Forum:Dropping World of Warcraft tag

Forums: Village pump → Dropping World of Warcraft tag

As you know, we have some novels/manga/comics that have the tag, and other that don't. Until now, the tag was only included when the name was too redundant (Mage, Stormrage...) but I see now that, after some moves with The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm, those redundant book names are having their tag removed.

Really, I don't think they should have them removed. They are good as they are. Some books with pretty unique names, like Arthas: Rise of the Lich King and Cycle of Hatred, as well as issues, chapters or volumes should lack the tag, for name-lenght purposes; but those with a generic name shouldn't, imo.

Anyway, we should decide on something about this. Drop them all, leave them all, drop a part of them... the categories are fine, imo, but the articles, who are the most important ones should get some kind of consensus.

Opinions?--Lon-ami (talk) 21:09, February 12, 2010 (UTC)

For the article name, it really should be the full title of the book, which includes the World of Warcraft, and the short versions (without WoW) should be the redirects. Sssssssssssssssssssssssss For Pony! (^Sssss/_Slithered) 21:16, February 12, 2010 (UTC)

Well, except for World of Warcraft: Mage and the sort... but then there's always disambiguations. --g0urra[T҂C] 21:20, February 12, 2010 (UTC)

Either they should be included, or they shouldn't. There shouldn't be something in between, where people might find the title too long to include "World of Warcraft"/"Warcraft", but then who is to decide what is too long or not?

I'm of the opinion of keeping the "World of Warcraft"/"Warcraft" on articles. I see this on the Gears of War wiki, where there's for example Gears of War: Aspho Fields, which keeps the "game" title. --g0urra[T҂C] 21:18, February 12, 2010 (UTC)

I'm in favor of dropping them. Firstly, once we get into books like "Prelude to Cataclysm" and "Rise of the Lich King" having two colons in an article name just looks ridiculous. Moreover, because this is already a Warcraft wiki, "World of Warcraft" isn't needed to differentiate it from anything and should be assumed. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 22:47, February 12, 2010 (UTC)

I personally think that the 'World of Warcraft tag' should be dropped if including the tag would cause there to be more then one colon in the page title. It should be included if this is not the case (making "World of Warcraft: Mage" into "Mage (novel)" is a stupid and unnecessary disambiguation). However, make no mistakes: not including it, if it is on the cover, is both inaccurate and causes the title to become a fan fictional abbreviation or nickname.--SWM2448 22:55, February 12, 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that "World of Warcraft" is on the cover of every single novel, just as "Magic: the Gathering" is on the cover of every Magic novel, "Forgotten Realms" is on the cover of ever Forgotten Realms novel, etc. This is the case even when the novels are explicitly about a different Warcraft game, such as the Tides of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal novelizations. Therefore, I agree with Gourra in that it should either be kept in all cases or dropped in all cases. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 22:58, February 12, 2010 (UTC)

I believe that the page name should be the formal book/manga/movie title. If desired, shortened (or lengthened!) versions can be used to redirect to the formal item name. Most of the world of warcraft books (like Star Trek, Star Wars, Warhammer, yadda yadda) do not include the series name in the formal title. I guess that places me in with Coobra and (mostly) Zeratul. Looking at Category:World of Warcraft books, I don't see examples where this is not the current case. I have not investigated deeply, though. --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 23:10, February 12, 2010 (UTC)

There seems to be different approaches to book titles related to a game/franchise depending on the wiki: there's the Gears of War example (see above), but then there's Wookieepedia, which omits the "Star Wars:" from the beginning. The right thing to do might be to follow Wookieepedia's example (since it's a much bigger wiki than the other one), but I'm not sure if anyone else has thought about it that way? --g0urra[T҂C] 00:01, February 13, 2010 (UTC)

To introduce a place where we already drop the full title (and are consistent), see the various Warcraft RPGs…, the entirety of which seem to be located just fine. --Sky (t · c · w) 04:49, February 13, 2010 (UTC)

I think we should drop it everywhere save in those cases where the name is too generic, like Mage and Stormrage. And, anyway, inside the article it should always be referenced as "tag: name", because the tag is included in the name, both in the inside credits and both in the stores.

