Hi!
I didn't know where to put this at all. I asked someone else and they saud ask an admin, but idk I feel this might be a better place for it. But if there is somewhere else that would be more appropriate to post it I am happy to post it there as well!
I'm not trying to be too pc.
I really like you infoboxdesigns, they are REALLY cool! But I am kinda confused as to why on the characters infobox you include their skin colour in their description. Harry Potter is a book series and it never really defines the skin colours of the characters (minus a couple of exceptions), the movies are merely one adaptation of the character.I feel by putting that information there you are potentially white washing the franchise and almost invalidating artist’s interpretations that do not fit into that category. Furthermore, you're not even naming their ethnicity -I assume to avoid accidental racism (or something)- so why even put it in?? it just seems redundant and a little racist to me.
Sorry, if this is not the right place to put this. I hope you can discuss these changes with other council members (??) and reach an inclusionary conclusion.
Thank you for reading c:
-Amy
- We had a long discussion about this and came to the general consensus that physical descriptions like eye, hair, and skin color should only be based on the highest canon for that character. That is only book info for book characters, film details for film-only characters, etc...
- As such, all characters infoboxes should only have highest canon info (that is no book characters described from their film portrayals) with references when possible. Are there certain characters you've found where this is not the case?
- As for ethnicity, I don't believe this is almost ever stated outright in the books/films/games so there would be very few characters possible to add this to their infobox (and it could always just be part of the article text for those few). Cheers --Ironyak1 (talk) 08:08, December 17, 2016 (UTC)
- The purpose of infoboxes is to present a summary of known information about a character in a format that readers can quickly reference to spare them having to read an entire article to find one bit of trivia. The physical appearance of a character generally doesn't factor into who they are or the overall plot. Harry's green eyes are an exception within HP canon, in that, even if they don't play a direct role in the plot, they play a large thematic role in establishing Harry as his mother's son and underscoring Snape's motivations.
- J. K. Rowling's wizarding world got its start with the Harry Potter novels. Novels, of course, require the appearance of characters to be described through text in order to allow readers to visualise them in their heads, and I imagine that mentality has carried over to how character data is presented on this wiki. Our infoboxes seek to provide a comprehensive overview of known canonical information on a character. That should ideally include basic appearance info (hair and eye colour, at least) to aid readers in visualising them. It's also useful for visually-impaired readers who may be enjoying our articles using text-to-speech devices, and thus cannot see a character's physical appearance in photos and illustrations.
- The inclusion of a skin colour field in character infoboxes isn't meant to imply skin colour is a defining trait. Nor is it meant to imply that a character is of a specific ethnicity when their heritage is unknown. That's why the "skin colour" field tends to be purely descriptive, e.g. "light," "light brown," "dark brown" over ethnic/racial categories like "white," "Middle Eastern," "black," etc. I imagine the skin colour field was included in character infoboxes because skin tone was deemed as big of a component in creating a mental picture of a character as hair or eye colour. ★ Starstuff (Owl me!) 21:43, December 17, 2016 (UTC)