Forum:Leela Audio Story category

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Since there are currently widely used categories such as "Romana audio stories" and "Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart audio stories", would it not be appropriate to add a "Leela audio stories" category, as she appears in many in both the main range and and Gallifrey? As an important character, she probably needs something like this. --Graske of the mandragora ☎ 16:03, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

I quite agree. We need to be able to present this sort of information for any recurring character. It's just a matter of figuring out the smartest way to do it.

Yes, we could create the category for any recurring character: Nyssa audio stories, Tegan audio stories, Oliver Harper audio stories, Charlotte Pollard audio stories, Sara Kingdom audio stories, Steven Taylor audio stories, Vicki Pallister audio stories, Jo Grant audio stories, Ace audio stories and the like.

Once we did that, we'd logically need categorisation up and down the line. Not just audio stories, but comic stories, short stories, novels, etc. Wherever we currently have "Category:Incarnation of the Doctor (media) stories", we really should have matching categories for all companions.

However, there's the countervailing argument that this is something that makes more sense to do with SMW. We could simply change the infobox template so that it allowed us to create a relational database. Then we could run queries asking for those audio stories in which Leela was a companion. Or those stories that had Leela and Romana. Or those stories where Leela was either featured or a companion.

So please don't rush off and start putting categories everywhere. It's on my "to do" list, and as soon as I can clear up some points with Wikia Staff about the future of SMW on Wikia, I'll have a better idea of how to proceed.

Please don't waste your time with it.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  20:34: Wed 26 Sep 2012

Just to back up CzechOut's comments. My general (and quite vague) rule with regard to these things is; if there's a potentially tedious process that needs to be done there's often an easier way to go about it and CzechOut is the bloke to ask.

The exception to this rule is for things that only a human (rather than a bot/process) can identify, that's stuff like; where part of the image needs identifying (like image categories such as Category:TARDIS exterior images) or articles that need rewriting, editing or altering, the bulk of which can be found within the Category:Maintenance. --Tangerineduel / talk 14:01, September 27, 2012 (UTC)

I quite agree. It would be a labourious task, and it's reasurring to know that CzechOut has a far, far better plan. --Graske of the mandragora ☎ 14:38, September 27, 2012 (UTC)

I've just gotten a clearer picture of where Wikia are heading with SMW support and I'll be ramping up my SMW solutions within the next month. I can't, or rather won't, give an ETA because, well, I'm busy — and so is the bot. The bot can only do about 9K edits/day, flat out, and it takes me time before committing the run to actually write the bot. Believe me, though, auto-updating appearance lists is high on my list of site improvements.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  01:01: Fri 28 Sep 2012

I think that there should be a "Leela audio stories" category as I feel that she constitutes a special case since not only has she appeared in more audio stories than almost any other television companion but she done so in six different ranges (the main range, the Companion Chronicles, Gallifrey, Jago & Litefoot, the Fourth Doctor Adventures and the Lost Stories), more than any character besides the Doctor himself. Plus she's a main character in three of them. Not all companions deserve such a category but I really think she does, much like Romana and Bernice Summerfield. --GusF ☎ 21:02, November 16, 2012 (UTC)

We can't and won't have policy based on subjective measures like whether someone "deserves" something. The question here is how to leverage information the best way. Categories are simply inefficient to the task of tracking which characters are in which stories. The existence of Doctor and alien categories predates the existence of T:SMW on this wiki, so these categories will remain. But there's absolutely no sense to adding new categories like this.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  22:15: Fri 16 Nov 2012