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Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television)/Archive 16

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U.S./American in WikiProject Film/Television

Latest comment: 5 years ago133 comments26 people in discussion

Discussion

Why does WP:NCTV use "U.S." when the country of broadcast is prefixed as a disambiguator (e.g. Supernatural (U.S. TV series)), but WP:NCFILM uses "American" (e.g. Split (2016 American film))? Shouldn't they use the same style? -- /Alex/21 12:14, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

Hmmm... Now who has been saying we should?!... Oh, yeah: me!! – Yes, as I've pointed out on multiple occasions, NCTV is one of the few (the only?) WP that uses "UK"/"U.S." rather than "British" and "American". Pretty much all other WP's, most notably NCFILM and the biography articles, use "British" and "American" for disambiguation purposes. I firmly believe that NCTV should drop the use of UK/U.S. and go to British/American, which would put us in line with all the other WP, and has the added benefit of eliminating the pestiferous U.S./US issue. Unfortunately, doing that will require an WP:RfC that is likely to be contentious and inconclusive... But I, for one, would support the change. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 12:22, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
As would I. I would happily start an RFC if it's recommended. NCTV already supports usages such as "Canadian" or "Australian"; "American" and "British" should go hand in hand with such examples. I didn't think to check other naming conventions; biography definitely does (e.g. Patrick Wilson (American actor)). -- /Alex/21 12:26, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
Yes – a recent WP:RM even went with "Emirati" over "UAE" (it was Studio One (Emirati TV program)), which is the only place where the abbreviation would have made sense in both WP:RECOGNIZABLE and WP:CONCISE terms. IOW, if we're going to use "Emirati" over "UAE", then we should absolutely use "British" and "American" over "UK" and "U.S." --IJBall (contribs • talk) 12:56, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
The only advantage for the TV's style is that it is shorter, but the recurring discussions about US vs U.S. and the inconsistent style with the whole en.wiki is not worth that. --Gonnym (talk) 12:27, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
Converting to "American" would remove any discussion about the use of US/U.S. in article titles... -- /Alex/21 12:30, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
You didn't understand me, I'm supporting your proposal. I meant that the current situation has the advantage of being shorter, but it has the disadvantages of raising the US debate and being inconsistent with other aspects of the pedia. --Gonnym (talk) 12:40, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
Hopefully I can give some background and a few thoughts:
  • We can't discuss this only in relation to the U.S. and leave out UK, so I've expanded the header to include both.
  • The reason the current convention developed to use (U.S. TV series) and (UK TV series) comes directly from what was used predominantly before the convention. Before that, most editors just used (US) and (UK) (such as The Office (US) and The Office (UK). Country distinctions were and are far more common in relation to TV shows than, say, films (per WP:NCFILM) which use country disambiguation only very rarely when two movies are from the same year. So I don't think its fair to draw an equivalence between NCFILM and NCTV and, in fact, petitioning at WP:NCFILM to switch to UK/U.S. would be far less impactful.
  • "American" as a word has a specific connotation of relating to the people of the United States (a demonym). So its not unusual we use something like Patrick Wilson (American actor) for biographies. The adjectival used for NCTV should be the one that best describes where the TV show originates or was produced, so it is not appropriate to use "American" in describing TV shows because we use the adjectival for the country, not the people. The spelled-out "United States" has a slightly stronger connotation for relating to the government of the USA. This ultimately seems to have led to use of "U.S." as the best adjectival to denote that a TV show (or film) originates from within that country, rather than originating from American (people) or the United States (government).
  • "American" as a word is also a bit ambiguous as it can imply a relation to any of the Americas (north, central, south). I don't think this is a major factor, just something to add that has come up in these discussions in the past.
  • "British" as a word likewise has certain connotation issues. "British" can be used as a demonym relating to the people of either the island of Great Britain or the citizens of the United Kingdom. You'll often see it used for people as in (British scientist), just as you might see more specific terms like (English scientist), (Scottish politician), or (Welsh author). Certainly, TV shows in the UK are produced within and portray strong ties to the countries of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and England. But of course we avoid using disambiguation (Scottish TV series) or (Welsh TV series), because those demonyms would get easily confused with the words for the regional languages. A formation like (United Kingdom TV series) reads a bit formal and may have the same implied connotation of relating to the government as the U.S. situation above. All of this is probably why editors early on settled on use of (UK) to disambiguate TV series originating from within the United Kingdom, and why we continue today.
Now, some of these connotation issues may not be obvious to people from outside of these countries. The adjectival to use falls within MOS:ENGVAR/MOS:TIES and like other usages, people from outside those regional variations shouldn't probably be leading a push to change things. That's not to undermine outside viewpoints - just consider that if something reads slightly wrong to you, it might be just fine or preferable for people in those regions. Anytime we have needed to determine how something is used in a certain region, we've very often consulted or deferred to editors from those regions, like in the RfC about Australian use of program vs programme. -- Netoholic @ 19:03, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
I've restored the original header, as it serves as an anchor for the link I posted to another NC talk page.
I can see how it originated from the second point; but now it needs to continue adapting to match the rest of Wikipedia. "American" can mean "related to the people", but that is not its sole definition. "American" means "relating to or characteristic of the United States or its inhabitants", such as the example film I linked, or "American culture" or "American traditions". "American" is also listed as adjectival or demonymic form for the United States of America, as well as "U.S."; the use of "American" to mean any of the Americas is also covered there. Same applies for Britain (e.g. High Treason (1929 British film)).
Yes, I agree that the view of the people from those countries is beneficial, but they should not be the only view heard, even as a "majority". This may be a contentious issue, but its one I believe sorely needs updating to conform with the rest of the site. I can see that an RFC would be the best idea to gain a wider range of views, so I'll think on starting one soon. -- /Alex/21 22:01, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
Two issues with this change, as I discovered in the RfC on US/U.S. from months ago: (1) WP:NCA opposes using "United States" and "United Kingdom": The abbreviations are preferred over United States and United Kingdom, for brevity., and (2) conjecture about using "British" in regards to what the term covers (just England, all of Great Britain, Ireland or not, etc.). Both can be overcome, but they're arguments that will likely come up from opposers. -- Whats new?(talk) 22:23, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
The first shouldn't be an issue, given the use of "American" and "British" instead of "United States" and "United Kingdom". But I do agree that the second would need clarification; however, the adjectival or demonymic forms article I posted above lists "British" for a number of countries, including Scotland, Northern Ireland, etc. -- /Alex/21 22:26, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
See this what I mean. Examples like "American culture" or "American traditions" originate from the people themselves and so that usage is fine. But we often avoid using "American" to mean simply things that originate from within the confines of the United States (Cinema of the United States not American cinema or Television in the United States not American television, for example). Preserving this distinction is important to understanding topics - if I told you that "I found a great American restaurant", your first assumption would be that I am talking about the style of cuisine, not referring to it being located within the United States or being founded there. But if I instead said "I found a great U.S. restaurant", the meaning is clearer from the context. -- Netoholic @ 22:26, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
Actually, I would assume the latter. That doesn't change the definition of American that I listed above. American as a noun, sure. American as an abjective, ":of or relating to America", "of or relating to the U.S. or its possessions or original territory", e.g. American embassies, American states, from Merriam Webster. -- /Alex/21 22:29, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
Well your interpretation may be affected by the particular national variety of English you're most familiar with. And please don't even bother with linking to a cherry-picked dictionary definition here as some sort of trump card to the discussion. It lacks nuance. -- Netoholic @ 22:51, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
I can link to dozens of other dictionary definitions, if you like. Just because it doesn't conform with you interpretation of the word, and the particular national variety of English you're most familiar with, doesn't make it less valid or incorrect. -- /Alex/21 02:17, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
More importantly, it's already used to disambiguate with that meaning at dozens of articles, so if it was a real problem, editors have had almost two decades to object to and overturn its use. In the meantime, the use of "American" and "British" for disambiguation by other WPs means they offer no real challenge for their use under NCTV. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 02:20, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
I'm not sure how your argument is any different than "French restaurant" or "Spanish restaurant" yet we use Top Model (French TV series) and Cheers (Spanish TV series). --Gonnym (talk) 22:44, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
If French or Spanish speakers want to discuss that we are presenting the context incorrectly by using those terms, they are free to. But those countries only have a single adjectival which is used to both describe the people, the language, and anything that originates from within the confines of those countries. With only one to choose from, its not incorrect in any context. Again, could be wrong if any French or Spanish wikipedians want to interject. -- Netoholic @ 22:51, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
"Preserving this distinction is important to understanding topics - if I told you that "I found a great American restaurant", your first assumption would be that I am talking about the style of cuisine, not referring to it being located within the United States or being founded there. But if I instead said "I found a great U.S. restaurant", the meaning is clearer from the context. " This is a flawed argument. If the conversation were taking place outside of the United States I would assume that either "American" or "U.S." would refer to the style of food. If the conversation were taking place within the U.S. I would wonder about the mental competence of the speaker. Just as I would if I heard someone in Beijing say that they had found a "great Chinese restaurant". --Khajidha (talk) 12:35, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
But as an American, I do say "American food" and mean it to mean cheeseburgers and hotdogs and mac and cheese and buffalo wings.... --Izno (talk) 21:52, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
As an example of what I'm getting at, is that a sentence like "P. F. Chang's China Bistro is an American Asian food restaurant" or "P. F. Chang's China Bistro is an American restaurant chain which serves Asian food might both be read to mean that it is a fusion style or that it serves both American and Chinese cuisine. A clearer way to state that it is based in the United States and serves Asian cuisine is seen in the lead line actually in place in the article - "P. F. Chang's China Bistro is an Asian-themed US casual dining restaurant chain". Its getting a bit off-topic, but its an example that shows that "U.S." is a preferred adjective to describe the country of origin over "American" which has many other potential connotations. -- Netoholic @ 00:32, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
I don't see how "P.F. Chang's is an American restaurant chain that serves Asian food" could possibly be misinterpreted the ways you suggest. And the sentence you quoted from the article still reads "wrong" to me. I would expect "P.F. Chang's China Bistro is an Asian-themed American casual dining restaurant chain." --Khajidha (talk) 01:09, 6 April 2019 (UTC)

RFC: What disambiguation should shows from the United States and United Kingdom use?

AMERICAN/BRITISH USED AS DISAMBIGUATION
This discussion revolves around the consistent use of format. Those in favour of the switch to "American/British" point to articles such as Komet (American automobile) and intitle search statistics as examples of it in use, whereas those opposed tend to revolve around definitions. WP:CONSISTENCY is routinely mentioned by those in favour as a justification for their position and both sides of the discussion have made use of anecdotal evidence. Based on the discussion as a whole, it appears that there is indeed consensus in favour of the switch to American/British. --TheSandDoctor Talk 04:59, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

What term should NCTV use for shows from the United States and United Kingdom, when disambiguation by country is required? Should such articles use "U.S." and "UK", or should they use "American" and "British"? -- /Alex/21 02:31, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

