Talk: Performers with multiple roles

Stuntpeople

As we discover more stuntpeople on 24, who almost all have many multiple minor roles, I was thinking of laying down some inclusion criteria for this page - maybe people where none of their roles have articles or unnamed entries could be excluded? Actually it seems like it's only been me who has broken that rule haha, but how about making it official?Otherwise this page will get soooo big--Acer4666 23:01, April 3, 2011 (UTC)

What is speaking against a "big page"? The title speaks for itself, a list of all performers who portrayed at least two characters/roles and I think this wiki will be as complete as possible, right? Tom 23:25, April 3, 2011 (UTC)

Well for a start when I edit it on my little computer it nearly crashes the thing! But I think that people use this page as a "Ahh,the guy who played Jim also played Fred", as opposed to "ah yes, Tony Donno played 31 unnamed background characters, which are all listed here". I don't think the information about the stunt guys shouldn't be on its own page,I just think perhaps we should separate the information. The problem is drawing the line between actors and stunt performers, which I am aware is very hard to define. Do you have a similar thing on Memory Alpha?--Acer4666 23:36, April 3, 2011 (UTC)

Maybe this list (I am not really a fan of such an article) could only list the appearances and not every role. If someone is interested in the actor/ stuntman he can read the article. When there is a list like "Thom Williams - 31 characters; Marci Michelle - 4 characters" starting with the person who portrayed the most different parts the site won't be "big" but listing the information. Tom 00:18, April 4, 2011 (UTC)

An enormous amount of stunt performers played more than 1 role, and as they are being catalogued in the wiki, I'm getting worried about it too. One useful addition I will try to make to this discussion is: if the person ever received a credit (or more) we can keep them here. This way we can keep Marcy Michelle and Henry Kingi, etc.

It's also unclear to me now if there is momentum to put images on all these roles. I simply don't know what this page is going to look like in the future. Blue Rook  talk  contribs 08:15, April 4, 2011 (UTC)

Are you happy with the identified stunt people being added to the wiki? I was thinking of starting a forum topic on how to manage all the new information--Acer4666 08:25, April 4, 2011 (UTC)

I actually just did that, and without having read what you wrote above (if you want to believe it!). But yes I'm happy, all these stunts and extras are an exciting source for great community activity, and also, re-structuring some of our content weak-points here! Blue Rook  talk  contribs 08:58, April 4, 2011 (UTC)

Acer thanks for taking the initiative in implementing my suggestion. But—and forgive me if I'm being annoying here—I'm having major second thoughts about excluding performers who lack credits. We have to remove more than just Donno and Williams... we'd also have to lose Brockton, Betts, Rosenthal, and perhaps several others for whom it is actually quite beneficial to be listed here. This is one of those occasional cases where I find myself saying "what was I thinking?" about an idea I made earlier. Do you agree? Blue Rook  talk  contribs 21:30, May 4, 2011 (UTC)

Ah yes, didn't think it through either - how about my original suggestion that we exclude actors that only play forbidden characters (tbh that's why I removed those guys!). Something like - "actors who play at least one role eligible for inclusion on the wiki"?--Acer4666 21:33, May 4, 2011 (UTC)

That's a pretty solid idea too. My motivation for retracting my idea wasn't simply because I wanted to keep people like Brockton, Betts, Rosenthal, etc. but also because I no longer have the opinion that the newer guys like Donno, Williams, etc. should be absent from here. In other words, it's cool if they stay. Such performers however (I'll start calling them "ineligible-characters performers/ICPs" for short) perhaps could just be dropped here without specifics. The ICPs would just get a parenthetical note on this page that simply says "see actor article for roles" to eliminate tedious and never-ending need to update in 2 places. I'm beginning to think this is the fairest option because it satisfies the inclusion criteria implied by the article title (any performer with multi-roles) but also saves us the ridiculous task of updating this page for ICPs. Ya? Blue Rook  talk  contribs 21:58, May 4, 2011 (UTC)

Wow, I was going to suggest the exact same stuff, Rook, just before reading this. Let's keep all performers on here, including stuntfolk, but for those who are exclusively ICPs, we just list them and let people link to the actor page for details. --22:10, May 4, 2011 (UTC)

