Forum:Temporary forums/Dab terms for unproduced stories

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Proposal

The core part of this proposal is very straightforward: adding "unproduced" to the dab term of pages in Category:Unproduced stories, such as moving Lungbarrow (TV story) to Lungbarrow (unproduced TV story). We already do this when a title is shared with a produced story, like The Talons of Weng-Chiang (unproduced TV story); expanding it more broadly will be a simple quality-of-life improvement by making it clear in search results which stories were released and which ones aren't.

While (unproduced TV story) is the primary topic of this thread, I'm also going to mention WaltK's proposal that we differentiate between unproduced and unreleased stories. Indeed, it's long been discussed at Talk:List of unproduced stories that the umbrella term "unproduced" is overly broad and maybe even inaccurate in some cases. In our coverage of stories like Absent Friends which were recorded and edited but not released, we already use cast lists and other elements that place these stories in a different mold than unproduced pitches or scripts like Fifty-Fifty. It might make sense to dab and classify them differently, as well.

"Unreleased" may be the best word for stories like Absent Friends, although there are also other options. Since this is the secondary topic, I'd like us to move forward with (unproduced TV story) regardless of whether this thread reaches a consensus on "unreleased" within its time window, but hopefully we can come to a conclusion on both fronts at once :) – n8 (☎) 16:48, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

Yeah, this makes sense to me. It makes it more clear to readers about what the page is about. I'm also in favor of differentiating unproduced and unreleased works, because again, it makes things more clear at a glance. Time God Eon ☎ 20:24, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Fully support making it a policy-requirement to use "unproduced" in unproduced stories. It is very confusing to come across pages without that dab, to me at least, and a am willing to bet other people. Also agree on the latter point. Cousin Ettolrhc ☎ 20:26, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

I seem to recall a discussion about this exact proposal a few years back in some talk pages, but I went through my post history and can't find it. I'm either looking in the wrong namespace or it was scrubbed. Oh well. Support, though I also think we should expand our coverage of unproduced stories, as discussed at the talk page, since it's incredibly TV-centric. Najawin ☎ 20:27, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Great topic N8, been long eyeing this one in T:TF.

Personally, I like the idea of having a big category called something like Unreleased stories. From there, we could have three main things: lists of future releases (see: List of future Big Finish releases), the few stories which were canceled but still produced (Absent Friends, Journey into Time, a few short stories I believe) and finally a sub-category for Unproduced stories (which are, also, unreleased stories!).

The only hiccup I currently see is I've never liked the term "unproduced" for stories which started production then got canceled right before. (Deadline to Doomsday) But, it could be argued most readers understand that "unproduced" means production did not finish, so I think it's still likely the best phrase.

This conversation also brings us into the topic of lost media, which we also need to discuss at some point as it applies to some of these stories. If we can fit that in seems debatable tho. OS25🤙☎️ 20:29, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

I support dabbing both unproduced and unreleased stories. If there is a concern over too many different dabs (which I would not share, in this case), then I would suggest we use "unreleased" rather than "unproduced," as that is the more inclusive category. Schreibenheimer ☎ 21:07, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

I fully support the proposal to dab all unproduced stories, to differentiate between unproduced and unreleased stories, and also dabbing unreleased stories. Pluto2☎ 21:22, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

I fully put my support behind this, but i would like to see the original reasoning for not including this for personal reasons (my opinion is unlikely to change)Anastasia Cousins ☎ 21:30, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

I've been around long enough that I can answer this. User:CzechOut implemented DABing unproduced and produced stories the same waaaay back in 2012, around April or earlier. This was right after it was decided that all stories had to be DABBED at creation. The logic was that the shorter the dab, the better, for simplicity's sake. You can check the edit history of The Hollows of Time (TV story) for an example of this.

Today the thought among many editors seems to be that a slightly longer DAB is actually preferred if it makes navigation easier, although I'm sure some older editors wouldn't agree. OS25🤙☎️ 23:09, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree with this. Complete support. Danniesen ☎ 02:46, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

I'll jump in with a reminder that per the spoiler policy thread, we can now have pages about individual upcoming works, so the "upcoming" section of the proposed "Unreleased" category as proposed by User:OttselSpy25 could contain more than just lists! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 14:12, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree with the majority on this one! Fractal Doctor ☎ 19:17, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

I am not sure that I can agree with the proposal's intention of using just "unproduced" or "unreleased" as dabs in this sense at this stage, as part of an issue I have with terminology. It is difficult to perhaps illustrate this... but this would, in my opinion, cause a bit of further complication to the issue we already have with Category:Unproduced Doctor Who TV stories.

