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Introduction

A few weeks ago, we finished our discussion of subpage policy. In that thread I suggested a wide array of potential subpage types, but the only ones which were ultimately approved were [[/Appearances]] and [[/Covers]]. These have both seen broad acceptance across the wiki: all lists of appearances have been moved to their new homes (hello Ninth Doctor/Appearances!), as have all cover pages (eg Faction Paradox (series)/Covers).

However, in the weeks since then, some of our threads have gone back and approved other subpage types from my original proposal! Our big Spoiler Policy thread allowed [[/Spoiler]] subpages (David Tennant/Spoilers!), and our Image Policy thread allowed [[/Gallery]] pages. This demonstrates that it would be good to revisit the rest of the proposals from the original thread, separate from the larger question of whether a T:SUBPAGE would be a good idea.

Since this thread addresses all of the original proposed subpage types, I'm adopting an unorthodox format with separate discussion sections for each part of the proposal. Don't be afraid of hitting "edit", though: you'll see that I used transclusions to make it easier to add comments without having to navigate between big blocks of text. And if you want to leave a comment about all of the proposal parts at once, you can do so in the "General discussion" section at the bottom! – n8 (☎) 21:32, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Proposal: `/Plot`

Forum:Temporary forums/Subpages 2.0/Plot

Discussion: `/Plot`

Please put comments regarding the [[/Plot]] proposal here.

I'm not really a fan of putting them on subpages, perhaps partly out of pride because I've written about 450 of them. We could put short summaries from memory on the pages, sure, but to be replaced by fuller ones at a later date. Jack "BtR" Saxon ☎ 21:35, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

You know, this is one that I don't feel either way about. I think moving exceptionally long descriptions might be a good idea, but I do think an issue we're going to keep running into with this forum is that once you move a section to a sub-page, people are going to treat it as secondary content, so some editors won't like that. OS25 🤙☎️ 21:46, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I support this. Not really got any more to add. Danniesen ☎ 22:17, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I also support this proposal. Fractal Doctor ☎ 23:02, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm not thrilled with this one. It seems like a mistake to me to have two different levels of plot summaries, as it becomes an excuse to not have one or the other. I could see moving the plot summaries to a subpage and leaving the section blank, with just a link to the subpage. That would greatly shorten the page. With that said, since this is a large change to how our pages are set up I would encourage us to try to get feedback from non-editors and less enfranchised fans. But that's just me. Najawin ☎ 23:34, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

This is my personal favourite proposal of this bunch. One of the main things I read the wiki for is to refresh my memory on what happened in the previous part of a serialised story or the previous installment of a continuous series if it has been a while since I experienced it. For this purpose (recapping a story you've already experienced), the summaries on this wiki are generally too long to be properly helpful. The length of summary we have is extremely important to have and should absolutely be kept around as they are very valuable resources for people who wish to check more minor plot beats or who want to experience a story that they don't otherwise have access to/the desire to experience fully. They are essential for creating and maintaing a full archive of Doctor Who and its related media. However, shorter summaries also have a lot of merrit for people who just need a rough refresher on the general plot beats and this, to me, seems like the most ideal way to integrate both of length. Bongo50 ☎ 18:16, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I wasn't a fan of hiding the plot in a subpage in the last discussion, and haven't changed. I don't support this proposal.

I sympathise with the issue of our lack of plot descriptions. Hiding them away on a subpage will I think just compound the problem to an 'out of sight out of mind' situation. It might make the main pages look more finished, but it's going to harm explorability of the wiki for people, it'll add an extra link to click for people to explore the in-universe elements.

