User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-4028641-20151101035254/@comment-5918438-20151229052313

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Bwburke94 wrote: We might have to resort to out-of-universe sources to take Petronella Osgood as a valid name for the identity

No. (T:VS)

Bwburke94 wrote: I have no objections to this, as long as the human and the identity share a page. The identity taken by "Zygon Osgood" and later by Bonnie is the identity initially held by the human.

Yes. (T:LOGIC)

Bwburke94 wrote: My main issue with this proposal is that there is no reason to parenthesise any of this. While it is true that Zygon Kate Stewart merely took the form of Kate Stewart, we have an existing method in place for characters only known by an alias, namely Template:Retitle.

I don't know what you mean by this. All {{retitle}} changes is the h1, or the heading at the top of the page. What we're talking about here is the PAGENAME, which needs to follow T:NAMING, T:DAB, etc. "Zygon Kate Stewart", as you call them, is not Kate Stewart, and did not even identify as such. That Zygon took Kate's form. Kate Stewart was not really their alias at any point. They were simply playing the part. "I get so into character". This is a very, very different case to Jack Harkness. Jack Harkness is not at all his birth name, but it is his identity. He keeps that name for thousands of years after adopting it, and refers to himself as Jack and nothing else. This Zygon pretended to be Kate for a while, but is not Kate.

Furthermore, "Zygon [Name]" is not something found in the script, and there is zero precedent for that sort of naming elsewhere on the wiki. T:DAB specifies that when a page needs disambiguation—when there are two or more pages with similar names—we use dab terms to distinguish them. Dumping related words together has no precedence in T:CHAR NAMES. In fact, we are told to use the name given in the credits. The name in the credits of Day etc is "Zygons". In a typical case, that character would be Zygon (The Day of the Doctor). However, there are several Zygons in The Day of the Doctor. So, Zygon (Kate Stewart) is the only valid other way to disambiguate in this case. Again, the only name we have for this character is "Zygon". We do not know their name.

"Zygon [Name]" is not, and never was, an option. For clones and duplicates of an original, we tend to name them Martha Jones (clone), Mickey Smith (Auton), Jennifer Lucas (Ganger). Those people are derived from the originals, and exist as a result. Jennifer Lucas the Ganger is Jennifer Lucas. Zygons are not the same. They put on the appearance of others, much like a Slitheen puts on a body suit, but does not become that person.

Disambiguation is not an option you can dislike. Disambiguation is a requirement when two pages have similar names, not something to be avoided.

Bwburke94 wrote: SOTO, here's a hypothetical: if another character named Martha Jones appears, how would the article of Tenth Doctor companion Martha Jones be titled?

Martha Jones (Made of Steel). Policy is policy. When we decided that characters will be disambiguated by their first story, we had these cases in mind as well. Not all recurring characters have unique enough names to not require dabbing. John Hart (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang), I'm pretty sure, has way more screentime than John Hart (The Sea Devils), and plays a major role in the context of an entire series of Torchwood. He is not by any means a "primary topic", though. I cannot speak for whoever decided to keep Jack Harkness as Jack Harkness once we met the originator of the name, but I assume it was because that would be like calling the Doctor The Doctor (An Unearthly Child). It takes a lot to gain "primary topic" status. Martha Jones is only a primary topic in the sense that her duplicates—Martha Jones (clone) and Martha Jones (robot)—are disambiguated and she is not, because she is the original. Same as Victoria is the Queen, and not the disambiguation page. TARDIS is a main topic, and would not get disambiguation. If there was a main Gallifrey, the planet of the Time Lords would remain Gallifrey.

I am considering Osgood as a potential exception to this rule not because she is a central character and dabbing would be "confusing", but because not all Osgoods actually originated in that story. The rule, as it currently stands, it to disambiguate by first story. The amount of stories or media a character is in does not change that. If either of you want to challenge the policy of T:DAB, feel free to start a new forum thread to do so. The topic of this thread, however, is Osgood. According to policy, she should get (The Day of the Doctor) dabbing. However, she might (might) be an exception of some sort to the rule, because not all Osgoods originated then. However, I'm starting to think she isn't an exception at all. Osgood did originate in The Day of the Doctor. Yes, other people joined that identity, but her first story was still Day. It'd be hard to debate that without a time machine to change the facts themselves.

