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Hi everyone. I've just answered a question with the tag 'the-doctor', in reference to a character in 'Doctor Who'.

But what about the Voyager character also called 'The Doctor'?

Should the 'the-doctor' tag be banned, to be replaced with 'the-doctor-(doctor-who)' and 'the-doctor-(voyager)'? Or, should we identify one of the two characters as 'the-doctor' and the other as something else?

Or, is the tagging system clever enough that the presence of another tag ('doctor-who' or 'voyager') on the same question means that such ambiguations are resolved.

Thanks everyone.

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6 Answers 6

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How about we don't have a "the doctor" tag and simply tag one as Voyager and one as Doctor Who?

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  • 3
    Because, if the tag exists, people will use it. And much initial tagging is done by the question author. Many people don't ever come to meta, let along know about tagging intricacies. It's unfortunate, but there it is...
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Commented Jan 19, 2011 at 2:45
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    And if the tag exists people will use it for either The Doctor from Voyager or The Doctor from Doctor Who. So whatever we decide here doesn't make a difference by that logic.
    – Daniel Bingham
    Commented Jan 19, 2011 at 2:54
  • @Dori - That actually might be the best solution.
    – Goodbye Stack Exchange
    Commented Jan 20, 2011 at 0:49
  • @neilfein if there's a consensus here, it should be easy enough for the (subset of the) community (that cares about Who/Voyager) to retag questions.
    – Tony Meyer
    Commented Jan 20, 2011 at 5:02
  • @all - I'm sorry my tagging beliefs are probably overly liberal, if you guys want to blacklist the-doctor tag that's cool... Just give me a moment to weep silently.
    – Mark Rogers
    Commented Feb 7, 2011 at 23:58
  • +1 Full support. "The doctor" is meaningless. We should use either Doctor Who or Voyager (or the specific case in many other works of SF&F with doctors).
    – Andres F.
    Commented Aug 20, 2012 at 23:33
  • "The Doctor" and hence the tag the-doctor means one thing to me, as related to Who? If a Voyager tag is useful, it would never occur to me to associate "the-doctor" with Voyager before Dr. Who. Just my two denari. Obviously there needs to be a 1:1 differential, and I think Dr. Who is a more accepted source for the term the-doctor. Notably, Dr.Who precedes Voyager by several decades.
    – livresque
    Commented Feb 27, 2013 at 6:13
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Currently among the Star Trek tags are:

Since this question has come up again, I propose either for Star Trek's "the Doctor", or to encompass all the Emergency Medical Holograms, the Doctor included.

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  • I think using emh for the doctor from Voyager is a great idea.
    – Kalamane
    Commented Aug 21, 2012 at 2:15
  • @Kalamane I was prepared to just up and do it with "star-trek-emh" a day or two ago, then checked and realized - tag searches apparently don't search inside the tag description. So users would have to know to look for "emh" instead of "the-doctor"... (or start with "star-trek" and happen to notice "emh" there) Any thoughts?
    – Izkata
    Commented Aug 28, 2012 at 23:57
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    I think star-trek-the-doctor would work great if it came up when you typed 'doctor' or 'the-doctor' while adding the tags to the questions.
    – Kalamane
    Commented Aug 29, 2012 at 0:30
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Here's the way I've thought of it:

  • Voyager - The Doctor has no other name (iirc), so he gets the tag .
  • Doctor Who - The Doctor can also be identified as "Doctor Who" (obviously), so he gets the tag .

Not the greatest idea, but I think that's what we're stuck with unless there's a better way to refer to Voyager's Doctor.

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  • Query: how do you get tags to appear in the body of a post?
    – Daniel Bingham
    Commented Jan 19, 2011 at 2:29
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    Except that "The Doctor" is Doctor Who. The Voyager guy does not qualify as "The".
    – geoffc
    Commented Jan 19, 2011 at 3:46
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    @Dori - Since 2006, the DW character is named 'The Doctor' in the credits. Inside the show, he's never called 'Doctor Who'. Fans insist that 'Doctor Who' is the name of the show, not the character. (Let's just say yours is a controversial opinion.)
    – billpg
    Commented Jan 19, 2011 at 7:31
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    According to wikipedia, Doctors 1-4 and 9 are credited as 'Doctor Who'. Doctors 5-8 and 10-11 are credited as 'The Doctor'.
    – billpg
    Commented Jan 19, 2011 at 7:40
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    Definitely agree with billpg. In Doctor Who, The Doctor is never called "Doctor Who". In the early years of the series, the title/name "Doctor Who" was a joke about the fact that nobody really knew who The Doctor was. Since then, obviously, a huge amount of mythology has been built up around the show, so we know much more about The Doctor and his story. Bottom line: "The Doctor" is the only way to refer to the title character on Doctor Who.
    – Nellius
    Commented Jan 19, 2011 at 9:39
  • @Dori I aplogise, I was just trying to clarify the situation with regards to Doctor Who. When I hear "the doctor", I think of Doctor Who; but when others hear "the doctor", they think of Voyager. I'd be more inclined to blacklist the "the-doctor" tag. And I think most questions about Doctor Who (the show) would implicitly be about The Doctor as well; whereas questions about the voyager doctor could quite conceivably be separate from questions about voyager in general, so I'd probably agree with a separate tag for the voyager doctor (but not called "the doctor")
    – Nellius
    Commented Jan 19, 2011 at 10:13
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    "The Doctor" is how the Voyager character is credited in the opening credits, so geoffc's comment that he doesn't qualify for the "The" is incorrect.
    – Jake Wallace
    Commented Apr 12, 2012 at 19:52
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Blacklist "the-doctor" and have:

  • "the-doctor-(character)-voyager"
  • "the-doctor-(character)-doctor who"
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  • @Dori - what about underscores? Then: "the_doctor-voyager" and "the_doctor-doctor_who"
    – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE
    Commented Jan 20, 2011 at 10:46
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    no it's <word1>-<word2>-<wordN>
    – Zypher
    Commented Jan 21, 2011 at 22:23
  • @Zypher - darn. I will have to rethink.
    – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE
    Commented Jan 21, 2011 at 22:29
  • @Zypher - rethought. Bit of a mouthful but better, I think.
    – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE
    Commented Feb 7, 2011 at 9:50
  • +1 blacklist the-doctor
    – Andres F.
    Commented Aug 20, 2012 at 23:35
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I'm not convincced on which way to go with but we shouldn't cram it all in one tag. Best thing i can come up with right now is use for both and disambiguate with either the or

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  • @dori yea ... it's not a great or even good way to do it ... i'm tempted to just get rid of "the-doctor" tag or pick on and alias it (you get warned) i am torn on this one
    – Zypher
    Commented Jan 20, 2011 at 23:21
  • But then the-doctor becomes essentially meaningless as a tag. I say remove it!
    – Andres F.
    Commented Aug 20, 2012 at 23:36
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I'm the OP who created I changed the tag to .

I think it's the best option because it's more terse.

I'm not sure we should blacklist the original tag, because some new users may want to throw a in there. On the other hand, maybe blacklisting is a good idea. My opinion is to wait and see if anyone uses it.

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