Forum:Disambiguation: Omegas

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Tybort has asked on my talk page:

Is referring to the Time Lord founder as simply Omega a break from dab when there's a humanised Dalek by that name?

Relatedly, is dabing someone (Dalek) (namely, Alpha, Beta and Omega needless confusion with the Rob Shearman episode? -- Tybort (talk page) 13:06, April 3, 2012 (UTC)

The truth is that I'm of two minds and therefore think it deserves greater attention. On the face of it, dab policy would indeed have a problem with all this. It should be Omega (The Three Doctors) and Omega (The Evil of the Daleks). But I really am inclined to believe that the Time Lord's name has nothing to do with the Greek letter. Thus I think it's actually Omega and Ω. I mean the Dalek is actually branded with the Greek symbol. There's no doubt about it. The Time Lord's name isn't even pronounced like the Greek letter — though I'm not sure if that's my American ears. (But I could swear there's some little factoid swirling in my mind that they deliberately didn't pronounce it like the Greek letter.) So a part of me says it may be better to go with what's visually and aurally there. The other part of me says that a lot of people won't know how to render Ω, even though we provide a handy way to enter all Greek letters. So let's throw the issue up for broader discussion.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 19:42: Tue 03 Apr 2012 

The current policy seems to be that when two or more pages share the same name, they are all subject to longer names. Thus, the page for Omega becomes "Omega(something that makes it unique)" and the other one becomes "Omega (something else that makes it unique)" and a simple "Omega" links to the Disambiguation page. As my work here is 99% editing, this means I get to type two open brackets, "Omega (something that makes it unique)|Omega" and two closed brackets, and then I get to do this three more times because it is case sensitive or I have forgotten that a space either belongs there or doesn't belong there. Oh, modified rapture!

What's that, you say? The system automatically puts up a series of choices? Well, not always on my machine. And while it may simply be the addition easily learned bit of technique to those who already know how to operate the system, to someone who is trying to edit while learning the system, it is a thorough clusterfuck. Because the Omega who appears in The Three Doctors is the same Omega who appears in, say the audioplay called Omega, which may not be apparent to someone trying to edit some page, the name of which, in part, is Omega.

The issue of the relation of any of the pages which may have in the past been referred to as "Omega" to the Greek letter sometimes pronounced in approximately the same way is a small part of a vast and complicated kludge that is falling apart. To worry about it is like worrying if you can get ecologically friendly suntan lotion when you're staked out naked on an anthill on a hot, bright summer day.Boblipton ^{talk to me} 23:19, April 3, 2012 (UTC)

Bob, you just venting, or was there an actual, practical suggestion in there somewhere?
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 00:13: Wed 04 Apr 2012 

My suggestion is to stop rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic. Admittedly, when you've just hit an iceberg, t's not particularly practical, but then nothing is. You may call this venting if you wish. Boblipton ^{talk to me} 00:26, April 4, 2012 (UTC)

Bob, I'm looking for concrete suggestions and plain language, not metaphor. I've put up two alternatives. Which do you prefer? Or do you have an alternative that I've not considered? Whether you like it or not, there are two articles for individuals named "Omega". The question before us is how do we differentiate between the two, not whether the system of disamambiguation necessitated by software that requires unique names for pages is plunging us all towards a watery grave.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 01:10: Wed 04 Apr 2012 

Omega (Time Lord) and Omega (The Evil of the Daleks) – The preceding unsigned comment was added by Boblipton (talk • contribs) .

I notice we had a problem with Ood Sigma being called Σ. In fact, CzechOut, you moved the page yourself because of Σ's unsearchability (with the initial page eventually being deleted). Plus, would that cause further confuson with Daleks Α and Β?

