Help talk:Relationship pages
One page for two relationship
Is it okay to combine two types of relationship between characters into one page? For example if fandom ships Character A and Character B romantically like whoa, but their gen relationship is also explored in fanworks and embraced by fandom, can those two fandom tendencies be kept on one fanlore page (especially if neither ship nor gen is dominant in fandom)? or do they need to be kept separate? Similar question also applies to a situation when fandom worships/loves/explores gen relationship like whoa but the romantic ship is still present (if considered a rarepair) - and vice versa. What if neither gen nor romantic relationship has a prominent presence in fandom, but some still exists? Is it okay to create one bigger page for interactions between those characters instead of creating two really tiny pages? Is it okay to redirect CharA & CharB to CharA/CharB (or the other way around, depending which is the more prominent one)? Help? Thoughts? Official policies? Permission to run wild? --Alex (talk) 17:14, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
- All I know is this issue hasn't come up before. I think in the past not having enough for one or the other meant that no one made a page for it. I think if most of what there is to say about them is gen or shippy, then it makes sense to combine on the majority-content page. If it's 50/50, I would consider CharA & CharB to be more inclusive a page title than CharA/CharB. (??) But the usual approach is to make separate pages and hope someone fills them out.--æþel (talk) 04:50, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
- Yeah pretty much do separate pages for them, if one has to stay a stub for bit - that's fine, because someone should be able to fill it out eventually. That's what I had to do for Tony/Darcy and Tony & Darcy page. Although originally I was annoyed with the concept, myself, I've actually come to like it because it gives you a chance to do other stuff with the pages, and it's probably easier for fans checking out the site looking for gen stuff or romantic stuff. Rarepairs deserve pages as well, not just the popular ships so I say make the pages. Same would have to be said in the Agent Carter fandom, both Peggy & Jarvis and Peggy/Jarvis appears. --Harpie (talk) 05:37, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
Pages for Pairings + Naming Conventions
Note: This discussion has been relocated from Fanlore talk:Wish List
I think it'd be useful if Fanlore adopted AO3's policy on using the full names of the characters in the names of pairing pages across the board (e.g. Clint Barton/Natasha Romanova) instead of relying on given names (Clint/Natasha) or smushnames alone (Clintasha). It's obvious who "John" or "Tom" refers to in the name of a page if you're familiar with the fandom but e.g. the Slash Pairings Category is getting confusing with the different but often unspecified Jacks and Lukes from different fandoms. Browsing Fanlore shouldn't be a context-based association game where you have to have shared a fandom with the editor two decades ago to guess whether "Luke" is Luke Skywalker, Luke Cage, Luke Hemmings or some other Luke. Things get especially tricky in shared universe canons where two characters might have the same given name (e.g. Gotham has two Victors because it's based on the huge DCU cast which has even more characters named Victor).
I realize that fans may be defensive of beloved pairing names ("everybody calls it Destiel so why use the clunky Dean Winchester/Castiel page name?") but the more data Fanlore accumulates over the years (decades?), the less clear and accessible general categories are gonna become.
P.S.: Only when it's applicable, obviously; I realize not every character has Given Name + Family Name provided by the canon. - Baycitybomber (talk) 11:05, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
- I am happy with Destiel redirecting to Dean Winchester/Castiel, which is similar to Wikipedia's system. The canonical page can include an AKA in the infobox that covers smushnames and common other terms (e.g. Dean/Cas). Smushnames and abbreviations are terrific for fans in the same fandom but they're often incomprehensible outside that. In the case of a pairing with two first names and nothing else, we could use AO3's method of putting the fandom in parenthesis after. Elf (talk) 15:04, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
- I agree with the point, but is this the most central/appropriate place to discuss it? This location seems a bit out of the way. Could we maybe call for a gardener or committee member to direct us to a place where the majority of the community could weigh in, since it's a policy change for page naming? -the old briar pipe (talk) 18:59, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
- I disagree. Fanlore is the one place were pages should be named the way fandom actually named stuff. Before AO3, naming conventions used to be quite different depending on fandom, decade, genre, etc. While it makes sense for AO3 to be prescriptive, Fanlore's goal and function is to be descriptive. --Doro (talk) 21:04, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
- While I agree with your reasoning, Fanlore ship pages tend to wind up being named whatever the person who makes them decides to call them. If the person who decides to make the page for Will/Elizabeth in POTC calls it Will/Elizabeth, that's what it gets called. If they decide to call it Willabeth, then it gets named Willabeth. There's no system which dictates that the page be named what the fandom actually calls it. The info should be on the page, but it doesn't have to be the page name. Which is how you wind up with a lot of confusingly-named pages. --Enchantedsleeper (talk) 06:57, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
- I'm all for making the likes of 'Sam/Jack' disambiguation pages if there are multiple ships with those names. I don't see any need for the likes of 'Destiel' to be a redirect since that's not a term used by other ships, nor is it ambiguous. It's true that someone unfamiliar with SPN won't know who that ship is, but that's true of any full names ship as well. If we're worried about major renaming of pages, we should start with the terrible fanlore convention of naming everything with title case instead of doing what other wikis do and having initial caps only in page names (barring proper nouns/things that are normally capitalized). Franzeska (talk) 21:12, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
- I agree with Doro and Franzeska. I really don't like the idea of prescriptive AO3-type page names. Browsing any general, multifandom category, you're not going to know what the majority of the pages are out of context. Most readers don't find pages this way - they find them through the search (in which case full-name redirects could be useful but probably aren't what the user will type) or links from the fandom articles. Fanlore's a fandom wiki and should use fan terminology. If there's disagreement over which is the most common name for a pairing, that can be hashed out on the talk page of the individual article. --sparc 07:32, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
- I agree that in theory the change makes sense. But I think that the great thing about Fanlore is that the names are more applicable and accessible through search and specific fandom relevance. I personally think that pairing names should be named in a way that best suits the fandom; though the full pairing names should be included somewhere on the page, or in the 'alternative names' section under pairing. --Victorywings 12:05, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
- It might be worth taking half of this suggestion and adding the fandom after the pairing name, so Destiel (Supernatural), Will/Elizabeth (Pirates of the Caribbean) or Willabeth (Pirates of the Caribbean). There is still a problem with the Gotham with the two Victors, but this could be on a case-by-case basis. --Msilfan (talk) 03:32, 19 October 2017 (UTC)
- Hi everyone, thanks so much for your suggestions and contributions to this discussion. As there hasn't been a consensus reached on this issue, after taking into account all of the different perspectives presented, the Fanlore committee have decided to continue with our existing policy on creating relationship pages, which dictates that fans should use "the punctuation/portmanteau/name order your fandom favors" when naming a new ship page.
- The reasons for this are firstly that we agree Fanlore should be a place of recording and reflecting fandom ideas, which includes reflecting the name for a ship most commonly used by a fandom. Secondly, if we were to adopt a different naming policy for ship pages across the board, whether it be an "AO3"-style naming convention or adding the fandom name in brackets after the ship name, it would take a considerable amount of editing work to bring every single ship page on the wiki in line with the new policy. We do also have redirects in place to make sure that different names for ships are redirected to the same page, and disambig pages for pages that share a name.
- With that said, although we have decided not to change overall policy, it is still possible to make the names of individual pages clearer if users think this is warranted. In cases where editors want to suggest changing an individual page name, we recommend opening a discussion on the Talk Page to get some outside input, before asking a gardener to make the change.
- In order to preserve this discussion in a place where the wider community can more easily find it, we will shortly be moving all of the comments on this issue to the Relationship pages talk page. There will be a link to that page left behind on this one to show where the discussion was moved to.