Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Video game characters/Archive 1

Current character article audits:
So until we get a spot in the template set up to better track things, here is an audit list of all the available character articles by gender. Keep in mind these numbers are now a clear indication of all character articles, as there are some that aren't categorized by gender (Lavos) and some overlap such as the BioShock twins.
 * Male: 308
 * Female: 208
 * Non-Binary or Genderless: 1
 * Selectable Gender: 13

In addition with species articles there are:
 * General Species': 33
 * Pokémon species: 28

Please note that this current number does not include lists at the moment for a better sense of scope, as they are a bit harder to categorize til we get better integration and tracking. But overall we have about 600 individual character articles within the scope of this task force as of this date. That number may also decrease as non-notable subjects are weeded out.-- Kung Fu Man (talk) 19:58, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

A section (that might be split into its own article soon) needing this task force?
The article for Ensemble Stars, a video game franchise with other spin-off media, currently has a discussion going on to split a new article for a list of ES characters. Currently, very few characters listed in the article actually have any information about them besides their voice actors, so a split would probably not be warranted in my opinion. Just wanted to let people know about a potential new article for this task force. QuietCicada (talk) 12:10, 14 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the note. You were right to mention it here, and I personally agree with your stance. However, that said, in the future, when you alert Wikiprojects/task forces like this, try to make your notification more neutral so that you don't fly afoul of WP:CANVASS. So, something more like "Hello, there's a discussion about splitting out a characters for (article), and we're looking for more input. Please comment at (talk page) if you have input. Thanks!" The notification shouldn't take a side, you'd just leave your personal stance at the discussion itself, which is fine. Thanks! Sergecross73   msg me  16:22, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Got it! Thanks for the heads-up on that policy. QuietCicada (talk) 17:08, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Redirected articles
Do we want to add redirected articles about characters to this task force? 8.37.179.254 (talk) 18:04, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * That makes sense, as redirected character articles may one day not be redirects. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 18:17, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Makes sense to me too. Sergecross73   msg me  18:25, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

A few edge cases on scope
I have a few edge cases on whether certain articles should be included in this task force.

1. Should characters made to market video games, like Segata Sanshiro or Polygon Man, be under this task force?

2. Should articles centralized on fictional characters, but not about fictional characters, like List of video games featuring Mario or Stereotypes in Punch-Out!!, count under this task force?

(Oinkers42) (talk) 18:39, 14 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Yes. I think the relation is close enough, and those sorts of characters often have game appearances/cameos too, as both do.
 * I'd say no, but I also think its largely a moot point. There aren't many articles like the Mario one. They're usually more like "List of Sonic the Hedgehog games", and framed more about the game series than the character itself. And I don't believe the Punch Out one is going to survive its merge discussion, and if it does, would again be a rather rare type of article. Sergecross73   msg me  19:07, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Added both, as they've appeared in video games related to their respective parent companies. There are some fringe cases like Johnny Turbo which are particularly weird (and probably better off merged into the Turbo Duo article) and appeared in a game well after the company involved was long gone. What about instances like this?
 * I'd also say no, as they're tangential subjects but this would be better strictly to be about the characters themselves to keep the scope from running amok i.e. suddenly having to include the Overwatch Pornography article.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 22:18, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Infoboxes and a "Manual of Style"
So this has been something I've been working on for a bit on my own, but been wanting to make the character infoboxes a bit more uniform. To this end I've cleaned up the vast majority, but there are a few things that have come up that might need some additional discussion and I feel it might work better if we have a consensus on them, and help prevent some of the wilder issues where infoboxes suddenly "bleed" deep into the article to the point of pushing material out of the way. Keep in mind too Pokemon species articles tend to follow their own formatting for their infoboxes, so they fall a bit outside of this. So some thoughts on the matter from myself and others:


 * Image captions
 * Main thing is to have the caption state where the art was used, or made for. I feel like stating artwork was for promotional purposes may be a bit moot as realistically they are all promotional images in these for the most part. Very few character articles use screenshots to illustrate the article at this point, and those that do have been steadily replaced with better concept art.
 * User:TheJoebro64 has mentioned he feels crediting the artist for the particular artwork can see some merit if they have an article on here in cases of promotional or concept art used, and honestly I like that idea but I want to run it by others and see how they feel on the matter.


 * Parameters
 * Last: I honestly feel given the frequent use nature of video game characters in side games and other media, the Last parameter really should not be used: more often than not it feels like it rapidly becomes outdated (and has) and only contributes to make an article bigger. It also doesn't inform the reader of too much in cases where the last appearance was a minor one, when they may have had quite a few appearances overall.
 * Full name: Full name tends to be pretty moot as the lead should display this info to the reader outright. It doesn't make sense to bloat an article with that information when the viewer can easily see it at a glance, and more often than not it's not mentioned again in the context of the article beyond that. It's definitely a case of Keep It Simple, Stupid.
 * Alias/Nickname: This one's a bit more contentious, but I feel in some cases Nickname can be valid...if the name is different enough and used often enough it can be cited by a reliable third party source as a name associated with the character. For example with Nathan Drake it makes no sense to note his nickname is "Nate" as that's a common shortening of Nathan. However, in Donkey Kong (character) the use of DK is closely tied to the character and would not be an immediately obvious shortening of the character's name.
 * Family: This includes the whole sibling/family/child/significant other run. Honestly feel these contribute nothing to the reader at a glance: a lot of times articles will only mention these characters in passing, in some cases it can be seen as original research as well to assume someone is say a character's love interest. Given that a lot of the VG Project has in the past regarded these as cruft, I feel they should be omitted and just mentioned in the body of the article if worth mentioning, because in the cases of some characters it has resulted in *insanely* overdetailed boxes.
 * Weapon This is mainly due to MK character articles, but this should probably stick to a weapon used primarily by the character across all appearances if possible, instead of trying to list a character's whole arsental. Again. you're mentioning things associated with the character at a glance to help understand them.

Thoughts?-- Kung Fu Man (talk) 21:38, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Frankly, the infobox parameters should be only "real world" information like series, first appearance, who created the character, who voices the character, and so on. The "in-universe" details like family, weapon should be omitted. TarkusAB talk / contrib 22:15, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with this, though I do think the family parameter could maybe stay. NegativeMP1 (talk) 23:40, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Weapon I feel like Fighting Style has some merit, as it does help invoke a mental image of how the character moves or is (and in some cases like, say, Soulcalibur or Street Fighter, the character is built around this aspect making it more than surface important). If we did keep family, I'd definitely feel some sort of "limiter" would be in order to keep it from listen a whole family tree like happened with Kratos (God of War) until recently.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 23:50, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * As WP:OWN states, "No one [...] has any right to dictate what the article may or may not say". This seems an awful lot like dictation. If the parameters are there for fictional characters in general, I think it should apply to VG characters in the same fashion - the video game character template simply redirects to the character template. If it's going to be changed, it should be changed for ALL fictional characters, not just gaming ones. Having unique rules for video game characters doesn't sit well with me. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 22:16, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Zx for the love of Pete can you try and understand what a discussion is and actually pay attention to what a policy means when you read it. Nobody is dictating anything. All of this is merely a proposal, and it's completely fine for individual projects to discuss and ascertain what information they do consider worthwhile in the infobox. We've literally had two discussions open up on this matter on the main project talk page prior to this.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 22:20, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * In what universe is WP:OWN relevant to someone seeking consensus? This discussion is literally the opposite of what you described there. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 22:21, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * This is not at all a WP:OWN concern. OWN is a single editor enforcing their strict view on a singular article. This is a workshop proposal for a potential MOS change, which would require adoption at the MOS page and then would be perfectly enforcable. That is certainly within the remit of MOS guidelines. -- ferret (talk) 22:56, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
 * This is a ludicrous application of OWN. That sort of application would make consensus-building on a whole impossible. I'm shocked to see such a misapplication of guidance from an experienced editor. Sergecross73   msg me  00:30, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * So this doesn't turn into a pure pile-on: I apologize, I misinterpreted it as more of a statement than a proposal. I understand now that it was meant to be debated. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 02:59, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to pile on anymore except to explain the visceral reaction. It was a combination of things: citing policy/guideline to an experienced editor, not being careful in your application of these, and the fact that your primary contribution to the discussion was to complain about it. It's easy to see red when all of those things are combined. Citing policy/guidelines can come off as rude if you know that the person is already familiar with them, but doing it erroneously is even worse.
 * As far as your other point, changing the template for all fiction would be a horrendous nightmare that has no possibility of working. It would either take a very long time to get every project on board with the change, or we would be deadlocked, as there's no way we'd be able to get a consensus without extreme planning. As it is, we're currently trying to make video game character articles stand out and serve as an example to aspire to, not fixing the character articles problem top down.
 * Anyway, I generally agree with the proposed changes. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 03:53, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

An aside, going to ping, and  towards this as all have also commented on the matter and I'd rather we hammer out a solid consensus going forward.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 08:21, 13 July 2023 (UTC)


 * I'll give more input in a bit too. Sergecross73   msg me  12:47, 13 July 2023 (UTC)


 * I'm generally in agreement. My thoughts:
 * Image captions - Agree with your thoughts, agree with yours/Joebro's stance.


 * "Last" - I disagree with the "last" field. I think its worth seeing, at a glance, if its a character who has been featured relatively recently or if they're more of something of the past. In my experience, upkeep hasn't been much of a problem, it seems like passerby editors are quick to update it. (Sometimes too quick, like adding Sonic Superstars to the Sonic character article today despite the game not being out until November, but even that has been generally solved by a simple revert, not time-sinking discussions. I think I've had a couple local consensus say just list games, rather than movie/comic/whatever appearances. Maybe something like that would help? Just brainstorming.
 * "Full Name" - I agree. It's been irritating having passerbys write in "Mario Mario" for the umpteenth time in the infobox. Thankfully it doesn't tend to come up in the prose/lead.
 * "Alias" - indifferent, but I agree with your examples.
 * "Family" - support removal. In my experience, it just leads to contextless, un-linked name dropping.
 * "Weapon: - agree it should just be main ones. RPGs could get problematic too, with class changes making it so lots of weapon types are usable. Sergecross73   msg me  16:24, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Regarding Last I can see that, I feel if we do keep it definitely go with the last major playable appearance in a game then, vs something minor (i.e. Capcom characters appearing in Teppen or mobile games for example, vs a full release like Street Fighter 6)--Kung Fu Man (talk) 19:26, 13 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Oppose Over prescripiton and instruction on the infobox based on user's personal preference is not needed nor is a benefit to the project. They can be worked out on the specific character's talk page since we are not going to be able to manage such actions top down since characters vary vastly from article-to-article, franchise-to-franchise.  Spy-cicle💥   Talk? 18:19, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * While I do agree that it can vary from franchise to franchise, I think at least some baseline with some of the parameters would be a good idea. We've had more than a few cases of infoboxes just suddenly extending past the length of the article, and some degree of expectations would help reduce edit warring but also reduce editor alienation if some understand there was a discussion and what all was involved.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 19:22, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * As mentioned by multiple editors above, this is standard MOS consensus-building. It's fine if you oppose to specific aspects of it, but it doesn't make sense to claim that we can't ideologically build a consensus on how to populate an infobox. I mean how do you think infoboxes are created and maintained? Sergecross73   msg me  19:41, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * KFM, Sorry my original reply was short. I'll reply here to the fields you brought up one-by-one:
 * "Image captions" - Agree with you and JoeBro. It's rare that the artist is notable, but sometimes they are.
 * "Last" - Agree. The last appearance of the character is not defining of the character. In most cases, it is everchanging.
 * "Full Name" - These are fictional details that are better for prose to handle. Sometimes the full name is important, but other times it's more of a trivial lore factoid. It could very easily just be mentioned in the lead.
 * "Alias" - Same as full name.
 * "Family" - Even more so unrelated. Better to explain in prose than without context in a box.
 * "Weapon" - See, I generally feel we shouldn't use any of the fields under the "In-universe information" banner. They make the article feel amateurish / too much like a Fandom article when we do that. I know I'm probably alone in this and perhaps hold an extreme view, but that's just how I feel about those fields. TarkusAB talk / contrib 20:23, 13 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Lukewarm take, but all in-universe stuff except nickname/alias and weapon (since there are cases where it will be useful) should be binned as it's needless WP:GAMECRUFT. Otherwise, I agree.
 * Though, one parameter I'd want to see managed better is the voice actor one. Look at something like Sonic or Donkey Kong—they're massively bloated, with some people who just voiced them once for a theme park attraction or something. I think they're a chore to read and maintain, and I'm not exactly sure how to manage something like them. JOE BRO 64  20:29, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I do agree with that, though I also don't have a solution. Could be a good separate thing to brainstorm. Sergecross73   msg me  20:55, 13 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Oppose Almost none of these have widespread consensus among Wikipedia editors. Also, this discussion is misplaced. Infoboxes part of Category:Fictional character infobox templates are used by WikiProject Film, WikiProject Television, WikiProject Video games, WikiProject Anime and manga, WikiProject Books, WikiProject Toys, and WikiProject Fictional characters. This proposal should have been made at Template talk:Infobox character (the most commonly used template), and the other WikiProjects I listed above should have be notified. InfiniteNexus (talk) 03:14, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I feel you're misunderstanding that this is a discussion on just articles for those under the VG project as a manual of style and not affecting any or all the other projects that use the infobox. Nobody here is interested in deciding what the Television or Comics project does with their infoboxes, or to modify the template itself.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 03:41, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for clarifying. I found this discussion because someone posted a link at Template talk:Infobox character without any additional context, so I assumed this was a proposal to change that template's documentation or parameters. If that isn't the case, please clarify on that page. InfiniteNexus (talk) 08:59, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * It's been done. Can you remove your oppose now so it doesn't get in the way of the consensus building for video game characters? Sergecross73   msg me  11:43, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Done. InfiniteNexus (talk) 05:59, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Sorry for coming into this late, but unfortunately the thread is so long that I can't read every single post, so I'll give my two cents. It's no secret I edit mainly the MK characters in terms of VG/fighting games, so I guess I'll restrict it to those. (Template copied from above.) I'm a firm believer of the KISS rule in character infoboxes and that it instead should serve as a teaser of sorts that will get people to - gasp! - read the article.
 * "Image captions" - Necessary in terms of identifying the source of said appearance.
 * "Last" - Assuming this means "last appearance", not needed.
 * "Full Name" - No, as it's in-universe. Same goes for the intro; for example, saying "Hanzo Hasashi" instead of "Scorpion" - that's what the article itself is for.
 * "Alias" - Same thing. Nope.
 * "Family" - Gone. Out. It's nothing more than a crufty mess especially if the property is constantly being rebooted (looking at you, NRS).
 * "Weapon" - After had recently removed this and fighting styles from some MK article boxes, I initially balked until the realization that both were WAY outdated (MK: Deception and Armageddon are nearly two decades old; sigh) and therefore their removal was justified. Only their species and origin are needed in the "in-universe information" at this point.

