Antagonist fussing is the act of trying to put a very specific label on a character as to what kind of antagonist or protagonist they are. This occurs more with antagonists than protagonists, but the term applies to both. Given the continued edit wars from these terms, and a lack of consistency in applying them, this policy has been updated to prohibit these types of edits.
Allowed character labels[]
When discussing a character, descriptions of what they do, their behaviors and what they say should be included in the main body of the page, not labels such as "antagonist" and "protagonist". Words like "character", "leader", "enemy" and "friend" can be used.
This wiki only allows 3 character labels:
- Main characters — Characters that are very important in the story.
- Secondary characters — Characters that are fairly prominent in the story but not as important as a main character.
- Minor characters — Any character that is less important than a secondary character.
Any further attempt to label a character or add modifiers to the above labels is prohibited. Attempting to get around antagonist fussing by using categories instead also counts as antagonist fussing. Please refer to the Pixar Wiki:Category policy for the official policy on category usage.
By using simpler character descriptions, we hope you will spend less time trying to define exactly what level a character is and instead use that time to add details about the character itself.
Violators are subject to being blocked as described below.
Antagonist / Protagonist categories[]
As part of this policy, categories such as "Protagonist" or "Primary Villain" are not allowed and will be removed.
Why this is prohibited[]
- It's a type of edit war. Can occur within minutes, hours or days, or can occur over several months.
- It is more important to know what a character does and who they are than to try an pin them down with a label.
- Made-up words. Words are being invented for the really minor antagonists (usually the fourth level down or even further down) and there is no consistency to the words they make up.
- The labels being used are overly-complex and have built-in doubts about their validity by using words like "probably" and "maybe".
- Wikipedia's Manual of Style on films discourages using labels that are subject to interpretation.
- Some of the people who are doing this contradict themselves and continue to the point where it becomes vandalism.
- People that focus on antagonist levels often do not make any other kind of edit, so they are not helping to build the wiki.
- The edit war often continues into the Trivia sections of the page with statements of "other people think the character is (antagonist level), but they are really (different antagonist level) because of (reason)".
Cleaning up character pages[]
Many character pages need to be cleaned up to meet the new policy. If you find a character page still using these terms, or having the protagonist or primary villain category, feel free to jump in and help out! Examples of pages that have been cleaned up include Holley Shiftwell and Randall Boggs.
For further reading[]
For an in-depth discussion of why this policy is being implemented, please read RRabbit42's blog post, the discussion on character levels and the Antagonist fussing policy on Wickedpedia. You will find an analysis of the edits for one character, more thorough explanations of the reasons for the policy and real-world examples of antagonist fussing there.
Block durations[]
This wiki generally implements a "three strikes and you're out" blocking policy.
The first instance of antagonist fussing from an existing editor will result in a warning posted on their talk page. If it is necessary to get the user's attention to stop them from editing pages and to make sure they read the warning, a block may be used until the user responds on their talk page. A notice like "read the message on your Talk page" will be included in the block reason so they will see it when the wiki notifies them they cannot edit at this time.
The second instance will result in a one-month block.
The third instance will result in the block becoming permanent.
There is an important exception to the "three strikes and you're out" rule: if someone is a new user and makes any type of "antagonist fussing" edit, that user can (and most likely will) be blocked for a duration left to the administrator's discretion, including up to a permanent block, unless the user acknowledges the antagonist fussing policy and commits to not violating it. At that point the block can be lifted. This strict blocking policy is to encourage users to make more useful, detailed edits to pages, rather than just slapping a label onto a character.