I agree with OS25, I do think people will treat it as secondary content. --Tangerineduel / talk 13:21, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't really get the impression that it's hiding away plot descriptions. Its simply presenting a shorter, more summarised, summary by default with a longer one (the type we currently have) available on a subpage. I really do feel that having different lengths of summary for different purposes is increadibly useful and this feels like the way to achieve it. Bongo50 ☎ 16:27, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

I oppose this proposal. I would rather there just be one detailed summary and have done with it. Schreibenheimer ☎ 19:48, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

The thing I really disagree with here is the implication that when we move these long plot descriptions, we'll put a short one in its place. That really doesn't feel fair to the editors who make the long one. OS25 🤙☎️ 02:41, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

It would be unfair if we were removing their work from the wiki entirely. But we're not. Maybe the writers of some very-detailed story summaries like Najawin and Epsilon could share how unfair they think it is? – n8 (☎) 13:39, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

The thing is that both the short and long summaries have the potential to be increadibly useful in different scenarios. As Nate says, the full summaries would still be there for those who want them while those who'd rather a shorter summary are also satiated. Bongo50 ☎ 18:07, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

I support this proposal; having seen @n8's edits to Silver-Tongued Liars accompanied by his intuitive proposal effectively demonstrates the practicality of /Plot subpages. Detail plot summaries are great, but at a certain point they end up being longer in word count than actual short stories we cover and cease to be a short summary, so having a quick "overview" type one and a super detailed one makes a lot of sense to me, and I would write both types of summaries.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

18:32, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

So as the person whose plot description was used for the example of "extreme levels of detail", I don't think this is unfair per se, but it is something that removes motivation. My motivations for writing plot descriptions are fourfold: help explain/process the book for those that have bought it, serve as a reference guide for people who need to reference things in the book but don't have it on hand for whatever reason, allow people to be aware of the bare minimum of the plot structure of the book if their financial situation doesn't allow them to have a copy, and to serve as an advertisement of a book for those that can buy the book. It's a balancing act, especially the last two, where you want to find a way to help both those less well off while also encouraging people to not view it as a replacement for the book and be interested enough to buy the book.

Perhaps the final one, the encouragement to buy the book, will increase if we implement this idea. But I think all the other issues will suffer.

Look, let's just be honest with ourselves. We can't trust Fandom's best practice's guide. Fandom has different motivations than us. They want every user to use Fandom as much as possible, click on Fandom links, and then feel like they got a complete, reasonable, happy experience, whether or not they did, so that they'll click on more Fandom links in the possible and associate it with this happy feeling in our monkey brain. A wiki for X wants more people to learn about X. But creating subpages shunts off information into pages that people are less likely to click on (especially if there's a minor substitute on the main page so they already feel somewhat satisfied), so it runs directly counter to their motivation.

Maybe this is me making a mountain out of a molehill, idk, but I know people have used my summaries to help them understand books they wouldn't have otherwise gotten. And I feel like making them harder to access, even a little bit, making it less clear that they're there, means that some people will come away without that understanding. It means some people will come away without having that reference guide, without knowing the basics of the plot they wouldn't otherwise know about. It's not unfair, but part of why I do this is so people have easy access to these summaries. Making it harder to access, even a little, drains that much more motivation. (Okay, okay, I'll get back to Newtons Sleep any day now.) Najawin ☎ 20:26, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

That makes sense, but I do really feel that, even ignoring Fandom's advice, shorter summaries have a lot of merrit. Maybe this is just me (and perhaps getting some more input from the wider Doctor Who community could be helpful?), but I frequently find myself wanting shorter, more easily digestible summaries just so I can get the gist of the structure of a story or remind myself of the broad plot beats which can be hard to easily do with the excellent in-depth length currently often provided. I think both length of summary have a lot of potential use cases and merrit. Bongo50 ☎ 22:34, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Well, let me float a question. Because I'm not entirely against this proposal, I think it's better than the /Biographies one, but I'm rather skeptical. People are referencing Silver-Tongued Liars (short story), yes? But this is a short story, which is a medium that tends not to come with a publisher's summary, whereas novels do. Instead of subpages, why isn't the simpler proposal that we try to give every story a "publisher's summary", whether the publisher actually gave it one or not? (If the publisher didn't do so, obviously the section says "summary", not "publisher's summary".) Throwing things into subpages or creating a new level of summary in between the publisher's summary and the detailed summaries I do for novels just seems like unnecessarily complicating the issue. No offense Nate.

