Talk:The Haunting (audio story)

Title

"Jago & Litefoot & Strax" is an umbrella title - there might be more adventures with Strax in the future - while "The Haunting" is the individual story title. JagoAndLitefoot ☎ 14:42, November 12, 2015 (UTC)

I agree that the current title is not entirely correct based on the presentation of Big Finish itself. I suspect that it was inspired by Jago & Litefoot & Patsy (audio story), but the analogy is less than perfect. That was a name of a story within an anthology.[1] On the other hand, this title is called Jago & Litefoot & Strax - The Haunting.[2] So I believe a closer analogy to this is Extinction (audio anthology), which also has an m-dash instead of a colon on the Big Finish website.[3] Thus, I believe that the best name for this page would be Jago & Litefoot & Strax: The Haunting (audio story). Whether there will be more adventures with Strax is not clear at the moment, so I would hesitate to base the name on such a speculation. Plus, it would be hard to guess that searching for Jago would not easily yield this story.

(I really feel that the first response should have been left to User:Strax the sontaran.) Amorkuz ☎ 21:31, November 16, 2015 (UTC)

The closest example of this nomenclature found on this wiki is indubitably The End of the World, which follows the template described by User:JagoAndLitefoot. Therefore, notwithstanding a discussion in the forums, this page will need to be renamed The Haunting (audio story). RogerAckroydLives ☎ 03:01, April 29, 2016 (UTC)

Respectfully, I do not believe this to be an apt analogy: the story's name on the Big Finish website is JAGO & LITEFOOT & STRAX - THE HAUNTING, whereas that other story you mention is simply 8.4. THE END OF THE WORLD. Amorkuz ☎ 04:47, April 29, 2016 (UTC)

I understand your thinking, but that form is used on the website for numerous series and ranges from BF. Should we then start calling stories Gallifrey: Intervention Earth? Or go even further and use news story titles such as Doctor Who: The Companion Chronicles: Second Chances? These prefixes are simply used to denote the range or run to which they belong. Given that J&L&S is a "unique" prefix, the closest analogy is still found with The End of the World. RogerAckroydLives ☎ 04:55, April 29, 2016 (UTC)

Being on vacation, I lack time and a proper computer to do proper research on this. But I believe the situation is more complex. Let us at least consider these examples:

• The End of the World has a unique prefix only on the cover. It is not a name of a range, and it was never used as a title of the release in marketing.
• Second Chances does not have Companion Chronicles in the title on the page of the story. I mean the boldface all-capitals title as above. In this respect, Second Chances is identical to The End of the World.
• Gallifrey: Intervention Earth has a name of an existing range separated by a colon.
• Jago & Litefoot & Strax - The Haunting has a prefix that is not a name of an existing range, so it cannot be restored by looking at the range name. The prefix is separated by a dash, not a colon.
• And then there is Doctor Who - Dominion where only one of the two prefixes from the Big Finish page was kept in our page name.
• And right before there is UNIT: The Wasting where our page dropped the prefix kept in the next release.

Looking at these examples, I am starting to think that this issue is not local to The Haunting. It might be worth exploring the seemingly inconsistent precedents in existence and try to make them consistent or understand the logic behind the existing naming. I will do that when I return to something with a keyboard. Amorkuz ☎ 05:23, May 1, 2016 (UTC)

The only potential inconsistency I see in that list is Dominion, which is easily solved as it is marketed as a Doctor Who story and features the Who logo, thus making "UNIT" simply part of the title. Again, the only comparable release on the list is The End of the World, as they both have unique prefixes. Do you have any evidence that the Jason Kane prefix was never used in marketing?

Also worth noting is that the BF website is consistently inconsistent when it comes to nomenclature, italicisation, ordering and "series" designation. With some releases, you would be hard pressed to find any two articles which use the same capitalisation, italicisation and/or prefixes. What we should be working from is physical evidence, found in CD booklets and Vortex. Even then, inconsistencies are present, but in far less abundance. Going by the two final covers, the story is entitled The Haunting, with the box set-style cover not even employing the Jago & Litefoot & Strax altered logo. The cover we feature in our infobox is an early one, without the later texturing of the logo, omission of the "special two-disc release" line, and the replacement line of "The Haunting, by Justin Richards", as found in Vortex 81 (which uses J&L&S as the series title) and the physical release. RogerAckroydLives ☎ 05:53, May 1, 2016 (UTC)

Changing the title is premature

I have to admit that I did not understand before that the rename is based more on the cover art than on the official marketing name of the story.

