Forum:(SPOILER: The start of RtD2) Quickstart Guides: Difference between revisions

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Forum:(SPOILER: The start of RtD2) Quickstart Guides (edit)

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Bongolium500

Tech, emailconfirmed, Administrators (Semantic MediaWiki), Curators (Semantic MediaWiki), Administrators

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-{{Spoiler}}
+{{Spoiler}}[[Category:Policy changers]]
-{{Forumheader|The Panopticon}} - Yes they are cool here, stop telling me what to do, nerd. -
+{{archive|Panopticon archives}} - Yes they are cool here, stop telling me what to do, nerd. -
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 ==Opening Post==
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 ::Yeah, so, [[User:Najawin/Sandbox 9]] is like a really rough first draft. I don't feel comfortable writing up anything related to 13's era, since I dislike it so much, if someone else can write up a summary of that it would be nice, and I'm finding writer's block with writing for the RtD1 era summary. Aside from that I think I have a good first pass. Obviously other people looking at what I have and making modifications is really amazingly appreciated. It's a first draft. But I think we've got some stuff here that we can work with as a baseline. imo. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 23:48, 1 September 2023 (UTC)
-:: You know, looking at this, my immediate worries are stylistic. This just seems like a lot of unbroken text in a way that would intimidate me if I were a newbie. I truly think, if we want to be approachable, we should do away with the pretense of in-universeness, and allow ourselves to say things like "In the two-part finale ''Death in Heaven''/''Dark Water''" and indeed "In the first episode of new showrunner Steven Moffat's tenure". I think that + illustrations would go a long way, and also allow a principled way to bring up non-TV information without drowning in it (we'd be able to clearly say "the War Doctor was, at this point, retconned into existence, which contradicted some stuff…" without having to go through the usual laundry-list of ''Have You Seen This Man'' et alt., things like that).
-:: (Also, as a minor point, you seem to trend towards capitalising "The" before e.g. "Doctor" or "Master" even when it isn't the first word of the sentence, which is fairly abnormal for the Wiki, and ''Who''-related publications in general. But easy enough to change on the whole, I suppose.) [[User:Scrooge MacDuck|'''Scrooge MacDuck''']] [[User_talk:Scrooge MacDuck|⊕]] 05:57, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
+: You know, looking at this, my immediate worries are stylistic. This just seems like a lot of unbroken text in a way that would intimidate me if I were a newbie. I truly think, if we want to be approachable, we should do away with the pretense of in-universeness, and allow ourselves to say things like "In the two-part finale ''Death in Heaven''/''Dark Water''" and indeed "In the first episode of new showrunner Steven Moffat's tenure". I think that + illustrations would go a long way, and also allow a principled way to bring up non-TV information without drowning in it (we'd be able to clearly say "the War Doctor was, at this point, retconned into existence, which contradicted some stuff…" without having to go through the usual laundry-list of ''Have You Seen This Man'' et alt., things like that).
+: (Also, as a minor point, you seem to trend towards capitalising "The" before e.g. "Doctor" or "Master" even when it isn't the first word of the sentence, which is fairly abnormal for the Wiki, and ''Who''-related publications in general. But easy enough to change on the whole, I suppose.)
+: Mind, I don't say any of this to diminish the work done so far! [[User:Scrooge MacDuck|'''Scrooge MacDuck''']] [[User_talk:Scrooge MacDuck|⊕]] 05:57, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
+::Well each of these sections would be a different page, right? I'm not super convinced that the text in each individual section would be off-putting, but if we might want to add in images, we can. If people wish to go for a different stylistic approach I have no objections. (And, yes, I do tend to capitalize "The" in that context. Personal preference, I guess? They're the definite article, as it were. It makes sense to me linguistically. But if we're not gonna do that we're not gonna do that, I, again, have no qualms.) [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 06:05, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
+:::Have started on the Chibnall era. Although I'm none too fond of it either, I do like some of it, and Whittaker's good.
