User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-188432-20130412143615

I propose that we need to establish a closed captioning policy. The Rings of Akhaten has profoundly demonstrated that sometimes we don't get any help from visual cues in the story or the end credits on how to spell highly incidental species or character names. Indeed, sometimes it's not at all obvious that we will ever see these species names ever again in prose adventures, or even necessarily on the website.

So that leaves us with the closed captioning. But closed captioning transcripts are not sold with the episodes. So US iTunes has one thing. The ABC version of iPlayer differs from the UK version. And we're left with lots of different spellings.

We need to establish an order of precedence. When is it okay to fall back on the closed captioning for spelling? And which CC transcript do we use?

I suggest that closed captioning be the spelling of last resort. That is, the precedence should go:
 * 1) Dialogue in which the character actually spells a name (SUSAN: T-A-R-D-I-S: Time and Relative Dimension in Space.)
 * 2) Onscreen graphics that establish the spelling (Gravestone that shows us how to spell Clara Oswin Oswald)
 * 3) Officially released scripts.
 * 4) Prose narratives using the characters. (This is not necessarily higher than the end credits.  But if things are spelled one way in the end credits and another way in a comic strip you kinda keep both, but then figure out which is the more common.  So it's Sarah Jane Smith, principally, but Sarah-Jane Smith also.)
 * 5) End credits. (It's Barbara as in Wright, not Barbra as in Streisand)
 * 6) The Doctor Who website, run by BBC Online. This is not a valid source for the existence of a thing, but if none of the above are available, then it is acceptable for the spelling of the article name.
 * 7) Closed captioning. When all else fails, CC wins.
 * 8) DVD/Blu-Ray release is the highest order CC, because it is, as far as I know, globally uniform
 * 9) Until such time as the DVD/Blu-Ray is released, the CC from Red Bee Media that is seen on BBC One and BBC iPlayer is the highest global CC authority, and the page is named from that.
 * 10) Redirects from the spellings seen on other official transmissions of episodes allowed as redirects so people can find the page, but not allowed in page names or links.

Thoughts?