Hope this helps somewhat. :) sixty nine   • whaddya want? •  05:14, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Elaine Marley
Elaine Marley has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. GAR will remain open this time longer. Greenish Pickle!  (🔔) 12:26, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Deekin
This is an awesome idea for a task force. Can anyone bring back Deekin from here? I loved that little guy. 2601:240:E200:3B60:9592:2091:C98F:C348 (talk) 11:38, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Notability would still need to be a factor for such. The purpose of the task force isn't to brute force articles through, even if I agree Deekin is great. Have you considered scouring for sources and putting together a draft that shows notability?--Kung Fu Man (talk) 14:40, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I did scour the internet for sourcing about D&D vg characters a few years back. Unfortunately, the only D&D character who made their name through video game appearances, and has significant coverage that meets WP:GNG standards, is Minsc (and Boo) as well as a few of the Planescape Torment characters. Not even Aribeth, who was heavily featured in the marketing for the original NWN as the game's pretty face. Haleth (talk) 12:51, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Subpage for assessing notability of characters
So, with the cleanup process, inevitably there will be articles found that are not notable, or may seem notable but are not actually. So I think it would be valuable to check out these articles one by one and slowly but surely figure out their notability. We'd start out with the low-importance articles and work our way up. Would anyone be interested in participating in this? It'd just be nice to have a consensus to point to, since BLAR redirects are often opposed simply because there was no consensus. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 16:34, 17 July 2023 (UTC)


 * There have been attempts to provide notability standards for fiction, but consensus is difficult to reach. See WP:Notability (fiction). (Oinkers42) (talk) 17:16, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * In this case I think it's intended to be similar to what happened at Talk:List_of_Street_Fighter_characters, where each article was examined and tidied up. I think it could be a good process for say the Tekken characters again down the road to help come to better conclusions there and have some discussion to point to.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 17:19, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I think they just mean for it to be a place for discussion/brainstorming prior to formal merge or AFD discussions. My two cents: I think it's a good idea for tracking through the review of them all, but I wonder if the discussions themselves would be better for the task force's general talk page? Otherwise I fear participation may trail off. Most Wikiprojects outside of a select few can even manage constant participation. Disregard my stance if it doesn't gel with your plan, I'm fine with whatever, just giving my 2 cents. Sergecross73   msg me  18:12, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * No, as a subpage. This task force is already a subpage of the broader project. Burying notability discussions 3 levels deep starts to feel like a cabal hiding in the shadow. -- ferret (talk) 19:03, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, I'm all for doing anything that will avoid that, I also just want to avoid spamming this talk page so much. I suppose if I post announcements of a review on this page and do the review on the talk page, that would be the most transparent way to do it. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 20:19, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I think that was a valid worry at WT:VG. The entire project didn't necessarily need or want to see Character work. But I don't really see it as spamming the task force. The entire purpose of a task force is to organize such work. -- ferret (talk) 21:46, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * That's fair. I'll just do that. Thanks for the input! - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 22:04, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Completely agree with ferret. It'll be good to spam it honestly, to show that it's actually an active task force, which is relatively rare. Sergecross73   msg me  22:06, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Shit, the task force doesn't have a category for low-importance video game characters. :( - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 22:26, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I felt like checking each articles one by one for notability costs a lot of time. Perhaps, only check articles that needs help and/or the presented sources at article still fails WP:GNG. Not all.  Greenish Pickle!   (🔔) 23:22, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

2B Notability Check
Aight, I opened a notability check discussion here. I encourage all to participate. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 22:49, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * You intend to do this with every low-importance character article? Don't you think that's a bit unnecessary? We could be spending that time working on something else. TarkusAB talk / contrib 00:19, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's something I'd like to do to just say "Our fact checkers have verified this statement is TRUE" for every article. Plus, I think this is a good way to address cleanup issues. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 00:21, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * There's no reason to open discussions as routine. Unless you really feel that notability may not be met, there's little reason to have a "affirm the status quo" discussion. -- ferret (talk) 00:22, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Agreed, and in that case doing it by grouping or theme may be the best route so we don't get bogged down. Like hands down 2B's going to be notable, just the refs need some housecleaning.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 02:53, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The article recently went through GA, the refs were checked. There was an error with leaving Niche Gamer in as a source, but that's all it is - an isolated error that was quickly replaced with a similar, better source. Please try not to be so dismissive as saying articles need "housecleaning" without evidence, as it can be seen as putting down the work of other editors. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 04:40, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Sir, with all due respect, I stated something based on the discussion linked to, which did involve two references. If you found that offensive I do apologize. "Quick tidy" would have probably been much more choice wording on my part, which is what occurred.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 04:50, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I like this project and I would like you to continue it, but I agree that it's fine to skip opening discussions on articles where things look up to code. For us, it wouldn't be useful if you posted all of them here; we'd lose interest. But please do post more, I think this will be quite helpful. I wonder if just one or two a day would be a good pace, but at that pace it would take a very long time. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 06:25, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Annah-of-the-Shadows
This article existed for several years but was recently redirected. How close is it to having enough sources to bring back? 164.44.0.57 (talk) 13:52, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I went through the sources on the original article, and I have to admit they're very weak. A lot of them are primary sources, very short mentions, and stuff like this that just don't really help establish notability. I think we also try to avoid relying on listicles like a "top 10 best female characters" and the like. I couldn't find a single reliable source that is wholly dedicated to the character Annah-of-the-Shadows specifically, and I find having some of that is a requirement. I don't think it's particularly close right now, unless you find a two-page feature in a respected magazine about this character. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 14:15, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I'd say it's about as far as possible from having enough sources. A search in gaming magazines came up with little significant coverage as well. Many character articles by the same editor had blatant lack of notability and were solely based on fanservice appeal. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 06:30, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Naoto Shirogane discussion
Hi, I've opened a discussion over a dispute relating to the inclusion of the "LGBT and video games" category here. I would appreciate members of the task force to weigh in. Cukie Gherkin (talk) 19:15, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Toriel, Flowey, and a Half-Life duo
So recently I decided to boldly redirect Toriel and Flowey to Undertale, due to both not meeting notability, and to my understanding others editors agreeing and raising similar notability concerns, though both got reverted for various reasons. Now frankly I would welcome another pair of eyes on that regard, but dealing with them has also brought up a particular problem: some information on these two *should* probably be preserved, but there's no character list to do so, and it might be a particularly worthwhile endeavor to create one to cover the notable characters in the series.

In the same vein, Headcrab and Vortigaunt both were AfD'd with a merge decision, but a similar concern was raised. Would a "Creatures of Half-Life" article be worth considering, and are there sources to warrant such a thing in terms of reception?-- Kung Fu Man (talk) 03:36, 18 July 2023 (UTC)


 * I think sometimes individual characters just aren’t notable, and/or the reception is too diffuse, that it doesn’t make sense to have lists of characters. I get why we tend to have them, as “just group these guys into a list” is a much easier sell than deletion, but when it comes down to it they need to be supporting the real-world information (games etc.) that are the focus, not the fiction. Just because character or species X shows up in a bunch of games doesn’t mean we’re serving ourselves and readers any better by having a list entry rather than just explaining what a headcrab is in the places it’s relevant (articles should be baseline comprehensible without linking away anyhow.)
 * Undertale has been the subject of some decent scholarly analysis so I imagine some of its characters have significant commentary. However I don’t think absent significant coverage outside of covering Undertale that it can’t be covered there. I think character articles and lists are often basically just some notable-ish characters with a bunch of non-notable ones on as a coatrack. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs  talk 04:01, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Ammendum: pinging and  into this discussion.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 03:43, 18 July 2023 (UTC)


 * 1) Yes to a Characters of Undertale article. List of Undertale characters work as well, but I feel that a "Characters of Undertale" would naturally involve a more in-depth discussion of the notable characters of Undertale (which would justify different quality ratings between start to GA) as opposed to a list entry describing data in fleeting detail (List-class, or Featured List when it gets good).
 * 2) I would...oppose a Creatures of Half-Life article as scope of the topic may be too narrow. May I suggest a Universe of Half-Life instead, since that could cover other aspects of the Half-Life universe as well as the Portal spin-off series since it's in the same setting. We can easily make room for a "Creatures of Half-Life" section and have the existing redirect point there. Haleth (talk) 03:43, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Actually just noticed there *was* a Half-Life creatures article...which apparently got AfD'd. Huh.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 03:45, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I had a peek at its page history. Yup, crufty as. I am surprised that the last AfD didn't result in it being deleted outright. Haleth (talk) 04:00, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * David brings up a good point though, and the state of that list does too. Would a Universe or Creatures article really say anything or just end up a coatrack? Because some of the creatures sure you can make some reception about, many however have next to nothing if anything.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 04:09, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * It's only a coatrack if there is no secondary sourcing which dwells on the subject and basically reads like a Fandom article which goes into minute detail about in-game stuff. Does that make sense? Elements of the Half-Life franchise's in-universe stuff, Portal included, have been broadly discussed in a serious manner like many other vg series. Haleth (talk) 04:45, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Do you think for the time being, redirecting the Half-Life articles to the parent series would be a good alternative? The information would still be in the page history, and it would solve the matter of the AfD results.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 04:48, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * The AfD's resulted in a clear consensus to merge into Half-Life (series), so yeah. Haleth (talk) 21:52, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Same opinions as Haleth here. Those articles sound like great ideas! QuicoleJR (talk) 03:53, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * How would you feel about Toriel and Flowey merged there though, namely the latter as you were the one to revert that BLAR?--Kung Fu Man (talk) 03:54, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I think that Toriel and Flowey are independently notable, and recently added several sources to Flowey to that effect, so - I fully support a "Characters of Undertale" article, but do not support a merge. It is not normal policy to auto-merge notable characters into lists, and it is common for characters to have both a list entry and main article.
 * I doubt a "Creatures of Half-Life" article would ever not be crufty. If the articles can't stand alone they're probably best off being described in the series page. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 04:29, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Zx, no offense...but there's less usable reception there than for articles you've advocated to have merged under the guidelines that those weren't notable. And other editors tried do to WP:BEFORE also. I'm just going to say that directly, I have over time become really confused at where exactly you draw the line for notability.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 04:36, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I only advocate for articles I believe have gotten significant coverage. If people are saying the articles don't have notability, than either they didn't find the sources I did, or I was incorrect. Either way, I think it at least deserves a discussion rather than being unceremoniously soft deleted. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 04:59, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * As I have said before, I fully support a Characters of Undertale article, if the characters are sourced properly and are more than just trivial mentions.
 * Creatures of Half-Life is a subject I don't know enough about, so I can't give a strong opinion on it. NegativeMP1 (talk) 04:42, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Looking at the sources on headcrab, it feels to me like it's mostly listicles or very direct outside cultural references to it. There doesn't seem to be any writing there on its place within the larger universe. I do think WP:Coatrack would be a problem there, yeah. All characters lists have a bit of a coatrack problem in my experience, but if you can cite some prose about each character within the context of the game, then things get a lot more nice. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 06:21, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Featured Article Copyedits
With a lot of Good Article Reassessments going about, it felt like a good idea to go through and do light copyedits on the Featured Articles covered under this, especially given it's a smaller pool. Will bring up that it's probably better to have one editor per article to avoid conflicting views, but also be mindful of anything mentioned on the FAC page that may affect prose. Kung Fu Man (talk) 08:52, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Arbiter (Halo)
 * Flood (Halo)
 * Jill Valentine - User:Haleth
 * Lightning (Final Fantasy) - User:ProtoDrake
 * Master Chief (Halo) - User:Shooterwalker
 * MissingNo. - User:Cukie_Gherkin
 * Tidus
 * Ur-Quan - User:Kung Fu Man
 * Characters of Final Fantasy VIII


 * Oh, dont worry about the GAR thing. I already stopped doing so, since people were furious about it. I'll gonna list all GA articles that needs help: Wario, Meta Knight (fails WP:GNG), Rikku, Charizard, Edea Kramer (possibly fails WP:GNG), Elaine Marley and Mewtwo.  Greenish Pickle!   (🔔) 11:49, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Let's hold off on that for right now so we can focus on one big meal at a time. The more momentum and involvement we get going on the smaller stuff, the easier it can be to snowball so we can get actual work done on the bigger hassles.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 19:28, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I've done some initial edits and trimming for Lightning, mostly removing fluff, condensing the story sections, and making the prose less wordy in places. I'd already done some work on the reception after the initial wave of clean-up. --ProtoDrake (talk) 07:50, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I'll claim one. I enjoy copy-editing. If this slips my mind for whatever reason, you can ping me. Shooterwalker (talk) 23:57, 14 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I gave Master Chief some work. I wouldn't mind another set of eyes on it, because there may be issues deeper than grammar and readability. Shooterwalker (talk) 00:40, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I know you touched up the Arbiter to deal with the character variations, but it looks like the roughest of the batch. Frankly speaking I think the best approach would probably be to copyedit it so that the Arbiter is kept there, with a brief mention of any of the other variations pointing towards a character list? What do you think?--Kung Fu Man (talk) 02:02, 17 July 2023 (UTC)


 * The idea of it being solely about the Halo 2 Arbiter was reverted, so it would have to come to some kind of consensus that I was unable to get. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 02:47, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * That explains why that looked weird afterward then.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 02:54, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Character drafts
I've been sitting on a draft for Leo Kliesen from Tekken. I would probably have it done already, but I've been a bit busy with real life stuff. I still need to build up a proper reception section, for instance. Do any of you have any good sources on the character I have not listed there?

