Forums:Multiple title redirects

Tolkien Gateway > Council > Multiple title redirects

With most of J.R.R. Tolkien's works there are characters with more than one title. This becomes a problem with a few suggested solutions we can vote on:

• Redirection - We can redirect all titles to one main article which we vote can vote on if there is not an obvious choice. The determination for the title will be the subject of another topic as we would have to take into consideration what was used the most, what is most canonical, and what is most proper, etc. The upside to this concept would be people can find all information on that character on one page. The downside is they might have trouble finding information on the specific lesser title for the character when they are redirected there. An example being if someone wanted to find why Aragorn was known as Strider, and it redirects to Aragorn II, this might not be very efficient.
• No redirection - In this scenario every instance of every name has its own page with information on that title and character. The Strider article would contain information when Aragorn was known as Strider, when he beceame known as Aragorn Elessar, that article would fill in those details.
• Semi-redirection - With this option all content is kept on one page but each different title of the character has its own page as well which contains information on what the title means. This is kind of a combination of the two earlier choices.

--Hyarion 00:03, 28 April 2006 (EDT)

I'd go for the last one: all info in the article with the most used name, the info on the specific nick names in seperate articles with a link to the chief article. Even Túrin-with-the-many-names is mostly known as Túrin Turambar. --Earendilyon 01:52, 28 April 2006 (EDT)

Perhaps it would be good to Redirect and include an "other names" section at the bottom. --Narfil Palùrfalas 10:02, 28 April 2006 (EDT)

I'm stumped on this one as I could sway either way. One thing we have to consider though is at some point I would like to expand into Sindarin and Quenya articles. Where we would have an article for alahasta which simply would state it is a noun, is found on X pg. in X book and means unmarred in Quenya. With this project in mind it does make more sense to go the no-redirect route. --Hyarion 14:17, 28 April 2006 (EDT)

Would Mardil be a good example of the type of entry that should be redirected in a "semi-redirection" approach? --Ebakunin 20:28, 3 May 2006 (EDT)

Yes that's exactly what I see as a good article to redirect as there is nothing more that can be said about the title and it simply exists to make it easier for people who are searching for Mardil Voronwë. --Hyarion 22:49, 3 May 2006 (EDT)

(Apologies that this post is a little late in the day (considering the last reply was a year ago).) I wholeheartedly support the first option, as i stated in a thread on this very forum. There are simply far too many terms to do it any other way. One particular flaw with the 'page for every name' is that some casual contributers may search for an alternative term for any given subject and then when they discover that that page only amounts to a couple of lines, add hundreds of words to it to 'fill it out' as the 'main' article.

I recently encountered that when dealing with the various terminologies used for the Houses of the Edain- innumerable pages like 'First House of the Edain', 'Haladin' 'House of Marach', 'People of Haleth' 'People of Hador' had all sprung up with lives of their own away from the basic 'House of... Beor/Haleth/Hador' entries.

Another example is to be found in the 'Men' section when there is an entire list of 'Men of...' entries (notably Rohan, Gondor and Harad) when there is also the pages 'Rohirrim', 'Gondorians' and 'Haradrim'. While the examples i state only apply to groups of people subject to all kinds of colliqialisms and a veritable infinite supply of different phrasings it also applies to characters: Is the lead ringwraith 'Lord of the Nazgul' or 'The Witch King of Angmar'? In the case of the wizards someone wisely chose to redirect their elvish names to the main page and i think that policy should continue throughout.

Apologies for this rant but this lack of centralisation i think is one of the biggest flaws with this site since it prohibits people finding the largest amount of information with the greatest context quickly. I do wholeheartedly agree with Narfil's comment of making a 'other names' section as standard for all other notable terms for a given subject. Dr Death 14:00 28 May 2007