Owning this audio, I can attest that The Haunting is not present on the cover at all. More precisely, it is not present on the cover of the download (I have just redownloaded it anew to make sure that it has not been changed in the meantime). The cover of the download is exactly the one we have on the wiki page. If someone owns the CD, please confirm whether the cover on the CD is the same or different.

It has been pointed out by RogerAckroydLives that Vortex, Issue 81, page 13 features a different cover art with A two-disc special release at the bottom replaced with The Haunting by Justin Richards. It appears that this cover art is just a promotional image that is different from the actual cover. This is not the first time images in Vortex are slightly different from the actual covers. Until it is confirmed that The Haunting is present at least on some of the cover variants, changing the title is premature. And even if the CD cover is different, the matter requires more discussion than the speedy rename template suggests. I am changing it to a simple rename. Amorkuz ☎ 23:05, May 4, 2016 (UTC)

The "official marketing name" of the story is not Jago & Litefoot & Strax. It never has been. The release has often been referred to as J&L&S: The Haunting, but this is the regular form used by BF to refer to stories by both range and name. The Vortex cover is the cover used by the physical release. I own a copy of the physical release. It can also be found online, through a search of various online auction or shopping sites. Vortex often present covers which differ from the downloadable one because these are the final ones, not vice-versa. The title The Haunting is on the final cover. This final cover is not available for download, as are large number of releases', an unfortunate trend from BF.

If you wish to debate nomenclature on the wiki, starting a forum is how to do it. Until then, this will be named The Haunting, and there is no reason for it not to be. RogerAckroydLives ☎ 03:17, May 5, 2016 (UTC)

That's not the way this wiki works. The speedy rename tag is for "pages that have obvious, non-controversial errors in their titles for swift renaming." Amorkuz has brought up questions about the proposed renaming; therefore the regular rename template is accurate. Shambala108 ☎ 03:31, May 5, 2016 (UTC)

Pray tell, what questions have not yet been answered? Amorkuz was not aware of the fact that the downloadable release features an early, unfinished cover, and had been arguing from that standpoint. Now that all parties are aware of this fact, is there any more debate? While the renaming may have been "controversial", at least to one user, it can hardly be said that it isn't an "obvious" error?

I will happily wait for Amorkuz to see this and respond before restoring the speedy rename, but, given that this debate was all based on a misapprehension, the speedy rename tag is far from mistaken in its use. RogerAckroydLives ☎ 03:38, May 5, 2016 (UTC)

First of all, I must apologise. I misunderstood RogerAckroydLives's statement about the cover. Since he started with the cover presented in the Vortex, I thought that this was his primary source. Surely, the Vortex should be secondary to both the physical release and the download release. So the misapprehension was that I was not sure the physical release features a different cover. However, as I wrote above, the fact that it does still does not resolve the issue completely.

And I am starting to think that this issue is not localised to this release, so an official policy would be nice. Thus, I agree that starting a thread in Panopticon is the best solution.

For me, this is not a question of an early cover vs. final cover. I believe, what we're dealing with is alternative covers, both (all three?) authorised by the production company. The physical release cover is present on the CD and in the Vortex. (Incidentally, I would appreciate it if RogerAckroydLives could upload it to the page so that all the covers are present with clear captions. That would help others to make sense of what we are discussing.) The download cover is the one present on the BF website as of today, in the downloadable zip, on the news page announcing the release on the day of the release [4] (where the title of the story is stated as Jago & Litefoot & Strax, which makes it the "official marketing name") and in the SoundCloud trailer [5].

In my view, if it is possible to buy a product with a particular cover, it is one of the final covers. So then one needs to determine which cover takes precedence, which would be a matter of policy to be created. RogerAckroydLives says that this situation is, unfortunately, widespread.

There are several precedents here. Unfortunately, they are partially contradictory/indecisive. One maxima (see T:CASTCREW) is to use the earliest release (transmission) as the primary. This would sometimes give primality to the download (as in River Song Diary case) but in most cases, including this one I think, would equate the two as the download is usually made available simultaneously with mailing the CDs, which is the determining date.

Secondly, perhaps based on our discussion about the difference in the cast lists between CDs and download, SOTO has recently amended T:CAST to emphasise the primality of CD releases with respect to casts. (I only learned about this amendment today, and it might change my position on this particular renaming.) There the situation is clear: the CD cast list is more complete than the download one.

