lot of space with minor roles.
  2. Another idea I had (although I wouldn't have the first clue on how to go about doing it) would to have some sort of drop down list of episodes that the actor has been in. a bit like the spoiler boxes I guess.
Spoiler:

Although the spoiler box type thing would hopefully be smaller and fit on that line. Possible just click the number of episodes or something. But again this is something that I would have no idea how to do and don't even know if it's possible.

    1. When you first mentioned this (the spoiler idea) on the Awful Forums, I was curious to see how that would look. Now your example gives me a better idea, and as even you pointed out, it takes up a lot of space. What's worse, you have to assume that TV IV Wiki will sometimes be running as slowly as it has been recently, and having to click a button and load something for every single character appearance could take forever. I think your single-line-per-appearance listing is better, but, again, when characters appear in a bunch of episodes of a series, that takes up a ton more space than the two lines which my version would take up. (Cleese, for instance, was Narrator in 50-some-odd episodes of House of Mouse. In my current version, I think that info takes up three lines. In a line-per-appearance model, it would be 50-plus lines.) The other reason I like the model I proposed is that it is all-inclusive and takes so little time to update. To use a for instance that will affect me very soon, Sela Ward appeared in two episodes of House in Season One. So, OK, end of the first season, I write, "House: Stacy Warner," Then: "Episode Count: 2 (Season One), and I'm set. But now in Season Two, she's already appeared in a half-dozen or so episodes. By my model, I just have to do a "minor edit" on that second line to read: "Episode Count: 8 (Seasons One through Two)", which takes about 30 seconds. By your two models, I have to include links to each episode, each week, as they happen. You see the advantage? I understand your problem with only having two seasons, so I'm open to suggestions, but: A.) by the old "Ep# - EpisodeTitle to Ep# - EpisodeTitle," we had the same problem on a wider scale, and B.) since the overwhelming majority of characters will appear in two or fewer seasons, for those characters who do have three-or-more season runs, each season page that's filled in should have a link to the prior season/next season on those pages. Which goes along with the episode information on the Character Pages, I think. So I really think my proposed layout offers the greatest amount of necessary information with the greatest ease of updating/correcting. At least, of the solutions presented so far. --JCaesar 18:37, 15 Jan 2006 (PST)

Let's Focus on This for the Summer

Long argument I made on DCEdwards1966's talk page, long argument on The Awful Forums. No need to rehash them except to say, what should we do about this? JCaesar 19:21, 8 May 2006 (EDT)

Quotes Section

Some of the copied-over stub templates for People Pages include a "Quotes" section. To date, only one Quotes section that I have found (the one for Mary-Louise Parker—click "edit" to see the comments) has been filled in.

That section is a vestige of IMDb that got copied over by a bot, and I'd rather not start encouraging people to fill it in on People Pages, which is why it's thus far stayed off the "preferred" format used on the Ian Somerhalder page (which needs fixing up, anyway, but not for that reason). Those quotes (as seen on the IMDb) are almost impossible to verify (unlike quotes from episodes of a TV show), and I can honestly say, from what I've seen on the IMDb, they have hardly ever added any useful information ever whatsoever period. A good 90% of the time, the IMDb Quotes sections also end up being "rah rah such-and-such a celebrity agrees with my political viewpoint/religious viewpoint/viewpoint on vegetarianism" or "boo such-and-such a celebrity is an Evil Librul/Twisted Conservative" or borderline creepy stalker stuff getting into every little facet of their daily lives. In fairness, the "Trivia" sections on the IMDb often end up being the same thing, but at least that section has the potential of providing something useful, worthwhile or interesting. Although frankly, percentage-wise, it tends to fall short a lot, too.

