Forum:Undated and unchronicled events

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Is there a specific reason for using bullet points for undated event sections on individual and species pages? The only example which didn't use this I could find was Sea Devil. It seems like it really messes up uses of images. After all, "undated" isn't a synonym for unchronicled, offscreen adventures even if a few of those mentioned sections refer to "undated/unchronicled". It could easily refer to a comic story that isn't easy to place. -- Tybort (talk page) 11:34, July 7, 2012 (UTC)

What's your proposed alternative format?Boblipton ^{talk to me} 12:13, July 7, 2012 (UTC)

To not bullet it at all and make it paragraphs, especially for longer undated sections. A lot of DWU fiction doesn't have an obvious placement beyond "features this lineup of Doctor incarnation and companions etc.". It seems bad form to just unilaterally get rid of such a commonly used format without asking; I'm just wondering if there's a valid reason in favour of bulleting. -- Tybort (talk page) 12:46, July 7, 2012 (UTC)

The paragraph format implies that the information or events are all related. Paragraphs should consist of information on a specific topic; you shouldn't veer off on an unrelated topic in the same paragraph. For the Sea Devil page, the weapons from The Sea Devils and Warriors of the Deep are both in one paragraph. This makes sense, since weapons are related to weapons. For the undated events, the events are all in one paragraph. This doesn't make sense; it would imply that the captured Sea Devils in The Forgotten and Destiny of the Doctors are somehow related, which is somehow related their addition in the I-Spyder Book of Earth Creatures. The undated events are only tenuously connected in that they are undated. Bullet points at least imply that the events aren't closely connected. -<Azes13 ^{talk to me} 17:48, July 7, 2012 (UTC)

I'm a little confused. I'm not misusing the word paragraph am I? That means a bit of information, followed by a couple of line breaks or an ident, right? -- Tybort (talk page) 17:59, July 7, 2012 (UTC)

Indentation, yes. I think Azes is going a bit overboard. He seems to be insisting that the particulars of one set of layout choices are somehow rules of English carved in stone, which I disagree with. I find bullet formatting useful to separate subcategories. For example, in The Eternity Clock (video game) continuity section, when the list of hats to be collected piled up, I made them a bulleted subcategory. I think that's an appropriate format. I am, however, sure there are other valid formats.

Nonetheless, while Azes may be a touch dogmatic, I think that bulleted separators are a good way to indicate clearly a list of several short (less than two-line) descriptions.

How about this: without going into the particulars of whether we should always do things in a particular manner -- which I think tends to make simplistic and ham-handed choices -- how about you plunk down a section formatted as it currently is, and then follow it with it reformatted the way you prefer and we'll see if people prefer yours.

I do think that people should make editorial changes without discussing every one. However, so long as you're asking, you're stuck with my opinion, such as it is. Boblipton ^{talk to me} 20:53, July 7, 2012 (UTC)

Alright. Here's how I'd lay out the Eleventh Doctor's section. Initially I moved the adventure games out from the "undated" section to between Cold Blood and Vincent and the Doctor, but I'm having second thoughts about the placement as "certain". Also, I'm pretty sure the knitting/flying lesson bit would come right before The Impossible Astronaut, but I'd have to rewatch that to be sure. The middle bit about Kevin is a bit bizarre do. -- Tybort (talk page) 21:29, July 7, 2012 (UTC)

(Undated adventures header)

The Doctor and Amy discovered the Daleks had destroyed the human race in 1963, using the Eye of Time to alter history. Following them back to Skaro, they travelled through the Eye to before the Daleks arrived on Skaro to use it themselves. The Doctor constructed a vision disruptor to blind them and overloaded the magnetic field generator, causing the Daleks to lose the Eye and to have never used it to alter history. (GAME: City of the Daleks)

The Doctor and Amy arrived in GSO Arctic Drilling Station, where a nano-virus spread by Cybermats had turned the crew into Cyberslaves to recover Cybermen trapped beneath the ice millennia before. The Cyberslave Elizabeth Meadows threatened Amy with conversion, forcing the Doctor to awaken the Cybermen in their ship; they promptly killed the Cyberslaves. After rescuing Amy, he used the same control panel to turn the Cybermen's nano-virus against them, shutting them down and blowing up their ship. (GAME: Blood of the Cybermen)

The Doctor and Amy visited Smyslov 3 for the first time and learnt their future selves had just visited and caused a lot of damage. Tanik threatened to imprison them for their actions, but the TARDIS had already taken off before he could disable the ship. (PROSE: Wish You Were Here)

While trying to rescue the Doctor from being trapped in a space-time riptide, Amy accidentally released the Entity from its container in the TARDIS. The Entity created a lesion in time to send Amy a thousand years into the future and began feeding on her timeline. The Doctor built a tachyon feedback loop which he sent to Amy to bring her and the Entity back to the Doctor. He captured the Entity and sent it into the riptide, where it could freely gorge on the four-dimensional Chronomites without harming them. (GAME: TARDIS)