+:::I might also start on some guides for some of the spin-offs and expanded media, akin to Nate's excellent FP guides, although I've got some other stuff to do first, so probably in a bit. [[User:Aquanafrahudy|<span style="font-family: serif; color: pink" title="Hallo." > Aquanafrahudy</span>]] [[User talk: Aquanafrahudy|<span title="Talk to me">📢</span>]]  10:40, 2 September 2023 (UTC)
+::::Okay, I punched through the writers block on RtD1. Let me note that I ''understand'' Scrooge's concerns here, but that I think those discussions are best had ''after'' we've already published something, anything. And that the stuff I've written are the ''plot only'' summaries + episode summaries. Adding on ones that also address production circumstances is a great idea, but seems to me to be an additional guide, not quite a modification to the ones I've written drafts for. Obviously up to an admin. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 09:05, 19 September 2023 (UTC)
+Can I get a sense of where your head is at with respect to this Scrooge? [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 01:15, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
+:: Well, I disagree. I really, really think we should ''at the very least'' add subsection breaks and illustrations before publishing anything. Putting myself in a newbie's shoes, the current drafts look ''daunting''. As regards BTS vs. in-universe perspective, I really think abandoning the "in-universe perspective + citations" format would be both a friendlier, and more objective way to do this; but I am open to the possibility of discussing that post-launch. The basic "these are scary giant walls of text when we're aiming them, in part, at the kinds of people who'd be actively hostile to the idea of reading a ''Doctor Who'' novel" issue, though, seems much more pressing. [[User:Scrooge MacDuck|'''Scrooge MacDuck''']] [[User_talk:Scrooge MacDuck|⊕]] 09:24, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
+:::Subsection breaks is easily done. I'd like someone else's help with illustrations, I'm horrible at deciding which ones to use. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 18:56, 23 September 2023 (UTC)
+::::Subsections done. Grabbed some random pictures for each one. Easily modified if people wish. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 04:52, 28 September 2023 (UTC)
+::::: Was an agreement ever reached on the namespace issue? I can ask Spongebob about creating a new one if desired. [[User:Bongolium500|<span title="aka Bongolium500">Bongo50</span>]] [[User talk:Bongolium500|<span title="talk to me">☎</span>]] 18:46, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
+:::::: Sorry for not contributing to this sooner, but having read over the opening post and @[[user:Najawin|Najawin]]'s sandbox, I do feel like this proposal is a very good one. I do think they should be open to auto-confirmed users, however, considering it is a pet peeve of mine when templates like {{tlx|Romanas}} are edit-protected.
+:::::: Even if these guides are short lived and eventually fall into disrepair... if they can help new editors get acquainted with the series within the next two years, I do feel they're worth adopting, especially as the bulk of the text has already been written (and in general, as much as I wish it wasn't the case, the content of the internet is ephemeral, and I do doubt this Wiki will last even for more than a couple of decades or so).
+:::::: As a suggestion for a new namespace, why not [[Guide:]]? Seems intuitive to me.
+:::::: I also feel a place for discussing pre-requisites for stories will be immensely useful; [https://thetimescales.com/ thetimescales.com] has a similar feature where reviewers can recommend up to three pre-requisites, so the adoption of a similar feature on the Wiki, complete with explanations ''why'' said story (perhaps written to be spoiler free however) and without the three-story-cap, would be a dependable new section of the Wiki. (There is a reason I've a good few audio dramas sitting on my shelf, un-listened to...)
+:::::: Also, where do we stand with ''links'' in these guides? Adding more links may be useful to give readers access to certain information, it may happen that this could become too much of a rabbit hole; so, where do we draw the line with links?