  • Support replacing "UK" and "U.S." with "American" and "British" for disambiguation under NCTV, which will finally put NCTV in harmony with most other WP's NC's. (And has the added benefit of finally eliminating the pestiferous U.S./US ENGVAR battle...) If this RfC actually passes, I suspect the articles under NCTV could be "mass-moved" with the help of a bot. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 02:35, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
  • American/British support as the nominator, and per my support and arguments in the discussion above. -- /Alex/21 02:36, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Status quo (U.S./UK) - The proper term to use is based on the adjectival for the country of origin, not the demonym for the people of a country (see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (country-specific topics)). Both "American (word)" and "British" have a strong connotation of describing the people (demonyms), whereas U.S./UK more conveniently and clearly describe the country of origin. This is why is perfectly fine that (American ----)/(British ----) is common when referring to biography articles, but less apt with regards to TV shows and other non-person topics. NCTV is consistent with other non-person topics like WP:USPLACE names formatted as Georgia (U.S. state), periodicals like Skeptic (U.S. magazine) vs The Skeptic (UK magazine), comics like Dennis the Menace (U.S. comics) vs Dennis the Menace (UK comics), "various artist" albums like Now That's What I Call Music! 32 (U.S. series) vs. Now That's What I Call Music! 32 (UK series). Its actually pretty impressive that with TV series that we've achieved a very high degree of consistency using this approach across an absolutely gigantic topic area. To illustrate this consistency, see that we have zero articles named with "(American TV series/program)", but some "(year U.S. film)" articles which is supposedly "wrong" per the current WP:NCFILM. No reasonable argument has been offered as to why this convention should change, rather than encouraging much smaller-reach conventions WP:NCFILM to change. I'm especially not impressed that the proposer here identifies as someone who is from outside either the U.S. or UK, and so I have concerns they are pushing their preferred WP:ENGVAR. -- Netoholic @ 03:29, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
    NCFILM has no issue with it, and you've still nor reasonable argument to support that "American" and "British" are solely people-related. Plenty of arguments have been presented to support the change, but you simply don't support any of them. Furthermore, segregating someone simply because of their nationality has no place here. -- /Alex/21 06:39, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
    Honestly, most naming conventions don't even bother explicitly defining country-based rules, just deferring to WP:NCCST or MOS:US. WP:NCFILM only includes "American" via one example - hardly a firm statement.. and the talk archives there show no discussion about it, unlike here at NCTV where this topic has been discussed since its inception. Frankly, other naming conventions (like WP:NCBC) follow our lead on this. All these claims that NCTV is somehow "wrong" compared to other naming conventions is just false. If you take away topics related to people or language, where I concede American/British is appropriate, NCTV defines the standard of use on Wikipedia more than any other except possibly MOS:US or WP:NCA, which we based this on. For those unaware, WP:NCA reads To save space, acronyms should be used as disambiguators, when necessary. For example, "Great Northern Railway (U.S.)" and "Labour Party (UK)". The abbreviations are preferred over United States and United Kingdom, for brevity - so this RfC is completely out-of-bounds as the proposed change would directly conflict with that more general guideline. -- Netoholic @ 08:04, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
    And yet, those that do, agree with each other. Except NCTV. Only one example is necessary, so that other articles can follow in its example. NCTV doesn't provide any examples, what's the point? There is still nothing to support the fact that the terms are related to the people or language only - shall I provide more dictionary definitions? The RFC is completely within the bounds, as you seem unable to understand the fact that nobody is asking for the use of "United States" and "United Kingdom"; the guideline says nothing about "American" or "British". There is still also nothing to support your egregious claim that only those from the nationalities discussed can start and/or contribute to such a discussion; Wikipedia is a worldwide effort, and will always continue to be, despite any attempts to cordon it off to specific people only. -- /Alex/21 12:42, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
    WP:NCA is highly relevant both for pointing out that brevity in disambiguation is of high value and for what it lacks - it does not say we avoid the "problem" of United States/US/U.S. by replacing it with "American", or United Kingdom/UK with "British". And you have not expressed any level of humility in this discussion that perhaps your national variety of English uses "American"/"British" in more contexts than other varieties of English do (see WP:ENGVAR). But since these shows have WP:TIES to those countries, it is the usage within those countries that should be respected. "American"/"British" just simply do not "sound right" when talking about non-person topics, specifically when the meaning is to indicate a country of origin. -- Netoholic @ 17:09, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Support proposal - American/British - I have no horse in this race, as I similarly didn't in the previous US/U.S. discussion, however, having conflicting usages between similar sets of articles is a very poor choice. Specific to this situation having TV and film, and to a greater extent, TV films and theatrical films, use different disambiguation styles. Both WP:NCTV ("Prefix the country of broadcast (adjective)") and WP:NCFILM ("include additional information such as the country of origin (adjective)") say to use the adjective and both link to List of adjectival and demonymic forms for countries and nations and both "British" and "American" appear in their respective country's Adjectivals column. So arguing that these are not proper is incorrect. Also, I fail to see how WP:ENGVAR is relevant here, as nothing here deals with local English variations such as elevator vs. lift or dates, and in-fact the usage of the adjectivals does follow local usage. --Gonnym (talk) 17:55, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Support move - "American" and "British" do have uses outside of people (see "American Airlines" and the "British monarchy") and indeed seem more natural IMO. -John M Wolfson (talk) 18:55, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
    • One of those is a proper name of a company, the other is a misleadingly piped link to Monarchy of the United Kingdom. Not very strong cases. -- Netoholic @ 19:05, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
      • The corporate name reflects a general use of "American" as a generic adjective relating to the United States; the monarchy article itself notes that "British monarchy" is often used colloquially, even when technically it's the monarchy for each of the Commonwealth realms. In both cases bands are often used with those two adjectives describing their origin, and IMO (although others might very well differ) "US" and "UK" seem stilted as adjectives. -John M Wolfson (talk) 20:29, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Support per proposer. There are plenty of examples of "British" and "American" being used in disambiguation, e.g. 10 Magazine (British magazine), 16 Bit (British band), Ettinger (British company), Fifty pence (British coin), Imperial (British automobile), ASEA (American company), Against (American band), Komet (American automobile), Look (American magazine), Jaguar_(American_rocket), etc. and there are also plenty of redirects from (American TV series), (British TV series), etc. Thryduulf (talk) 19:29, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Allow all - this isn’t something that requires consistency. As long as it is clear from the title what the subject of the article is (and any ambiguity is clarified) it does not matter how we get there. It is an irrelevant nitpick whether we use US” vs “American” or “UK” vs “British” (etc.). These terms indicate the same thing to the average reader. Blueboar (talk) 19:46, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
    WP:CONSISTENCY exists for a reason, so we don't have articles at, say, variously "American", "U.S." and "US" – we pick one, and use that for all articles within a WP. So a "dealer's choice" solution is a bad solution... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 23:51, 3 April 2019 (UTC)
    If WP:CONSISTENCY was the main concern, then you would either go to smaller naming conventions and get them to move to the standard we use here very extensively... or you would hold this RfC at a high level at WP:TITLES so that it applied broadly across -all- article naming at once. -- Netoholic @ 03:13, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
    Or, we can refer to larger naming conventions and move us to the standard that they use very extensively. -- /Alex/21 03:20, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
    @Alex 21: - Cite it. Give us a naming convention that affects more articles than NCTV which specifically says to use "American" and "British" for disambiguation. WP:NCBIO doesn't. WP:NCFILM only gives "American" as one example (not explicit) and doesn't affect nearly as many topics. But in fact the major title policies (WP:TITLEFORMAT which refers to WP:NCA) give specific guidance to use the acronyms and examples which only use acronyms: To save space, acronyms should be used as disambiguators. -- Netoholic @ 03:34, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
    NCFILM. NCTV gives no examples, but NCFILM still states to use American, which is used in plenty of articles. NCA is a guideline, and TITLEFORMAT states Abbreviations and acronyms are often ambiguous and thus should be avoided unless the subject is known primarily by its abbreviation and that abbreviation is primarily associated with the subject, and Acronyms may be used for parenthetical disambiguation (emphasis mine), not "must". -- /Alex/21 03:38, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
    Netoholic, by the way, do you plan to reply to many more comments that do not support your position? -- /Alex/21 03:39, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
    @Alex 21: - NCFILM affects far fewer articles than NCTV. Maybe someone will do some database query magic for exact numbers that don't count redirects, but there are 255 results for "American film)" but 536 for "(U.S. TV series" and 222 for "(U.S. season". For UK articles the comparison is 185 "British film)" vs 446 "(UK TV series" and 215 "(UK series" (seasons) . Of course, I didn't include "TV programs" or all the other show types, but I think you get the point. Try Again. I will keep replying to obvious and verifiable untruths. -- Netoholic @ 04:02, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
    Incomplete results, cherry-picked disambiguations searched for that do not show the entire picture. Please cite that NCTV is the biggest naming convention on Wikipedia that uses disambiguations by country. Also, you admit to bludgeoning. Cheers. -- /Alex/21 04:07, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
    Well that is an WP:ICANTHEARYOU if I ever saw one. -- Netoholic @ 04:13, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
    As it is incomplete. I can certainly hear you, but if you want to provide statistics, provide the statistics properly. -- /Alex/21 04:14, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
    If "WP:CONSISTENCY was the main concern" is a silly red herring fallacy. All the WP:CRITERIA are of equal concern. If Netoholic wants to change WP:AT policy to remove one of the criteria, WP:VPPOL is thattaway. While the CONSISTENCY policy within it still exists, we'll continue to follow it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:06, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Support Status Quo (U.S./UK) - I really can't see any convincing reason to change. MOS:US and MOS:ABBR support the use of the abbreviations so I can't see why NCTV shouldn't continue to do so. --AussieLegend (✉) 01:27, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Support Status Quo (U.S./UK) along with the points made above America can refer to North, Central and South while US only refers to the United States. MarnetteD|Talk 04:11, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
    That's already considered under List of adjectival and demonymic forms for countries and nations, but "American" remains listed and is thus acceptable for use. -- /Alex/21 04:15, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
    And, yet, this is not a problem for either NCFILM or the biography articles. IOW, it's not a real "problem". --IJBall (contribs • talk) 12:35, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Support - Contrary to what someone earlier said, US and UK just sound wrong to me in most cases. I would really only expect them in government related topics. --Khajidha (talk) 12:39, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Support Status Quo (U.S./UK). I'm seeing three arguments in favour of the change: 1) Consistency with WP:NCFILM 2) Resolves U.S./US debate. 3) Looks 'better' or 'more natural'.
re 1) I think the degree of inconsistency is pretty weak. WP:NCFILM says include additional information such as the country of origin (adjective). "US" and "UK" are adjectival forms for countries, and are listed at List of adjectival and demonymic forms for countries and nations. The guideline later goes on to give Noise (2007 American film) as an example disambiguation, but doesn't explicitly state that 'American' is the preferred adjectival for the United States. And it doesn't say anything at all about UK vs. British. It seems to be an incidental detail that film titles settled on using 'American' and 'British', rather than some carefully considered policy. Also, as Netoholic points out, US/UK is consistent with naming conventions for many other domains.
re 2) Everyone seems to agree that this would be a happy side effect, but not a reason to make the change in and of itself. re 3) This is a matter of personal taste. I happen to find US/UK more natural in this context. Colin M (talk) 16:41, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Status Quo as American and British are increasingly considered politically incorrect. British is disliked by the Irish as British Isles includes Eire, and American excerts a dominance over other Americans such as South American, Native American, Latin American, Central American and others, so US and UK is preferable IMO Atlantic306 (talk) 21:34, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
    Politically incorrect? Since when does Wikipedia maintain a "politically correct" status? That's new to me... -- /Alex/21 23:04, 4 April 2019 (UTC)
    The Irish object to "British Isles" because they feel it presents the mistaken idea that Ireland is part of the United Kingdom. I fail to see how that would extend to an objection to using British for things that are explicitly from the UK. No one is saying to slap "British" on articles about Irish television. As for the point about "American", that is simply following general Engliah language usage. An unmodified "America" or "American" is virtually always a reference to the United States in English language usage. --Khajidha (talk) 12:30, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
    This is off-topic, since this RfC has nothing to do with disambiguating Irish shows, only American and British ones. It certainly has nothing to do with the term "British Isles".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:06, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
    No, there's absolutely nothing politically incorrect about either British or American. And Britain does not include the Republic of Ireland, although the British Isles does. They are two entirely different things. Note that people from the UK are officially British citizens. That is our nationality. If that's politically incorrect then take it up with the government, but please don't try to foist allegations of political incorrectness on the usual, common and correct adjective for people and things from our country. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:11, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Support change to American/British - for many reasons: (1) brings such articles into alignment with many other Wikiprojects including FILM, (2) removes debate about whether to write "US" or "U.S." in article titles, (3) aligns with the use of full country name in other television articles such as "New Zealand TV series" (not "NZ TV series" or "N.Z. TV series"), and (4) clearer to the average reader, especially those who don't recognise what US or UK stands for in an article title. Fully noting that WP:NCA prefers abbreviations for brevity, I would argue that NCA has not only failed to adequately deal with the US/U.S. issue, but that an additional 5 characters (UK->British) or 4 characters (U.S.->American) is hardly a massive toll, especially when New Zealand is commonplace over NZ, Emerati over UAE, etc. -- Whats new?(talk) 04:54, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
    I think we would and should absolutely respect the wishes of editors from New Zealand or UAE if they voice a problem with the adjectivals we use for their TV articles, per WP:TIES. -- Netoholic @ 04:46, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Support change to American/British. We use these for pretty much everything else, so I don't know why TV shows/films (and political parties, which seems to be the other one) should be an exception. -- Necrothesp (talk) 09:40, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Support change to American/British as per many above, most recently Whats new?. —Joeyconnick (talk) 17:03, 5 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Support change to American/British per WP:CONSISTENCY policy. (That said, I would be in favor of a site-wide RfC at WP:VPPOL about switching everything to US/UK, per all the rest of the WP:CRITERIA (concise, recognizable, natural, precise); our titles should only be as a precise as necessary for recognizability, and the idea that US/UK are not recognizable, specific, and natural in English simply isn't credible.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  01:57, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
    @SMcCandlish: What an odd vote, maybe I'm misreading? Why would you favor a change here and then the opposite change at a higher level - which would double the workload? Also, CONSISTENT with what? No other naming convention states a specific use of adjectival (NCFILM gives only one as an example, and as I've shown with the stats above, film usage of American/British is far less than the TV usage of U.S./UK). If CONSISTENCY is a goal, why force a larger set of work to TV articles when a lot less work is necessary for films and other smaller topic areas? -- Netoholic @ 04:43, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
    Nothing strange about it. We have a rule, so follow it. Those who don't like the rule are free to propose a change to it (should that change ever come to pass, then having all the names consistent will actually be helpful, for semi-automatedly moving stuff later). Analogy: If the law says "possession of 2 or more grams of a controlled substance results in a mandatory minimum sentence of 18 months", that's what the judge will impose, even if he/she would also advocate repealing drug-possession criminalization laws in the first place. The gist: don't try to make a "magical exception" for this one case. There is way, way too much special pleading coming out of the TV and film and anime wikiprojects – a constant firehose of it – and it needs to stop. (And I say that as a participant in all of them.) That's actually a far more serious issue than which particular text strings to use to disambiguate here. At some point it needs to sink in that wikiprojects are not fantasy kingdoms in which novel rules get to be invented against the site-wide standards, as if WP:CONLEVEL policy didn't exist. (Strangely, I just had to make the same point in a completely different thread immediately before this edit.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:27, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
    @SMcCandlish: Could you explain what rule you're talking about? This naming convention is in line with WP:NCA and has been for about 13 years. Even Georgia (U.S. state), one of the most prominent non-biographical articles using any adjectival matches the usage we have here (added: and a RM to Georgia (American state) was soundly rejected and SNOW'd in Jan 2018). Please link to the exact rule you think this guideline needs to be following with regard to American/British. -- Netoholic @ 08:20, 6 April 2019 (UTC) Updated. 11:04, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
    Read the above discussion? WP:CONSISTENCY, WP:CONLEVEL, WP:DAB. How many rules pointing in the same direction do you need? LOL. They're all pointing at "do what all the rest of the articles are doing".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:19, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
    Here we see again that the Emperor has no clothes. You're just repeating the same unsubstantiated claims. There is no guideline which explicitly states to use "American/British" as an adjective. There is statistical evidence showing that, for non-biography topic areas, "U.S./UK" is used far more often. -- Netoholic @ 21:25, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
  • Statistical data: intitle:"(American magazine)" 16 uses; intitle:"(US magazine)" 7 uses; intitle:"(U.S. magazine)" 5 uses. intitle:"(British magazine)" 37 uses; intitle:"(UK magazine)" 21 uses. intitle:"American film)" 93 uses; (U.S. film) had 2. intitle:"British film)" 36 uses; intitle:"UK film)" 3 uses. So even with not checking biography topic areas the usage of "American" and "British" is more common (and in film is basically the only usage). --Gonnym (talk) 21:49, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
    Parentheses are ignored unless you do an exact query using a regular expression. This is probably a more reasonable search and accounts for at least one other area of potential variance. --Izno (talk) 23:14, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
    Fullpoints also are ignored. --Izno (talk) 23:21, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
    Good to know. I'm using a script so my searches show correctly for me. Gonnym (talk) 23:56, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
    Why did you fail to compile the same stats for "TV series", "seasons/series", "TV programs", etc. for comparison as I did above? Seems like you've found a pitifully small sets of articles which are inconsistently named - not a strong case for disrupting the TV topic area which is vast and consistent. -- Netoholic @ 01:54, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
    Are you seriously asking why? Because NCTV's guideline strictly says to use U.S. and UK and for the past year myself and others have made sure thousands of articles confirmed to those guidelines. Also, as I've noted, I intentionally did not check bio articles, as you've argued they do not count, but as other's have pointed out, that is your personal opinion. If we count those articles then as pointed out, the whole wiki except for this project uses one American/British. --Gonnym (talk) 12:05, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
    Adjectives for people (or groups of people) are demonyms and some are very different from the adjectivals for a country of origin. Consider for example we use (Philippine TV series) not "Filipino" - and so bio articles should not be considered in this discussion. "American" and "British" are the predominant demonyms for those countries, but they are not so predominant as non-bio adjectivals. For something that originates within a country, we should use the clearest adjectival for that country. "American" (referring to non-persons) could refer to any of The Americas, and "British" is exclusionary in a lot of contexts to Northern Ireland, whereas U.S. and UK have never been problematic or unclear in their usage. I can never recall any TV article naming discussion where these abbreviations where ever called into question for being unclear on their scope. The TV article area is so vast, it proves that U.S./UK works... whereas your examples above are smaller in reach, inconsistent, and unproven. -- Netoholic @ 19:56, 7 April 2019 (UTC)
  • American / British - It seems more natural to me, which makes me think it's what a reader would expect, too. I don't have a strong opinion about it, however. Argento Surfer (talk) 13:00, 16 April 2019 (UTC)
  • American / British - 1st choice, but what could it hurt to also have the US and UK? Atsme Talk 📧 00:54, 24 April 2019 (UTC)
  • American/British. This brings it inline with WP:NCFILM and WP:NCMUSIC. It's also odd to use Canadian for TV series from Canada, but US and UK for shows from those countries; I see no reason they should be treated differently than any other country in the world. Calidum 05:07, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Next steps