By the by, I prefer Omega (The Three Doctors) and Omega (The Evil of the Daleks). After all, to my knowledge, there isn't actually a Dalek called Simmons. -- Tybort (talk page) 13:47, April 4, 2012 (UTC)

I would personally prefer the second choice, with Omega (The Evil of the Daleks) redirecting to Ω. On the other hand, maybe we should make a page about the symbol of "Ω", sense it appears to be common, appearing as a part of River Song's costume as well. But both seem practical. OS25 (talk to me, baby.) 23:34, April 4, 2012 (UTC)

i like the suggestion with omega leading to the timelord and the greek symbol Ω being disambiguated into anything else using that symbol including the dalek, but i also think there should be redirects using the first method where omega (timelord) redirects to the timelord called omega and omega (dalek) leads to the dalek of that name (and omega (whatever else that comes with the name omega should be inserted here)) for the people who don't know how to type in the symbol and don't have any hanging around to copy paste. so, long story short, use the second method but allow the first to be used as a redirect. and czechout, i can also hear a difference in the pronunciation. the timelord's name is pronounced sort of like "oh-mi-gah" while the letter is more "oh-meg-a". Imamadmad ^{talk to me} 12:19, April 5, 2012 (UTC)

It's been a long time since I listened to the Evil of the Daleks soundtrack, but my (very vague) recollection is that Troughton pronounces the Dalek's name in Evil the same as he pronounces the Time Lord's name in The Three Doctors. (I'll try to verify that tomorrow, if I have time.) I thought that the pronunciation "OH-me-gə" was simply an older British pronunciation of the name of the Greek letter, and "oh-MAY-gə" was the American pronunciation. (I've no idea how the Greeks say it.) Either way, I think that acting as if the Time Lord's name is different from the Dalek's is cutting things a bit too fine. I think it's fair to say that the Time Lord is the "primary meaning" of Omega in a Whoniverse context, which means that the named humanized Dalek should get the disambiguating suffix. (I don't much care whether that suffix is (Dalek) or (Evil of the Daleks).) Omega (disambiguation) and Omega (audio story) also look fine to me.

I really don't think that there's enough to be said about Whoniverse uses of Ω to justify an article at Ω or Omega (letter). The stylized omegas on River Song's costume appear to be a symbol of The Church — it's on their uniforms and banners too. I doubt it has any significance beyond being a variation on the Christian symbol of the Alpha and Omega, probably chosen as a symbol for the Church in order to minimize offense (or at least, to cause less offense than if the soldiers of the Church were all wearing crosses). (Of course, now that I've said that, we'll probably find out next year that the Time Lord Omega is behind the Church and the Silence...) —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 03:57, April 30, 2012 (UTC)

Re-reading the disambiguation policies, I can possibly concede to the Time Lord being the "primary term". Although, is 10 appearances, plus the Remembrance novelisation enough to take precedent over the Dalek?

CzechOut's musings seem to imply that because both Omega and "Ω" are in-universe individuals, that neither is more "important" and need SOMETHING to split the two. And while (Dalek) I could possibly understand if said race were were mindless automatons, (per the "Things" part of dab), as Daleks are very much self-aware lifeforms (ergo, people, in the broader sense), (The Evil of the Daleks) seems suited for these humanised Daleks. On top of that, (Dalek) also conceivably means TV: Dalek. -- Tybort (talk page) 08:18, April 30, 2012 (UTC)

Is "number of appearances in Doctor Who stories" the sole criterion for determining a primary topic? Even if it is, I'd say that 10 beats 2. And if we're willing to look at a larger context, we might consider that Omega has 212 mainspace links, while Omega (The Evil of the Daleks) has only 41. Similarly, in the real world, a Google search for 'Omega "Doctor Who" ' doesn't mention the humanized Dalek until the 20th page (with a link to our article). We get hits for a "doctor who advocates use of omega-3 fatty acids" before the Dalek is mentioned. Nearly all the hits are either about the Time Lord stellar engineer, or are derived from him (the Big Finish audio, mentions of the Hand of Omega, and so forth). On Wikipedia, that would be pretty conclusive evidence that Omega is the primary topic. Of course, we don't have to follow Wikipedia's rules, but I do think that it makes sense to have the article on the Time Lord at Omega, per the principle of least astonishment. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 02:21, May 1, 2012 (UTC)

Of course it makes sense to have the Time Lord Omega at Omega. But it has been long, long established that this wiki does not operate by the principle of least astonishment. For about the first two years I was here, I railed against our naming policy, throwing up, as you just did, examples of how Google searches overwhelmingly thought of "Castrovalva" as either the actual, real world painting, or the television serial. When you look, as you did, at internal linkage stats, there's absolutely no doubt that "Castrovalva (TV story)" is linked far more often than "Castrovalva". Every "Wikipedia instinct" says that we are absolutely wrong to name articles as we do.