On another note, I also have a draft for Goro from Mortal Kombat. Do you guys think it's ready to be brought back to the mainspace? Do you have any other sources not yet added there? MoonJet (talk) 08:27, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
 * would probably have some sources on Leo I feel, I know she mentioned them before. As for Goro I feel some of the sources might be a bit off in the movie end? I can take a look at that later if you want, right now knee deep in another article.
 * If I may offer a suggestion (and one to anyone else reading this) I have noticed people using the VG banner template with a class of Draft and tagging the character project onto it as a means to track them through the talk page. I feel that may be a great idea for your article work there, so we can be on the same board and not have instances of overlap.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 08:55, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Notability discussion for Pokemon species
Hi, I'm doing a little thing where I get people together to determine the notability of a group of character articles, and the discussion can be found here. I invite anyone to join, whether they be interested in Pokemon or are simply hoping to clean up character articles. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 20:05, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Lord British
Here's going to be a nightmare and a half to discuss. Lord British is a character from the Ultima series of video games, but also the alter ego and self insert of Richard Garriot, the man behind those games. The main problem is a long standing discussion on if the character is notable separate of the man, and if SIGCOV to that end exists? A big point of discussion is about players trying to kill him in the games to get around limitations imposed by the developers to do so, but I don't think that so much counts as reception to warrant an article on his own.

This isn't a merge discussion at the moment, but more an avenue on trying to figure out if there's something missing and an approach we should take, or if ultimately there's just nothing there. Kung Fu Man (talk) 03:48, 23 July 2023 (UTC) Clarifying something: while I'm not encouraging single-article discussions like this normally, the article does fall under the Start-to-C cleanup drive the task force is currently engaging in and is a highly controversial topic.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 03:52, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
 * At current reading, based on the two articles, I wouldn't say I see why Lord British should exist apart. The article makes the assertion that he's one of the most iconic characters in history, but the article certainly doesn't support this, and indeed, looking for sources it looks rather thin. Feels like you could turn it into two paragraphs in the Garriot article and lose the amount of specific trivia about how his character has been killed, which absolutely goes beyond the reliable secondary coverage in terms of due weight. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs  talk 20:34, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Put bluntly, that article looks more cruff or Wikia than Wikipedia. I think this could be merged very easily into either a paragraph or a couple of sentences dependong on how much can be written about it without becoming deliberately wordy. --ProtoDrake (talk) 22:26, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I could easily see this being covered at Richard Garriot. Probably better and without as much unreliable or off topic information. Shooterwalker (talk) 21:03, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Notability essay
I drafted a notability essay for characters Notability (video game characters). Problem is, right now I'm the only contributor and I, like all humans, have my personal biases. I'm inviting others to edit the essay to help achieve some type of community concensus for an approach to thinking about character notability. TarkusAB talk / contrib 20:22, 26 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Wow, this essay focuses on the exact issues/nuances that I would have! I think the essay would benefit from an example of a listicle-ish source that does constitute significant coverage, to provide an example of what caliber of listicle is worth even looking into. Tough ask, to be sure. Can anyone think of any?
 * I'd also like to hear others' opinions about a certain category of source that I've got mixed/evolving feelings about. When a major game news website reports on development info about a game (e.g. character design intentions, interviews with creators), should that be treated as 'significant coverage'? Obviously interviews are WP:PRIMARY in the direct sense, but the outlet still took the time and resources to devote coverage to it and the interviewer contributes editorially to the interview in the writing/selection of the questions to ask. When an outlet chooses to run the article, they are making an editorial decision to provide this coverage over some other thing that they've determined does not warrant coverage. Basically, are there certain forms of development info that would ordinarily be considered PRIMARY that still 'count' for notability/significant coverage? (Obviously, when a publisher self-publishes an interview on their own website with their own devs, that's promotional in nature and not what I'm talking about.) Axem Titanium (talk) 20:57, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Overall I think it's solid. It might be helpful in Notability (video game characters) to explain when you're giving the Sonic list exactly what limitations are put in place for that page; not being a Sonic person I have no idea what makes it an example to follow. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs  talk 21:07, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Added. Thank you TarkusAB talk / contrib 21:18, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I personally think that it's good, but we should be careful to figure out how we feel about list articles. Do we see a distinction between a list-format article and a listicle? If a list-format article has significant coverage of a character, is that adequate to use? For example, if someone did a top 10 FF6 characters list, but went kind of crazy talking about Celes as a significant character to the industry and her influences on other characters, would that be usable? - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 21:25, 26 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Looks good to me—a great way to provide context to guidelines from a VG-specific perspective. I especially like the examples given for significant coverage. Interestingly, I think § List titles demonstrates some of the inconsistencies between titles: articles like Mario and Animal Crossing are "pure lists" but are titled Characters in [X], whereas The Last of Us and Halo have sections about creation and reception but are titled List of [X] characters, despite the opposite perhaps being more appropriate. Just an interesting quirk, I suppose. – Rhain  ☔ (he/him) 23:47, 26 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Though our standards on notability are clearly different from one another, I tend to agree with the essay. Though, I went ahead and added "does not meet GNG" under the arguments to avoid. Much like the opposite position, a reason should given why they don't think it meets GNG.
 * I should also note that the reason listicles are so widely cited in character articles is because the bulk of character reception comes from listicles. It's part of the reason I've always been against the notion that listicles don't contribute to notability. So, I like the essay's approach to look at what the listicles actually say. MoonJet (talk) 04:12, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree with most of what is said here, though I bring this proposal. If a list is something on the lines of "best video game characters of all time" or "best (profession/role/species/gender) characters of all time", the list should be able to be used. Ones that shouldn't be considered are ones such as "best characters in (video game/video game series)" unless the source talks about them extensively or ranks the character #1. Examples:
 * Good: "Best Female Video Game Characters Of All Time", "Best Swordfighter Video Game Characters" - Not very specific, incredibly broad, should still be considered and usable.
 * Bad: "Best Characters In Splatoon 3", "Best Characters in Metal Gear" - Specific to a game or series with a limited amount of characters and probably a result of content farming, though an exception could be made if one of these goes off the rails when talking about an entry or if the character is ranked highly.
 * The bad ones could still be mentioned in an article, but I don't think they should be taken into account for character notability. Most publications that make lists like those have been determined to not be usable for notability anyways. NegativeMP1 (talk) 05:27, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I tend to agree with this too. "Best Female Video Game Characters of All Time" is naturally a lot more noteworthy than something like ""Best Female Characters in Mortal Kombat." That said, it should still be more than a sentence or two blurb. It's all about context. MoonJet (talk) 05:52, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that "Best X of all time" lists aren't content farming too. I think the substance of the list entries should be the primary consideration, rather than simply a rule of thumb based on the scope and title of the list. Axem Titanium (talk) 06:10, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I can agree with that perspective, but I still think articles with a more broad perspective like I mentioned should weigh more when it comes to notability over "Here's the top 10 best characters in a game that has only 10 characters!" NegativeMP1 (talk) 06:24, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I think it really just depends on what's in the list. Even a very narrow focus of a "best X in franchise" article can be worthy of inclusion if it's got enough content, and likewise a "best characters in gaming" that's listicle formatted with little commentary isn't worth much more than "this publication included it on this list"-type summary (that's what all the "this character is sexy mentions" are boiled down to in Cortana (Halo), which I think gives them as much consideration as they deserve.) Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs  talk 23:48, 27 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I think their point is that listicles that cover just gaming in general rather than specific to the series should be given more weight in notability. That said, I'm pretty much in agreement. It just depends on what's being said, and how in-depth it is. MoonJet (talk) 06:06, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I broadly agree with the idea, with a few caveats. A list of "best characters in gaming" or "best action heroes" is significant, maybe not in quantity but certainly in quality. A list of "best characters in this one game" is not significant for any character, because it's mostly trying to re-cover the game. At most, it might establish the notability of a list of characters. I would generally put very little weight on "sexiest characters in gaming" or "6 characters with blue hair" or "top ten barbarians in games", unless they really had some intelligent analysis about barbarians. Shooterwalker (talk) 19:21, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I think I agree, but I do think we shouldn't let "List of best Octopath Traveler characters" be only usable for a list of characters, as I think we should prioritize what they're saying. Ie, going into detail on Tressa being one of the best female characters of all time, and going into detail as to why. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 19:56, 28 July 2023 (UTC)
 * And the same applies to "ranking every character in X" listicles. Not useful unless it goes into a lot of depth on the character. QuicoleJR (talk) 00:52, 29 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I second Shooterwalker's opinion here. Haleth (talk) 23:07, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Scope
So a recent discussion came up as to what exactly the task force should cover beyond the obvious. As of right now the givens are:
 * Characters originating in video games
 * Lists of characters that appear in video games

Gravitating outward from that though it starts to get a bit more complex, and these need a bit more discussion so we can iron out scope:
 * Mascots Corporate mascots created for means of advertising originally or other non-gaming purposes, that are intrinsically tied to a gaming company. One rule I was going with originally was "they had to appear in a game in a major role", which covers subjects like Segata Sanshiro as a result, while subjects like Kevin Butler (character) are not as they were advertising only.
 * Anime/Manga/Film exclusive characters in a video game adaptation This would be subjects such as Jesse and James (if they get their own article again), and I feel it should be fine as long as the characters have some significant presence in video game media also (i.e. in their case, Pokemon Yellow).
 * Characters in media directly tied to gaming This one recently popped up with the Sword Art Online characters, as the media revolves specifically around depictions of characters in a MMO. Personally I feel this may be a better subject not to to keep the focus from not spinning out of control. The question would rapidly become if Ralph from Wreck-It Ralph, Ainz from Overlord or the characters of Scott Pilgrim would be covered as both are tied to video games in varying degrees, and it could easily become a complex mess.

Thoughts on the matter, or possibly other fringe cases worth considering?-- Kung Fu Man (talk) 10:33, 1 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Mascots for video game company need to be part of task force but non-video game characters part of a video game series, I don't know. non-video game characters based on video games could be fine I guess. NatwonTSG2 (talk) 14:01, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I think the question to ask yourself is whether MOS:VG applies to the content. TarkusAB talk / contrib 18:14, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Building off of Tarkus's question, I think to the extent that we don't butt heads with other project-specific MOSes, our scope should be as expansive as reasonably possible. Jesse/James, Kevin Butler, and Wreck-It Ralph are all covered by the main WPVG so it would be weird to gerrymander the scope to exclude them from this task force. I don't know enough about Overlord or Scott Pilgrim to say one way or the other, but they appear not to be under WPVG at the moment. Personally, I would go with any 'character', broadly construed, already included under the WPVG banner. Axem Titanium (talk) 00:15, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
 * The problem is again though Axem that's including some characters that *aren't* under our MoS such as the aforementioned Sword Art Online cast: they follow the anime project's MoS and are only tangentially related to us.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 00:20, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Talk:List of Sword Art Online characters does not appear to be tagged with WPVG and I'm not sure Sword Art Online should be either. That's a question for WT:VG though, not here. Axem Titanium (talk) 03:02, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Mascots should be able to fit in if they are for a company that has video games as one of their priorities.
 * Anime/Manga/Film exclusive characters in a video game adaptation I think would be fine.
 * Characters in media directly tied to gaming I don't think should be included NegativeMP1 (talk) 21:03, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Updates on this:
 * Added Kevin Butler (character) to the task force per the above, the other other untagged video game company mascot I could find was Marcus Rivers, which failed notability and was redirected to PlayStation Portable and probably better covered briefly under marketting there. I can't find any other outlier mascot articles, but it's entirely possible others could just be badly categorized given the volume of the VG project.
 * Added the VG template and task force to List of Sword Art Online characters to at least keep it consistent and reclassed it as List-class. While I do think it need some closer examination (especially the individual articles in terms of notability) for the time being it's consistent until a broader discussion can be done on WT:VG.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 07:35, 26 August 2023 (UTC)

Listmageddon: Dealing with our massive character list problem
So to put it simply, the project has a lot of character lists. That's going to be a given in a project of this scope, even for the task force there's a large number. In fact one would argue, too many; several users have outright pointed out the futility on trying to get that many lists through the FAC process alone. There's also a huge problem with inconsistency: while some are in list format, they're clearly not lists as they're more developed as articles. In fact several, such as Characters of Myst, are full fledged GA's instead. So how do we deal with this problem?