Now that the RfC has been closed in favor of switching to "American" and "British" in NCTV disambiguation, we need to:

  1. Rewrite NCTVUK/NCTVUS. (And at the same time, I would also favor changing the general guideline to indicating a "preference" for by country disambiguation whenever possible, as multiple RM's have shown that it is preferred...) And,
  2. Put in for approval of a bot to do a "mass move" of all of the articles under NCTVUK/NCTVUS to "British" and "American" disambiguation (leaving redirects at all of the old "UK" and "U.S." titles).

There may be other things that need to be done?... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 05:51, 14 May 2019 (UTC)

Articles (TV pages, season pages,list pages), templates and categories. --Gonnym (talk) 08:18, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
A mass move can be executed per WP:MOVESUBPAGE, and as an approved page mover, I'm happy to help with this. I can look into putting together a list of all the television-related articles, template and categories that use "U.S." or "UK" disambiguation. -- /Alex/21 12:17, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
After following this search and filtering through the results with my own regex search-and-replace, I came up with this list of 847 articles, templates and categories. -- /Alex/21 12:57, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
If you think you can do the moves without a bot, feel free! (I'd cite this RfC in the edit summary, when doing them.) It just seems like a lot of work, the kind of thing that's better suited for a bot to do... (FTR, I didn't know/remember page movers can do "mass moves" like this, and I've never looked at that code in question.) --IJBall (contribs • talk) 13:18, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
On second thoughts, the mass move script won't work, as it only remove or appends text to the pages to be moved. A bot request would be best, if someone would like to file one. -- /Alex/21 13:50, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
It's probably better if somebody more familiar with bots and the request process does it – I'm almost never dealing with BAG and such... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 13:55, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
Primefac, I've requested several bot tasks from you, and you were a great help with my requests. Would mass page moves (about 800, replacing "U.S." with "American", and "UK" with "British") be something that could be performed by PrimeBOT? -- /Alex/21 14:08, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
My bot's an AWB bot, which can't do automated moves. I would put in a request at WP:BOTREQ. Primefac (talk) 19:38, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
@Alex 21: TheSandBot is set up for page moves and flagged. I would happily file a BRFA if given a list (preferably broken down with from->to listed). --TheSandDoctor Talk 00:32, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
TheSandDoctor, cheers! I'll put together a list in my sandbox for you. -- /Alex/21 00:33, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
Sounds great Alex 21, just ping me when you're done please. Okay? --TheSandDoctor Talk 00:37, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
TheSandDoctor, done! See User:Alex 21/sandbox2. -- /Alex/21 00:38, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
I just realized the list is incomplete, because there's still game/talk shows, miniseries, serials, season articles... I'm putting together a more complete list while I'm logged in. I've put together a more complete list the linked sandbox with the following search, which is a lot more inclusive, and includes a further 607 results. -- /Alex/21 02:32, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
TheSandDoctor, the list is now complete. Do you think you'd be able to file the BRFA, please? Thank you! -- /Alex/21 01:08, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
A mass move of US-disambiguated seems reasonable, but not of UK without some pre-processing, because the UK != GB, and my understanding is that "British" only refers to those from Britain or even just Great Britain.[1] I don't think it would be hard to pre-process them to verify. --Izno (talk) 14:37, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
"British" is an acceptable term for a wide range of countries, per List of adjectival and demonymic forms for countries and nations. -- /Alex/21 14:55, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
Doubtless, but this is an opportunity to be precise instead. "Irish" is just as easy to move a target to. --Izno (talk) 15:10, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
Agree with Alex – if people want to argue that "British" is a problem, they need to do it site-wide, because "British" has been use for disambiguation purposes forever around here, and there's never been a problem with it. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 15:42, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
I would oppose Alex 21 doing any of these mass moves directly. His mass operations related to country terms has been a concern in the recent past. -- Netoholic @ 15:19, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
It looks like we've already established that it should go through WP:BOTREQ. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 15:42, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
I'd be careful about doing mass moves as it's likely to cause issues, most notably with navboxes. A lot of work is still going to have to be done manually. --AussieLegend (✉) 21:26, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
@AussieLegend: Do you know if it would be possible to fold those kinds of (necessary) edits into the bot request? --IJBall (contribs • talk) 22:13, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
Also, don't bot requests like this usually get "tested" with a smaller subset of articles (say, 10) first? If so, that would be a good opportunity to figure out what additional issues we'll be looking at in carrying this all out... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 22:15, 14 May 2019 (UTC)
@IJBall: (BAG here) You are correct that bot tasks are typically trialed on a smaller subset of the articles. If no concerns arise after a period of time and the trial goes as expected, then they are typically approved. If concerns do arise or there are bugs in the code to be worked out, then subsequent extended trials might be called for. I hope this clears it up for you! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask away. --TheSandDoctor Talk 00:36, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
@TheSandDoctor: and everyone - MusikAnimal has already done a mass move, see Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/MusikBot 10. Maybe they can help out? --DannyS712 (talk) 01:12, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
@DannyS712: @MusikAnimal: There appear to be a few conversations going on at once here. In an above thread with Alex 21 I agreed to file the BRFA with this. TheSandBot has performed over 43 thousand of these (resulting in around 86k page moves, when including talk pages) (Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TheSandBot). This task is extremely similar to that task and will require around 3 key strokes to update for this. I plan to file within the next half hour or so. --TheSandDoctor Talk 02:35, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
@DannyS712, Alex 21, and MusikAnimal: BRFA filed. --TheSandDoctor Talk 03:04, 17 May 2019 (UTC)
Old issue that is irrelevant to the current discussion, a singular concern that was resolved, understood and all flags returned. -- /Alex/21 00:34, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
  • I'd strongly suggest manual moves of some of our highest-traffic articles first (maybe ten U.S./UK ones each), as some of those editors may not have seen the RfC and a bot running might cause a panic. -- Netoholic @ 02:15, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
    And how do we determine those articles? -- /Alex/21 02:35, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
  • Template usage should be updated to standardize the new usage.
    1. Series articles that use {{Infobox television}} should have
      1. |list_episodes= changed from "List of <series> (U.S. TV series) episodes" to "List of <series> (American TV series) episodes". [Off-topic remark: the parameter name here should really be changed to match the other 2 templates]
    2. Season articles that use {{Infobox television season}} should have
      1. |season_qualifier= changed from "U.S." to "American" and from "UK" to "British".
      2. |episode_list= changed from "List of <series> (U.S. TV series) episodes" to "List of <series> (American TV series) episodes".
    3. Episode articles that use {{Infobox television episode}} should have
      1. |series= changed from "[[<series> (U.S. TV series)|<series>]]" to </nowiki>[[<series> (American TV series)|<series>]]</nowiki>
      2. |season_article= changed from "<series> (U.S. season 4)" to "<series> (American season 4)".
      3. |episode_list= changed from "List of <series> (U.S. TV series) episodes" to "List of <series> (American TV series) episodes".
    4. Navboxes that change should have
      1. |name= be changed to the new template name.
      2. If |title= has a piped link, update it to the new "American"/"British" style.
--Gonnym (talk) 05:51, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
@Gonnym: (just saw this now) That is definitely an idea for a follow-up BRFA/task, once the articles are moved. --TheSandDoctor Talk 05:05, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

Initial bot run completed

Per Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/TheSandBot 3, an initial bot run has been completed on 30 pages. If there are any issues, please leave a note at the BRFA. If there are no responses, this will be approved in 5 days. — xaosflux Talk 19:07, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

American (U.S.) vs. American (Americas)

I just saw this discussion due to the bot moves. I think it was a bad idea. "U.S." clearly refers to the USA, but "American" could refer to other parts of America (it's complicated). It would have been better to stick with "U.S." for clarity. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 07:13, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Mike Peel, noted, but that argument was already raised in the RFC, and it passed as a consensus nevertheless. -- /Alex/21 04:55, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
That usage is extremely rare in English. --Khajidha (talk) 14:33, 20 June 2019 (UTC)

Manual updates

List of Unforgettable episodes is showing "Expression error: Unexpected < operator" in the lead. That is due to use of the first template shown below. It needs to be replaced with the second because Unforgettable (U.S. TV series) has moved. 

{{Aired episodes|title=Unforgettable|showpage=Unforgettable (U.S. TV series)|finished=all|seasons=4}}
{{Aired episodes|title=Unforgettable|showpage=Unforgettable (American TV series)|finished=all|seasons=4}}

Something similar is needed at List of Supernatural episodes List of Suits episodes List of Shameless (American TV series) episodes (and perhaps more, as pages are refreshed). I am mentioning that here rather than fixing it myself because there are probably other things which need changing. Johnuniq (talk) 08:02, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

I did mention that there would be a lot of manual work required. --AussieLegend (✉) 09:32, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
Requires work, manual not so much. As an example see my mapping above. You just need to identify what needs to be updated and a bot can still perform it. Taking this as an example, then any page on the list (those that have changed) that has the template {{Aired episodes}}, if it has |showpage= change the country part. --Gonnym (talk) 09:56, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
Can you do something for navboxes? --AussieLegend (✉) 10:53, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
Sadly, I don't know how to code bots for Wikipedia, but TheSandDoctor might be able to help. @TheSandDoctor: is this something you can do? --Gonnym (talk) 11:28, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping Gonnym. A bot could do that easily. DeprecatedFixerBot is currently set up to do something similar. So it needs to be run on those 3 lists (so far) AussieLegend? I can probably start working on writing it within a day or two. --TheSandDoctor Talk 12:37, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
2 more issues to add to the list of "lets-hope-we-have-a-bot-to-help" list: 1) links in disambiguation pages that should be updated to use the new links, as those links are not pipped, the visual text is the old one; 2) hatnotes at the top of articles (the {{for}} and others) should also be updated. --Gonnym (talk) 22:01, 6 June 2019 (UTC)
I checked transclusions of {{Aired episodes}} in AWB, and it doesn't seem like there's any further error'ing cases of the template. -- /Alex/21 05:23, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

Other manual updates that need working on are updating the templates and categories linked at User:Alex 21/sandbox2; the templates need to have their "view" links updated and usages of the templates updated, and the categories need to be moved and updated at their respective articles. The manual moves at User:DannyS712/sandbox4/User talk:Gonnym#NCTV page moves have all been completed. -- /Alex/21 05:03, 7 June 2019 (UTC)

Episode summaries are not displaying in season articles either. Nor are links to related seasons in the infobox. I'm not picking on Rktrf here, but when he fixed the episode summary issue here, he missed the infobox, which is easy to do. Editors fixing articles need to watch out for that. --AussieLegend (✉) 07:15, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
  Done on the episode summaries. The infobox issues can be fixed in their own AWB run; I'll see if I can set up the relevant find-and-replaces. -- /Alex/21 08:35, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
Gone over the two lists (User:Alex 21/sandbox2 and User:DannyS712/sandbox4) and updated all links on those pages - that includes the infoboxes, hatnotes, displaytitle, sorting, etc. That also includes some series templates (those that had a name change) which had their links updated as well. Other series navbox templates which weren't nominated (like a template with a name of "series (US)") still don't have updated links (that show up black). --Gonnym (talk) 18:30, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
I've updated the television infobox templates for seasons and episodes. The primary infobox television template will be difficult, since there's 46k transclusions to go through, but AWB only lists 25k. -- /Alex/21 08:37, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
Re this edit, there are still likely some navboxes out there that haven't been updated, like {{Heartbeat}}. --AussieLegend (✉) 12:20, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

How should the following categories be named?