Awesome plan - I also realise my way wouldn't work if people got pedantic about stunt doubles "playing" main characters.--Acer4666 22:18, May 4, 2011 (UTC)

Tim Mikulecky

Hey, just about listing Tim Mikulecky's roles - have I misunderstood what agreement we came to above? I thought we only don't list roles if they exclusively play ICP (ineligible character performances) - Tim Mikulecky has two roles with articles, so don't we list his roles, like with Henry kingi?--Acer4666 22:08, May 22, 2011 (UTC)

Ah there is a misunderstanding: see Brett DeLuca and Doc for what I meant about this. Any character who has his own appearances template (or unnamed character appearances list) can just get "see article" here, because there is no need at all for duplicating stuff anymore.(This doesn't meet we go and delete all the duplicated information that's already here, since that is unnecessary.) Mark Wexler and Chiarella don't really need that stuff, but again, since it's there, we might as well leave it. But in instances where its a Forbidden character, that is when we should list appearances, because there is nowhere else to do so. Blue Rook  talk  contribs 21:20, May 23, 2011 (UTC)

Unmanageable; let's change this

It's too much to ask to expect the community to keep this up to date, every single time a background performer appears. It's a rather tedious process enough as it stands already when you see Robin Powers in the background, and you have to go and update that episode's guide as well as his character article. Why should anyone have to come here and plug in episodes?

I already see a number outdated lists on this page, and I'm unwilling to keep maintaining this. I strongly propose that we stop unreasonably expecting ourselves to update this, and simply delete episode links from any character who has an article or an unnamed entry. The links should still remain strictly for characters who have neither names nor lines, like Dana Bunch's CTU character, because these characters don't have homes of their own to list their episodes. Blue Rook  talk  contribs 16:38, February 25, 2011 (UTC)

Defs agree - episode links only necessary for non-articled characters--Acer4666 16:42, February 25, 2011 (UTC)

Ooh actually one thing - I think it's nice to see when actors pop up early on in 24 then again later - but if you see that, for example, Endre Hules played Serge and Stovich, it doesn't mean a lot. So I would suggest having (Day X) or (Days X-Y) in brackets next to the names, I think that would be manageable and let you see at a glance roughly when the actors popped up as well as their roles.--Acer4666 17:56, February 25, 2011 (UTC)

Yes certainly, I wasn't planning to remove the Seasons from this list, just the episodes, I should have been more specific about that. I'm glad you like the plan and noticed that too. I'll wait for a bit and then go implement this if there are no complaints in a few days. Blue Rook  talk  contribs 21:40, February 25, 2011 (UTC)

I expected that this would become an issue eventually, and I'm cool with it. I love the idea of having the links there for every character, but if everyone agrees it's unmanageable, I won't protest. --proudhug 15:51, March 1, 2011 (UTC)

It is a great idea, of course, to have them. One day, if there comes a way to reliably automate the updating process (like with bots or templates or something) I'll be the first to support putting those back. Blue Rook  talk  contribs 05:41, March 2, 2011 (UTC)

Revisited

I was about to go implement this, and a thought came to me: the only real problem with this is updating the very same characters I was complaining about and that we had agreed to make exceptions for! Dana Bunch's character gets to keep an episode tally? Characters like that are the reason I was trying to pull down the episodes in the first place. Everyone else is accounted for just fine, so removing them would be useless!

Perhaps, as an alternative to leaving this alone or doing my original idea, we could only remove the counts for constantly recurring background characters who have names/links. This way it provides some relief for having to update those. We leave behind people like Adoni Maropis's and Anthony Azizi's episode lists (because they are not going to change), and the Forbiddens (because they can't get listed anywhere else)... but remove Teller, Jacki/Marcy, and people like Robin Powers who keep showing up (so we only have to update their character pages and episode guide's Uncredited lists as usual, and there's no double burden for them anymore here). Makes sense? Blue Rook  talk  contribs 07:52, March 2, 2011 (UTC)

Ooh sorry Blue Rook I must have missed this when you posted it! But it was a good idea, and makes sense.--Acer4666 09:59, March 15, 2011 (UTC)