Nevertheless, despite the fact that our naming system is counterintuitive (from the Wikipedia editor's perspective), it's been long and consistently established that dab terms are required when there are two in-universe things of the same name. This is meant to convey that we don't favor one thing over the other; that a book character isn't deemed "less important" than a TV character.

These two Omegas must be disambiguated in some way. And as far as I can see, there are only two avenues available to us, as described in my initial post. Any other suggestion, it seems to me, would require a rewrite of naming policy, and would have a knock-on effect for hundreds of articles.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 13:29: Tue 01 May 2012 

If a policy demands that we do something that does not make sense, it might be time to revisit the policy. I understand the argument for consistency, but as Emerson said, "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds".

Even if we do want to stick with the policies as written, I don't see why Tardis:Disambiguation policy#Primary topics doesn't apply here. You seem to be suggesting that the only circumstance in which we could say that something is a primary topic is if there is one in-universe meaning and multiple related out-of-universe meanings (as, roughly, at Regeneration). If that were the rule, we couldn't have, for example, Frankenstein named as it is. Similarly, we've got The Master and Master of the Land, the second of which could easily be Master (The Mind Robber), with the Time Lord as the primary topic. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 01:40, May 2, 2012 (UTC)

i think the easiest solution (while still being logical) is to just disambiguate both names. what difference does it make if there is no primary omega? we have to remember with this wiki that not everyone has seen all stories, that there are a number of people who know The Evil of the Daleks (TV story) but not The Three Doctors (TV story) or any of the other 10 stories (only 1 of which is televised) in which omega the time lord appears. although that is probably a small amount of people, using the timelord as the primary term with no disambig term following it might confuse those people to whom the other omega is the only one they know. basically, we have to write this wiki from the perspective that not all the readers will know about all the characters, especially not-often-recurring characters, and in my opinion the only characters who don't need a disambig term after their names (aka the primary person) are main characters/often recurring characters. as neither of those characters imo fit that definition, i think both the timelord and the dalek's name should be disambiguated by the first story they appeared in. Imamadmad ^{talk to me} 06:59, May 3, 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough. I still think that leaving the Time Lord at Omega should be acceptable under the "primary topic" section of the disambiguation guideline, but it's not that big a deal, really. Omega (The Three Doctors) and Omega (The Evil of the Daleks) are tolerable, albeit clunky and awkward. But then, it seems that we've placed a higher priority on consistency than simplicity (or at least, we've prioritized a different sort of simplicity). Meh. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 03:31, May 4, 2012 (UTC)

Arrgh, you guys are kinda pinging me with a part of the dab policy that was being rewritten. I know the {{inuse}} thing says 72 hour limit, but that doesn't really apply to policy pages, since these are locked. In fact, I'd wanted that inuse tag to remain in place. Massive changes have happened to the wiki just in the last two months of the year; naturally there is a lag in re-writing policy so as to catch up. Dab policy is amongst the most radically altered things this year, so the dab page may not fully reflect every nuance yet.

Which is a long way of saying that you're hangin' me on a part of the policy that isn't really finished yet. I still think that the Dalek's name is Ω, the Time Lord's, Omega, and then you just use {{you may}} to link the two articles. Easy. You avoid the question of disambiguation.

However, I would say that we should be careful with the Emerson quotes and the thought that just because one thing makes sense another thing cannot also makes sense. The down side of Wikipedia naming conventions is less apparent in this particular situation. Our method may not make sense to the Wikipedia mind, but the consistency of using the title of the first story in which a thing appeared does allow for people to know immediately when something is named correctly. Using the Wikipedia method of "popularity" means that you have to do Google searches, provide evidence, essentially build a case for a particular name. Our way allows for anyone to quickly and easily figure out the right name for an article without having to go through the bureaucracy of a forum thread/talk page.