This site is about TV, and to the extent that actors pages are on here—and I've been a devout advocate that they should be and that they should be well-populated and have been staying up late hours to make it so—the pages should be about their work on television and not what the cast of The O.C. thinks of the War in Iraq. Some measure of that will necessarily seep into the Biography and Trivia sections, but as much as it can be contained, I think we've done a good job of doing that thus far, and I'd like to keep it that way. The Quotes section just opens up a can of worms we don't need. And, again, it's often damn-near impossible to verify, unless you happen to have a copy of every magazine or newspaper ever published and talk show or news show ever aired handy. JCaesar 18:36, 30 July 2006 (EDT)

Quotes section should exist. However, it should only be quotes related to said person's television work. IE, no random quotes on politics or on some product they are pimping. Also, only quotes that include citations. Most major magazines are stored on online databases such as EBSCOhost and LexisNexis that can be verified by anyone with a library card. This seems like a good compromise position that seems to fix the potential problems of the above speculation, without arbitrarily getting rid of good content. --MateoP 21:40, 30 July 2006 (EDT)

Is it really worth trying to hunt down a quote that may or may not even really exist? Especially if someone on the notoriously incorrect IMDb submitted the quote, it may have been paraphrased or incorrectly transcribed. It could have been from an interview that wasn't put in a magazine (i.e. radio, television, etc). Why go through all the trouble of trying to use a unintuitive database system that you only have access to at a library to verify that, yes, Zach Braff really is a vegetarian.
Furthermore, the quotes section rarely has useful information. If someone wants to include a quote about how Tony Schaloub was raised by wolves, then they should include that in the biography with the quote in the biography itself. If there is no place for the quote then it is likely unnecessary. --IndieRockLance 22:45, 30 July 2006 (EDT)
Thanks for the obligatory disagreement with me. However, in my proposal, I specifically said that only quotes related to their television career should be included in the quotes section. Tony Schaloub being raised by wolves would not pass this filter. In contrast, the other sections have no television-only rules to them. The bio and trivia section have tons of non-television related information. This would make the quotes section the most restrictive section on the page.
It would be the responsibility of the person adding a quote to find a citation. If you can't find a citation, it shouldn't be added. And any uncited quotes should be removed when found. Citations can easily be found through online databases and you do not need to be at a library to access them.
No one is suggested transfering all IMDB quotes onto this wiki. So how accurate imdb quotes are is irrelevant. --MateoP 22:59, 30 July 2006 (EDT)
However, it should only be quotes related to said person's television work. And the person deciding how "related to said person's television work" said quote would be is...?
Also, only quotes that include citations. Most major magazines are stored on online databases such as EBSCOhost and LexisNexis that can be verified by anyone with a library card. Great! I take it you're volunteering to track down every quote every user cites on all 10,000 Person Pages (and the tens of thousands of future Person Pages) from now until the end of time?
The simple fact is, the majority of people who put Quotes on Person Pages are not going to cite them, and when they do, they are likely going to be copied verbatim from the notoriously unreliable IMDb. It is a huge waste of anyone's time to police this. Why create more work for other people when not having the section at all saves so much time?
Yes, Biographies and Trivia sections present the same problem. Again, though, I've heard nothing here to suggest that Quotes are generally ever "good information" by any definition. Why create a huge cost when the potential net benefit is close to nil? JCaesar 23:13, 30 July 2006 (EDT)
You're right, there is no distinction. In fact, it is even more difficult to find trivia citations than quote citations. You can not, logically, be opposed to one and not the other.
No person is required to do anything on a wiki. Personally, I won't look at ever person page and check to see if quotations are cited. What I will do, is in my normal navigation, is remove uncited quotation. People can add all sorts of untrue information to a wiki, to literally every page that exists.
I think quotes are interesting in that they give an actor's opinion on their roles.
Let me remind you that "consensus" means group opinion achieved through negotiation. This means polite discourse and negotiation. I think I've given a fair middle ground idea that eliminates most of your concerns. If you have a counter-negotiation please present it. --MateoP 23:20, 30 July 2006 (EDT)
