User:Mini-mitch/Sandbox Three/Article naming
This wiki has some rules regarding how articles should be named. Probably the two most basic are:
- Article names should be in singular form, not plural. An exception would be a group such as The Beatles, or an organisation such as the United Nations, as the official, legal names of these are in plural form.
and
- Unless the name of the article contains a proper noun, only the first word should be capitalised.
Some other rules that apply to all types of article are:
- Ampersands (&) should never replace the word "and", unless the credit actually contains one, or the title actually uses one. For instance, the ampersands in Northwest Imaging & FX and Love & Monsters are fine, but Mad Dogs & Englishmen is incorrect, since the title is Mad Dogs and Englishmen. (The deciding forum discussion is here.)
- Article names cannot contain the characters |, #, <, >, {, }, [, and ]. For advice about how to handle a page which should include one of these characters, like 2|entertain or Man #1, please see this discussion.
- It is technically possible for article titles to contain single quotation marks, and it usually works without incident. After all, a single quotation mark is simply an apostrophe. However, it's recommended that single quotation marks be replaced by double quotation marks, especially when the article title needs to be italicised. This is because the single quotation mark has a meaning in wiki markup, whereas the double quotation mark does not. This recommendation also maintains consistency with the general ruling to preference double quotation marks, below.
Naming of specific types of articles[[edit] | [edit source]]
Serials[[edit] | [edit source]]
For television serials, especially those produced before The Savages, the name given in the BBC's episode guide is preferred. Alternate names and names of individual episodes from the Hartnell era should redirect to the name given in the BBC guide. "Inside the Spaceship" should redirect to The Edge of Destruction, while the episode "The Cave of Skulls" and the serial's production title of 100,000 BC should redirect to An Unearthly Child. The notion of allowing redirects from Hartnell-era episode names to the parent serial was granted by way of a forum discussion — one that simultaneously rejected the creation of full articles about Hartnell episodes.
This discussion further stipulated that Hartnell-era episodes should link to the plot sections of serial pages. For instance, "Dangerous Journey" redirects not just to Planet of Giants, but specifically to the section Planet of Giants#Dangerous Journey (2). That way, readers are taken directly to the part of the article that relates to the named episode.
The exception to this way of doing things is Children of Earth. According to a hotly contested forum decision, COE is considered the name of series 3 of Torchwood, and the individual episodes are to be given their own pages. Children of Earth is thus handled differently to the usual practice with serialised stories in the "classic" era of Doctor Who, or with The End of Time, in which individual episodes do not get their own, separate articles.
Characters[[edit] | [edit source]]
General guidelines[[edit] | [edit source]]
By forum consensus, 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. If a full name is provided, though is not generally used, the body text of the article itself should start with it. For example, the article should be named "Amy Pond", but should begin with:
- "Amelia Jessica Pond, more commonly called Amy Pond, was a companion of ..."
Both forum and talk page discussions agree that characters who get married do not automatically have their articles renamed to assume the last name of their spouse. The clearest example of this is Gwen Cooper, who's never seriously referred to as "Gwen Williams". But it also applies to Amy Pond, especially since an explicit joke is made about the matter in the script of The Big Bang. Until the broadcast of Death of the Doctor, Jo Grant's article remained set at her maiden name. However, it has since been changed to Jo Jones, as the character, in-narrative, made it clear that she went by the name "Jones". The case of "Martha Smith-Jones" is ambiguous, because she only gets the name in end credits and other out-of-universe sources. "Donna Temple-Noble", however, is made explicit by Wilf in The End of Time.
Honourifics[[edit] | [edit source]]
Honourifics such as Mr, Mrs, Dr, Professor, religious ranks, or military ranks should not be included in article titles about the person themselves.
For example, a character such as Winfold Hobbes may have been listed in the credits as "Professor Hobbes". Therefore, per our rules on crew listings, that's how his name should appear on the Midnight page. However, his full name, without the title "Professor", is used to title his article.
Things named for people with honourifics, such as saints, should include the honourific, as with St Jude's Hospital or St John's Monastery.
