How to handle the "names" of nameless subjects in articles

Wiki Discussion
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1

A lot of Deltarune's subjects (and to a lesser extent, Undertale's) operate under a state of deliberate namelessness. The game does not tell you the name of the Sword Route's end boss or the neighbor that ends up receiving Tenna or those moaning piles of lint at the start of Chapter 1, and that is on purpose.

This, of course, is in direct conflict with the wiki requiring each article to have, well, a name. So we end up having to pick something, either derived from dialogue, file names, or just made up. I think this is an understandable compromise.

However, I am thoroughly unsatisfied with the way the wiki communicates this. Most pages reserve their only note of "hey, this name isn't used in-game" to a mere footnote, and continue to use it as a name everywhere throughout the article as if it was equivalent in veracity to "Noelle" or "Dice Brace". This muddies the water on what names are Deltarune's and what names are ours, and causes confusion such as people thinking "Card Kingdom" is an official name.

I have three proposed measures here. I believe even just one being implemented would improve this wiki's communication.

Measure 1: Banners
Blatantly stolen from Super Mario Wiki, the idea is to put a banner above the page warning the reader that the name is conjectural, or sourced from filenames, or only present in external material (example 1, example 2). Considering the page title is the literal first thing present in the article, I think warning the reader that there are caveats with said title immediately after is reasonable. Only downside is that they're a bit ugly, but I'll take "functional but ugly" over "pretty but dysfunctional" any time.

Measure 2: Rephrasing articles
This is something I've already done on the page for "the nobody". The introductory section avoids naming them and specifically notes their lack of a confirmed name, and... wait, someone removed that. As seen in this revision, the article would specifically clarify that the moniker used is in lieu of a proper name, without pushing it into a footnote. Applying this to other articles would help make it clearer which subjects are unnamed.

Measure 3: Worse names
Once again hearkening back to the Card Kingdom discussion, the issue I and others have pointed out about "Card Kingdom" as a name is that it just looks like an official name. Article titles like "closet Dark World" and "Shadow Mantle holder" are unmistakable for an actual name by virtue of being clunky and plain. There's not that many pages this would apply yet, but this current discussion about covering Sword Route's monsters would leave us with a LOT more candidates.

So, what do you all think? Are any of these measures worth implementing? Would you tweak them before implementing them?

2

It was my bad for putting the disclaimer in a footnote...

I just thought it was just nonstandard for it to be like that.

But as an aside, some sort of banner could work. I personally don't have too many problems with notes, but I get that they come under the same umbrella as references where you have to actively click on them to see their contents, instead of being an easily accessible disclaimer.

For that sake, I'd therefore agree that notes should be reserved for extra information rather than important disclaimers about an article.

3

I think changes should be done for purely conjectural names in cases; for example, the nobody rework is certainly superior, but for names based on internal files (eg. "wobbly thing", "dust pile"), the current note is best in my opinion. It's semi-official already, so no need to plaster a large banner or rephrase the introduction to not use a name.

4

Banners are a common sense solution here, Bulbapedia does it too. I think a field showing whether it's based on an internal name (official but disputed canonicity) or made-up would be useful as well. Since most pages already have a description like that, I don't think it'd be a huge issue to bring in line either.

5

Measure 1

Basically creating a notice template for conjectural names. I think this would be the best way of solving this issue. Maybe we could have a feild that explains why the conjectural name was chosen?

Speaking of notices, why are they placed at the bottom of a page? They exist to notify a reader of important information, so why are we gatekeeping it at the bottom of a page?

Measure 2

Feels a little redundant if we will have a notice explaining that the name is conjectural anyway. I am mostly neutral on this one, but I can totally see why it would be beneficial, especially for articles like the nobody where "nobody" is nothing more than an adjective they use to describe themself and not a title or something that could reasonably be treated like an actual name.

Measure 3

I already made my thoughts clear in the discussion about Card Kingdom's name, but basically, I think we should avoid using "officlal-sounding" conjectural names as much as possible and only use them in places where we don'thave a choice such as route names.

6

I would be in favor of measure 1. To use a relevant example with regards to articles that have names based on filenames, Unknown would definitely benefit from an unmissable disclaimer that its name is sourced directly from the code, rather than leaving such a crucial detail in the notes (this particular case would also benefit from "Unknown" being clarified front-and-center as an actual moniker in the code and not the wiki labeling a mysterious thing from chapter 4 with an adjective describing it as such, just to eliminate any and all possible confusion.)

7

I want to clarify, this isn't a "either 1, 2, or 3" situation. All measures can either be implemented or not, independently of eachother.

8

A combination of 1 and 3 would be the best, I think.