Board Thread:The Panopticon/@comment-7302713-20130510215247/@comment-7302713-20130512161304

Let me clarify. I've found that (in my experience only) we refer to characters by first name for the most part. Referring to characters by their last names is most certainly an outlier. But, sometimes, particularly in in-universe biographies we start to refer to one or more characters by their last name. Now it's true that we don't always know last names for characters, and that some characters don't even have last names. Having multiple names, having a surname--these are all cultural artifacts. These practices are not universal even in the real world, so to expect that they'd be universal in the world of Doctor Who is more than a little silly. That being said, I don't really have a problem with referring to characters by their last names in some formats. John Smith is a real-world, human persona. So is for that matter Jackson Lake. Referring to them by their last names is perfectly acceptable.

My real problem is the massive variation that we have. We have both formats being used. We have both formats being used within the same article, sometimes even for the same name. It's not ok. It's dreadfully confusing and it's just plain bad writing. And it's very uncomfortable when these lines fall upon sex. Which, sometimes it does. Again, this is just what I have noticed in my personal experience editing, but in an article about multiple characters, if one of the characters is going to be referred to by their last name instead of their first, it tends to be the guy. I'm not saying that I think sexism is the driving force here, but whatever is driving this, the outcome is bad, unprofessional writing with the appearance of sexism.

I think that the main cause of this is simply that this is wiki writing. We have different writers who come to these articles with different notions of how they should be writing. And that's why we have policies to regulate writing. Spelling policies, grammar policies, tense policies and so on. We need something for this.

I think that we should always use last name format for real-world people. Whether it's an article that uses real-world or in-universe perspective, we should always use last name format for real people. When referring to characters in articles that use a real world perspective, we should use first names. I think the exception would be for people who are called by their last name all the time. We may know Mr/Ms/Dr So-and-so's first name because it's on a name tag or used once, but for the most part everyone calls them by their last name. This happens most often with professionals of some sort.

I think the only place we have a real question is in-universe articles. In Jackson Lake's biography, should we refer to him as Jackson or as Lake? Whatever decision we make, we should hold it true for all in-universe pages.

I'd really, really, like to see consistency here, especially within the same page. So I'm not really fond of the "use whatever the source uses the most" idea. John Smith (10th doctor) is more often called Mr Smith then he is John. But Martha is called Martha at least as often as she's called Ms. Jones and Joan Redfern is called Matron and Joan more often than she's called Matron Redfern. So if we follow the rules of "most often used name applies" we end up using the names Smith, Martha and Joan. This is really awkward and weird. It also has the appearance of sexism even though sex is not the determining factor. We need to look at this from the reader's perspective, not ours. They're going to wonder why we're referring to only one character by their last name.

I think the only issue that we really have to decide is how we should refer to characters within in-universe articles. I don't have a problem with either format, though I think that last name sounds a bit more proper. We'd certainly never be that informal in a real-world biography and it's a bit weird that we're that informal in an in-universe biography. But I'm ok with either choice. I just think that we need to make a choice.