I mean, sure, the publisher's summary for Against Nature (novel) is not particularly helpful, and these often serve more as teasers than as descriptions of plot structure. But I think it's going to be hard to find a balance in-between the publisher's summary and the "long" summaries as is. I also think these "short" summaries might leave people more confused than satisfied - I've cut certain characters and plotlines out of my summaries as much as I can, and had to put things back in in order to not compromise the plot. At a certain point, trimming for the sake of trimming leads to confusion. I can only imagine what a short summary of Against Nature would look like, the separate plots are so interconnected. Again, if my dislike is, say, a >=90% or so for the biography thing, this is like a 60% or a 55%. I'm not thrilled, I'm skeptical, but there's something here that we can work with. Najawin ☎ 23:09, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

The thing with (publisher's) summaries is that I think they server yet another purpose:

(Publisher's) summaries provide a mostly spoiler-free way to decide if you're interested in a given story without giving away much of the plot.
Shorter plot summaries allow people to get the gist of a story without going into all of the details. It allows people to get a quick refresher on a story they've already experienced.
Longer plot summaries that we already have allow you to effectively experience a story without experiencing it, providing details on all plotlines, all characters and all little moments.

In my mind, these 3 concepts are all different but each one has their separate uses. Ideally, I'd like to see them all in some form or other. Bongo50 ☎ 23:50, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

So I feel like the description you've given of "short" summaries is two different things. "[A]llow[ing] people to get the gist of a story without going into all of the details" is what a long summary already does. And, ideally, "[A]llow[ing] people to get a quick refresher on a story they've already experienced" would be accomplished by the publisher summary - it would prompt you of the rough outline of the plot enough that you could fill in a vague skeleton. Maybe I'm weird in this, but I'm pretty sure I can do this for most books I've read. I think there's an inherent tension in these "short" summaries that will make them difficult to write for novel length stories. Again, I'm just trying to imagine how you'd write up Against Nature as a short summary. There are... issues. Najawin ☎ 01:55, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree to some extent, but I still feel that a middle-length summary has merit. Perhaps it would help if I described a few of my use-cases for a summary of this length:

I'm about to start watching episode 3 of a Classic Who serial but it's been a week since I've watched episodes 1 and 2 and I can't remember what events led to the cliffhanger. Ideally, I'd be able to spend a minute reading a paragraph or 2 that summarises the main events of episode 2. The summary section is too brief to be useful here while the plot section can be too detailed, going into all of the subplots which aren't relevant to the setup for episode 3.
I'm about to start listening to Scherzo but it's been a while since I've listened to Zagreus and I can't remember how that story ends. The publisher's summary is no help here and the plot section is too detailed for what I need.

In both of these scenarios, and maybe it's just me, I feel that it'd be helpful to have a summary about a paragph or 2 in length which just goes over the highest level breakdown of events. In terms of it being difficult to write, I think it would make sense if these shorter plot summaries were optional and, if it is the case where it would be impossible to write, can just be left out. Bongo50 ☎ 10:04, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

You do realize Zagreus is the worst possible example you could give for this, yes? Our tv coverage is already fairly sparse, isn't it? Najawin ☎ 19:50, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I'd say our TV coverage is anything but sparse. Heaven Sent (TV story)#Plot is over 3500 words, and for Classic, it can get much longer: The War Games (TV story)#Plot is over three times as long! – n8 (☎) 17:30, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Why is it the worst possible example that I could have given? Bongo50 ☎ 23:31, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I think it's quite possibly harder to do a short summary of Zagreus than it is Against Nature. Najawin ☎ 23:45, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Maybe. I'm starting to begrudgingly accept that this subpage idea and shortened summaries may not be practical. I'd still ideally like them, but I accept that it's probably not possible. Bongo50 ☎ 23:55, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