Well I'm proposing we adopt the formatting used by WikiProject Square Enix. Amongst all the task force lists, they've gotten the most to GA-class. So taking their formatting into account, first we ascertain which lists are actually articles, as in having a development and reception section much like a character article would (or in some more fringe cases like List of Halo characters, where it has dev and merchandise discussion but still needs reception), and discuss the characters individually vs a long list format. When done, we move them accordingly: Afterwards if the subject has been recognized as an article, reclass accordingly (Usually in this case it'd probably be C-class) and remove the Lists wikiproject template if there.
 * If it's related to one game, rename as "Characters of [GAMETITLE]"
 * If it's related to a whole series, rename as "Characters of the [SERIESTITLE] series"
 * If an article is a list alone and doesn't fall into the above, move or leave at "List of [GAMETITLE] characters" or "List of [SERIESTITLE] series characters".

Now you're probably thinking to yourself "Wait, wasn't there a previous discussion on this matter?" and yes, about two years ago at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Video_games/Archive_160? And that discussion resulted in no consensus. But I'm going to argue the why is because there was no clear direction on how to proceed, just confusion towards naming conventions. So I've taken it a bit on myself to WP:BEBOLD and move several of these that fit this styling to a proper title, to give a broader sense of what this entails. This actually fixed several inconsistencies, such as the first two Dragon Age games having "list" articles, but Inquisition's was marked as "B", despite the same formatting between all 3. A few other instances were also fixed where I could ("Characters in" to "Characters of" for consistency, articles like Characters of Devil May Cry retitled to Characters of the Devil May Cry series).

Keep in mind still this isn't a cureall: there's about 4 Featured Lists that fit the above formatting, but moving and reclassifying them may cause an issue of them losing their featured status, which I'm pretty sure would not appreciate as I believe it's their work. Worst case I would suggest possibly moving them to the correct title, but leaving them at their classification as "legacy" list-articles in this sense). Some were already at "Characters of" placement but lacked the dev/reception sections, and for the sake of sanity I reclassed these as Start. Some articles will require requested moves also due to years upon years of shuffling on this front, but I think with a clear vision those small few articles can be requested without problem.

Now the biggest improvement we'll see from these is a way to gradually improve the articles themselves: that's been hands down one of the biggest complaints about the lists, as they tend to be "out of sight, out of mind", and again require the user to go through the FAC process to see their improvement recognized. So this should encourage not only actual improvement, but also make the creation of Good Topics far easier as now there are less hurdles. While I have gone a bit gungho on this, I felt it was necessary, but by all means we should discuss this too to make sure the consensus supports those actions. Anyway thank you for your time and patience and I hope I haven't bored you to death. Kung Fu Man (talk) 09:34, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * To clarify, I'm only the nominator/primary author of two of the four relevant FLs—the others are (Uncharted) and  (God of War). (The only other FL is List of Pokémon, though I suspect that will remain unchanged.) –  Rhain  ☔ (he/him) 10:50, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm glad you pinged me because it reminded me that I need to go through the God of War characters page and fix/remove some extraneous details that have been added since God of War Ragnarök released (and probably some other things). I've neglected it a bit for the last several months as I focused elsewhere, including bringing Ragnarök to GA. -- JDC808  ♫  11:09, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I would note that the emphasis on the titles of these articles feels unwarranted to me. We should treat all of our lists as encyclopedic articles. If we have nothing encyclopedic to say about the contents of a list, after all, the list should not exist. Descriptions of in-universe/plot information should almost always be in service of development, reception, themes, etc. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 11:16, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I agree, though there are definitely some lists that are, well, frankly lists, such as List of Super Smash Bros. series characters. Right now this is mainly aiming to clean the wound as it were: once the articles that have some work are moved, we can look at what's left and determine more closely what fits Start, any that definitely still fit the List class, and what should get merge discussions/AfDs. We're dealing with a decades old problem after all.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 11:21, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Insofar as you can structure the articles, I think there's a distinction to be made in the types of sourcing and coverage of our characters, and where that relates to what structure that can be made. Characters of Myst covers a very story-focused puzzle game series where there's only a few games, minimal numbers of characters and reception that talks about those characters. (I should flesh out the reception section with some more sources that undoubtably exist, but that's a matter for another time.)
 * But List of Halo characters covers a much, much larger franchise (30 books! A dozen games!) The games still have a major story component (more than something like a fighting game series) but are arguably best known for its multiplayer; a lot of very important-to-the-franchise characters exist primarily in novels, not games, which do not have a ton of critical or journalistic coverage. The list sits as it does because I gave up trying to triage additions, and even with the very narrow criteria of "significant recurring characters that have also appeared in the video games" you still end up with a bunch of characters you can't say anything about without heavily relying almost entirely on primary sources. Even "talk about development" as a strategy stops really working for these kinds of articles, because the development of the characters spans decades now and multiple studios, so it doesn't make a ton of sense to have single "Development" or "Reception" sections at the head and tail of an article. I simply don't think there can be a version of List of Halo characters that could exist either as a good article or a featured list, simply because most characters don't have real reception for them and if you axe it down to just the notable characters, the list doesn't serve any real purpose; might as well just get rid of it entirely. So "what makes the best article" isn't necessarily a useful rubric for this. Likewise many character lists project-wide are basically just dumping grounds as the result of AfDs that want to retain information so it gets stuck in a character list, because broadly-speaking Wikipedians treat LISTN as much looser notability requirements so stuff can survive as a list that wouldn't as an article. This is all to say I think the structure for naming you present makes sense, but that list articles should probably always have "List" in the title and we're always going to have some articles that are structured more like lists and some lists that are structured more like articles. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs  talk 13:01, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I think in a situation like that, when it starts spinning out to be too all-encompassing, separating the lists even if they remain related to each other isn't the worst option. Like for example we currently have List of The Last of Us characters, List of The Last of Us Part II characters, and List of The Last of Us (TV series) characters. It's encompassing a whole franchise, but it's split up in a way that that keeps the individual parts separate so the issue of development overlap and reception doesn't become a problem. Even larger lists like List of Street Fighter characters can be split up into individual series, there's actually work started on that under the Draft category. The problem is definitely surmountable, even if there's going to be some outliers, but what outliers we have at the moment are few and far between.
 * I'm also going to disagree that there is too much overlap between the concepts of a list article, and an article that uses a list-structure. You can see clear examples where List of Pokemon is certainly a list, but something like Characters of the Uncharted series are attempting to discuss the characters and their development as a whole. Maybe once in a blue moon we might get one that's really hard to define, but having looked through all 99 of the lists we currently have under the task force? There's a clear line. I feel we can finally conquer this issue and see some genuine improvement project-wise.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 13:22, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * At least with Halo, I don't see the splits helping, because you've just distributed the lack of sourcing problems, and in any case you can't neatly cleave characters that way since many might have primarily book appearances but only minor game appearances, etc. Any reception or dev information about the characters in a single work as a whole would be better put into the respective game article. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs  talk 14:05, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Start-class character article improvement drive
At the time of writing this, there are 34 Start-Class articles under the project. This is after going through the previous Start-class articles, and also going through the B and C class articles to reassess any that may actually be lower on the quality scale. At the time too there's one being discussed for merging, Lord British, with the discussion found here. While that one's up in the air, there are 33 that are still up for potential improvements:


 * Adam Jensen (upgraded to GA)
 * Agent 47
 * Alma Wade (Redirected)
 * Altaïr Ibn-LaʼAhad (upgraded to C)
 * B.J. Blazkowicz
 * Brock (Pokémon)
 * Conker (character) (Redirected)
 * Erica Anderson (upgraded to C)
 * Felyne (Redirected)
 * Flowey
 * Garrett (Thief)
 * Grue (monster)
 * Guile (Street Fighter)
 * Jibanyan (Redirected)
 * K.K. Slider
 * Kane (Command & Conquer)
 * King (Tekken)
 * King Dedede (upgraded to C)
 * King Hippo
 * Koopa Troopa (upgraded to C)
 * LeChuck (redirected)
 * Lillie (Pokémon) (upgraded to C)
 * Morte (Planescape) (redirected)
 * Nightmare (Soulcalibur) (upgraded to C)
 * Niko Bellic (upgraded to C)
 * Pit (Kid Icarus)
 * Princess Daisy
 * Ratchet and Clank (characters)
 * Sam Fisher (Splinter Cell)
 * Sans (Undertale) (upgraded to C)
 * The Nameless One
 * Toro Inoue (redirected)
 * Tyrande Whisperwind

The easiest route to any of the above would be a developed reception section, any development info (or even cited discussion about their designs and design changes if possible), and a quick tidy to remove cruft and original research. That'll get them out of Start-class, and at least to C-class. While I'm not expecting even this task force to reach "100% no Start-class articles!" even with this smaller pool, I do feel this could be a good starting point to get a lot of them improved, figure out any that may simply just not work, or at the worst case leave potential citeable refs on a Ref ideas template on the talk page. It'll probably be a drive we revisit every few months, but it's at least a seemingly tangible goal. Kung Fu Man (talk) 07:55, 26 August 2023 (UTC)


 * I'd like to improve Koopa Troopa if sourcing can be found. (Start class was probably generous in its assessment - it looks rough.) Sergecross73   msg me  14:02, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah I cleaned up the infobox on that one but honestly I'm...not sure what can be done with it. Dev info on Nintendo content tends to be sparse, and there's little reception even there as is. Maybe Goomba's reception has some overlap with them?--Kung Fu Man (talk) 14:13, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I see what I can do with it. It's in such bad shape I feel compelled to try. I'll work through it and see where it takes me. If I can find proper sourcing, I'll try to upgrade it to C level. If I can't, then I'll condense it down into a more "mergable" form. If anyone finds more sources, let me know, I can do the work of implementing it. Sergecross73   msg me  13:37, 27 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not very convinced that Princess Daisy meets notability. I would give it a pass for now since Wonder comes out soon and she might get coverage and discussion with that games release, but as of right now I wouldn't be against a deletion discussion for her. Negative  MP1  18:44, 26 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Updates on my end: redirected Morte (Planescape), only one article providing sigcov, main problem is there's no indication of notability outside of the games as all discussion is within the context of them. Improved Altaïr Ibn-LaʼAhad to C-class, cleaned out a whole bunch of cruft, tidied the reception section, and copied dev info from the parent game article. We might consider taking another look at the Assassin Creed character articles as a whole down the road though, a lot of them are written weirdly in-universe with large "Fictional character biography" sections.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 15:20, 27 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Someone redirected Alma Wade article. BigLordFlash (talk) 14:44, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Not sure if that one will stick, especially since it was an IP, but we'll see how that goes.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 15:56, 28 August 2023 (UTC)
 * The majority of issues with Sans (Undertale) were fixed since the AfD, so I reassessed it as C-Class and also bumped it up to Mid-importance. Negative  MP1  20:23, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

If no-one else takes it, I might be willing to take on Adam Jensen's article, given I've done a lot of work on that era of Deus Ex already. No guarantee I'll find much reception on him. And just adding this in...JC Denton is a thin mess of an article, and probably needs redirecting/merging as it's wafer thin on content and sources. --ProtoDrake (talk) 09:53, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
 * well JC was BLAR'd until today, apparently though feels it was controversial and wants to work on it.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 21:56, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I already added a major SIGCOV source to it, so it feels like there is definitely coverage out there, especially given how acclaimed Deus Ex is. Heck, the Lay D Denton mod is probably notable enough on its own for an article. At the very least, I think it's a potentially controversial thing to boldly soft delete. I have probably stated many times earlier, but I am not a fan of the mindset that if articles are small, they should be merged. It heavily discourages article creation or expansion when something is a redirect, as people assume it's not notable. ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 22:17, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Finished Jensen. --ProtoDrake (talk) 18:49, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

I'll try King Hippo and Lillie. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 09:57, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

Per the list discussion below, I've moved 5 articles into Start-class for the sake of sanity/consistency: Characters of the BioShock series, Characters of the Half-Life series, Characters of the Legend of Zelda series, Characters of the Mario franchise, Characters of the Metroid series. I'm going to exclude them from the above drive for now as several require their own host of issues, but making note that they are also there now.
 * Few more lists moved into Start. But Nightmare has also been upgraded to C.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 20:20, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

In case this thing is still going forward, I'd suggest in the case of Garrett (Thief) looking at the series articles, which are generally pretty well sourced. That could be an easy way of finding...something. --ProtoDrake (talk) 14:22, 10 September 2023 (UTC)
 * While this is still ongoing, I've gone ahead and nominated the Felyne for AfD after heavily searching for sources.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 13:37, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

Overwatch character Good Topic project
So for those of you who put up with me on the wikipedia discord, this is something I've been working on for some time: trying to make a Good Topic out of the Overwatch characters. This is more a long-term project for things, and admittedly a lot of it is a pet project, we've made some good progress. Here's where all the articles currently stand:


 * Ana (Overwatch)
 * Ashe (Overwatch)
 * Brigitte (Overwatch)
 * Cassidy (Overwatch)
 * D.Va
 * Doomfist
 * Hanzo (Overwatch)
 * Junker Queen
 * Kiriko (Overwatch)
 * Lúcio (Overwatch)
 * Mercy (Overwatch)
 * Mei (Overwatch)
 * Moira (Overwatch)
 * Orisa (Overwatch)
 * Pharah
 * Ramattra
 * Soldier: 76
 * Sombra (Overwatch)
 * Symmetra
 * Tracer (Overwatch)
 * Widowmaker (Overwatch)
 * Wrecking Ball (Overwatch)
 * Zarya (Overwatch)


 * Characters of the Overwatch franchise


 * Of the above, Moira and Lucio are currently up for GAN. I'm currently working on Mei this week.
 * Wrecking Ball has notability concerns, though survived a recent AfD. However it may be worth revisiting a merge discussion if more sources aren't found, and the development section at the very least can probably be better summarized.
 * Several character on the list have significant analysis in secondary sources, and may be worth considering for spinning out in the future as more sources are dug up:
 * Ramattra  (This one might be worth more waiting until Blizzard does something with him, but strong start)

Anyway that's where everything stands on this. The artbooks for the first game is available online (the first as scans, the second on youtube as flipthroughs), and I do have an archive of Blizzcon panels discussing the characters. But as projects go this is a long-term one I wouldn't object to help with for some of the other articles, even if it's just help gathering or suggesting sources or tidying up the behemoth of the character list and getting some overarching reception in there.