Bullets vs. Numbers

I can't say I like the numbers. Almost all of the people on the list only have two appearances so it's mostly just a series of 1s and 2s over and over and it looks weird. Bullets look neater, in my opinion. --proudhug 01:25, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. --SeanPM 06:08, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Okay wait. Obviously I put the numbers back, but this is definitely not the same thing I did last time. It looks a billion times neater than what I did previously: compare the old version with the version I just saved. The difference in the quality of the overall appearance is immediate. Eh? Blue Rook  talk  contribs 21:01, August 10, 2010 (UTC)

Marci Michelle

Maybe this is a way to sort out that problem with Marci Michelle and the two people she plays - Jackie and Marcy? SignorSimon 17:32, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

This definitely would be the solution, if we could definitively establish that she played two different characters (which I am personally convinced she did). But some folks disagree for different reasons. In a few days I'll be back to watching the episodes and I'll catalogue her appearances and help solve this. If I'm wrong, which is possible, then the actress won't wind up here. But my money is that she will! – Blue Rook 03:30, 13 January 2008 (UTC)_talkcontribs

I'm certain she has been - I've heard her called Jackie and Marcy. SignorSimon 09:02, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm adding here now. Can't believe the quintessential performer with multi roles is the latest to be added. How these things slip under our noses! Blue Rook  talk  contribs 20:01, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Category

Is making a category using this same name appropriate? I mean, there's absolutely no other actor subcategories, maybe it's a start. --Deege515 02:24, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with that. It might be redundant since we already have all of the See Also sections for those actors. But, like when I did the See Alsos some months back for Day X antagonists, I went back to replace them with the proper category. Replacing these current multiple-role-actor See Alsos with your category might be the solution, given your proposal. In a nutshell, it should either be your category or the See Also's, not both, and I don't personally have a preference on either one (so long as one of them is used). – Blue Rook 16:39, 29 October 2007 (UTC)_talkcontribs

See the thread below for why I created the See Alsos. Replacing them with a category would undermine that effort. However, I agree that we shouldn't have both, and I personally think a category is preferable to a See Also. I guess the solution would be to find another way to "parent" (i.e. de-orphanize) this page. --Proudhug 18:32, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

This is an old topic, but I'm posting to state that I don't believe this page needs to be replaced with a category. The article has evolved a usefulness which categories can't utilize, that is, listing all the episodes of each character's appearance. Let's keep this for good. Blue Rook  talk  contribs 20:01, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

Note to self

Find a way to Unorphan/unloneley this page when sober. --Deege.

Done. --Proudhug 23:45, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion

What if we put "shares the same actor as" in every characters page who is performed by a multiple-character actor? We already do this, so anyone got a problem with making it universal? Also, could we (like we do with phrases that refer to an On-screen kills by Jack Bauer) make it so that putting in the phrase as "shares the same actor as" would also serve as a hyperlink to this page?

For example, instead of saying "He shares the same actor", it would become "He shares the same actor.

Anyone got any other ideas or any reservations?--SuperbowserX (talk) 20:54, March 21, 2016 (UTC)

This edit probably got buried under Acer's wave of edits (Nice job Ace!), so I'll make this edit again lol. Anyone have any ideas/reservations with regards to this suggestion?--SuperbowserX (talk) 16:36, March 22, 2016 (UTC)

Whereabouts would this go? I have reservations about people like John Meier or something when there would be a huge list of every other minor character they ever played. Also, on the unnamed characters pages, I think those italic oou sections are big enough as they are, so I wouldn't want to see them grow so much--Acer4666 (talk) 09:30, March 24, 2016 (UTC)

Hey SuperBowser you seem to be enacting this on the unnamed characters pages. Like I say, I'm not too sure about putting them on those sections because there are so many multiple performer roles that those italics sections will start getting too big. Also I really feel like this is information pertinent to the actors, and is (rightly) listed on actor pages, but is kind of not really to do with the characters--Acer4666 (talk) 19:03, March 25, 2016 (UTC)

I only put it on actors who have only 2 roles and have somewhat memorable/similar roles. i.e. Wallace/Ari, Juma/Norris, Teenager2/D8Serg. Didn't plan to (and will not) do it for everyone. And yes, I know "somewhat memorable/similar roles" is a very vague description, but... Uhm... Yeah. Just not gonna make it standardized wikia policy.--SuperbowserX (talk) 19:18, March 25, 2016 (UTC)