(For what it's worth "Please explain Zagreus to me" is a Quickstart guide I'm definitely down to have if when that thread happens.) Najawin ☎ 00:01, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

I could see that being very useful. Bongo50 ☎ 00:31, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

Najawin, I just mocked up for Zagreus: "Following the explosion of an anti-time casket in the TARDIS, both the Eighth Doctor and the TARDIS are infected with Zagreus and have to fight for control of themselves. During its struggle, the TARDIS takes the Doctor and Charley through a series of separate holographic projections. Through these, Charley learns that the Divergence was trapped outside time by Rassilon, and she witnesses three times it reentered history: at the Foundry in ancient Gallifrey; during the Dionysus Project on 20th century Earth; and in Winkle's Wonderland near the end of the universe. From his Dark Tower, Rassilon ensnares President Romana and Leela in his plot to ally with the TARDIS' Zagreus personality, embodied in the form of the Brigadier, to stop the Divergents. However, with Charley's help, the Doctor defeats Rassilon and the Divergents both by giving in to Zagreus. To stop this Zagreus personality from reemerging, the Doctor leaves for exile in the Divergent Universe, and Charlie stows away on board."

Does it capture every detail? No. But is it an accurate overview and sufficient to meet the goals Bongo has described? Yes. I believe this demonstrates that these kinds of summaries are very possible, and I agree with Bongo that they're also very valuable. – n8 (☎) 15:47, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

Wow, that's great. It achieves my goals far better than I was expecting. This would have been very useful when I was starting Scherzo and the Divergent arc which was quite a bit after I finished Zagreus. It inlcudes everything I would need to know for a brief reminder. Bongo50 ☎ 17:12, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm unconvinced, but if Bongo is, perhaps it can work! As I said, this is skepticism, not an outright dismissal. Najawin ☎ 18:49, 31 March 2023 (UTC)

That is perfect, n8. I think that simple summary proves this subpage idea could well work. – The preceding unsigned comment was added by Cousin Ettolrhc (talk • contribs) .

Proposal: `/Other realities`

Forum:Temporary forums/Subpages 2.0/Other realities

Discussion: `/Other realities`

Please put comments regarding the [[/Other realities]] proposal here.

I think this is a fine suggestion. I do think there will be cases where we obviously need more than one page for the various cross-reality versions of people. For instance, I rather think that /Pete's World is a little bit better than (Pete's World). But for instances where cross-reality differences are minimal, or are too sparse to obtain a full article (see the implied multiverse of the Continuity Cap) I think /Other realities is a grand idea. OS25 🤙☎️ 21:48, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I strongly support "/Other realities", insofar as it replaces our current "#Other realities" (and "#Alternate timelines" as many pages still call it), but want to make it clear that I do not support merging pages like Twelfth Doctor (Four Doctors) into Twelfth Doctor/Other realities (although I do think it should be mentioned with a "{{main}}" thing), or at least that this warrants a separate discussion. That being said, I definitely support moving out current other realities subsection to a new subpage. Cousin Ettolrhc ☎ 22:01, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I support this. Not really got any more to add. Danniesen ☎ 22:17, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

As do I. also not much to say here. Time God Eon ☎ 22:24, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I support this. I like a degree of separation between alternate world characters and their Doctor's world counterparts; these characters lead different lives, have different families etc. In the words of the Tenth Doctor, "Rose, she's not your mother". Purely in terms of editing, what would be the best way to link to these individuals once/if the subpage is created. If I'm editing Shadow World, for example, and want to link to the Shadow World version of Moira, would I type [[Moira (The Pilot)/Other realities#Shadow World|Moira]], or is there a shorter way of doing this? 66 Seconds ☎ 22:30, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

