User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-4028641-20151101035254/@comment-1827503-20151228150608

SOTO's reply:

SOTO wrote: It's not actually a very complicated case: Osgood is an identity. The whole point of her character in the Zygon two-parter is that once both assumed that identity, neither was specifically human and neither was specifically Zygon. If we must put something in the infobox as species, Osgood literally gives us "hybrid" in the script.

So. Osgood is Osgood, regardless of origins. It is an identity, and it is a character. Prior to TDOTD, that identity belonged to only one individual. So in the history section of the one Osgood page, it would, at first, simply be human Osgood's story. Prior to to the peace treaty Day, "Zygon Osgood", as we seem to be calling her here, did not identify as Osgood. Prior to the end of Inversion, Bonnie did not identify as Osgood.

Thus, the Osgood Zygon from Day still needs their own page, but their history ends when they actually become Osgood, and Osgood's joint history continues on the Osgood page. The Zygon who mocked Osgood, stole her inhaler, who I believe tried to attack Clara, is not Osgood. That Zygon, though, slightly later on in their history, became Osgood, and at that point it all merges. No duplicate information needed on the Zygon page, because that individual ceased to be that Zygon that was impersonating Osgood, and became one of two Osgoods, each with a different species.

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.

SOTO wrote: ''Let's call that page Zygon (Osgood) for now, because I think some unconventional dabbing for this case is in order. That character is a Zygon, and not actually Osgood; "Osgood" is simply the only identifier we have for that Zygon, because that was the form they took and no other name was revealed. Zygon Kate Stewart should be Zygon (Kate Stewart) as well, Zygon (Elizabeth), Zygon (horse), etc. In normal circumstances, the disambiguation would be the story page, but in this case there are several Zygons from the same story that each need individual pages. (On a slightly off-topic note, I think we should do the same with Slitheen whose actual names we don't know—Slitheen (Human They're Impersonating) ''

''I think it's a very different case with Zygons than it was with Gangers, who were the people they were copied from, simply not human. These Zygons were simply Zygons who we characterise by the people they pretended to be. If we ever do find out which Osgood is which, which I believe we won't, and we decide to separate them, then they would get Ganger-like treatment, with Osgood as the main name, and, say, (Zygon) and (Bonnie) as disambiguation terms.'' Though obviously we can point out that immediately after the merge, each knew which they were because Zygon Osgood gave human Osgood her inhaler, unless something new comes up in future, we should not attempt to separate Osgood by her species at any point after the inhaler scene. We can only state that Osgood knew which species she belonged to, and treat all self-identifying Osgoods as one identity, which no distinctions made except that there were more than one. "One of the Osgoods..." "Osgood told the Doctor..." "The Osgoods worked together to..."

They have a shared identity. Why does everybody feel so strongly that she must be separated, when clearly what Osgood wants is to be considered collectively, and as simply Osgood, regardless of her species. Attempting to make divisions where no divisions actually exist in her identity would be akin to trying to shove real-world non-binary people into a binary gender, just because you feel they must be assigned one. It was actually kind of rude for the Doctor to be continually asking her, because why should it matter? She is Osgood.

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.

SOTO wrote: Anyway, in the same vein, Bonnie (The Zygon Invasion), who does have a name of her own, would be the same. She'd have her own page, her own history, leading up to her taking the identity of Osgood, at which point she would simply be Osgood, and would be part of the joint history from then on. So Bonnie's infobox picture would be of her in Clara's form, or maybe in Zygon and Clara form. At the end of her biography, she ceases to be Bonnie at all and becomes Osgood. Simple. Her personality is her personality as Bonnie, while she was identifying as such, just like the Sixth Doctor's personality section is that incarnation's personality and not the following Doctor's. She effectively becomes a different person in the same manner.

Of course, if there weren't three potential individuals melded into one identity, and Bonnie was the only surviving Osgood, Bonnie's page would just have an "As Osgood" section. This is not the case we are dealing with, though, and I believe the solution is clear. Once again: one central Osgood (The Day of the Doctor) (we can't actually say we know her first name at this point, because we don't believe the Doctor on "Basil", and she called him that when he called her "Petronella" at the end of Inversion), and pages as well for Zygon (Osgood), the one who impersonates Osgood and steals her inhaler, and Bonnie (The Zygon Invasion), the one who impersonates Clara and leads the revolution. At one point, those two were separate entities from Osgood, and those pages would cover those lives, as effectively ending when they each become Osgood.

