Talk:The Trouble with Tribbles (reference book)

This is a seminal reference work on Star Trek and deserves a fuller treatment. In that connection, I found a link to an online publisher offering the book for free as a PDF download. It appears that Gerrold has cooperated in the effort, and that he holds the copyright. If so, I would suggest adding this to the article:

==External links==

• PDF version of The Trouble with Tribbles

in some fashion. --GNDN 18:07, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Disambig

I'm kind of thinking this should be moved back to "The Trouble With Tribbles (book)", and "The Trouble With Tribbles" should redirect to the episode. The only difference between the episode title and the book title is one capitalized "W" ... that's not really much of a difference and could cause some confusion. Maybe. Or maybe not, I don't know. What do ya'll think? --From Andoria with Love 01:41, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

To be honest... both should, in theory, be the same name. And this should reside at "The Trouble with Tribbles". But that's just me. -- Sulfur 01:54, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

That's what disambiguation is for: to handle situations in which two articles (or, in this case, an article and a redirect) would have the same name. I agree that the difference between "The Trouble with Tribbles" and "The Trouble With Tribbles" is too subtle. Besides, why is the preposition capitalized here in the first place? That's not standard English capitalization (though it does happen occasionally). Is it written that way on the book's title page or something? —Josiah Rowe 01:50, August 22, 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's how the book capitalizes it. -- sulfur 02:10, August 22, 2010 (UTC)

Well, in that case it should also be capitalized that way in the first line of the article. I still think that Shran was probably right two years ago when he said the article should be moved back to "The Trouble With Tribbles (book)". —Josiah Rowe 02:23, August 22, 2010 (UTC)

There's nothing to disambig it with, ergo, no reason for the "(book)" disambiguation. Is a disambiguation page a good idea? Perhaps. Is it needed since there are only two articles with almost the same title? Debatable. -- sulfur 03:33, August 22, 2010 (UTC)

There's nothing to disambiguate it with if you consider the distinction between "The Trouble with Tribbles" and "The Trouble With Tribbles" to be significant enough. It's sufficient to distinguish the articles for Wikia's database, but most readers wouldn't know that the episode has a lowercase "w" and the book has an uppercase "w". The question is whether disambiguation exists solely for "filing" purposes, or if it also exists for the benefit of readers.

I certainly don't think that there's a need for another disambiguation page, besides the one that exists at The Trouble with Tribbles (disambiguation). —Josiah Rowe 19:34, August 23, 2010 (UTC)

The "book" at the end isn't needed, since the disambiguation page lists all three. The only time something in parentheses is required at the end of the name is when the two titles are actually identical. The third page that is the same has a "CCG" at the start. Should we change that to "The Trouble with Tribbles (CCG)" instead? -- sulfur 21:06, August 23, 2010 (UTC)

Of course not. I'm just thinking of the "principle of least surprise" for potential readers. It seems likely to me that a reader, arriving at the MA front page, might type "The Trouble With Tribbles" into the infobox, looking for the episode. As it stands now, he'd have to either click through twice (once to the dab page, and then to the episode) or read most of this article to find the link to the episode. Very few people are likely to know that Gerrold wrote a book about the episode at all, much less that the book capitalized the word "with".

Furthermore, because of the way that MediaWiki search works, if someone typed in "the trouble with tribbles" (a lot of people don't bother to capitalize words in searches), they'd arrive at this article. How likely is it that someone typing that is looking for an article on the book rather than an article on the episode?

Think of it this way: if you were a casual fan and saw two links, one to "The Trouble With Tribbles" and another to "The Trouble with Tribbles", could you guess which one would take you to an article on the episode? The capitalization of "With" is such a minor distinction that I think that it makes more sense to have "The Trouble With Tribbles" serve as another redirect to the episode page. —Josiah Rowe 03:27, August 24, 2010 (UTC)

Redux

This should be at The Trouble with Tribbles (book), now that the "W" is a "w", with the redirect page moved here. - Archduk3 14:55, March 18, 2011 (UTC)

I agree.–Cleanse ^{( talk | contribs )} 22:43, March 18, 2011 (UTC)

Disambig page, or redirect page? -- sulfur 00:23, March 19, 2011 (UTC)

99% of people looking for "The Trouble with Tribbles" are looking for the episode. It's clearly the primary topic, especially when you consider the book is about the episode- without the ep there would be no book. --There's a 99% chance I hate you. 09:38, October 5, 2012 (UTC)