Forum:Relaxing T:HONOUR

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Opening Post

I'd like to start this off by clarifying that this thread is not attempting to create a whole new policy, or even radically alter the current one. The aim is, in short, to expand our allowance of dabbing by honourifc.

Another more unusual case is that of Grandma Connolly from The Idiot's Lantern. Normally, we would call her Connolly (The Idiot's Lantern) — but there are other Connollys in The Idiot's Lantern. Thus, it's clearer to just use her honourific to title the article.The part of "When honourifics are allowed" that is relevant to this discussion

From the above quote, many may deam this thread unnecessary, but it is not. The current policy only allows us to use an honourific dab when nothing else is possible. So for example, the individual most commonly known as "Godfather Sabbath" (in order to differentiate him from Sabbath Dei) is located at Sabbath (Movers) on our wiki, which almost no one would search and which requires pipswitching to "Godfather Sabbath" every time it is linked, anyway. I propose to that we change our dabbing rules so that Honourifcics are prefered over story dabs when disambuigation is necessary.

This, however, would not mean that all pages on members of Faction Paradox are changed to include their honourific (unless, of course, there are other similiar cases to Sabbath) - however I do suggest that we add redirects to some or all of these pages, as a user may well search for "Godfather Auter" when looking for Auter, for example.

Below is a list of characters who I think deserve a rename, and defintely do deserve a redirect (some already have one):

1. Vastra to Madame Vastra as she is most commonly refered to as that

2. Father Kriener as a redirect to Fitz Kreiner, like Kode is. Discussion on splitting this character should be left to Talk:Fitz Kreiner.

3. Waites (John Smith and the Common Men) to Mr Waites as thats what he's refered to, and the current pagename is very long.

4. Andrew_Williams to Sir Andrew Williams, as he is only ever refered to as such, inclduing in story titles.

5. Saldaamir to Mr Saldaamir as that's what he's referred to, and all sources featuring him state he only goes by that.

Additionally, although this is slightly outside the original scope of this proposal, I'd like to suggest we also allow for epithets, probably in a new policy called T:EPIPHET or something. Characters who would benefit from this would be (non-comprehensive list):

1. Brian (A Guide to the Dark Times) would be moved to Brian the Ood, as that is consistently what he is called in both valid sources, the Time Fracture stage play, and in fandom.

2. Epsilon (Out of the Box) to Epsilon the Watcher, as that's what they're called.

3. Rusty (Into the Dalek) to Rusty the Dalek, although as they're most commonly referred to as "Rusty" instead of the full, I'm okay if this one doesn't pass, and "the Dalek" is a very general epiphet.

4. Romana III (The Shadows of Avalon) to War Queen Romana, although again I wouldn't be too annoyed if this doesn't pass.

Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 08:11, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

I support the proposed relaxation of T:HONOUR and the proposed creation of T:EPITHET, or something of the sort. I also support all proposed renames, except for the Romana one, which I'm not sure about. Aquanafrahudy ☎ 17:07, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

I see no reason to change our policy in terms of page names - no positive argument for doing so is given in the OP, just a proposal. Perhaps redirects for these things, honorifics + names or names + epithets could be done? I'd be amenable to that. Najawin ☎ 17:18, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

FULL SUPPORT! Yes! This is so needed! Yes! Complete support for this. Those dab term-names are so hideous. Danniesen ☎ 18:26, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

I support these, and honestly, I'd like to throw in that we move Victoria to Queen Victoria, and other monarch titles. Pluto2☎ 18:34, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

For many moons, this has been the T:TF proposal I anticipated the most. I have grown very very tired of honourifics not being used in page names in cases where it's very obvious they should be. Young (The Sea Devil) is a disgrace. It should be Miss Young without question, no redirect can fix the fact that we simply have chosen the wrong page name. There are obviously many more cases like this. In some situations, "Miss" "Grandfather" etc can and are depicted as borderline being a character's "first name."

The only one out of the main proposals I disagree with is probably Vastra. But I do think the "Sir" angle could be difficult, as there are numerous characters (including Ian Chesterton and Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart) who are confirmed to be knighted but not in their first stories. So I think that should be a case-by-case thing. Brian the Ood being a redirect is a very obvious example of our policy not fitting the reality of coverage. OS25🤙☎️ 19:09, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Najawin - perhaps I didn't properly forumulate my reasons because I saw it as inuitive - does Godfather Sabbath not look and feel much better to you than Sabbath (Movers)? OS25 - yes, I absolutely agree that we should not move every character with an honourific. This should be a case-by-case Talk page thing. Aqauana - yeah, I'm completely ambivalent on the Romana one, just tossed it in their as an extreme example, partially so that people could say no to it now and codify that. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 19:21, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree with most (albeit not all) of the renames proposed by the OP and other commenters above. That said, I have two comments and one question.