We could just turn Moira (Shadow World) and Moira (Extremis) into redirects to Moira (The Pilot)/Other realities#Shadow World. {{anchor}} can be handy as well, since it lets us link to a specific paragraph of a page – say, Sixth Doctor/Other realities#The Quantum Archangel – without requiring us to have an actual section on the page called "The Quantum Archangel". – n8 (☎) 23:43, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I think this is, in general, a good idea. But there's some discussion to be had. I know some of the motivation for this was that Extremis had events that didn't make sense when viewed separate from the rest of S10. But there are stories and alternate universes where this isn't the case. We might want to restrict the subpage to be specifically the accounts of a character that are to be understood in a broader context with the (N-Space, whatever) version. Not sure we do, but this is an option we should discuss. Najawin ☎ 23:39, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks n8, that would make more sense. Regarding what Najawin has said above, I kind of agree. Some characters are "what-if" scenarios, e.g. Amy Pond (The Girl Who Waited) or Wilfred Mott (Donna's World) - they are physically/mentally the same individuals as their "main universe" counterparts, but have followed an alternate course of events. I see no issue with this sort of character going on a subpage belonging to their "main universe" counterpart. Some characters are physically different individuals to their "main universe" counterparts e.g. Jackie Tyler (Pete's World) or Elizabeth Shaw (Inferno Earth) - they were born in a separate universe/timeline. I remember at the end of Survivors of the Flux, there was some debate about whether the whole series would move into Universe Two, essentially wiping the continuity slate clean for future series. If this were to happen, the "main universe" would switch, and we might end up with pages for (as an example) Jackie Tyler (Universe One) and Jackie Tyler (Universe Two). On whose subpage would we place Jackie Tyler (Pete's World) and Jackie Tyler (Sea Devil Earth)? 66 Seconds ☎ 10:22, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

That's kind of hard to say without full context of such a hypothetical reboot, and would probably have a lot of effects on the wiki at a whole, but I'd think at that point an overall Jackie Tyler page might be more suitable to cover all versions of the character, though it would also depend on if she's related at all. If Universe Two Jackie Tyler shares nothing but a name, then the alternate versions are really all variants of the Universe One version and can stay with her.

Otherwise, I think this proposal is just like moving the already existent "Other realities" or whatever they're called section to its own page for neatness, as well as allowing for slightly more detail. Any version who has enough detail to be considered "a separate character" should still be mentioned there, but have their own page per T:MERGE. I also agree that variants without their own pages should have {{anchor}}s, which would allow for redirects for the purposes of linking and even categorization. (These redirects even show up in italics in categories to conveniently distinguish them.) Chubby Potato ☎ 10:35, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I like this proposal as long as alternate versions that still have enough detail to warrant their own page recieve one with a {{main}} link. Chubby's suggestion of using {{anchor}} seems like a great idea as well. Bongo50 ☎ 18:16, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

In response to Chubby Potato, you are completely correct in that such a hypothetical scenario currently has little relevance on this proposal; hence, it doesn't change my support for this. However, currently the wiki is geared towards one main universe, with secondary parallel universes. Redesigning the wiki to suit the concept of a multiverse, where all universes are equally important, is perhaps something to genuinely consider as we move forwards. 66 Seconds ☎ 00:14, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

I also support this as long as significant alternate versions still get their own pages, as others have said. Yes, we may debate over a few, but I don't think it will be a major sticking point. Schreibenheimer ☎ 19:51, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

I understand your concerns over multiversal coverage, User:66 Seconds, however I believe this proposal in and of itself takes us as close as we need to be, as of right now. The reason we can't just slap "(Universe One") behind most of our pages is that the naming of the prime DW universe is contested and, perhaps more importantly, that it is not definitive that all stories not set in an "other realty" are set in the same reality, despite it appearing that way. For example, many fans place the EDAs and 8DAs in separate continuities, but due to T:NPOV we cover them as if they are one. If we were to label their continuity, we would end up "taking sides" in the multiversal debate, and actually violating T:NPOV as this would heavily contradict Zagreus (audio story) (but not some others). Anyway, all of that aside, I do support "/other realities" with respect to T:MERGE. Cousin Ettolrhc ☎ 06:27, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