I do think a good topic is definitely viable with that in mind, even if it's a good several months from now. Kung Fu Man (talk) 18:15, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
 * And a small update, but Mei has been nominated for GAN now too.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 02:21, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Large "Sex appeal" sections for female characters
(I am not trying to push feminist beliefs, I am aware that Wikipedia is not censored, et cetera.)

Mai Shiranui and Kitana both have incredibly large "Sex appeal" subsections that seem to be made almost entirely of "Top 25 Hottest Video Game Women"-type lists. I fear that this issue may also apply to other female Mortal Kombat characters, but I don't have the time to check right now. QuietCicada (talk) 23:17, 10 October 2023 (UTC)


 * It's not like it's off-limits as a topic, but it's definitely an WP:UNDUE issue to be covered so heavily. Definitely needs to be trimmed and condensed, as has generally been happening in recent years. Sergecross73   msg me  23:51, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
 * These sections are mainly the work of one individual editor who tended to grab everything not nailed to the floor. Overall in those particular articles it's not just the sex appeal section that's an issue with the reception as a whole. Many of them have been fixed at this point at least.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 05:03, 11 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I don't think we're talking about whether sex is offensive to someone's political or moral beliefs. We're talking about whether these paragraphs provide genuinely encyclopedic value to our readers. I can see some value in summarizing a bunch of lists with single note, "this character has been noted several times for their sex appeal". But a complete paragraph about every clickbait listicle is the real problem. We are better off focusing on a higher quality of award, such as a ranking of best games / characters / stories of all time. Shooterwalker (talk) 01:35, 12 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Throw out all listicles (especially entries like "#8 best left foot in '90s games" or whatever they come up with), and these articles start looking a lot better very quickly. If a listicle comments on a character's cultural impact it's one thing, but if it's just the #18 sexiest character, that's useless. Regardless, these women are very much renowned for the sex appeal of their designs, and having a section commenting on that directly is very reasonable. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 07:47, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Mai's one of the poster girls for "sex sells" in gaming, so even if rewritten it's probably going to lean hard into that. What's a bigger question though is if articles like Kitana or Kasumi would be notable when the dust clears: we've already seen with the rest of the Dead or Alive cast for example that once you gut references saying nothing, there was no actual discussion there to cite.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 14:37, 12 October 2023 (UTC)
 * It's hard to say until all the unsourced and trivial stuff is removed. I think even these listicles can still hold something, along the lines of "Publications like x, y, and z particularly praised the character's left foot." Uh yes, I am sticking with the ridiculous example. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 12:36, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Nah you're argument's not ridiculous, it's just hard to separate the wheat from the chaff when there's this much to sort through, not to mention being aware some of the sources may not actually be saying what they're cited for as has been par for the course for that particular editor's work.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 13:19, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, properly fixing these articles is really hard and your heart needs to be in it. You really want to check every single source, and there's a lot, and I'm sure a bunch of them are dead links too! ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 13:43, 13 October 2023 (UTC)
 * I always see a perennial suggestion to update the Video Game manual of style, or the Video Game reliable source guidelines. I don't know if anyone ever got around to it, but it's clear that the information value of listicles varies a lot. And they've definitely become more prolific once people caught on that they're cheap, clickbait-y content that doesn't require much writing. Shooterwalker (talk) 23:26, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

A small bump on this, cleared out a lot of junk references from the Mai Shiranui article if someone else wants to take a swing and start rewriting some of the prose. It should be far more manageable now.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 02:24, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

Merge proposal to combine Magikarp and Gyarados into one article at Talk:Magikarp and Gyarados
Per title, I've started a merge discussion for the above subject. Please feel free to partake and offer your opinion.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 21:48, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Looking for feedback (or maybe even volunteers) on a draft Final Fantasy X character page
Hello,

I've spent quite a lot of time working on writing and revising Draft:Seymour Guado and was told by an editor at the Square Enix wikiproject that this is a good place to ask for feedback.

I've been very self-conscious about having enough sources, especially in the Reception section, to the point that I even made up a very wonky test to ensure that the page would be comparable to similar Final Fantasy articles in some potential metrics of notability before even trying to see if it'll get approved for mainspace. I'm only just now submitting to AfC after years in development from my own sandbox to draftspace, but I still feel it could be made better, whether its AfC succeeds or fails.

If anyone has any commentary on the state of this draft, or would like assist in finding additional sources or otherwise contribute to making it better, please let me know!

 Vanilla  Wizard  💙 23:22, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure Seymour passes GNG. Where is he discussed at length by an independent source? TarkusAB talk / contrib 23:34, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I have managed to cite a couple of pages that are primarily about the character, but I have unfortunately had to rely on a lot of pages that are about Final Fantasy X broadly, which isn't a great sign. That said, at least some of those sources might still offer enough analysis to be pass WP:SIGCOV's standard of more than a trivial mention, but it does not need to be the main topic. This might be a bit time consuming, but I could go through each source currently in the draft individually and check to see how many of them would actually meet SIGCOV. I do acknowledge that it would likely be the minority of the sources there.  Vanilla  Wizard  💙 23:47, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Are they independent sources? (Not the Ultimanias or anything else written by Square) TarkusAB talk / contrib 00:36, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It should go without saying that sources published by the game's creators are not independent and cannot be used to establish notability. Such sources are only used for the purpose of verifying certain details, particularly in the infobox. The most likely place to find sources that could establish verifiability will be the reception section. I am hard at work going through them all one by one to compile a list of which sources are and are not worth looking at to assess notability (and checking VG/S for reliability in the process), after which I will try to organize the results of this assessment into a table to make it more digestible. This might take a while, so I thank you in advance for your patience.  Vanilla </b><b style="background-color:#749;color:#FFF"> Wizard </b></b> 💙 00:54, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I've finished doing my own assessment of the sources I have so far, and I've come to the conclusion that it's not ready. I have withdrawn the AfC accordingly (not sure if that's even a thing that can be done, hoping I didn't break anything by removing the template). While I do not believe this draft will be in mainspace any time soon (unless I find some great sources that have been hiding from me all along), I greatly appreciate that you two took the time to offer feedback, especially Kung Fu Man introducing me to VG/S. <b style="font-family:Trebuchet MS"><b style="background-color:#07d;color:#FFF"> Vanilla </b><b style="background-color:#749;color:#FFF"> Wizard </b></b> 💙 03:46, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * You might hit up WP:VG/S on some of the sources, both WhatCulture and Sportskeeda are marked as unreliable over there.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 23:50, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you, I was not aware of WP:VG/S, I had only been using WP:RS/P up to this point. I will definitely be consulting VG/S in the future and when I go through all the currently cited sources to determine which ones could pass SIGCOV. <b style="font-family:Trebuchet MS"><b style="background-color:#07d;color:#FFF"> Vanilla </b><b style="background-color:#749;color:#FFF"> Wizard </b></b> 💙 00:03, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * A few thoughts that may help: you need sources that discuss the character in detail. While the musical relation is neat, the bit about it being most requested doesn't really tie it into his character. I'll be honest, I don't think this meets notability. It's not that it's badly researched, it's that the third party discussion doesn't hold it up enough to indicate notability, or even a sense of how he's important beyond FFX.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 01:03, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * That's fair. With how long this one's been in the drafts, I would not mind putting it back on the shelf unless and until more sources about the character are released. That said, the bulk of the reception section is currently about the character, so I haven't lost all faith in this draft yet. The idea to mention how the character's musical themes were received was largely based on what I saw in other character articles (e.g. Sephiroth (Final Fantasy)) having similar sections. I agree that the particular line you're referring to doesn't really tie into the character and can be removed, though the other lines that are more specifically about how the tracks fit the character's personality might be permissible, depending on the quality of the sources and the extent of the coverage. <b style="font-family:Trebuchet MS"><b style="background-color:#07d;color:#FFF"> Vanilla </b><b style="background-color:#749;color:#FFF"> Wizard </b></b> 💙 01:10, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * One more thing - I forgot to respond to the most interesting part of your reply: or even a sense of how he's important beyond FFX. This struck me as interesting because most fictional character articles I've come across are similarly written and mostly just explain how a character is received by critics, similar to how the reception section of a game article would mostly just explain what critics thought of it. Could you give some examples of what sort of things would establish a character as being important beyond the media they appear in? This is my first time trying to write a character-related article and the expectations are quite different from the sorts of subjects I normally write about, so I have a lot to learn. <b style="font-family:Trebuchet MS"><b style="background-color:#07d;color:#FFF"> Vanilla </b><b style="background-color:#749;color:#FFF"> Wizard </b></b> 💙 01:51, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the late reply, but what I mean is generally when writing a character article, you want the reader to understand why outside of the context of the game it matters, be it design analysis, real world importance, or character critique. It's not a hard requirement but it's a good baseline to illustrate why the character is notable and a part of the public conscious. And I don't think Seymour quite reaches that you know?--Kung Fu Man (talk) 17:28, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your reply, I agree with your assessment after taking a closer look at the sources I have. So far, there are at least some quotes critiquing the character from a narrative or design perspective, but it also leaves much to be desired. Much of the reception section is currently relying on passing mentions or short, surface-level reviews of the character, and I feel the page should be better than that before showing it to readers. This one is going to have to stay in the drafts for some time while I stay on the lookout for better sources with more in-depth analysis or critique than what the page currently offers. I think what I have here is a starting point: not ready for mainspace, but not unsalvageable. The difficulty I have in locating good English-language sources does demonstrate a lack of notability, one that will only be overcome by either waiting for better sources to exist, finding good sources that I must have missed somehow, or finding sources in other languages. In the meantime, I will probably redirect my attention to hunting for sources for other potential future character articles that might be more promising. Thank you again for your time and your input, I feel I've learned a thing or two about how to (and how not to) write a character article from your feedback. <b style="font-family:Trebuchet MS"><b style="background-color:#07d;color:#FFF"> Vanilla </b><b style="background-color:#749;color:#FFF"> Wizard </b></b> 💙 21:31, 17 December 2023 (UTC)

Mortal Kombat characters
Earlier this year and last year, several Mortal Kombat character articles were sent to AFD, with most of them ending in a merge. I think we should take a second look at some these, including:

Goro Jade Kano (though this one wasn't actually in AFD; it was just boldly merge) Noob Saibot Quan Chi Rain Sindel

Out of these, I think Goro, Jade and Kano are the strongest candidates for a revival. I've had a draft on Goro for a while (do you guys think it's ready to be brought back to the mainspace yet?). I also just started one for Jade, and will try see what I can do with that. MoonJet (talk) 07:52, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I really don't think many of these could be spun back out without building on some weak references, Kano definitely. I'm not trying to shoot you down, but look at your Goro draft, and how many are just "Ranked X on LIST". Rankings are in a lot of cases just completely pointless, as they tend to be arbitrary. What's said is a lot more vital. The film discussion has some meat on it, but it's rough to see that as the backbone then instead of the mainstream version of him.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 08:08, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, that's the intent here. On Goro, I have actually removed some of the listicles on there. Maybe a couple more could be removed. Yeah, Goro has a lot of discussion on his film portrayals, for some reason. Though, we also have some history behind the character too. MoonJet (talk) 08:36, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It...hasn't been that long. Has much changed to think there'd be a different outcome? Sergecross73   msg me  14:42, 16 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I think it's less a matter of time difference and more a different mindset. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 07:30, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
 * That, and the fact that I've found new sources on some of these since the AFDs. The AFDs were going by really quickly, with seemingly not much time being put into searching for sources. So, I listed some characters that could potentially have articles again. MoonJet (talk) 08:13, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm not going to lie Moon, unless those are some stellar sources I don't know. It doesn't help we're still trying to fix what's still there, namely articles like Mileena.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 11:17, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

Characters that do not have articles but probably should
Probably more of a long-term goal than anything, but I feel like there are a growing number of well-done character articles, so I have to think there is always potential for more. Can you think of what characters that currently do not have their own articles, but probably should, assuming they can meet the WP:GNG? That can include never-existed articles, as well as articles that had been deleted or redirected because insufficient sources at the time. BOZ (talk) 21:37, 30 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Off the top of my head, the following I feel are good consideration options: Senator Steven Armstrong, Alice Liddell (American McGee), Amy Rose, Mad Moxxi, Lucario (recent AfD, but I feel the sources *may* be there to support it), and Frog (Chrono Trigger).
 * That said I want to stress that just because I feel they may fly doesn't mean they *could*. There have been plenty of times I've gone and tried to write up a subject, only to discover the sourcing doesn't work and the article self destructs. Ibuki (Street Fighter} is a good example of this, as after cleaning out all the weaker sources, the final article didn't have enough meat to really keep it on its own too feet and got merged.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 08:15, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't think we really need many more articles on characters than we already do, but if you find some novel sources on specific characters, I'm sure there's lots of potential. I still feel like a lot of Pokémon have potential, but it's hard to find sources that aren't Screen Rant, Comic Book Resources, or modern Kotaku. Try to stay away from listicles and tutorials, and you end up not finding much. It's a difficult balance to strike. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 09:34, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Actually not as many as you'd think. Some seem to start strong (i.e. Lugia) but then quickly fizzle as you realize you're running out of stuff to cite. Klefki and Voltorb right now feel like the strongest contenders for getting spun back out, due to the back and forth they got over their designs and how they were seen in regards to the roster as a whole. What ones are you thinking that may work?--Kung Fu Man (talk) 09:43, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Right now, I don't have access to sources to make any of them work. I just know that there's a lot of widely-known creatures there, which I think is more promising than a specific title character that appeared in only one or two games, like "Alice from American McGee's Alice". But that's mostly gut feeling based on widespread recognition and branding, not on actual sources. I am still unsure where good sources on specific fictional characters are... ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 15:35, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Widespread recognition doesn't always equate not notability. Sagat (Street Fighter) is instantly recognizable and yet not much tangible was said. Meanwhile April Ryan (The Longest Journey) appeared in only a fistful and got widespread commentary and study.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 15:48, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't know, Sagat isn't really up there for me when it comes to recognizability, but that's subjective of course. Either way, I think we're simply best of having an article proposals page where we can compile sources for subjects that aren't covered by dedicated articles yet. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 16:39, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @BOZ To add to the ones not mentioned by the others, the ones that I do know have good sources:
 * Malenia, Aiden Pearce, Savathun, Booker DeWitt, Jimmy Hopkins, Emet-Selch, Tiny Tina --Haleth (talk) 04:36, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Cool, I've been wanting to start this but need the time. :) BOZ (talk) 07:03, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh and by the way Astarion's voice actor won an award the other day from The Game Awards, so I expect there will be a substantial amount of coverage that specifically discuss the concept and creation of the character in the months to follow.


