User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-188432-20121207092215/@comment-188432-20130106012325

From Tardis Wiki, the free Doctor Who reference

OttselSpy25 wrote:

What it boils down to, in my opinion that is, is that Tardis Information System is too silly a name for high popularity,

Why? Or, more elaborately, why is it less silly than our misunderstanding of the script that brought us the "index file"? I'd almost wager money that if Christopher H. Bidmead has ever heard of our little wiki, he's probably raised an eyebrow over our name.

"tardis" also is simply not good enough.

Elaborate, please. It's what we are commonly called throughout the Wikia network. It's our URL and our interwiki link name. How is it not good enough?

Also "The Index File" is cannon

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Stop it with the the conflation of "canon"and "valid source" already.

Anyway, you seem to be suggesting that you can just sort of assemble a name from whatever parts happen to be lying around. And while that might be true, that's not how this name was chosen, as the above evidence clearly shows. "Tardis Index File" was born of a mistake, not an intentional mashup. For years, TARDIS Index File was linked not to a page in the Tardis namespace which explained what the wiki was about. Instead it was the name of what is, as of today, the TARDIS information system article. Freethinker1of1 wrongly believed that the phrases "Tardis Index File" and "Tardis Information System" were synonyms, so he went for the shorter one.

I'm not saying that we can't take two phrases and mash them together to create something which is not actually present in a narrative. I'm saying that "Tardis Index File" feels like an obvious mistake to anyone who has actually seen Castrovalva lately.