Forum talk:The Cloisters

Two Years

As of publishing, it will have been two years since the forums have been removed from this wiki. (Indeed, I think that happened a day or two ago and we just missed it, but w/e.) T:WRITE POLICY and T:CHANGE, as written, still require us to go to a section of this wiki that has not existed for two years. In that time discussions concerning multiple pages and validity debates have continued to pile up. Moreover, it's undeniable that in some ways this has impacted the wiki quite massively. To draw a few specific examples from the list linked above:

• The validity of Can I Help You? has simply never been addressed. The "story" was published under a week before the forums were removed, and I only was able to find the text for the story a month later. James Goss, who coordinated the entirety of Time Lord Victorious, told us in so many words that it was intended to be valid. (Obviously aside from the issue that wiki validity rules are not exactly the sort of things most writers care about - he made multiple statements emphasizing that he viewed this story as an important part of the overall narrative.) For almost two years this story has never had even the slightest discussion on validity, it's simply been assumed to be invalid because any discussion of it would require a discussion of our merchandising rules, and, as a result, could have massive ramifications for the wiki as a whole, which only further underlines the potential damage not addressing this issue does to the wiki.

• Most obviously egregious is the continued validity of all of the author biographies from The Book of the Enemy. There's a section of biographies of contributors to this book, some fictional characters, some real life people, and some real life people who are treated as fictional characters. When User:NateBumber was first covering the anthology he decided to treat the author biographies section as a subsection of another, accidentally causing them to be treated as valid, and using that on the page Wilhelm Liebknecht. Nate was quick to point out that this was a mistake when I stated on another talk page that this section was valid, saying that he never intended for his own biography to be a valid source. The two of us figured this out basically at exactly the same time the forums went down (almost to the day), and as a result there's simply never been a discussion of how to handle the three different types of contributors to the anthology, whether we want to cover part of these as valid or none, and as a result our treatment of TBotE is incomplete in regards to certain characters who are fleshed out much more in these biographies, since I decided to completely ignore this section based on this confusion.

• User:CzechOut stated, upon the resolution of the The Curse of Fatal Death inclusion thread that he wished to reopen discussion based on evidence that nobody had discussed. While to my knowledge the particular evidence he wished to consider hasn't been stated, in the following January, so, 21 months ago, I decided to go looking in the old Rec.arts.drwho forum based on a comment I remembered on TARDIS Eruditorum about the episode and Moffat's thoughts at the time. I discovered a wealth of new evidence relevant to the debate that was never addressed, suggesting that we were perhaps in error in validating the story. At the very least it was more than sufficient to open up a new discussion, and I think it might have changed a few minds, it certainly gave me pause. As a result, due to the lack of forums, for 21 months we've potentially had a fairly contentious story in the fanbase and on this wiki listed as valid when it might have properly been invalid this entire time.

Okay. So there's undeniably a problem. Is there a solution? Well there's a long term solution, the recovery of the old forums and then turning on DPL Forums. This is being worked on by CzechOut and others, and I understand that we're closer to this than we have been in a while. And I understand the delays to this solution so far. Far be it from me to complain about life being weird and throwing curveballs at you. I'm not here to complain about that.

But the issue is the problems we're experiencing don't go away in this time, and if anything they get worse. The List continues to grow. Frustrations continue to grow. And what's more, we have a short term solution. User talk:CzechOut#Temporary forums details a perfectly workable solution to the problem we have in the short term. The response, User talk:SOTO#Temporary forums, gives the rationale of not wanting an extra step in re-adding the forums, which, in all honesty, is a reasonable critique. But it's not one that should stand in the way of us taking steps to fix a problem that has no end in sight. Even if these steps are stopgap measures rather than the full implementation of the forums, it's better than nothing.

I leave you in the close with the following thought. T:WRITE POLICY contains the following line:

Except in cases where the community desires something that is technically impossible, the consensus of the community always has the power to veto or change any rule. [Emphasis present in the original]

What I, and others before me, am proposing, is not technically impossible. The very rule paralyzing this wiki seems to suggest that, if it's the will of the community, the solution that has been proposed must be implemented. Najawin ☎ 07:50, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

My view on this has changed quite a bit since I created the temporary forum system to which this talk page is attached. I am now of the view that we should go straight to re-enabling DPL Forums. I don't see any point to adding an intermediate step. We do not need archives to do this; they can simply be re-instated later, as and when we obtain them again. I have spent some considerable time looking into what is required to get DPL Forums working again and it is not hard, maybe an hours work max. If desired, I could easily provide a list of what needs doing for this. Bongo50 ☎ 12:39, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Thank you Najawin for writing this 2 year anniversary post (🎉), and for putting it more eloquently than I was planning to. As my user page has suggested, it's confusing that our admins haven't acted on this already – especially since, as Bongo has pointed out, it would require so little work to reopen permanent forums at Forum:Index!

