Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-7302713-20130519181606/@comment-7302713-20130520144548

I'm not saying that we alter the source material or how it's presented in any way. I've never said that, and in fact, using full names and alphetising by last name if available helps preserve the way the source material presents characters. The practice of using full names and alphebitising by last names is not a problem for only names. Doctor Who isn't the only place where there are people who have just one name. When this happens everywhere else, no one freaks out about it. Lists of musicians are organised alphebitically all the time without it being a problem that some muscisians only use one name or that other names are in fact the names of bands. This isn't a problem anywhere else, why is it a problem here? Yes, we have an unusually high number of people for whom we have no last name. So what?

Standard practices in the real world are important to us, because that's where our readers come from. Our article structures and lots of other things on this wiki come from real world standard practices. That's the only reason people don't come to this wiki and go "huh? what? i'm lost. this is useless". We don't have to alphebitise names in the template. We don't have to order the template at all. But we're having this discussion anyway because we realise that no order, or order by appearance might be confusing to people who aren't familiar with Doctor Who.

Alphebetising by first name or title and piping away the rest has complications. It means that we end up droping the Brigadier's actual name, or doing some weird organisational thing with him. It means that we can't group the Arwell family as a family. And the source material is what's grouping them. The Doctor doesn't go off and have an adventure with just Madge or Lily or Cyril. He doesn't have a relationship with any of them individually, not really. They're a package. Madge helps him out and as a reward, her family gets an adventure with the Doctor and the members of her family are considered companions. If and when the Doctor thinks of Lily, he thinks of her as Lily Arwell, Madge's daughter, and that's how the audience thinks of her as well.

If we can alphebitise by first name without losing the ability to group families, without getting rid of the Brigadier's name, etc., then I'll drop my objection. I'd think it's odd going to all this trouble to subvert a fairly standard real world practice that isn't a problem in the first place, but I won't object.

Also, let me point out that choosing the most frequently used name in the source material has been a problem before. Joan Redgrave isn't a companion, but she's a good example. She's called Redgrave more than she's called Joan. Using only the name Joan is problematic. So is using only the name Redgrave.

Names are treated a ton of different ways by Doctor Who. We have characters with only one name, and characters whose full names aren't known. We have characters who are frequently refered to with a title in addition to a name. We have characters who are frequently referred to with a title instead of their name. And we have good reason to group certain characters together (like the Arwell family).

The one name issue is a much more frequent issue than any other. But, BUT, it's not an issue that's a problem in terms of standard alphebitisation. And forcing a different alphebisation standard causes real problems for characters who don't fit this mold.

This preference seems to be based on the idea that alphebitisation by last name doesn't work for people with only one name, that there is some inherent problem. But there is no real problem. Everyone else who alphebitises names handles one named people just fine, and no one thinks it's weird that Alex comes after Alice Adams, when he'd come before plain old Alice. So why is this a problem for us? What makes us different? And are we really different enough that this is problematic enough to create a whole new system that has some fairly big inherent issues and requires some pretty big exceptions?