Forum:Clarifying the use of the (anthology) and (audio anthology) disambiguation terms

Index → The Panopticon → Clarifying the use of the (anthology) and (audio anthology) disambiguation terms

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Opening post

Relevant discussions: Tardis talk:Disambiguation term, The Panopticon/Anthology vs. multipart story (Thread:185295, archived at User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon III)

The problem

I'm not aware of any comprehensive and easily-findable explanation for the particular cases when the (anthology) and (audio anthology) dab terms should be used... It seems, neither are a fair amount of other editors, as expressed, for example, at this talk page. In addition, I'm not sure that what seems to be the standing policy is actually the best way it could be.

So, I've tried to look at how pages are currently titled and describe current practice as best I can.

The policy so far

Both the (anthology) and (audio anthology) disambiguation terms are allowed everywhere when necessary for disambiguation of two or more non-hypothetical pages (such as Short Trips (series) and Short Trips (anthology)). The following discusses the other cases, where the dab term technically isn't necessary.

• Both dab terms are not required for numbered releases that share their title with other releases, such as Doom Coalition 1, The HAVOC Files 3, or Iris Wildthyme: The Complete Series Two. Anything with "Series" or "Volume" in the subtitle is probably this. (This numbering-based decision has been discussed at Thread:185295.)

• This includes releases which are unusual in their series in having a title, i.e. when most of the releases in it lack unique titles. One example is The Tenth Doctor and River Song, part of The Tenth Doctor Adventures alongside The Tenth Doctor Adventures: Volume Three. This does not include, for example, Purity Unleashed, since most of the "audio anthologies" in The Sixth Doctor Adventures have unique titles.

• Doctor Who annuals and adjacent releases such as The Doctor Who Fun Book and The Brilliant Book 2011 never require a dab term unless necessary.

• Both dab terms are not required for releases which collect a selection of stories published elsewhere, such as The Dalek Collection. If the title includes the words "Collection", "Omnibus", "The Complete Series" or "The Complete something else", it's probably this case. For a somewhat unintuitive example, this means that the Puffin eshort collections don't require a dab term, and nor do Hornets' Nest etc., as the individual audio stories were first released separately and only later collected under these titles.

• Releases with titles ending in "and Other Stories" do not get a dab term.

• Short Trips books and Virgin Decalogs never get a dab term unless necessary.

• In all other cases under discussion, an (anthology) or (audio anthology) dab term is required. (Thread:185295 discussed and rejected "auto-dabbing", but it doesn't seem like anyone since has actually stuck to that decision, so I don't think it's quite relevant.)

Tangentially related: the (series) and (audio series) dab terms are just never required unless necessary.

Exceptions and inconsistencies

I like this description, because it fits the actual current practice even in less intuitive cases, such as the Dalek Audio Annual boxsets and Hornets' Nest.

The only exception I've been able to find is — right now the BBC New Series anthologies in particular are all over the place. The Missy Chronicles lacks a dab term, while The Legends of Ashildr, presented and marketed in an extremely similar fashion, gets one. I Am The Master: Legends of the Renegade Time Lord and Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe both have a {{rename}} hanging that would add a dab term that fits the rules I described, but neither have an active discussion going. Tales of Trenzalore: The Eleventh Doctor's Last Stand has a proposal to remove the subtitle without adding a dab term.

Conclusion

So, I see basically three options here. Either something like this description (or a more correct and comprehensive description, if I made a mistake somewhere in this one) goes on a policy/Manual of style page; these rules are discussed and changed, and some new policy goes on a relevant policy page; or this is decided to not be that important and never spoken about again. :)

jsmith5504^{talk to me} 15:48, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

...Is The Worlds of Big Finish not also an exception to this flowchart? Indeed, it's explicitly undabbed in the revision history, moved from a version having a dab to one not - simply because it "doesn't seem to need one". Najawin ☎ 22:02, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

My understanding is that it is policy to disambiguate every story title ever even if the title would never be used in universely. Why the same is not applied to anthologies is totally beyond me. WarDocFan12 ☎ 22:38, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Replying to @Najawin:

A! Thank you. It is, I have missed that.

