User talk:Time Lord

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• Time Lord •

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czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  16:45: Mon 13 Mar 2017

Okay. Thanks for your message :) --Time Lord ☎ 18:01, March 13, 2017 (UTC)

page moves: please don't

Please be advised that it is a policy of this wiki that only admins are allowed to move pages. The rationale and suggested alternatives are explained at Thread:128198. Thank you for your attention. Amorkuz ☎ 12:24, May 8, 2017 (UTC)

Okay. Thanks for your notification. :) Firstly, it seems to me that the page moves I've made are permitted by that page, as it states that, "Determine how many links there are to the current name. If there are under 10, go ahead and manually move them to the new name." The only pages I've moved have been ones with less than ten incoming links, and I've done all that cleanup work myself, leaving just the redirects remaining where the moved articles used to be. Nonetheless, I'll endeavour to use the "speedy rename" template from now on, solely due to your preference. And if I have misunderstood the page you've linked to, perhaps it could be tweaked for clarification(?) Secondly, how do I apply for adminship on this wiki? --Time Lord ☎ 07:21, May 9, 2017 (UTC)

I think I know where your misunderstanding stems from. Your quote says "move them", them being the links. And, indeed, admins are always grateful when links are already moved, provided of course that the page move was obviously needed and did not require any discussion. Moving links, however, is not the same as moving the page itself. For instance, the move of Valentina Vistin to Valentina Visintin, which you performed, was necessary and I thank you for picking up on this. But the remaining redirect should not be there (unless the typo is in the credits of the episode itself). As explained in the thread I referred you to, moves without leaving a redirect are only technically available to admins.

I understand that it can be frustrating to know the move is needed but having to wait till an admin comes around to take care of it. And the decision to disallow page moves by regular users was made during your hiatus. However, you are still bound by it by T:BOUND. I appreciate your good will, but please do not confuse yourself by thinking that the prohibition on page moves is somehow a whim of one admin. It has been a policy for years, well before my time, and many a user have been blocked for violating it. The title of the thread I pointed out and the highlighted text within the thread are pretty self-explanatory. It's hard to be clearer than that.

As a side note, I am now trying to deal with clear-cut cases of speedy renames. But the policy should be followed regardless of that.

Finally, the policy regarding becoming an admin is explained at T:HOW ADMIN. The actual nomination is performed at Tardis:User rights nominations.

I am happy that you are back. Experienced editors should be and are valued. Just remember that many things have changed since you've been gone. Gallifrey is back. The Master is a woman. There is a new incarnation of the Doctor in between Eight and Nine. Users shouldn't move pages. All story names must be dabbed. Timelines are prohibited except in the Howling. Remember: 21st century is when everything changes. And we must be ready. Amorkuz ☎ 08:43, May 9, 2017 (UTC)

I understand most of that (all apart from "All story names must be dabbed. Timelines are prohibited except in the Howling." What's "dabbed" and "the Howling"?!) Also, I've been an admin before, on Memory Alpha, so am interested in finding out how this site differs, adjusting to the different policies and guidelines, etc. and improving as much as possible. Also, I may have been on hiatus from this wiki, but I've been an avid Whovian ever since 2005, so I've consistently kept up with the program. --Time Lord ☎ 08:56, May 9, 2017 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the links as to adminship, as those are very helpful. Btw, much of the formatting used on this wiki is superfluous. Essentially, I've seen so many cases of stuff like [[TV]]: ''[[The Name of the Doctor (TV story)|The Name of the Doctor]]'', when really all that should be needed to be written is {{TV|The Name of the Doctor}}. That sort of template would then produce the correct formatting, making the editing of the site a lot easier and less time-consuming. --Time Lord ☎ 09:13, May 9, 2017 (UTC)

Glad you asked. "Dabbing" is a slight abuse of English deriving from "disambiguation term" or "dab term", hence, the term if you get my meaning. I'm allowing myself to use it since it is officially introduced at T:DAB. That all story titles must be "dabbed" is stated at T:DAB STORY. Here is where you can find The Howling. That timelines are disallowed in all other places has been decided at Forum:Timeline_sections_on_pages.

Another thing, again this can be different at other wikis, but it's accepted norm here to answer on the other's talk page. I know it fragments the conversation, but here we are. That way they are definitely notified about the reply. Users with close to 100k edits like Shambala108 cannot realistically follow every page they edit.

As for the template, it is a nice idea and I will certainly raise it with other admins. One potential problem I see with it is that recent years have seen a lot of duplicate titles even for the same medium. This necessitates more complex dab terms, such as in The Promise (FCBD comic story) vs. The Promise (DWAN comic story). For such stories, {{COMIC|The Promise}} would not work for obvious reasons. And the editor would not have the benefit of autosuggest as with the current system. Mind you that there is already the template "da", for which {{da|Midnight (TV story)}} produces Midnight . And I'm not sure it would simplify matters to automate it further. You might be interested to read where this is all used at Template:StoryTitle. Amorkuz ☎ 11:15, May 9, 2017 (UTC)

Proposed template thoughts

Let me premise what I'm saying by mentioning that deployment of such broad-scope templates can only be decided by all admins. I've promised to notify the others of your proposal, so my approval/disapproval is not that important.

