Forum:Navigation from one story to the next

Index → Panopticon → Navigation from one story to the next

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I've noticed a disturbing trend on some pages, both in television and other media. It looks like there have been several different "approaches" to linking from one different story to another. Can we please agree that the only linkage between stories will be in the infoboxes? This business of taking up a whole section at the bottom of the page to do a really ugly text-based "Previous Story/Next Story" has gotta stop. That's what infoboxes are for: slamming all the little details into one, easy-to-find location.

While I'd like to believe this practice merely predates the existence of infoboxes, and no one went back to remove the redundancy after rolling out the boxes, I note that it's still the practice on some newly-created pages, such as Sisters of the Flame. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 04:28, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Sisters of the flame doesn't have that its just simply that the next and previos story in the series are also the next and previous story in the timeline / canon.

While i agree that we should use the ifo boxes to link one story to the next i still think we should have entire series templates down the bottom Dark Lord Xander 04:55, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

They aren't even templates. They're sections that are just a collection of linked text. And they're not at the bottom. They're towards the bottom. They're just wedged in there in this great, bulky mass towards the end of the article. And they're not consistently there. Seriously. They're ugly, they're redundant, and they're only used just enough to be annoying.

As for those few examples of the "next story in canon" to which you allude, please. That's total fanwank. Trying to place a short story next to a novel next to a televised serial next to a comic strip is a pointless exercise of speculation. Dunno why anyone wants to put themselves through this, because even the best examples of this sort of "timeline" readily admit it's utterly impossible to do for the Eighth Doctor stories. Plus, you really don't have to do much more than see the name "Gary Russell" before you know you're in temporal hell. Here are a few of the problems inherent in creating "next story in canon" links. there are at least two explanations of Evelyn's departure from the TARDIS, two explanations of LIz' departure from UNIT, a view of John and Gillian which makes them and the whole of the TVC run involving them a dream of the DWM Eighth Doctor, an end-of-reality explosion in The Glorious Dead (which can be said to have reverted every one of the black and white DWM comic strips to, well, Oblivion) — and, oh yeah, a little thing called the Last Great Time War which makes all accountings of what did or didn't happen completely unreliable. One of the mandates of the TARDIS Manual of Style is to keep things concise. One link the the last and next story in that particular series of stories, neatly tucked away in an infobox, is more than sufficient. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 05:16, 17 July 2008 (UTC)