You can not, logically, be opposed to one and not the other. I don't think Trivia is a failsafe circumstance, either. The difference is, Trivia is called "Trivia." By definition, it's not entirely useful. Now, granted, the Trivia section can be used as a catch-all for otherwise tangential information which is nonetheless neat and unique—like the fact that John Cleese has a lemur named after him. Personally, I'd prefer to see the Trivia section used almost exclusively for that kind of keen-but-not-terribly-essential information and not, say, that Mary-Louise Parker "is part Swedish," because I can't even imagine what sort of person gives a rat's ass about that. But, hey, to each his own, and if somebody is really that intrigued to discover that tidbit, whatever. Again, it's called "trivia" for a reason.
Quotes, on the other hand, are even more useless, and they do imply a statement of fact which is, by necessity, verifiable. Trivia is often covered in DVD extras and talk shows. Unless we restrict Quotes to only coming from DVD extras and talk shows (directly related to TV), there's, again, no way of policing it, and if we were to go to those lengths, why bother? If a quote is really that interesting, paraphrase it (or put the pithy, interesting part in quotes) and include it under "Trivia" or "Biography."
If you honestly think that the overwhelming majority of celebrities have ever delivered even one pithy, remarkable line along the lines of "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country," or, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," fine. I can justify a Quotes section for that. I kinda doubt it.
I think quotes are interesting in that they give an actor's opinion on their roles. Very, very rarely is that the case. If you're that interested in an actor's opinion on his or her roles, start filling in the episode guide for Inside the Actors Studio or The Charlie Rose Show, and then you can go nuts with the quotes inside the episode guides. How's that for a counter-negotiation? JCaesar 23:35, 30 July 2006 (EDT)
I would suggest that if you don't find quotes to be interesting then simply don't add them to pages. Wikis, being voluntary, require no work on anyone's part. However, what you are suggesting is disallowing people who do find them interesting from adding them. That can not be justified.
DVD and talk shows are less verifiable than magazine interviews/articles. Magazine articles are available all the time, talk show information is available the time when the talk show airs, and DVDs only if you own the DVD (otherwise, if you are lucky, you might be able to get it to the library to verify). On the question of verifiability, there is no question that quotes are much easier. However, just to make it even more secure for those who are concerned, I've suggested that citations must be included at the time of submission. This means that you or anyone else will never have to track down a citation, unless you are the person submitting the quote. --MateoP 23:59, 30 July 2006 (EDT)
Would we be having this discussion if DCEbot's auto-generating bot hadn't included a "Quotes" section as a result of copying it from the IMDb's template? Yeah. I didn't think so.
DCEBot is just me editing with a bot flag. I have no automated way of gathering information. I have a template that I created from an actor page last September. It was created from and actor page (possibly Alyson Hannigan) that was given as an example of how an actor's page should look. I only create stub actor pages. Aside from filling in the name of the actor, I add nothing else to the page.
I have no interest in a quotes section but I don't see a reason to disallow one either. It might be beneficial for you guys to go duke it out privately rather that disrupting the wiki with your feud. DCEdwards1966 | Talk 09:15, 31 July 2006 (EDT)
I do sincerely and completely apologize for my misunderstanding of how the Quotes section and most Actor Stubs were created.
As far as "disallowing" the use of Quotes, however, I'm not one to "disallow" anything that's not libelous or vandalizing. But disallowing, discouraging and not encouraging are three different questions. We already have a headache on our hands with editors filling in actor credits by copying over, almost entirely unedited and almost entirely unformatted, the TV credits from the IMDb. (I've found literally hundreds of examples, but some of the ones I can remember from the last handful of days which I didn't fix are Kiefer Sutherland, Enrico Colantoni, Victor Garber and the page which started this whole Quotes section mess, Mary-Louise Parker. It should be obvious why we do not want to encourage this practice, but just in case it's not: The IMDb's credits for TV shows are at best incomplete and at worst inaccurate; its formatting does not match the Wiki formatting at all; and the links within the Wiki are minimal.
The notable thing is, the format of those copied-over IMDb credits seem to match each other relatively closely (borrowing some elements of TV IV Wiki-only formatting, but not enough to be unrecognizable as IMDb credits). The other noteworthy point is that these filled-in IMDb-borrowed credits were not all done by the same user. In fact, double-checking, no two of the examples I just used were done by the same user.
That happened because one person did it on one or more pages, somebody else copied and pasted that format to their pages, somebody else copied and pasted to their pages, and on and on until the problem had spread to (now) the majority of People Pages with any credits in them whatsoever.