The Dark Dimension, for instance, cannot be called Unproduced. It had a production office, script, recces and contracted cast. But inversely, we cannot really call it Unreleased either. That would suggest a level of completeness that one would assign to Journey into Time or Absent Friends.

Further complication exists for The Slide (arguably, this did get produced in full both as a non-DWU and a DWU story), Sealed Orders (we know this hit some stage of production, just from the infamous photograph of JNT at his project board for Season 18 in the production office), the minefield of the original Season 23 (twice over - as the writers were recontracted post-hiatus for 25 minute versions of their scripts...), the original Mind of the Hodiac (as a unsolicited send-in, wouldn't this strictly be a pitch rather than anything else?)

In essence, what I'm trying to say is that - I have doubts that now is the right time to be finding a specialised dab for all those stories when we have to yet to fix distinct lines on how things should be handled. (for instance, I remain of the mind that things like Mind of the Hodiac that didn't get a formal script commission should be referred to as pitched or proposed.) I would much prefer that we sort out the matter of how many distinctive terms we are going to need to be accurate before we approach how we would best dab this. JDPManjoume ☎ 14:32, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

I simply disagree that the secondary conversation about terminology is a blocker for the main part of the proposal. Even if that part of the thread is left unresolved to continue in a later thread, in the meantime there'd be nothing incorrect about continuing current practice and precedent by using "unproduced" for The Dark Dimension, Absent Friends, and Valentine's Day alike. As Wiktionary defines, "produce" means "to make (a thing) available; to present to an audience or to the public." A synonym listed by Google Dictionary is "provide". Nor is this definition strictly colloquial: in all industries I've been able to check – including in media! – the final stage of production is always understood as release, whether that's phrased as "distribution", "dispatching", or "launch". "Unproduced" does not mean a story did not begin the first stages of production, as you seem to suggest; rather, "unproduced" means that it did not complete them: in other words, "not produced". Absent Friends, however far it made it through the process, was not ultimately produced for our enjoyment. Therefore it is an unproduced audio story.

If this use of the word strikes some as strange, that's something we can continue to discuss in this thread. However, should we fail to reach a conclusion on terminology, that's not a reason to not implement the clear consensus on disambiguating our dab terms.

All that said, I hope we can come to a conclusion in this thread regarding terminology. You seem to be suggesting four terms, "proposed", "unproduced", "unreleased", and something else for The Dark Dimension. I worry that this may be too much proliferation – having to remember precisely which stage each story ended in is rather more demanding on editors than just "did it come out or not?" – but in principle there's nothing wrong with extra precision. What would you suggest we use for The Dark Dimension, if you think the other words are inappropriate? – n8 (☎) 16:27, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Radical though it may be to abandon "unproduced" altogether, I wonder if we might not start using "uncompleted" stories for stories that stopped at any stage of production short of a completed final product ready for release, and "unreleased" for the Absent Friendss of the world. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 17:40, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

That's not a bad idea and may be the most technically accurate approach, but my personal feeling is that "unproduced" will more easily convey to people the status of most such stories. "Uncompleted" doesn't technically imply that production was started on a story, but I could certainly see how someone could take that implication if we used that as the dab term, as the average person doesn't refer to something as uncompleted if it never actually started. Schreibenheimer ☎ 18:07, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

I would argue that if scripting/drafting started then a given story was in fact "started" — tautologically, there'd be nothing to talk about if nothing had been done. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 18:10, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm with Nate here on what "produced" means, or close enough. You'd hardly say that a factory that's halted as the first item has gone halfway through it has produced anything. (Technically, you could, but it's not what people mean colloquially. It's unclear why inventing terminology is helpful in this instance rather than harmful. What does it give us?)

With that said, I do think we should discuss clarifying our policies on unproduced stories, as I said above. Najawin ☎ 19:25, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

Okay, I've had a think about this. I would be more amenable to Scrooge's suggestion of 'uncompleted' and 'unreleased'. (It would definitely be the case that 'uncompleted' is the best-fit term for the edge case situation of The Dark Dimension.) And then - yes, I would additionally hope for a 'proposed' or 'pitched'.