Latest comment: 5 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

The category naming style for "television series by network" is all over the place. As an example here is what is found in Category:American television series by network:

There really isn't any special reason for the variations as they all hold the same exact items - programs that have been shown on that network, and per WP:CATDEFINING that should be the first broadcast/airing network.

While we're on the subject of categories, the country subcategories in Category:Wikipedia categories named after television series are either named "televison series" or "television programs".

Again, no reason here as well and they should all have a consistent style. --Gonnym (talk) 14:00, 9 July 2019 (UTC)

In general, I would prefer consistent used of the term TV "program", as it is the "catch-all" term that covers both true TV series, and other non-series TV shows. So I would support moving all of these cats, etc. to "program"/"programme". --IJBall (contribs • talk) 19:44, 10 July 2019 (UTC)
"Programming" would be a better catch-all because of that very British-American spelling difference. So "(network) original programming" would be my preference -- Wikipedical (talk) 19:14, 11 July 2019 (UTC)

Argentine or Argentinian

Latest comment: 5 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion

According to List of adjectival and demonymic forms for countries and nations "Argentinian" should be used, but practice seems to be otherwise. There are 14 articles that use "(Argentine TV series)" and 1 that uses "(Argentine talk show)" vs 4 that use "(Argentinian TV series)" and 4 that use "(Argentinian season". Couldn't find no other TV or film related pages. On the category side of things (Category:Television in Argentina) it seems "Argentine" is the one used. Seeing as how there really is no reason to have 2 different dabs used for the same topics (and seeing as how we don't do this for any other country), which one should be used? --Gonnym (talk) 06:01, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

"Argentine TV" seems to have the lead in ngrams. The NOW Corpus is close, 50-42 in favor of "Argentine TV". Along with the current predominance of "Argentine" in the category tree and used to name the Argentine television-related lists, I'd say the choice is largely made. I'll ping WP:WikiProject Argentina. -- Netoholic @ 08:09, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
FTR, I'd prefer "Argentinian", as the more "standard" adjectival form, though it appears that "Argentine" is also considered "correct"... This seems to be similar to the "Singapore" vs. ""Singaporean" issue... But, at this point, if we want to standardize on "Argentinian", it would likely require a "mass" WP:RM and discussion. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 15:50, 24 May 2019 (UTC)
To me either one is fine as a demonym, but I strongly prefer "Argentine" as an adjective when referring to non-persons. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:23, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
Updated the guideline with an explicit Argentine example so this can be follow general en.wiki practice. --Gonnym (talk) 08:41, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Disambiguation by element

Latest comment: 5 years ago9 comments3 people in discussion

I just noticed your edit to WP:NCTV. What exactly is that based on? I can't recall any dispute discussion on this matter on the page. The last proposed change was by me if I'm not mistaken. --Gonnym (talk) 21:13, 24 July 2019 (UTC)

It's based on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (television)/Archive 15#Additional disambiguation. As written, NCTV appears to mandate Winterfell (Game of Thrones) rather than Winterfell (Game of Thrones episode) since the location of Winterfell doesn't have its own article (despite being a primary redirect), but a consensus of people have agreed that it is nonsensical in this case, and so the guideline should be changed to reflect reality. If you have a suggested wording I'm all ears, and we can restart that conversation. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 02:07, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
I still don't understand why it couldn't have gone from Where the title is the same as an episode, character, or other element from the show which has its own page, disambiguate further using Title (Show episode/character/element). to Where the title is the same as an episode, character, or other element from the show, disambiguate further using Title (Show episode/character/element). - that is basically all that's needed. As a side note, I'd really wish you hadn't added that dispute tag or at least added it to the specific sub-section you meant, as in a different RM discussion people are using that dispute tag to ignore the guideline for the base section completely. --Gonnym (talk) 05:37, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
Well, we don't want to put it in such absolute terms. Your suggested change, taken literally, would mean that Death (South Park) would have to be at Death (South Park episode) to accommodate the one-off character who appears only in that episode. We would either need to specify a list of exceptions (keeping in mind that "no exceptions" is too narrow and "has its own page" is too broad), or hedge and say that disambiguating using element type is merely a possible choice to be applied with discretion. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 13:35, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
And so? What harm will come from that death episode moving? This follows exactly WP:INCDAB. There is no primary topic for a qualifier, so for any given series, the same name can, and would, be equally ambiguous. In your given example - the episode is not coincidentally named after the character that appears in that episode. --Gonnym (talk) 14:58, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
That's your opinion though. Netoholic occupies the opposite ground, for example. I'm somewhere in the middle, but probably closer to your position than his. In the end we need to propose some wording and get a consensus of people to agree on the compromise. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 17:07, 25 July 2019 (UTC)
While a good editor, he is known for not allowing any change to go into the guideline. On the other hand, "my" opinion is backed up by RMs and NCTV discussion on this subject that that have shown that editors (a) don't think incomplete disambiguation can be a primary of anything and (b) that for the same TV series, same name topics should be disambiguated - taking these two together produces the only logical conclusion - anything else is just beating around the bush. Unrelated to whether we'll reach a conclusion here, could you please edit NCTV and place your tag in the correct sub-section, as your issue is with the 2nd part (Where the title is the same as an episode... and not the whole section. As I've stated above, other editors are taking your dispute tag as open-season on the whole character guideline. --Gonnym (talk) 18:36, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

My basic principle is that each parenthetically disambiguated title is quite similar to a normal title, with the possibility of a primary topic (or none). WP:INCDAB doesn't specify what to do in the case of nonexistent articles, because taken to the extreme you couldn't have Purple Rain (album) without adding "Prince" if some garage band released an album called "Purple Rain". So I think a good rule would be this: the element type is required when there are multiple entities from the show with the same name unless the element in question is the primary topic within the show and is the only element from the show with a standalone article. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 04:35, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

It's hard to parse this, without seeing it – could you give some examples as to what you're getting at?... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 04:40, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Mass roundabout transclusions in television series articles; Discussion at Talk:Arrow (TV series)#Transclusions

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

  You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Arrow (TV series)#Transclusions. -- /Alex/21 09:03, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

Miniseries v. TV series

Latest comment: 5 years ago6 comments6 people in discussion

In light of this ongoing RM and all the ridiculousness that came before it, I would like to ask why it matters if we use "miniseries" or "TV series" as the disambiguator? A miniseries is a TV series after all. Calidum 03:21, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Exactly – we should deprecate "miniseries", and use "TV series" as the disambiguator for any "limited series"-type TV shows. Simpler, and effectively more accurate. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 03:30, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
Kill it with fire. --Gonnym (talk) 08:25, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
Yes, thinking about it, this (first, above) is an important point. Disambiguation is supposed to be to a generic class, and where there is a choice of two classes the simplest term should be used (unless two similar items within a wider class forces use of a narrower one). There is no requirement for the disambiguation term to be focused more narrowly, if a clear wider term is sufficient to do the job. Since there is only one television series of this title, it is not clear to me how any proposed change would be justified under WP disambiguation policy? MapReader (talk) 12:22, 21 July 2019 (UTC)
Yup. Use the more generic and less ambiguous term for disambiguation purposes. All miniseries are also TV series. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:22, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
And not all "TV series" are television series. Thousands of series have never even touched a television in its release, nor ever been broadcast. -- /Alex/21 11:21, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

What If series

Latest comment: 5 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Thoughts on the disambiguation between What If... (web series), What/If and What If...? (TV series)? -- /Alex/21 15:05, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

The article names reflect the title card stylization, so it's fine in that regard. All series are listed fine under What If (disambiguation), so readers will find the correct one. I'd only add {{Other uses}}s to the top of each article that link to the disambiguation page, and leave it at that. – sgeureka t•c 15:38, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Being Human

Latest comment: 5 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion

Should the following be titled "American" as opposed to "North American", per the recent updates to NCTV?

-- /Alex/21 10:19, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Actually, the parent article refers to the series as Canadian, whereas the characters article refers to it as American, and the British episodes/characters articles recently (until I disambiguated them) referred to it as the Canadian/US adaptation... -- /Alex/21 11:19, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
This one would need a WP:RM before moving. It's similar to Talk:Skins (American TV series)#Requested move 11 November 2018, except that in the case of Being Human, the "American-Canadian" co-production aspect is much more supported by sourcing (IIRC – IOW, the sourcing needs to be checked to see what it supports in terms of production of the series). My guess is that an RM as proposed will be opposed by all of those who think "American TV series" will ignore the Canadian production aspect... So, while the current arrangement is non-standard, and I personally dislike it, my guess is that there is not consensus to move it from its current disambiguation. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 12:26, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Yes, it's awkward, but it's a reasonable compromise. I guess technically it should be Being Human (Canadian-American TV series) or Being Human (American-Canadian TV series). Actually... this might be a case where disambiguating this series by year is more elegant: Being Human (2011 TV series) —Joeyconnick (talk) 22:01, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Isn't the proper adjective "Canado-American"? (pertaining to both Canada and U.S.A.) ; similar terms are Sino-American; Anglo-American; Franco-American; etc -- 67.70.33.184 (talk) 21:05, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:List of Toriko episodes#Requested move 26 October 2019

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

  You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:List of Toriko episodes#Requested move 26 October 2019. Discussion is about whether you can have a "List of episodes" article without having a "TV series" article. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 19:37, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:The Morning Show (American TV series)#Requested move 3 November 2019

Latest comment: 5 years ago2 comments1 person in discussion

  You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:The Morning Show (American TV series)#Requested move 3 November 2019. This could use more eyes from knowledgeable editors from here, especially as this probably affects more than one article. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 23:58, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Bumping this, as the Talk page archiving last night will take this off watchlists... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 14:03, 4 November 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (television)#Additional disambiguation

Latest comment: 5 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion

This section is unclear.

First off, in practice it's an ordered list. That is, instead of burying the priority instructions inside the paragraphs, how about replacing use one of the following methods with "These methods are in order of priority; use the first one that applies." To me, that makes it much easier for a reader to decide which to use than to find out mid-paragraph that Generally the preferred disambiguation when additional disambiguation is needed. mid-paragraph.

Secondly, Generally used when there are shows with the same title within the same country. isn't as clear as could be. Is this intended as a secondary disambiguator (after method #1 fails to disambiguate) or is this meant as a general instruction, independent of the first method? The logic suggests the former, the phrasing suggests the latter!

Currently; thanks to the unsynched natured of the two paragraphs a casual reading makes you ask "are there situations where both or neither method is applicable?". This state of ambiguousness does not do.

This section should use language that makes it as clear as possible what our conventions intend: either we present two equal methods, used for different purposes (and where we clearly spell out how to resolve conflicts if the two instructions can overlap!); or we present a hierarchy of methods where we're meant to use one after another until "enough" disambiguation is achieved.

In short, this section fails to clearly and concisely answer the simple questions: 1) do we disambiguate by country or year (or nature of show)? What is our primary and secondary disambiguator? Any exceptions? 2) do we intend for there to be leeway/overlap or not? If "yes", what are our instructions for resolving this? (Maybe let's first answer the questions, and the section will write itself after that.)

Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 11:10, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

To answer your first question, there is really no consensus for country over year or vice versa. See this discussion from earlier this year. Calidum 13:30, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
That isn't true – multiple WP:RMs over years have shown that "by country" disambiguation should be used preferentially when it can be easily used... The issue from CapnZapp's POV is that there aren't always "simple examples" – this gets to the "mixed set" situations. Luckily, there are many more cases where "by country" (2 or 3 TV shows from different countries) or "by year" (2 or 3 TV shows with the same title from the same country) can be easily used, and I think NCTV reflects that. The issue with "mixed set" (i.e. TV shows from multiple countries, and from multiple years within the same country, all with the same title) is definitely less "settled" – I would say more WP:RMs on those have been settled in favor of using both "by country" and "by year" disambiguation in a "mixed set", though there is certainly a subgroup of editors who think we should only use "by year" disambiguation in a "mixed set". And this doesn't even cover the rare examples when so-called "double disambiguation" is needed, but so far there's only about half-a-dozen examples of those. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 13:38, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
My point is that our guidelines shouldn't reflect prior edit battles. They should be clear on what there is and isn't consensus on, rather than leaving unresolved basic issues hanging. That is, if we can't achieve consensus on whether option A or B should be picked first in some particular case, that's not a problem in itself. As long as the guideline doesn't avoid the issue!
Instead, address the issue. It's perfectly fine for a guideline to say "choose yourself" or "there is no consensus here"! (And doing so is much easier for readers to understand, than to wonder why an obvious choicepoint is left unguided, and having to scour old talk archives to understand why.) CapnZapp (talk) 17:25, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
Honestly, I'm not sure what you want. The current guideline does reflect the current consensus, which I outlined above. It doesn't cover complex cases, like "mixed sets" because, 1) it can't, and 2) there isn't a strong "current consensus" for those. If you think certain things could be worded better, or should be reworded, then propose the changes you want to make, and we'll see if consensus supports the changes. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 17:53, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
Then read my initial post again and then ask me what's unclear about it. Myself I think I made myself relatively clear in how and where the current phrasing is lacking. From an outsider's POV, that is - remember, unless you're actively involved with a certain guideline, it's impossible to know "current consensus" as the intangible thing separate from what's written on the page. Please note - I don't want to change "current consensus", I just want the guideline to be simpler and more clear. Therefore I took it to talk instead of making edits that might be perceived as consensus-changing. Our main goal as guideline editors can't be to make it reflect "current consensus" with only a secondary regard for whether it's comprehensible to our readers, after all. Therefore I'm asking you experts on this particular consensus to give the section a once-over. Thanks CapnZapp (talk) 18:56, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

The current guideline does reflect the current consensus I never said it didn't. Reflecting consensus can't be the only criteria. What I said was that the guidelines are unclear. Muddy. Ambivalent. And even that is okay - if the text owns it. Makes it clear to the reader that, yes, our advice isn't clear. This allows the reader to stop searching for something that isn't there; to stop trying to wrack his or her brain on what the advice "really tells me to do".