Bongo, I encourage you to write up that list and split it into "steps which can be done by our admins" and "steps which must be done by Fandom". We can then ask our admins to enact the changes of the first category, or do them ourselves, if possible; I have already fixed {{Forumheader/Panopticon}} and {{Forumheader/Reference desk}}. And once no wiki-side blockers remain, any of us can then ask Spongebob456, who would surely be able to flip the DPL switch back on without difficulty or adding more to CzechOut's loaded plate. – n8 (☎) 14:43, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Here is that list:

• Doable by admins:
  • MediaWiki:Allpagesnext should be restored
  • MediaWiki:Allpagesprev should be restored
• Doable by Fandom staff and devs:
  • The Forum namespace is currently configured so that no-one can create pages. This needs to be fixed and I believe should be doable by changing a configuration variable in LocalSettings.php. This should be doable with just a simple request to staff via the contact form, or possible even directly to Spongebob456.
  • {{Forum search box}} is currently broken due to a bug related to Extension:Inputbox and Fandom's changes to Special:Search. I have already reported this bug so there is very little that can be done about this.

All in all, this is a lot less than I had thought. In terms of the different boards, fixing DPL Forums will work for most of them. The old DPL Forum's version of The Howling still works, so that can be used for spoilers. Discussions could be used for the reference desk.

It would be nice if an admin could take a look at this discussion and share their thoughts. Bongo50 ☎ 18:55, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Just to note, let's steer clear of criticizing other users and try to focus on productive ways to move forward. Things happen, as frustrating as that is. Najawin ☎ 01:00, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

Let's also hold back from speculating too broadly about changes which might be enacted once Forum:Panopticon is reopened. The forums aren't the only thing holding back these proposals: there's also editor opinion, admin consent, and – yknow – the rules. But this isn't the place to litigate any of these particular topics. The point is that without forums, they can't be litigated at all. – n8 (☎) 14:15, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

The discussions we need to have are legion, far beyond the three examples listed. In addition to story-specific cases, there have been multiple stimulating proposals for site-wide changes, e.g. T:MERGE or the improved citation templates, as of late, and that certainly cannot be handled on a talk page. The decision does not rest with me alone, but if the rest of the community agree, and the relevant FANDOM authorities prove tractable, I am 'certainly in favour of reopening the DPL Forums even if we can't get the archives just yet.

It's honestly been so long that the then-ongoing threads are best treated as "closed as unresolved", and could, by now, be started afresh guilt-free (though the data present in the old posts would be nice to have). I recall User:CzechOut espousing such views in one of our private chats some months back, although I don't want to put words in his mouth, so apologies if I'm misremembering/misquoting. In any case it'd be a very sensible view, and it means that the scruples which prevented us from creating new archive-less Forums a year and a half ago are out of date. Bring it on, I say.

As the fellow said, nothing is forever, but it's time we buckled down and lived in the present! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 19:46, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Yes, the forums would be very useful, and I think that they should return. Such things as the Cushing films being invalid, and The LEGO Batman Movie being uncovered should really be fixed - something that can only be done if and when the forums come back. Cookieboy 2005 ☎ 20:23, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

We need forums back. Anything else is just mental. That’s a fact and it’s just as simple as that. —Danniesen ☎ 20:40, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

I absolutely concur. [snip]

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

22:44, 13 October 2022 (UTC)

I was directed here by Najawin from Talk:Dust Devil (audio story), another talk page so bloated with a topic larger than simply that of the actual page that it ought to become a forum thread too. I of course support reopening the forums as well. Would the plan be to simply re-enable the main DPL forums, or use this "temporary forum" situation? I think most of us would agree the former would be better. I don't think lacking old threads is a good enough reason to not use the main forums and relegate discussions to restricted, more technically complicated temporary forums. (It's looking increasingly likely they wouldn't be temporary anyway…) Chubby Potato ☎ 00:57, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

