User blog:Midoki24/Template Characters - Characters To Be, Maybe

Hi there. I wanted to bring to attention the idea of Template Characters. It's a phenomenon that we've all seen from time to time. It was brought to my attention that there are characters that many no necessarily fit their role on character pages. And it's also interesting to note what I view as informative enough to be a character and what is not. Since these views differ and since the topic is mildly interesting I'd like to foster some discussion about it.

A "template character" is a character that is mentioned within a comic book that holds no significance to the plot of the story. It's a common idea in the Astro City section of the website, but it's also used in many Green Lantern Corps characters. I'm going to use a specific example to try and help you understand my point.

The Astro-Naut is a character that has never been seen on panel, they've never spoken and are never the main plot in an Astro City comic book. However, like other characters on this site, the Astro-Naut holds specific significance to the stories at large and is an important character to this comic book's history. This character is important and therefore it got a character page. I know what is and isn't important is subjective but bare with me. This is not a "template character" and therefore deserves a character page.

Characters like Johnny Lightfoot, Palomino and Lightning Kid all have redirects. These characters have a section on the template. They are important to the founding tradition of heroes in this comic book however they are not important to the overall importance of the plot in the story they're featured in. They are a name in a paragraph, no image, no significance. So while documenting them is important, it doesn't deserve a blank (what we refer to as a skeleton page) page with almost no information written on it because there is no more information to draw on. These are "template characters" and while they may or may not be expanded upon in the future, at the current time they do not meet the requirements for a character page.

The difference between these characters, to me, is basic. Can there be more information written about them? For characters like the Astro-Naut, they most certainly can. This character has appeared (as a mentioned character only) multiple times and therefore there can and will be more information written about them. That is information we can use. It deserves a character page (and infobox). Whereas characters like Boilermaker, Derelikt, Block and Tackle have no more information that can be written about them. They are mentioned only once, hold no significance to the plot or the book and while they are interesting trivia, they are template characters.

Now there is a "mentioned only" tag for characters that are simply mentioned in a book. There are character pages for characters that only appear in writing, within speech bubbles, for Elseworlds titles. These ideas and functions already exist on the website. What I am discussing is the naming of characters and how to use them on the site when they fit between the cracks. There is something called a Minor Character Template that we used to use for certain characters, however, it was used subjectively for characters that didn't quite fit the bill to the editor. Please take your time in looking over my examples and see how they might fit towards other characters like La Garro for instance.