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::: Thanks for reading (and well done if you read through all that), {{User:Aquanafrahudy/Sig}} 19:55, 1 January 2024 (UTC) | ::: Thanks for reading (and well done if you read through all that), {{User:Aquanafrahudy/Sig}} 19:55, 1 January 2024 (UTC) | ||
::::It seems to me... bizarre to characterize our progress in the discussion heretofore as | |||
:::::[Scrooge has] demonstrated, ''validity is largely a matter of mergers'' | |||
::::I mean, you've certainly ''claimed'' this. But there's no ''argument'' for it, it's just an assertion about what you view validity as being. Indeed, the pages we're discussing now are ''clear'' counter examples to this basic line of thought. If we cared solely about narrative connections, we'd have merged [[Weapon (The Eyeless)]] and [[The Moment]]. The fact that they're on separate pages with information present on each to talk about the varying accounts of the issue tells us that validity is not about ''merging pages.'' Everything present is in a valid work. If we were to merge works as you're suggesting we'd have one page discussing all of the competing ways in which the Doctor ended the time war pushed together. Now, of course, you realize that this approach is problematic to your argument, so you try to head it off at the pass. Are you successful? | |||
:::::My standard for ''both'' is "is this more or less conducive to discussing the narrative connections between these accounts in a neutral way" | |||
::::No. This is completely subjective. It's arbitrary in practice, it's precisely the worst type of rule we could implement on this wiki. (And as an aside, the reason why I use OOU reasons for validity and IU for merging is that I don't believe validity is related to merging, since we very distinctly do ''not'' always merge like you're suggesting. It's about cataloguing. Which appears similar.) | |||
::::It's also, I want to stress, not the only standard Scrooge has to hold. There's nothing preventing us from creating a page called "Time War Ending Device/Weapon/Whatever" and merging every account of the issue there and trying to cover things neutrally there. It would be ''horrible''. But it would be neutral! And it would probably cover the narrative connections better than we do currently. So why don't we do this? If validity is about merges, if we want to discuss narrative connections in a neutral way, and that's '''''all''''' we care about, why don't we? We can't do this trick with, say, [[Richard III of England]], [[Christopher Marlowe]], and [[William Shakespeare]], but we can do it here. | |||
:::::None of [[Forum:Is The Infinity Doctors canon?]] strikes me as a pertinent justification for validity/invalidity. None of it is free from canon-brain. | |||
::::Oh come now. Under this standard you can argue that ''all'' of T:VS is irrelevant as it's not free from canon-brain. It's not six months before the writing of T:VS. They're explicitly using "canon" in that thread to refer to proto-T:VS, with perhaps 2 exceptions. | |||
:::::"There must be ''some'' metric by which we define our borders, or we'll be pickin' Rose/Dodo lesbian fan fic off the walls" if it means anything is an argument for Rule 2, not Rule 4 | |||
::::I'll focus on this, the rest is really '''quite''' irrelevant to the point being made. The statement made is just that some boundaries must exist, by the reference to a particularly ridiculous slashfic. Since some boundaries must exist, authorial intent is perhaps the most easily defensible metric, as they've explicitly insisted that they "don't think it counts". Whether or not you buy this, w/e. But it's not an argument for R2. It's an argument for some boundaries and then, '''''given that boundaries must exist''''', R4 following after. Two arguments. Not one. | |||
:::::the whole "we have to believe a writer who says their work exists outside mainstream continuity" is just flatly asserted without any good justification for why there even ''is'' coherently such a thing as "mainstream continuity"; why it ought to be what the Wiki cares about; or why a writer's notion of it should be thought to correspond to the Wiki's hypothetical definition of the same | |||
::::Again, this happens to be the one example where the conclusion of the thread ended in "it's kinda valid". And the statement made is ''specifically'' referring to that work. But you're making a mistake here. Perhaps there's no coherent thing as mainstream continuity. Sure, whatever. But it's still kosher for a writer to say "even if there ''were to be'' a mainstream continuity, my work is not like that. Whatever you think of as mainstream continuity, my work is not that." They can define themselves in negation to the term, even without the positive example exists. And Czech isn't even arguing there that the wiki ''should'' care about the positive example. Just that those people who define themselves in opposition to it are taken at their word. Obviously the wiki to writer conversion is nuanced though. | |||
:::::The "sales" argument just depresses me. But if nothing else it bakes in a wholly unjustified idea that DWU stories are necessarily for-profit; how are we to judge a Rule 4 quote for a free online story then? Hmm? And in a broader sense it seems again intent on psychologising the writer involved for some reason, instead of looking at what's in the text | |||
::::Publicity? But we can't look at the text to determine intent of DWU-ness, obviously. That would make us precisely as bad as our worst detractors accuse us of being, trying to decide what is and isn't DWU based on what we think from the text. Personally I don't think much of this argument though, I've read the ra.dw logs about ''Curse'', Moffat actively encouraged people to watch it and donate by saying it ''wasn't'' real, and to donate to charity to "keep Curse out of canon". | |||
:::::Firstly, isn't "and I'd prefer if DWU stories, whatever those are, don't reference it" accepting that some version of Web Theory's 'dead-ends' would have to be part of a formalisation of what we mean by 'intent not to be set in the DWU'? Interesting, I find this. | |||
::::Nah, on a first draft I didn't include that. I put it in specifically to better appeal to you, to make the hypothetical more extreme. | |||
:::::It's not clear how your personal feelings on such a matter relate to what's ''best for the Wiki''. The author's intent does not seem like it affects whether it's better Wiki-work to cover it as valid or not. | |||
::::I mean, sure. But it's just question begging, in the real sense of the term, to suggest that it's better wiki-work to cover it as valid. It was really the next sentence that mattered there, that if invalidity was ''ever'' going to exist, it was these works that would have to be invalidated. Do we want to invalidate things? We can discuss this. But I just don't see an argument here that gets around this issue, that if invalidity is to exist, these are the most natural objects to be invalid. | |||
:::::And all this is before we get into all the well-trodden secondary issues about how it's monstrously difficult to find any uncontroversial instance of an author making a mythical Rule 4 statement, because actual DWU authors do not use the word "universe" the way we do and we ourselves don't all agree on what ''we'' mean by "the DWU". | |||
::::You'll find no argument from me that this is difficult. But I don't believe that such a thing is impossible. Indeed, I'm fairly confident that at the time of release ''Curse'' met these criteria. Whether or not we can trust the statements Moffat made, given the motives I referenced above, and how he's changed his tune since then, you know, w/e. But his comments ''at time of release'' seem to be sufficient to me. So it ''can be done''. It's just rare. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 20:19, 1 January 2024 (UTC) |