Help talk:Naming Conventions/Relationship Pages Archive

Pairing/Relationship Pages

Hi, I could use a little clarification when comes to the naming of Pairing/Relationship articles. On the help page it says both "Because the naming conventions for pairings vary from fandom to fandom, there is no hard-and-fast rule about how to represent the name of the pairing. Contrast Fraser/Kowalski with ItachixSasuke" and "Virgules (/) should be avoided except where necessary". These two things seem to contradict each other. I'm asking because of the renaming of articles with Name/Name to portmanteaus, which can be a problem if more than one ship name exists, even if one ship wins out in the end and is widely accepted that doesn't erase the fact that the other ship names existed. I'm fan of name articles with Name/Name, and just redirecting portmanteaus to the Name/Name page. However, I know others disagree, so a clarification or user consensus would be helpful when creating future pages. -- Kingstoken (talk) 22:43, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

Comment that enchantedsleeper left on my talk page for clarity:

Virgules (/) should be avoided except where necessary, as they define subpages. (Said with the understanding that it is a core part of pairings and fannish terms, and shouldn't be avoided in those cases.)

The page also says in the Character and Pairing Pages section that "Because the naming conventions for pairings vary from fandom to fandom, there is no hard-and-fast rule about how to represent the name of the pairing." So I don't really think there is a need to start moving pairing pages en masse unless there is a clear discrepancy between how the Fanlore page is named and how that ship is referred to in the fandom? After all, redirects can be made that serve the same purpose. --enchantedsleeper (talk) 17:35, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

The way I interpreted this is that ship pages don't have to follow any set format of "Firstname Surname/Firstname Surname." It seems to me that if a certain name for a ship is what's used the majority of the time, then that should be the title of the page to reflect the fandom terminology.

I think that method should be followed even if the ship naming conventions are inconsistent within the fandom (like if different ships use portmanteaus of first names or surnames and minor pairs don't have a ship name) because if the names are inconsistent that's still a meaningful and relevant aspect of the fandom, and we should represent fandom practices without trying to streamline them.

But I understand Kingstoken's point that with multiple ship names there can be issues with picking one. I think if there is an obvious preference then that should be the page title, and alternate names will still be listed in the infobox and can be explained on the page. If there is no clear dominant name, then the title should be Name/Name and any names used by fans should be explained on the page. If I've changed a page to a name that's not the dominant name, then please let me know. —caes (talk) 01:54, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

I think as well as kingstokens concern about ships with multiple smoosh names, there is an issue around how we identify the most popular name for a pairing. How do we determine that? Tags are synned on ao3, tumblr tags are a mess and can we do this without giving preference to a particular platform and ignoring different trends on different platforms? I'm genuinely asking, can it be done? For massively popular pairing like Sterek and Reylo, the answer is obvious but other pairing are not as clear cut.

Pairing names also change over time. 'ineffable husbands' is the most popular name at the moment for azi/cowley in good omens, but it was called AC for twenty years before that. Older ships often just used letters or first names, and those couldn't be changed to their most popular ship name for disambiguation reasons. Also some smoosh names on Tumblr had to change following the purge, cos the staff deleted their tags. I know of at least one in the DC comics fandom.

I think some general discussion is needed on this topic before we look at pages or fandoms on a case by case basis. And I think Name/Name is more appropriate in most cases due to shifting trends in fandoms. - - Auntags (talk) 08:04, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Okay, so we had a quite similar discussion to this a couple of years ago which originally appeared on the Fanlore:Wish List Talk page and was relocated to the Help:Relationship pages Talk page where it would be more relevant/easier to find. (It could possibly also have been put here). It's too long to paste, so I'll just link it here: Pages for Pairings + Naming Conventions. But to summarise what took place there, there was a discussion about standardising page names in the "AO3-style" format of (Full Name)/(Full Name). Other folks countered that Fanlore is a place where the fandom's preferred pairing name should (and normally does) take precedence. In the end the Fanlore Committee's verdict was this: "...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." (There was context for that reasoning which you can read on the original discussion).

You'll see at the time I pointed out that Fanlore pages generally just wind up being named what the editor who creates it decides to name it, and that editor is not necessarily going to be thinking about the fandom's preferred name for the pairing. I do still think that can be an issue, but I also think that any kind of attempt to impose a "standard" on page names (whether it be to favour smushnames, to favour slashes or something else) is going to annoy people and ultimately, it's not what Fanlore is about. Fanlore is about documenting and reflecting fandom and fannish usage.

