Board Thread:Policies/@comment-16461120-20160405024130/@comment-61022-20160406162706

I think what Annabelle is getting at by defining a relationship based on legal definitions so boiling down the concept of Single, Engaged, Married, Separated, Divorced, or Widowed, down to its most starched and generic understanding based on how it is generally accepted and defined by government institutions.

A less polarizing term for what we're discussing is a civil or cohabitative union between two individuals. Which is what marriage is once you boil away any religious, emotional, cultural, or legislative position or rules on the matter.

While I appreciate the attention to detail for some, I should point out that Marvel -- being a quite liberal and inclusive publisher, and more so since being acquired by Disney -- I don't think they're going to be splitting hairs on what different governments define as an acceptable marriage, what regions define marriage as what. They're going for what people generally accept as a union between two people.

That said... I think we need to draw some lines and stick to broader definitions because at some point we're just splitting hairs and categorizing things that have no longevity and are so subjective we're either creating editing wars or they are left outdated because the status changes too frequently.

Particularly with dating. Against using that as a category because some characters frequently go between dating and being single, they never settle. Are we going to update the Human Torch's profile every time he's dating a different girl? Who is going to undertake that? Honestly, people have a hard enough time adding legitimate data to profiles, this is not something people will keep up with. And even if they do, again, its so superficial and might cause pointless edit wars.

I would accept the idea of a "common-law" status, for characters who have been dating someone for a significant period of time. But that would have to be defined as the characters actually cohabitating together in the same residence for a extended period of time. If we put some defined threshold.. Lets say they have been living together for SIX MONTHS Marvel Time (that's two years of publications, roughly, per the Sliding Timescale) but otherwise if they are casually dating somebody I don't think this is a status we should be updating because that can change as quickly as a single month.

Honestly, instead of beating our heads over what variables to stick into these categories, perhaps we need more vibrant character profiles. I would love it if we adopted character templates similar to Memory Alpha (Example here)

We did this with Alignments.. We should do this with all the other things that are a little more complex than a conceptualized category. I think our pages could be more vibrant if we add a section for a characters given interpersonal relationships (romances, friendships, marriages, family etc.)