Talk:Main Range

Rename

I have created this talk page to address the question: should the Big Finish range entitled Main Range on this wiki be entitled The Monthly Adventures as is it's official name on the Big Finish website? – The preceding unsigned comment was added by K9-1132 (talk • contribs) .

I'd agree with that. As that name has been used for several years while it's been active, that seems fair enough. Danochy ☎ 01:49, November 3, 2020 (UTC)

Think that this is wise. Aren't they coming to an end in early 2021 too? So main range isn't really appropriate when the range is discontinued. KennethBenidorm ☎ 02:43, November 3, 2020 (UTC)

I mean, neither would "The Monthly Adventures", by that standard, seeing how they'll no longer be coming out monthly. We don't call it "the main range of Big Finish", anyway. We call it "the Main Range" because that's what it used to be named.

In the abstract I could see us renaming to "The Monthly Adventures", but equally, we don't have a duty to use the latest name. Quite the opposite, in fact — we care a great deal about how things were presented at the time of release, which is why the TV Movie to us is "Doctor Who (TV story)", not "The TV Movie" of "The Enemy Within (TV story)". For series titles, the rules are somewhat more flexible, but the fact remains.

And the big roadblock I see is this: we link to "Main Range" an awful lot across the Wiki. It would be a lot of work changing every one of those links, and it would be a bit pointless to enact the rename without doing all that work. By which I mean: yes, we could rename this page to The Monthly Adventures but keep Main Range as a redirect and thus keep all the links the way they are. But if so, why even bother? Functionally we'll still be calling it "the Main Range.

Before anyone mentions using a bot to change links, even that is not without issues. "Main Range" doesn't have an article, so usually, when mentioning it in an article, we'll type something like

Ascendency of the Trods was the 789th story of the Main Range, released on Asbril the 89th, 2167.

or perhaps

Ascendency of the Trods was the 789th story of Big Finish Productions' Main Range, released on Asbril the 89th, 2167.

whereas under the new name, we'd want that text to read

Ascendency of the Trods was the 789th story of The Monthly Adventures, released on Asbril the 89th, 2167.

If it was a matter of swapping a link for another, a bot run could do it. But here we'd want the bot to grab not just the link "Main Range", but also a hypothetical non-hyperlinked "the", or indeed to rephrase the whole thing to better fit the new title! It's just not feasible.

That's not a hard no on the rename, then, but it's a pretty strong technical argument against. And as I said, there's nothing wrong with using the older names. Please address that problem, then, if you still want to argue for a rename. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 02:55, November 3, 2020 (UTC)

None of the pages directly use Main Range though, they are all (and I've checked a fair range of them) formatted as such:

Ascendency of the Trods was the seven hundred and eighty-ninth story in Big Finish's monthly range.

So the only change required there would be in the infobox, which would be a direct switch. If we also want to change the lead, the ubiquitous use of that format would make it very easy.

Whether we actually want to make the change is a different matter. While I'm now not entirely sure we should switch, I don't think the TV movie is a valid comparison, as that was a case of changing the name after the fact. The Monthly Adventures is very much an active range (for a while longer, and at least while the name was changed), so a closer comparison would be Doctor Who Magazine, although that one is much more clear cut given the longevity of its third and current name. Whatever the case, I feel we should go with the title which best has our readers in mind. I know a fair few people still refer to its as the Main Range, and as far as I know this is the most long-running name of the series, so perhaps that would be the best route to take? Danochy ☎ 03:22, November 3, 2020 (UTC)

I mean, we'd still want to change "[[Main Range|monthly range]]" to "[[The Monthly Adventures|monthly range]]", you know. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 11:16, November 3, 2020 (UTC)

Oh, I know, but we wouldn't have to worry about the surrounding formatting, would we? That's what I meant when I referred to the ubiquity of the current format. Danochy ☎ 11:26, November 3, 2020 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone for discussing this. What I would say about this is that whatever it has been called in the past, this range is currently called, at least by Big Finish themselves, the Monthly Adventures. I also don't think it would cause any confusion as long as we sorted out exactly what would happen with the links. Of course, any links would immediately redirect anyone to the new page so i think that would work out OK. I personally think this change would be a good idea and if everyone else agrees i think it should happen. Thanks again for discussing it! K9-1132 ☎ 15:55, November 8, 2020 (UTC)

