Forum:Race and Ethnicity

A recent Dispute has bought up the issue of how the race section on the character templates should be used, should Ethnicity be in the race section, it's own section or not needed at all, post your thoughts. - RASICTalk 20:44, December 9, 2009 (UTC)


 * Race currently (in infoboxes) denotes both type-of-creature (ghoul, human, etc.) and human ethnicity (asian, hispanic, etc.), the latter of which is a subcategory of the former.
 * This bothers me just on a categorization level.
 * Race is used in-game (e.g., by the gene projector) to denote ethnicity.
 * Question: is it also used in-game to denote type-of-creature?
 * Question: is race used anywhere else in the game besides the gene projector?
 * Currently, the wiki is inconsistent. Does that matter to anybody?
 * This may be something I should just live with, but I don't like just living with things I think should be different. That's why I edit a wiki! :P --Gothemasticator 20:53, December 9, 2009 (UTC)


 * I personally think it would be better to add a new category, species and race, or race and ethnicity, a new catagory is definitely needed. - RASICTalk 21:05, December 9, 2009 (UTC)
 * ^ What he said. Spoon Say Hi! 21:13, December 9, 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, I don't really see the point in having the ethnicities at all since they have no ingame consequence. All they determine is the look of a character and you can already see that when looking at the infobox image. Listing the haircut for every individual character makes about as much sense as listing their ethnicities.


 * That said, I'm pretty neutral on this issue. I wouldn't advocate adding them but I'm not terribly opposed to having them either now that someone's already added them. However, in my opinion the ethnicities are certainly not important enough to justify own categories - especially for overall consistency since there's no reliable way to determine them for characters from the earlier games. -- Porter21 (talk) 21:17, December 9, 2009 (UTC)


 * Like Porter, I don't think ethnicity is terribly needed in the infobox. But if it is to be there at all, I don't think we should add yet another field for it - it's best to leave it as it is now. As for whether the word "race" is used anywhere for "type of creature" in-game - yes, in Fallout Tactics. Ausir(talk) 21:20, December 9, 2009 (UTC)


 * I guess I should explain the use of "race" in the GECK a bit more since it's what the ethnicity entries are derived from. In the editor, "race" is a mixture of actual race, ethnicity, age and (in some cases) even affiliation. For example, "ghoul" is a "race" in the GECK, and so are "Hispanic", "HispanicChild", "HispanicRaider" etc. I don't think much in-universe information can be derived from it, just like the GECK's "age" setting does not correspond to in-universe age (a lot of the adults are about 15 if you go by the GECK setting). Both do not necessarily carry an in-universe meaning, they are merely adjusted to achieve the look the designer wants for the character. -- Porter21 (talk) 21:30, December 9, 2009 (UTC)

suggestion - Would there be a consensus to just not include ethnicity information in npc infoboxes?--Gothemasticator 21:33, December 9, 2009 (UTC)


 * So for now should we leave things alone or what? - RASICTalk 22:15, December 9, 2009 (UTC)

Well, it doesn't look like it really matters to anybody but me. So, I'm not going to worry about it. Thanks for the input.--Gothemasticator 23:06, December 9, 2009 (UTC)


 * yep, just leave until told otherwise for now. - RASICTalk 23:09, December 9, 2009 (UTC)