Talk:William (The X-Files)

Hatnote
I have no desire to start a hatnote edit war on this page. If you disagree with my changes, please feel free to further edit/revert them, but please let's discuss them here as well from now on, to try and reach consensus. My rational for the changes is as follows:


 * In my view, mentioning that Baby William is a character in The X-Files is important as this establishes the context for why the footnote is relevant both to the article and potentially to the reader. This is why I added it.
 * My original edit ("For the X-Files character...") did not capitalise "The" because this made a straightforward and simple, grammatically coherent hatnote. I did not think it critical to retain the "The" in italics and capitalised, as although normally a show's official name either does or does not include a capitalised article, typically in usage there is no hard-and-fast rule. In that sentence construct, the "the" with lowercase is required for grammar; it does not form part of the title of the show and thus should not be capitalised. If a capitalised "The" is required, the correct form would be "For the The X-Files character..."; the non-capitalised "the" belongs with the word "character", not with "X-files", which is adjectival in this context. I have changes the sentence grammar to allow a capitalised "The" without undue awkwardness. I hope this is acceptable. (This does not prove that it is correct, but my first chosen form exists independently elsewhere on Wikipedia, e.g. the hatnote at Help! (album); I contend that in this context, it is acceptable and even correct not to capitalise the "the".)
 * "The X-Files" is the name of a series and thus should be italicised per MOS:ITALICS. In an italicised context, words or phrases that are normally italicised are transposed again into the regular font. This is what should be done here, and I have reinstated it.

I do not claim to be infallible in these regards, and as said above, am ready to have a debate to attempt to reach consensus. Please participate if you disagree at all. Thank you

--MegaSloth (talk) 16:32, 9 October 2012 (UTC)


 * I'd just note that a link to List of minor The X-Files characters would be better as there are at least four characters in the series named "William". In terms of italics and definite articles, what you have at the minute is fine. GRAPPLE   X  16:37, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comments. I took a quick look and the other three Williams – besides going by the name Bill or Billy – appear to have well-established surnames, which I think means that MOS:DABSUR applies and they do not need disambiguating? --MegaSloth (talk) 19:13, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I'd say to be safe, go for it. Max (The X-Files) has a hatnote pointing to Max Fenig, after all. I think if we're going to stick a hat note to aid navigation we might want to go the whole hog. How about "For the titular character, see Baby William; for other characters in the series named William, see list of minor The X-Files characters"? GRAPPLE   X  19:19, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Well we're going off the original topic, but as that appears to be settled I'm happy to run with it. I'm afraid I would disagree. I would say that disambiguating Max Fenig from Max, even in the context of The X-Files, was technically incorrect unless there is some compelling WP:IAR-type reason to vary from the guidelines. I'm not sufficiently familiar with the X-files to comment on the Max/Max Fenig case so I won't pursue that, but it is clear to me that the other Williams, if they were to be referred to by a single name, would in any case be "Bill" or "Billy". This is in addition to MOS:DABSUR which clearly states "Persons who have the ambiguous term as surname or given name should not be in the same section of the disambiguation page as the other links unless they are very frequently referred to simply by the single name (e.g., Elvis, Shakespeare)" (this is talking about DAB pages but there is no reason to use different criteria for DAB hatnotes). Disambiguating the Bill(y)s from other uses of "William" alone would be both against the disambiguation guidelines and counterproductive. --MegaSloth (talk) 19:43, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Fair enough for this one; though the Max/Max Fenig case makes sense as Max Fenig is a character not only from the series but from that episode itself, I can easily see a reader searching "Max (The X-Files)" and reasonably expecting to see the character (like, for example, searching for "Hamlet" and wanting to see Prince Hamlet rather than The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark). GRAPPLE   X  19:49, 9 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm glad we can agree on the hatnote for this page. While I'm not completely convinced regarding Max Fenig, your arguments make some sense. I'm not sure your example of Hamlet is a good one; Prince is a title not a first name and to my knowledge Hamlet is given no other name, so there is no choice but to disambiguate him from other "Hamlet"s. Nonetheless, I am content that the hatnote at Max (The X-Files) is at worst harmless and is possibly useful so there's no point spending our energies debating further. Many thanks for spending the time to sort this one out. --MegaSloth (talk) 17:37, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

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