If there is a section, it will be filled in—even if it's filled in with information copied verbatim from another site, such as the IMDb (which is often the case). If there is no such section, it will likely not be filled in unless said section is absolutely screaming to be created (as with, say, many of the unique, show-specific sections found on different shows' episode pages, such as Lost or House, M.D. or Battlestar Galactica (2003)). While People Pages are still largely ignored, that was the concept behind cutting the empty section out of templates and People Pages I was filling in. I'll hazard a guess that nobody—not even MateoP—would ever have bothered to track down quotes to include on any People Pages if the section had never been created by one person one time for whatever reason for the one page on which it first appeared (possibly the Alyson Hannigan page?). And I'd further feel almost 100% safe in betting that had the IMDb and Wikipedia not used the section regularly (and, again, badly in their cases), the first person to create a "Quotes" section likely never would have thought to do so.
That was why I cut out the empty Quotes sections in any article I found them in. That's why I cut it from the one article in which I found it (which looked, at the time, to be copied almost verbatim from another source, based on formatting irregularities. I have since found it in a second one, which I'm not touching until the issue is resolved.) I promise I had no idea who had filled in that one section, and it has nothing to do with a feud. I was trying to avoid the risk of that template being copied, and thus verbatim-copied useless misinformation becoming the norm somewhere else on the Wiki, this time in an area we can avoid much more simply than we can avoid having a credits section.
If I saw a huge groundswell of support from Wiki users clamoring to have a Quotes section, I'd shrug and move on with my day, even knowing full well it will inevitably degenerate into what it has become on the IMDb as the Wiki's user base becomes larger and the number of People Pages multiplies. But when it starts, if it can be caught there before it spreads, it can be (I swear to God I thought not much more than 24 hours ago) effectively contained and eliminated before it becomes a bigger mess.
It's not about disallowing. It's about not encouraging. And that's how this whole issue started. JCaesar 12:08, 31 July 2006 (EDT)
If you simply want to "not encourage" it, then, as I suggested earlier, once you have removed the section from the actor pages you will have no problem if people go in and add it themselves. Because if you then remove sections that people add themselves, then you are disallowing it.
If that's all this is about, then we really don't have a problem. I said earlier that I have no problem with that section simply being removed and allowing people to add it if they want. --MateoP 21:17, 1 August 2006 (EDT)
If DVD's (which are also available at any Blockbuster, through Netflix, or—if you want to violate the law, which I don't recommend—through bit torrent downloads) are "less verifiable" than magazines and newspapers, we should probably stop the entire concept of a TV episode guide Wiki now. I'm 98% sure most of the episode guides on this site—certainly most of the ones for shows older than this last season—are created as the result of DVD's.
Quotes are a useless and difficult to police waste of bandwidth. If we encourage people to use that section, we might as well right them a blank check to fill the Wiki up with useless garbage or complete misinformation. Even if we explain to people, "Try to keep the Quotes free of unrelated Quotes," it's unlikely to be heeded. Editors don't pay attention to the Help page with its list of preferred formats which can be easily copied; why should we expect people to bother to listen to more vague and subjective commands on other pages, like, "Don't start supporting your political beliefs," and, "Cite your sources"? If we nip the problem in the bud—by removing that section from the other templates, and keeping it off the only page in which anyone has thus far bothered to fill in the information—before DCEbot's one error spreads to a site-wide pissing contest, we'll save everybody tons of time. Editors don't need to look up the rules of MLA citation; admins don't need to answer 6000 complaints that so-and-so mistyped a quote and didn't cite it and should be blocked. Easy. Painless.
I'd like to think the information on this site can be and will be better than IMDb is and TV Tome was. Avoiding extraneous information which begs to be abused is a good way to do that. JCaesar 02:39, 31 July 2006 (EDT)
The exact same thing can be said about the Trivia section. You are just willing to ignore this problem for that section because you happen to like it. That's hypocritical, and wrong. --MateoP 07:39, 31 July 2006 (EDT)
You are just willing to ignore this problem for that section because you happen to like it. Hey, now, wait a minute, are you telling me what I like and don't like. Are you... are you calling me a liar? Do I need to demand more apologies here, buddy?
As I thought I made clear, I don't really like the Trivia section all that much. I can just justify its existence more readily than I can the Quotes section, and its potential for some useful information to come out of it is greater. The Trivia section will likely be useless much of the time, the Quotes section almost always. I'd rather at least halve the potential for useless garbage, and since more interesting information is likely to come out of the Trivia section, if you really must include a wonderful, pithy quote from Drew Barrymore about how she wants to be ground up and fed to her cats, is it really that impossible to add it to the Trivia section? JCaesar 08:13, 31 July 2006 (EDT)

