Number of Character Appearances V

[Emanick]

Did you get a reply from Martianmaster at all. I got a reply bacvk from Mark Hall.

Thanks for the reminder; it's been a busy week for me and I hadn't realized that so much time had gone by already. No, she hasn't responded. What did Mark say?

[Mad Humanist]

What did Mark say?

Not much. Just to list some suitable moderators. I guess we still need to wait till Saturday. but I will reply back to Mark then - unless something intervenes of course.

[unbeliever536]

There is already a thread that tracks each character's speech balloon count.

Yes, Onyavar brought it up when I asked about the combined translation text. I suggested combining threads (assuming we add additional data), but he hasn't responded to the idea, and we shouldn't do so without his permission.

edit:

Also, I propose that we use offline appearances, followed by additional pages, as a tiebreaker for ordering. (I propose this strictly because Higlya is currently listed between Cedric and Lee, and it looks weird)

[SirKazum]

Also, I propose that we use offline appearances, followed by additional pages, as a tiebreaker for ordering. (I propose this strictly because Higlya is currently listed between Cedric and Lee, and it looks weird)

Sounds like a good idea. I've wondered why they don't do that too.

[Mad Humanist]

Thanks for the reminder; it's been a busy week for me and I hadn't realized that so much time had gone by already. No, she hasn't responded. What did Mark say?

I think time's up now. I guess if Martianmaster was going to get in touch she would have done so by now. I'll ask the moderators to get properly involved. Maybe the best compromise of precedent (which makes sure that no coup is going on) and transparent input from the community is that if you want to run the thread you should put forward proposals on what you changes you would like to make and send a private message to Mark Hall. If you want to make changes (but don't want to to run the thread) you should put those forward too. I guess the extent to which we find a balance between "democracy" and precedent is open to negotiation but if there is no consensus here then precedent must prevail.

Edit: Also according to precedent you should PM Mark if you want a particular person to curate the new thread.

[LibraryOgre]

I think time's up now. I guess if Martianmaster was going to get in touch she would have done so by now. I'll ask the moderators to get properly involved. Maybe the best compromise of precedent (which makes sure that no coup is going on) and transparent input from the community is that if you want to run the thread you should put forward proposals on what you changes you would like to make and send a private message to Mark Hall. If you want to make changes (but don't want to to run the thread) you should put those forward too. I guess the extent to which we find a balance between "democracy" and precedent is open to negotiation but if there is no consensus here then precedent must prevail.

Edit: Also according to precedent you should PM Mark if you want a particular person to curate the new thread.

The Mod Wonder:

Shoot, has it been 4 years since we did this? Nominations are due by Midnight, US Central Time, March 9th.

[Bird]

Whatever happens as far as curators go--I agree with Emanick's notion that appearances of the HPoH should count for both the HPoH and for Durkon, irrespective of whether that character speaks. (Emanick, sorry if I didn't characterize your position on that quite right.) It's the only way that makes sense to me given how the thread treats other characters--treating impersonations, drawings, etc, as appearances.

Also:

Also, I propose that we use offline appearances, followed by additional pages, as a tiebreaker for ordering. (I propose this strictly because Higlya is currently listed between Cedric and Lee, and it looks weird)

Makes sense.

[Fawkes]

Oh, actually, yeah, I like both of those changes.

[Emanick]

Whatever happens as far as curators go--I agree with Emanick's notion that appearances of the HPoH should count for both the HPoH and for Durkon, irrespective of whether that character speaks. (Emanick, sorry if I didn't characterize your position on that quite right.) It's the only way that makes sense to me given how the thread treats other characters--treating impersonations, drawings, etc, as appearances.

Also:

Also, I propose that we use offline appearances, followed by additional pages, as a tiebreaker for ordering. (I propose this strictly because Higlya is currently listed between Cedric and Lee, and it looks weird)

Makes sense.

Indeed, that's exactly what my position is. So, yeah, those are both things that I plan to do if I wind up as curator.

I also think I'll create a separate section to rank characters by their total number of appearances, treating all pages as equal, if that's all right with most people. To prevent excessive clutter, this section would only track those characters with over 10 total appearances.