• Firstly, there are already several instances where honourifics are used for disambiguation: see Mr Smith and King Arthur. Using this existing precedent alone would be sufficient to rename Waites (John Smith and the Common Men) to Mr Waites, and perhaps a few of the others as well. To the extent that this precedent isn't reflected on T:HONOUR, that's something the admins can rectify with the power of T:BOUND reform; to the extent that this precedent might be applied to any of the examples listed in the OP, that seems like something best discussed on the individual talk pages, where there's more space to weigh the evidence in each case.
• Secondly, there's nothing stopping us from making redirects at common alternative names. For instance, the proposed redirect at Father Kreiner already exists. If it's thought that a redirect from War Queen Romana to Romana III (The Shadows of Avalon) would be helpful, any of us are free to create it.
• Lastly, my question. The concrete proposal, italicized in the OP, is that "Honourifics are preferred over story dabs when disambiguation is necessary". I like this proposal for the reasons OS25 notes above. But many of the specific instances listed seem to go beyond that principle: for instance, no disambiguation is needed at Vastra, so why would we be moving it to Madame Vastra? (For the record, I am opposed to that specific suggestion.) So could we narrow down what the scope of this thread is, exactly?

– n8 (☎) 19:23, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

That's very good Nate! In theory I like that a lot. But I do think it will get silly eventually. For instance, in Search for the Doctor there's a group of characters in one "chapter" named Captain Evans, Navigator Grundy and Engineer Floyd. Wouldn't it be a little weird to have Captain Evans on this one page for a character who's eaten by fish just a couple pages later? I think the policy makes more sense for characters who generally are significant, but for side characters it starts to feel a little silly. OS25🤙☎️ 19:27, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

I know I'm going out-of-order here, but the conversation has moved on, so I'm just sticking this here for the record: "Honourifics are preferred over story dabs when disambiguation is necessary" isn't my idea; it's what Ettolrhc proposed as the subject of this forum discussion! I agree that Captain Evans would be weird and strange. – n8 (☎) 00:23, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

Forgive me Etty, I'm not sure why something looking and feeling better is supposed to be motivating - I could easily just say "no" and move on. Is there a way in which the wiki is harmed by the current state of affairs? I think perhaps - that it's counterintuitive for users to navigate to certain pages. But this is remedied with the redirects. Is there a way in which the wiki would continue to be harmed by that hypothetical state of affairs? I'm not sure how. Najawin ☎ 19:46, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Nate - Okay, well, if T:HONOUR can be changed to allow Godfather Sabbath then, well... that was the main point of this thread, so perhaps this could've just been done with the T:BOUND reform, in which case this thread may be moot. Huh, well good to know redirects can be created freely, I wasn't fully aware of that (as for Father Kriener... When I first wrote this OP I don't think the redirect existed... But that makes me look quite foolish, lol!). You're correct, I got overzealous with Madame Vastra. I fully accept that was a mistake on my part. OS25 - contra, why would it be better to have Evans (Search for the Doctor) than Captain Evans? The latter seems preferable to me. Najawin - (side note, please don't call me Etty, use Ettolrhc, or Cousin. Not you're bad as my signature was Etty for a bit, but yeah, sorry haha). Yes, the wiki is harmed by the current state of affairs. I pointed this out in the OP, but when writing an article mentioning Godfather Sabbath, one right now has to write "Sabbath (Movers)|Godfather Sabbath", which is longer to write than a simple "Godfather Sabbath". Additionally, if an article name is the most intuitive to both link to and search, naming the article that just makes much more sense than having it at a redirect. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 20:08, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Najawin asks "is there any reason we HAVE to fix this rule?" I ask, is there any reason the rule needs to be broken in the first place? The simple fact of the matter is that it's an issue of Search Engine Optimization. If a Doctor Who fans wants to know more about Grandfather Sabbath, it is a huge problem that simply googling "Doctor Who grandfather sabbath" does not render the correct results. Thus, simply using a less clear DAB and a redirect is not good enough - if the page doesn't appear via Google search then the redirect isn't relevant to if the policy is functional. OS25🤙☎️ 20:24, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Oh please, characterizing my objection like so is obvious question begging OS25. Without said argument there's no reason to think the rule is broken in the first place. As to Ettolrhc's objection, let me note that what they're suggesting is bad practice. We want to write [[Godparent (rank)|Godfather]] [[Sabbath (Movers)|]], not [[Sabbath (Movers)|Godfather Sabbath]]. As for the idea that articles should be named after their most intuitive / most searched / (perhaps most linked) redirect, let me point you to the What Links Here page of First Great Time War. This is not policy and would probably make our lives as wiki editors much harder, or would encourage stagnation on the wiki. Najawin ☎ 20:47, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Furthermore, let me suggest that this notion is precisely the reasoning that prevented characters like Odessa Smith or Nova Osgood from being located in the proper place for as long as they were. It should be rejected flat out. Najawin ☎ 20:50, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

I again emphasize that SEO is a valid reason to tweak the official rules. I do not think we absolutely need the honorifics in cases where we have proper names otherwise, it is clear that a page name like Sabbath (title) is far less useful to those searching online for information than simply the actual phrase they are likely to search for. Godfather Sabbath is a useful distinction because it immediately makes it clear to the reader how this character is different from Sabbath Dei - Sabbath Dei is not a "Godfather" we can assume. If Sabbath Dei does or does not appear in some random story titled Movers is not a useful distinction to most readers, thus it is not the best possible page name. Again, redirects do not help in this situation. OS25🤙☎️ 21:17, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure if SEO considers redirects. If it doesn't, I absolutely concede that it's a reason. Big if though - Sabbath on FP wiki and Tardis are the first two results for "Godfather Sabbath" in a private tab, just as a quick check. Maybe ask Spongebob? Najawin ☎ 21:33, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps the rule of thumb is that we should rename pages which are going to use the [[|]] trick nearly 100% of the time. I can not think of an instance where I will ever link Young (The Sea Devil) as [[Young (The Sea Devil)|Young]]. I will like that page, 100% of the time, as [[Young (The Sea Devil)|Miss Young]]. Thus, using any title other than Miss Young makes no sense. Whereas with someone like Captain Evans, I could very clearly see calling him only Evans on occasion.