Also, to improve a potential problem pointed out above. If a user creates a citation that turns out to not exist, that should be considered a serious offense. That would deter people from making up citations. --MateoP 23:23, 30 July 2006 (EDT)

So you're saying someone should block them? JCaesar 23:35, 30 July 2006 (EDT)
Adding false information is vandalism, and should be treated the same as all vandalism. Same punishment. Of course there is a difference from not knowing that quotes must have citations (which deserves no punishment and simply the quotes will be removed) and making up a citation that doesn't exist. --MateoP 23:59, 30 July 2006 (EDT)
I'd like to say that any solution that adds non-obvious rules is not really a solution at all. Editors are bad enough at following obvious rules like proper formatting let alone rules about citations and what quotes are and aren't allowed that aren't readily evident from looking at other articles. I mean we have a rule about not copying from wikipedia that got broken so much it had to be added to the edit page in bold and even then still gets broken.The-jam 10:50, 31 July 2006 (EDT)
Adding rules to the edit page, like what is done with reviews, would be the way to go. --MateoP 21:17, 1 August 2006 (EDT)
Adding rules to the edit page. Please re-read this section of the-jam's comment: I mean we have a rule about not copying from wikipedia that got broken so much it had to be added to the edit page in bold and even then still gets broken. (Emphasis added.) JCaesar 22:37, 1 August 2006 (EDT)

As a further attempt at compromise on my part, I suggest that quotes not be part of the default template on actor pages. It would be optional. That way, people who fill in actors pages would not feel obligated to fill it in, and people who do want quotes, can add the section if they are willing to do the work to find them. --MateoP 07:39, 31 July 2006 (EDT)


