Talk:Moby Dick (whale)

Personal essay/ Primary source tags

Animalparty has a point, but WP:BOOKPLOT advises "Even with strict adherence to the real-world perspective, writing about fiction always includes using the original fiction itself as a source." It also advises "...a primary source may be used only to make descriptive claims, the accuracy of which is verifiable by a reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge... Do not make analytic, synthetic, interpretive, explanatory, or evaluative claims about information found in a primary source."

I removed the material which does not meet these criteria and removed the tags. (I should note that although I created this page, it was only a move from List of Moby-Dick characters to clean up that page.ch (talk) 05:29, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 18 January 2015

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Move to Moby Dick (whale). There is clear consensus for a move, and clear consensus against the proposed move to Moby Dick. Of the several suggested alternatives, Moby Dick (whale) has the best support. Cúchullain ^t/c 14:12, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

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Moby Dick (Moby-Dick) → Moby Dick – * By the same reasoning as for the move from Captain Ahab (Moby-Dick) to Captain Ahab at Talk Page Captain Ahab, this article should be moved to Moby Dick.

• The present title "Moby Dick (Moby-Dick)" is confusing.

• Moby Dick is clearly Primary topic.

• WP:TITLE calls for Recognizability, Naturalness, Precision, Conciseness, Consistency. "MD (M-D)" is not more recognizable, only more confusing; "MD" is more natural, because the whale is not named "MD (M-D)"; MD is more precise, again because it is what he is called in the novel; more concise; and, perhaps most important, more consistent, since Ishmael is the only other character in the MD Template: Moby-Dick to have (Moby-Dick) because he is not the Primary Topic.

• There are, to be sure, many hits for “Moby Dick” and “Moby-Dick,” but there are so many spellings referring to so many different MDs that after fighting with Google Search for far too long I decided that there was no way to get useful results.

• Moby Dick (disambiguation) lists the other Wikipedia articles with MD in the title, none of which could be confused with the whale.

• Confusion with the novel is possible even though Melville spelled the novel with the hyphen and the whale without. But “Moby Dick (Moby-Dick)” doesn’t help with this either. So a second possibility would be to move to Moby Dick (whale), but that still looks silly. ch (talk) 19:03, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose I believe "Moby Dick" is a plausible search term for "Moby-Dick". The presence or absence of a hyphen is a relatively minor difference (the title appears in print in both forms, see here), and Moby-Dick (or Moby Dick) the book is a more general primary topic than Moby Dick the character. I don't think it's warranted to assume the reader or editor who links to Moby Dick is intending the character and not the larger story, or vice versa and replacing Moby Dick with an article on the character can cause confusion in wikilinking and such. I do grant that "Moby Dick (Moby-Dick)" is a less-than ideal title, but it is still a subtopic of Moby-Dick, and while I find Moby Dick (whale) perfectly acceptable, perhaps an alternative like "Moby Dick (character)" would work. To facilitate people who arrive at Moby-Dick expecting an article of the character alone, the hatnote could be more tailored, such as For the titular white whale of the novel, see Moby Dick (character). For other uses see Moby Dick (disambiguation). --Animalparty-- (talk) 00:04, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose and advise Moby Dick (Moby-Dick) → Moby Dick (whale) as clearly unmistakable and avoiding any redundancy. After all if we are referring to the novel as "Moby-Dick" in that whale's title, then the novel's article should be titled Moby-Dick, but it isn't. So the current set-up all around is messed up and inconsistent, and The only way to remedy both the redundancy and the extremely common misperception that the novel title does not have a hyphen is to pipe the whale's title with the parenthetical word whale. By the way, it should not be "character", as the whale is not a human or humanoid nor is it anthromorphized (i.e., it doesn't speak English or have specific thoughts in English). Softlavender (talk) 02:02, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose the proposed move but support a move to Moby Dick (whale) per User:Softlavender and ditto all of his/her comments. The current disambiguator is flawed because it doesn't clearly differentiate this article from the others listed at Moby Dick (disambiguation). Moby Dick should be a redirect to the novel. —  AjaxSmack  04:14, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
• Move to Moby Dick (whale). The novel is definitely the better target for Moby Dick, but the current disambiguation is just plain confusing. kennethaw88 • talk 04:45, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose clearly the novel would be the primary topic of the proposed title. The fictional whale can use the disambiguator "(character)" such as other fictional characters use -- 65.94.40.137 (talk) 06:23, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose I agree that the novel should be the primary topic, and that this article should be renamed Moby Dick (character). Fortdj33 (talk) 13:23, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
• Support Moby Dick (whale) and no other. Red Slash 20:51, 19 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose this move, but Support Moby Dick (whale) or (character), but better (whale). In ictu oculi (talk) 01:13, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
• Move to Moby Dick (whale), the most sensible title for a whale. -Zanhe (talk) 06:07, 24 January 2015 (UTC)
• Comment - I have to say I find the proposed title Moby Dick (whale) quite odd. He is not a whale, because he is fictional. I personally much prefer Moby Dick (character). It is clear and concise, and the argument above that "it should not be "character", as the whale is not a human or humanoid nor is it anthromorphized" seems completely spurious. Whoever said a character has to be human or anthromorphized?  — Amakuru (talk) 13:57, 26 January 2015 (UTC)

  Support move to Moby Dick (fictional whale) per Egsan Bacon. Fictional whale seems to describe it best.  — Amakuru (talk) 16:04, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

• Comment, Moby Dick (whale) or Moby Dick (character) is OK with me — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.120.164.90 (talk) 23:50, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose this move per arguments above. Either Moby Dick (whale) or Moby Dick (character) would make sense to me. Or, for a compromise, how about Moby Dick (fictional whale)?--Lemuellio (talk) 14:52, 27 January 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose, but support alternatives. Per the primary subject being the novel and the awkwardness of the current title, as already detailed above by others. Any of Moby Dick (whale), Moby Dick (character), or Moby Dick (fictional whale) would be fine with me. I think I like "fictional whale" best, but any of them would be an improvement. Egsan Bacon (talk) 15:22, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

• Move to Moby Dick (whale). No need for "fictional" in the title or "character", someone reading the first two sentences will pick up on that. SnowFire (talk) 22:42, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Moby Dick is not a character

In Melville scholarship the whale is usually not regarded as a character. The article Character (arts) defines a character as a human being. In works of fiction there are of course many animals given human personalities so as to blur the distinction, but Moby-Dick is not that kind of book. So I rewrote some sentences to omit the word character or substitute another.MackyBeth (talk) 15:20, 28 March 2015 (UTC)