Forum:Use of present tense in History and Synopsis sections of Character pages

Upon reading a few character pages, something has been troubling me. When we talk about things that have already occurred in the Bleach universe, in order to be grammatically correct, we should be using the past tense. A lot of pages seem to change tenses repeatedly in the same paragraph, and most are predominantly in the present tense. As an example, I will use the first paragraph of Yamamoto's Soul Society Arc synopsis.

As it stand now, the paragraph reads:

"Yamamoto is first seen during a meeting between captains over their fellow captain Gin Ichimaru's failure to kill Ichigo Kurosaki. Upon arrival Gin gets into a argument with 11th Division Captain Kenpachi Zaraki and 12th Division Captain Mayuri Kurotsuchi. Yamamoto tells them to stand down and then asks Gin if he had been informed about the reason he has been summoned. He then details that Gin acted without permission and failed to capture the target, which he feels is unusual for a captain. He then asks for an explanation."

Since the events being described occurred in the past, we should be writing these in the past tense, like this (I also fixed some other grammatical errors, and clarified some wordings that were grammatically unclear, but the text remains basically unchanged except for the tense):

"Yamamoto is first seen during a Captain's meeting about 3rd Division captain Gin Ichimaru's failure to kill Ichigo Kurosaki. Upon his arrival at the meeting, Gin got into an argument with 11th Division Captain Kenpachi Zaraki and 12th Division Captain Mayuri Kurotsuchi. Yamamoto told them to stand down and then asked Gin if he had been informed about the reason he had been summoned. Yamamoto then went into detail, explaining that Gin acted without permission and failed to capture the target, which he felt was unusual for a captain. He then asked for an explanation."

I realize that most, if not all, character pages are written in this strange mixture of past and present tense, but most of them just don't make sense grammatically. The sentence from the original paragraph "Yamamoto tells them to stand down and then asks Gin if he had been informed about the reason he has been summoned." jumps from present to past tense then back to present all in one sentence.

At the very least, I would like to change the History sections of the character pages so that they are consistently in the past tense. Ideally, I would like to change every synopsis to the past tense, since that is the grammatically correct way to refer to things that have already happened. I am willing to do this myself, although it will undoubtedly take me some time to do so. I am a bit of a grammar Nazi, and things like this just don't look good.

I already fixed Yamamoto's history section and made it consistently past tense, to show you what it would look like. It makes way more sense now than it did before I changed it IMO. But I don't want to go through and start changing tenses (even if it is grammatically correct) only to have someone revert all of my changes. So I am asking if it would be OK for me to at least fix the grammar and tenses of the history sections of character pages, and ideally if you'd be willing to let me change the tenses of the synopsis sections too, that would be great.

I know I've had my share of problems with some of you, but I really am just trying to make this wiki better. CorpusDei 23:42, November 25, 2009 (UTC)


 * I just noticed that there was a mention of this already in another thread. The point made by the OP there, Mohrpheus, is basically the same as mine, although I went into far greater detail. Someone said that they felt that having synopsises in past tense would make it seem that the series is over. Similar to the point that was made to me regarding the use of the term filler (that people aren' t stupid, and shouldn't have to be reminded when characters are filler), I don't think that anyone who comes to this wiki looking for bleach info would not know that Bleach is still going on. Having the history and synopsis sections in the past tense if the correct way to do things, and just looks and reads far better than a constant running present tense description of events that have already occurred. CorpusDei 23:53, November 25, 2009 (UTC)

Making the wiki better is one of every users point on the site. But for some reason your not getting the point every time you bring up an issue it sounds like alot of you deconstructing the site, theres always this grand amount of work your all to willing to do that was never an issue until you made it one. The Synopsis is present tense period the history sections maybe worded in the present tense but should be past tense, though unless you've written a whole article which invests a lot of time and work you would know that it takes considerable amount of typing and not everything one does is gonna be perfect. When that issue happens users jump in and help out by fixing grammar mistakes and the wording of the sentences. As far as the history sections are concerned having the past tense used is fine but not if it means sacrificing the events that took place or removing content as tends to happen when someone proposes changing something they dilute the entire section. As far as the synopsis current events are subjective what has already happened to one user maybe new to another not to mention as stated before we don't want the entire site diluted because of supposed changes to tense. These events didn't take place at some unknown time possibly years or centuries ago. These events are in the present sometimes interconnected or happening at the same time in two different areas. No one goes back to past volumes of books and rewrites them in the past tense because they already took place as per the new volume in the series coming out.Salubri 00:23, November 26, 2009 (UTC)


 * Maybe you should have payed more attention to what I said. I'm not trying to change the content, I'm trying to make the articles grammatically correct. All encyclopedias are written in the past tense, and a wiki is essentially an editable encyclopedia. I'm not trying to dilute the site, I'm trying to make it better, and you especially are just unwilling to make any changes. Don't tell me that I'm going to be diluting the entire section, did you even look at the Yamamoto history section that I fixed? I didn't take out one piece of information. And to be honest, most of the character pages are literally full of errors, not only in tense, but general grammar and word choice. There is no reason for you to be clinging to the wordings of articles that are just badly written, regardless of how much work went into them. I also fixed the Isshin character page today, and I had to correct about 60 grammatical, spelling and word use problems in that article, which Yyp approved of and thanked me for. Take a look at all the changes I made, and tell me that the article doesn't read a whole lot better now:

http://bleach.wikia.com/index.php?title=Isshin_Kurosaki&diff=106576&oldid=105934 Just looking at many of the other articles, I can see that most of them have just as many problems. Don't tell me that I don't understand what it takes to fix articles. I have the time to fix a lot of these problems, and I'm willing to do it. I want to hear from more admins before giving up on this, you don't own this wiki, and your attitude is pretty bad for someone who is supposed to be a leader here. CorpusDei 00:45, November 26, 2009 (UTC)

First off i didn't say you diluted anything, so take your own advice. What i said is that they should not get diluted under the guise of changing tense, whether you take that to me talking to you personally is on you because all i that i did address was that i was not in agreement with was your concept for the synopsis. Secondly good faith edits are always appreciated but lets admit that we have seen what you consider what's best on the site as i am sure no one has forgotten how you basically insulted everyone here because the site doesn't meet your personal standards of how you think it should be, so lets not talk about site ownership. Third your attitude is the one that needs adjustment because for one you don't do serious edits on this site on the regular bases or involve yourself with the community at large, nor do you give credit to those who have worked hard on it. Instead of presenting your ideas in a more open way and suggesting improvements you basically get on here and tell everyone that they're wrong and your right. You don't bring it as a possible project, you don't ask for help as grammar and syntax is something everyone should be involved in. All I have done is stated my view of what you had put up and while I agree on the history section I don't agree at all about the synopsis and the way you put forth the ideas to the site. I have no doubt that you mean well but i personally dont think you express your ideas without disregarding others work. Now if you wanna talk about it in a more constructive way instead of getting personal about it, im willing to work with you as i like the idea about the history section but its entirely up to you. Salubri 01:27, November 26, 2009 (UTC)
 * Alright. If you're into the idea for the History sections, then I will start doing it. Obviously, it's going to take some time for it to all get done, but I will try to do some every day. If other people want to do some too, that's cool. I really wasn't looking for an argument. CorpusDei 03:59, November 26, 2009 (UTC)