If I didn't have doubts that there was a difference between "Omega" and the Greek letter, I wouldn't have started the discussion at all.

I've had that Emerson quote thrown at me twice in the past month and I do take a bit of umbrage at it. It is my no means a "little-minded" notion to construct rules which avoid long-winded debates. Especially in an environment where you have auto-suggest on both the search bar and in the editing window.

Having been involved in the mind-numbing Caron/Hacek naming debate on Wikipedia, as well as a few others, I can say most assuredly that Wikipedia's rules, though they make sense, are wrong for us. Just flat out wrong. The article is called caron to this day simply because there are fewer speakers of Czech in the world. Which means the largest population on the planet who use haceks don't get to name the thing that is so ubiquitous in their tongue that it is actually a part of the name of their tongue. Why? Because English speakers, who don't even have haceks in their language, have written more articles about carons in English than have Czechs in English. Popularity is frankly a batty way of naming things because you have to prove the assertion of popularity. Omega, fine, that you could do cause he's a major-ish character, and there's only this silly Dalek in the way. So of course the Google results hit him outta the ballpark. But what about Peter? Or Bill? Or any one word, common name? Which of these minor, supporting characters named Susan gets the undisambiguated name? Why not just make it a redirect to Susan Foreman? Surely she's the primary "Susan". Do we really wanna have a naming debate on all of these? No. So we make a rule that works and stick to it.

Imagine if we had to go through this kind of debate every time we had to figure out the dab term for two, similarly named things. Seriously, take a look at category:disambiguation and imagine the number of debates, the amount of bureaucracy, that has been avoided by sticking to a simple rule. That's not "foolish consistency". That's smart, time-saving, decision-making.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 17:36: Tue 08 May 2012 

Frankly, I think it would make sense for the Doctor's granddaughter to be at Susan or Susan Foreman, and all the other Susans currently at Susan to be at Susan (disambiguation); Susan Campbell seems quite absurd, like another wiki having an article on the protagonist of Pride and Prejudice at "Elizabeth Darcy", or the title character of Jane Eyre at "Jane Rochester" (after all, "Reader, I married him"). But as you've made clear, we're not trying to make sense in article naming, at least not that way.

The argument you're making against using the principle of most common usage and/or the principle of least surprise in article naming, is one that would work just as logically at Wikipedia. The only difference is that you'd have to get over a lot more institutional resistance there, while here you've only got a couple of people saying, "Hang on..." The problem with preemptive disambiguation is that eventually, you end up with article titles doing what categories should. We've already gone farther than I'd prefer, what with sticking "(TV story)" on the end of things even if there's nothing else with that name.

But it's not something I really feel passionate about. I can live with a pattern of article naming which I find awkward and counter-intuitive. I just question which benefits our readers and casual editors most. But as long as there's a hatnote pointing readers to the article they're looking for, there's little harm done.—Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 02:44, May 9, 2012 (UTC)

P.S. As an aside, I should mention that the autosuggest doesn't always work for me, particularly if I'm editing on my iPad. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 02:44, May 9, 2012 (UTC)

P.P.S. Feel free to restore the {{inuse}} tag on the dab page; I honestly thought, since it had been 24 days since the page had been edited, that it had been left there by mistake. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 02:44, May 9, 2012 (UTC)

Well, look, I in fact agree with you. For about the first two years I edited here, I was a strong proponent of the Wikipedia popularity principle. I'm sure you can find archived discussions where I vehmently opposed Castrovalva linking to the city instead of the TV story. I still think the "in-universe primacy" argument doesn't make sense. Primacy, I believe should be given to names of stories. That would, overall, involve the fewest number of keystrokes when writing.

