Rename[[edit source]]
The precedent on this is pretty wonky. Thread:232143#4 suggests there should be no change, but as is pointed out on User:NateBumber's user page, there's actually a fair bit of conflicting accounts of how we handle situations like this. Najawin ☎ 23:09, October 15, 2020 (UTC)
- I find User:CzechOut's verdict in that thread to be extremely problematic. One of their main examples is "Mickey Smith's mother" but that point is rendered null and void as that page is now titled with the name given in other media. All the other examples; Bill Potts' mother, Susan Foreman's father and Martha Jones' grandfather, have no real relevance because none of those characters are named in other media (to my knowledge at least).
- This page should be Nova Osgood and I cannot figure out why that would be seen as problematic. Xx-connor-xX ☎ 14:11, November 10, 2020 (UTC)
- I find this all incredibly bizarre as there was no character prior to her appearance in For The Girl Who Has Everything. All we knew was that Osgood had a sister. I understand in the case of Bill’s mum, where she has something of a physical presence as a character in Series 10, but this is just a throwaway line about a family member. No one is going to be looking for Osgood’s Sister on the wiki except to find out whether we’ve learned anything more about her in other media, at which point they’d be directed to the Nova Osgood page. I guess Polly Wright should be named Polly (The War Machines) or Mel as Melanie (Terror of the Vervoids) because this idea that names that come from outside of TV shouldn’t be used as page titles hasn’t only been handled inconsistently but it’s also not exactly a neutral point of view. SarahJaneFan ☎ 16:39, November 10, 2020 (UTC)
- Completely agree with SarahJaneFan. Regardless of the ruling, this page should not be affected. Nova did not appear in The Day of the Doctor so this isn't a case of an unnamed character being named in a novelisation. This was character that was alluded to in that episode, but first appeared in For the Girl Who Has Everything. RadMatter ☎ 19:52, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
- Point of information, appearance vs mention is irrelevant, "Mickey Smith's mother" is one of the cases mentioned, and she was only mentioned in any work whatsoever. (Though this page later being changed anyhow is quite humorous.) For the purposes of the thread in question, the character is still considered an unnamed character. Yes I disagree, yes I want it changed, yes I think the wiki is inconsistent. But we can't get around the rule like this. Najawin ☎ 20:08, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
- Couldn't For the Girl Who Has Everything be used as a separate source to get around the naming issue though? It's not an adaptation, so in this case, the page name shouldn't be controversial. 20:19, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
Odessa Smith wasn't mentioned in Rose (TV story) though, even though she was in Rose (novelisation). So I'm not sure that works. It's the fact that she goes unnamed in other TV episodes that's causing the problem. Najawin ☎ 20:21, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
- Since per Najawin's Sandbox this is the informal hub for discussion of reopening Thread:232143, I figured that I'll share that I've recently put quite a bit of effort into going through all the novelisation pages on the wiki and expanding User:NateBumber/Sandbox3#Novelisation character names, which I believe is now at least nearly comprehensive. (Feel free to add any I've missed, dear reader, but please respect my division between "Characters who currently require dab terms" and "Characters whose names are already unique".) – n8 (☎) 15:16, 8 March 2021 (UTC)
Conclusion[[edit source]]
I hesitated on this for a little while due to the technical inability of checking what User:CzechOut's linked forum post from the first message was, exactly. But on a policy level, the fact that we do not use names from novelisations is a very specific exception to T:NPOV, arrived at in a thread about novelisations.
This thread and ruling did not, indeed, could not have any bearing on something as broad as "names given in non-TV sources to characters who somehow originated on television". As cited before, Polly Wright is all the precedent we need to establish that we can and do use offscreen names even for very prominent TV characters — let alone a character who was only ever briefly name-dropped on TV, but most of whose development happened in spin-offs. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 17:27, 10 April 2021 (UTC)