Note, too, that our spelling policy requires British spellings. This has an impact on honourifics, in that the British do not use a period after any honourific that begins and ends with the same letters as the full word. Thus, because doctor begins with a d and ends with an r — and because saint begins with an s and ends with a t — the usual British rendering of the honourifics are Dr and St, sans periods. Thus, this is the spelling pattern we will attempt to enforce on this wiki, even though Dr. Who is commonly seen in the Doctor Who end credits of the 1960s and 1970s.
Finally, if a character is widely known by a title, such as Sergeant Benton, then a redirect can be created under that name, pointing to the proper article title. This however should only be done sparingly, and only with major characters.
Exactly one character, Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, shall have a redirect on his honourific. Although there are indeed other Brigadiers in the DWU, only he shall be the Brigadier.
Characters with only one name[[edit] | [edit source]]
For characters who only have one name given such as Spencer, the story in which they appeared is added to the article name to disambiguate between articles; Spencer (The Faceless Ones), Spencer (The War Games), Spencer (Doctor Who and the Silurians). This is only done if there are multiple uses of the character's name such as the Spencer example, if the character has only a single name and no other articles direct to that single name it does not need to be disambiguated.
According to a forum ruling, if a character who needs to be disambiguated has appeared in multiple stories or episodes, use the first story or episode as the disambiguation term. For instance, Nancy from The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances is at Nancy (The Empty Child).
- The concept of disambiguation is covered in greater detail by our disambiguation policy.
Magazine issues[[edit] | [edit source]]
Outside of this wiki, the usual way of referring to the 273rd issue of a magazine is to write it thus: [Magazine name] #273. This nomenclature is denied us in the MediaWiki software that underpins this wiki, however. The # character in a link tells the software to link to a section of an article. For instance, [[Tardis:Manual of Style#Magazine issues]] creates a specific link to this section of this article. So while DWM #273 creates a blue link and appears to work, it is actually linking to DWM and looking for the section called "273". Thus, it produces a false blue link. This phenomenon is perhaps easier to see with a red link. [[DWM Issue #273]] creates a red link — DWM Issue #273 — because it's actually linking to the article DWM Issue (which doesn't exist) and looking for the section named "273".
Because of this technical condition, there is a need for magazine issues to be named in a certain way. The rule is this:
- Take the indicia title of the majority of issues in the run, make an exact acronym of it, then add the issue number.
Hence, the 273rd issue of Doctor Who Magazine becomes DWM 273. And because the name is based on the name in the majority of issues, we have DWM 12, not DWW 12. Easy.
What's perhaps less clear is that acronyms don't necessarily match our prefix system. For instance, Torchwood, the series, is prefixed here as TV. However, the 12th issue of Torchwood Magazine is TM 12, since TV isn't actually an acronym of Torchwood.
Also, if there are instances where the acronym of the publication's title wouldn't be clear, the two digits of the year of first publication are appended. For example, the American Doctor Who comic book was a publication that began in 1984. To abbreviate to DW would be ambiguous as there are several American comic books with the title Doctor Who. Calling it "DWUS" would likewise be ambiguous, because . . . there are several American comic books with the title Doctor Who. Thus, we have to go to the only thing that truly distinguishes the publications: the year. The 15th issue of the Marvel US Doctor Who comic is therefore DW84 15.
Astronomical objects[[edit] | [edit source]]
Some authors use Roman numerals when naming astronomical objects: Metebelis III, Gorgol XIII, Minyos II, Gallifrey XII. Others use Arabic numerals: 4-X-Alpha-4, Star system 690, Nebulax 4, Algol 7. Still others use the English word for a numeral: Gallifraxion Four, Boojus Five, Beta Two. A few even use multiple numbering systems: 16 Alpha Leonis One.
According to an early forum ruling, editors should make no attempt to invent a standard nomenclature. Rather, they should use whatever numbering system the author used. In the case of performed stories, where no novelisation or published scripts exist, editors are freer to use their best judgment. For this reason there has occasionally been some redirection between the different numbering systems, as with Arcateen V and Arcateen 5. Initially only spoken aloud, Arcateen 5 was moved to Arcateen V after REF: The Torchwood Archives established the usage of Roman numerals.