I'll be honest, it has been quite a while since I've been on the wiki, due to various factors, but one of the reason is that... i've been waiting for the forums to come back, as I understand that volunteer admins often are busy and that things take time. However, it's been years, and I must say this proposition for temporary forums sounds really nice! There's a few things I've been thinking about that could be nice additions to the wiki, but that would need proper discussions on some sort of forums. If we can do something to break this deadlock the wiki has found itself in, then I support that entirely. Liria10 ☎ 11:19, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm in agreement with my above fellow editors and admin. For a community as big as Tardis, going two years without a proper means of discussion and policy-updating is nothing but self-harming for maintenance. This is by no means finger-pointing, nor do I condone such a thing, but it's a matter of fact that it is impacting our ability to move forward with dozens upon dozens of decisions we need making.

Further, another though I had that was just materialized by Liria: our lack of forums might be driving away users new and old. Not much reason to stick around a place whose rules you (slightly) disagree if you can't even have a shot at amending it, now is there?

With that said, all clear respect for my fellow admin CzechOut and his personal reasons for not updating our Lost Forum Archives (which, to reiterate, is not really our business to discuss and I'd appreciate it if it's not brought up again for the remainder of this discussion), but a place to host our new/needed discussion is more than needed at this point. Whenever he actually has the time to restore the old ones it'll be very much useful, but weighting the scale, that seems to me like a lesser priority at this moment. I'm in full support of us moving forward with the needed steps. OncomingStorm12th ☎ 14:02, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

I'm cheered to see admin support above, and in light of this, I'm wondering what is the blocker on reaching out to User:Spongebob456. My understanding is that MediaWiki:Allpagesnext and MediaWiki:Allpagesprev cannot actually be restored by our admins, and {{Forum search box}} is a larger bug, but these things aren't absolutely essential for the operation of DPL forums. The single truly necessary change is the unlocking of the Forum namespace. Is there anything preventing an admin from bringing this to the attention of User:Spongebob456 today? – n8 (☎) 14:15, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

I think it's inarguable that we need somewhere to discuss these all these issues. We effectively have a two-year backlog of discussions which can't be resolved without forums. Jack "BtR" Saxon ☎ 12:22, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

This conversation began on Tardis talk:Temporary forums, but since the consensus had already moved from the "temporary forums" proposal to something much more specific and permanent – specifically, the reopening of the Forum: namespace and DPL forums immediately, without waiting for the restoration of the archives – I've taken the liberty of selecting the relevant comments and copying them to here, with proper CC BY-SA 3.0 attribution, to make the topic clearer to newcomers. The prior edit history can be viewed at Tardis talk:Temporary forums. – n8 (☎) 14:36, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

Per a request to voice my view, I am expressing my agreement that the proposed solution should be implemented. As stated, the wiki is struggling to function as discussions mount up without the proper place in Forum provided for them. As such, I support restoring it in alignment with the reasons given. Snivy ✦ The coolest Pokemon ever ✦ 21:27, 28 October 2022 (UTC)

So it had seemed to me that consensus was against asking other users for input, hence why I didn't go posting the link to this on people's talk page. But User:StevieGLiverpool was asking in Discussions about the forums coming back, having not seen this. It might be worth calling it to the users listed above's attention even if we don't insist on waiting for them. Najawin ☎ 02:07, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

That seems like a good idea to me. This discussion and everything coming from it is important and editors should be aware of it. Bongo50 ☎ 08:33, 30 October 2022 (UTC)

I for one would like the forums to be back as soon as possible. Is there any reason not to? We can just get the archives later, right? MrThermomanPreacher ☎ 11:28, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, took me a while to get here. I think I've garnered an understanding about what this is about. The best case scenario I feel like would be just get regular forums open and bring in the archives later. The main reason I want forums is to open a discussion about video game validity - and seeing as there are plans for a Decide Your Destiny validity change I may need to piggyback off of that.