I believe this same idea has been previously used for Rose (A Rose by Any Other Name), aka Rose-the-cat. There's a similar situation at Miss Brown - at some point you could argue this forum is about clarify current policy and writing it down rather than totally changing the rules. OS25🤙☎️ 23:27, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

From what I've observed, Fandom's internal search engine considers redirects, but external search engines do not. Whether external search engines can deduce that Sabbath (Movers) is the Godfather without consulting redirects is a different matter. For what it's worth, I do prefer Godfather Sabbath to Sabbath (Movers), just because Movers is such an unhelpful dab term: he was mentioned so many times beforehand, and his appearance in Movers is so minor, that identifying him as "Sabbath from Movers" is something only the wikibrained would ever do. (In particular, there are many users to whom "Godfather Sabbath" would make sense but "Sabbath from Movers" would not, whereas I can't imagine how anyone could understand "Sabbath from Movers" without also understanding "Godfather Sabbath".) Still, though, I would prefer we have this conversation on Talk:Sabbath (Movers). – n8 (☎) 00:40, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

I completely support allowing honourfics and epithets in page titles. And while we are at it, I want to make it fully clear if a story names a character Mx. Personname, we keep the full stop and do not do Mx Personname, T:BRENG be damned. Besides, we need that exception, otherwise we would be forced to change every single time Dr. Who is used on the Wiki which is a lot.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

20:29, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

I've got a lot of thinking to do about the primary discussion going on here, but just as a thought for now on Epsilon's point - Dr. Who currently exists... but the wording of T:HONOUR at the moment explicitly disallows the use of periods on the end of Dr, as per usual British English rules. Dr. Who's page seems to have (sensibly) always been listed at Dr. Who. And I believe all his stories from 1965 to even his most recent in 2022 do refer to him as such: Dr. Who. As such, that part of T:HONOUR definitely requires examination for either an exemption or a complete overhaul of that rule. (T:SPELL probably also needs explicit notation that Dr. Who's page, the Cushing film credits & the Hartnell era cast section listings are exceptions to the British spelling rules on this basis, too.) JDPManjoume ☎ 19:07, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

In my opinion, our policy should be that a character's name on the wiki should be written as it appears in the most sources. For instance, Mr. Bean should be at that page because that is his name, period included. It would be bonkers to list the character at Mr Bean or, worse, Bean (Dennis the Menace in Balloonatics). So why is Mr. Benn at Benn? I think we need a more consistent policy in these cases. OS25🤙☎️ 19:34, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

I suspect in both the Dr. Who (Dr. Who and the Daleks) and Mr. Bean cases, what we're doing is applying the Doc Holliday precedent: Cushing's character is not — at any rate not primarily, not explicitly — a man called Who who has a doctorate, any more than Hartnell was, but rather a man going by the indivisible moniker of “Dr. Who”. See also Mr Tickle or Captain Britain.

(This is not to say I oppose the reform, but I do think those highlighted exceptions have a rationale under the current policy, and don't just stick out without reason.) Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 11:03, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

@n8 I apologize for the OP for this thread being, well, poorly written and articulated. My aim is not just to allow for more disambiguation, but also to rename character pages where the character is almost always known as including their honourific or epithet, for example Miss Young and Brian the Ood. I think the main reason for the unclearness of this is that I changed my mind without noticing whilst writing the OP, and then got excited when the forums opened and so posted it without properly editing. Let this be a lesson to me to do it better next time. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 07:38, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

Just to note that I asked User:Spongebob456 about the SEO issue, see their talk page. They said they'll get back to me. Seems from their comments that they think it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but that we should use pipeswitches over redirects internally for webcrawlers, as that does effect SEO slightly. Najawin ☎ 16:24, 1 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm unsure how much this overlaps with the exact proposal laid out in the OP but one relaxation to T:HONOUR I'd especially like to see is to do with the Spectrum gang from Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. Our articles for the four main characters (Captain Scarlet, Captain Blue, Colonel White and Captain Black) used to have dabbed colours as page names (Scarlet (Captain Scarlet in Death Crash!), Blue (SPECTRUM is Green), White (SPECTRUM) and Black (Capt. Black Mars Expedition Lost!)) and other more minor yet recurring characters still face this same fate as can be seen in Green (SPECTRUM), Fawn (We Will Destroy Unity City) and Magenta (We Will Destroy Unity City). Now, thanks to the story Traitor Black Gives In! our main four currently have their pages under their real names (Paul Metcalf, Adam Svenson, Charles Grey and Conrad Turner) but I believe this situation to be far from ideal.