It is this last crucial part where we need to go beyond "does it reflect consensus?" and into "is this well written?". I maintain that, no, it is not well written. In fact, it reads exactly as if multiple editors have tweaked until everybody can live with it, but no further. And that's just not good enough for something that's routinely thrown at new wikipedians (at its ugliest with a message like "reverting per WP:NCTVUS") CapnZapp (talk) 11:22, 8 November 2019 (UTC)

The War of the Worlds

Latest comment: 5 years ago36 comments7 people in discussion
Further information: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television § The War of the Worlds

I recently posted about the above articles at WT:TV earlier today. The first is a Canadian/American series that premiered in 1988. The second is a British series that is definitely set to premiere later this year. The third is an French/American (I think?) series that is set to premiere first in Belgium on October 29 this year (per trailer). How should these articles be titled? I only just retitled them today (they were originally respectively titled War of the Worlds (TV series), The War of the Worlds (miniseries), War of the Worlds (Fox TV series)), but given the release dates, I'm not 100% certain. Thoughts? -- /Alex/21 04:44, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

I'd go for something like (or at least create redirects there)
All of this will make it easy to find on The War of the Worlds (disambiguation). – sgeureka t•c 09:20, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
I think we've tried to phase out double disambiguators (i.e. year and country), so I'm not sure... To be honest, after reviewing the sources whilst expanding the article, I'm not even sure that the third series could be considered American; the only American country involved is Fox, and it's Fox's international divisions that are part of the series. -- /Alex/21 10:11, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
We haven't deprecated "double disambiguation", but it should not be used unless it's strictly necessary (e.g. Hunter (1984 American TV series) vs. Hunter (1984 Australian TV series) is pretty much the unique case), and it's absolutely not necessary here. So the second one should definitely stay at The War of the Worlds (British TV series) (though The War of the Worlds (TV series) is arguably good enough, as per WP:SMALLDETAILS – that one may be worth a WP:RM discussion...). "By year" disambiguation probably makes sense for the other two, as they aren't easily disambiguated "by country", so War of the Worlds (1988 TV series) should stay where it is, and where the last one ends up depends on whether it premieres in 2019 or (as I suspect is more likely) 2020, and we probably don't know that yet... IOW, I think where Alex has moved these is fine in the interim – we'll move the last one when we have a verified premiere date. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 12:37, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Add: If it's confirmed that the last one will premiere in Belgium this year, then I think it can be moved to War of the Worlds (2019 TV series) right now... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 12:53, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Fair; Utopia (2014 American TV series) and Utopia (2019 American TV series) is another unique case that I came across only within the past hour. Personally, I'd argue against SMALLDETAILS. The many adaptations haven't been overly uniform over their inclusion and/or exclusion of the beginning "The", so War of the Worlds (2019 TV series) could very well mean the British series and The War of the Worlds (TV series) could very well mean all three of them, if that's what a reader has looked for (hence my starting this discussion). Personally, I've searched for many series that start with "The" by excluding the "The". But I do agree that the other two series aren't easily disambiguated by country, given the involvement of multiple countries. Might be best to move the third series, add hatnotes, and hold an generic RM for all three. -- /Alex/21 13:11, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Nope – those should clearly be at just Utopia (2014 TV series) and Utopia (2019 TV series): I'll move those when I get the chance. Correction: Utopia (2014 American TV series) needs the "double disambiguation", as the Australian series is also 2014; but the 2019 series does not need it. As for the British series, it's arguable, but I think I'd be tempted to put it to an RM discussion – it may be decided that the "The", along with the use of hatnotes, is good enough... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 13:38, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
I think I'll wait until later to hold the RM, until both of them have premiered in 2019, as I can't find anything else confirming the October 29 airdate for the Fox series, and the BBC series has been pushed back several times over the past few years and it might just happen again. Once they've both premiered in 2019, then I'll put an RM across. Thanks for the help! -- /Alex/21 00:17, 1 October 2019 (UTC)
An IP (67.70.33.184 (talk · contribs · WHOIS)) requested at WP:RMTR that the War of the Worlds (2019 TV series) article be moved to War of the Worlds (U.S.-France TV series); I have reverted the move, informing them that the title does not conform with NCTV, and pointed them to this discussion. Also pinging Anthony Appleyard as the initial page mover. -- /Alex/21 11:31, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
Right – double disambiguation is sometimes required, but is not necessary in many cases. The 2019(?) series only needs to be at War of the Worlds (2019 TV series) – this uniquely disambiguates from the other WotW articles, so additional disambig. is unneeded, as per WP:CONCISE. I also agree with Alex that we should never do "double-country" disambig. – e.g. War of the Worlds (American-French TV series): in these cases, "by year" disambiguation should always be preferentially used over something like this. It's bad enough that one or two articles use "North American TV series" for disambiguation – doing something like "American-French TV series" is beyond the pale...   Note: Hmmm... The British TV series may also end up being 2019 – if that happens, then I definitely think we should move it to just The War of the Worlds (TV series) as per WP:SMALLDETAILS (and add hatnotes), otherwise we'll have a mess as War of the Worlds (2019 TV series) would need "double-disambiguation" as well, and that's not even easily possible in this case. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 12:34, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
Hmmm. I see your point, but I'm on the fence about it. I think that SMALLDETAILS would already be in place with their current locations; "British" disambiguates the clearly-British series from the country-ambiguous series, and the lack of "The" in the country-ambiguous series is what would satisfy SMALLDETAILS, meaning it wouldn't need double disambiguation. Getting technical, the country-ambiguous series would already need extra disambiguation no matter the location of the British series, given that both are airing in 2019 so it automatically applies to both. Besides, hatnotes are already in place on both articles.
My suggestion above still stands; we leave them where they are for now, wait until they've both premiered so that we're certain that they're both premiering this year(/month), and then hold an RM to gain further suggestions. -- /Alex/21 12:58, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
The War of the Worlds (2019 TV series) doesn't exist, if the Franco-Etatsunien production is at one, then the complementary title should exist being used or redirecting (search boxing for 2019 WotW would need to bring up both series for the year indicated) -- 67.70.33.184 (talk) 20:37, 4 October 2019 (UTC)
War of the Worlds (2019 Franco-American TV series) / War of the Worlds (Franco-American TV series) would seem to be using the proper adjective for a topic pertaining to both France and U.S.A. "Franco-American", like "Sino-American" and "Anglo-American", etc. -- 67.70.33.184 (talk) 21:12, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree with sgeureka completely. It should be:

You can't have the BBC one listed as "British", while leaving the "French-American" by Canal and Fox as just "(2019 TV series)", even if the names are slightly different, as they're both being released around the same time. It will get confusing for people who don't realise there's 2 shows coming out at similar times, and they might not notice the disambiguation notes at the top of each page. I've only just heard about this French-American one, which I've just noticed was incorrectly listed as a British show on IMDB, so I've corrected that. Now going to have to go back and check the tags I've added to questions about the 2019 adaptions on Quora, to see if anyone was asking about the Canal /Fox version, rather than the BBC version. Danstarr69 (talk) 15:13, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Double disambiguation in the form of "year country" is not at all necessary, as already discussed, nor is disambiguation in the form of "country-country" required either. Can you cite an example of another article being titled thus? -- /Alex/21 22:05, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
As an update, here is an interview which classifies the series as a multi-national effort: For many in the cast, the show’s cross-border nature held significant appeal. “It was incredibly liberating and exciting to work with a multi-national team, as opposed to just an English one,” says Elizabeth McGovern. “The nature of this story suits this international scope, and it was so stimulating to be directed by a Belgian filmmaker while working with an Irish actor alongside a French crew.” Thus, we could never use any country disambiguator, as there's too many countries to take note of, and the series is produced by multiple companies, so that only leaves the year acceptable. -- /Alex/21 01:58, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Having been slapped down for attempting to address this issue, I suppose I should point out that, as Danstarr69 says above, it seems ridiculous that we still have the two pages named thus:

Both are 2019 series, one being American-French, and the other British, as per the production companies. Alex 21's suggestion that the former can't be given a nationality because of some observation about the crew/cast by an actor is neither here nor there. The director being Belgian doesn't make it a Belgian production, any more than the BBC version's director makes it Portuguese. Nick Cooper (talk) 15:53, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

What's wrong with hatnotes solving the problem? Some on Wikipedia seem to think that a "2-click solution" is somehow blasphemy to our readership – I'm of the opinion that if we're get our readers to where they want to go within 2-clicks, we're doing fine. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 16:54, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
Nick Cooper, you didn't get "slapped down for attempting to address this issue", you were reverted for moving the article without discussion, or looking for a discussion first, and moving it without first reading NCTV. Yes, they are both 2019 series, but my main reason for not giving War of the Worlds a nationality is because of it's dual-nationality when it comes to production; it is an American, French production; the French broadcaster's even says so. Can you cite a longstanding example of an actual with dual-nationality as its disambiguator? -- /Alex/21 23:52, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
Can you cite a specific policy that dual-nationality can't be used? Nick Cooper (talk) 10:22, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
If it is not listed in WP:NCTV, then it is not used. As it is you wanting to use a dual-nationality disambiguator, the burden lies on you to gain a consensus for it. -- /Alex/21 10:25, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm getting sick of this now! Why does the USA think it rules the world?

Whenever something is from the UK (or another country), it has to be labelled British (or another nationality). Yet whenever something is American, it doesn't have to be labelled apparently. One rule for one and one rule for the other.

Same goes for co-productions. If a show is predominantly or entirely produced and broadcast by a British TV network, and an American company come in at a later date as co-producers or distributors, it suddenly becomes an British-American show, with the American networks taking all the credit for a show they usually didn't commission, fund or produce. Yet when a British company comes in as an actual co-producer with an American company from the start, it's usually just listed as an American show. Again one rule for one and one rule for the other.

If the 2019 British series has to be defined, then the 2019 French-American series has to be defined too. The Canal and Fox Networks Group series War of the Worlds (2019 TV series) should be listed as a French-American series.

Danstarr69 (talk) 17:56, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

This was already explained – with the UK series, we're relying on WP:SMALLDETAILS the "The" to distinguish it from the other two versions (which lack the "The"). This is frankly the best solution here, because otherwise we have two 2019 series with similar titles and any proposal to try to distinguish these two from each other with more than what we're doing currently is just going to lead to an ugly mess that will likely require "mutlinational" disambiguation, and/or "double" disambiguation. AFAIC, any of these solutions are worse than what we're going right now... Face it, folks – sometimes forces beyond our control stick us with some sucky situation, where there will be no "clean" article title disambiguation "solution". These articles are one of these circumstances. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 19:23, 14 November 2019 (UTC)
Relying on the presence or absence of the definite article is pretty weak. Apart from that, it would logically mean that we should have the BBC series as The War of the Worlds (TV series), but that's a redirect to the Television section of the TWOTW disambiguation page. Clearly we do need the year for the two (simply) War of the Worlds series, but we also need to differentiate between the two 2019 series, because people will get confused between them. Common sense should prevail. Nick Cooper (talk) 10:31, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
Please read WP:SMALLDETAILS. You may think it's weak, but it's a verified policy; see the examples provided. If you actually read the above discussion, you'd see that The War of the Worlds (TV series) was actually suggested as a valid location for the BBC series, so yes, you're right, it could and can be moved there if there's agreement to. What suggestion do you have to differentiate them that lies within the acceptable bounds of WP:NCTV? -- /Alex/21 10:41, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
Please try not to be so patronising. I had already seen that the idea that "The War of the Worlds (TV series)" was enough was floated, but nobody came to a decision on it, did they? Nick Cooper (talk) 13:41, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
No, they didn't, so there wasn't a clear necessity to move it from its current location. Looks like that's still the case. -- /Alex/21 13:57, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
Well, God forbid we exercise common sense to avoid confusing people, eh? Obviously sticking rigidly to "the rules" (real, claimed, or imagined) is far more important than that.... Nick Cooper (talk) 14:05, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
Well. Yes. Exactly. This guideline was made through years of discussions and consensus, and one editor just wanted to abandon it all? Based on? But if you've quite finished discussing... -- /Alex/21 21:58, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
It's very clear now that you think you own the pages, and can't cope with anyone making constructive edits. Nick Cooper (talk) 08:48, 17 November 2019 (UTC)
Constructive edits don't include moving articles in the face of consensus and discussions. If you'd like to have a civil discussions with suggestions and agreements, I'm more than happy to, but I won't be insulted and judged by some random editor solely upon the comparison of our ages. -- /Alex/21 08:50, 17 November 2019 (UTC)
Danstarr69, the "USA thinks it rules the world"? I can name dozens of British-series articles that don't require its country as a disambiguator, and hundreds more of American ones that do. If the "USA thinks it rules the world", then we would name War of the Worlds (2019 TV series) as an American series, which it clearly isn't named such, or listed as such, because it's not. It's equal an American, French production. I'll ask you the same question as I did to Nick above: Can you cite a longstanding example of an actual with dual-nationality as its disambiguator? -- /Alex/21 23:55, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at Talk:Magnum, P.I.#Requested move 3 December 2019

Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

  You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Magnum, P.I.#Requested move 3 December 2019 . — YoungForever(talk) 20:11, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Hong Kong

Latest comment: 5 years ago13 comments7 people in discussion

The consensus is to disambiguate all Hong Kong TV series (both pre-1997 and post-1997) as (Hong Kong TV series). Editors found "Hong Kong TV series" to be more WP:RECOGNIZABLE than "Chinese TV series".

