User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-4028641-20151101035254/@comment-188432-20170602170459

User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-4028641-20151101035254/@comment-188432-20170602170459

Yes, Petronella, there is a Santa Claus
The 2017-ish short story, Yes, Missy, unambiguously resolves the matter of whether the page Osgood (The Day of the Doctor) should be renamed Petronella Osgood. The use of "Petronella" in this story is not ironic, nor tied to another obviously incorrect piece of information. It just is her name. This is backed up, though it needn't have been, by the use in the cast of characters Big Finish used in an audio release. Though non-narrative, it is a long-held practice that credits published with the release of a story are an allowable source if nothing in-narrative gives us anything to go by. We don't need it in this case, but happily we have it for additional confirmation.

Accordingly, as explained at Talk:Petronella Osgood/Archive 2, links have been moved from Osgood (The Day of the Doctor) to Petronella Osgood (save for the ones in this thread), and the page has been moved.

So that dispenses with the original argument on the thread.

How do you solve a problem like the Zygons?
Next comes the assertion that Zygon versions of Osgood are somehow a combined species or hybrid known as "human/Zygon". That's not true and just not how Zygons work. The so-called "Zygon Osgoods" are fully Zygon and merely mimicking humans. Terror of the Zygons makes this abundantly clear, and nothing in the Moffat-era tales does anything to conclusively dispute this. Zygons operate in a particular way, and their unique way of mimicry needs to be observed in article naming and construction.

The "Zygon known as Petronella Osgood" is not Petronella Osgood in any way. Not like Clara's splinters, not like incarnations of the same Time Lord. They are distinct from Petronella Osgood -- and therefore do not belong on the page about the human original.

The so-called "Zygon Osgood" is an identity assumed by several different Zygons, and is that sense singular, taking care of Shambala108's justified concerns that we follow T:NAMING's admonition to name pages singularly.

Yet, although it is a single identity, as 115.188.61.225 tells us, it was assumed by several different Zygons. Accordingly, the page Zygon Osgood -- like one about a title or a job or an office -- can discuss several different Zygons who held that identity. This is pretty much what Danniesen argued quite simply back in November 2015, and SOTO expounded upon.

I don't hold fully with all of SOTO's argument, of course, because it was written before the publication of the short story that allows us to call the human original "Petronella". But the basic notion is there.

Conclusions arising from this discussion
Here's what results from the above:
 * Petronella Osgood, an article about the human original. Links to Zygon Osgood can be given there, but that's it. Please keep that article as tightly focussed on the human as possible.
 * Zygon Osgood, an article about the Zygon identity passed around by several Zygons. This article should be broken up into sections, each sticking to uniquely identifiable Zygons carrying on the identity. It should not bear the category "Individual Zygons", but instead should have the category, "category:Zygon identities".
 * Bonnie (The Zygon Invasion), is an article that, to my mind, needs no changing of its focus. It stays tight on that individual Zygon, and mentions her assumption of the Osgood identity as a logical part of her biography. Zygon Osgood, of course, should also mention Bonnie's assumption of the identity.
 * Osgood's sister shall be moved to Petronella Osgood's sister, as the simplest disambiguation.
 * Osgood has already been created as a disambiguation page for all the Osgoods the site covers, and not just those caught up in this Zygon controversy. And I see no cause to change that to Osgood (disambiguation).
 * Any talk of other Osgoods in UNIT not directly connected to the Petronella Osgood/Zygon is deemed off topic to this thread and summarily dismissed -- though a few of these non-Petronella suggestions were implemented anyway.
 * To SOTO's point about searchability, Osgood (The Day of the Doctor) and Osgood's sister have been retained as redirects. And if the casual DW fan edits Osgood into an article where Petronella Osgood is more desirable, that's okay. At least readers clicking on the link will be close to the topic they're looking for.  As is said on the dab page notice, "If you followed a link here, please fix it to point to one of the pages listed below".

Applicability of this ruling is limited
Finally, I just wanna note that Zygons are a specific type of shape-changing species. Their methods have been well and pretty consistently described across their appearances. I know there was some effort to apply general pagenaming policies and examples from other species that were kinda close, but I want to make it clear that I'm not making a ruling here with applicability beyond Zygons. Policies are written to have wide application; they cannot ever be written to take care of every single case. So next time we meet a shapechanging race, we should be wary of extrapolating this ruling for use there. It may be applicable, but it may not. We'll just have to wait and see.