So to my mind, the only system that makes sense is to take things on a case-by-case basis and name ship pages whatever makes sense for that individual fandom. It might seem messy, but fandom is rarely neat or clear-cut xD I want to stress that this is not an official Fanlore Committee Judgement(TM), this is me speaking in my personal capacity as a Fanlore editor and bearing in mind the discussions we had about this before. If folks think that a ship page's name or a fandom's ship page names are wildly out of step with fannish usage, they can raise it on the Talk page and gain a consensus around renaming the page; if there's a general shift in naming over time, there should definitely be a section on the ship page which talks about that, and then a decision could be taken whether the page name should change (I don't think it should most of the time, but maybe in some extreme cases the 'old' name would be completely inappropriate, I don't know). If it's impossible to come to a judgement, then maybe a "neutral" name can be agreed upon, which would probably be the (name)/(name) version. --enchantedsleeper (talk) 09:58, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Responding to Auntags about determining the most popular name, for the Scisaac page I googled "scisaac" "teen wolf" and "mclahey" "teen wolf", with the fandom and both phrases in separate quotes to only see applicable results, and there were clearly far more results for Scisaac. When I googled "stormpilot" "star wars" and "finnpoe" "star wars" there wasn't a large difference in the results. "finn/poe" "star wars" got more results, which I think is indicative of the lack of consensus in SW fandom, so that page hasn't been retitled. I understand that this method doesn't work as well depending on how old and internet-based the fandom is, but I think it works to figure out significant preferences. —caes (talk) 16:21, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks EnchantedSleeper, I wasn't aware of that discussion. Interesting read, and I think your strategy of discussing on talk page before moving is probably the best way to approach things moving forward.

Caessius, thanks for explaining your methodology. I'll admit I'm a bit wary of google search results as Tumblr users, and possibly users of other social media platforms, can choose for their blogs and posts not to be included in search engine results. So I did a little digging on google trends, which tracks user searches. It backs up your results. But what I found interesting is the fact hardly any users are searching with x or / anymore. It's all the namesmoosh pairings. I had to go back to the ships that were popular in 2004 to find substantial number of queries with the slash. It might just be because it's quicker to type the namesmoosh on a mobile device. But the slash sometimes only appears in English speaking regions, with non-English speaking regions only using the namesmoosh. I wouldn't be in favour of changing all of our pairing pages on that basis though. I just found it interesting and thought I'd share. --Auntags (talk) 18:06, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Okay, yeah - methodology aside, I'm wondering why this renaming effort needs to be undertaken in the first place. Are you planning to do this for all fandoms, caes? It seems to me like there hasn't been any significant issue with the page names on Fanlore thus far, so I'm not sure why moving them all wholesale is suddenly needed.

And I do think there should be a Talk page discussion or at least a note left with reasoning on the relevant pages. Advanced Editors and Gardeners might have additional wiki permissions, but they still need to use them based on discussion and consensus - renaming a page following a collective decision or fixing a page name error is fine, but if there's going to be any kind of ambiguity around what the page name should be then I think a discussion is needed first. --enchantedsleeper (talk) 18:10, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, sorry about moving the pages without notice. I wasn't aware of the different perspectives on this issue, so I'll be sure to note it on the talk pages from now on. Again, if there's anything I've moved that isn't accurate, let me know. I was planning to move pages just whenever they came to my attention, probably trying to do all the pages for a fandom at once.

I've personally found an issue with the inconsistency of "Firstname Surname/Firstname Surname" in some fandoms and "Firstname/Firstname" in others, and I wanted to get at least that consistent. —caes (talk) 18:56, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

When it comes to "Firstname Surname/Firstname Surname" vs "Firstname/Firstname" I find it depends sometimes on the age of the fandom and especially if it is pre-A03. I think a lot of newer fandoms are used to A03's "Firstname Surname/Firstname Surname" format for fic, but use smoosh names for discussions on tumblr and twitter. Older fandoms tend to use "Firstname/Firstname" or in the case of Star Trek "Lastname/Lastname", example Janeway/Chakotay, plus short form initials were very common for use on mailing lists etc, like J/C. This might not be the case for all fandoms, but this is what I have come across.

I am still a proponent of "Firstname Surname/Firstname Surname" for article names because character names don't change, but fandom names can change over time, for example Kirk/Spock can now be referred to as Spirk or Space Husbands, those terms didn't exist years ago, but were created when new fans discovered the series later. This is why I don't like the idea of naming the articles with smoosh names, because we don't know if in ten or twenty years when new fans binge watch a series if they are going to be using the same terminology -- Kingstoken (talk) 19:21, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

Most of the first name/first name pages are from older fandoms and I think Caessius might be referring to the percy Jackson pairing pages. They were first name/first name. I noticed that awhile back, but the names are very distinctive and I didn't know enough about fandom to even start a discussion about page names. Like enchantedsleeper said above, often it's down to the person who created the page and all we do is disambiguate as needed, following discussion. - - Auntags (talk) 19:30, 20 December 2019 (UTC)