[Wikipedia-l] Movie naming convention: proposed tweak for simplicity

[Ray Saintonge]

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>As it is, our movie naming convention (which has been around since before 
>January) reads:
>
>"Oftentimes movies share the same name as other movies, books or terms. When 
>disambiguating a movie from something else use (movie) in the title when only 
>one movie had that name and (YEAR movie) in the title when there are more 
>than one movies by that name (example: Titanic (1997 movie))."
>
>One user has for some time now been creating many movie titles in the form 
>[[{movie name} (YEAR)]] (example [[Scareface (1932)]]. However I moved that 
>page to the convention compliant [[Scareface (1932 movie)]]. After the move I 
>compared the two and quickly realized that the word "movie" is not at all 
>needed for disambiguation because "Scareface" is already disambiguated by 
>year (there wasn't anything else released that year named "Scareface" that I 
>know of). What's more is the fact that Scareface (1932) actually has a chance 
>of being linked simply as [[Scareface (1932)]] instead of [[Scareface 
>(1932)|Scareface]] (not that it matters too much with Lee's neat pipe trick). 
>
>So this is my proposed new wording of the convention (and I will assume 
>acceptance of this as is if there are no objections):
>
>"Oftentimes movies share the same name as other movies, books or terms. When 
>disambiguating a movie from something else use (movie) in the title when only 
>one movie had that name and (YEAR) in the title when there are more than one 
>movies by that name (example: [[Titanic (1997)]])."
>
>We could add in the detailed movie convention page that if and when there 
>/is/ more than one thing with the same name that is released in the same 
>year, then the format of [[{name of movie} (YEAR movie)]] can be used.
>
In the first place the title was "Scarface" and not "Scareface".

The policy should remain that first level of disambiguation answers the 
question "what?" rather than "when?". The 1932 movie "Scarface" was 
based on the 1930 novel of the same name by Armitage Trail.  It is not 
safe to assume that just because you have [[Scarface (1930)]] and 
[[Scarface (1932)]] the earlier one must be the book.  During the silent 
movie period (When TV's and home videos were in short supply) it was 
quite common for a book to be produced after the movie, when it could be 
illustrated with a selection of still shots from the movie. A person who 
knows about movies does not always know about books.  I didn't find any 
books entitled Scarface published in 1932, but there is nothing on the 
net for books that is as comprehensive as IMDb is for movies.

Eclecticology