Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-4028641-20151101035254/@comment-24894325-20151227223955

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.

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.

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.

To sum up,
 * I think the situations when Ind1 and Ind2 have the same Name, Ind1 first appears in Story1 and Ind2 first appears in Story2, where Ind1 also appears --- such situations warrant a discussion whether the standard policy should be used or deviated from. In the case of Jack, it was deviated from.
 * The standard dabbing policy should not be applied to characters appearing in more than one media as per T:NPOV.

Both situations are likely to be rare and not accidental, so this would probably not affect too many pages/editors.