In timeline format:
 * 1)  Joining UNIT—before Human-Zygon treaty (1 Osgood): There is one Osgood (The Day of the Doctor). She is human and works for UNIT.
 * 2)  Start of Operation Double—'s arrival (1 Osgood + Zygon = 2 Osgoods): Zygon (Osgood) becomes Osgood, and there are two Osgoods.
 * 3)  Missy's murder—Zygon rebellion (2 Osgoods - 1 Osgood): Missy kills one of the Osgoods, and the remaining Osgood does not identify as either human or Zygon specifically, refusing to tell anyone what her species is.
 * 4)  Rebellion steps down—present time (1 Osgood + Bonnie = 2 Osgoods): Bonnie (The Zygon Invasion) becomes an Osgood, and there are two Osgoods again, at least one of which is a Zygon. Both of which are Osgood, just like the one who had died.

Ignoring the "Petronella" issue for now, I support the idea of each Osgood having their own page, and of Bonnie's article depicting her in Zygon form.

Amorkuz's reply:

Amorkuz wrote: Since any simplification is a win, I would support cutting from four pages to three by uniting the "identity" page with the "human" page. There is a certain appeal in the reasoning that the Zygons functionally become the human Osgood.

I am, however, a bit worried about the names: the search often provides a drop-down menu with no context. It would be preferable if the page names in this drop-down menu are clear enough for most users to click on the one they search for from the very first attempt. As always, Bonnie (The Zygon Invasion) is not problematic. Zygon (Osgood) is a bit worse as it could refer to Bonnie. What I mean is a person not privy to this discussion could think that Bonnie is a Zygon who impersonated Osgood at some point, and the Bonnie page would not show in a search for Osgood (methinks?). Is it possible to add the story name to it in addition to Osgood, e.g., Zygon (Osgood, The Day of the Doctor) or a variation thereof? And now for the Osgood page. Osgood (The Day of the Doctor) might be very confusing, IMHO. The story name could be seen as excluding all the other stories with her. In fact, is there a precedent of using a story name as a disambiguation for a character appearing in more than one story? I'm not sure what the best solution here is. Petronella would surely help. Could we maybe take her word on it? She's not been known to lie as much as the Doctor.

Our existing disambiguation policy would block Zygon (Osgood), and as stated above in my reply to SOTO, I'm against using character names as disambiguation. Zygon Osgood (The Day of the Doctor) is the logical best option if disambiguation is needed, with only the story's title as disambiguation.

I do not feel like having TDOTD in the page title excludes all the other stories with her, but in the specific case of Osgood, anything after the inhaler scene wouldn't go on the Zygon's article anyway.

SOTO's replies:

SOTO wrote: Zygon (Osgood) could not feasibly refer to Bonnie (The Zygon Invasion) any more than UNIT soldier (The Three Doctors) could refer to Palmer (The Three Doctors) or John Benton, also UNIT soldiers in that story. But UNIT soldier is the unnamed UNIT soldier, and we have names for those other two, and "UNIT soldier" is what we're given in the credits. For Name, all we're given in the credits is "Zygons", played by Aidan Cook and Paul Kasey (those are the actors who played Zygon Osgood, Zygon Kate, etc, whenever they were not in "human" form). Unlike UNIT soldier, though, we cannot simply name her Zygon (The Name of the Doctor) and be on our way—because there are many, many many Zygons in The Name of the Doctor.

Therefore, we have to go beyond standard disambiguation conventions. (If there's no other way to separate them, we even allow titles like "Mr" and "Mrs" to enter into titles because two people known only by that last name appeared in the same story.) Starting from the name Zygons, given in the credits to include all the "unmasked" Zygons throughout the story, we can only really do: (list of names excluded)

Because Osgood is such an unusual case, our normal disambiguation rules might need to be bent a bit. Zygon Osgood from Day may or may not need disambiguation.

I do not see the Zygon situation as similar to honourifics, except for the fact that Zygon (The Day of the Doctor) is off limits. You're using honourifics to explain why disambiguation is needed, but do they have anything to do with Osgood?

SOTO wrote: The name "Petronella" is only ever used in the same context as "Basil". In order to consider "Petronella" anything other than something she came up with in the moment in response to Basil, we would have to accept Basil as the Doctor's true first name. In the final scene, the Doctor calls her Petronella, and she calls him Basil in return. You don't have to go very far into subtext to realise that the script really wants to get across that she was lying about her first name, and we still don't know that, just like we still don't know which of the original two Osgoods is the one that survived.