The pages for these characters should be at their rank + colour combo in my opinion. They are the most recognisable names by far and the ones which will be pipeswitched 99% of the time. I'll also note that Marineville Ablaze gives Scarlet's surname as Metcalfe (which is actually the accepted spelling in proper Captain Scarlet circles) meaning a rename back to the dabbed colour might be on the cards. A story discovered since the original rename would result in the rather fortuitous Scarlet (Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons) as the article name but why can't we cut out the middle man and leave him at Captain Scarlet? Borisashton ☎ 18:29, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Well I will say that a basic reading of Star Trek precedent says that we can just use the official franchise names regardless, but I would agree that in those instances "Captain X" is the proper way to address them, never "X (story title)". OS25🤙☎️ 02:48, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

See my previous example of Sabbath, I think the "X (story title)" page name is actually better for wikification. Najawin ☎ 09:13, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Najawin, thanks for re-highlighting your earlier reply. I'd be curious to hear how you address my counter-argument regarding the relative uselessness of "Sabbath (Movers)" as a page title. I'm not actually sure that [[Godparent (rank)|Godfather]] [[Sabbath (Movers)|]] is actually better than [[Godfather Sabbath]], but even if one were to have that preference, as you pointed out there's nothing wrong with most links going to a redirect – in this case, Sabbath (Movers) being a redirect to Godfather Sabbath! (While not disputing the argument you were using it to illustrate, I'll also point out that First Great Time War isn't the best example: its WhatLinksHere only looks the way it did because the page was moved by a non-admin who didn't change the existing links. When the talk page rename discussion settles on a permanent name in one direction or the other, those links should be moved.)

Boris, I agree that Captain Scarlet is a clear case for this thread. Nothing is gained by [[Captain (rank)|Captain]] [[Paul Metcalf|Scarlet]]. – n8 (☎) 15:11, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

I don't think "it's counterintuitive and weird" is a compelling argument when it comes to our dab policies, personally. They've always been counterintuitive and weird. Najawin ☎ 16:03, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

... I agree! That's not the argument I was asking you to respond to, nor is it one that I've made. – n8 (☎) 18:24, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Forgive me, but I think it is?

I do prefer Godfather Sabbath to Sabbath (Movers), just because Movers is such an unhelpful dab term: he was mentioned so many times beforehand, and his appearance in Movers is so minor, that identifying him as "Sabbath from Movers" is something only the wikibrained would ever do.

Surely this is just insistence that our dabing practices are counterintuitive and weird, and that as a result of their running contrary to intuition (only making sense to those with wikibrain) we should change them. This has always been the case. It will always be the case with some of our dab practices and rules. I don't think this is compelling. Najawin ☎ 21:10, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Ahh! I misunderstood, since I did not and would not use the words "counterintuitive" or "weird", and I'll note that you've neatly elided my analysis of the informational content in the title options. But fine. If that's the extent of your response – "it does clearly suck, but our wiki has always clearly sucked, so there's no reason for us to make it suck less" – well, I'll trust other participants to decide which is more convincing. – n8 (☎) 21:39, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Well I think that approach is backwards. You're basically never going to see the raw text "Sabbath (Movers)" divorced from any context except when searching for Sabbath and at said page, so the actual issue is whether or not you find Sabbath at any one particular location. (I can't imagine how it would be an issue on the page itself, you have all of the information there on the page - clearly this has all of the information that could be conveyed.)

So I just don't think the issue of informational content is distinct from that of it being intuitive from a search perspective. As for the idea that my response is "our dabbing practices have always sucked", I mean, it's more that there's always some degree of arbitrariness to them. I don't think we have compelling reason to move away from a more consistent system to a less consistent system when I think it hurts wikification slightly and gives credence to the same reasons that Czech used to deny the page names of Odessa Smith and Nova Osgood. I think we should be very skeptical of any reasoning that comes close to suggesting that page names should be what they're most linked at or most likely to be looked for. Najawin ☎ 22:01, 7 June 2023 (UTC)

Character's pages should be at what their name is. He's called Godfather Sabbath, never "Sabbath", so if someone sees the article, they will end up, incorrectly, believing he is addressed primarily, or even really at all as "Sabbath". Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 21:07, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Those are two distinct and contradictory positions. Should their pages be located where their names are at, or where they're most often called? If it's the former, the page is already located there, modulo a dab term. (Sabbath is his name, he's just always addressed with his title as well.) If it's the latter, this has radically counterintuitive implications like the ones I've alluded to. (And if you're getting hung up on Sabbath in particular - since his name is as much adopted is his title is, consider the same argument wrt Vastra or anyone else with a prominent title.) Najawin ☎ 21:16, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Okay, I'll rephrase. The page should be at what they are most often called in-universe.(also, Unless he was ever actually addressed as "Sabbath" in the sources he appears in, I'd argue that's not his name in any respect, especially as before joining the Faction he likely had another name. But that's besides, as "most often called in-universe" is enough imo). This also applies to other characters, like Ms. Young, although the situation is slightly different with Brian the Ood, as I'll bet, although I haven't done TLV, that he's most often called Brian. But out-of-universe, his character is known as "Brian the Ood", which I think should supplement the fact he's also sometimes called that in-universe. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 06:18, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

But this is just the same problem! First of all, you're just admitting that the principle you've suggested is fundamentally inconsistent in how you want to apply it, and that's just obviously an issue. But think about how often people refer to Mickey's mother. As of Odessa Smith's first named reference in Rose, under what you're suggesting we should still refer to her as "Mickey Smith's mother" because she's been more commonly referred to as something else. Or what if Obverse decided to publish, idk, 7,000,000 AI generated short stories that all talked about Gallifrey as The Homeworld. Would we change the page name because now it's been referred to as something else more times in-universe?

