Thread:Dexcuracy/@comment-27025402-20160620211551/@comment-27025402-20160620231912

The reason I changed it is because Firstname Lastname is the format we have all characters in. Actually, they're in full name format. It just happens to be the case that we don't have middle names for many other characters. Cassandra Johanna Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo is the only other case I can remember where we know a character's longer name.

Having such a long name for an article is. . . ugly. This must be an aesthetic quality, because I see it exactly the opposite. In much the same way that Taliesin's use of Percy's full name impresses many viewers, I find the completionistic quality of the page title to be impressive. I almost feel like the wiki deserves to drop the mic after that page title.

Think what would happen if wikipedia used middle names in every article. There would be fewer disambiguation pages, for one thing. In all seriousness, though, the appeal to Wikipedia's authority is compelling, but not altogether persuasive to me. Even in their naming conventions, they specify that it does not apply to fictional characters. In the particular case of this wiki, which serves a different purpose for the audience of Critical Role than does Wikipedia for the audience of all humans, I think we must account for the fact that this wiki is often a source of answers for questions that may seem simple to you and me, like: There is a significant benefit to the fan community in having these questions answered at a glance in search results on Wikia and Google.
 * "What's Percy's full name again?  And how is it actually spelled?"
 * "Is it Grog Stonejaw or Strongjaw?"
 * "Who's the Thunderbrand guy with Allura?"

Also, since there hasn't been an issue of Percy's full name being used in every article where he's mentioned, shortening his page name seems like a solution without a problem. And because of the Google/SEO problems, it's a problematic solution without a problem.

They only use middle names in a case where that person is most known by that name or it would otherwise cause confusion[...]. Due to the way Wikia (and Google, for that matter) handles searches, I disagree that the use of the full name causes confusion. When Percy's page was named with the full character name, a user typing "Percy" or "Percival" into the Wikia search bar would notice that Wikia autopopulates the search bar with the correct page. This behavior is made possible by the use of redirects, which Wikia uses to autosuggest. The same thing happens with, for example, "Lady Allura" instead of "Allura Vysoren". And, as I demonstrated in my previous post, Google pages with full character names very skillfully, as well. Rather than causing confusion, I see the full names as doing the opposite:  educating the user at a glance while seamlessly delivering the intended content.