Yes, it would make things easier for us if we accepted Petronella as her true name, but there is simply no basis for that at this time. At the moment, it's only used in Inversion, and it's not clear at all, given the only context in which it was spoken, that this was her real name (in fact the script goes to lengths to make sure we know it's not). However. If a story, maybe a BF adventure, (story, not anything out-of-universe, written not by the writers of the story, but quite possibly by some confused BBC and/or BF employees who just didn't get that whole Petronella thing) uses that as her first name, honestly, unambiguously, then we can discuss this again, and possibly move the page accordingly.

Both of us have switched our opinions on "Petronella" since Inversion initially aired. The story does go out of its way to avoid confirming "Petronella", but neither did it clearly imply it's not her name. We might want to keep that name out of the article's title, but acknowledge that it might be her first name, similar to characters with names confirmed by a novelisation.

Amorkuz's reply:

Amorkuz wrote: This, however, does not erase my second concern, the Osgood (The Day of the Doctor) designation. Here is a mental experiment. I want to find the information on the Osgood collective. I type "Osgood" and get several pages. The closest is the above mentioned one. But I know that the collective was not created in The Day of the Doctor, not onscreen anyways. Moreover, I know that Osgood was purely human in this story and became a weird hybrid afterwards. So this The Day of the Doctor designation suggests that this page is NOT about the collective and IS ONLY about the human, which is the opposite of SOTO's suggestion.

This is why, while waiting on the Petronella leak status, I would still prefer to find some other, unconventional dabbing for "Osgood" that would not suggest anything wrong. How about Osgood (UNIT)? To the best of my understanding, Osgood (The Seeds of Death) did not work for UNIT, but all Osgood hybrids do. Plus, it is inclusive of Extinction, which in Osgood's timeline happens before The Day of the Doctor.

Tom Osgood, whose first name is given only in prose, also worked for UNIT. This means that any disambiguation involving UNIT has to account for him as well. Osgood from The Seeds of Death can have his article located at Harry Osgood if the page name Osgood is needed for the collective identity.

SOTO's reply:

SOTO wrote: Eh, I see what you're saying. It's the first appearance of the first Osgood, and of the second Osgood, but not the third (originally Bonnie), and it's not the first appearance of this idea of anyone but the human Osgood being really Osgood. "Osgood" as a "hybrid", as said in the script, or a shared identity, began in The Zygon Invasion. I get what you're saying.

T:DAB and T:ONE NAME say always dab by the name of the story in which the character first appeared. But exceptions can sometimes be made, in rare cases, by forum discussions. None have been made so far, so what's your reasoning behind an exception being made for this case?

''I can only think of Jack Harkness as a sort-of exception. We don't dab his page even though the original Jack Harkness also has a page, at Jack Harkness (Captain Jack Harkness). Also, if we go with my plan, all the "Zygon (character)" pages will definitely be an exception.''

If we do decide that she deserves an exception because she's multiple individuals and not all debuted in The Day of the Doctor, then I might suggest Osgood (UNIT scientist) instead of simply (UNIT). While we obviously have no conventions for non-story character dabs, the audio story dab is (audio story) rather than (audio), for example.

Outside of Time Lords known as "The (x)" such as the Doctor and the Master, I believe Jack Harkness is the only exception, but the fact exceptions have been made is crucial to this. SOTO, here's a hypothetical: if another character named Martha Jones appears, how would the article of Tenth Doctor companion Martha Jones be titled?

Also, I will continue to insist on Template:Retitle for characters known only by an alias, as we used in the case of Jack Harkness, but it seems I may be losing that argument.

Amorkuz's replies:

Amorkuz wrote: Let me try to analyze the three cases of a character present in several stories and dabbed by the first appearance I was pointed at: 1) Nancy (The Empty Child), 2) Jack Harkness and 3) Osgood (The Day of the Doctor). I am going to argue that the standard policy is good for 1) where it has been applied, is bad for 2) where it hasn't been applied (would be Jack Harkness (The Empty Child) otherwise) and is bad for 3) where we should not apply it.

The criterion of goodness/badness for me is simple: does the disambiguation term itself add ambiguity? If it does, it's bad as it doesn't do its job.