There's also a lot more anthologies which are undabbed because they have a subtitle than I'd previously noticed. In fact, that seems to be another entire current-practice rule, removing the inconsistencies in most of the examples I gave. (I'm still not sure how people decide whether a subtitle should be included in the page title, but it is, in fact, true that at least most pages with a subtitle don't have a dab term.) And this handily gets rid of the Short Trips/Decalogs exception, too, if we say that not requiring dab terms for releases is just a series/"range"-wide decision, which a lot of this already seems to point towards. I dare say this is precisely what discussions are for. :)

However, I think the point about all this being not entirely clear to all editors and having to be written out somewhere obvious — if not changed — stands.

(Side note: How should I need to integrate these realisations into the opening post's flowchart, if in any way at all? Would it be as something like a clarificationy note with "Edit:"?)

jsmith5504^{talk to me} 22:59, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

I like your description, very thorough. Perhaps just to make it more concise, I would suggest that current practice policy is that anthology titles which are at least in some part descriptive (and therefore have in-built disambiguation) are the ones which don't include dab terms. These descriptive attributes include: (not to repeat you, but just to restate what you've said in terms of this descriptive quality...)

• Numbers (including series/volumes/years) in their title
• Terms which are synonymous with anthology (collection, omnibus, other stories, etc.)
• Series titles, like The Doctor Who Fun Book, The Worlds of Big Finish etc.
• In the case of Short Trips, prefixes.

In fact, somewhat relevant to this discussion is the talk over at Talk:Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury#Rename, where it has been proposed to remove that prefix and append the (anthology) dab term. Since prefixes are generally advised against, I would generally agree with that suggestion. Apart from that though, I propose that this descriptive quality be the guiding policy when deciding on whether to use a dab term. That is to say, all anthologies with non-descriptive titles should be dabbed.

Consequently, these changes should probably be made

• Subtitles should be removed from anthologies and replaced with (anthology).
• I would argue that while anthologies explicitly titled with "Collection" or similar should be dab termed, I don't agree that all such recollections should be. So, Hornet's Nest should be suffixed with (audio anthology).
• The Tenth Doctor and River Song is an edge case, but I'm inclined to dabbing it also. Unsure though.
• While Decalog is synonymous with anthology, it is also the name of the series, so should be disambiguated for clarity's sake.

Danochy ☎ 08:33, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Good point, good generalisation. The thing is, I'm not sure that a title is "descriptive"/synonymous with "anthology" is always easy to objectively determine... I mean, we've got True Stories (anthology) and Collected Works (anthology), in which the collectiony words are to some degree part of the title in an artistic sense, not descriptive. But that seems... a very fine distinction, especially with things like the various Obverse and Arcbeatle Books anthologies like The Book of the Enemy and The Book of the Snowstorm, part of series known for being very metafictional and often existing in-universe or titled for in-universe books with the same name.

And, personally, I'm overall not opposed to something like The Outer Universe Collection (anthology) or Breaking Bubbles and Other Stories (audio anthology), if only for consistency. Doesn't really look significantly wrong or excessive at all. (I mean, the Braxiatel Collection isn't an anthology of works about Brax, just an in-universe thing which happens to fit the pattern — and the wiki could benefit from distinguishing these two kinds of cases more obviously... per the same reasoning used for stories, which WarDocFan12 has reminded us about.)