Regardless, if that's isn't quite feasible right now then yes we absolutely need some temporary forums to alleviate some of the stresses that having lacked forums for 2 years has brought us. The quicker we can get some discussions going and review in any policy or page politics the better for the overall health of the wiki I feel. Bring it on! StevieGLiverpool ☎ 13:23, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

The fact we’ve gone without forums for two years now is baffling to me. It’s vital to the smooth operating of the wiki that we get them back as soon as is humanly possible, whether they be temporary or not. We need a space to be able to properly resolve the issues that many have illustrated above and more beyond that. If it’s doable to bring the forums back and just get the archives later, I’m in full support of that. If not, a temporary forum of some kind is still desperately needed. SarahJaneFan ☎ 14:31, 1 November 2022 (UTC)

Throwing in my two cents to agree with this. The current paralysis from the lack of forums needs to end and if its feasible to open them up without the archives in place yet, then do that. If that's not feasible, then we desperately need some sort of temporary solution. Perfect should not be the enemy of good. SherlockTheII ☎ 09:09, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

I've actually been following this discussion since Bongo's short-lived creation of the temporary forums but, to put it bluntly, I gave up most of my hope for the return of the forums a long time ago and developments since then have done little to change my mind with how easy it apparently was this whole time. However, as my opinion on the most recent proposal has been requested on my talk page, I'll give it right here. To be concise: it's frankly ridiculous that a Wiki of this size hasn't had somewhere it can change policy in over two years and I would support almost any solution (including all those proposed here as well as several others) to rectify this, though I agree that immediate re-activation of the DPL Forums without archives would be best at this time. Borisashton ☎ 21:18, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

I was brought here by my talk page, but i'm not sure i can say much else other than i support the idea of a temporary forums or forums without old archives because we can't wait anymore Editoronthewiki ☎ 23:33, 4 November 2022 (UTC)

Same as Editoronthewiki. I support every initiative where editors can discuss properly, it's the spirit of a wiki.HarveyWallbanger ☎ 10:33, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

I know I was not invited to this conversation but I thought this might be the best place to ask a question. Is there any way to access archives currently? Like anywhere? There are some old inclusion debates I am very interested in reading. Tellymustard ☎ 17:01, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

You don't need to be invited to weigh in! Some (very) old inclusion debates are archived at Forum:Panopticon archives, but any from 2013-20 are currently inaccessible because of the situation with Fandom closing the Board namespace. While you're here, do you support the proposal of opening new forums at Forum:Index ASAP, instead of waiting for restoration of the 2013-20 archives? – n8 (☎) 17:37, 9 November 2022 (UTC)

I think that they should be implemented ASAP as long as it doesn’t delay the archives being implemented. Also I think as soon as they are opened the validity of Vienna should be reconsidered. Tellymustard ☎ 17:18, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

Alright — I think there is a clear consensus now, from users old and new, in favour of this motion. I have formally asked User:Spongebob456 to try and handle the technical aspects of re-enabling DPL Forums. We'll still live in hope of the fulfillment of Czech's archives project; but in the meantime, I hope, for all our sakes, that the time has finally come to turn this page in the history of the Wiki.

(…As a point of order, @Tellymustard: policy does allow the reexamining of inclusion debates if there is new evidence, of course, but I don't think such an inclusion-reexamination should be the first thing we handle. There are multiple issues with a greater impact on the Wiki which have piled up, such as the slur pages discussion. User:Najawin/Sandbox_5 is not an "official" waiting list, but it should serve as evidence that there are already many other discussions waiting to be picked up…) Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 19:23, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

This is two years in the making, and it's good to see this passion again for getting things back on track. We certainly can't wait forever to keep moving forward.

And as we're between eras, this does seem like a good time to get all this unwieldy stuff out of the way, in preparation for the big anniversary year to come. There will undoubtedly be some missteps along the way, as we work on allowing for change while honouring the foundations we've been building on for all these years.

Seems to me, the community is gathering around these common goals, and ready to tackle some big decisions together. As far as I'm concerned, we should value this fire.

These are good steps! So long as we're being cautious and deliberate here, this proposal has my support, as well.
× SOTO (☎/✍/↯) 21:30, 10 November 2022 (UTC)

While we're waiting on User:Spongebob456, I'd just like to offer a suggestion for if/when the forums do open up. We have a lot of threads to go through, and everyone has their own thoughts on which threads are most important to discuss. This is, of course, a suggestion, not anything like a demand. But I would think that the most efficient way to proceed is to try and avoid creating threads that required large amounts of references to the archives we currently can't access. So avoid something like a Shalka inclusion debate, which gets bogged down in minutia of what prior evidence was or was not already addressed, etc. The slur pages are a decent example of a discussion which I think would avoid this, as would be the (N-Space) dab term (the discussion of why this dab term exists in the first place is fairly easy to explain and is all that's needed from past threads). I would also suggest that people try not to flood the forum with threads as soon as its open, perhaps one "long term discussion thread" that they think will take a while to resolve and one "short and sweet" thread that they think will be relatively easy to hash out.

