Why we sometimes protect article creation: the curious case of Dorium Maldavar Maldovar

Forums → Archive index → Panopticon archives → Why we sometimes protect article creation: the curious case of Dorium Maldavar

This thread has been archived.

Please create a new thread on the new forums if you want to talk about this topic some more.
Please DO NOT add to this discussion.

Why has the Dorium Maldavar page name been changed back to simply Dorium? When you type in "Dorium Maldavar" you are redirected. This is stupid. Simon Fisher Becker's online CV has confirmed it and numerous sources have stated that fact to. Now, there is just a Behind the Scenes note stating that this "might" be true. I don't get it. S.F.B's CV confirmed it. Doctor Who Spoilers confirmed it. I thought this wiki was supposed to face the facts and state the truth. Ghastly9090 14:12, February 6, 2011 (UTC)

Because an online CV is not a valid resource. Such things don't appear on the list at Tardis:Resources, for good reason. CVs are often wrong. Toby Haynes' CV at one point said that what turned out to be A Christmas Carol was going to be 90 minutes long. Gareth Roberts' CV has claimed at various points that he was writing more for SJA/DW than actually made it to the screen. And this actor might be going off of a scene that he remembers filming but which the editor failed to use. We need to go by what we actually have, not by what we might have in the future. I haven't removed the reference to "Maldavar" from the behind-the-scenes note in the article, so readers may still evaluate whether they think it's reasonable. But so far, the only name we have for the character is the one given in the credits of The Pandorica Opens. Indeed, Tardis:Manual of Style#Naming of articles tells us:

"The titles of articles about individual characters should be the name by which the character was most commonly known in the Doctor Who universe, with later names preferred to earlier names."

And, so far, the only name we have for this character is Dorium. And that's what we need to go with. It might be possible to go with Dorium Maldavar at a later date, if indeed people refer to him in the narrative by the whole name in the S6 episode. (If only the end credits change, and there's no mention of his surname in the episode, then you have one end credit versus another, which gives no cause for the article's name to change.) But even then, there would be no need to go back and change all the links to Dorium Maldavar. That would be a foolish waste of time, since he was actually known as just Dorium for at least a year.

Anyway, short answer is that it's very clearly against our rules to change this character's name away from what the credits of The Pandorica Opens tell us.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

I made the mistake of not checking the reference. Unfortunately this is not a valid source of information. Unless further information backs up this title it remains as Dorium.--Skittles the hog--Talk 14:44, February 6, 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and here's another thought. We don't even know that Maldavar would be the surname. As he's clearly non-Human, it could be that Maldavar is the forename. So if we start using this whole name, willy nilly, we might very well be wrong in our usage. This is why our spoiler policy says clearly:

"DO NOT create articles relating to in-universe elements or actors who will appear in yet to be broadcast or released stories. This information is often vague, inaccurate or contains spoilers.

If these articles are created they will be deleted."

By logical extension, then, we can't change the title of an article to something that hasn't yet been broadcast. By deleting Dorium Maldavar, which I will in a few minutes, I'm merely following that policy.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

Case study: completed

This article is a perfect case study about why we have implemented page protection on certain articles having to do with the latest episodes of our favourite programmes. Had we gone with "Maldavar", we'd now be stuck with a lot of links that we'd have to fix. Waiting until the episode has aired has allowed us to confirm:

• spelling — it's Maldovar, not Maldavar (this we can both see in the credits and hear when the name is pronounced in-narrative)
• usage — the fact that script uses "Mr. Maldovar" allows us to see that "Maldovar" is his surname
• that the best resource for information is the episode and the end credits. doctorwhospoilers.com, by contrast, is not a valid resource

This isn't, of course, to pick on Ghastly9090. Rather, it's to explain how things that seem so certain in the off-season can very easily fail to materialise when the episode actually transmits. Our protection policy is not, as other users have claimed, ruining the wiki. It's protecting us from the needless busywork that would have arisen from, for example, having to change Dorium Maldavar to Dorium Maldovar.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 21:18:06 Sat 04 Jun 2011 

Can I just say that at the time, dwspoilers was not blacklisted so you can't tell me off for using the source. --User:Ghastly9090/sig 18:13, June 10, 2011 (UTC)