You mean, someone should maybe go through all 10,000 Actor Stubs that already have them and remove the section?
I'd roll my eyes at how galling your constant demands for other people to do work is, but IndieRockLance and I just spent the last four hours doing just that (and we still haven't done C-R yet). Again, to nip this situation in the bud.
Speaking of default templates, I'd really like to congratulate you personally on some of your stellar work in paying attention to formatting guidelines or even, hell, picking one and running with it. It's also painfully clear to me that you have such an immense interest in filling in information in sections which others haven't already set up for you, that clearly you would be extremely concerned about the Quotes section if DCEbot's bot hadn't already provided the power of that suggestion. JCaesar 08:13, 31 July 2006 (EDT)
This is one of the reasons you are impossible to work with. This is called an ad-hominem attack. Whether or not you like the way I edit pages is irrelevant to whether or not we should disallow a quote section. Since others are now participating in this, consider yourself ignored again. --MateoP 21:17, 1 August 2006 (EDT)
Awww, and I'd just baked you lemon squares. I was actually trying to make a point which the-jam stated a little later in a much more overarching way. We have a problem with people ignoring the rules of not copying, and as your stubs were proof, basic formatting. (Just last night, I pitched the entire Rainn Wilson entry—which was in its entirety, and I quote: "[ActorStub] [formatting] Rainn Wilson is an actor who plays Dwight Schrute on The Office (USA) and somebody else on Six Feet Under"—and started from scratch on it.) Adding vague, subjective rules to any section is begging for trouble, and certainly opens the door to more copying at best, if not complete sloppiness like your stubs or the original Rainn Wilson entry.
To give you an example of what I mean: I like the Memorable Moments section, specifically because it exists on no other site that I've seen. If an editor wants to fill that section in, he or she is forced to do a little work on his or her own. Even if it's not formatted properly, at least it will be original and easily verifiable as having happened or not happened by other viewers of the show, which is what this site is for.
There is no such guarantee on Quotes (nor, indeed, Trvia, Biography or credits), so we can just sort of hope people will put in the effort and clean up after them when they inevitably don't. If the section is one that we really can't afford not to have—like Biography and the credits—there's not much we can do, but again I say, Quotes does not fall under that banner, and it never did, and that's how this whole discussion started. JCaesar 22:37, 1 August 2006 (EDT)
If the quotes section is kept it should be renamed to something like "Television Related Quotes" to make it obvious what kind of quotes should go there. Also making it a subsection of trivia might be a good idea to lump that sort of generally useless data together.The-jam 10:50, 31 July 2006 (EDT)
I'm fine with a subsection and the suggested title change. --MateoP 21:17, 1 August 2006 (EDT)
Man, did you ever nail the problem with the vague rules for what belongs in a section. It would be exactly the same as trying to enforce rules stating what belongs in the Trivia section. Frankly, I rolled my eyes when I saw "Is part Swedish" (which is, by the way, verbatim from IMDb) in Mary-Louise Parker's trivia, because that's precisely the sort of pebble which starts rolling down mountaincaps to create the enormous snowballs of hellacreepy Trivia sections like what you get with Hilary Duff on the IMDb, including a month-by-month account of her schedule for her pedophilic 40-year-old stalkers' convenience. But if somebody is really that interested in the fact that Parker is part Swedish, fine, whatever. It is a Trivia section. It has some useful applications. I see no need to remove a potentially useful section to avoid the potentially creepy applications of it. But not creating a most likely useless section is another question.
As far as a sub-section for quotes, that would, at least, be a better idea, but if the goal is not to encourage that kind of section at all, even that's encouraging something. Anything that says, "This is where you can put the info you copied and pasted from IMDb" is going to be filled with stuff copied and pasted from IMDb. I mean, again: If a large number of users on their own decide to put quotes in the Trivia section, sigh, shrug, fine. If hundreds of pages start having enough quotes in the Trivia section to make it worth the energy of creating a new section for those, fine. I do not have the time nor the interest in following around every Trivia section with a ruler. If it organically becomes a repository for creepy stalker info, mind-numbingly stupid factoids culled from a questionnaire in Teen People and 16, and Elisha Cuthbert's deep thoughts on her faith in something or another that she carefully avoids calling "God" and how she's just a regular kinda gal, so be it. I'd rather leave that section alone, hope for the best and try to lead by example. If quotes had been placed in that section in the first place as just another bit of trivia, I'd've gritted my teeth, shuddered, and moved on with my edits. But since this is only about, so far, two filled-in pages and an assload of empty stubs, I wanna put as much of a lid on the possibility while I still can and hope that it won't become an issue. At least, an issue outside of a Proposal page slapfight. JCaesar 12:08, 31 July 2006 (EDT)