Cunard (talk) 09:28, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

How should Hong Kong TV series pre-1997 be disambiguated (when needed)?

  1. (Chinese TV series)
  2. (Hong Kong TV series) - usage is consistent with Category:Television in Hong Kong
  3. (Hong Kongese TV series) - usage follows the demonym(s) at Hong Kong
  4. (#### TV series) - year usage (keep in mind that there might be conflicts here)

Not sure how many articles have this issue, but I've already ran into a couple that I didn't know what to do with. --Gonnym (talk) 13:27, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Out of the first three options you listed, only "Hong Kong" is listed at List of adjectival and demonymic forms for countries and nations; Cantonese and Hong Konger are the other two options. -- /Alex/21 13:31, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
We have always used "(Hong Kong TV series)", and I don't see any reason to change that, whether it's pre- or post-1997. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 15:41, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
You'd use Hong Kong post 1997? Isn't that like using "Northern Irish" or "Welsh"? or even "Floridian"? --Gonnym (talk) 15:48, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
Yes – it'd clearly be an exception, though one with a historical basis. I certainly wouldn't go changing all of the post 1997 TV articles from "Hong Kong TV series" → "Chinese TV series" without an RfC on that question first (as there are a number of these)... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 16:00, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
Cantonese is not correct. Canton Province (now spells as Guangdong) is not including HK. If using "Cantonese drama" as disambiguation, it can also mean production in Canada but conducted in Cantonese language. However, some production in Kong Kong are conducted in English language Matthew hk (talk) 17:33, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

RfC: What disambiguation should post-1997 Hong Kong TV series article use?

Background: TV articles that need disambiguation can be disambiguated by the country adjective of the country the show originated from. So, as an example, if a show was broadcast in Mexico it would be TV series (Mexican TV series). Sub-divisions of a country are not used for disambiguating. Which means an article can be disambiguated as TV series (American TV series) but not TV series (New York TV series); TV series (British TV series), but not TV series (Welsh TV series), TV series (Scottish TV series) or TV series (Northern Ireland TV series).

The above discussion's input has the pre-1997 disambiguation for these articles at TV series (Hong Kong TV series). Should post-1997 TV articles about Hong Kong be disambiguated the same or use TV series (Chinese TV series). --Gonnym (talk) 17:20, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

  • 2 (summoned from WPHK talk page) The terms Hongkonger and Hongkongese did not used in real life much often even they appeared in dictionaries. While for the status of Hong Kong, even HK became a SAR since 1997, media reporting still distinguish the production of HK from Mainland China, thus the suffix Chinese is not that good for WP:CRITERIA under Recognizability . Yes there are more and more HK-Mainland China joint production but for now the disambiguation suffix i thought we are talking about were pure HK based production such as TVB, Cable TV and Now/ViuTV. Matthew hk (talk) 17:29, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Weak support for leave use of "Hong Kong TV series" for all. In other contexts, I would oppose something like this, because Hong Kong is not a "country". But I agree that, in the context of TV series (and likely films as well), "Hong Kong TV series" is much more WP:RECOGNIZABLE than use of "Chinese TV series", which would just muddy the issue when it comes to TV series and TV productions. That said, 1) I would not support doing using "sub-national" disambig. in pretty much any other context (e.g. I'm still very much against, "Northern Ireland TV series", etc., for example), as 2) this is pretty much a unique "exception" to the general rule – it's basically a historical anomaly, and 3) my support for this is admittedly weak, and I won't be particularly put off if "Chinese TV series" carries the day for post-1997 TV series. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 18:01, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
  • (Hong Kong TV series) as TV shows produced in Hong Kong are still known as such in many overseas Chinese societies. Also, such shows are more likely be offered or consumed in Cantonese dub rather than Chinese (barring national policies) in overseas societies. robertsky (talk)
  • Comment: To the RfC starter, if your agenda is to make the switch over to Chinese, then I would appreciate it if you said so outright. CapnZapp (talk) 21:04, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Status quo: the RfC starter compares Hong Kong with New York or Wales, with no further elaboration. That's superficial, unhistoric and unconvincing. CapnZapp (talk) 21:04, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
  • Leave it as Hong Kong And as a basis, in general, it should more follow bot common recognizable naming and also the main area for distribution. If some version comes out made by Hawaii public television for Hawaii, then the disambig can say Hawaii rather then the US. North8000 (talk) 13:49, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should television episode article titles default to official names over the common name?

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

  WT:TV#RfC: Should episode article titles default to the broadcaster's official title? czar 01:53, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Character article name disambiguation

Latest comment: 4 years ago7 comments3 people in discussion

By omission, Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(television)#Episode_and_character_articles seems to be encouraging unnecessary/excessive disambiguation in certain cases. WP:NCDAB reads (in part):

3. Parenthetical disambiguation. A disambiguating word or phrase can be added in parentheses. The word or phrase in parentheses should be:

This is why we have Jon Snow (character), which is a Good status article, instead of Jon Snow (Game of Thrones character) or Jon Snow (A Song of Ice and Fire character). The show name is unnecessary disambiguation, as there currently are no other notable characters named Jon Snow.

This issue came to my attention because a move request for The Mandalorian (Star Wars character) → The Mandalorian (character) was opposed per WP:NCTV. There are no examples addressing this particular issue, but the rest of the examples obviously lead editors to believe that any disambiguation should include the show/franchise name. And WP:NCDAB specifically indicates otherwise. There is not and will never be another character named The Mandalorian outside of Star Wars. And this is a wider problem than this one article, I've seen plenty of character articles which unnecessarily include the show/franchise, when the generic (character) would suffice.— TAnthonyTalk 21:43, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@TAnthony: See also WT:TV#Sidetrack about centralized fiction guidance. --Izno (talk) 21:54, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
WP:NCDAB also says this Naming conventions applicable to certain subject areas are listed in the box to the right; these often contain detailed guidance about how to disambiguate. meaning that that framers of the disambiguation style delegated to subject-level NC the guidance on how to disambiguate articles in that subject. I personally see no issue and actually see it as superior to the "character" version. --Gonnym (talk) 22:21, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
Aw, I have to disagree with you. :( "(character)" is generally superior unless there exists some need to disambiguate that (after which I naturally prefer "(series character)"). --Izno (talk) 22:30, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
You also prefer using "(series)" as disambiguation, so no one is perfect ;) Gonnym (talk) 22:41, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
Gonnym, obviously WP:NCDAB can't contain examples of every type of disambiguation, so I understand it's appropriate to have specific guidelines by subject elsewhere (for example, WP:BOOKDAB advises first using the author name to disambiguate between books rather than years). But just because the overarching guideline is allowing derivative styles doesn't mean we should employ practices that are cumbersome or unnecessary. The spirit of disambiguation is simplicity; The Mandalorian (Star Wars character) isn't so bad but Jon Snow (A Song of Ice and Fire character) would be silly.— TAnthonyTalk 23:32, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
We should at least clarify in the guideline if we feel one or both of these options are acceptable, since it is such a wide-reaching issue.— TAnthonyTalk 23:39, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

"R from television episode" template wording RfC

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
  FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

Please see Template talk:R from television episode#RfC: The template wording's accuracy.

I've RfCed this because the page has very few active watchlisters other than the disputing parties.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  07:00, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Help needed with category name

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Category:The Family Channel original programming is up for renaming here. The problem here is that there are 3 "The Family Channel" networks - The Family Channel (American TV network), Family Channel (Canadian TV network) and one without an article that leads to History of Freeform (TV channel)#The Family Channel (which is the one being renamed). If you have any ideas for a possible name, please add your comment to the discussion over there. Thanks. --Gonnym (talk) 08:29, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Season naming convention

Latest comment: 4 years ago12 comments7 people in discussion

I would like to understand the justification for the policy of naming pages for individual seasons of TV shows by putting the season number in parentheses. Parentheses in article titles are, according to the policy at WP:PARENDIS, meant to be used for disambiguation. That is, the article title without the parenthetical part should be a name for the subject of the article, and the parenthetical part should be there to distinguish it from other things with the same name. So the subject of the article Cheers (season 3) should be something that, in some common context, would be referred to just as "Cheers".

But I do not believe that it is at all common to say "Cheers" to refer specifically to season 3 of Cheers. People would say "Cheers" to refer to the TV show as a whole, but not to refer to one particular season. And the same applies to any other TV show. So this naming convention seems to conflict with the policy on article titles. --superioridad (discusión) 18:26, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I was searching through the discussion archives, and found some other talk related to this topic here and here. I also noticed this argument in favour of parenthetical season numbers at the second link:

We title the articles as "House of Cards (season 3)", because the article is about the specific subject of House of Cards, but what particular area of the series are we talking about? Season 3. Hence, it's use as a disambiguator.

I do not think this argument holds water. The article is not about House of Cards, it is about part of House of Cards. As I said in my original comment, I do not believe that people commonly use the name of the show to refer to individual seasons. Rather, if someone wanted to talk about an individual season, they would probably say something like "House of Cards season 3" or "season 3 of House of Cards". The argument presented in the quote would seem to support moving George Washington's teeth to "George Washington (teeth)", or History of the United States to "United States (history)". --superioridad (discusión) 18:45, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
Before going too far, what about for shows of the same name in different countries, eg The Office? Right now we use "The Office (UK season 3)" but this idea may move that to "The Office Season 3 (UK television series)" which is unnecessarily long. --Masem (t) 18:55, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
Yes, this is the exact issue. Cheers (season 3) would fully be Cheers (TV series, season 3), but the latter is unnecessarily long, and thus violates WP:CONCISE... Aside from this, I have yet to see an alternate suggestion from the original poster – without that, this entire discussion is probably moot. But if the idea is that we should go to a "season 3 of House of Cards"-type naming scheme, I'm about 100% positive there will be zero support for that, as it's both worse as per WP:CONCISE and as a searchable option (e.g. because starting a search with "season 3..." would bring up hundreds of articles under that search, whereas searching for "House of Cards" will easily bring up House of Cards (season 3)). Again, this is a "solution" in search of a problem. The current scheme simply works best. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 19:11, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
There is certainly no need to add "TV series" to the parenthetical in a general "season page" for a show, unless there is something else that could also be called "Cheers season 3". Disambiguation is for when a title is ambiguous on its own. This would not apply to most shows, since most shows do not share a name with another show.
It could be that titles of the form "One Day at a Time season 2 (1975)"/"One Day at a Time season 2 (2017)", or "One Day at a Time (1975) season 2"/"One Day at a Time (2017) season 2" are appropriate, since the existence of "seasons" implies serial media. But I don't think it would be a problem if a name that uses parenthetical disambiguation appropriately is "too long" because of the parenthetical part.
My main concern is not the aesthetics of any naming convention, but whether the existing convention follows the policy on article titles. I currently think that it probably does not. If indeed it does conflict with policy, then finding a different naming convention would be one solution, but another could be rewriting the policy to allow for the existing usage. --superioridad (discusión) 23:54, 4 March 2020 (UTC)
Straight from WP:GUIDES: Guidelines are sets of best practices that are supported by consensus. Editors should attempt to follow guidelines, though they are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. (emphasis mine) It's less important that everything follow every potential guideline to the letter, and more important that they serve the readership. If the current practice is actually an "exception", it's effectively a common-sense one, and all of the "follow the guideline to the letter" solutions are worse than current practices. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 01:10, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
We are not talking about a guideline, but a policy. --superioridad (discusión) 05:15, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

I've also always found this strange for the same reason. My preference would be using a comma, e.g. House of Cards, season 3" or "One Day at a Time, season 2 (2017)". -- Wikipedical (talk) 19:40, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Also agree with the OP. Using the comma as a separator would seem to work best. These can be accommodated before or after other parenthetical disambiguation (which would use the noun form), so The Office (American season 3) could be The Office (US), season 3 or The Office, season 3 (US). --Paul_012 (talk) 12:18, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
I would also support a comma separator. Should this be changed to an RFC so that we can gain an official consensus on it? Note that for the above, "US" is deprecated and "American" would be used. -- /Alex/21 12:47, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
I think a RfC would work better if all title variations are covered, showing examples how they'd look after the change, and correct terminology is used. --Gonnym (talk) 12:57, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
I'd argue that "American" was fine with "American season" being combined as a single phrase, but should be dropped if it's to stand alone. Retaining "American" would only work if there's a noun for it to modify, e.g. The Office (American TV series), season 3 or The Office, season 3 (American TV series), which are unnecessarily long. (As a side note, per the original concern, the "American season" format is also technically inaccurate since they are not American and British seasons of a single series, but different sets of seasons of American and British series.) An RfC would be the way to go, but we should probably narrow down the options first. --Paul_012 (talk) 13:09, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Series disambiguators for streaming platforms