Bwburke94 wrote: With Nancy, she appears only in two consecutive episodes widely considered a two-parter, and no other Nancy appears in any story in which she appears. We disambiguate by the first of those episodes merely for consistency.

Ashildr, if another character by the name exists, would similarly be disambiguated by the first story in which she appears, unless we locate her article at Me instead. We would not locate it at Ashildr (Me) or Me (Ashildr), as there is no reason to make an exception to the disambiguation policy.

To reiterate, that is how the policy goes. Exceptions to any policy are not everyday occurrences. It's not "let's follow the policy when convenient". It's "let's follow policy, period." Except in very specific and very rare circumstances where these conventions could not work. It's not a matter of merely choosing to be "consistent". And we do not give preferential treatment to characters which have appeared in a lot of stories, or are more well known:

"Note, though, that this is a very different organising principle to that which you'll find on other wikis, like Wikipedia. There, the notion is that relative popularity determines which page goes without a dab term. If we were set up like Wikipedia, Castrovalva would lead to the TV story, because it is by far the thing most people associate with the term "Castrovalva".

"But our system isn't like that. We consistently choose to prioritise on the in-universe/out-of-universe metric, giving no weight at all to most linked to /least linked to, or most searched for/least searched for."

-T:DAB

We don't only follow T:DAB when a character only appears in a small amount of stories. Unless something is by an enormous margin a primary topic..it gets dabbed when there's another thing by the same name.

Ashildr would definitely be Ashildr (The Girl Who Died). Not Me because a) that's a personal pronoun b) the Doctor reiterates on multiple occasions that that is her name. Me (The Girl Who Died) is a perfectly valid redirect, though.

Bwburke94 wrote: Osgood (as a collective identity) did not appear until The Zygon Invasion, as when Death in Heaven aired there was no reason to suspect the Osgood in this episode may have been the Zygon. However, Osgood (the human) first appeared in Day, so we can't follow all our policies without making the name too exclusive.

An interesting take. "Too exclusive". Yes, interesting.

Bwburke94 wrote: Right now, this is not true, so as it currently stands novelisations do not figure into article titles. Oddly, our current policy states novelisations are valid when not contradicted by the original work, but for whatever reason this policy doesn't apply to titles.

This is actually not so. Novelisations do count for titles. Sometimes, we simply miss out on things. If a first name, or a more specific name, is given in a novelisation, we use that as the primary title of the character's page. Pages where this has not been carried out in no way signify policy; they simply got through the cracks. There is currently a {{speedy rename}} on Osgood (The Seeds of Death), and it will be Harry Osgood as soon as I get around to carrying it out. Novelisations are not in any way invalid, but they are trumped by the TV story from which they originated; same with any other adaptations, in audio for example (unless the adaptation is only loose and essentially its own story, as with Dalek and Human Nature/The Family of Blood. The original is pretty much always deemed most reputable in the case of narrative contradictions.

Finally:

Amorkuz wrote: The standard dabbing policy should not be applied to characters appearing in more than one media as per T:NPOV.

Strongly disagree. Most recurring characters appear in more than one medium, as has been pointed out. The policy is the policy right now, which you are bound to. Again, feel free to start a new forum discussion on this. But, in my view certainly, it is not a violation of medium neutrality to allow for the first appearance of a character to be considered their first appearance. Martha Jones, dabbed, would be Martha Jones (Made of Steel), despite this not being popularly known. A first appearance is a first appearance, and the community decided, long ago, that we disambiguate character pages by their first appearance, regardless of whether or not that story is popularly known.

Characters are named according to the story (or episode) they first appeared in, even if they appear in subsequent stories for which they are arguably more famous.

-T:DAB