 * FYI: https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/baldurs-gate-3-astarion-internet-crush-babygirl-rcna121687 Haleth (talk) 01:49, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

This conversation made me think of an idea I had for WikiProjects in general. As an example of what I'd like to see, I have been building User:BOZ/BTG reviews noticeboard for board games for a while now. I think a single page like that for video games would be a bit much to handle, but for a more focused topic like video game characters it might work. If you did some research to find sources for a character, but not enough to make a whole article for them, or if you find a single source which discusses multiple such characters, it would be great to have a communal place to store these sources in case someone later comes along who wants to work on that topic and finds more sources! I'm not quite talking doing something that replicates WP:VGR since article requests need to already demonstrate their notability to be listed there, I'm talking about having a list where notability is not yet proven but providing a starting point for a source search that can be completed once the sources are found. Sounds reasonable? BOZ (talk) 01:59, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
 * We have a provision for that already set up. If you go to the main page and click the Draft or NA category options, you'll see a list of proto-articles or source compilations. You can tag your own subpages with the task force in order to keep track of things like that. It's one of the reasons I wanted to set this up to begin with, actually.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 09:04, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, you mean like Category:NA-Class video game characters articles? I was thinking a more communal thing, as those are userspace drafts (although some really are more just lists of sources than actual drafts), but you could always have such a thing as I'm suggesting in addition to what is being done there, if you want to. :) BOZ (talk) 09:18, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
 * The main problem with a communal one is you'd have a lot of the same issues in AfD's: "This mentions this character, it has to count!" and people fighting over what does and doesn't work. Or scrounging for anything minor that barely mentions a character, or isn't reliable. I'm not saying it isn't possible, but it'd be harder to pull off. If you're going to do a communal drive, doing it with a category of characters may be a better start, something like Street Fighter or Pokemon, and hammer out some groundlines on figuring out how to address sources that may be too weak or unusable.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 09:39, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I think this project at this stage might be decent at dealing with this. If it's almost entirely experienced editors watching and editing the page, there's potential there. We can always nuke it if it bloats, though I understand not wanting to put effort into something so risky. Oh! Having a column split for sources about the character specifically versus more general (useful) mentions might be helpful! ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 18:13, 4 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Real talk, I suspect that BG3 characters might have a solid chance. Planning to research Karlach and Lae'zel once I've finished the game. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 18:07, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I might find the time to work up something just to get it started. :) Maybe later this week or over the weekend. Meanwhile, since D&D is a big thing for me, I started User:BOZ/DnD-VGchar to list all the formerly-existing D&D video game character articles that I had found; I can't say that the sources exist now (or ever) to bring any of them back, but you never know. :) Feel free to use it however you like, or add to it. BOZ (talk) 19:51, 5 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Sure thing. I'd really like to do those two articles myself, but if I don't get to them in a while, feel free to do them. Though if you could, focus on others, like Shadowheart or Wyll, haha. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 14:51, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
 * So, tally of potential articles for BG3 characters so far:
 * Karlach
 * Lae'zel
 * Astarion
 * Shadowheart (Baldur's Gate)
 * Wyll
 * Haleth (talk) 06:30, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
 * User:Jackedano got Astarion. BOZ (talk) 20:01, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm working on Karlach and Lae'zel, to be entirely clear. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 01:55, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Start-class Article Improvement Drive (Cont.)
So continuing from the previous phase, here's the current remaining non-list style Start-class character articles still awaiting improvement to C or higher:


 * Agent 47
 * B.J. Blazkowicz
 * Brock (Pokémon)
 * Duke Nukem (character)
 * Flowey
 * Garrett (Thief)
 * Grue (monster)
 * Guile (Street Fighter)
 * K.K. Slider
 * Kane (Command & Conquer)
 * King (Tekken)
 * King Hippo
 * Larry (Pokémon)
 * Lord British
 * Pit (Kid Icarus)
 * Princess Daisy
 * Ratchet and Clank (characters)
 * Sam Fisher (Splinter Cell)
 * The Nameless One
 * Tyrande Whisperwind

As you can see, we are down to less than 20 of these articles at the time of this posting. The main thing to getting the articles to C at least is a developed reception and development section. Admittedly on some of these, the latter isn't going to be likely, but we can still discuss designs and design changes where possible.

Tagging a few folks:
 * @BOZ D&D is your jam, do you think The Nameless One can be properly expanded?
 * @Fieryninja I know you're working on getting Peach to GA, I reckon you've probably found some sourcing for Daisy along the way that could even just go on the talk page.
 * @Rhain Tagging you in here too because I know B.J.'s one of the articles you watch after.

(Also apologies to anyone I pinged that didn't want to be, you're just the best folks I can think of tied to these subjects @_@)

I don't think too many of these remaining ones are merge worthy, but it might be a good idea to do discussions if possible. But given we've managed to clear out 20 of these, I think we can bring it to at least 10 or less in rapid time. Kung Fu Man (talk) 14:39, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I'll definitely keep an eye out for any Daisy sources that I come across and make note of anything useful. Fieryninja (talk) 17:53, 10 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I could try and improve King from Tekken a bit, at least getting him up to C. After all, I was the one who brought back the article from its merged state many years ago, and the sources provided in his AFD from some months back could be of some use. Maybe Princess Daisy as well. MoonJet (talk) 07:34, 11 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Can we add the Zerg article to the list while we're at it? Haleth (talk) 02:42, 24 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I've now improved King a bit, and upgraded him to C. I may do further improvements on the article in the future. MoonJet (talk) 12:37, 27 December 2023 (UTC)
 * It could definitely use some dev info, if there is any?--Kung Fu Man (talk) 22:52, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Improved on Flowey. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 13:12, 13 January 2024 (UTC)

ALL ARTICLES UPGRADED OR DEALT WITH! Amazing job everyone!--Kung Fu Man (talk) 18:31, 19 January 2024 (UTC)

Scope of Team Rocket
I would like to invite discussion over at Talk:Team Rocket. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 08:53, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Animal Crossing character discussion
I have started a discussion at Talk:List of Animal Crossing series characters that this task force may be interested in. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:55, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Potential Pokémon FT
Would anyone want to work with me to get each generation of Pokémon article to Featured List? Then all of them + List of Pokémon could potentially make a Featured Topic. -- Zoo  Blazer  07:22, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I would love to see this, but I never quite know what sources are appropriate for these lists, to cover all of the Pokémon (even the few boring ones) in a Featured List-appropriate manner. I imagine this might get harder with each generation too. Regardless, I have a few of these lists on my watchlist and may help out with some copyediting and such :) ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 08:49, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I think it could be done, though it'd be valuable to figure out how much content each Pokemon should have, as currently, the other lists tend to be a little crufty. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 09:41, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that comes down to the source problem. It's hard to identify which aspects of a Pokémon we should describe, and it varies greatly from species to species. Even all Pokédex entries are formatted wildly differently, often presenting fun facts. How many editorial decisions can we make before we are outside of the realm of FL? Would it be reasonable to describe for each Pokémon what animal or concept it is based on, even if we don't have a (primary or secondary) source for it? ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 12:31, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Looking at the gen 1 list (I assume the others are the same) there is a source at the beginning of the table for the pokemon.com dex which covers dex number, name, and typing(s). That should be good as it works the same as some of my recent FLs in sports with one source to cover the basics of the table info. But yes, the descriptions get crufty for sure. Honestly those would need either altered or removed entirely unless sourced.
 * In terms of prose above the table, I think we need basics like what a Pokémon is, what a Pokémon generation is/why generation X is considered generation X. Basically source the dex range, which shouldn't be hard. Then add any general info about the generation or anything noteworthy that isn't a random fact or crufty. There's no need to describe every Pokémon, but if individuals have good coverage from sources, then there would probably be useful info to add to the list somewhere. Not sure if it's noteworthy to describe groups like starters, pseudo legendaries, and legendaries/mythicals or not, but those are a way to connect a bit with the other lists. -- Zoo  Blazer  16:41, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I support the idea of leaving some descriptions blank, if we do not have any sources to describe the Pokémon. I expect that would be increasingly common for each new generation. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 09:20, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I feel at least a basic description for each is fine, given each list is describing every mon in a given generation. Has one ever considered Magneton? Pokelego999 (talk) 02:46, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
 * We'd need all descriptions sourced to pass FLC, which can be tough to find for many less popular Pokémon. -- Zoo  Blazer  03:08, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
 * We'll see what happens when it comes to it, but I definitely think we should at least try to get sourced info. I'll concede to blanking should it come to it, though. Has one ever considered Magneton? Pokelego999 (talk) 03:53, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'd definitely be down to help, as improving these articles has been on my to-do list for a while. I think we should aim for the following
 * -Make a conception and design section
 * -Work on minimizing the cruft in the species boxes. Also add citations for any relevant reception/analysis a given Pokémon has.
 * -Make a Reception section for how the generation overall was received.
 * Let me know what I can do and I'd be willing to help put some focus into improving a given list. Has one ever considered Magneton? Pokelego999 (talk) 17:52, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Are you sure that a featured topic for lists of Pokémon by generation would be accepted? I feel as if that it'd require every individual species to reach GA or FA as well, as to avoid any accusations of cherry picking. λ Negative  MP1  07:11, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
 * A topic covering only the lists of Pokemon should be fine. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 07:28, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Looking for opinions for Raichu peer review
About a week ago I opened a peer review for Raichu, with two goals in mind: find issues to fix in the article itself to re-approach FAC, and find ways to improve the other articles to be better clear for those unfamiliar with Pokemon. And that's a big reason why I'm mentioning this here: even if you're not familiar with this franchise, I want this subject to feel clear to you as a reader. So if anyone can drop any suggestions or advice I'd appreciate it. Kung Fu Man (talk) 04:10, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Refining the "Pokemon infodump"
So one thing we've been trying to do across the Pokemon character articles, for both the species and individual characters, has been to try and offer an introductory paragraph at the start of the article explaining the basics of the franchise and what the reader needs to know to understand the rest of the article. This was first cooked up with MissingNo., and then spread across the other articles. After a recent FAC attempt on Raichu, the manual citations which were used on previous versions were considered insufficient due to being primary sources, and high quality secondary sources were requested. So this is the current version of it

Developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo, the Pokémon series began in Japan in 1996 with the release of the video games Pokémon Red and Blue for the Game Boy. In these games, the player assumes the role of a Pokémon Trainer whose goal is to capture and train creatures called Pokémon. Players use the creatures' special abilities to combat other Pokémon, and some can transform into stronger species, or evolve. The ultimate goal is to complete the Pokémon index (Pokédex), a comprehensive Pokémon encyclopedia, by capturing, evolving, and trading to obtain creatures from all Pokémon species.