For the sake of formality, this post contains the formal list of changes I would make to the thread. I may or may not consider others if a thread consensus exists for making tweaks like that - this is a community project, after all, and I don't want to make any significant decisions about what direction it should go in unilaterally. As an extension of that principle, if any of the above changes that I already plan on making wind up being opposed by most thread participants, I'll probably ditch them.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I think the OP would benefit from turning the non-grouped entries into a table, with columns for total number of appearances by page, by strip, book, mentions, etc, instead of the colorful but otherwise confusing system (I can never remember what blue and red numbers mean). Throw in a few "total" columns at the end for ordering, and that will make a nice upgrade to the OP structure. It should also be relatively easy to auto generate, if you have the info in an excel sheet or similar.

The masses of minor characters with few appearances can stay as they are, though, I think.

Grey Wolf

[Flame of Anor]

I agree with Emanick and Bird about the changes.

[Fawkes]

(I can never remember what blue and red numbers mean)

Blue numbers are additional pages, red numbers are bonus appearances.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Blue numbers are additional pages, red numbers are bonus appearances.

I meant I can't remember which is which, when I'm scrolling down the list and comparing any two characters. I could always check the explanation in the OP, but then I lose my place. Since red does not mean "bonus page" nor blue means "extra page", they don't really help me remember.

GW

[Emanick]

I meant I can't remember which is which, when I'm scrolling down the list and comparing any two characters. I could always check the explanation in the OP, but then I lose my place. Since red does not mean "bonus page" nor blue means "extra page", they don't really help me remember.

GW

Oh yeah, that's always bothered me, too. I've always wished there was something at the top of the page that reminded the reader of what red text meant and what blue text meant. I'll probably add a line to that effect at the top of the new thread.

I like your suggestion for using a table to order character appearances, too, although I think that might be a discussion we should postpone until the new thread.

[Gift Jeraff]

The masses of minor characters with few appearances can stay as they are, though, I think.

I honestly think characters with no name or official title should be separated. The whole section of characters with <10 appearances is an eyesore thanks to stuff like Sapphire Guard with XXX Hair and Draketooth with Whatever Clothes. If someone wants to compare the appearances of meaningful yet minor characters like the gods they have to ctrl + F and it's just clunky.

Fun stuff like Ted and Shlubbo No-Name-Zaki can stay with the "real characters." By the way, stuff like that were why I proposed counting an appearance for Number of Character Appearances, but I'm not going to insist on it.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I honestly think characters with no name or official title should be separated [from those that do have a name or title].

Huh. Not a bad idea. You have my vote.

GW

[ti'esar]

As someone possessed of a soft spot for background extras, I don't want to remove the unnamed characters by any means. But I would certainly not object to separating them from minor named characters. It might be more trouble than it's worth, though - for instance, we'd have to decide if the various Godsmoot High Priests and Priestesses counted as 'named' or not.

[Mad Humanist]

Oh yeah, that's always bothered me, too. I've always wished there was something at the top of the page that reminded the reader of what red text meant and what blue text meant. I'll probably add a line to that effect at the top of the new thread.

I like your suggestion for using a table to order character appearances, too, although I think that might be a discussion we should postpone until the new thread.

Separating unnamed characters is too much of a break with tradition for me. I like the table idea though.

[Emanick]

Separating unnamed characters is too much of a break with tradition for me. I like the table idea though.

Yeah, that would be a logistical nightmare as well as an inevitably arbitrary exercise, IMO (what constitutes a name, and what doesn't?). It also wouldn't account for the fact that having a name is not the same as being important - the unnamed Cleric of Loki is much more important and interesting than, say, the three named barbarians Belkar killed in the Barbaryunz Gild. I'm not a particularly big fan of that potential tweak.

Was that an implied part of Grey Wolf's proposal? I didn't understand it as such.

It's unfortunately true that the mass of characters with fewer than 10 appearances is a bit of an ugly mess, but that may be an unavoidable problem, since there are so many of them. I'm open to ideas on how to make the section more sightly, although my hopes are not high that it can get much better than it is.

[Gift Jeraff]

what constitutes a name, and what doesn't?

Simple: if they had only 1 appearance, would they have qualified for the Cameos
(named characters with 1 appearance)? If not, they go under the unnamed section. On the plus side, this would allow us to track stuff like the lizardfolk who became Malack while prevent him from reaching Major Character status (which is rather silly).

If nothing else, I suggest we rename the minor bandit, Sapphire Guard, etc. characters to Bandit with X and Sapphire Guard with X so that they're at least clumped together (as is currently the case for Draketooths and high priests).