I cannot imagine consistently applying this rule, and I don't think you want us to. But if there's no fundamental principle motivating these changes, no underlying reason behind this, it's just doing it based on vibes. Surely you can see that "it's just vibes man" isn't a sound conclusion for a thread to reach. (Also, you know, you can have honorifics in specific page titles if forum threads make exceptions for them, see Dr. Who and Marticide. I see no need to change the policy generally. I could imagine "Brian the Ood" given how he's represented on merch, but Vastra and Sabbath are really not good arguments imo. Vastra is actually referred to as Vastra from time to time, and Sabbath is part of a larger organization that uses titles, so changing his dabbing would suggest you do that for all of them, which is a really weird position.) Najawin ☎ 07:05, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Najawin, saying "You're basically never going to see the raw text 'Sabbath (Movers)' divorced from any context except when searching for Sabbath" strikes me as kind of like saying "You're never going to use your eyes except when seeing." Well, yeah! That's the whole unique purpose of a page title! Redirects can do linking, and {{retitle}} can do the main page display, but search is the domain of the page title alone, and since it's the main way that our users find our pages, I think it's very important on its own.

Regarding concerns of consistency and precedent, the classical wiki position is that these exist to serve the readers and editors, not the other way around. So "we can't do the sensible thing in situation X because it will be inconsistent with situation Y" isn't especially persuasive to me. All that said, I'm sympathetic to the concern of Mickey Smith's mother, and if this is to be a new rule rather than a set of ratified exceptions, I agree that we would do well to carefully mark out the scope of this rule change to avoid unintended consequences elsewhere.

What I like to do when a suggestion worries me is to try to find a mutually aggreeable middle ground. For instance, in this case, maybe the rule should be that (a) we always prioritize proper names over descriptive ones, and (b) we only add descriptions to proper names when those are universally used and/or especially helpful for disambiguation or clarity. This would indicate that Odessa Smith is better than Mickey Smith's mother and that Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart is better than the Brigadier, while also allowing us to use Queen Victoria and Brian the Ood etc. – n8 (☎) 18:10, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

Well, no, Nate, it's not like that. You were bringing up the idea that the page title with this dab term lacked informational content, and my response is that you would never see it in a context in which this issue mattered, you'd only ever see it while searching for the page. See, specifically:

So I just don't think the issue of informational content is distinct from that of it being intuitive from a search perspective.

I agree that it's not 100% ideal for search. But my response to it is the same as it ever was. This has always been the case. It will always be the case to some extent. And redirects help with the issue and are allowed already.

(On the side note of ignore all rules, I have absolutely no issue with a handful of cases that are discussed individually that break rules. Where the problem emerges is when there are two rules that are contradictory in their motivating principles, or that a rule is clearly only being applied when users feel like it - the rule is "opt in" rather than "opt out". Moreover, of course, T:EVIL TWIN, and just a note that wikipedia has some really weird philosophical governance ideas.)

This rule you're proposing is much too vague. What does "especially helpful" mean here? Is the issue with Sabbath just that people don't think of him as "the Sabbath from Movers"? Or would this apply to every character over a story based dab term, if they also have a descriptive title/epithet/etc? Either position seems unpalatable, as the latter is a massive change that makes the ranks of Faction Paradox deeply split on whether they have their title or not, and the former seems, well, arbitrary. Najawin ☎ 21:02, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

As others have pointed out, page titles are primarily a matter of discoverability and so pages should be titled in a way that maximises that both internally and externally. I'm not sure if most-called in-universe name fits this, because page titles are an out-of-universe thing, and that would seemingly kill conjectural titles in their tracks (although maybe that's a good thing - Talk:Christopher Eccleston (in-universe)). Descriptive titles are helpful but in a well structured wiki these sort of queries should be easily answered by other means. Internally, if I wanted to know who Mickey's mother is I visit his page and look in the infobox, and putting "Mickey Smith's mother" into Google returns the Odessa Smith page here in a featured snippet, no less (because Google has very good relational content understanding). So renaming that page is not actually helping discoverability because the page is not hard to find. Search is not the only tool a wiki has for finding pages! "Sabbath (Movers)" fails external discoverability because the page doesn't show up on Google when searching for "Godfather Sabbath", and so is a prime candidate for renaming.

And on that relational content understanding (and moving the page name aside), I wonder if linking to that page more often as [[Sabbath (Movers)|Godfather Sabbath]] rather than [[Godparent (rank)|Godfather]] [[Sabbath (Movers)|]] would help. From a UX point of view I could find myself, as a reader, being annoyed by the latter version: clicking on the Godfather part of the name does not actually get me to the character's page despite it seemingly being part of it, and Google would not as strongly be associating the Godfather bit of the name with the page itself. Would need a bit of an experiment but I imagine the results would be quite helpful here.

Making redirects just for the purposes of linking is generally frowned upon, especially just for editors to save a few keystrokes - and so if pages are linked to most through a redirect that should be some sort of indication that maybe that page is misnamed (although I am not familiar enough with the "First Great Time War" example above to really comment further) - but I know this wiki and redirects has a very odd relationship. And again, I can imagine a bit of experimentation with linking to redirects directly, and seeing if that changes Google's understanding in any way, would be a good idea.