+:::::: One last thing is that I probably wouldn't write a guide about Iris, given the over-all contradictory nature of the character inhibiting me to state anything about her too definitively (my few sandboxes about Iris incarnations aren't that [[T:NPOV]] satisfying with the leads!) and how I've come to be rather disheartened with editing (or even reading, come to thing of it) really anything to do with Iris considering [[The Story of Fester Cat (novel)|certain works I've created pages for]] getting rather controversial online (to the point I think I even mildly annoyed Magrs himself with perpetuating the fallacy that all of his works are ''Who'' spin-offs (*''glares at the not-so-tactfully named [[Doctor Who spin-offs]] page''*) as well as the dedicated Magrsverse Wiki I tried to launch <s>crashed and burned</s> whimpered limply before curling up in the fetal position and dying). So, yeah. {{User:Epsilon the Eternal/signature}} 19:27, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
+::::::: With the Iris guide I meant more like a guide to which bits are good starting points and all that, but come to think of it the only decent advice I can come up with is "start with ''The Scarlet Empress''", which would make a rather short guide. [[User:Aquanafrahudy|<span style="font-family: serif; color: pink" title="Hallo." > Aquanafrahudy</span>]] [[User talk: Aquanafrahudy|<span title="Talk to me">📢</span>]]  20:04, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
+:::::::: I think that there could be plenty else to put in a guide for the ''[[Iris Wildthyme (series)|Iris Wildthyme]]'' series: how the different strands of the series interconnect, other good starting places (Big Finish's first series is a great starting point imo, but the first audio of series 2 is weaker which is worth noting as only series 2 onwards are available on Spotify and I wouldn't want someone trying the series to get put off by one slightly weaker audio) and perhaps a glossary of brief descriptions and definitions for recurring characters and concepts (and I mean very brief, stating only the broadest facts).
+:::::::: I think links should be used as much as they are used in the main namespace. They're useful. [[User:Bongolium500|<span title="aka Bongolium500">Bongo50</span>]] [[User talk:Bongolium500|<span title="talk to me">☎</span>]] 20:37, 8 October 2023 (UTC)
+::::::::: Come to think of it, it might make more sense to have a general guide to the Magrsverse, outlining how things fit together and good places to jump in. [[User:Aquanafrahudy|<span style="font-family: serif; color: pink" title="Hallo." > Aquanafrahudy</span>]] [[User talk: Aquanafrahudy|<span title="Talk to me">📢</span>]]  07:13, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
+:::::::::: Kind of like [http://lifeonmagrs.blogspot.com/2018/10/how-it-all-fits-together.html this] perhaps? [[User:Aquanafrahudy|<span style="font-family: serif; color: pink" title="Hallo." > Aquanafrahudy</span>]] [[User talk: Aquanafrahudy|<span title="Talk to me">📢</span>]]  15:58, 9 October 2023 (UTC)
+:: Alright, final thoughts on what namespaces to use, everyone? Aiming to have these up in at least rudimentary form by the 23rd at the latest. (That is, 23rd of ''this'' month.) --[[User:Scrooge MacDuck|'''Scrooge MacDuck''']] [[User_talk:Scrooge MacDuck|⊕]] 12:22, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
+::: I'm pro-new namespace ("<tt>Guide:</tt>"). Failing that, "<tt>Theory:</tt>" is fine I guess. On a separate topic, I'd like to note that some recent news might make a guide on good "Classic" Who starting points very useful. [[User:Bongolium500|<span title="aka Bongolium500">Bongo50</span>]] [[User talk:Bongolium500|<span title="talk to me">☎</span>]] 12:53, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
+::::At this point I think I lean towards Theory: but have no strong opinions. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 23:33, 14 October 2023 (UTC)
+::::: I think I support a new namespace. [[User:Aquanafrahudy|<span style="font-family: serif; color: pink" title="Hallo." > Aquanafrahudy</span>]] [[User talk: Aquanafrahudy|<span title="Talk to me">📢</span>]]  06:15, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
+== Conclusion ==
+<div id="box">
+Before I begin, I do have to note that I have some bias here, having participated in the thread. However, I feel that broad consensus is in favour of guides and so, in general, this proposal passes. Now for the specifics:
+* The guides index (more on that in a minute) will be linked prominently on the main page, once it is created.
+* General consensus is that guides should not be locked more than regular pages. Therefore, by default, guides will receive no page protection. If vandalism becomes an issue, protection levels can be applied as normal. This can be revisited if there is a persistent vandalism issue.