Ultimately this is a section all these articles are going to need, but we need to establish two things for the reader: Book references would probably be the best ones to fit in here, though it also begs the question if player's guides by third parties would be acceptable, or run into the low quality source wall again. I'm going to dig through Scribd and Archive.org's library also, books like Pikachu's Global Adventure may have some useful material for this. But I feel if we can refine this, we can get a bit closer to improving a good chunk of our character article quality, given how many Pokemon-related articles persist. Kung Fu Man (talk) 04:27, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Clarity in what we're explaining
 * High quality citations that help offset concerns (I feel like while Kotaku and IGN can be good for reception, they're not going to be as desired for a block like this, especially if any approach FAC)


 * (directed here from the WP Discord server) As someone who has never played, read, or watched Pokemon, I can tell you that is an admirable summary that makes sense. My only nitpick is wording: is slightly clearer. Happy editing, SilverTiger12 (talk) 05:17, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * This is a good and important thing. However, I do see a few items I would personally change to this:
 * For gen1 Pokémon, I think we could rephrase the first sentence as: "Developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo, Pokémon Red and Blue for the Game Boy was the first set of games in the Pokémon franchise."
 * For gen2+ Pokémon, we could rephrase it as "Developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo, the Pokémon series is a series of Japanese roleplaying video games that began in 1996."
 * I would rephrase "The ultimate goal" to "A major goal", as Pokémon games have a variety of objectives.
 * Another option is to shorten the sentence down to "A major goal of the Pokémon series is to collect all Pokémon species available." Just because it's so much shorter.
 * Note that the link Pokémon Trainer is currently not going anywhere helpful. Perhaps unlinking is better.
 * I hope these ideas may help. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 09:55, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I feel the Red and Blue bit helps keep it consistent, but also helps establish it's about the games at the start. That's been a stickler in a few reviews, given the nature of this franchise.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 17:36, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I can't say for sure what will work best, but I can only say what's worked for me. So much of getting to featured quality isn't just what you say but when/where/how you say it. The first sentence in the body is crucial, and you can lose the reader right there. Try to talk directly about the subject in the first sentence, which is the character. Before the reader would even care who the developer and publisher are, or what year the game came out, they've arrived at this article to look up "who is this character".
 * "XXX is a fictional creature in the Pokemon series of video games, appearing as one of many "Pokemon" who train for combat against each other."
 * That statement gets all the basics out in front, and draws the reader's interest into whatever facts you need to discuss next (Why are they called Pokemon? How does combat and training work? What is it about this particular Pokemon? And what can you tell me about the game series?) There's a few ways this can work as a first sentence in the body, either by putting the "Appearances" section before the "Development" section, or by putting it as the first sentence of the "Development" section. Shooterwalker (talk) 17:59, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The main problem is you can't put appearances before development in these cases: you're going to end up having to rely on terms that haven't been established to the reader. "What's a gym leader?" "Why are people fighting each other with Pokemon?" "What's a Pokedex?" "What do you mean 'evolve?" etc etc etc. We need to establish these terms before the reader gets too deep, like what Gog the Mild was suggesting about a background section (though I'd be wary about a one-paragraph section personally). I do think you have a good idea though establishing at the start the character's name and being a part of it.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 18:19, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Good point. I did imagine the "Background" section flowing into the "Appearances" section, followed by the "Development" section. Give a basic overview of the character and the role in the games, maybe highlight how their portrayal has changed across games, and then explain how they were created. The ideal goal is to give the reader enough information in exactly the right order that they need it.
 * Another suggestion is to avoid jargon as much as possible. Do we need to understand what a Pokedex is, or is it enough to say that the player's goal is to collect these creatures, the end? I don't know the answer to that one. But for example, in Ur-Quan, the article describes how the player defeats their battlestation, instead of using the in-universe name, "Sa-Matra". Leaving this terminology out might make a die-hard fan cringe, but the article becomes much more readable, and no real meaning is lost. Shooterwalker (talk) 18:33, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * There are enough cases where the Pokedex is pertinent to the character that it's worth mentioning beyond just establishing what the "end goal" of the franchise is, case in point MissingNo. not being included in it, or cases like Gengar or Tinkaton where it helped shape public perception of them. It's on the lower end of necessary information across the board, but common enough when brought up that I would argue it's worth including.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 18:48, 26 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That makes sense to me. That's the kind of thought process I use any time I introduce a new proper noun. If it helps, here are my different tactics, from most minimal to most descriptive:
 * "The game begins with the player piloting a starship."
 * "The game begins with the player piloting a starship, called the Proper Noun."
 * "The game begins with the player piloting the Proper Noun, a spaceship built from ancient technology discovered by humanity."
 * "The game begins with the player piloting the a starship called the Proper Noun. The vessel was built after humanity discovered relics from an ancient alien civilization called the Proper Noun Two."
 * The amount of fictional details can easily stretch and compound, depending on whether the reader really needs to know the name of the starship, how it was built, what it was built from, and what the ancient aliens were called. Usually a sign that you need it is if an element comes up repeatedly in key story moments, or it's something that reliable sources really love to discuss.
 * I'm sure you already know a lot of this stuff, and I mostly just want to see you succeed at FAC. The work is worth it. Shooterwalker (talk) 20:11, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

Well based off your suggestions, Silver's and Mabel's, this is what I got it up to now. The text in bracket is placeholder examples of course. I managed to replace most of the refs with higher quality ones (hopefully Nintendo Power will be recognized as fine), though may swap out Game Informer. But does this feel like an overall improvement? [CHARNAME] is a [fictional species/character (depends on subject)] created for the Pokémon franchise. Developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo, the series began in Japan in 1996 with the release of the video games Pokémon Red and Blue for the Game Boy. In these games, the player assumes the role of a Pokémon Trainer whose goal is to capture and train creatures called Pokémon. Players use the creatures' special abilities to combat other Pokémon, and some can transform into stronger species through a process called evolution.


 * It's already looking a lot stronger and clearer, by my read. Great work. Shooterwalker (talk) 03:42, 27 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I would personally trim it down quite a bit, and am still in favor of varying this paragraph on an article-by-article bases, depending on which information is relevant. I think "Pokédex" might actually never be necessary even, if we just say "in-game description." I'm also still not sure if mentioning Red and Blue is relevant for Pokémon introduced in later generations. It's well-written with no obvious holes, tho. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 09:04, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The Pokedex section is probably the only one that could be cut from a few articles. I would keep it as part of the copypasta for discussion here, but it doesn't need to be in *all* the articles, true. The game mentions though I would leave because it helps establish that we're talking about the characters primarily in a video game sense first with details like "experience points" or "in-game items", and it solidifies that frame of reference.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 09:21, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Edit: Something to consider, but if we do make the Pokedex section depend on related discussion, should we remove the infobox detail listing their number? It could be confusing to a reader since we're not defining what that is.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 09:23, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think keeping an infobox label unexplained in prose is a problem. I imagine it's really common in sports, for example, and it will be wikilinked. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 08:10, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

"Sustained coverage"
There's a disagreement between Kung Fu Man and I regarding "sustained coverage" regarding the Tekken character Josie Rizal over at Articles for deletion/Josie Rizal. Can anyone else chime in? MoonJet (talk) 14:51, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Rayman sandbox
It's been since July 2023 that I has last discuss about my Rayman draft after it's submission was rejected and now I have turn it into a sandbox and I have improve the reception section by following how other users created their video game character articles and now I'm not too sure if I'm should move my sandbox into the redirect which the redirect said that I can't created an article from the redirect unless the draft is ready. So I look at my draft, making sure anything here is good other than the missing space for Rayman 3 so, are there any suggests? NatwonTSG2 (talk) 16:26, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Give BLAR a chance
So recently over the last few months, it's become increasingly obvious that BLAR-ing is being seen as "content remove" or "stealth deleting", when the whole point of the policy is to Be Bold and consider that an article may, indeed simply not work. Now granted I'm not saying "Every BLAR is going to be the right move". But there's a weird mentality that it's saying "this article can't exist" instead of "this article as the sources stand don't seem to support it". That can be contested if you feel they do, that should be *discussed* if you feel they do.

But I think many demanding AfD, or treating it as circumventing the AfD process, are missing that it's meant to be a bold action to say "please fix this" at a base level, and if you can't, this was probably the best course of action". Being bold is one of the cornerstone concepts of Wikipedia. Articles can and should be revived if notability becomes tangible over the years; hell I revived several that I merged back in 2008 this year alone, and if you look at the sources they didn't manifest for years upon years. AfD's on the other hand tend to carry with them the stink of "finality": a consensus was met amongst peers, and if notability manifests later, you can just as easily have an editor point at the AfD and demand that verdict stick, even if the new article is nothing like the old. Been there plenty of times.

That's not saying BLAR-ing isn't fullproof. If you think it's wrong contest it, but at least consider the why from the edit summary. Not everything has to rush to AfD either: we have 600+ articles now sure, but almost all, outside of perhaps our list problem (we still have over 80 character lists...) I feel are in a good place in terms of notability. But ultimately it's not meant as a bad-faith action, and treating it as such is removing a key tool in maintaining Wikipedia. Kung Fu Man (talk) 03:23, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I am very fond of redirecting articles as per the WP:BRD process. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 07:56, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree with this. If you have a problem with that particular BLAR, feel free to revert, but reverting it just because it was not decided on at AFD when you would support it at AFD anyway just feels like needless bureaucracy. QuicoleJR (talk) 12:08, 19 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, ultimately, this is correct according to protocol. Sergecross73   msg me  12:54, 19 March 2024 (UTC)

Pro-Tip: How to not have "Portrayed by" take priority over "Voiced by"
So for those of you working on character articles, you probably have noticed if the character you're working on appeared in a live action adaptation of the related work and you add that to the infobox, it takes priority over the voice actors. That's usually less than ideal, as most people's introduction to these characters are going to be through their voice.

So here's a workaround: lbl1 = Voiced by data1 = soandso lbl2 = Portrayed by data2 = soandso

With this setup, "Voiced by" will appear above "Portrayed by". Keep in mind if you have a motion capture actor listed, you'll want to make that one lbl2/data2 and the portrayed param #3 instead, otherwise the motion actor will appear above these. Kung Fu Man (talk) 10:47, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Notification
Just letting everyone know that the main Video Games project is considering trying to get Mario to GA. The discussion is here. QuicoleJR (talk) 14:00, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Development info and the subject of notability
This is a subject I've been thinking about, but a lot of our notability standards rely on notability: showing that there is some degree of reaction or commentary on the design or character itself, usually in a varied manner and to a significant degree.

But we've also seen cases where development info on how a character was made through articles devoted to the subject have counted as SIGCOV, and it's led me to wonder just how much that can apply in the long run to notability. Like does it extend to third party artbooks? Magazine articles where character designs are explored? Obvious a reception section is still a necessity, but how could such make up for this content in a way we'd all be satisfied with? Kung Fu Man (talk) 23:15, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Art books in the sense of books that license the IP and showcase the art from a game are useful for getting some insight into the creation, but not independent enough from the game and its creators to do anything for notability, the same way that a dev log doesn't count toward meeting GNG. A book, magazine, web source, etc, independently discussing and analyzing the art is a different story.--AlexandraIDV 23:48, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * That's what I mean more like a Japanese artbook going into a blow by blow as to why things were made a certain way, or stuff like Undisputed Street Fighter as a book discussing character origins (Zxcvbnm mentioned that before, and at the time I was dismissive but I can see some merit in retrospect).--Kung Fu Man (talk) 23:58, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
 * The trouble is, finding development info these days is even harder than it is to find good reception for most characters. But in the rare case a character gets really good and detailed development info, I think that can make up for reception that is more on the lackluster side, just as long its published by third-party sources. MoonJet (talk) 13:12, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I think it's great how ambitious this group is. But as I've tried to remind people in the past, reception sections are not the only route to notability. It's generally the most common/easy path to it. But all we need is significant coverage from third party sources, and enough content to warrant a split from the game. It should be meaningful, but it can take any form, as long as it's from a third party. Concept/creation coverage is no more or less valid than anything else. Sergecross73   msg me  21:13, 6 April 2024 (UTC)
 * It would be rare to see an independent source cover the making of a character if they didn't also say something about why that character was important. Still, the key is the independence of the source. I agree with people who say that a licensed guide or behind the scenes is basically a devlog with higher production value. Shooterwalker (talk) 19:32, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

Task force importance ratings
Hey y'all, asked on Discord if I could set you guys up with task force importance ratings, so I've done so! Adding e.g.  to the talk page template will add articles to the correct category of Category:Video game characters articles by importance; right now I stuck Doomguy as Mid to test it. The User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Video game characters table should update with them the next time the bot runs. Let me know if you want me to change or revert anything! -- Pres N  17:26, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Importance ratings
I feel like we should have a discussion about how important a character must be for each level of importance. I feel like several characters have been listed higher than they deserve, and I have already reduced the level of a few. Many characters who were listed as Mid-Importance should be knocked down to Low, and there are likely a few in Low that can be brought up to Mid. Keep in mind that Low is the default, and Top, High, and Mid are all above average. Pinging as participants in a previous discussion on the latter's talk page. QuicoleJR (talk) 00:09, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't mind the discussion, but I also want to caution not getting too "obsessed" (for lack of a better word) with where things land. I think it can prove to be too great a distraction, especially when the purpose of this is to help find important articles to improve. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 00:12, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I know this is Mii thing again. It is not a "top" importance. I feel like you have a personal bias going here, but no. I also thought that it should be actually "mid" not "high", but I think rating it as high would be fine?   Greenish Pickle!   (🔔) 00:15, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I also disagree with Samus being ranked so low. She's quite well-known and a highly influential character overall. In terms of Video Games characters, I'd say Top Importance is justified. Has one ever considered Magneton? Pokelego999 (talk) 00:18, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * That is not the reason I started this discussion. The Mid-Importance and Low-Importance sections should not be the same size. Besides, the main project has a guideline for importance, and I think it would be useful here as well. QuicoleJR (talk) 00:43, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I was planning on starting a discussion for this before too long. Gonna chip in with my own opinions on how to assess importance in this regard:
 * Top: Iconic to millions beyond gaming, and easily recognizable to a gamer of any sort. Could also be applied to characters that were influential to the gaming industry in terms of representation. This would be for characters like Mario, Sonic, Link, and Pac-Man.
 * High: Recognizable to most gamers or still known to general audience, but significantly less than ones at Top-importance. Could also be applied to characters that received vast amounts of critical acclaim. This would be for characters like Ellie (The Last of Us), Solid Snake, Doomguy, and Charizard.
 * Mid: Supporting characters in a larger franchise, main characters of a smaller game, or only known to a smaller audience. This would be for characters like Paimon (Genshin Impact), Raiden (Metal Gear), or the Arbiter (Halo).
 * Low: Extremely niche, not very well known characters. Too many examples to pick from.
 * Based on this criteria, I'd argue that Mii would be High, while Samus could be either High or Top. I want to know what y'all think of this. λ Negative  MP1  00:42, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * That makes sense. I agree with those criteria. QuicoleJR (talk) 00:45, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