These are, again, just my suggestions. I've just been looking at User:Najawin/Sandbox_5 and thinking that the backlog is so extreme that if this isn't done in a somewhat orderly fashion I'm not sure any thread will get the attention it deserves. Najawin ☎ 23:40, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

The sheer absence of the Forums would make application of that standard itself rather challenging, though. Does a given topic go over matters that were discussed previously in the inaccessible archives? Well, how could we tell without access to those archives? It seems to me that the only sane way forward until the Archives resurface — and indeed, to a degree, after they do — is to treat this as a fresh start. Unless someone starts acting in obvious bad faith, I would like everybody to avoid getting "bogged down in minutiae of what prior evidence was or was not already addressed, etc". Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 00:04, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Moving forwrd

There being apparent consensus on the notion of restarting DPL Forums without archives, they will be reopened by no later than this upcoming Monday. Since it's been two years, I think we can safely consider old discussions as being "concluded without predjudice". It makes more sense now to just restart discussions afresh where necessary.

Tardis is highly unusual in having such long-lived archives, and by now they serve more as a barrier to new editors than a help with editing. To be honest, the transition away from Wall Forums to Discussions wasn't really made with wikis like ours in mind. And it wasnt clear to me, or others on the Fandom team, just how much work there would be in transiting the Wall Forums back to DPL while keeping links to them functioning. In all honesty there aren't many wikis like ours, and there wasn't solid advice at the time of transition. I struggle to think of a wikiu that went fron DPL to Wall Forum and then back to DPL, while maintaining basic discoverability. Memory Alpha and Wookieepedia, for instance, always maintained DPL, so they never had the intervening step of Wall Forums.

Still, I think Wall Forums were good for Tardis, back in the day, in that people could quickly and easiy see new posts as they were made. One of the major faults of DPL forums is that it's not easy to see new posts, especially for new editors. In the old days, prior to Series 5, DPL discussions would simply wither on the vine, and it consensus wasn't clear. That's why you'll see me going through the old, old discussions and simply declaring a consensus. It wasn't a power trip, but the direct consequence of DPL. In truth, discussions were often better on Talk pages, because those people who were interested in that topic could post directly at the page in question.

But that's me talkin' as a Tardis admin.

As a Fandom employee, the vast majority of wikis have benefited by using Discussions as a way to carry out wiki business.

In any event, I am mainly to blame for this two year gap, and for it, I deeply apologise. I hope you won't think that I led you on by promising the resoration of archives, but that you will understand I simply underestimated the difficulties, and that I'm in a place, personally, where the pressures upon my time are substantial. Those pressures have only intensified through the intervention of COVID and less favorable economic times.

Nevertheless, I hope you'll be able to see the new forums as a place for a fresh start, once they come online in the next few days.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  00:33: Thu 17 Nov 2022

Did anything come of this? StevieGLiverpool ☎ 01:39, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Nate posted on his talk a few days ago. I assume he's just busy and underestimated his workload again. If it runs on too long an admin can always ask User:Spongebob456. (Who I'm sure is tired of me bugging him.) Najawin ☎ 01:51, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Was just alerted to this discussion. Excited to see the forums open, because frankly I've found it hard to be enthusiastic about coverage without that feature (not that anyone has missed me much). OS25🤙☎️ 16:40, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Per User talk:Spongebob456#Forums the ETA is the end of the year, and Spongebob says he'll look into it in January if it's not done by then. Just as an update. Najawin ☎ 21:28, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Well… here we are, in this brave new 60th anniversary year, and it seems the DPL Forums have suffered yet more delays from the "next few days" User:CzechOut hoped for in November. User:Bongolium500, User:SOTO, User:OncomingStorm12th and myself have taken it upon ourselves to activate Tardis:Temporary forums, come what may. The community deserve better than another missed deadline, no matter how good everyone's intentions — simple as that. Hopefully the Temporary Forums will live up to their name and only serve as a temporary intermediary until something better materialises at the endpoint of User:CzechOut and/or User:Spongebob456's efforts; but the Wiki cannot continue to rely on such hopes indefinitely. At some point, a line has to be drawn, in everyone's best interest, and this is it. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 11:11, 2 January 2023 (UTC)