However, since that idea has been roundly squashed during several different discussions, not all of them led by me, then we face another choice. Should we have all names disambiguated, or just those where there's conflict with an in-universe item? And here, there's no question that the programming benefits and the ease of policy explanation outstrip the downsides. Now we can build templates which easily add or subtract the dab term allowing for templates to easily and reliably link to the correct page. Before, you had to build rather elaborate templates to work around the pages that didn't have dab terms. This forced the use of #ifexist which, for reasons Wikia have never been able to explain, creates false redlinks in Special:WantedPages. This caused some uproar amongst certain users who depend upon that page to guide their editing activities.

Now we don't have to worry about any of that, and template programming is much, much easier. Ultimately this means that we'll be able to create a template whereby the end user's life is super, super easy. They'll just be able to type {{Four to Doomsday}} and it'll spit out (TV: Four to Doomsday) or {{Four to DoomsdayN}} and it'll spit out (PROSE: Four to Doomsday). Or something very like that.

And in the meantime while we're waiting on that, the old "halfway house" system does still work. Four to Doomsday takes you to the same place Four to Doomsday (TV story) does. So you haven't actually lost anything, except where we've discovered that some titles previously thought to be exclusively out-of-universe are actually in-universe, like The Five Doctors.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 19:01: Thu 10 May 2012 

p.s. On married names of regular characters, I agree with you. I tend to think the rule should be here "most common" name, not the married name. I don't think I could go as far as saying that Susan should again link to Susan Foreman, though. That would be a little too skewed towards television having primacy, which is something we try to avoid if possible. In my zeal to clean up the forums, it appears that I hastily closed Forum:Married Companions as a failed proposal when really the discussion actually seems to have garnered more supporting views than not. I've tossed it back into the Panopticon if you wanna comment.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 19:01: Thu 10 May 2012 

p.p.s. As far as I'm aware, autosuggest does not work at all in the wikiamobile skin. It's supposed to be coming, and frankly, the dev team working on wikiamobile are the most responsive team at Wikia. They've been making massive changes to that skin (relative to Oasis) so quickly that they don't even bother to post revision notes for everything. I know that the autosuggest argument does fail a little bit because wikiamobile isn't there yet, but I honestly think it will be there sometime this year. Since you actively use wikiamobile to edit, you might want to spend some time at w:c:community reading the staff blogs about wikiamobile. They are looking for people to actively test it and give feedback. I myself am mostly just a wikiamobile reader.

Actually, when I edit on my iPad, I do so in Oasis. I only use wikiamobile on my phone, and that only for reading — in fact, I wasn't aware that one could edit in wikiamobile.

As for the question "Should we have all names disambiguated, or just those where there's conflict with an in-universe item?", being quite ignorant of the technical side of things, I figured that had been decided by the ubiquity of the (TV story) suffix and so forth. But that's not really the question with the two Omegas. The question here is "When two in-universe entries have the same name, but one is much more prominent than the other, can the more prominent be given the undisambiguated title?" Or, to put it another way, "Within the context of in-universe items, can we have a primary topic?"

I've stated my preference: in this particular case, having the Time Lord at Omega and the Dalek at Omega (Evil of the Daleks). But if the community really prefers Omega (The Three Doctors), I can live with it. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 03:56, May 11, 2012 (UTC)

By the way, I'm serious about Master of the Land, which seems very strangely named to me. The character is credited simply as "The Master" in The Mind Robber, and "Master of the Land" is only a shorthand for "Master of the Land of Fiction". I'd think it would make more sense for that character's article to be either at Master of the Land of Fiction or Master (The Mind Robber) — with the Master remaining, as it is, the primary topic for the term. :D —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 04:03, May 11, 2012 (UTC)

I've found another case in which we seem to be using a "primary topic" rule: the Master's legman from The Deadly Assassin is at Goth, while the home of the Deathsmiths is Goth (planet). Which seems quite right to me, but if we decide that we don't have a "primary topic" rule the Time Lord would have to be moved to Goth (The Deadly Assassin) or some such, and Goth (disambiguation) to Goth. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 16:05, May 23, 2012 (UTC)

Sorry to have been away from this thread for a while. Quite rude of me, considering I was the one who started the damn thing. You raise an interesting point about a distinction between story names and in-universe topics. Is it possible to have primary topics amongst in-universe things? Of course it is. And, yanno, in a case like Omega or the Master, I think there is a dominant usage. The problem is the subjectivity of the term "primary". Who's the primary Borg, for instance? Who's the primary Charlie, William, Andrew, Elizabeth, Alex or Emily? Does the fact that a surname-less chracter appear on television give them "primacy" over an equally minor character in a comic strip? According to a more fundamental principle of the wiki — all media are equally valid — no.