Latest comment: 4 years ago17 comments10 people in discussion

I see there was a 2015 RfC which didn't see enough input to form consensus, where the sentiment was that web/online series aren't TV series and need a different disambiguator. Times have changed, though, and many Netflix originals such as The Crown (TV series) are named like regular TV series. Does this reflect current consensus? If so, it should probably be written down in the guideline. --Paul_012 (talk) 12:26, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, I would oppose treating series on Netflix, et al, as anything other than "TV series", and I'm sure almost everyone else around here would agree... As for changing the wording, do you have something specific in mind? --IJBall (contribs • talk) 16:20, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
Disagree. We already have articles such as Vixen (web series) and Con Man (web series) - The crown is no different, it is a web series. I would support disambiguating series articles into what they actually are. -- /Alex/21 22:15, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
Read television – streamed series are included there. "Web series" is almost exclusively reserved for programming that runs with <15 minute episodes. There's zero reason to change this approach. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 22:29, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
"The Crown is a historical drama web television series". Still a web series. Web series: "A web series is a series of scripted or non-scripted videos, generally in episodic form, released on the Internet and part of the web television medium"; nothing about minutes comes up? So, both apply. I would still support a change. -- /Alex/21 22:29, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
It's nonsense. Television is more than simply a "medium" – it's basically a format as well. Again, absolutely no reason to call things that are clearly "TV series" anything other than "TV series". This is another example of some people trying to create a problem where there is none. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 22:32, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
And that is your opinion, as this is mine. Please do not refer to it as "nonsense"; I have not done the same to you. You linked an article and its definition. I linked an article and its definition. Both apply. They may be "television" series, but I believe that web series applies to them more and they should be named thus. -- /Alex/21 22:34, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
No, it doesn't because the whole concept of the "web" (i.e. the "world wide web") is basically an anachronism in modern contexts. There's basically no such thing anymore, esp. when you bring in wireless. Again, zero reason to change what is clearly working, and what everyone understands to be accurate: The Crown is a "TV series", plain and simple. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 22:39, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
You believe it doesn't. I do. It is also a web series, as the article for the series itself states. Identical to Vixen and Con Man, as there is no consensus for some "<15 minute" "rule"; even the article I linked supports my statement. Or does that not count anymore? Does that mean your link doesn't count, or? -- /Alex/21 22:44, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm in agreement with IJBall. If you can frame the series around our conventional understanding of what a television program/series is, and can see it airing on a broadcast network, cable network, or streaming service, "TV series" is fine. "Web series" in my eyes, and as IJBall said, is more for something that is potentially a couple minutes long (but not approaching the 22 min length of "standard" half hour shows). They also more than likely are only debuting on online platforms such as CW Seed, or YouTube, etc. - Favre1fan93 (talk) 04:37, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

I probably have the similar concerns to those I had in 2015. Any proposal should take into account differnt aspects of non-traditional TV - that means, "standard" streaming services, such as Netflix; non-standard ones, such as YouTube (not YouTube Premium, YouTube Red or YouTube TV); gaming platforms, such as PlayStation Network; mobile-released; browser-released; and now even Facebook/Instagram. This article does not even mention the word "web" once when talking about Content (web series). In addition to not having a consistent naming convention as can be seen in Category:American drama web series, the articles themselves are also not consistent with how they are describing these shows. One way or another, we should really have some guideline in place to sort this out. --Gonnym (talk) 06:55, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

We don’t disambiguate shows as “broadcast series” or “cable series,” so “web series” seems so wrong to me for shows like The Crown. Netflix/Amazon/Hulu/Apple...TV shows are included at the Emmys and are written about in TV sections in news sources. Plus, regarding shows like Arrested Development that aired on broadcast and streamed online- to the casual reader it’s just a TV series. “Times have changed” since 2015, but honestly the same types of television content are being produced with varying distribution methods. Don’t think there’s an actual problem here to solve. -- Wikipedical (talk) 03:37, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

My 2 cents: There a few series that originate on a US streaming platform, but premiere on TV in another country. (Example: A few Hulu series, because Hulu is not available outside the US.) Content- and presentation-wise, the series are mostly identical, so there is IMO no need to disambiguate. – sgeureka t•c 09:21, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Network 10 (an article that is brilliantly high-quality compared to Seven Network and Nine Network; nice job, Wikipedia) has just released several shows on 10 Play, prior to being broadcast. Example. Are these "web television" shows now? Or does being intended for broadcast first absolve them of their webness? And what of The Mindy Project, which is apparently both a "web" and "non-web" television show? Oh, DrPizza! (talk) 13:03, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

Quibi launched today, so we can expect this topic will be tested somewhat in the near future. -- Netoholic @ 14:22, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

In the case of Quibi shows, "web series" is arguably the better choice as apparently none of their "shows" run more than 10-minute episodes. But even here, I wouldn't object to "TV series" (more accurately, a "series of television shorts") as the world has basically moved beyond "web series" as a format. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 14:30, 6 April 2020 (UTC)
I agree with IJBall that, in 2020, there is no need to make a distinction between a "traditional" TV series that is broadcast over airwaves (which, for many people in many places has actually coming through cables for the past 40 years) and a series that originates on a streaming service. Maybe 10 or even 5 years ago, the idea was novel enough that the distinction made sense, but a TV series is a TV series no matter what medium it is consumed via, over-the-air, cable, streaming, DVD/Blu-ray, etc. Unless we are talking about something where the format of the program varies considerably from the established-for-over-60-years-now 1/2-hour or 1-hour format, like perhaps Quibi and the ever-contentious "miniseries", then making the distinction between a "web television series" vs. a "television series" is unnecessary. —Joeyconnick (talk) 17:19, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Proposal to mass rename television categories to "shows"

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

In case anyone is interested to add their opinion, there is a proposal for a mass rename of television categories from "program"/"programme" to "shows" at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2020 May 6#Television program(me)s. --Gonnym (talk) 14:27, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Edit war

Latest comment: 4 years ago22 comments4 people in discussion

There's an edit-war involving a couple of editors on the article page that appears to be over the use of the word "show". There is no place for edit-warring and I have warned one of the editors who has reverted twice. Both Gonnym and IJBall have reverted some of Netoholic's changes so I invite Netoholic to this discussion to gain consensus for his changes instead of edit-warring. --AussieLegend (✉) 17:49, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Well, I think my position on this question has always been clear "TV show" is vernacular and should not be used – "TV program" is the general term. And, additionally, the actual article should be moved back to Television program after the very poorly attended (and poorly advertised) late-2017 WP:RM (initiated by, you guessed it – Netoholic!). --IJBall (contribs • talk) 17:53, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
@IJBall: - Its been over 2 years. Accept consensus on the term or make a new RM. Otherwise, drop it. -- Netoholic @ 18:35, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
Actually my revert was for the actual guideline that was sneaked in without any prior discussion anywhere. The "show" was just a very minimal part of it. However it seems that the other editor has used that as an excuse for a revert. In any regards, they should know better to force edit their will into a guideline. For the record, I oppose the addition. --Gonnym (talk) 18:19, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
Gonnym: I think the "sneaky" editing began with your first revert which along with removing a section on character article naming also changed "show" to "series" without declaring it in the edit summary. You repeated this later by changing "show" to "program" - while misleadingly stating your edit as a full revert (it wasn't, since you altered it to "program"). "Show" is used extensively in this guideline as a catch-all since we define "series" and "program" under specific terms and use them in disambiguation. "Show" use here merely continues the writing style.
As for the specific line - If the character's name is the same as the show's title or if the character appears in many different titles, use Character name (character) - this is just an explicit statement of a disambiguation already used in the WP:NCFILM guideline and used extensively across the TV article space for when both a character shares the name of the TV show it belongs to. You removed an example - "Samurai Jack (character) – character name same as the TV series title (Samurai Jack)" - so I invite you to show where this is not correct. -- Netoholic @ 18:32, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
Yes, I'm sure my revert was sneaky. Regarding the actual issue, what other media guidelines do has no relevance on this guideline. You want to propose the addition, go ahead, don't force your opinion via reverts. --Gonnym (talk) 23:35, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
Gonnym - please stop with the grandstanding. Of course what other guidelines do is relevant to this one for WP:CONSISTENCY if there is an area of overlapping need, such as naming character articles. (character) is defined in WP:NCFILM and WP:NCVGDAB - both media that also have articles about fictional characters. This method is already used for TV character articles, where its necessary, so this new line is nothing more than documenting common practice. Now, for the second time, can you please give any reason that TV articles should deviate from this and, if so, what alternative would you offer? -- Netoholic @ 01:37, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
I'm all for consistency and if you recall a few years ago I actually tried getting all character guidelines to confirm to the same style, which you opposed. While WP:NCFILM says that, it was again, added by you without any prior discussion here. You seem to like adding sections to guidelines without any discussion then claiming another guideline has it (as you did there as well). Again, I oppose this. If you aren't going to start a discussion to gain consensus, please stop pinging me, it's very tiresome. --Gonnym (talk) 08:17, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Gonnym - This is already a discussion to establish consensus. Your simple "I oppose this" statement does nothing to further discussion. I've twice now asked you to say why you think the addition is technically incorrect. And no, objecting just because I was WP:BOLD in putting into words what is already practiced is not good enough. I'll not ever feel the need to ask permission to make such an obvious change with so much precedent and demonstrable current usage. Unless a clear argument is made about the actual content of the change (and not about me), then the line and example will be restored. -- Netoholic @ 09:00, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
I don't believe you have consensus and I don't believe that "(character)" even follows WP:Precision. If you add it knowingly without establishing a consensus, I will revert. Go get your consensus if you believe you already have it. --Gonnym (talk) 09:09, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Gonnym - The only part of your response that is about the edit and not this editor is "I don't believe that "(character)" even follows WP:Precision". Do you understand that this use of (character) is an uncommon occurrence, only happening when the character's name is the same as the series title or, even more rarely, if a character crosses several titles? This is a special case to avoid ugly constructions like Samurai Jack (Samurai Jack) or even worse Samurai Jack (Samurai Jack character). -- Netoholic @ 09:38, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Gonnym - your lack of any coherent reason for rejecting the substance of this change and avoidance of discussion leads me to think you are targeting me and reverting to make a WP:POINT. This change is simple, obvious, and inevitable. Are you going to make us go through 30 days of RfC just to make your POINT that you don't like me being WP:BOLD and updating this guideline as necessary? If instead you want to WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY this change, just self-revert please and save us all some time. -- Netoholic @ 13:57, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
I have nothing against you. For what it's worth, I think we're almost aligned with our voting in all recent RMs and other discussions we've both commented in. I presented my rationals for reverting you here multiple times, but you simply dismiss them as lack of any coherent reason which is both not WP:AGF and just plain WP:UNCIVIL (and incorrect). And since 2 other editors aside from us have so far commented here so far, one who reverted you as well and one who hasn't commented on the issue, if you want the changes to be added, you'll need to start an RfC to show you have consensus. That is what we all have previously did when we wanted to amend the guideline. --Gonnym (talk) 14:01, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Gonnym - No. Many guideline changes are accomplished via simple tacit consensus resulting from just letting a WP:BOLD edit stand unless one has a coherent objection to the content of the change rather than the editor. Especially for this kind of change which is simple and obvious... and something that can be changed in the future if discussions are actually fruitful. You reverted and didn't even come to this talk page to start a discussion about it. None of you has stated a coherent objection to this actual change. So fine, I had the RfC already typed up and was just waiting to hear that you want to force us to go thru the motions. Needless posturing on all your parts. -- Netoholic @ 14:10, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Please look at the history of this page - see [2] as one example, where you blocked a simple and obvious change, which had multiples RMs backing it, or this which had even more RMs backing it. As for starting the discussion, you do know WP:BRD right? What exactly did you want me to do? Start a discussion asking you to start a discussion? Please stop pinging me. --Gonnym (talk) 14:19, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Gonnym - Your first revert was "removing part that was never discussed before". This is a shitty revert reason on its own because it goes against WP:BOLD and, even worse, arrogantly fails to take into account that just because you may not have seen a discussion doesn't mean it was "never discussed before". At least take a moment and type up some kind of reasonable objection to the content of the change OR drop a message and ask what my basis for it was. I've shown above that this use of (character) already exists in other guidelines and I know you can't really be claiming its "never been discussed before". You made a hasty revert, just admit it. -- Netoholic @ 14:34, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
He doesn't have to do anything of the sort, and WP:BRD specifically supports what he did, not what you did. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 14:39, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
IJBall - I'd advise you and Gonnym to go to WP:BRD and read the "Revert" paragraph at the top. Gonnym took none of that advice. We all know that line was an overdue improvement and completely aligned with other naming conventions. You're in a catch-22 - you can't Oppose in the RfC because you know this change is an obvious one, but you also can't Support either because doing so will make your revert actions look petty, and you really can't ignore it because you've made all this stink about the change. Can't wait to see which way you both fall. -- Netoholic @ 14:51, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

I want to thank Gonnym's for undoing Netoholic's latest reversion which is both disruptive, and obnoxious, when there are clearly at least two editors that oppose Netoholic's latest changes in their entirety – this is clearly edit warring. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 14:00, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

IJBall - oh don't even try to take a high road here. It was exactly one year ago today that you tried to push an undiscussed change through via edit warring. You tried to put it in 3 times before you finally opened a discussion up (a discussion I might add that got archived before we had a clear outcome). -- Netoholic @ 14:25, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
As Gonnym notes above, that change was supported by the results of multiple RM's over years. IOW, there had already been plenty of discussion about it. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 14:38, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
Then the RfC I asked for about it would have proven that out, but your actions were far worse in that exchange than I was here. That archived discussion points to cherry-picking of the RMs you used as proof. That issue is not settled, but we'll get back to it. -- Netoholic @ 14:42, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Jonathan Scott (television personality)

