Talk:Jack

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This brings up some issues, as with Kermit (disambiguation). It's probably useful, but I'm unsure of including Sweetums here. It's a great joke, but there seems more room for that on Character Disambiguations (which, along with the opportunity to display images of identical or near identical characters, is the main reason it's still around). Basically, I guess, I'm wondering what's the general feeling about the use of disambiguation pages. Should they be used only as cases for disambiguation to avoid wrong linking or potential wrong linking, or just to link to all variations of a name, or should they include/omit clearly "joke" names and references? We include the latter on tons of other pages, so on the one hand it makes the disambig pages less dry. On the other hand, I keep thinking that it's the function of a disambig page to *be* dry, and purely informative. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 04:05, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

The reason I included Sweetums on this list is after correcting about 100 casual Muppet viewers that have referred to him "Jack" I thought having him on this page might be helpful to someone looking for "Jack" (in fact someone told me today that there favorite Muppet was Jack from The Muppet Movie, to which I just sighed and showed my fanhood by explaining his name is Sweetums. My best friend's sister (who is 30-something) calls him Jack too - and she's seen tons of Muppet productions over the years). If you think it's too gag-ish you can remove it, but I know a lot of people (who for some reason did fully get the "joke" and haven't seen enough productions with his name prominently used) that know him as "Jack".

The question of under what conditions a disambiguation should be created is a decent one. Should it only be for actual mislinking situations? So until someone links to "Jack" meaning "Jack Rabbit" and someone else links to "Jack" meaning "Jack Frost", there should be a "Jack" page (or it should be a redirect to the most common). We don't included real people named Jack here so it's not just for any and all Jacks on the wiki. As for "potential" misslinks, who decides if a potential problem will arise. Will someone incorrectly mislink between Seymour (the elephant) and Seymour (the turtle) some where down the line? Or are they so different and clear that such a problem will never arise? -- Brad D. (talk) 04:30, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

You mentioned real people, which is one of the problems I had with Kermit (disambiguation) which includes Kermit Love and also Kermit, Texas and things like Baby Kermit which are all covered in either Kermit the Frog's Alternate Identities or Kermit the Frog Alternate Ages, both of which are clearly linked to from Kermit the Frog. So that seems to me to be a pretty obvious "any and all" situation. And there already is Seymour (disambiguation) for precisely that reason, to avoid mislinking and because in both cases, the names are identical and we've moved away from adding "the" just to solve that problem. That doesn't quite apply here. As it is, this whole list, especially the Jack gag, could be moved to Character Disambiguations (though I find it interesting to find that people actually *have* mistaken Sweetums for "Jack"). Fred is a disambiguation page which includes only real characters named Fred, whereas the list on Character Disambiguations can include a Veterinarian's Hospital joke that "Fred is a terrible name for a hospital." On the other hand, awhile back, Matt seemed affronted that Andy links to only one Muppet named Andy, even if all other existant Andy's are labeled differently with surnames or adjectives (Bad Andy, Andy and Randy Pig). So definitely as a community, we need to re-assess what we want to do with these pages. We can move this discussion to category talk if need be, but I wanted to start it here, as a clear example. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 04:42, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Well with Kermit (disambiguation); a Muppet Show page, a Muppet Babies page, a random TV appearance page or really any page on the wiki could say "A gift was given to Kermit." And that "Kermit" link could refer to any of the Kermits on that disambiguation page. The regular contributors know the difference between linking to "Baby Kermit" and "Kermit the Pig" but some newcomer could come and add a sentence without being clear on the full and proper title and it could go undetected for a while until someone who knows better comes in and fixes it...in theory.