So to sum up an actual position, I think moving away from dabs and towards honorifics is a good thing, but probably only on a case-by-case basis to start with, where such a discoverability problem actually exists. For Vastra, that means the page is probably fine where it is because there's no problem finding it on here or on Google. Google doesn't actually understand page moves very well, so moving a page actually kills its SEO history and starts it over again, and therefore mass moving pages might actually have unintended negative effects. guyus24 (talk) 01:06, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Just to note, the issue of external discoverability is something I've asked our FANDOM/wiki rep about, and they're gonna get back to me on whether creating redirects will be enough to improve google search results. But "Godfather Sabbath" as a search, in quotes, in private tabs, already returns the FP and Tardis wikis as the top two results. So I don't think this example is definitive, though the overall point may be correct - we need to hear from Spongebob. Najawin ☎ 01:18, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Huh, ok, that's a recent thing. It was not doing that an hour ago when I was checking (it was returning Sabbath Dei instead, but did have the FP wiki's version). Google, huh <shrug/> guyus24 (talk) 01:22, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Same here, I get Sabbath Dei and FPWiki's [[Sabbath (Movers)]]; although from the snippet of the farmer's article that is previewed on Google, the {{you may}} which includes the text "Godfather Sabbath" is visible...

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

02:02, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

I get precisely this for incognito mode on both Firefox and Safari. And have done so ever since the issue of SEO was first discussed. Google, idk. But again, I agree that SEO might be a concern, and there's some discussion taking place on whether we can fix that. Najawin ☎ 02:29, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

I do not follow how "most called in-universe" would harm conjectural titles of the Jenny Everywhere or Christopher Eccleston (in-universe) form. In-universe these people are presumably called by those names, not "eccentric-looking woman" and "Salford lad who looked like the Ninth Doctor"! You seem to be mixing up what they're most often called in-story and what stories in gestalt tell us or imply they are most often called in-universe. (If a character spends a story under an alias, but that alias was only used for the span of the story's events, then they're most called by their real name in-universe but most called by their alias in-story. Neither question especially matches what they're most called in real-world discussion of the story; that could really go either way depending on the case.) Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 08:44, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Najawin, why are you enclosing the query in quotes? That's not how people usually Google things in the real world, nor is it how SEO is measured. When you search it without quotes, Sabbath Dei is indeed the top Tardis Wiki result, as I've replicated on both mobile and desktop in different browsers. Unless Google indexes Fandom differently than every other website including Wikipedia, as I already said upthread, there's no need to wait for a Fandom rep to weigh in: our internal redirects to a page have no impact on Google search results. Where redirects do have impact is when someone types in the search bar on the Tardis Wiki itself. My concern remains that, upon typing in simply the word "Sabbath", there is no indication to the searcher whether Sabbath Dei or Sabbath (Movers) is the character most commonly known as "Godfather Sabbath".

But Najawin, I do appreciate you summarizing the core of your objection: "I agree that it's not 100% ideal for search. But my response to it is the same as it ever was. This has always been the case. It will always be the case to some extent." Or as I put it more succinctly earlier, "It does clearly suck, but our wiki has always clearly sucked" – and/or, I might add, "and it will never be literally perfect anyway" – "so there's no reason for us to make it suck less." ;)

As it is, I don't find your suggestion of vagueness remotely convincing, since from the start the idea has been that this new guideline will be interpreted and implemented via talk page discussions. No rule exists in a vacuum; it only has power to the extent that it is interpreted by our editors and implemented by our admins. And when it comes to deciding whether or not a suggestion is "especially helpful", I trust our editors and admins to – as Justice Potter Stewart once said – "know it when [they] see it." If the result is inconsistent, honestly, I can't bring myself to care: better to be sometimes right than consistently wrong! – n8 (☎) 20:47, 11 June 2023 (UTC) [edited 16:52, 12 June 2023 (UTC)]

If I want to search for an exact phrase I always enclose it in quotes; I'm not sure why that's controversial. But, again, it's possible that even without quotes this issue could be ameliorated.

As for the interpretation that my position is that our wiki's dabbing policies have always sucked, let me frame this another way. "There have always been edge cases, there will always be edge cases, you cannot possibly please everyone attempting to search for things, and attempting to do so with a vague and arbitrary standard that you admit is vague and arbitrary is a cure worse than the disease." Perhaps your experience has been different, but I consistently hear the Potter quote in a derogatory context. People make fun of it. Why are we trying to make our wiki's rules less consistent, when we've been trying to make them more consistent as of late?

We already are sometimes right. Which of course you know. You want to increase our percentage by, I dunno, .00001% or something at the cost of introducing a wildly inconsistent and arbitrary rule that's not even needed. We can already discuss individual cases as exceptions, there's precedent, and the SEO concerns might easily be resolved. It's a solution to an imagined problem - everything discussed has (or may have) an easy fix that doesn't require the rule being suggested. Najawin ☎ 22:53, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

Firstly, it's definitely good Google-fu that you use quotation marks – I do the same! – but it's not how most people usually search, and it's not how SEO is measured in the industry. Despite my overall reservations about this back-and-forth (articulated below), I'd still be curious for you to elaborate on ways through which "it's possible that even without quotes this issue could be ameliorated", since so far the only mentioned alternative to simply moving the page seems prima facie infeasible.

Is Stewart's quote widely derogated? Not in the legal community; Wikipedia cites textbooks calling it "realistic and gallant" and "candid". Stewart only regretted it because of how it overshadowed the rest of his legacy. Given the tendency of discussions like these to devolve into hyper-systemizing, I think it tidily injects a healthy dose of common sense into a Gordian knot of "featherless biped" style quibbles.

