This is mainly a draft for Administrivia.Page Title Collision. I don't know what else I can upgrade here.
As the amount of work pages created grows, the chance that two of these works will share the same title grows too. People will obviously want to do something about that. Let's start with what not what to do when that happens:
BAD ideas:
- Just not making a page. If it's a perfectly fine work and you can make it meet all the required criteria, why be so defeatist?
- Replacing the original article with the new work page/deleting the previous page. Both have the right to exist, plus we have enough server space for both. Though it may be worth doing so if the page is too bad to be salvaged and would otherwise be put on the Cut List. Just make sure to check the wicks and replace them appropriately.
If two works share a title and a namespace, consider titling both pages differently, this is called a disambiguation method. There are several ways to do it.
Ways to do it (usually from most effective/common to least):
- By Retronym, usually to disambiguate the first installment from a whole franchise, like VideoGame.Mega Man Battle Network and VideoGame.Mega Man Battle Network 1.
- By year, like Film.Robo Cop 1987 and Film.Robo Cop 2014.
- By country of origin, like Series.The Office UK and Series.The Office US.
- By creator, like VideoGame.Aladdin Virgin Games and VideoGame.Aladdin Capcom.
- By source material if it's a fan work, like Fanfic.Aberration Naruto and Fanfic.Aberration Worm.
- By profession if it's a creator, like Creator.Steve Mc Queen Actor and Creator.Steve Mc Queen Director.
- By console (though this one is rare), with a possible mix with a different style:
- VideoGame.God Of War I and VideoGame.God Of War PS 4 (because VideoGame.God Of War II came out after the former but before the latter).
- VideoGame.Spider Man Atari 2600, VideoGame.Spider Man 2000, and VideoGame.Spider Man PS 4 (the 2000 game was multi-platform).
- VideoGame.Transformers The Game Console and VideoGame.Transformers The Game DS (both were released in 2007; the DS is a handheld console, but home consoles are typically what comes to mind first).
Note that disambiguation should be done at the end, rather than at the start. Pages like VideoGame.Atari 2600 Superman or Fanfic.Arads Stardust can easily confuse people in terms of alphabetisation (does that go under "A" or "S"?) and there's generally no reason that putting disambiguation at the end would not be possible anyway. It's appreciated when these articles are moved to titles like VideoGame.Superman Atari 2600. This does not apply to titles which have parts that sound like disambiguation at the beginning but are actually put there officially, like VideoGame.Sid Meiers Pirates or WesternAnimation.Filmations Ghostbusters, those are sorted under "S" and "F" respectively.
If it's a franchise and the first installment has the same title as the franchise, it can usually be separated by using 1. Works which use Roman numerals for sequels are better off using I. There can also be occasional fan designators if sequels aren't numbered, though this is frowned upon except as a last-ditch effort. So VideoGame.Mega Man 1, VideoGame.Fable I, VideoGame.Grand Theft Auto Classic, and VideoGame.Paper Mario 64 (it's because it's on the Nintendo 64, not the 64th game) are all valid. First installments should always be disambiguated from the series page if single parts of a series have pages, to make it consistent with sequels which have distinct pages by default.
If it's a franchise and an installment has the same title as the franchise but it isn't part of an ongoing franchise, disambiguation is not necessary. Film.Street Fighter didn't need to be disambiguated from Franchise.Street Fighter because there were no films released later on.
If two works only share a title, but have a different namespace, you can just put the article where the title would be. Same it shares a title with a trope, a fanwork, a troper, etc. See Flight. There are currently five pages with this title:
- Flight, the trope about flying.
- ComicBook.Flight
- Film.Flight
- Literature.Flight
- VideoGame.Flight
- There are also a few fanfics called Flight, but none of them have pages and they would likely be split by source if they would indeed receive pages.
When two articles are in separate namespaces but share subpages like in the case above, you can Soft Split the subpages, keeping the contents separate from each other without having to move either article. This is typically done by using headers (recommended if the subpages are fairly short) or folders (if it's fairly long). If it's very long, consider using a header with folders underneath for its items structure, or just split as explained below.
This action is acceptable, but people can still disambiguate if they feel like it's a good idea.
Reasons for why people may disambiguate even if it's just same title but different namespace:
- Wikiword collision. Like it or not, TV Tropes' links almost always don't just use the alphanumeric characters if the work has special characters. Potential wikiword collisions may make the links look fairly dumb or misleading. For example, Film.Mask was moved to Film.Mask 1985 because there was already WesternAnimation.MASK and it has the wikiword of "M.A.S.K." If people saw links to the film page with "M.A.S.K.", they would see it as rather stupid and it might make them think it's not the film they're looking for. By the way, it's completely unrelated to Film.The Mask; articles like "A" or "The" can prevent collision.
- Character page collision. Characters.Sonic The Hedgehog (for Franchise.Sonic The Hedgehog) and Characters.Sonic The Hedgehog 2020 (for Film.Sonic The Hedgehog 2020) have been split with a justifiable reason - the movie has mostly original characters and the ones that originate from the games are changed drastically in some aspects.
- The two work pages are largely unrelated. Film.Frozen 2010 and WesternAnimation.Frozen 2013 are quite different from each other, even if both involve ice and snow. By comparison, ComicBook.The Mask, Film.The Mask, VideoGame.The Mask, and WesternAnimation.The Mask are all part of the same franchise involving a fellow named Stanley Ipkiss with a green mask that grants powers, and it hasn't been split.
- A shared subpage is currently split by headers or folders (depends on length), but is getting a "this page is too long" error (typically the maximum length is 500K HTML characters or 540KB weight). It's a fairly unlikely scenario, but it could always happen. Alternatively, it's just so long people find it bothersome to read, even if it's not technically breaking any limits.
- Some people ultimately believe that it's better to split all the time. While such an action may be excessive and is uneconomical, it's probably not mandatory to revert them, especially if there would be a lot of wicks to correct again.
Exceptions and special cases:
- Tropers/ pages are hidden (as sad as it may be for those who want to show their page or have a namespace icon), so disambiguating a work because of a troper page is not needed. Literature.Septimus Heap and Tropers.Septimus Heap can stay when they are. That said, a troper could start a page in the Sandbox/ or TroperWall/ namespace, if they do, consider asking them if they'd want to disambiguate that page to something like Sandbox.Troper Name Sandbox and put a link on their Tropers/ page.
- Official works take priority over fan works if a troper decides that disambiguation is necessary. Fanfic.Avengers Endgame Dragonis Prime is disambiguated, while Film.Avengers Endgame isn't. Similarly, Fanfic.Game Theory Lyrical Nanoha is disambiguated from WebVideo.Game Theory, although the two works are unrelated beyond sharing the same title.
