Motion to re-define the [lucifer] and [sandman] tags!

Question

Browsing through lucifer questions, I noticed two things:

1. Majority is about the character who debuted in The Sandman, or Mike Carey's Lucifer series.

2. That's not what the tag guidance says. To quote,

   Lucifer was a fallen angel in Christian mythology and commonly associated as Satan. The name Lucifer is used in several works for characters that are powerful and evil, usually with some kind of fall from grace in their background. Of note is the DC Comics character from Sandman, whose depiction draws heavily from Milton's Paradise Lost.

It appears that the tag was intended to be about all portrayals of Lucifer in all works; but it happened that the most popular one seemed to be the Vertigo character.

Same goes for sandman. Usage guidance:

The Sandman is a folklore character who brings sleep and dreams. He is in particular the titular character of a series of comic books by Neil Gaiman, where he is also known as Dream or Morpheus.

And wiki:

The Sandman is a figure of European folklore, who brings good dreams by sprinkling sand onto the eyes of children. This tag applies to any incarnation of the folklore figure.

An important incarnation is the titular character (also known as Dream or Morpheus) of neil-gaiman's series of graphic novels The Sandman.

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Effectively, those two tags are now character, rather than franchise, or series tags. We don't want character tags to breed. We don't always adhere to that policy, but I think it's a good one in this case:

• So far it seems that questions about those characters have been limited to their portrayals in Vertigo comics, with no exceptions for Sandman, and 3 exceptions for Lucifer (Supernatural, closed as too broad, story identification).

Re-defining those tags to be specifically about the respective Vertigo series would prevent possible confusions, and bring those tags closer to our established policy (i.e. no character tags for less popular characters), the purpose of the tagging system (tags should aid search process; tags should reflect what the question is about, not what it mentions).

For sandman, I propose we rename it to the-sandman, specify in the guidance that it is about the Vertigo comic series (and maybe say that it should be used with vertigo-comics, if this proposal gets enough votes. E.g.

To be used for the dark fantasy comic series written by Neil Gaiman, as well as its spin-offs. Use with [comics] and [vertigo-comics] tags.

_{I could then write a nice wiki for the tag, with fancy pictures and quotes}

For lucifer, I propose we state clearly that it is for the Vertigo series written by Mike Carey, and the new 2016 Lucifer series.

The total number of retags then amounts to 3: simply purge it from those three questions. Supernatural's Lucifer can live without own tag; Biblical Lucifer... well, we don't have enough questions about that for him to have a say in this.

Answer 1

lucifer should be restored to amaranth/Molag Bal's original wiki excerpt

For questions about the DC Comics character Lucifer, the comic book series about him, and the TV series which is based on the comic book series. The character first appeared in The Sandman and then in his own comic book series; both series were published under the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics. The TV series premiered on Fox in 2016.

With a little tweak to specify it's about the Lucifer franchise, too.

Our current arrangement for character tags as such is that the first/most popular version of the character (as measured by our use on SFF, not anywhere else) gets the plain tag. If other versions exist, or there's room for confusion, we use prefixes and suffixes to clear things up.

Specific examples:

• thor is separate from thor-mythology and thor-stargate
  • See the description:

    For questions about the Marvel character Thor and the related franchise. For other usages, use specific tags such as thor-mythology or thor-stargate.

• star-trek-data to clarify it's Data we're talking about, as data alone is too unclear
• loki and odin are both the Marvel characters

If a Lucifer tag was ever needed for Christian depiction, we should use lucifer-religion or something similar.

Similar guidance goes for sandman.

There's no reason either lucifer or sandman can't be franchise tags, as both are franchises. They're, IMO, much less character tags, especially now that Lucifer is a TV show (and should get its own lucifer-2016 tag where necessary)

Answer 2

I propose the use the-sandman for Neil Gaiman's series, keeping sandman for other uses — either the Marvel villain or the mythological character.

I propose to use lucifer for the spin-off.