Finally, for the record's sake, nowhere did I or would I "admit" that anything I have suggested is arbitrary. My proposals in this thread are the result of careful consideration of the existing exceptions to T:HONOUR and the further pain points which have been identified here and elsewhere. In fact, I'm actually arguing for the less "wildly inconsistent and arbitrary" approach here! You say there's no reason for a change because "we can already discuss individual cases as exceptions" to T:HONOUR. Would you really rather that we continue to declare exceptions case-by-case without any codified guiding principles, or could we instead formulate some criteria and add them to T:HONOUR to explain when exceptions to the general rule are possible and limit their scope?

I've had fun with this back-and-forth, but despite my attempts to redirect the relentless criticism in a constructive direction and reach a mutually agreeable compromise, when I'm being misquoted to this extent (in italics no less) I don't see much practical purpose in continuing to engage with a single contrary voice. I'll trust the other readers and the closing admin(s) on this one. – n8 (☎) 16:52, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

As for how to fix the issue aside from moving pages, this was touched on many times. Redirects might plausibly still work for SEO and we're looking into that option. It's certainly fine for internal discoverability and solves all of the problems on wiki.

from the start the idea has been that this new guideline will be interpreted and implemented via talk page discussions. No rule exists in a vacuum; it only has power to the extent that it is interpreted by our editors and implemented by our admins. And when it comes to deciding whether or not a suggestion is "especially helpful", I trust our editors and admins to – as Justice Potter Stewart once said – "know it when [they] see it."

I cannot begin to understand how this isn't an admission of arbitrariness. "Why do it on X but not Y, can you give me a fully fleshed out standard?" "No, it will be interpreted by our editors on a case by case basis." - This is so obviously arbitrary in its application that it's bizarre. (Perhaps the confusion is that you think I meant arbitrariness of the standard itself? If this is the case, I apologize, that was not my intent.)

I would have absolutely no objection to adding such principles to T:HONOUR if people can make them clear, consistent, and without wildly bizarre implications when applied consistently. I once again cite User:CzechOut, who makes an excellent point, even if I disagree on the specifics of how they used it:

All rules of the wiki have to be clear and easy to administer.

Why are we enshrining vagaries in our rules when we've tried so hard to eliminate them elsewhere? Surely this is reason in itself to be skeptical of this idea and to try all other options first. Najawin ☎ 20:28, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Even setting aside the external discoverability back-and-forth, I spelled out exactly how redirects will not solve the problem for internal discoverability, which you have not addressed. I would have been happy to elaborate on my suggestion, but you did not ask for elaboration; instead, you preemptively said that any feasible interpretation would "seem unpalatable". Not to repeat myself yet again, but I would love to hear a proposal from you that would meet the criteria you have set out. – n8 (☎) 02:17, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

I apologize, you're correct, I didn't address

search is the domain of the page title alone

But the reason I didn't address this is because it's just not true. Try it yourself. Search for "Black Sun War", type it out in the search bar. As soon as I get to "Black su" "First Great Time War" appears as a suggestion. Redirects handle search internally as well. Is it 100% optimal? Probably not. I get other things suggested to me as well, and I know that wiki search can be frustrating for people. But this isn't an impossibility, and it's something we should at least attempt before throwing up our arms in frustration and adopting a new policy that adds more ambiguity and contradiction to our rules.

Quite frankly, I don't think such a proposal is possible given the examples people have chosen as representative. I think Vastra, for instance, is a horrible case study for this policy, and Sabbath is relatively poor. Potentially possible, but not helpful as a case study. If we're going to do something like this, I think the only approach that's viable is something along the Fugitive/War Doctor precedent, where official marketing consistently and repeatedly refers to them through use of their epithet / honorific. It cuts off many of the examples people seem to want at the knees though, so I don't think it's a relatively popular option. Najawin ☎ 02:47, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with everything n8, guyus24, and User:Scrooge MacDuck have said so far. (And for the record, I agree Vastra shouldn't be changed, but, for example, Mr Salamander should). I understand your qualms, Najawin, with people just saying "I agree with PERSON", but I honestly can't be bothered to re-type arguments when it would just be a less articulated version of those user's points above. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 07:26, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Hmm. Let's try this approach. What would convince you that this change isn't needed? I've expressed what would convince me that this change is viable, and in prior threads I've gone over what would convince me to other positions in those threads. What would convince you, User:Cousin Ettolrhc, as well as anyone else who wants to answer, that this change isn't needed?

Writing out honorifics and epithets in the body of the text is actually preferred for wikification, so I don't find this compelling, but maybe you still do. Regardless, you can link to them using redirects if you want to do this sub optimally, and this wouldn't require changing current policy. Searching for these pages by honorific by name or epithet through a redirect also wouldn't require changing current policy. Technically speaking if the objection is that the page title at the very top looks weird and counterintuitive we can solve that by using retitle. I think that might require a slight change in current policy, but it's different from this proposal, and I don't find the argument particularly convincing, but you may. So we're left with external SEO, which might be a nonissue, we need to hear back from FANDOM staff.

