Forum:Two questions on DWBIT comics pages

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While looking for uses of the American spelling "installment" (instead of the UK spelling "instalment"), I discovered that nearly all of the pages on Doctor Who: Battles in Time comics had a section titled "Original print details" with this written below the section head:

(Installment, publication with page count and closing captions)

And then it gave just that, in something of a shorthand style. I assumed that this was an instruction that used to be on the preloaded page format, and should have been deleted, so I got rid of the instruction. But then I realized that apart from the closing caption, all the information was (or should be) in the infobox. Do we really need to give this information twice, and in this format? Are closing captions useful or interesting information for anybody? Would anyone mind if I just deleted the section on all those articles? There's something similar on some, but not all, pages for Doctor Who Adventures comics as well. I think that the infobox should suffice for this.

Second, I also noticed on the DWBIT comics pages that most of them have this boilerplate text in the "References" section:

• The Battles in Time comic strip sought to reinforce the association of its Doctor with the one seen on screen with ‘props’ from the TV series: his blue/brown suit, sonic screwdriver, psychic paper and his intelligent glasses.

This seems fairly pointless to me. Surely this could be said of any adaptation, especially any comic adaptation. Furthermore, in some cases there are specific notes added to this pointing out which of these "props" did or did not appear in the story. Wouldn't it simply be better to note if the Doctor used one of these in a specific strip, and cut the boilerplate? I could remove it from the pages, but I don't actually have the Battles in Time issues, so I can't verify specific appearances. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 03:39, June 30, 2012 (UTC)

I've been the one editing these boilerplate, although I did not place them there initially.

1: "Installment" is an acceptable alternative spelling in England and the only correct one in the American English. When the British English and American English usages conflict absolutely (for example, in most of the '-or'-'our' words such as honour/honor, glamor/glamour), the British spelling is the one to use. In cases, however, where there is split usage in British English and absolute cases in American English, I've been using the latter.

2: The boilerplate about the tone of DWBIT comics: I don't know where these came from, although I have edited them extensively for grammar. Because they are true, offer some insight and the articles are not overwhelmingly long, I see no reason to remove them. If the articles were immensely long and they were not cordoned usefully from the other parts of the article, I might agree with your assessment.

By "usefully cordoned" I mean that someone who comes in looking for a subset of information about an individual strip can find that and not be bothered by this information if he does not wish it.

Checking through the articles and seeing if the sonic or suit or whatever is used in that article, making a note and removing the boilerplate would be an acceptable. Special-written prose is always preferable to boilerplate. However, boilerplate is preferable to nothing. If someone wishes to 1: check through the DWBIT strips, confirm the presence/absence of the sonic, suits and glasses, write the note and remove the boilerplate, that would be preferable to the boilerplate. However, removing the boilerplate in the pious hope that someone will do the work later would be foolish. Boblipton ^{talk to me} 13:43, June 30, 2012 (UTC)

I'm also not the one of placed it there, but am the one who would've tidied it up into references. User:The Librarian is the user who predominantly created the BiT pages I think.

The section is the result of that long title being a separate sub-section (like notes and continuity), but shouldn't have been. But the Librarian seems to write a huge amount of articles offline and then posts and when I've informed him it's been in between cycles of writing or something.

When I went through and edited these articles to fit our standard comic story layout I basically just threw that boilerplate text into References. I left shoved that text in there because I wasn't sure if the statement was just vague, but true, or if it was a statement about all the BiT comic stories that had just been blanketly applied to all the stories and was waiting for a final edit to make it more accurate. --Tangerineduel / talk 14:59, June 30, 2012 (UTC)

Well, since I don't have the Battles in Time comics to check, I'll leave the text alone for now. But if anybody does have them and have the inclination to go through and replace the boilerplate with specific references, that would be great.

As for "instalment" and "installment", the Oxford dictionary prefers the former, as does our Help:Spelling cheat card. (In its "World English" version, Oxford adds, "Spelling help: Spell instalment with one l (the spelling installment is American).")

What about the "Original print details"? See, for example, Time of the Cybermen (comic story)#Original print details: does "4/4 DWBIT 11 (4 pages) TO BE CONTINUED!!!" really provide useful information? All of that is better presented in the infobox, except for "TO BE CONTINUED!!!"... and are readers really interested in that? —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 18:50, June 30, 2012 (UTC)

Judging by my reading, there seem to be a lot of people from Cambridge in the publishing industry. Boblipton ^{talk to me} 19:58, June 30, 2012 (UTC)

As Josiah Rower notes it's all now actually in the infoboxes can include all that information it doesn't need to be included at all.

Before the infobox update I'd included in the "Notes" section, either as a bullet point or a subheading. But I think any useful info can go in the infobox. So that section can be removed. --Tangerineduel / talk 17:40, July 1, 2012 (UTC)