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Talk:Brian Williams

Discussion page

Article needs renaming

It's been confirmed that the character will appear in a later episode, so the DAB nature of the title is inaccurate and will prevent users from finding the article on him, especially if the DAB page at Brian Williams is deleted by those who seem to want this wiki to be hard to navigate. 70.72.211.35talk to me 02:40, September 9, 2012 (UTC)

Disambiguation articles are there to navigate people to the correct article(s). When you search for something they're pretty much the first thing you see. Plus, on most articles it suggests pages that you might have meant when you loaded the article. I don't really think there's an issue tbh. Plus, the Brian Williams in the NSA "Snowglobe 7" came first and there's very little we can do about it.
TheFartyDoctor Talk 03:02, September 9, 2012 (UTC)
The page still needs to be disambiguated, even if he appears in a later episode. As this is his first, this is what we go with. Tardis1963 talk 03:41, September 9, 2012 (UTC)
For cases when there's only two people, {{You may}} is more than enough to alleviate the confusion. Often, when you start typing Brian Williams in a link, it'd show the two dabed Brian Williamses. -- Tybort (talk page) 11:37, September 9, 2012 (UTC)
It does seem that the Doctor's wife's Grandfather is going to remain more notable than a one off character in a novel. Perhaps Brian (Dinos on a Spaceship) should be the one listed as Brian Williams and a {{You may}} link could handle the rest. The page for (Snowglobe 7) is barely a blip as it is, clearly Rory's dad is already more interesting.The preceding unsigned comment was added by AnaxagorasZ (talk • contribs) .

At a later date, when this character has made multiple appearances, it would certainly be best to give this page preference as I do not doubt it is the page most expect to find at Brian Williams. There is no urgency to make the move, but I see no reason to delay as links will only have to be changed when the switch is made and they're sure to pile up in the meantime.--Skittles the hog - talk 20:05, September 9, 2012 (UTC)

When Amy Pond first appeared in The Eleventh Hour, the page was named 'Amy Pond' not 'Amy Pond (The Eleventh Hour)'. So I completely agree that this page should be renamed. 86.22.110.143talk to me 12:16, September 15, 2012 (UTC)
While I'm not completely opposed to the idea of maybe making this the "prime" Brian Williams page, the Amy argument has nothing to do with anything. amy has appeared in far more media than just one or two episodes, including three comic series running at the same time. I don't know of any conflicting Amy Ponds like with Brian Williams (Snowglobe 7) (which until DOAS' airdate was the Brian Williams page), so for what purpose would we even consider requiring an Amy Pond page with the disambiguation term (The Eleventh Hour)? -- Tybort (talk page) 13:27, September 15, 2012 (UTC)
Conversely, I am totally opposed to dropping the dab term from the full article name. There's no cause to make an exception to policy in this case. He's not more important than the Snowglobe 7 guy, because core site policy sets all media as of equal weight.
czechout<staff />    06:00: Mon 17 Sep 2012
Moreover, it's an incredibly common name. I'm not entirely convinced there's not another Brian Williams somewhere in some story we've not got around to cataloguing yet. And given that we have two stories in 5 years to use the name Brian Williams, I certainly don't think it's unlikely that there will be another Brian Williams somewhere down the road. One thing people are forgetting in this thread is that we've only got about 30k articles on this wiki, and a lot of those are behind the scenes pages. We've barely begun to scratch the surface of in-universe characters. We use dab term naming as much to futureproof ourselves as to make differentiations that we're sure about. I can't see a situation whereby it'd be good policy to move this to Brian Williams; we're only gonna have to move it back.
czechout<staff />    06:10: Mon 17 Sep 2012

Leadworth

Where is it established that he is from Leadworth? The only time he has been seen is at Amy and Rory's house (last we heard they are in London), and he was never mentioned, or seen during the adventures set in Leadworth. He is not even present at the wedding, which took place in Leadworth. Geek Mythology 21:28, September 9, 2012 (UTC)

Another victim of the silly Disambiguation policy on this wiki

There are a number of wiki users like myself who don't bother using the search tool and instead just browse to tardis.wikia.com/wiki/<search term>. This is how I get to most pages, and finding that disambiguation pages have been deleted because there's only two or three similarly-named entries is, frankly, a bit rubbish, and makes the wiki very hard to navigate.

I'm strongly in favour of either renaming this article to simply Brian Williams, or recreating the disambiguation page. Certainly the article's current title, which includes the name of what will be only the first appearance of the character, is not the way to go. Ben Paddon 20:24, September 11, 2012 (UTC)

Yes, our dab policy would look pretty stupid to someone who doesn't use the search tool. Obviously, though, using your browser's URL field isn't in any way a search. You should only use that method when you're sure of an article's name. There is absolutely no reasonable expectation that a name as common as "Brian Williams" would have appeared only once in a franchise that's 50 years old and comprised of thousands of unique stories.
In calling our dab policy "stupid", you're not really understanding the challenges of organising information on a franchise that's 50 years old and comprised of thousands of stories. The DWU requires a different approach to naming that is dependant on using the search tool. If you used the search tool, you'd soon discover that it produces auto suggestions which then reveal the wisdom of the dab policy. Moreover, having the dab terms helps during editing, where autosuggestions are also prevalent. Without a consistent policy of applying the name of a character's first policy to their name, editing and searching would in fact be much more difficult. It's a good thing to have dab terms like we do, because it makes it completely obvious which Brian Williams you're looking for.
czechout<staff />    05:45: Mon 17 Sep 2012

Spelling

Somebody, no idea who, but somebody sucks at spelling. This page was at the correct "Brian Williams (Dinosaurs on a Spaceship)", but somebody, no idea who, who I'd assume is not as good at English usage as they think they are, moved the correct page to an incorrect title. Can an admin please move it back to the correct title? Unless all of a sudden 'soar'ing is the new dinosaur roaring. Tardis1963 talk 06:07, September 17, 2012 (UTC)

It's a truism of, well, life that people make mistakes. Take it easy, big fella.
czechout<staff />    06:32: Mon 17 Sep 2012

I support the name change

Just like to say I support the name change. I struggled to find this character, using google. It took me to the page Brian. Considering the number of Brians in Doctor Who i think that Brian should be made a disambiguation or at least have a (bracketed conxtext) in the page title.

The "Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" title is now irrelevant. Just had to share my thoughts.

-Thomas Love http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/jackass/images/5/5f/Star_tiny.png [talk] 13:48, October 12, 2012 (UTC)

  • He's now appeared in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, The Power of Three, and P.S.. As the only other "Brian Williams" on record is a three-line page, I also support moving this to Brian Williams. If another particularly notable Brian Williams turns up, we can re-disambiguate this page as necessary. NOT doing it because there MAY be another B.W. somewhere down the line in either direction is frankly silly. d · 13:58, October 12, 2012 (UTC)
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