Guideline:Character Articles

Character Articles should be written with a specific focus on the character for which the page is named. As is the case with most other content pages on BattleTechWiki, characters are usually cross-linked with several other pages associated with them (e.g. events, locations, vehicles, etc.) that Editors must take care not to get needlessly tangential when summarizing their histories, and generally err on the side of including less than more.

The BattleTech timeline spans more than a millennia and with tens of thousands of characters from all periods within, it's inevitable that the literature about some of the characters will be written in a way that—subtly or overtly—frames their actions in a hindsight narrative. Such legacies should only be included if they are directly responsible for them and if leaving it out would render the character's history incomplete. As such, this information would be woven into the main body of the article and not added to the end as an addendum or summary, which has the potential for editorial opinion–analysis—something BattleTechWiki goes to great lengths to avoid (outside of designated spaces where it is acceptable). Treated the same way are quotations, which should be added if and only if they are important enough to the character's story.

Character Articles have other ways to incorporate peripheral information. For example, a character's descendants do not need to be added to the article proper when a link to their family page in the InfoBox will suffice. Other anecdotes and loosely related trivia, such as ships named after the character, would be permissible in a Notes section. In this way, the Editor is provided some flexibility with how information can be incorporated.