What else must be done to convince you that this change is superfluous? Najawin ☎ 16:30, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Najawin, that's not actually the line I was referring to – Ctrl+F for "Where redirects do have impact". I like your idea of defaulting to names used in marketing, which I've been planning to bring up in a separate thread independently of this discussion. – n8 (☎) 12:40, 16 June 2023 (UTC) [edited 13:22, 16 June 2023 (UTC)]

But there's a simple solution to this, which is that a redirect at "Godfather Sabbath" points to Sabbath (Movers), so if they search for the actual term they're looking for they'll get the right result. "Sabbath" will obviously have ambiguity, it should be no surprise that they're getting multiple answers, and if they're uncertain as to which, they can either refine their search or take a gamble, and, well, look at that, Sabbath Dei has a {{you may}} on it. Najawin ☎ 22:08, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Conclusion

Right! Apologies for the wait, but I was waiting on a final technical verdict from User:Spongebob456, our steadfast Fandom representative, who has now confirmed that redirects do count for SEO — that is, if people Google “Cousin Justine”, and we have a redirect from Cousin Justine to Justine, then Google will still rank our “Justine” page as highly in the search results as it would “Cousin Justine”, even if the phrase ‘Cousin Justine’ is not used in the actual text of Justine.

With this in mind, we can at least discard the worries about SEO, and stick with internal rationales. Discoverability, as User:Najawin also stated, is not a problem there: our search bar auto-suggests the correct page name when a redirect is suggested.

This importantly reaffirms that we should generally have a number of redirects for a given character, even technically ‘incorrect’ ones. And we should retain them even if they’re not linked to from anywhere in a Special:WhatLinksHere sense. Such ‘orphaned’ redirect are still useful for search functions. As such, Father Kreiner should certainly exist, and likewise Cousin Justine or even something even less supported by the sources, like War Queen Romana.

We should also always create such redirects — dabbed if need be — for the way official credits, or the text of prose, refer to a character. Young (The Sea Devil) will remain at that name — we’ll come to that — but Miss Young (The Sea Devil) should also exist for searchability.

Still:

(…) we should be very skeptical of any reasoning that comes close to suggesting that page names should be what they’re most linked at or most likely to be looked for.User:Najawin

We strive to use the name that is diegetically the most proper and most commonly-used name. And titles aren’t, normally, part of someone’s name, as such. An important element there is that titles change. Cousin Justine was originally Little Sister Justine. A Ms might once have been a Miss. No one is born a Captain or a Brigadier. Vastra is hardly likely to have called herself “Madame” before she carved a new life for herself as an enigmatic gentlewoman in Victorian London. Sure, characters’ names change in other ways (e.g. married names), we do have to make judgement calls — but trying to incorporate titles is just creating a whole new swathe of problems for ourselves in that respect in a really needless way. If Justine is just Justine then we don’t foreground one era of her life over another.

There were repeated complaints that writing [[Sabbath (Movers)|Godfather Sabbath]] is a pain, but that’s a misconception. I don’t think this quite came across in the attempted retorts, but the point is that you’re supposed to write [[Godfather (rank)|Godfather]] [[Sabbath (Movers)|Sabbath]], instead. Not as sleek as [[Godfather Sabbath]], sure, but this is still much more intuitive, and unlike the naive pipe-switch, it serves a real purpose compared to the [[Godfather Sabbath]] option.

With all this being said, I think some of the frustrations here demonstrate that the Doc Holliday precedent has been under-applied. There are many cases where a title becomes part and parcel of a character’s moniker/nom-de-guerre; where it simply isn’t accurate to refer to them without their title. Mr. Bean and Dr. Who (Dr. Who and the Daleks) were cited as standing examples of this, as were superheroes like Captain Britain; we should indubitably extend this to the SPECTRUM crew and similar — let’s face it, they’re essentially superheroes themselves — as suggested by User:Borisashton. In this category we also find Mr Saldaamir. As discussed, such instances should ignore T:BRENG if necessary in favour of reflecting the punctuation actually used in the sources (though T:BRENG could be used as a tiebreaker if sources differ with no clear-cut numerical advantage).

What about epithets? Well, it looks like it all goes back to Wild West outlaws again: consider Billy the Kid. It would be supremely unhelpful to refer to him as “Billy the Kid”. Unlike instances like “Godfather Sabbath”, the epithet is not actually primarily a neutral descriptor; it’s part of the moniker itself. And this is true even though Billy really was a “kid”, much as Brian the Ood happens to really be an Ood.

By analogy, I think we can allow Brian the Ood. Credits and merchandise consistently refer to him as such, making it clear it’s the proper full form of his nom-de-guerre, not just a statement that his species is “Ood”. This is obscured because Ood is one of those species name that we always capitalise regardless — but he’s “Brian the Ood” the way Billy is “Billy the Kid” — they're not “Brian, the Ood” or “Billy, the kid”. And to pick another, now perhaps more topical example, Beep should really be Beep the Meep.

Of course, we should be careful not to over-extend this: I’m not sure about Rusty the Dalek, though for the aforementioned searchability reasons, we should have the direct anyway. Such questions can be hashed out on the talk pages. But I want to stress that this is not a case of there being arbitrary case-by-case exceptions to T:HONOUR: rather, there are tricky cases which properly speaking don’t actually fall afoul of the spirit of T:HONOUR, but simply need community discussion to be identified as such. It's not even a change to policy — it all goes back to the Doc Holliday discussion! It's just an official recommendation to be a little broader/consistent about using that precedent than we historicall have been.

As always, thanks to everyone who participated. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 15:27, 6 August 2023 (UTC)