Names from novelisations in page titles
Opening post
Around the time of the first NuWho Target novelisations, I created Thread:231243 about our treatment of novelisations. Beforehand, we'd put novelisations in a strange second tier of validity: parts which matched the TV story were valid, but parts which contradicted the TV story weren't. Thanks to the arguments in that thread, we changed the policy and validated all novelisation content, wrapped in "By another account" logic when necessary.
However, CzechOut carved out a specific exception for page names. There are dozens of characters who were unnamed or only given a first name in their TV appearances but received full names in novelisations. For instance, Co-pilot (The Horns of Nimon) – a generic and cumbersome page name if I've ever seen one – was called "Sardor" in the novelisation. Why not just call the page Sardor instead? CzechOut's reasoning, mirrored at Talk:Miranda (The TV Movie), was that "articles shouldn't be named on the basis of an obscure work, like a novelisation". I didn't fully appreciate this logic at the time, but I've come to see that it's very wise and shows a keen sensitivity to the needs of the full spectrum of our users. When I proposed that the old, TV-dabbed names would still exist as redirects, CzechOut replied at Thread:231243#4 that the way redirects are displayed in search results simply isn't sufficient to bridge the gap for casual users of the wiki.
In the five years since then, our benevolent overlords at Fandom have added a new feature: when you search for a name which is a redirect, it shows you both the redirect and what it redirects to! For instance, to use the example of a novelisation-original name later adopted by other media, when you search "Cass" it offers
This perfectly addresses CzechOut's concern. With the searchability issue resolved once and for all, we should officially grant novelisations the same weight as other sources in page naming, particularly in cases where it would help disambiguation. – n8 (☎) 15:43, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
Discussion
- I think this is a "common sense" proposal that I wholeheartedly support. The redirects showing up in searches pretty much solves the only reason we even blocked using names from novelizations in article titles. Pluto2☎ 16:40, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
- I wholeheartedly support this proposal, as it allows for easie linking to the page (lack of disambiguation), informs casual watchers of new information (whilst not confusing them - see the redirect) and, well, I always like moving further into "all (valid) sources are equally valid". There is only one small area I would be concerned about - if a full name is given in a TV story and is then (hypothetically) contradicted in a novelisation, which name do we use? I presume we'd use the TV name (with a mention of the alternative name in the lead), but I feel we should confirm this into policy from the get-go. Cousin Ettolrhc ☎ 16:55, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
- I think this is a good idea. Cookieboy 2005 ☎ 17:03, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
- 100% agree. Why should a name from an audio, novel or short story be considered any less obscure than one from a novelisation? Jack "BtR" Saxon ☎ 17:11, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
- Totally Support and to respond to Cousin Ettolrch I think in the case of contradicting full names between a TV story and a Novelization, Susan Foreman vs Susan English for example, we'd go with name from the TV Story on the basis of seniority or frequency. In most cases the TV name would have been used first, but if there are occasions where a novelization's name was used first but the majority of later sources use a different contradicting name, that later name may be used instead. I don't know if any cases like that actually exist and I invite people to poke holes in and iron out this idea because I feel like this could have it's own complications that I'm not entirely foreseeing. Time God Eon ☎ 19:09, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
- Fully agree with you there Time God Eon, just wanted to get it out there. Sincerely doubt anyone will disagree except in another hypothetical scenario I just thought of. What if a character called "Sarah Smythe" on TV (credited as such) is then called "Sarah Smith" in the novelisation, and then later EU stories use the novelisation name, what would we do then? Or is this not worth thinking about until that actually happens, considering it's such an absurd edge-case and this policy would work 99% of the time. Cousin Ettolrhc ☎ 21:04, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
- I agree with this wholeheartedly. Nothing more to add. Fractal Doctor ☎ 22:05, 7 February 2023 (UTC)
- While I understand @User:CzechOut's rationale, I felt it is undermined by the double standard applied by only applying such a rule to novelisations. I feel, due to this double standard, the rationale while noble in cause has done nothing but frustrate me due to its lack of consistency (and the fact that I disagree with the ruling at all but that's besides the point).
- I also don't understand why novelisations, out of all of "extended universe" sources, were the only ones subjected to this rule, as the recent novelisations, such as Rose, has heavily influenced series like Redacted, while sources such as old annuals and what-have-you are much more obscure, so how come names from more widely "accepted" sources like novelisations were barred but names from obscurer sources are fair game? What makes this even clearer to me is that @CzechOut has actually named pages like Cyber-Leader (A Good Man Goes to War) despite the fact that the name came from a Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition despite the fact that it isn't an in-universe source of any kind!
- However, even disregarding recent developments that completely resolve @CzechOut's rationale, I think that this double standard should've been overruled years ago. 01:32, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
- In response to n8's response to me, that sounds like a good plan (to leave weird edge cases for later). I say go ahead with this proposal as soon as possible! No real reason it hadn't already been the case (I had presumed all EU naming of TV characters was banned, if not then this previous ruling makes even less sense). Full Support!Cousin Ettolrhc ☎ 17:41, 8 February 2023 (UTC)
- I support this proposal, and agree that the novelisations are hardly obscure.
- Also acknowledging Time God Eon and Cousin Ettolrhc's concerns of which name we'd go with the one that was used most. Possibly based on the Artifacts or Artefacts of Rassilon? forum ruling. But as n8 says, we'd also likely use a talk page to discuss a specific page. —Tangerineduel / talk 04:29, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
I'm frankly kind of amazed that this wasn't already a thing. I obviously support this 100%. WaltK ☎ 18:55, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
- I wish to voice my support for this. Anastasia Cousins ☎ 19:12, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
I too completely support this. There's no good reason not to have these names as titles anymore, and leaving out names from novelisations goes against our goal to cover all media, effectively diminishing coverage of the character. Especially since some characters named in novelisations have their backstories significantly expanded. It also is a rather weird exception to the rest of the usual naming rules that stands out, when the page uses a name but the title an ambiguous term. And of course, any unusual cases can be discussed on their talk pages. Chubby Potato ☎ 20:57, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
- I also want to add my support for this. Any unusual discrepancies can (and should) be discussed as and when they arise, but there's no reason to treat novelisations as a whole differently to other media just because of that risk. SherlockTheII ☎ 21:15, 17 February 2023 (UTC)
Conclusion
This has been open for a little over a week, and I think this is just plainly such a no-brainer that we've run out of things to say. The way the searchbox now displays the directs means that there is no longer a real searchability concern. Moreover, it was always somewhat strange to treat names given to TV characters in novelisations differently from names given in any other non-televised source.
As discussed in a few places, of course, judgment calls to have to be made, on a case-by-case basis, when we have multiple conflicting names in different sources; but this is no different from the general case of conflicting sources on a character's name. The particular genre of one of the sources need not make much difference.
In short, novelisation names can now be used in page names, and should be preferred to dabbed forms like Co-pilot (The Horns of Nimon) in the vast majority of cases. Naturally, redirects should be renamed at the old TV-credit-based names for searchability. Thank you, everyone! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 17:51, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