+** However, I do think that it is wise to have some control over the guides added to the index. As such, there will be a system to propose guides at [[Guide talk:Proposed guides]] (like [[Tardis talk:Video recommendations]], a talk page is being used to assist in archival). Once a guide is proposed, it will be looked over by an admin and, assuming there's nothing egregious, it will be added to the index.
+** Guides that have not yet been proposed will use the template {{tlx|draft guide}}.
+* As you've already seen, I have decided to go with a new namespace, <tt>guide</tt>, rather than placing guides into <tt>theory</tt>. Guides aren't theories as many people in sci-fi [[fandom]] would use the term, even if they might be in the academic sense (although I think that this is tenuous). We should avoid giving the impressions that these guides are speculative as, right or wrong, that is the idea most sci-fi fans would get from reading "theory". Moreover, I think that they have a lot of potential to become something very useful and different that may be limited by sticking them into <tt>theory</tt>. A new namespace also allows for guides to appear in search results by default without making that true of timelines and discontinuity discussions.
+* Guides will be organised at [[Guide:Index]]. This page will be locked and manually updated by admins following the proposal system already discussed. If this proves to be problematic and leads to a backlog, this can absolutely be discussed.
+** I put together an initial design of this page in the next few days and then will continue to work on it further.
+** My plan is for the page to have different sections categorising guides such that readers can easily find things they will find useful.
+* In terms of what guides can look like, I want to place minimal restrictions here. As I've already said, I think guides have so much potential and I don't want to limit that by imposing arbitrary restrictions that may end up restricting guide creation in the future.
+** Having said that, I think guides will, in general, work better from an out of universe perspective, but this is not a hard rule. The perspective used should be whatever's clearest to readers. It's also fine to mix and match within a guide. Again, whatever's clearest to readers.
+** To some extent, [[T:NPOV]] won't apply to this namespace. I hope that this makes some basic sense. If you're writing a guide on, for a random example, the [[Fourth Doctor]], it wouldn't be helpful to give ''[[Disney Time (TV story)|Disney Time]]'' the same prominence as, say, ''[[Revenge of the Cybermen (TV story)|Revenge of the Cybermen]]'', despite the fact that they're both Fourth Doctor television stories. While the main namespace is about writing encyclopaedic and comprehensive articles for use as a reference source, guides are about making ''[[Doctor Who]]'' easy to navigate and that does involve removing some nuance, cutting a few details and trying to focus on what a reader would find most useful.
+** Of course, EU material should be highlighted where relevant. It would be completely amiss to have a guide on the [[Fourth Doctor]] without mentioning his [[Fourth Doctor audio stories|audio dramas]] or [[DWM comic stories|DWM comics]]. This can be in dedicated sections or slotted in where relevant.
+** If an editor has an idea for a guide that doesn't fit with what's already there, I want the common practice to be that the editor creates the guide anyway.
+** As this was brought up specifically, I see no reason not to link where relevant. Links are useful. They let readers find out more in an easy way.
+** If the lack of clear guidelines causes any issues, the talk page should be the first place to go and remember that, above all else, guides should be useful to readers.
+[[User:Najawin|Najawin]], I like what you've got at [[User:Najawin/Sandbox 9]]. Am I correct in assuming that your sandbox is meant to be split up into multiple different pages for multiple different guides? If so, please could you finalise them to a point where you'd be happy for them to be considered "finished" (of course, they can be added to and edited later), publish them in the <tt>guide</tt> namespace under their final names and then propose them following the system at [[Guide talk:Proposed guides]] (more to check that the system works than anything)? I'll then get them on [[Guide:Index]] and, once that's set up a bit, I will add a link to the main page.
+This is quite a large thing to introduce to the wiki and I don't feel that this thread was seen by all of the active editing community. As such, once the first few guides are on the index, I will put out an announcement at [[Forum:Tales from the Tardis]] and make a sitenotice.
+As always, thanks to all those who participated. I really think that this idea has so much potential and look forward to seeing how it develops. [[User:Bongolium500|<span title="aka Bongolium500">Bongo50</span>]] [[User talk:Bongolium500|<span title="talk to me">☎</span>]] 22:07, 11 November 2023 (UTC)
+</div>