Forum:Discontinuity revisited

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To bring back a old topic - should the Discontinuity, Plot Holes, Errors section be tidied up or just deleted in general? Some pages, such as The End of Time seems to have massive of information in that section. Should the section be deleted altogether ot just have a general tidy to and leave the main points in? Mini-mitch 16:41, March 20, 2010 (UTC)

I'm in favour of keeping it, but clearing it up (and keeping a tight hold on it), leaving the points that are production errors or continuity problems. Any explanations that have things like 'maybe, probably, perhaps etc' can just be removed. Also anything that's got conversation styling to it should also be removed, the articles are about presenting information, not pondering ideas from people that's that the Howling is there for. --Tangerineduel 16:51, March 20, 2010 (UTC)

This is an issue about which I have a strong opinion: I vote for complete deletion. An absolute, write-it-in-the-Manual-of-Style, zero-tolerance ban on discontinuity points on story pages. The story pages should tell us only what's in the episode itself, and describe the production, broadcast, and later home video release of that episode. Any narrative "problems" are better noted on an individual in-universe topic page itself. That the Doctor uses the wrong button on the TARDIS console to open the door, for example, belongs at the Doctor's TARDIS, not in a section under the episode where he makes the "mistake". After all, story pages are real world, out-of-universe pages. How can there be "discontinuity" in the real world? Continuity problems, to the extent that they are noteworthy, only exist in-universe. Yes, the discussion of them can only be told from an out of universe perspective — that's why you put them in italics or in a behind-the-scenes section — but they apply to the in-universe topic, not to a real world discussion about the story. Looking at it perhaps more simply, the continuity error doesn't apply to the episode as a whole, just to one topic within the episode. Thus these notes firmly belong elsewhere.

A separate problem is the size of these sections. They're often the biggest parts of articles here, because many editors think the section is little more than a forum page, where they can post claims and counter-claims about an issue. (Hell, I've done that in the past, myself.) Or possibly they attract so much activity because we've made it easier to note continuity problems by including these sections. Who'd want to do the hard work of going to a topic page and figuring out how to phrase things within that article, if all you have to do is add a bullet point to the episode page?

And yet for all the words these sections contain, very few of them actually convey any sort of hard information. When you frame something in the negative — i.e., Discontinuity — you tend to get negative responses. We are actively inviting people to pick episodes apart with these sections, and that's not the point we're after. Eliminating only the points that are couched with the words "maybe", "probably" and "perhaps" won't eliminate the dubious points being made. Just because an entry doesn't say "maybe" doesn't mean the point isn't iffy. (As a total aside, I actually prefer phrasing which uses the words "maybe", "possibly" and "perhaps", because at least the writer is being honest. It's useful for readers to know that a point is uncertain.)

Nevertheless, the sensible course of action is to eliminate discontinuity sections from story pages. This would ensure the length of that section isn't greater than the length of the rest of the article combined. Remember, our goal is to provide a concise guide to the DWU — not a long-winded, often speculative one. Discontinuity notes belong only on individual topic pages in a concise, italicized note at the bottom of the article, or directly underneath the problematic point. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 18:19, March 20, 2010 (UTC)