Here, however, we have contradictory covers/titles on alternative simultaneous releases. So I do believe it would be best to create a policy regarding such cases. Would RogerAckroydLives like to do the honours of beginning a thread on Panopticon? If not, I would do it tonight.

PS. By the way, I think we both learned something new in this discussion. It would be good if this new knowledge is recorded in the Notes section so that other people know it too, similar to Voyage to Venus. Not having access to the physical covers (not all of them at least), I would prefer not to do it myself though. Amorkuz ☎ 08:06, May 5, 2016 (UTC)

Another relevant precedent is T:SERIALS, where the primary name for a story (serial) is to be taken from the official BBC guide. Amorkuz ☎ 08:43, May 5, 2016 (UTC)

I'm glad we're both properly aware of each other's reasonings. Thanks for the apology, and I would also like to apologise for coming across rather irate at several points.

If I have an opportunity, I may start a forum thread, but with regards to the picture I personally won't be able to supply it any time soon. If anyone else has the opportunity, please do so.

I still stick by the fact that the untitled cover is an early version: a number of facts make this clear, most obvious of which is the fact that it was released long before the actual release of the story, and it is one of many which were first made downloadable with early versions of covers. Take stories such as Survival of the Fittest or The Secret History: the final covers for these releases feature "surprise" castings, which were held back from the earlier, digital versions, and are still unavailable in such a form. What might be most advisable is simply to ask BF to account for the early version being the only one available digitally, or, even better, request its replacement. Until then, I can't see any difference between this and the fact that the Zygon episodes from last year's series were initially announced under subtly different names; the download release is, if anything, a "production error".

Regardless, I would appreciate it if the page could be tagged for speedy renaming, as current policy would dictate. We aren't going to name a certain upcoming Counter-Measures release by its release name rather than its episode titles, are we? And that is what the current name is: a release name, used sometimes in marketing, but certainly not primarily ("official marketing name" is hardly a genuine production term, let alone a clear classification, and I still struggle to understand how one phrasing beats all others simply because it was from a marketing release from the day of release). The current page can stay as a redirect, as it is indeed what the story is occasionally referred to as, but it has been known as The Haunting, regardless of the cover, since its announcement. If you still aren't convinced, leave it as it is, but I would much prefer it be actively noted as a page which needs renaming, even if its new name matches neither my proposition, nor yours. RogerAckroydLives ☎ 08:46, May 5, 2016 (UTC)

Please explain exactly what the forum thread is that you plan to start. Thanks. Shambala108 ☎ 13:13, May 5, 2016 (UTC)

Back to business. Let me try to collect my thoughts that have changed dramatically over the course of the argument. First of all, I'm glad RogerAckroydLives mentioned the redirects. I often forget about them. And they more or less solve the usability problem. I think there are three in principle possible names: Jago & Litefoot & Strax (current one), The Haunting (RogerAckroydLives's suggestion) and Jago & Litefoot & Strax: The Haunting (my suggestion from several months ago). No matter which of them is eventually chosen for the name, I think the other two should be left as redirects.

The policy on naming first TV serials also means that one can call a story by a name not mentioned in the story itself or on the cover. If The Daleks can be a name, so can be The Haunting, especially given that it is present on the BF official page. This takes care of my problem with "The Haunting" not being on the download cover. (Strictly speaking, it was not really a concern of mine since I don't think covers should be the primary source for names. Rather, it was my reaction to the method suggested by RogerAckroydLives.)

For those who determine the name from the cover, however, upon comparing the two CD covers of this story with other covers from Jago & Litefoot range, I now agree with RogerAckroydLives that The Haunting takes for this story the place normally occupied by the story name in other releases. So, based on the covers, "The Haunting" should be the name.

But what about the official BF titles, which is my preference for giving names? I sampled the current practice for answering Shambala108 below. What seems to be happening is the following: if the story/box set has a unique name, then this name is used for the page name, even when the official title includes a prefix and even when this prefix is not a name of the range. Two examples: Only the Monstrous omits the The War Doctor Volume 01 and The Triumph of Sutekh omits The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield Volume 02. This seems to be a good usability practice given CzechOut reminder that suggestions are restricted to 6 lines. In other words, when name of too many stories/box sets starts with the same prefix, such as a range name or a variant of this range name, the ability to reach some of them via suggestions is lost. This does not seem to be the problem for Jago & Litefoot stories, but insisting on identical prefixes as a matter of policy would clearly create problems.

