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From Lostpedia

Affiliation

I would like to add a new row to this box titled "Affiliation". For example, "Jack's Team", "Locke's Team", "Others", "Kahana", "DHARMA", "Independent", "Unknown" etc. How would people feel about this? Kidburla 16:51, 27 March 2008 (PDT)

Sounds cool to me. Just make it optional to hide it, since we probably won't need it for all the extras and flashback characters. --Pyramidhead 03:10, 29 March 2008 (PDT)

"Last Flashback Appearance"

• While well intentioned, I think this is a very misleading row - I noticed that Pyramidhead added it to Nikki's page for her appearance on the TV in "Ji Yeon", but I find this iffy for a few reasons:
  • Can this even be categorized as an "appearance" since she's... dead? And on TV?
  • It was in a flashFORWARD.
  • What about other, ALIVE characters whose most recent appearance was in a flashback/forward? We'd have to be constantly updating "Last Flashback Appearance" for all characters - unlike the good system we have for "Last Appearance" where an episode is only listed if the character is dead.

So when it comes down to it, I think this row is counterintuitive.--Overworkedirish 15:21, 29 March 2008 (PDT)

I'm open to another suggestion. The only reason I left the field in was because it was in the Other Infobox that I borrowed to make this one. --Pyramidhead 23:41, 30 March 2008 (PDT)

"Age"

• Is there even ONE character whose actual "age" is known??? I feel like this row proves quite useless, unless there is, say, a shot in the show of one of the character's birth certificates/passports/driver's licenses (Ben's and Michael's were both fake - most likely in accurate birthdates).--Overworkedirish 15:21, 29 March 2008 (PDT)
  • Thinking a little about it, I guess we know Henry Gale's age.--Overworkedirish 15:21, 29 March 2008 (PDT)
    • That's what I thought, so now the Age row will be invisible unless it's inputted in the code. Also, for anyone whose date of death/birth is known, I think the Age field should be Unknown (born XXX, died XXX).--Pyramidhead 23:39, 30 March 2008 (PDT)

"Status" for Flashback Characters

• How can this be evaluated for some characters who are exclusively flashback characters? Just a few quick examples that happen to be along the same storyline: Liam Pace, Karen Pace, Megan Pace (child). Who's to say they didn't die in a freak car accident during the events on the island? I think this should get some dialogue.--Overworkedirish 16:34, 29 March 2008 (PDT)

There's no reason to assume they're dead unless they were shown or stated to have been in a "freak car accident." We could easily debate this to no end. Unless the show tells us otherwise, everyone who was shown alive and well in their last appearance can be assumed to still be alive. --Pyramidhead 23:39, 30 March 2008 (PDT)

Seasons Crossed Out?

I've noticed that some characters have all seasons "crossed-out" at the bottom of their infoboxes (see: Keamy, Omar, Dave) - why is this? Is there any way we can help insure links for them being provided on the Character appearances page like other characters?--Overworkedirish 17:33, 29 March 2008 (PDT)

Current location of character

Dear Lostpedia admins, I would like to suggest to add information about the current location of the character because there are several possibilites such as 'on the island', 'off the island', 'on the raft', etc. This would be useful information for viewers who have missed recent episodes.--Messenger 03:55, 1 June 2008 (PDT)

First/last/etc. appearances

I thought of a way to clean up the complicated system we have for first and last appearances. Rather than listing the last "real-time" appearance for each character, I suggest we put their last flashback appearance there instead, in italics, then indicate the episode they died in under Date of death, like: 1 November 2004 ("Do No Harm") This way, we can get rid of fields like "Last flash appearance," which are really more confusing than helpful, in my view anyway. --Pyramidhead 23:11, 3 June 2008 (PDT)

I don't agree with the placing of episode titles in italics. It's not clear what it means from first glance, and it looks messy. Robert K S (talk) 23:20, 3 June 2008 (PDT)

More generally, we could use italics to show that their first/last appearances, what have you, was only in a flashback. I don't think the rule would be all that hard to grasp, and this way, we could apply the same concept to people who've only been seen in flashback. Just have their "First Appearance" field be italicized. These are just some thoughts - it seems just as clunky to have, on some pages, First, Last, Last Flash, and Last Mobisode entries. --Pyramidhead 01:25, 4 June 2008 (PDT)

Since you've already implemented italics to show that a character is dead throughout the navboxes, the meaning of italics in infoboxes that would be most apparent to me would be that the character died in that episode. When I saw your first edit italicizing an episode title in a navbox, it was for the episode "Exposé", and I thought you were simply trying to italicize the episode title either because it was the name of a TV show or because it was a foreign word. I mention all this as examples of sources of confusion that are clear to me right off the bat--there may be many other ways that italicized episode titles may be construed. If you intend to use italics in a new way, you had better be sure that the usage is immediately and unambiguously evident. Robert K S (talk) 12:15, 6 June 2008 (PDT)

• In my opinion there should be something like "First Realtime appearance", "Last realtime appearance" (if the character appears as a corpse), "First flash appearance", "Last flash appearance" and "Died in". --Kemot from Poland 06:31, 9 June 2008 (PDT)

"must be status as of 7 January 2005"

Assuming that in Season 5 we will pick up in 2005 rather than in 2007 or 2008 (an assumption that may indeed be without merit), someone is going to go through and edit this date with every episode, and then go through and modify the statuses of all the navboxes needing attention? That's a little silly. I think the "status" field should reflect the known final status of the character up to what we've been shown on the show. Robert K S (talk) 12:20, 6 June 2008 (PDT)

So far, January 7 is as far as we've gotten in the linear, "real-time" narrative. Once the show returns, obviously, we'll change that to reflect whatever happens each episode. This is just to keep people fighting over whether Locke is dead or alive during the hiatus. --Pyramidhead 12:44, 11 June 2008 (PDT)

• I agree with Robert KS that using a "present time" marker for alive/dead is not a good solution. In the case that the "present time" catches up to the earliest FFs, then that makes it even more confusing. For the casual user of Lostpedia, due to the nonlinear timeline of storytelling in Lost, the "Status" field is meaningless. Let's figure out a solution. The whole purpose of the infobox is to give at-a-glance summary of information, but when the nonlinear plot is so complex, it takes more than an "at-a-glance" summary-- despite fans "wanting" to have character status as a "statistic", it may make more sense not to have this field in the infobox summary, especially when misinterpretation may result for the majority of casual readers of the encyclopedia. Anyways, here are some suggestions: 1) remove the Status field entirely (we already have a date of death field); 2) Rename status field which indicates current date (and continuously update current date by editing this template after every episode; 3) Rename status field to indicate that the storyline at some point references or depicts their death. -- ^C¯ _Santa_ ¯^T 13:22, 7 July 2008 (PDT)

I completely agree, and I'm leaning on the first two proposals. I think status is impractical, and so often we end up with "unknown" (remember the Mikhail incident at the end of Season 3, people argued he was still alive and that his status should be unknown). I think status should just be removed to be honest, it just doesn't work. --Nickb123 (Talk) 13:40, 7 July 2008 (PDT)

• The more I think about it, I too am leaning with Nick on removing status altogether. Fixing the field requires too much explanation, and that means it's article content, not infobox content. Is there an easy way we can remove it by coding in a way that doesn't require editing every article uses the "status" field? -- ^C¯ _Santa_ ¯^T 03:55, 9 July 2008 (PDT)