I agree with JCaesar on the subject of quotes. I'm also worried about the trivia section eventually filling up with unverifiable and obsolete factoids as on IMDb. Adding a citation requirement will not much improve this. Even if you ignore the distortion introduced by the media—what you actually say in an interview and what some hack finally writes up isn't necessarily the same—remember that actors are, by definition, professional liars and the stuff they spout when promoting an entertainment product or themselves is to be taken with great suspicion. —Naddy 14:10, 31 July 2006 (EDT)

Well, I wouldn't go so far as to call actors "professional liars." Actors are professional pretenders. Agents, managers and most of all publicists are professional liars. ;)
In all seriousness, though, that's not entirely a joke, and where it becomes prurient to the discussion is: Whom do you think it is who fills in much of that trivia/bio/credits/oh-my-yes quotes information on the IMDb? I can tell you from first-hand experience that you would be shocked and appalled (or maybe not—the front page has made it increasingly clear that the IMDb is becoming, more and more, the world's largest actor/writer/producer/crew member advertising site) at what percentage of that data is plugged into bios directly from the people paid to lie about their clients. I've been the hired goon paid to do the publicists'/managers' dirty work on the IMDb. It's a lot.
To the extent that we can do so, I'd like to keep the disgustingly disingenuous promotion off this site, and removing the temptation (by not creating sections which specifically encourage their involvement) is the first step in doing that. The day I see the phrase "gifted performer" pop up in a bio, I will weep like an American Indian seeing litter on the highway. JCaesar 22:09, 31 July 2006 (EDT)

Summary

To attempt to summarize the above discussion, it comes down as 3 people in favor of disallowing quotes, 2 people opposed to disallowing, and 1 person neutral but giving a suggested way in which disallowing can be avoided. Either way, it's a clear no-consensus. However, there was some reasonable negotiation and it appears that maybe this can be resolved by doing two things:

  1. Not adding a quote section to the guidelines and not adding it to new actor pages when created.
  2. Having quotes be placed, when someone decides to create them, in a subsection of Trivia and possibly renaming it to "Television quotes" (or something similar).

If all agree, this seems like a reasonable compromise. --MateoP 21:26, 1 August 2006 (EDT)

If you have a burning desire to have quotes, and you absolutely believe that the Person's page is simply incomplete without those amazingly pithy and perfectly well-stated words of wisdom, fine, go ahead and put them in the Trivia section. If you're worried that a reasonable person wouldn't know that this is a quote otherwise (although a little proper punctuation goes a long way), you can even make a sub-section if you really so desire. But can we please try not to copy verbatim from copyrighted sources (or, as much as possible, non-copyrighted sources)? Even something as simple as, "According to Newsweek, Mary-Louise Parker once said, 'Acting is hard, and I like pie,'" is fine.
Then again, if all editors across the board would try to put a little pride in their work and spell and punctuate correctly and format correctly and try to include only relevant, useful or extremely interesting information, just as a rule, that'll go a long way, too, and save your fellow editors and friendly neighborhood admins a lot of time. JCaesar 22:16, 1 August 2006 (EDT)

Images

Though not specific to people pages, this seems to be where most of the problems occur. Based on my understanding, some of the images uploaded of actors under fair use are not really fair use. Event photos (e.g. this photo of Sarah Chalke) are usually taken by free lance photographers to be sold to magazines and therefor wouldn't be acceptable under fair use. Only promotional images provided by studios or the actors agents (i.e. head shots) would be true fair use situations. Again, this is based on my understanding of fair use. If I am wrong then there is no problem. Otherwise, we may end up having some copyright problems. DCEdwards1966 | Talk 23:43, 1 August 2006 (EDT)