Thus, I now believe that The Haunting is also the best page name from the point of view of official BF names.

Given that the two active participants have, thus, reached a consensus I propose, instead of putting a speedy rename tag, to simply ask one of the admins directly to perform the rename. A natural choice seems to be Shambala108, who is already aware of this discussion. But if RogerAckroydLives has another favourite go-to admin, I would have no objections. My personal preference would be SOTO, from whom I've learned a lot about naming and who might have some additional nontrivial thoughts about this issue. But I'm not sure SOTO is very active in this Wiki at the moment. Amorkuz ☎ 21:06, May 6, 2016 (UTC)

Proposed Panopticon thread

I would like to emphasise that I'd prefer the more experienced user to create the thread. But here is my understanding of what is missing in T:NAMING. To be honest, I always assumed by analogy with cast lists that, starting from The Savages, pages for TV stories are named according to the opening credits as seen onscreen. This cannot be directly transferred to audio because the name of the story is almost never present in the audio itself.

However, upon reading the policy T:SERIALS more carefully, I realised that it is not the opening credits but the BBC website that determines the page name. Since all media should be treated equally and since this policy is trivial to transfer to BF audios, perhaps, to me a thread is not really needed. I am converging on the belief that, as we blindly follow the BBC naming scheme, we should equally blindly follow the BF naming scheme. RogerAcroydLives rightfully pointed out that BF changes names from time to time. While this is unfortunate, it has happened with BBC too, The Mutants mutating to The Daleks is the obvious example. And BF doesn't do it too often and with very few releases, IMHO.

Having said this and after looking through several examples, I am not sure where we take the story name from on BF website. The issue is largely in how to separate the series/range name from the name of the story. If there is a policy regarding this, I'd be happy to read it, but for now I couldn't find it. Here are some of the examples, both stories and anthologies:

• Only the Monstrous (audio anthology) is called 1. The War Doctor Volume 01: Only the Monstrous on the BF website. The War Doctor is treated as a series name (the only BF designation I know is The Collected War Doctor for the range), Volume number is also omitted.
• Extinction (audio anthology) is called 1. UNIT - Extinction by BF. Here UNIT is not a series name either. The range is called UNIT - The New Series. But here UNIT is left in the page name.
• Dominion (audio story) is called Doctor Who - Dominion by BF. Both Doctor Who an UNIT are range names, the audio belongs to the latter, but it is the former that is omitted in the page name.
• Time Heals (audio story) is called 1.1. UNIT: Time Heals. Why is UNIT kept for Dominion but not for Time Heals? (The same happens with all the stories of the UNIT range except for Dominion.)
• Jago & Litefoot & Strax (audio story) is called Jago & Litefoot & Strax - The Haunting. Currently The Haunting is omitted from the page name. The proposal is to use it as the only page name, omitting the modified range name.
• The New Adventures of Bernice Summerfield (audio anthology) is called The New Adventures of Bernie Summerfield Volume 01 by BF. We omit the volume number.
• The Triumph of Sutekh (audio anthology) is called The New Adventures of Bernie Summerfield Volume 02: The Triumph of Sutekh by BF. Here we omit the range name and the volume number.

Admittedly, most of these cases are anthologies rather than separate stories. But we are to be treated to more of these anthologies, including in the new series. I fear that the same will be happening as with The Churchill Years (audio anthology), which is currently under the rename tag. Note that BF calls it The Churchill Years Volume 01. Note also that The Third Doctor Adventures (audio anthology) is not under a rename tag though it also has Volume 01 on the BF website.

One general discussion of all these cases and a policy creation could hopefully prevent such discussions erupting after each release and establish a uniform naming scheme that is easy to follow by ordinary editors. Amorkuz ☎ 17:18, May 5, 2016 (UTC)

And all of the above does not even account for the opinion of RogerAcroydLives that the cover art is more important than the name as used by BF. Sorry about getting carried away and not mentioning it earlier. Amorkuz ☎ 18:06, May 5, 2016 (UTC)

Conclusion

As Big Finish seem keen on confusing us, we need to pick one title for this story, and that title is The Haunting, as seen on physical CD cover and the title of the BF page. Thank you all for participating.
× SOTO (☎/✍/↯) 20:18, August 2, 2016 (UTC)