Maybe they should only be for character that truly have the same exact name (and their article titles are only differentiated by disambiguation term in parenthesis). I mean Dorothy (the goldfish) and Dorothy Gale (the human character) are different names (just like Jack Rabbit and Jack the Dog). But Vicki (the girl) and Vicki (the snake) technically have the same name and would need disambiguating. Who makes the call on what could be potentially mixed up? Especially since us (hard-core fans are coming from a different perspective than the "average Joe internet-surfer")? Could One-Eyed Jack and Jack the Dog be confused? Could a Kermit really mean Baby Kermit? -- Brad D. (talk) 04:59, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Honestly, with Kermit, I think not. And again, if someone actually does make that mistake, Kermit includes a link to Baby Kermit. It's not so much that I object to Kermit disambiguation listing Kermit the Pig and Forg etc., even if they are jokes (although the fact that they're all one-shots, few "newcomers" would even know they exist let alone go looking for them as their main Kermit, and all play off of the fact that there is a Kermit the Frog limits even that to my mind, but I don't object to their inclusion). But why include it for Kermit Love, a city named Kermit, and even things like Kermit (animated), which are specifically titled as disambiguation? Honestly, can you seriously imagine someone linking Kermit alone to mean Love or the animated Kermit? And if they do, honestly, wouldn't it be better to correct it on the page than expect someone to click the link, come here, and find the right answer? My concern in general, really, is less with the existence of these pages, than with their scope. Kermit jumps around everywhere, and Jack includes the Muppet Movie joke, but doesn't mention, for example the Jack and the Beanstalk adaptations (that's a seperate disambig, yeah, but). And again, is if someone confuses One-Eyed Jack and Jack the Dog, it could go on Character Disambiguations, depending on whether we still want to keep and use it, or just turn every item on that page into its own disambig page, jokes and loose connections and all. That's basically the big question here. How should we be using Character Disambiguations, if at all, and how should Disambiguation pages be formatted? Way back, Scott posted on one page that he felt disambig pages should include no extraneous information, just a dry list of the items which need to be disambiguated and whwat they are/were they come from; the Jack joke skirts that line. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 05:07, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

I used to think that Sweetums was named Jack. After all, Mad Man Mooney called him "Jack" when he told him to come into the parking lot, and just referred to him as his Jack. Sweetums corrected Kermit by saying "Jack not name, Jack job!", but he never properly introduces himself by name (he could have said "Jack not name, Jack job. My name's actually Sweetums"). And it took me a long time to understand what Sweetums was saying when he said "Jack not name, Jack job", and even after I finally figured it out, I didn't know what a jack was for a few years. Also, after I realised that the Mupepts were lsited in the movie credits along with their performers, I looked for the name Jack in the credits for The Muppet Movie and The Great Muppet Caper but couldn't find the name, and was confused by the Sweetums name (and although I first noticed that the Mupepts were listed in the credits, I first saw the name Sweetums in the credits for The Great Muppet Caper and thought maybe that was Lips, not noticing the Lips credit untill a year or two later, and knowing that Lips wasn't in The Muppet Movie, I became confused again). I didn't knwo that Sweetums' name was Sweetums, and not Jack, untill I saw The Frog Prince (thankfully, I did see The Frog Prince shortly after noticing the names in the credits). --Minor muppetz 03:33, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree -- Just from watching "The Muppet Movie", how likely would you be to know that Sweetums is called Sweetums?? I thought he was Beauregard for years myself, because I figured out he wasn't Jack but had never heard, or never connected him to, the name "Sweetums". So I would say that is less of a gag-name, and more like the name of a movie-role for him. In that sense I don't see why it shouldn't be on the disambig page. If I'd just rewatched The Muppet Movie for the first time in years and wanted to know more about him, I'd come here and search on "Jack" or possibly "Jack Muppet Movie" (for fun I just tried that last; I would never end up on Sweetums' page).

In terms of the broader question, I look at the disambigs as more important for the information seeker than the information contributor. As a user, I rather like the general wiki habit of just putting everything associated with a name on the disambig page. It makes it easy to find what you need on a search for a give name, even if the formal name of the character includes a detail that makes it unique. To borrow an example from above, somebody trying to find "Andy Pig" may not realize he's always called that (or formally called that) and might just type in Andy and get lost without the disambig. I sort of see it like keeping around a redirect from Boppity to Blue Frackle, simply to help people who don't know the official name get to the page they want. -- Wendy (talk) 17:00, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

This is really a larger issue, yeah, and I think I may have muddled things by starting the discussion here. I'll bring it up on category talk later. The biggest issue, really, is that there's at least five to six different approachs to disambiguation, from see alsos on character pages themselves to seperate pages and so on, all colliding with each other. As for Sweetums/Jack, frankly, I think including his picture here only *adds* to the confusion. Users could see it and go, "Hey, I knew his name was Jack!" Peter suggested a compromise which I like. He's been doing his own style on George, where joke names, or names which were in the planning stages but never actually used for a character on-screen, can be explained in a "See Also." That would address the Sweetums/Jack issue (which does seem more prevalent than I'd have thought) without unintentionally adding to it by including a picture of Sweetums on "Jack." The bigger issue is just getting everyone on the same or at least reasonably similar wavelengths on handling disambiguation. I'll try to bring it up on the category talk page later tonight or tomorrow. -- Andrew Leal (talk) 17:05, 2 November 2006 (UTC)