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Was that an implied part of Grey Wolf's proposal? I didn't understand it as such.

No, my proposal was explicitly only for the top part of the list, the ones that get a row each, and therefore are almost table-like. I said to leave the masses at the bottom as they are. Gift Jeraff's proposal, on the other hand, deals with the masses.

GW

[137beth]

Whatever happens as far as curators go--I agree with Emanick's notion that appearances of the HPoH should count for both the HPoH and for Durkon, irrespective of whether that character speaks. (Emanick, sorry if I didn't characterize your position on that quite right.) It's the only way that makes sense to me given how the thread treats other characters--treating impersonations, drawings, etc, as appearances.

Agreed, that had been what I supported doing since the initial reveal of HPoH.

I don't think unnamed characters should be separated from named characters, though. Whether they have a name doesn't alter how may times they appeared.

[Yendor]

I'm not sure exactly what's being suggested, but I think the idea should be to separate the named characters from the unnamed within a section, so under each number there'd be two paragraphs, one for each group. Renaming anonymous characters within a group also sounds good.

Oh, and:

1027: Belkar, Blackwing, Elan, Haley, Roy, Vaarsuvius. I think that's Felix and Bandana on the right of the first panel, but I can't identify the other three crew members.

[Chronos]

Not that I expect much dissension on this point, but I agree that the next title should be "We Like Counting Things".

And while we're discussing procedures, I favor the interpretation that every appearance of the vampire counts as both the former High Priest of Hel and as Durkon. I'm not sure what to do about the names of vampire characters, though: We have been calling the vampire using Durkon's body "High Priest of Hel", but he's technically not any more, and we have a number of other characters (most notably Gontor) who have also been vampirized, and for whom we ought to make the same distinction. I think the proper way of referring to such characters would be systematic, so we'd call the vampire using Durkon's corpse "Durkon's Vampire" and the one using Gontor's corpse "Gontor's Vampire", and so on, though I'm not sure what the best phrasing of that would be. It's also not clear what to do with Malack, whom we've only ever seen and been introduced to as a vampire: Should Malack actually be called "Malack's Vampire" (assuming that was the long-dead shaman's name), or should the shaman actually be called "Malack's Mortal", or should we just ignore the issue for that one because they have exactly the same set of appearances?

[Yendor]

Malack wasn't the original's name. I don't really see the point of distinguishing Malack from the corpse, especially when we never saw the original, any more than we should count the bodies that make up Grubby's flesh golems.

[Mad Humanist]

Malack wasn't the original's name. I don't really see the point of distinguishing Malack from the corpse, especially when we never saw the original, any more than we should count the bodies that make up Grubby's flesh golems.

May be the rules should be:
1.) For all vampire's we call them "X's vampire" unless X's vampire and X are known to use different names.
2.) We only bother distinguishing X and X's vampire if either we saw X or X's corpse before they became a vampire or if we see X's vampire and X's spirit in conversation.

[SirKazum]

May be the rules should be:
1.) For all vampire's we call them "X's vampire" unless X's vampire and X are known to use different names.
2.) We only bother distinguishing X and X's vampire if either we saw X or X's corpse before they became a vampire or if we see X's vampire and X's spirit in conversation.

Sounds reasonable. Making a point out of Malack being a Negative Energy spirit controlling a long-dead lizardfolk shaman's body is too clunky for the thread when we only ever saw Malack the vampire, but with folks like Durkon and Gontor the distinction makes sense. And "X's Vampire" (i.e. "Durkon's Vampire" rather than "High Priest of Hel") sounds like a pretty clear but concise terminology that can be applied to any and every vampire.

[Mad Humanist]

So another deadline passes....

[Bird]

Sounds reasonable. Making a point out of Malack being a Negative Energy spirit controlling a long-dead lizardfolk shaman's body is too clunky for the thread when we only ever saw Malack the vampire, but with folks like Durkon and Gontor the distinction makes sense. And "X's Vampire" (i.e. "Durkon's Vampire" rather than "High Priest of Hel") sounds like a pretty clear but concise terminology that can be applied to any and every vampire.

Yeah, I agree that sounds pretty good.

[martianmister]

Sorry for all the waiting. I've been busy with health related issues. I'll try to read all of your post.