The reason I favor a more blanket approach is that it's simply way easier to administrate. If the rule is "always disambiguate if there are two or more in-universe things," that's just easier to explain, enforce and work with. It may not always be the easiest thing to search for, but given proper use of tophats like {{you may}} and disambiguation pages, the average reader should be able to easily find what they're looking for.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 19:50: Fri 25 May 2012 

I think that creating tighter rules just so that we can say "this is how we do it" is perhaps going about things the wrong way. I favor the occasional "primary usage" case partly for flexibility, partly because I think it makes things easier for editors (avoiding unnecessary parentheticals in the most common cases), and partly because a slavish obedience to the "always disambiguate" rule would give us absurdities like Master (Spearhead from Space). Readers should be able to find what they're looking for via hatnotes and dab pages whatever we decide here.

I think that the occasional debate over "is there a primary usage here?" is a small price to pay for a smidgen of rational naming. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 02:40, May 27, 2012 (UTC)

I understand that the conversation has moved into more general discussion of primary terms and dab, but the second half of my question to CzechOut seems untouched on. If as CzechOut said earlier, "Omega" is deliberately unlike the Greek letter and so the Dalek should be Ω, then fine.

I still bring up my question about whether Α and Β really work, and how there aren't any characters in TV: Dalek called Alpha, Beta (and Omega; I assume that even if we go through with the Ω move, there'll still be a redirect in the meantime). -- Tybort (talk page) 17:25, July 3, 2012 (UTC)

I'd forgotten about this topic. I finally dug up my Evil of the Daleks soundtrack DVD, and I'm darned if I can hear a difference between the way that Troughton says "Omega" when he's referring to the humanised Dalek in that story, and the way he says "Omega" when he's referring to the Time Lord founder in The Three Doctors. The CD also has a handy PDFs of the original filming scripts, in which the Dalek's name is written as "Omega" in dialogue, not Ω. That said, there's also a stage direction, which reads as follows:

DOCTOR WHO EXTRACTS A NAIL FILE OUT OF HIS POCKET AND MARKS EACH DALEK IN TURN, SCRATCHING ON THEIR SURFACE FIRST AN 'A' THEN A 'B' AND LASTLY AN 'O'.

Now, I can't make out the symbol Troughton draws on the casing in the telesnaps, but I'm guessing that the only reason the script says 'O' instead of 'Ω' is that David Whitaker's typewriter didn't have the ability to type 'Ω', and that the marking in the actual episode was Ω... but I don't think that means his name is Ω, any more than Ood Sigma's name is Ood Σ (even though he's got a Σ on his tunic).

As for the Time Lord, I think that Baker and Martin did name him after the Greek letter (after their initial idea of OHM, or WHO upside-down, was vetoed). He's meant to be the ultimate villain, after a fashion: the first and last Time Lord. So pretending that his name is something different from the name given to the Dalek is nonsense, really.

For the record, my preferences are for the Time Lord to remain at Omega, and the three Daleks to be at Alpha (The Evil of the Daleks), Beta (The Evil of the Daleks) and Omega (The Evil of the Daleks). As an aside, I think that the disambiguation page that used to exist at Beta could be recreated, with links to Beta (The Evil of the Daleks), Beta (The Krotons) and other pages like Beta Two, Beta-4, Beta Caprisis and so forth. I think that having disambiguation pages at Alpha, Beta and Omega (disambiguation), with hatnotes on all the relevant pages, should make things simple enough for the reader. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 02:01, July 4, 2012 (UTC)