The purpose of dropping the tag in some cases would be, then, just for making the name a little shorter, and nothing more. All articles that allow it should have the tag dropped, and those who can't because are too generic should keep it.--Lon-ami (talk) 11:40, February 13, 2010 (UTC)

And who is one to decide which ones are generic and which aren't? Either we drop the tag in the article name or in the article itself, or we don't. --g0urra[T҂C] 11:57, February 13, 2010 (UTC)

Generic = articles with similar names exist around. For example, Mage has an article for the Mage class, and Stormrage is a surname. Cycle of Hatred has an unique name, and Tides of Darkness can stay without the tag because the only other article with it has "Warcraft II:" before.--Lon-ami (talk) 14:26, February 13, 2010 (UTC)

Still doesn't sound like an argument to me to keep the tag. There's always Mage (novel) etc. to use. --g0urra[T҂C] 14:37, February 13, 2010 (UTC)

Mage (novel) is just stupid, imo, when we have the complete name and don't use it.--Lon-ami (talk) 15:47, February 13, 2010 (UTC)

Why should it have the full name, while the other books doesn't? It sounds stupid imo that there are "special cases". Like I said earlier, either keep it on all or drop it on all. I'm in favor of the latter one. --g0urra[T҂C] 19:41, February 13, 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Gourra that the decision should be consistent. I do not want to make up categorization rules any more than we have to. However, I also agree with Lon-ami that "Mage (novel)" is stupid and unwanted.--SWM2448 02:43, February 14, 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with "Mage (novel)." -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 02:59, February 14, 2010 (UTC)

In running text or speech, I think that more people will call it "World of Warcraft: Mage" than "Mage" or "Mage novel". I also think more people will call Arthas: Rise of the Lich King "Arthas: Rise of the Lich King" than "World of Warcraft: Arthas: Rise of the Lich King". Hence my previous proposed naming conventions. However (as I often seem to argue with myself), there are always piped links, and the 'more people' may be just weasel words on my part.--SWM2448 03:10, February 14, 2010 (UTC)

What people call it has nothing to do what the article should be named. There shouldn't be any confusion when people say "Have you read Mage?" or the like. But maybe that's just me. --g0urra[T҂C] 21:18, February 15, 2010 (UTC)

Re "Mage (novel)"...

1. Lon-ami: it's no more stupid than any other disambiguation, really.
2. General: afaik, it's not been published yet, so the exact title is up in the air.

More widely, though, I do not think we should be applying a "World of Warcraft" prefix to the name of an item "because it describes that Warcraft property". That would effectively create a pseudo namespace (ala "Quest:"). Some books may have something like that as part of their title, and some may not, but we should not arbitrarily add it to the title ourselves. Were we to create a "World of Warcraft:" namespace for books, then to be consistent, we could end up with something like "World of Warcraft: World of Warcraft: Mage", which would be Very Silly Indeed. --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 21:05, February 15, 2010 (UTC)

My vote would be to use the "official" title of the book to the extent that it is possible to tell what that is. I see at the publisher, for instance, "Warcraft: War of the Ancients #2: The Demon Soul" and "World of Warcraft: Stormrage". ([1]). I'd also support a rule to consistently leave out a prefix of "World of Warcraft", on the grounds that this is a wiki for WoW, and the shorter page name would be easier to use. While I understand them, I disagree with the idea of basing this decision on common names for the books (which would be fine for redirects) or number of resulting colons. -- Harveydrone 21:56, February 15, 2010 (UTC)

You folks know me, I muddy the waters whenever I can. With Harveydrone's comment, I thought "so what IS the definitive title of a book?" Answer: The name it was copyrighted under, at the US copyright office. So for Harvey's first example, see this page. I think, given this, that we can safely use any portion of the name that we really want. (I got to that page via this one.) --Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 19:32, February 16, 2010 (UTC)

Vote

Drop All World of Warcraft or Warcraft tags and use [[Name (novel)]] or [[Name (manga)]] or [[Name (comic)]] (as appropriate) when a disambiguation is required.

Votes

Yes

1. Yes Loremaster A'noob, Arch Druid of the Noobhoof Clan (^talk/_contribz) 09:25, February 16, 2010 (UTC) - (no comment)
2. Yes g0urra[T҂C] 10:51, February 16, 2010 (UTC) - (no comment)
3. Yes Dark T Zeratul (talk) 19:10, February 16, 2010 (UTC) - ()
4. Yes Eirik Ratcatcher (talk) 19:32, February 16, 2010 (UTC) - (Within the limits of Not Making Stuff Up, but also not omitting stuff.)
5. Yes SWM2448 00:52, February 17, 2010 (UTC) - (no comment)
6. Yes -- Harveydrone 20:03, February 17, 2010 (UTC) - (assuming disambig could be "(manga)" if appropriate, etc.)
7. Yes Sssssssssssssssssssssssss For Pony! (^Sssss/_Slithered) 20:35, February 17, 2010 (UTC) - (Personally not a fan of using (type), but I'd rather do this than to have to type out World of Warcraft each and every time... Now if we can just do the same to categories.)

No

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Issues

How is this going to be applied to World of Warcraft: The Comic and World of Warcraft: The Magazine?--Lon-ami (talk) 13:41, February 26, 2010 (UTC)

Because "World of Warcraft" is the actual title of those publications, they would remain. -- Dark T Zeratul (talk) 18:15, February 26, 2010 (UTC)