I strongly advocate for this change. As I see it, the difficulty of changing links is beside the point: yes, there are hundreds or thousands of pages that refer to it as the Main Range, and it might be a challenge to write a regex query that fits; but this is exactly why Magnus Manske gave us redirects. There's nothing wrong or shameful about most or all links to a page using a redirect. This doesn't make the rename "pointless", as the real "point" of a rename is for each page to have the most relevant and accurate name. And for this page, that name is The Monthly Adventures (audio series). – n8 (☎) 16:42, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Bring Back the Old List Format

I'm just gonna say in advance, this post is going to get ranty, so try not to take it personally. It must have been a long time since I've visited this page because it seems about two years ago someone decided it would be a good idea to get rid of the list of main range releases and instead divide them all into smaller lists divided up by year and listed in a sub-page for that year. Without trying to sound too rude here, I just want to ask: Who thought this was a good idea? Granted I completely understand that back then whomever made this change would have been unaware at the time that Big Finish would be bringing there main range releases to an end within a few years' time and so they had no idea that this list wouldn't have just gone on forever. But putting aside whether or not having one long list on a single article is an issue (I don't see why it would be, but that's just me), I fail to see how this is a good alternative.

As it stands, there is no way someone could use this list effectively. Not only does browsing through all the releases require opening multiple articles, which itself is far more of a hassle than simply having one really long list on a single page, looking for a specific title on this list requires a person to have knowledge of the year that it came out. While I'm sure there are probably one or two users on this site that have the year that every sing main range title came out committed to memory, for the rest of us, this would require us to search for that specific title's article so we could find the year it was released then pull up the sub-page for that year so we could find it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that entirely defeat the purpose of having a list like this to begin with? Lists like these are meant to not only show the order of releases for these titles, but also to provide important information regarding these releases such as their writers, directors, the characters featured, and the month and year that they were released. Lists like these are extremely useful for people who want to find information on multiple titles and don't want to have to mess with wading through their associated articles.

Just as an example, earlier I came to this article wanting to see the order in which all the Thomas Brewster stories were released. Imagine my surprise when I suddenly saw that in order to find the information I wanted, I would have needed to know the years that all the Thomas Brewster stories were released which, as I pointed out earlier, kind of completely defeats the purpose of why I came to view this list to begin with. So instead I just pulled up an archived version of the article from 2018 so I could quickly find the information I needed. I'm sorry, I'm really not trying to be rude here but can someone explain to me who thought this was a good solution to keep an article from becoming to bloated and how they though that this list would be useful to anyone by forcing people to have to open it in multiple tabs just to view the damn thing properly? The fact that pulling up an archived version of this article allowed me to find what I wanted quicker and easier than using the current article means that something is terribly wrong here.

As I pointed out earlier, the main range titles will be coming to an end soon, and I don't think having a list of around 300 titles is enough to justify having this list being broken up as it is. We can still go ahead and keep the sub-pages because those pages do contain some useful information summarizing all the main range releases of those years, but there is no need for them to have them at the expense of having one long list of all the releases on this article. I've already brought this issue up in the wiki channel of the the Doctor Who Discord server and a couple other editors have are onboard with re-adding the list to this article. I'm going to let this post sit for a couple of days to see if anyone has any opposition to this change. If not, I will be re-adding the old list to this article and update it to include all the main range releases that have come out since then. –Nahald ☎ 05:42, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

I agree that for usability's sake, all the stories should be listed on this page. But before you change anything back, it's worth noting that this move wasn't performed by a random user but by User:TheOncomingStorm12th, with the help of User:SOTO. The given reason was, "This page and Main Range covers are far too big, specially when there is a policy disallowing too many images in one page. A similar approach to Doctor Who Magazine/2012, et al. will be taken." That said, I'm not really sure how the pre-edit version of this page violated the image policy at all. A viable compromise position would be to keep the covers and production details at Main Range/2012 et al. while still listing all the releases on this core page. – n8 (☎) 16:42, 25 January 2021 (UTC)