I have a suggestion on this matter: omit Mid, and go with just Top, High and Low. Mid is going to be contentious because unlike Top and High there's not as much definition between it and High/Low, and it'll rely more on a user's own views and perspectives. High and Low by themselves are much easier to define.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 02:28, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Importance is a distraction. Mid is a fine importance level for any character to be at. Don't worry about it too much, we all know well how significant certain characters are to many of us. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 07:26, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I didn't quite realize until just now that this taskforce now has its own importance rating system separate from the general video game one. I don't think this adds anything to our project, and I think importance on WP:VG normal was clear enough as is. (Very fast and nice technical setup tho, PresN!) ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 08:59, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * It feels a little redundant in most cases. I suppose there's not much harm in adding it, but if it becomes a distraction, we can discuss removing / merging it back to the main Wikiproject rating. Shooterwalker (talk) 16:40, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Feel free, btw- it's easy to turn back off in the main WPVG template. I personally agree with KFM- "obviously super important", "important", and "the rest" makes sense to me for all projects, and any amount of time spent arguing over what bucket to put a start/C-class article into is wasted time. That in turn implies that arguing over what the buckets should be is also wasted time though, so, I'll leave it there. -- Pres N  23:04, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

== Aim for GT == Anyone who is willing to help with the article List of Resident Evil characters is very much welcomed. I really find it very hard to make up the concept and design sections for a list of characters (I couldn't even think of where to start). That article and Wesker (which is currently GAN-reviewed right now) are the only ones left to make this a good topic for Resident Evil. Arigato gozaimasu  Greenish Pickle!   (🔔) 05:46, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Draft:Antón Castillo
Dear WikiProject members,

I was just wondering whether any members of this WikiProject would consider contributing to a draft article about Antón Castillo, the central antagonist of Far Cry 6. The draft is still in its early stages, but it has potential to reach a quality standard, similar to the articles of the antagonists of Far Cry 3–5: Vaas Montenegro, Pagan Min and Joseph Seed. So far I have had very little experience in editing video game articles, so I was hoping that a few editors here may be able to lend a hand.

If you are interested, please indicate this with a short message below, or simply start contributing to the draft. :)

Kind regards and all the best, Lotsw73 (talk) 13:51, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Scrutinizing all characters
I think we already checked across a lot of fictional character articles. Now there are few articles that seems to be very weak state or failing notability. Zhongli (Genshin Impact), (can be nominated for several months) Juhani (Star Wars), Vette (Star Wars), (can be renominated several months) Ghoul (Fallout), Edward Kenway, Arno Dorian, Atlas (Bioshock), Vault-Tec, (lacking reception) and Lord British (can be potentially renominated in several months). Just gonna note here. 🥒 Greenish Pickle! 🥒 (🔔) 01:32, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Vault-Tec's not covered under us.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 01:45, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

HOW CAN I GET CHARACTER ARTICLE IDEAS
Okay this is frustrating and confusing to me about how my articles get redirected while characters like Asgore and Angela from Mana and a bunch of Final Fantasy and Fire Emblem have no problems like HOW, there no SIGCOV. What should I do with my own problem? Luckily, this wikiproject may have my problem, there are users who are creating articles without sources that mainly talk about their character. NatwonTSG2 (talk) 22:40, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Have you...read the articles you're raging about? The new Final Fantasy ones have several pages in books discussing them alone. Cuphead had...valnet? And that's coming from someone that has considered the possibility of a Mugman article. You just didn't have substance there so the merge was unsurprising.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 22:47, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, I do and realized that the books have several pages mainly discussing them so, I guess I just needed to look at the books instead of just Valnet so. NatwonTSG2 (talk) 23:04, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
 * It's more that you shouldn't get discouraged if there's a lack of discussion. The fact you're summarizing those articles as "well they're not being talked about in the sources!" shows that. Look at what's being said, and how. SIGCOV does not mean "the entire source needs to be about the subject", it means substantial discussion needs to be in a source.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 23:09, 23 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh, my bad that I didn't acknowledge since most guidance pages just explain and show that the fact that the source has to entirely about the subject of discussion. Also I have a question which is "is it necessary to merge some of the information from the character article to the game or series article?" NatwonTSG2 (talk) 00:41, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I expect that most information on Cuphead the character can fit in Cuphead the article without constituting undue weight. It's the player character that the whole game is about. This is why people had such a hard time writing an independent article on Rayman (character) that didn't just rehash the series article. ~ Maplestrip/Mable ( chat ) 06:43, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Well there are some users who make creating articles look easy, with most of them having little information and sources however, still make the cut and yes, I do acknowledged that sources count does not matter so. NatwonTSG2 (talk) 12:44, 24 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I mean, it ain't easy, it was a process of learning how to search for sources in the most efficient and effective way. This is what I use to search for sources: User:Cukie Gherkin/Source searching - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 05:00, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

The character index
The instructions on the character index page say that the index should use the task force importance ratings, but most characters are currently classified under the importance ratings for the main project. I would appreciate help fixing this. QuicoleJR (talk) 13:40, 25 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Update: Some characters are entirely incorrect, it seems. Sans (Undertale) was listed as Low-Importance even though we have him at High and the main project has him at Mid. Some class ratings likely also need updates. Like I said, I would appreciate help fixing the ratings on the index. QuicoleJR (talk) 13:47, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
 * It doesn't really matter. I believed that it one was created just to track the character articles. You can't even see the importance ratings on that page either way. 🥒 Greenish Pickle! 🥒 (🔔) 13:50, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
 * @QuicoleJR I really believe the importance scale is more of a formality than anything official, and shouldn't be fussed over this hard.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 15:11, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
 * My issue is not a focus on importance ratings, my problem is that the index is currently inaccurate. I am trying to fix that inaccuracy. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:12, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
 * And I'm trying to explain to you it's not that big a deal: there's always going to be some one arguing one thing is Mid and the other is Low. I'd rather just nuke Mid entirely. There are more important things to fix and finish.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 15:14, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Honestly, I agree with you on nuking Mid for this project. I think having Top, High, and Low/Normal would be better here. However, while they are here, I don't see why we should leave the index with incorrect information. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:44, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Actually, a better idea might be removing the importance ratings from the index. The list and class ratings are the important part of the index, and the index doesn't really need to show the importance ratings. Also, like Greenish Pickle said, they are not easy to see. If I could figure out how to do it and didn't edit on mobile, I would do it myself. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:51, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Proposal: Disable Mid-Importance while keeping the others
Several task force members have stated their support for only using Top, High, and Low as importance ratings. I think this would make things much simpler and stop a good number of arguments from happening. Mid is the most subjective of all of the ratings. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:58, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Support

 * 1) As nom. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:58, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
 * 2) Support. I feel this will help get rid of the debating of category importance from various users, and allow us to have a less subjective ranking of characters. Has one ever considered Magneton? Pokelego999 (talk) 16:32, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Oppose

 * 1) I can understand the rationale here, but I disagree with that rationale. Not only would getting rid of mid-importance be fairly unorthodox compared to the project (and the rest of Wikipedia, for that matter), but it serves as a compromise per Shooterwalker's statement below. I really don't see how getting rid of Mid-importance would solve anything, it's not even that big of a deal or a point of contention. Edit warring over importance ratings is dumb, and it's not like any more than three people are going to be actively looking at importance ratings. Debates about importance ratings aren't going to be that common. Just keep the status quo. λ  Negative  MP1  22:15, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
 * 2) I share similar sentiments with Negative here. Whilst I understand the positives of getting rid of the mid importance tag, I think the positives can't outweigh the negatives. It would not align with the main Wikiproject and I can see this just making more arguments with editors rational-ing why a former mid importance article should be either now low or high. To me, instead of solving the issue, removing the mid importance may end up just creating a (potential worse) issue.  Captain  Galaxy  15:04, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

Discussion
If editors can't help themselves with arguing/wasting time on it, I recommend the whole thing be scrapped. Or if there's a lot of interest in continuing it, then let those people handle it, and the time-sinking editors should step away from it. This is one of those things, kind of like with Wikipedia's category system, that people need to keep in mind that comparably very few people will ever even see this.

Here's a good example to illustrate what I mean. While Cloud Strife averages 600+ views per day, conversely, the talk page averages one view per day. And you don't even know that every talk page view is looking at the quality assessment either. Sergecross73  msg me  16:42, 25 April 2024 (UTC)
 * It's one of the reasons I didn't think it'd be a good idea to be honest: the importance scale is often just "there" and most people are going to work on what they want to. While it might be neat to work on high importance character articles, I feel it's not a *necessity* as most are going to have folks bog down.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 19:35, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

I agree that we don't want editors to argue and waste time on this. But I see how this proposal could backfire. I could see editors getting a lot more defensive if they are forced into all-or-nothing (important-or-not). "Mid" might be helping things towards compromise. The distance between "low" and "high" is bigger than the distance between "low" and "mid". Shooterwalker (talk) 21:15, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Characters of the Final Fantasy VII series
If this article is brought to GA, we could create a good topic, since all individual characters with articles are GAs. I would do it, but I don't know much about Final Fantasy VII or about writing this type of article. QuicoleJR (talk) 23:00, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

All RE character are now GA, but despite that I am familiar with the series, I have no idea how to set up a good list of x character articles; thus I have no interest now aiming for GT. lol 🥒 Greenish Pickle! 🥒 (🔔) 23:09, 27 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Pinging who has worked with a lot of Character articles and lists and brought some to GA or FL. QuicoleJR (talk) 23:33, 27 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Given Cait Sith just got made, and Cid Highwind is also viable looking at sources, it's probably best to wait before pursuing a good topic.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 01:43, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Oh, missed that. Still, it would be great to have this article as a GA for when those two become GAs, and having more GAs is good in general. QuicoleJR (talk) 01:47, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Character lists
This is something I have never been able to figure out. How do we decide whether an article about the characters of a game/series as a group is an article or a list? My first thought was that pages that used a subsection format instead of a list format were the ones considered articles, but list of Mario franchise characters proves that wrong. I then thought that having info about the creation and reception of the characters in separate sections was the deciding factor, but list of Genshin Impact characters disproves that. It also doesn't come down to the article title, as shown by characters of the Kirby series. Does anyone here know the answer? Thanks, QuicoleJR (talk) 15:47, 10 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Honestly speaking, most character lists under this task force are basically just dumping grounds with little to no organization or widespread consistency in how they are formatted. And it doesn't feel like there's any solution, since each type of game could warrant a different kind of character list. I'm not sure if there's any major factor that determines when an article is either "List of X characters" or "Characters of X" beyond the personal preference of whoever named the article. λ Negative  MP1  21:49, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Sorry for not responding sooner, but I was referring to the quality assessments, not the article title. QuicoleJR (talk) 01:35, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It didn't seem like that to me at first. Either way, my case still remains semi-relevant even knowing that context. λ Negative  MP1  01:37, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
 * There was an attempt on my part to differentiate character lists from articles in list format, but it sadly ran into some issues. The main hassle is as Negative said though: many are just dumping grounds because somehow having a character article is bad if it's "not notable enough", but it's good that it's "out of sight" when it's just one giant slab of cruft shoved into the middle of the thing more often than not.
 * A big example of the "dumping ground" problem are many of the anime game lists, which were literally done just to move the cruft away from the main article. That in the end doesn't help anyone understand the subject, it's basically shoving a problem somewhere else and going "it's not my concern."
 * We need to sit down and have a serious talk at some point on how to approach these.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 01:42, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
 * What is the criteria for making a character list? Obviously LISTN is something that you would want to meet, but how much of a factor is SIZESPLIT? Is there a point where a series is so popular that it can have a list even without meeting LISTN? QuicoleJR (talk) 01:53, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I think at some point Sizesplit just hasn't applied. Like with a lot of the aforementioned anime lists it was literally just a dumping ground, and it became so habitual people kept doing it. Then you have stuff like the Street Fighter character list that has in all honesty become a behemoth that SHOULD be split.--Kung Fu Man (talk) 01:57, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I was referring to how we decide which series get character lists, although I can see how I could have been misinterpreted. I will say that the lists for some series like Street Fighter could arguably be split. QuicoleJR (talk) 02:13, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

GAN Backlog
Making folks aware of this, but right now we have 10(!) Good Article Nominations going at once. It could be a good idea if you haven't done a review for someone as of late to grab one of theirs and give it a review. Just remember to be thorough, do a spot check, and let's see if any of them can make it to GA. Kung Fu Man (talk) 14:32, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Good article reassessment/Afd for Haytham Kenway
A good article Haytham Kenway has been nominated for deletion. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the AfD page. Thank you. 🍕 Boneless Pizza! 🍕 (🔔) 19:38, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Achievement reached: 200 Good Articles
I wanted to bring everyone's attention to the fact that at this moment we have now reached 200 Good Article quality character articles for the task force. While yes this number may certainly fluctuate in the upcoming months or even weeks, it's a massive achievement for this task force and a testament to the work everyone's put into it. It shows too we can reach that 250 FA + GA goal, and go beyond it even!

Well done everyone! Kung Fu Man (talk) 06:25, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Why didn't you say "achievement unlocked"?? - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 15:21, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
 * ...because somehow it didn't occur to me!--Kung Fu Man (talk) 15:29, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Very impressive. I'm honestly impressed we've maintained our activity, just because of how many Wikiprojects and task forces fizzle so quickly. Sergecross73   msg me  15:45, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Good work everyone. I hope to contribute to the next 50. Shooterwalker (talk) 20:01, 16 June 2024 (UTC)