Talk:WB Television Network

What is Ribbit Arena, and why is it here? [David Levinson]

Is the "The" strictly necessary in this article name? Unless WB is very particular about it appearing in running text as "The WB Television Network" (and maybe even then, if we get clarification on the article-naming policy) then surely it ought to move to WB Television Network. Alai 17:51, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

• "The WB" does sound dumb, doesn't it? But they're very particular about being referred to with the definite article. Most style books assert the rule that an organization is always the final authority on the correct usage of its own name. ---Isaac R 19:53, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC)

• I think wikiprecedent keeps "The" in titles if it's part of the official name, e.g. The Beatles, The Rockford Files. --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 20:20, Apr 19, 2005 (UTC)

• • There are different conventions for different cases. "Works" are well-established as always retaining the initial article, and names of bands seem to be another such, accordinbg to the MoS. However, the more general rule seems to most common use/capitalised "The" in running text. (Googling (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22The+WB+Television+Network%22&btnG=Google+Search) seems to indicate this is actually quite common, though perhaps only WB themselves even bother using the full title, somewhat biasing the results.) Alai 06:16, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Page move

I'm placing this on wp:rm, in order to get some clarity here. There seems to be a lack of rigour in the naming conventions on this. Alai 05:15, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

• Two data points, for whatever it's worth: 1) a google search for "WB Television Network" gets only 4,000 more hits than "The WB Television Network", which seems to imply "The" is pretty commonly included at the beginning, and 2) If you go here[1] (http://www.uspto.gov/main/trademarks.htm), click "SEARCH trademarks", click "New User Form Search (Basic)", enter "wb network" and submit the query, you will see that "The" is part of their registered trademark. Niteowlneils 20:53, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I did the move, and fixed all the double redirs, before coming to this page to explain the logic and keep "some fool" from reversing it. I was surprised to find that this change is controversial!

It was obvious to me that someone had chosen that name because of the "The" being used by, or service-marked by, the network itself. We don't use names because they are official, but bcz they are natural enough to be widely used, and therefore to be the name that real users (not corporate lawyers) are likely to look them up by.

WB put the "The" in there as much bcz it's unnatural to include in the name as bcz "WB Network" standing alone sounds funny. (It sounds funny bcz it combines an initialism and a word, which perhaps make it sound like Network is a surname which could make WB stand for something like "Wilfred Bartholomew".) The frequency of including the "The" is just like never using "National Broadcasting Company" (that's NBC) without a "the" (lowercase!) in front of it. But trying to make people capitalize the T is an affectation that supports the punchy "The WB" and "The Duck Frog" thing.

WP doesn't like The in titles, and this one is ugly and not needed. Hope you-all will just let it be now that it's done. (In intentionally left the "The" bolded in the lead of the article, but i don't think that's a big deal either way.)

Sorry if i've offended anyone by uninformedly editing boldly (tho this is not an apology for doing so).
--Jerzy·t 16:59, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

At 130,000 for "The WB Television Network" to 4,100 for "WB Television Network", I think the 'common names' guideline clearly prefers "The" more than the 'avoid "the" guideline' prefers without. 151,000 hits for "National Broadcasting Company" compared to 18,800 for "the National Broadcasting Company" seems to indicate 'the' isn't often used in running text for networks unless it is part of the common name. Niteowlneils 09:21, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

This information is unpersuasive. Why NBC is different may or may not be interesting, but it's not very relevant so far.

Have you figured out how to discount pages that were ordered changed by the site owners' legal depts, which reflect commercial propaganda rather than real usage?

I assume no one would make the corresponding arguement about "The United States", in the likely event that the results are similar. (That is a redir, as this is, and both should be.) And are you arguing that we must write

We watched The WB Television Network

rather than

We watched the WB Television Network

(which presumably both count on the The side in your search results, but reflect entirely different approaches to the name)?

What about

That's a The WB Television Network show.

vs.

That's a WB Television Network show.

? (In fairness, i'll mention that the NYTimes is dealing with a related issue in writing "...belonged to Al Qaida" but "was a Qaida operative". But i suggest that most pub'ns' practice of writing "was an Al Qaida operative" is merely a concession to readers' ignorance about whether the organization is named after a martyr named "Al". While foreign languages are such a fringe case as to be confusing, you'd probably find "Der Brandenburger Tor" out-Googling "Brandenburger Tor", but we're not as likely to be confused about German grammatical articles as about Arabic ones.)

--Jerzy·t 02:14, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)