So, I'm leaning closer to:

• Absolutely remove subtitles and replace with dab terms — I agree with you there... Leave redirects where the long title is more commonly referred to — like Dalek: The Astounding Untold History (...), which I've never once heard being called just Dalek.
• Do still add dab terms to anthologies/re-collections with "collectiony" words in the title. And regardless of what is decided upon, I agree that Hornets' Nest should probably be dabbed anyway.
• I'm leaning towards The Worlds of Big Finish etc. also being dabbed, maybe for the same consistency reasons, maybe if only to clearly mark them as not being series.
• Leave numbered releases undabbed... this is just an aesthetic preference, because I don't think Stranded 2 (audio anthology) looks very good. Would be grudgingly fine with that if this thread chooses radical consistency and dabs everything.
• I think that how to handle The Tenth Doctor and River Song probably depends on whether the wiki will choose to decide about dab terms per release or per range/series. I'm leaning towards the per-release option, so, dabbing it. (As for similar cases, I wasn't sure about The HAVOC Files: Loose Ends, but looks like it'd be fine being Loose Ends (anthology), just based on how the title's presented on the cover... would be very helpful if people more familiar with that series clarified that. So far, looks like removing the series prefix in all cases like with UNIT should be fine.)
• What to do with Short Trips and Decalogs is a good question.

• For the former, there's precedent with "Doctor Who and the (...)" in the novelisations... that even if a "prefix" is a genuine and un-leave-out-able part of the title in some cases within a series, it's cut in all the other cases. So I'd agree with you and the talk page suggestion that it should be A Christmas Treasury (anthology).
• As for the Decalogs, I don't think they have anything particularly special going on, just both a release number and a unique title instead of just one of those. A decision hasn't been made yet, but it'll be a potentially widely applicable one. I've no idea how to handle them yet. (Maybe they should be Decalog 5, etc., with the "title" treated as a subtitle... maybe they should be Wonders (anthology)... maybe a hybrid approach like Decalog 5: Wonders (anthology).) However, I really wouldn't prefer them being the only series-prefix-disambiguated anthologies while everything else is dab-term-disambiguated.

• The Dalek Audio Annual boxsets seems like more of an edge case. Do we consider the first half to be the title, with the rest as a subtitle? Do we consider it to be a series prefix with quirky variations, with the rest as the actual title? Might be a good idea for it to have its own discussion... not sure there's anything else quite like them at the moment.

So, yeah.

jsmith5504^{talk to me} 20:40, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

User:jsmith5504 your analysis is very wise and I agree completely on all of your bullet points. Although I do not see why we would remove the prefix from UNIT and Short Trips and Havoc but not Decalog. I think individual boxset names should always be preferred to Series Number style titles when available. Something like Stranded 2 is more a description than a title in my opinion. WarDocFan12 ☎ 17:58, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! Hm. I suppose part of that was that I had a vague aesthetic feeling that Decalog 3: Consequences was somehow the entire title in a way Short Trips: Life Science somehow wasn't. Also, an aversion to the series going Decalog, Lost Property, Consequences, Re:Generations, Wonders, because Decalog might seem like the title of only the first instalment in the exact same way Wonders is of the fifth (even though it is true that Decalog is the complete title of only the first instalment)... can't deny that part of my readiness to drop the Short Trips and The HAVOC Files prefixes is because both of those series contain multiple anthologies that incorporate the series prefix as part of the proper title, so this particular kind of confusion wouldn't happen. And on the A Christmas Treasury talk page the Decalogs are described as "numbered, like sequels" and so not an uncontroversial case in terms of the prefix.

However, I've looked around, and it seems that describing the Decalogs as just Lost Property or Wonders autc. is much more common than I had thought! It's even in all four of the relevant ledes... and the prefixed option's commonplace-ness might be an influence from the article title itself. So you might actually be right.

I definitely agree with you about preferring having only individual names to only series numbers — simply Decalog 5 is probably not a great option — but I don't think choosing between the other two options I described is so clear-cut. I'm not sure which I prefer myself.

(Completely unrelated: there probably should be some sort of exceptions about always stripping subtitles... or about what a "subtitle" is? Because The Doctor: His Lives and Times should probably never ever be called The Doctor (anthology)... and it might not be the only case like that.)

jsmith5504^{talk to me} 21:49, 10 June 2024 (UTC)