Forum:River Song incarnations or full page?

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Theres been some talk between myself and Rassilon of Old whether we should have seperate incarnation pages for River Song or whether we should keep all the incarnations on one page. My personal opinion is that we should keep everything on one page, this is for several reasons.

1. Other individuals, such as the Doctor, Romana etc should have incarnation pages as they have had several appearances in each incarnation.
2. The names for each individual River/Melody incarnation are hard to decide upon (see talk pages of the incarnations for details)
3. The information on River can easily be covered in one article as we already have her birth and most of the details leading up to and including her death.

Anyway what are everyone else's opinions on the matter?

Discussion

I'm fairly easy either way. It seems to me that separate pages for different incarnations are a matter of convenience rather than some rigid rule. Because each of the pre-River incarnations seem unlikely to be more than one-shots, the advantages of keeping the biography in one place is obvious. I would say it wouldn't be until the supportin sections (primarily the 'Personality' section) for each got ungainly that breaking it up would be warranted. In the meantime, it could be handled as separate paragraphs qualified by which incarnation. So I guess I am on the side of keeping the whole thing on one page. On the other hand, if people really want to create the extra pages, I can work with that. Boblipton 16:55, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I would be in favour of a single page. There's is no real advantage to having three pages, at least not at the moment.--Skittles the hog - talk 16:59, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

Well, you also have to figure that the Doctor has a single page itself AND incarnation pages. And if you think about it, it would actually ease up the continuity flow for the show. If you're wanting to know about the River in the Spacesuit, you'd have to look through all of the article to find different bits of info, but with the incarnation pages, all the info is right there. TheTARDIScontroller 17:06, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but if you take Rassilon for example, the article works fine as a single page. All the information is still there, and it doesn't exactly take long to find what your looking for.--Skittles the hog - talk 17:20, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

I personally think I would prefer one page, since neither of the other incarnations are particularly large in article length, so would be easily integrated to River's page, however I wouldn't object to three different pages. And also on that note, should we not discuss the naming of the pages? Because right now the River Song incarnation is "Melody Pond (River Song)", but I think it should be simply "River Song". Just like Amy's is titled "Amy Pond" instead of "Amelia Pond" because that's what she is known as most. River is most known as River, even if her birth name is Melody Pond.

So, if it is to be three pages they should be named after their most known name. The little girl should simply be Melody Pond, Mels should be Mels and River Song should be River Song, as that's what they're all called, not Melody Pond (Spacesuit)/(Mels)/(River Song) which looks rather messy as the page title. If it's one page, then I suggest simply River Song, as that's the name she has been known by most with Melody Pond and Mels being redirects. --The Thirteenth Doctor 18:24, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

Absolutely should be one page. I support user:The Thirteenth Doctor's redirection scheme. I'm more strongly negative on the multi-page idea than anyone else in the discussion, however. I actually am fussed that there are multiple pages. The character is River Song, period, just like Borusa is only Borusa. Before anyone brings up the Master, I'm opposed to that whole thing existing as multiple pages, too, and always have been. So the current existence of multiple Master articles isn't a positive precedent for there being multiple River articles. I do think we can say, however, that there should be a Melody Pond (Ganger) page, however, as that is a unique entity.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">18:30:34 Sun 28 Aug 2011 

Finally! I agree completely on this front and that of the Master. I also agree with User:The Thirteenth Doctor that the page should be "River Song", not "Melody Pond", but the redirects would be necessary.--Skittles the hog - talk 18:36, August 28, 2011 (UTC)

I agree that one article is enough for the character, because the other two can never be more than stubs (unless we learn a lot more). Also, we don't actually know that baby Melody became the little girl in TIA; she could have regenerated one or more times before that. So, we'd need to make that into separate, even smaller stubs (who wants to write the "Personality" section for the baby?).

I also agree that the one article should be called River Song, for all the reasons given above.

If we do have separate articles, the little girl would have to be just called Little Girl, as she was before the reveal that it was Melody Pond. That's the only name anyone ever used for her in-universe and in the credits, while the baby, Mels, and River have all been referred to as Melody Pond in-universe, so, if anything, she's the _least_ deserving of having an article called "Melody Pond", not the most. And the naming problem is yet another argument for keeping it all in one article—obviously not conclusive in itself, but it does add a little weight. --173.228.85.35 21:59, August 28, 2011 (UTC)