Latest comment: 4 years ago9 comments3 people in discussion

I think we can all agree that this is a terrible disambiguation choice – anyone have any proposals for a better article disambiguation choice here?... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 02:07, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

Its more the scope of WP:NCPEOPLE and sub-guidelines. But there are a mix of "TV personality" and "television personality" in use right now. Probably want to use "TV" as the long form "television" has long been assigned to use for items related to the technology rather than programming. -- Netoholic @ 06:16, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
A lot of those look to be redirects – for redirects, I don't have a problem with "TV personality". But for actual WP:BLP articles, I don't think "TV personality" cuts it as a disambiguator – we should come up with something better. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 14:15, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
Yeah I'm not aware of how to stop redirects from filling up the search results. I think "TV personality" is the best option between the two, and there's no reason to be inconsistent. But I'd have to hear other alternatives - other than the even more vague "(celebrity)" which is where TV personality redirects to. I'm not sure what works best. There is also "(TV presenter)"/"(television presenter)" in use with the same inconsistency, though television presenter does exist as an article. -- Netoholic @ 15:03, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
I would probably prefer "entertainer" (without the "TV" part), and then failing that "celebrity" would probably be the next stop. But "TV personality" is both non-standard, and is also a rather nebulous term. (I have less of a problem with "TV presenter" or "TV host" – those are actually legitimate terms.) --IJBall (contribs • talk) 15:07, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
I don't see how "personality" is not legitimate. Look at this Ngrams showing more references to that description than "presenter", and for 2-3 decades longer. It was a very natural carryover from radio personality. -- Netoholic @ 15:32, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
Because "TV presenter"/"TV host" is an actual job/career. So is "entertainer". I have no idea what "TV personality" is, but it strikes me as a non-encyclopedic term. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 15:52, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
Jonathan Scott (and others sure seem to be making "an actual job/career" out of being TV personalities. This seems more like just another case of you not liking a certain term, but dismissing all evidence to the contrary showing that its use frequently. -- Netoholic @ 16:05, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
I don't consider "celebrity" a useful disambiguator, as it simply means "someone who is famous for being famous". -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 05:58, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Blood and Water (TV series) vs. Blood & Water (TV series)

Latest comment: 4 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

Are these OK the way they are as per WP:SMALLDETAILS, or should they be moved to Blood and Water (Canadian TV series) and Blood & Water (South Africa TV series)?... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 03:29, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Not OK IMO, this is super confusing. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:45, 24 May 2020 (UTC)
Almost always confusing. Specifically in the case of Blood & Water (TV series), one of the sources for the article uses "and". In the other case, the official YouTube for its network uses "&". I think that proves the point. -- Netoholic @ 03:48, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Discussion at Blood & Water (TV series)#Requested move 24 May 2020

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

  You are invited to join the discussion at Blood & Water (TV series)#Requested move 24 May 2020. As per the discussion above. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 14:22, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Article Naming for The Haunting of Bly Manor

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

There is confusion as to what this article, The Haunting of Hill House (season 2), should be named. This current naming does not make sense and should be renamed back to just The Haunting of Bly Manor. Although it is the second series of The Haunting series, Bly Manor revolves around a new and different story and characters and are not related to Hill House. Either way, here is my comment from the talk page:

Something to note with the title of this show is that Bly Manor is a completely different story consisting of different characters to Hill House (yes I'm aware that this an anthology series). Naming this 'Season 2' of 'The Haunting of Hill House' doesn't make much sense as it's not a continuation of Hill House at all. It's why its titled differently. One suggestion could be to rename both current articles The Haunting of Hill House (TV series) and The Haunting of Hill House (season 2) to The Haunting (season 1) and The Haunting (season 2) respectively, as specified by trailers ("The Haunting continues") and social media platforms for the series. However, this change would not be supported by many sources. Another option could be to revert it to how it was beforehand to its respective title of The Haunting of Bly Manor to avoid confusion. To sum it all up, Bly Manor isn't a continuation of Hill House, and the 'season 2' title isn't justified. Happy to discuss this further. Looking forward to hearing other opinions on this. Thanks. KaitoNkmra23 (talk) 12:49, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

WP:WAS for dead fictional characters

Latest comment: 4 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

You may be interested in the following discussion: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Dead fictional characters. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:06, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Episodes same as series title

Latest comment: 4 years ago8 comments4 people in discussion

Above is a short list of episode titles that are the same as their series - most, but not all, being pilot episodes. These are technically correct as of the present wording of WP:NCTV#Episode and character articles, but also they are repetitious in the same way discussed in #RfC on character titling in special cases. Would like to get some opinions on these, if we think any change is in order, such as simply dropping to "Title (episode)" where additional disambiguation isn't needed in the same way we handle character articles. -- Netoholic @ 13:37, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

I doubt you're going to like my answer, but I am fine with the current situation, as all of these seem to disambiguated with "([show] episode)" which lessens the repetition concern IMO (i.e. Entourage (Entourage) would be a much worse solution...). Beyond that, I don't really see an alternative that would be better than the current situation. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 15:19, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
Entourage (episode) is probably the main alternative to consider. -- Netoholic @ 19:53, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
I'm fine with it too. I understand it comes across as redundant, but I like the consistency with other episode names. Calidum 15:35, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
@Calidum: Well, since most of these (all but the two that are also character names) don't need the "episode" additional disambiguation, the CONSISTENT approach would actually be to name them like Boardwalk Empire (Boardwalk Empire) in the same way as all the other Category:Boardwalk Empire episodes. -- Netoholic @ 19:53, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
I'd definitely oppose that as worse/less clear than the current situation. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 20:03, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
Not endorsing it, obviously, just saying that its the most technically CONSISTENT. -- Netoholic @ 20:16, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
I think Netoholic's reasoning makes sense. If we can't use the most consistent title anyways, then we don't really care which of two inconsistent titles is "more" consistent. Just pick the one that works better, and I think (episode) alone is fine. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 21:29, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Gonnym's edit June 30

Latest comment: 4 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion

Regarding this big change on June 30 by Gonnym, I've reverted so that we can discuss some specifics. Because some sections were both reordered and involved a lot of changes, my revert kept the changed section order to make comparison easier in the diff.

Aesthetically in Gonnym's edit, the conversion of prose sections to bullet lists and removal of indents from the examples make the page look flat and somewhat unreadable. Some of the one-off examples (like Star Trek in the Media franchises section) were moved out of prose into the long example lists, which disconnects them from the text they relate to. There is also little value in adding headers to every examples section, since we don't link to them, and actually can't in his version since they all use the same anchor (#Examples). The lines added to almost every section that say "name does not conflict with any other article" are all repetitive and redundant with the lead 1st paragraph (fundamentally, after that line, everything in NCTV is already about ambiguous titles).

Contrary to his edit summary ("No actual guideline change or amendment"), there were some functional changes to the page (~5600 characters added). His "Additional disambiguation" section exhaustively-defined certain formats for series and especially seasons, which are something NCTV (intentionally) didn't rigidly define because there are a number of factors at play for any particular case. Text was added about "shared universe name", which is debatable whether that is really different from a franchise name, and is still somewhat a special case - a change to be discussed. -- Netoholic @ 15:24, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

  • One thing I noticed is that the "double disambiguation" example was added back, and I am very much opposed to including that in NCTV because it is so rare (roughly only half a dozen cases) that it should not be included, and including it will only confuse people to think its use is appropriate when it's not. So I will continue to oppose inclusion of a "double disambiguation" example... Other things that bothered me were minor – like using "and" in lists of examples instead of "or", and not including "etc." to show that the list of examples is by no means "all inclusive". --IJBall (contribs • talk) 15:30, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Some comments:
    • there were some functional changes to the page (~5600 characters added) - are almost just the examples.
    • There is also little value in adding headers to every examples section, since we don't link to them, and actually can't in his version since they all use the same anchor (#Examples) - that was done to a) comply with MOS:HEAD and b) allow an easy way to edit the section, which adds the edit button. If you really want to link to the examples (and I personally see no reason why), you can either change the section name, add an anchor or add a shortcut. You'll notice that I limited the ToC intentionally to not show them. --Gonnym (talk) 15:44, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
    • His "Additional disambiguation" section exhaustively-defined certain formats for series and especially seasons, which are something NCTV (intentionally) didn't rigidly define because there are a number of factors at play for any particular case nothing I added was not something that isn't part of the guideline. What exactly isn't? Year prefix? Country prefix? Year Country prefix? Year season prefix? Country season prefix?
--Gonnym (talk) 15:44, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

RfC on character titling in special cases

Latest comment: 4 years ago10 comments5 people in discussion
This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.


If the character's name is the same as the show's title or if the character appears in many different titles, use Character name (character).

Shall the above guideline be added to WP:NCTV#Episode and character articles? -- Netoholic @ 14:03, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Survey

  • Support as proposer - Please note that this does -NOT- apply to -ALL- character articles, but only those where the character shares its name with the show OR if a character crosses over into multiple shows and/or other media like films. This avoids redundant-looking constructions like SpongeBob SquarePants (SpongeBob SquarePants) or extraordinarily long titles like SpongeBob SquarePants (SpongeBob SquarePants character) in favor of the much more WP:CONCISE form of SpongeBob SquarePants (character). The (character) method of disambiguation is already used for those specific cases throughout TV character articles and this exact method of disambiguation is also used in WP:NCFILM#Character articles and WP:NCVGDAB#7 - both media types that have articles about fictional characters (some of which crossover to TV). -- Netoholic @ 14:03, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
  • Officially oppose as the editor hasn't stopped spamming me with endless amounts of pings, even though I've asked them multiple times to stop. The proposal is full of holes which I find unsatisfactory. I'll list a few, but I'm sure there are more. Let's start with the background: Television articles have been distancing themselves from ambiguous and unhelpful disambiguation for years. Articles about a TV series aren't disambiguated with "series" but with "TV series" (unlike video game articles); episode articles which share the name of a character have gone through multiple RMs which added the TV series name to them, such as Talk:Killer Frost (The Flash episode)#Requested move 3 December 2018, Talk:Rose (Doctor Who episode)#Requested move 7 February 2018 and Talk:Peter (Fringe episode)#Requested move 21 November 2019 as a few examples. These show that in term of the television naming conventions, WP:PRECISION is more important than WP:CONCISE. For characters, the television guideline has stayed clear from the "character" disambiguation as that is unhelpful to the reader. Yes, some examples like the one given above of SpongeBob SquarePants might be simple, but what about a character article for Batman (TV series)? Would Batman (character) work there? How about Daredevil (character) for Daredevil (TV series)? Then we also have the issue of WP:CONSISTENT, where most of the characters of a specific program are disambiguated one style, and another character in a different style. This guideline touches on this issue in a different section where it says A consistent naming scheme should be used for all season articles of a TV show: if one season is named something special, this should be noted through redirects and in the article's WP:LEAD, but the article should be named in the same fashion as the other season pages, there is a reason consistency is important as it's very helpful for both readers and editors to search for articles and navigate category content. Lastly, there is the issue of if a character crosses over into multiple shows and/or other media like films which is very vague. A TL/DR summary: WP:NCTV hold in higher value WP:CONSISTENT and WP:PRECISION over WP:CONCISE and this proposal is full of holes.--Gonnym (talk) 15:23, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
I don't have a firm opinion on the current proposal (I'd like to see more comments from others), but your explanation matches my feelings, and explains, for example, why I think it should always be "[title] ([TV series) episode)" (e.g. Winterfell (Game of Thrones episode)) and not just "[title] (episode)" (e.g. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (Game of Thrones)), as the latter always strikes me as insufficiently clear on its disambiguation. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 15:40, 14 May 2020 (UTC)
@Gonnym: - Several times in your vote you bring up CONSISTENCY, but haven't addressed that this additional text is specifically to be CONSISTENT with NCFILM and NCVGDAB. Almost all character pages cover their appearances in multiple media, so having the guidelines conflict would be detrimental. All of the recent RMs you listed have one thing in common - the term in question has multiple meanings within the same series (a character AND an episode named for that character), so its natural we would be forced to use multiple disambiguation terms - but that's not really relevant to this proposal. Can I ask specifically what title you think SpongeBob SquarePants (character) should be moved to? -- Netoholic @ 01:43, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Of course Netoholic's suggested addition would need some kind of allowance for exceptions, like ...use Character name (character) unless further disambiguation is required. Perhaps it should also clarify that often the character is the primary topic and need not be disambiguated (Perry Mason, Katy Keene, Batwoman). I'm also finding the character examples at WP:NCTV#Episode and character articles lacking. The Mother (How I Met Your Mother) and Spike (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) obviously need the series name because they're so generic and there are likely other fictional characters with these names. But "(character)" is already in practice for characters with series/films named after them (Ally McBeal (character), Forrest Gump (character), John Wick (character), Pink Panther (character), Wolverine (character), Joker (character)) and is effective, and should at least be suggested as an option.— TAnthonyTalk 21:05, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
We probably don't need explicit wording for those exceptions. We can just add an example to the list like the Jigsaw (Saw character) example under WP:NCFILM#Character articles. Its intuitive enough to see that sometimes extreme cases exist. -- Netoholic @ 02:28, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

  • I don't think we need a formal close of this. Based on general support apart from the single firm oppose of Gonnym, I'm going to make this change. If there arises any confusion or exception we need to document, we can make adjustments. -- Netoholic @ 12:52, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
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