Talk:Conan the Barbarian (2011 novel)

Conan the Barbarian (2011 novel) is correct article title

Kindly refrain from continuing to move article to "Conan the Barbarian (Stackpole novel)." The author is irrelevant for sharecrop series like the Conan series, and for movie novelizations where the primary relationship is to the original film, not the author. The date-based designation succinctly and consistently distinguishes this book from others sharing the same title. Retitling this article would make it inconsistent with the others; retitling all the "Conan the Barbarian" titles to make them consistent with an anomalous "Conan the Barbarian (Stackpole novel)" article would require wholesale modification of existing links to all the "Conan the Barbarian" titles, which would be a ridiculous amount of work. Consistency in this case argues for retaining the original date-based article title. BPK (talk) 20:11, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, which other articles are you talking about? Conan the Barbarian (1982 novel) seems to be the only one! --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:26, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Most of the "Conan the Barbarian" articles are differentiated by date. See the Conan the Barbarian (disambiguation) page, but I also list them below for ease of reference. There have been four different books with that title, two of them novelizations of films (the articles for which are also differentiated by date). In the case of the novelizations, date-differentiation makes the articles consistent with the films on which they are based. All these articles have existed for years, and there are multiple links to them. Changing practice now based on the named author policy (which I have consulted, and looks to me more like a recommendation than a rule) would entail a massive clean-up project. Moreover, in the case of Conan, an iconic, franchised character about whom works have been produced by numerous authors, the author of any one particular work is unimportant. There would be no discernible benefit to changing the article-naming practice in this instance other than the dubious one of substituting a fuzzy means of disambiguation for a precise one.

Article listing:

Conan the Barbarian (article on the character)

Conan the Barbarian (1955 collection) (first book bearing the title, a short story collection; author, Robert E. Howard.

Conan the Barbarian (1982 film) (first film bearing the title)

Conan the Barbarian (1982 novel) (second book bearing the title; novelization of the film released the same year; authors, L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter)

Conan the Barbarian (2011 film) (second film bearing the title)

Conan the Barbarian (2011 novel) (third book bearing the title; novelization of the film released the same year; author, Michael A. Stackpole)

Conan the Barbarian (2011 collection) (fourth book bearing the title, a short story collection with contents different from the 1955 collection; author, Robert E. Howard)

Conan the Barbarian (comics) (1970-1993 comic book series featuring the character; a later comic book series with the same title is covered in the article Conan (Dark Horse Comics))

BPK (talk) 15:44, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Okay, so it is just the tie-in to the 1982 film we're talking about, as there doesn't seem to be a sensible alternative option for the collections. It doesn't matter that the Conan article titles don't match each other. They should match titles of similar articles per WP:CONSISTENCY, which is policy, not a recommendation. So books should be named per WP:NCBOOK, films per WP:NCFILM, etc, etc. --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:52, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Well, the most similar articles here are those that share this work's title, so I would argue that it does matter that they match each other. And policy is a recommendation. It's a guide to assist in decision-making, not a prescriptive rule foreclosing any other alternatives. Wikipedia's own article on Policy makes this distinction. BPK (talk) 16:11, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 21 August 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. The consensus is that, in this particular case, dabbing by year rather than author name is more appropriate. Discussion about whether we should use full author names in dabs is more appropriate for guideline talk pages. Jenks24 (talk) 10:07, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

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Conan the Barbarian (2011 novel) → Conan the Barbarian (Stackpole novel) – Per WP:BOOKDAB: If further disambiguation is needed, add the author's surname in parentheses. WP:CONSISTENCY is policy. No other book is disambiguated in this way. Rob Sinden (talk) 07:50, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose - firstly because of argument by User:BPK2 above and Conan the Barbarian (1982 novel), second if moving then support Conan the Barbarian (Michael A. Stackpole novel) per WP:CONSISTENCY with Human Touch (Bruce Springsteen song) and what we usually do with everything except mononym classical composers (Mozart). Very few novelists beyond big names like Balzac and Dickens are just referred to by their surname in Books, even when it is a distinctive surname like "Stackpole", but in this case a sharecrop or franchise novel series. With titles like The Game (Jones novel) which Jones? The title fails WP:RECOGNIZABILITY. In ictu oculi (talk) 08:35, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

That's a separate issue. WP:BOOKDAB prescribes author surname only, WP:SONGDAB prescribes full name of artist, WP:NCFILMS disambiguates by year. WP:CONSISTENCY calls for consistency with the pattern of similar articles' titles and defers to the various topic-specific naming conventions. Songs and books and films are not the same thing, and we should disambiguate each as prescribed in their specific guidelines. --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:45, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

BOOKDAB represents a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS; it should be made consistent with the rest of Wikipedia, using the full name of the entity being disambiguated against, instead of a partial name. -- 67.70.32.190 (talk) 05:26, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

No it isn't a local consensus. WP:BOOKDAB is part of WP:NCBOOKS, the guideline recommended by policy WP:CONSISTENCY. If you don't like it, see if there is support for change with an RFC. --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:56, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose - as argued above. Other respondents should be advised that as the creator of a number of the articles involved (the question affects more than just this one) I am not a disinterested party. In my view, the books's status as a sharecropped work in a franchised series by multiple authors negates or at least de-emphasizes the usefulness of the author as a factor for disambiguation. As with other franchised series such as Star Trek, Star Wars, the Man-Kzin Wars, and pretty much any comic book series one could name, the identity of the author of any individual work is largely unimportant to a reader's decision to seek it out (with the possible exception of whatever author originated the series). Policy is important, but not set in stone, particularly when following one would create more problems than it would solve. Such, I contend, would be the effect in this case, in which I would argue that being a stickler for policy would disrupt an logical and coherent existing system while conferring no discernible benefit. BPK (talk) 16:03, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.