I think you are correct. I think it would qualify as fair use to use such an image if and only if you were discussing the exact image. Otherwise, you have to find a more generally available image to use as promotion in this way. --MateoP 00:00, 2 August 2006 (EDT)
Also I think it should be a good idea that people provide links from where they got promotional (and other non-screenshot) images that way people can check copyright issues easier. --MateoP 00:06, 2 August 2006 (EDT)
That's assuming sources provide full credits. They don't always.
In fact, it can sometimes be pretty difficult to determine which photos are provided by agents and which are provided by freelance photographers. Magazines often take photos which look suspiciously like headshots, and agents and managers often take promotional photos at events. Not to mention that awards photos may just as easily be AP or UPI photos, which aren't as carefully guarded.
It's also important to remember that the number one source of agent/manager-provided images is the IMDb, which protects those images for a reason. Photographers tend to be very protective of those images, far more so than, say, the AP.
Ultimately, I don't think this is that big of an issue. If someone has a problem with the use of an image, they're not going to jump straight to suing. They'll send a letter saying, "Take this down." If we get one of those letters, we take it down. Odds are we're not going to get many of those letters, but we'll get one of them sooner or later, and it's not that hard to deal with those issues on a case-by-case basis. JCaesar 00:13, 2 August 2006 (EDT)
Also, the more I think of it, the more I'm reminded of the Ebaum's World brouhaha, which is a none-too-rare situation on the Internet, of sources taking credit for images, material and content which they did not create, or to which they do not hold the rights. Asking every editor to credit photos would also either require them to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the vast archives of the Library of Congress or (more likely) run a serious risk of miscrediting images because they assume (as most reasonable people do) that their source's credits are accurate, which is not always the case. Both for the sake of ethics and our own skins, I'd rather not do that. JCaesar 00:47, 2 August 2006 (EDT)
No, I'm not asking for that. I'm asking for a simple link to the place where it was found. Even if some of the links turn out not to be useful, having them will sometimes to be useful and that is reason enough to provide them. I didn't say they should credit the website for owning copyright. A simple "I got the image here [http:// ]" could help people who are interested in finding out the information. For example this image contains a link and that link does have copyright information. --MateoP 07:52, 2 August 2006 (EDT)
Well, that's great for that image. But ultimately, as the-jam pointed out in the above discussion, asking all editors to comply with a guideline tends not to accomplish doodley-squat, as Kurt Vonnegut would say. Even guidelines written in bold on the edit page are ignored. Either someone would have to go through every image and remove the uncited ones (and there are now hundreds, if not thousands), or we just have to hope things work out okay. Plus, again, citing sources does not guarantee the cited source is being completely ingenuous in its credits, and our job here is not to promote other Websites.
Trying to guess ahead of time who is and who is not going to complain is something of a fool's errand. If we were really trying to make that prediction, we'd assume that all images owned by the notoriously lawyer-happy Disney are foul territory, and that means every last screencap for Lost would have to go bye-bye.
Ultimately, as far as any images go, the best we can do is use them with the fairuse tags and hope for the best. If someone complains, we remove the image. No biggie.
As far as freelance photographers, once they've sold the rights to their image, they tend not to give a damn what happens to it after that. They've already made all the money they're going to make off it. (See the part in the copyright law regarding "loss of profit.") Agents and managers, on the other hand, make no immediate profit off the headshots, only off its continued use as an advertising tool, so they're more protective of their clients' headshots. JCaesar 10:01, 2 August 2006 (EDT)
According to the linked Wikipedia article in the fair use notice, "Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as use for scholarship or review." (Emphasis added.) It's my understanding that uses for Wikis of any kind fall under "scholarship or review."
Of course, if that's not correct, I'll be happy to stop uploading such images, although I'm not 100% sure there's any way of enforcing that across the board. Also, it should be noted that almost every image I've uploaded that was not a screenshot, I found on Google Images, which does not archive images with strict copyright protection (such as those on the IMDb). The IMDb also goes to some lengths (not necessarily great lengths, but some lengths) to protect their images.
It should also be noted that there is a special "fair use" tag for promotional images, such as headshots, as well as a special one from screenshots. My guess is that if we run into copyright issues, we're in more danger from the screenshots than we are from even papparazzi photos which are pretty easily available across the Internet. JCaesar 00:02, 2 August 2006 (EDT)
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