Editing notes for the real world characters article

ArticleEditing notes

This page contains some information about the tables on its parent article and the templates creating them, as well as who should appear in which table.

Editing

• The article should be edited in source editor.
• Almost the whole page is made out of templates, and visual editor tends to mess with pages with complex code like this one.

Tables

• The tables on this page are created by templates.
• There are 3 different table-row templates, creating the rows for the 3 tables on the page.
• These templates are subtemplates of the parent template container {{RP tables}}.
• The template {{RP tables}} itself does nothing, but it holds the full documentations of all its subtemplates.
• The templates that actually create the table rows are:
  • {{RP tables/tr1}}
  • {{RP tables/tr2}}
  • {{RP tables/tr3}}

→ There will be some short overview about the usage of these templates here later. For now, please refer to their full documentations.

References

• References should be added at the end of the page inside the <references> tags, and only the short format <ref name="foobar"/> should be used in the table's details fields. This helps keeping the code clean, and it's much easier for other editors to figure out if a certain episode or bonus video has already been referred to.
• References can be used in all "details" fields. Don't use them in other fields.
• If a reference for the status has to be added, you can use the parameter "statusref" for this.

Table contents

The 3 tables on the page are:

1. "Real people played by actors"
2. "Real people shown in archive footage"
3. "Real people who were mentioned only"

This is pretty self-explaining, but here are some basic rules anyway:

1. There is not much to say about the people in the first table. People in that table all have their own article.
   The table is different from the other two as it has separate "details" fields for the character and the real person. It also has a parameter for the actor that the others obviously don't need.
2. This table should contain everybody who was visually seen in the show but not played by an actor. It does not matter if the person was prominently shown in archive footage or just seen on a photograph somewhere in the background. It does also not matter if it was a major character, like a president, or some news anchor seen on a TV screen. If they were visually in the show, they belong into this table.
3. This is for everyone who was mentioned but not seen. They could have been mentioned by someone in dialogue, or their name could be in a newspaper article or a mission patch.

Images

The first 2 tables show a screenshot from the show (left) and a real world image (right) of the person.

The 3rd table obviously is missing the first option.

• Images used for the real world picture should be chosen from about the same era the person appeared in the show, or the same time they were referred to (for table 3), if possible. A few years +/- is ok as well, but don't use the latest real world image that can be found, unless there is no good one that shows the person around the time they appear in the show.
• The images used for this should be named using this pattern:
  <full name> <year> (OTL).ext
  Example: Nancy Reagan 1983 (OTL).jpg
  This assures best the correct display of the image-caption shown when hovered over the image.
• All images used on this page should be in 1:1.2 (5:6) aspect ratio. Images in that ratio are collected in the category Portraits in 1:1.2 ratio.

Season & First/Last parameters

• For the first table, there is not much to say here. "Season" means the season(s) they appeared, and "First/Last" means their first and last appearance in the show.

• For the 2nd table, this is different. While "Season" still represents the season(s) the person was in (visually), the "First/Last" column refers to when they were first or last seen, mentioned, or referred. Someone can appear in 1 season only, but be mentioned in all seasons (for example Richard Nixon).

• For table 3, it is similar to the first table. Both "Season" and "First/Last" refer to when the person was mentioned.

Note

The bonus video series connecting the seasons count towards the following season.

For example, someone who appeared in the bonus video of 1975, which is actually the year right after season 1 ended, will be noted as being in season 2.

Details

• Details about the person should be kept as short as possible.
• Almost everyone in these tables has a Wikipedia page that is linked to for finding more info.
• Keep it short and only include the most relevant things.

Redirects

• Every person on this page should have a redirect page that leads directly to their entry in the table.
• Every name in the tables is also a html anchor that can be linked to like this:
  [[Real world characters in For All Mankind#Full name]]
• If you add persons to this page, always also create a redirection (unless the person has their own article).
• The redirects should be categorized to either Real individuals (archive footage) or Real individuals (mentioned), and additionally to the tracking category Redirects to real world characters article, and need to be sorted correctly using {{DEFAULTSORT}} or the template {{defsort}}. For the categories, the template {{cats}} can be used.
• For examples see the source of Garry Kasparov (archive footage) or Ron Ziegler (mentioned).

• In other articles, persons on this page should be linked to that redirection page (i.e. to their actual name) which will then point to their entry in the list.

• Inside the article, link to other people who are in the list as well should be linked to their entry in the list, even if they have their own article.
• There is a template for this: {{al}}
  Examples: {{al|Thomas Paine}} / {{al|Thomas Paine|Administrator Paine}}

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Thank you all for contributing to this article!

Oot42  •  Hi Bob!  •  💬  20:09, 29 April 2024 (UTC)   •   Last updated: 2025-12-21 18:21 (UTC)