Talk:Tom Dooley (humanitarian)

Merge needed[edit]

Hello, I started the article on Tom Dooley. after reading Conduct Unbecoming by Randy Shilits. I really do not care if the article is merged with another one or not, provided that it does not ignore his homosexuality. Browned

This article and Thomas Anthony Dooley are almost the same length. Obviously there should be only one article. Do either/both of the primary authors want to take this on. Under which name? I put Thomas Anthony Dooley in the merge tag here, suggesting this be merged into that, for a couple of reasons, though I'm flexible. Some points:

According to Wikipedia convention, articles on people are titled with the name the person is most commonly known by. (I learned this when questioning "Kit Bond" instead of "Christopher Bond".)
I've always know of "Dr. Tom Dooley", but a quick search on Amazon seems to show that as an author he is most commonly credited as either "Thomas Anthony Dooley" or "Thomas A. Dooley". Curiously, he is credited as "Thomas Anthony Dooley for the book Dr. Tom Dooley: My Story.
Biographical article titles usually don't include the subject's "description" (i.e., "humanitarian") unless absolutely necessary for disambiguation. "Dr. Tom Dooley", "Thomas Anthony Dooley", or "Thomas A. Dooley" would avoid the need for this.

Eager to hear other's opinions. -- Kbh3rd 02:48, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My impression of the preferences is different. Since he was generally known as "Tom Dooley", that would would be the ideal name. Since there are other men also named "Tom Dooley" we need to add a "clarifier". Nobody called him "Thomas Anthony Dooley" or "Thomas A. Dooley" and so those would be the last options. Thus the second-best name is "Tom Dooley (humanitarian)". See how nicely it fits in at Tom Dooley? For other common names, see Paul Williams and Bill White. In those cases we used clarifiers rather than resorting to their rarely-used formal names. -Willmcw 09:00, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm easily swayed away from "Thomas Anthony" or "Thomas A.". But I would prefer "Dr. Tom Dooley" unless there's a Wikipedia guideline against it. "Doctor" was his proper title, after all. "Humanitarian" is an accurate description, but so is "author". He would never have introduced himself as "Tom Dooley, humanitarian", but he did title his autobiography "Dr. Tom Dooley". People are much more likely to search on "Dr. Tom Dooley" than they are on "... (humanitarian)". Of course, they're most likely to search for "Tom Dooley", and that disambiguation page can easily read, "For the American humanitarian see Dr. Tom Dooley". Liberally sprinkle in redirect pages for "Thomas Anthony Dooley", "Thomas A. Dooley", and "Tom Dooley (humanitarian)". -- Kbh3rd 18:31, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid that there is a prohibition against using titles in all but the most extreme cases (i.e. Mother Theresa). See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (people). Cheers, -Willmcw 21:16, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Also see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies). And yes, redirects are cheap. -Willmcw 21:17, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You win. Now about that merger ... Kbh3rd 02:38, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

(There are no winners or losers-anyway, the contents are more important than the wrapper [A lesson that we might well learn from Dooley].) Yes, the merger. Would you like to do it? I'm not a "primary author" but they don't seem to be around and it shouldn't be hard. If in doubt, dump it all in here and we can sort it out together over time. Just leave a redirect at the other page. Thanks for helping to make sure that this remarkable person is properly remembered. -Willmcw 07:35, 20 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]