Portal:Blog/One person, many names
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One person, many names: keeping saints identity clean | |
| Blog | Blog |
|---|---|
| Posted | July 22, 2026 |
| Author | Tom |
| Tags | saints, technical, wiki improvement, announcement |
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Behind the articles, we maintain a master identity list—one person, one id, redirects for variants, and careful disambiguation—so the wiki grows without duplicate holy people. | |
As saint articles and the Saints Cargo table grow, the hard problem is not only writing prose. It is knowing who is the same person under many titles: St. vs Saint, language variants, inverted names, novena titles, and bare names that collide.
What we are doing
Behind the scenes we maintain a master identity list (tens of thousands of persons) with:
- One person → one id (other titles become redirects)
- Rejected non-persons logged with reasons (not silent deletes)
- Disambiguation for bare names that must not auto-redirect to a single saint
- Tooling and checks so bulk work does not reintroduce twins
You will mostly notice this as cleaner titles, fewer confusing doubles, and steadier article production over time.
For readers
You do not need the ledger to use the wiki. Search, Portal:Saints, and feast-day links should simply resolve to the right life. When something still splits or mispoints, tell us—identity work is ongoing.
Explore: Portal:Saints · Special:Drilldown/Saints