Why the dab (The Empty Child) is sufficient for 1) even though Nancy also appears in The Doctor Dances? This case is overly simple really. The two episodes are essentially one story, as confirmed by their story numbers (164a and 164b). But let's imagine we uncover some other Ashildr in some forgotten comic. The dab (The Girl Who Died) would still work throughout Season 9, right, despite her changing from human to hybrid? We've seen many transformations that have no effect on the naming, e.g., Rose, Jack, Brig, etc. I conclude that the creation of the Osgood collective by itself should not affect the naming scheme.

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.

Amorkuz wrote: So what would make dabbing by the first appearance bad? What made it bad for Jack and is also happening with Osgood? I think, the presence of another individual with the exact same name: Jack Harkness (Captain Jack Harkness) or both Zygon (Osgood) and Bonnie (The Zygon Invasion). Note that we want to separate the second Jack Harkness but to conjoin the second and third Osgood. The situation is as follows: we have one individual, Ind1, introduced in Story1, and then someone else, Ind2, who has the same Name as Ind1, introduced in Story2. The standard policy prescribes to call them Name (Story1) and Name (Story2). This is what is done with the second Jack Harkness but not the first. (And I think it is extremely confusing because the name of the story just happens to be applicable to both Jack Harknesses as individuals.) But it kinda works (for the second one), at least for someone familiar with the policy.

But let us imagine a user who has not read all the policies (yes, I'm looking at myself). Imagine someone not knowing the first appearance policy for dabbing. Well, both Jack Harknesses are in Captain Jack Harkness, so which one is the new one? The purpose of the dabbing to separate unambiguously is mildly violated by the dabbing for Ind2 being too inclusive.

The Osgood case is for me the reverse situation. Here the dabbing for Ind1 is too exclusive: the purpose of dabbing is to include all Osgoods into the article for the human Osgood, whereas the other parts of Osgood did not yet appear in The Day of the Doctor.

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.

Amorkuz wrote: And the second and last point I want to make is that using first appearance story as the dab term is not the best idea if a character appeared in more than one medium (Jack in TV Doctor Who, TV Torchwood and COMIC; Osgood in TV Doctor Who and AUDIO UNIT). It seems to me that doing so would violate at least the spirit of Neutral point of view policy, item 1. All media are equal. To me, this means not only that information from one is equally important as from another, but also that the absence of information from one media should not preclude a user from using the Wikia efficiently. I know I would be very cross if Izzy was disambiguated with Endgame because I saw her in The Company of Friends and have no idea whether she is the same as in Endgame. I feel I should not be made to know all comic stories to be able to disambiguate efficiently. By the same token, I think a person should not be made to watch the New Who TV series to be able to disambiguate Jack or Osgood. Someone who only watches Torchwood or only listens to UNIT audios gets no useful information from (The Empty Child) or (The Day of the Doctor) respectively. For them citing a short description like (time agent) or (UNIT scientist) seems beneficial.

The majority of televised characters have appeared in more than one medium, because of novelisations and other non-televised works. If all media are equal, as you state, then it makes no difference what medium any specific story is in. Would John Hart (Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) be an inappropriate title because he later appeared in later unconnected stories? I don't think so.

Amorkuz wrote: Hmmm... I feel bad for Osgood (The Seeds of Death) now. His first name was also given (in a novelisation) as Harry, but his page is not called Harry Osgood, whereas Tom Osgood's is because the name Tom was given in a book. Is there some policy making novelisations of lesser importance than original books? (Still on-topic for Osgood, hopefully.)

Secondly, this Tom is not a bad guy. He wouldn't want to get in a way. If his first name is kept, I think SOTO's argument from above explains why Osgood is not Tom Osgood. But even if we rename his page to Osgood (Dæmons) or remove his first name mentally, I think they can be nicely distinguished by Osgood (UNIT sergeant) and Osgood (UNIT scientist). Tom Osgood actually appears in the cast as Sgt. Osgood (according to The Dæmons). And his supposed daughter (as per Moffat's implicit intension) is not a sergeant, right?

If novelisations are to be treated as equal to other prosaic works, then either the Osgood from The Seeds of Death is at Harry Osgood or the Osgood from The Daemons is at Osgood (The Daemons). 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.

And no, we are not expecting our readers to know the Osgood from The Daemons was a sergeant, which sort of disqualifies Osgood (UNIT scientist) as a title because it relies on that information.