Secondly, it should be noted that some people like to code and others don't. The more complex a template, the less non-coders are going to like it. For instance, if there is a variable number of arguments and one of them is not something you know off the top of your head, then very few people are going to employ it. (What I mean is that remembering TV/AUDIO/COMIC/PROSE/etc. is easy and the (short) list of them is readily available, whereas guessing the FCBD and where it's coming from---Free Comic Book Day---is beyond mere mortals.) But, for me the deal breaker would be the lack of auto-suggestions. Story titles can be very long and the probability of making some small typo while typing them by hand is very high. A template without auto-suggestions would multiply the number of red links tenfold.

Having said that, your last syntax gave me an idea. If the template takes the bracketed page title as the second argument, something of the sort {{story|COMIC|[[The Promise (FCBD comic story)]]}}, which provides an autosuggest of the story name due to the double bracket, then I can see supporting this. Whether one template with two arguments or several single-argument templates is better, I'm not sure. But such an argument provides sufficient information to typeset everything. Note that the prefix (TV/AUDIO//etc.) cannot be inferred from the dab term since some stories are invalid and then must bear the prefix NOTVALID. Making such a template is probably very simple using {{StoryTitle}}. Amorkuz ☎ 15:43, May 9, 2017 (UTC)

Well, lemme just get in here and say that, since this wiki was in part based on Memory Alpha, the templating that makes something like template:DS9 work has already been investigated several times in the past and rejected for technical reasons. There's a massive difference between the number of stories considered "canon" at MA (700-odd) and those considered "valid" here (multiple thousands). Heck, there are roughly the same number of DW audios than there are episodes and films of ST! And there are definitely more comic titles than there are episodes of ST. It's just a much, much bigger franchise than ST -- largely because Paramount have stepped in and imposed a useful limit on what "counts".

Such numbers start to impact template performance, and the template could affect broader performance across not just this wiki but others if the template were to be used in an SMW variable in an infobox -- something MA doesn't have to consider.

And, as Amorkuz has already pointed out, it's actually important that people be able to see the autosuggest, which they wouldn't if story names are templated. There are enough cases of stories being titled after a person, place or thing within the story -- as well as the same title being reused -- that it becomes important to accuracy that people be served a list of things to choose from.

The DWU is just not as simple a place as the STU.

So, it's a great idea, but we just can't do it.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  18:11: Wed 10 May 2017

I understand. No problem. Have a good day. :) --Time Lord ☎ 19:41, May 10, 2017 (UTC)

Validity of real world sources

I'm actually gonna answer your question here, because it doesn't actually pertain to T:NAMING, which is mostly about technical restrictions on article names.

You asked:

Can scripts and/or other real-world sources be used to name articles about things which are unnamed on screen? --Time Lord ☎ 17:49, May 8, 2017 (UTC)

Well, your question is a bit complicated because you've conflated a couple of things that are not comparable: scripts and other real-world sources. Scripts may in very extraordinary cases be an acceptable source for page names, but only if nothing else -- the episode as performed, the closed captioning, the end credits -- give the name.

There are exceptionally few cases of this, the prime being Zaggit Zagoo and the related Zaggit Zagoo bar. But even in these rare cases, the script has to be officially published -- and there is no official script for most televised stories in the DWU. The reason we allow scripts is because they aren't really a "real world source" -- they're just another form of the narrative. And so they fall under the same basic ruleset as we use with novelisations -- that is, we use 'em, if they don't contradict anything else associated with the episode as broadcast. (Obviously, sometimes there's a difference between the script-as-written and the script-as-filmed.)

As far as "real-world sources", the short answer is that no, we don't allow these. Only narratives count.

However, we do occasionally allow names of real life people to be used in full, even if the narratives don't quite give those names. In other words, there are times where T:CHAR NAMES can trump T:NO RW.

A good, recent example is Anthony Eden. Technically Knock Knock doesn't give us the "Anthony", but it does give us "prime minister" and "Eden". In such a case, we go ahead and add the "Anthony", mostly because "Eden" is pretty common name in the DWU, and normal dab rules would be only confusingly applied. They would tell us to add the story name of first appearance to the surname, resulting in Eden (Knock Knock). But the problem is that Eden doesn't actually appear, and the resulting page name would be exceedingly confusing. We also haven't yet determined whether Knock Knock is actually even the first mention of the guy, as we've not finished an exhaustive review of other stories. The likelihood is that somewhere, some way "Anthony Eden" is mentioned in a DWU source, so naming the article "Anthony Eden" is not only clear, it's future-proofing. In effect, "Anthony" is acting as the clearest dab term possible. And in such cases, we leave behind a BTS note saying that "Anthony" isn't actually mentioned in Knock Knock -- a note that would persist even when we do track down "Anthony" in another source.

But most other real-life things we only name from what we have in narratives. This is why, for instance, we have 2004 Olympics but not Athens Olympics, or 2000 Olympics but not Sydney 2000 -- even though we do have London 2012 and 2012 Olympics.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  18:11: Wed 10 May 2017

Thanks very much for your reply. It's a great help to have so much of what I'd already assumed actually confirmed, so thanks. :) I was asking because I was reading through the script of Into the Dalek, and spotted quite a few names for things on screen but unnamed in the episode, so I conclude those are fine to be used as namespaces. --Time Lord ☎ 18:20, May 10, 2017 (UTC)

Soliciting email addresses from other users

You absolutely may not solicit other users' email addresses from users on this wiki. I have a duty of care to people here to stop that kind of invasion of privacy. Bullying people into giving you their address, as you did at User_talk:Danniesen#A_request is beyond unacceptable, and you will now be blocked.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  20:03: Wed 10 May 2017