A way to divide CK character pages

This was brought up in a discussion between those who want to lump all characters with a same name and those who want to split unique characters who coincidentally share a name. https://www.librarything.com/topic/340301#

Since both uses can't really be accommodated, it was suggested that having the ability to divide character pages would be a good compromise. If a divided character page was modeled after author pages, then the lumpers could see all of the identically named characters on a disambiguation page and the splitters could click through to see the details on a specific character.

We've been moving chunks of data out of CK and into more bespoke data elements (series, and now awards, for instance). This might be worth talking about with CK Characters. We'll have to talk it over.

Yes please. Going so far as to replicate the author division system would cater to both uses as described, especially since splitting is already happening (by eg. suffixes to the character name on the CK entry). An assignments page similar to divided authors would be a lot simpler (for helpers) than editing a bunch of CK.

Thinking further: characters can be a bit more woolly in definition than authors, so it might be worth considering going to two levels of split. This would let the page handle differing lumper-splitter viewpoints on whether parody versions of a character belong together in a split, splits containing a real-life person who also appears in fictionalised form, fanfic versions of established characters, and so on. Would it merit being taken to further sublevels? Extreme solution could be endless splittable (via decimal?) to permit such granulation as the MDS pages are able to handle, ie. letting people see pages for: lumped name > single instance > fanfic version > by author X > ... which may be nice to have for some extremely popular names/characters that have hundreds even thousands of works. Or filterable to achieve similar.

Example (here using a subsplit numbering, but for a straight division like authors simply replace the labels with -1, -2, -3, -4, -5):
Abraham Lincoln (combined page)
-1 (the US president)
-1.1 Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter {this is from Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter}
-1.2 Abraham Lincoln (Harry Turtledove) {this is from eg. How Few Remain}
-2 Captain Abraham Lincoln (grandfather of -1, no need for sub-split because may be only in a handful of works)
-3 (some 3rd entirely other Abraham Lincoln, also not sub-split)
Etc.

I've probably dived way too far into this too soon!
But yes, any improvement so that lumpers aren't mad about data being split away to a suffixed name, and splitters can do things with efficiency, would be great.

>2 conceptDawg: If this author-split idea is considered the best solution, can I just ask that whatever is done, that it's a bit more sophisticated and streamline than the current author-split pages? Possibly also coming with the option to show the options as "grouped" or "ungrouped" like Series has now?

I could imagine a three-tier system consisting of numbers and symbols.
The symbols would determine whether the persons appear in:
* it appears at several authors books,
° in a series,
+ in more than one book by the same author
- in one book.

This is followed by a separator.
This is followed by digits which could have the following meanings:
0 real person (biographically "correct"),
1 real person (fictitious),
2 fictitious character,
3 etc-.
at the end follows (if needed), again separated by a separator, the specification of the different persons with the same name (1 ... n)

One could also consider whether references to books, series, etc. can be added for each character in which the person also appears.
I am aware that with many persons this could lead to an unmanageable number.

And now it's your turn:
Pick apart my idea, which hasn't been thought through at all yet. ;-)

>5 birder4106:

That's crazy complicated!

>6 lilithcat:
Could it also be that only my description is so terrible?

I've always been known for being able to express something simple in a complicated way. Unfortunately.
And that too in a language other than my mother tongue.

An example of Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders:
Abraham Lincoln -.1
Written out: Abraham Lincoln real (fict.), one book

>7 birder4106:

No, you described it well. It's just seems to me that with so many different symbols/numbers/etc. it could get very confusing.

If People/Characters were set up like work series in the new system, then I imagine we could group the people and characters with the same name using standard labels along with add-in labels for that page.

An intimidating problem I see immediately with this is that while many series are listed elsewhere-- in a book or on a webpage-- for easy reference, LT Helpers might need an unusually high familliarity with the works, without any existing listings of which characters are in which works. I expect that most of us who contribute to the People/Characters field are only familiar with the few books we're editing for each person or character name. Meanwhile, there could be dozens to hundreds of unfamiliar, ungrouped works already showing on the page.

We would still mostly end up with long lists similar to what we have now, wouldn't we?

If People/Characters were set up like the author pages as they are today, then I expect we would have all the same problems and the same level of animosity that we've been dealing with for the author pages. There be monsters in those waters.

Another thought: How would/should we differentiate between a "person" and a "character" for biographical fiction? Tagging and classifications for those works span across nonfiction and fiction. Could the expectation to separate the people written about in the most factual works from the realistic characterizations of real people be minimized?

This type of factual fiction makes up a large proportion of works that I currently use the People/Character pages for.

>11 aspirit: "Could the expectation to separate the people written about in the most factual works from the realistic characterizations of real people be minimized?"

Do you mean in the current system or this possible new one?

>10 aspirit: If character pages were set up like series pages, you'd also have all of the CK and series info lumped together for all the characters with the same name which, from my view, is a major part of the reason for dividing.

>12 Carmen.et.Error: Both, really.

>14 aspirit: I don't think I've noticed this expectation in the current system, but maybe I'm misunderstanding.

My assumption has always been that if it's the same person, it's the same person, whether they appear in a work of non-fiction or "factual fiction". Either way, I read a lot of both too, and, if I'm reading you right, I feel the same way.

I think using a people/characters division system on the model of the existing author divisions should be used to divide homonyms, but not to distinguish between the (allegedly) fictional and factual employment of people/characters in books. The latter is a judgment about the works rather than the characters in them.

Imagine the analogous situation with places. A fictional book set in Chicago is set in the "factual" Chicago as much as any book is. Having counter-factual things happen there doesn't make it any less "Chicago," when that is the identity that the fiction is asserting. Likewise, a book that features Amelia Earhart fighting Cthulhu may be patently fictional, but if it involves an attempt to represent the historical aviatrix, then there shouldn't be a split in the people/character to divide it. That would defeat the purpose of the original identification.

bump

>16 paradoxosalpha: Imagine the analogous situation with places.

This was a highly productive line of thinking for me, I appreciate you sharing it.