The Doctor continued to their intended vacation spot, Poseidon 8. He found it under attack by a Zaralok, occupied by the Vashta Nerada and its people under a "sickness". He returned power to the undersea farming facility, treated the vortron radiation poisoning of its crew and used a triangulation device to trace the appearance of the Zaralok and the Vashta Nerada to a World War II era warship, the USS Eldridge. This had brought through a dimensional vortex caused by a malfunctioning cloaking device. The Doctor and Amy deactivated the device, returning the Zaralok and Vashta Nerada to their proper timelines. (GAME: Shadows of the Vashta Nerada)

The Eleventh Doctor attended the funeral of Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart. (PROSE: The Gift)

For his first date with River, the Doctor planned to take her to Calderon Beta to see the starriest night in all of history. However, he had to deal with future versions of her that appeared in the TARDIS and send them away before they met each other. He also met his his future self when getting rid of the third River, learning it was their last date from his future self's perspective. (TV: First Night/Last Night)

Getting a new haircut and one of his suits, the Doctor took River Song to Darillium to see the Singing Towers. Along the way, he met an earlier version of the himself after River went into the wrong TARDIS. (TV: Last Night) At the Singing Towers, the Doctor wept as he said goodbye, as he knew that River's death was coming soon for her. He gave her an upgraded version of his sonic screwdriver as a farewell present, knowing it would be needed to help save everyone. (TV: Forest of the Dead)

The Doctor visited the Gamma Forests and met Lorna Bucket as a child. (TV: A Good Man Goes to War)

The Doctor attended a party at Frank Sinatra's hunting lodge with his two friends Geoff and Albert. They took a picture together; the Doctor used it to prove to a boy that Geoff existed. (TV: A Christmas Carol)

The Doctor was at a party with River and got caught up in trying to turn a goldfish back into a queen. Amy tried to talk to him, but he ignored her and found he had the wrong fish. (TV: Bad Night)

Finally listening to Amy complain about how she could remember two different timelines, the Doctor took her to 1994 to replace an ice cream she lost as a kid; they attend the fair then. (TV: Good Night)

The Doctor bought a street in New York in Amy's name to get the best burgers in all of history for free. He even suggested a new burger, which he called "The Doctor Burger".(PROSE: The Forgotten Army)

The Doctor discovered a decapitated king was not the robot duplicate of himself and reattached his head, somehow keeping him alive. (TV: The Doctor's Wife)

The Doctor prevented an infant Drexxon from freeing two adult versions from imprisonment, which would cause untold destruction. He defeated them by leading an orchestra in playing a Venusian lullaby, something he hadn't done since his third incarnation, and resealing them. (PROSE: Death Riders)

The Doctor saved Parallife from the System Wipe virus. (PROSE: System Wipe)

The Doctor prevented six Weeping Angels from tricking a man into saving his wife from a car accident in the past, preventing a temporal paradox they could feed on. (PROSE: Touched by an Angel)

The Doctor allowed a sentient robotic T-Rex calling itself Kevin to join him, Amy and Rory during their travels after it helped stop the Sontarans. The Doctor was asked by Kevin to help him find a better purpose in life other than being a mechanical T-Rex attraction at the museum. (COMIC: When Worlds Collide)

Constructing a battlesuit to help Kevin fight, the Doctor left him behind to be the new chief of security on a space station in the future, fullfilling his promise to help Kevin find a better life. (COMIC: Space Squid)

It doesn't disturb me much either way but I mildly prefer it with the bullets. Not enough to go back in and change it back probably. At the moment I'll abstain. I wouldn't even bother to abstain abstain except that you did this at my behest. Thanks for that.

I have the feeling that the bullet point format arose to make it easier to find individual incidents and cut and paste them into the appropriate spots when discovered. Boblipton ^{talk to me} 22:43, July 7, 2012 (UTC)

But do we need it at all?

Having a section called "undated and unchronicled events" implies that the page is somehow a timeline, and we can't figure out where to put these events. But it's not a timeline. It's just a broad overview of the character. It doesn't have to mention every single little thing about the character.

I say we get rid of the sections entirely. Since these sections typically appear only on the Doctor's incarnations pages, I say leave these little details to Forum:Timey-wimey detector, or work them in to other sections of the article.

It's just not the job of Eleventh Doctor to be a complete chronicle of every waking moment of that character.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍   19:18: Tue 28 Aug 2012

I'm not so sure. I can understand that rationale for removing offhand references to the decapitated robot king or Woman Wept, but not full novels and comic stories that aren't directly tied to the TV series' chronology. That seems excessive. As long as it's an overview of each story and noteworthy alluded-to points of their history, rather than minutiae of every page or every minute, then I think it's okay.

I normally think of the biography section on a character page (the only section I really edit on such a page) as the equivalent of a planet or species page's history section. So yes, I would think of it as a timeline. -- Tybort (talk page) 21:37, August 28, 2012 (UTC)