Forum:Doctor Who prefix in titles

From Tardis Wiki, the free Doctor Who reference
Revision as of 18:41, 1 June 2012 by CzechOut (talk | contribs)
Index → Panopticon → Doctor Who prefix in titles
Spoilers are strongly policed here.
If this thread's title doesn't specify it's spoilery, don't bring any up.


How should we handle the usage of "Doctor Who" in titles? We seem to have a fairly inconsistent use of the prefix in titles.

With video games we've got a fairly inconsistent usage. Doctor Who: The Adventure Games is prefixed yet the individual games aren't. Then with single releases some like Destiny of the Doctors aren't prefix.

Most of the Doctor Who reference books are titled this way such as; Doctor Who: The Sixties, though there are a few exceptions The Universal Databank, Travel Without the TARDIS, The Key to Time.

I propose we just drop the Doctor Who prefix for everything. As far as I can see the rationale appears to be that it's on the cover (at least that holds true enough for the books), but if that were the case the majority of merchandise and texts we have listed would need to be prefixed also. --Tangerineduel / talk 15:44, May 31, 2012 (UTC)


I have been assuming that when "Doctor Who" begins at the beginning of a title, it is because the publisher/producer/distributor/boyfriend of the owner titled it that way, like the way Target used to change the names of the stories for the novelizations to "Doctor Who and...."
That being the case, the name of the whatsit is (e.g.) * [[Doctor Who: the Sixties. It should be noted up front and on top. After that it may be convenient to refer to it as The Sixties, but that's a nonce or nick name, and no more appropriate than using an old, annoying nickname at the front of your page. Show a little respect. Boblipton talk to me 16:47, May 31, 2012 (UTC)]]
I agree with Tangerineduel. Drop the prepending Doctor Who. It should be taken as read on a DW wiki, unless of course it actually disambiguates in some way (as it does with Target novelisations). This isn't an issue of "respect", Bob, but organisational efficiency. If this were a general library catalogue, I'd agree that the prepending DW would be necessary. But here it gets in the way of auto-suggest, alphabetisation in categories, and various other automated processes. When we speak of "The Sixties" on this wiki, of course we mean the reference book. The Doctor Who bit is unhelpful and redundant. Here's the full list of everything affected by this issue:

With that many things beginning with Doctor Who: autosuggest is useless, the titles are immune to {{TitleSort}}, and, as TD pointed out, there's no particular rhyme or reason to why some things don't have the prepending Doctor Who:. If we make the rule "drop the Doctor Who" unless it's absolutely necessary for disambiguation, the system will make much more sense.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">18:37: Fri 01 Jun 2012 

Retrieved from "https://tardis.wiki/w/index.php?title=Forum:Doctor_Who_prefix_in_titles&oldid=1120362"