Talk:Chapter

Chapterhouse vs. Chapter

This case is not straightforward. The term Chapterhouse is used, for instance, in Lungbarrow. Thus, the basis for the rename should be discussed in more detail. Amorkuz ☎ 21:25, October 27, 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, but there's more to it than that. I guess I should've expected that someone would counter the speedy rename with Lungbarrow, since that's the oft-cited only appearance of the word "chapterhouse" in reference to the organisations that have elsewhere been called, in everything from TV: The Deadly Assassin to TV: Extremis, "Chapters". But I'm going to go out on a total limb and label that as a common misconception, since Lungbarrow happens to also feature such quotes as

• "The thought chant was taken up by Councillors of the minor Dromeian and Cerulean Chapters on the opposite galleries and on the Patrexean circle lower in."
• "Suddenly, there was a squad of guards before him, splendid in the ceremonial scarlet of the President's chapter-colours."
• "Unless an appeal is lodged within five days, the aforementioned House of Lungbarrow and all its appurtenances will, under the ancient laws subscribed by the founding triumvirate of the New Time, be excommunicated from the Matrix and the Prydonian Chapter."
• "Furthermore, the excommunication of the House will be revoked and the Family reinstated in the Prydonian Chapter."

When "chapterhouse" is used in Lungbarrow, it's always specifically in reference to the building used by a Chapter as its headquarters. For instance:

• "It was reported that the House of Lungbarrow was on the agenda at an emergency session of the Council of Cardinals at Prydon Chapterhouse."
• "Hooded in a black cloak, he pushed the scroll into the open beak of the great stone owl that guarded the Chapterhouse gate."
• "He sent the signal that would transmat him back to Prydon Chapterhouse."

Now, there are some quotes that seem to imply that the Prydonian Chapter is called the "Prydon Chapterhouse". After searching through Lungbarrow's 19 uses of "chapterhouse" and one use of "chapter-house", I've found them all:

• "All records of this mission have been expunged by order of the Prydon Chapterhouse."
• "If the Chapterhouse read those papers, Lungbarrow will be a laughing stock."

... and that's it! Those are really the only two quotes that use "chapterhouse" in this way and can't be understood at face value as references to buildings. (Feel free to verify in your own copy!) Of course, these two quotes aren't some inexplicable discrepancy; they're clear usages of metonymy: "A place is often used as a metonym for a government or other official institutions, for example, Brussels for the institutions of the European Union ..." In this case, the official institution identified by Lungbarrow itself as "the Prydonian Chapter" is referred to, via metonymy, as the name of its physical headquarters, the Prydon Chapterhouse.

And meanwhile, PROSE: The Book of the War also discusses several times the chapterhouses of the Great Houses, defined in that book as "the ancient, stately buildings where those bloodlines keep their reproductive technologies, complex anchors in time designed to firmly root their children in the soil and the history of the Homeworld." Lungbarrrow and The Book of the War agree: on Gallifrey, a "chapterhouse" is a physical building, not an organisation.

Of course, by the way the wiki currently stands, "chapterhouses of the Great Houses" doesn't make much sense: while in The Book of the War the phrase refers to a bloodline or family of people on the Homeworld, our article "Great House" discusses the physical buildings featured in Lungbarrow ... despite the fact that the phrase "Great House" never appears once in that novel. Seriously. It surprised me too. PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible is actually the first story to use "Great House", and it explicitly uses the phrase to refer to a bloodline:

• "The need to survive created the concept of rationalized families, born through their own genetic looms, that would stabilize the decimated population. Thus were founded the Great Houses of Gallifrey that we know today."

This usage is also echoed in PROSE: Blood Harvest:

• "Many of the Great Houses bore the taint of vampirism."