I just don't feel that it would be otherwise correct to conflate unsolicited spec. pitches like the TV Doctor Who and the Star Beast or Mind of the Hodiac for things that got formal commissions. Between those three terms: we can keep a relatively minimal number of categories with losing immediate & important distinctions... and ultimately, we can reformat the current List of Unproduced Stories into a list that makes clear distinctions on what got how far in terms of specifically those 'Uncompleted' stories. JDPManjoume ☎ 17:06, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

I can understand why that perspective makes sense if we focus only on TV. But does it make sense in the context of every other medium? How many "unproduced" and "uncompleted" novels are there, using this distinction? Not many. I can think of Campaign (novel), Nimon of Athens (novel) and Mentor (novel) qualifying under some metrics, some being uncompleted, some unproduced. Pretty much every other "lost novel" we cover is a pitch. If the proposed dab terms slices things into sets too small to make categories, (Category:Uncompleted Novels), the distinction is probably not worth making. Najawin ☎ 20:14, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

What about Equilibrium (novel)? I'm not sure how far along the novel actually got while Forward was shopping it around to Virgin and then BBC Books, but it was certainly completed at some point since Forward released it online. Perhaps there's discussion of that novel in some DWM issue, but I don't have the desire to search through a bunch of back issues to look. Pluto2☎ 20:21, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

That's not particularly indicative of anything. Smoking Mirror (novel) is in a similar situation. Some of this discussion already occurred at Talk:List of unproduced stories. The relevant paragraph is from Scrooge:

The distinction is also only really applicable for TV — cases of a book or audio being greenlit only to be cancelled partway through "production" are so vanishingly rare that I can think of only one “Unproduced” novel fitting that description. Nearly all the interesting non-TV "stories that almost were, had influence on later productions, but were never completed themselves" never made it past the pitch, because "production"-wise, much more of the work on a novel is done before the author officially brings a pitch to the publisher.

I think Mentor might count, given the comments made about it, and we know that Tardis Team Diaries 3 and 4 were planned, if not commissioned/written. So we have somewhere between 1 and 5 stories that count under this metric, them being officially green-lit and then failing to materialize, for one reason for another, at least that I can find. (Maybe you also count the Paul Cornell novel where 7 regenerates, since it was discussed with the Peter Darvill-Evans? I wouldn't.) Najawin ☎ 20:45, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

So I've re-read through this discussion and, while maybe things could change in the last 24 hours, thus far there seem to be three conclusions:

1. Broad support for including "unproduced" in the dab terms of unproduced story pages.
2. Broad support for using "unreleased" as a dab term for the rare few stories which were fully finished but not released, such as Absent Friends and Campaign.
3. No consensus on any more complicated level of differentiation between unproduced stories.

It's the eleventh hour but I'd like to add one further corollary for admin consideration in the closing statement: since "unproduced" will now be present in the title of each unproduced story page, surely we still won't need {{unprod}} to be so damn big? It's recently been pointed out to me that, since most casual users have no reason to be familiar with our template image practices, it's unnecessarily confusing to users to see the Scratchman logo above, for instance, Faction Paradox. A smaller template the size of {{wikipediainfo}} or {{stub}} will surely suffice going forward. – n8 (☎) 17:08, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Today is the final day for this proposal, so if anyone has anything more to add, now would be the time to say it. Danniesen ☎ 11:25, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Conclusion

As Nate summarised, there is broad support for including "unproduced" in the dab term for unproduced stories. Therefore, "unproduced" will now be used by default in the dab term of anything currently covered as unproduced - that is, anything currently in category:Unproduced content.

Moreover, there is also relatively broad support to use "unreleased" in some form or other for stories which don't pass Rule 3 of T:VS, but for which the descriptor of unproduced would be inaccurate by some understandings of the word "produced". As there was no consensus on how to best define rules for this, I think that it would be best to make this a case by case decision to be discussed on the talk page of relevant content. Therefore, and this is something that could potentially have clearer rules discussed and formalised in a future thread, stories and over media may, on a case by case basis, be classed as unreleased in order to aid with accuracy and clarity. When this is done, "unreleased" should be used in the dab term.

Additionally, I do feel that a rework of categories will be needed here and so I will be creating a new category, category:Unreleased content, to directly house the stories and other media that are classed as unreleased. This category will also contain, as a subcategory, the currently existing category:Unproduced content. It will also contain a new subcategory, category:Future releases, which will house List of future releases, List of future Big Finish releases and pages on any individual future releases. While this was not proposed initially and received very little discussion, it is a logical thing to do and comes naturally with these other changes. I will create these categories and place pages into them over the next few days when I have time but, if anyone wants to help me out, feel free.

Finally, Nate's proposal near the end to shrink {{unprod}} seems reasonable. I do not have the required skills to make the graphic required for this but, if someone does and wants to, it needs to be 130 x 25 pixels and follow the format of File:StubTab.png, File:InvalidSource.png and other similar images. If anyone does make this graphic, please upload it to the wiki, alert me on my talk page and I'll do the rest. Bongo50 ☎ 21:00, 17 March 2023 (UTC)