This is really confusing, because, as you might know, the Faction Paradox series refers to Time Lord society as the "Great Houses". Right now, if someone reads a story and goes, "Oh, what's a Great House?" and turns to the Tardis Wiki, they'd be told that it's a sentient building on Gallifrey, which is completely unhelpful. I could fix this by ripping apart Great House, but instead I've tried to set up a system of rename templates: Chapterhouse should be renamed to Chapter, since the organisations described on this page are called Chapters; Great House should be renamed to Chapterhouse, since the sentient houses that it describes are called "chapterhouses" in Lungbarrow, The Book of the War, and Against Nature; and User:NateBumber/Sandbox2 should get copy/pasted or moved to Great House. And then the wiki will have taken a giant step forward in accomodating the Faction Paradox series.

In conclusion ... wow, this was a lot longer than I expected when I started writing. You're right that I shouldn't have made it a speedy rename, but rename templates aren't exactly reliable when it comes to getting a page moved: just look at the Gateway, where a rename template sat for eightish months before I turned it into a speedy rename and, viola, it was moved within a week. I guess I looked at this page -- which has had a rename template (including a reason, and moved links!) since early July -- and figured it could benefit from the same treatment. Thanks for the correction, and I hope this can end with this page and Great House finally being moved to the locations they deserve. – N8 ☎ 19:23, October 28, 2017 (UTC)

After an unexpected hurdle in the form of a 4-year-old forum thread, finally the page is moved. How could I say know to a metonymy? However, after looking into the matter, it seems like a complete mess in terms of terminology used in different places. My own first instinct would have been to become agnostic and blindly repeat terms that are used in each source, explaining the discrepancy in the BTS. Generally, we can't force authors to be consistent about stuff, and this seems like a topic where consistency is not very high even when metonymy is taken into account. For instance, there is a link to Chapterhouse from Iris Wildthyme. It does refer to a house. Whether it refers to a chapterhouse is not clear from the description on the page. Not knowing the source material, I prefer to refrain from editing such things, but my first reflex would have been to remove the link. Also I would naturally assume that a Chapterhouse is the house of a Chapter, not of a House (which would be a Househouse?), especially since Chapters consist of houses. In other words, I am fine with the Prydonian Chapterhouse, but it's harder for me to wrap my mind around the Chapterhouse of the House of Lungbarrow, which seems to have been suggested by one of the links. Amorkuz ☎ 00:06, November 4, 2017 (UTC)

Thank you so much for making this move! Thrilled that it's finally done. But yeah, I feel you on the whole ambiguity of it all. In the Faction Paradox series, at least, the word "chapterhouse" is used pretty routinely (see The Book of the War and Against Nature, the latter of which licenses a ton of Marc Platt Lungbarrow concepts like Drudges and Kithriarchs) to describe the living headquarters of minor Great Houses exactly like Lungbarrow's House in Lungbarrow. (Which makes a little more sense given that, in the FP series, the six ruling Houses are themselves Houses with subHouses, so House Meddhoran is a part of House Dvora analogously to how the House of Lungbarrow is a part of the Prydonian Chapter.) So ... yeah. Seeing as no title better than "House" is given in Lungbarrow, and House (Lungbarrow) is a bit of a clunker (especially when every other relevant source calls them chapterhouses), I think Chapterhouse would be the best compromise for the page about the buildings currently described at Great House. But I'm certainly not 100% set in stone on this understanding. As long as Great House gets moved somewhere, so I can make that page actually accurate! – N8 ☎ 19:56, November 5, 2017 (UTC)

I feel like I have to counsel against the use of changing a rename tag to a speedy rename tag just to get a quick resolution. The speedy rename tag is to only be used for "pages that have obvious, non-controversial errors in their titles for swift renaming. By 'obvious and non-controversial', we mean that the need to move the page is clear under T:DAB or T:NAMING." Any page that requires discussion or has any question does not get the speedy tag. Speedy rename tags that are not obvious to the admins can be changed to rename tags, but the reverse is not to be done unless the case matches that described at Template:Speedy rename. Sometimes the admins just don't have enough information to move a rename page; changing it to a speedy rename is not the solution. Thanks, Shambala108 ☎ 00:23, November 4, 2017 (UTC)

Gotcha. – N8 ☎ 19:56, November 5, 2017 (UTC)