To me, this is a very straightforward subpage idea and works as a logical extension of current policy. I support their creation. Regarding a potential reboot supported by an in-text explanation, e.g. Universe One and Two... I feel it'd be best to cross that bridge when we come to it.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

18:37, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Proposal: `/Non-valid sources`

Forum:Temporary forums/Subpages 2.0/Non-valid sources

Discussion: `/Non-valid sources`

Please put comments regarding the [[/Non-valid sources]] proposal here.

This is probably the submission I support the most. Obviously this has been an issue for us for a very long time. The coverage of invalid stories in their own pages has historically been far more important than we give credit for. Especially for stories like Scream of the Shalka, Death Comes to Time, and Big Finish's Unbound; which were once invalid but now are allowed for coverage.

But, I do think some of the implementation is a little awkward, as these stories aren't really "behind the scenes". And in some cases, having separate pages for every invalid appearance of a character feels silly. Take Tom Baker (Who on Earth is Tom Baker), Tom Baker (Introduction), Tom Baker (Doctor Who?), etc.

So having Tom Baker (in-universe) and then Tom Baker (in-universe)/Non-valid sources would be a great idea. OS25 🤙☎️ 21:54, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Absolutely support this idea fully! It's been very frustrating, for a long time, that Nonvalid stuff is in the BTS section, despite being in-universe. Cousin Ettolrhc ☎ 22:04, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I support this. Not really got any more to add. Danniesen ☎ 22:20, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I absolute support this. Time God Eon ☎ 22:24, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Support, with caveats about implementation. Information from valid sources is generally tried to be welded together into a "biography", of sorts. I think it's going to be impossible to do that with invalid sources, because the invalid sources often aren't trying to "talk" to each other, even if they might or might not be trying to "talk" to the mainline DWU (some are, some aren't). So we need to be careful how we implement this. Najawin ☎ 23:43, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't really understand your concern, Najawin. If details echo each other, they will be welded in a similar way to valid pages. If they don't, those sources likely won't get mentioned, just like on valid pages. We don't need to speculate about whether or not the author intended for said reference to be there, and we especially do not need to presume that non-valid sources do not have continuity with valid sources (as seen by the fact that the proposal to add a continuity section to non-valid pages had 7 supporters, and was added quite recently if I recall correctly). Cousin Ettolrhc ☎ 06:19, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm a little confused, why would sources not get mentioned if they don't fit in with some proposed melding? But this isn't my concern. Suppose we have two separate invalid versions of a character that have no overlap in narrative. How would we arrange this? Do we try to force a biography format on it, a chronological ordering? This is what we do normally, even if we don't know what order things happen in. (The most recent discussion I recall was back before the forums went down, it was related to the discussion that preceded the Master split discussion way back then, iirc. Something to do with Missy's stories having variable ordering? idk. See Talk:Eighth Doctor/Archive 1 for an early example.) I think it would be a mistake to try to do this for invalid sources. Najawin ☎ 06:38, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Najawin, maybe it would help me understand your concern better if you could accompany it with a concrete example. Can you think of any examples of a character with two incompatible but fully licensed appearances in non-valid stories? I'm scrolling through my list but coming up empty-handed. – n8 (☎) 13:19, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Pick any of those that also appear in Doctor Who? - for instance? Or any two characters that appear in both Doctor Who? and The Daft Dimension? Maybe we can impose some sort of order to these events, but they're clearly not trying to be in communication with each other. Najawin ☎ 20:13, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I would like to first state that I support the proposal for subpages for Non-valid sources. But in response to Najawin bringing up Doctor Who? and The Daft Dimension, there is in fact a proposal for them to be reclassified as valid but set in their own parallel universes, which was always authorial intent. The comic strip is called The Daft Dimension because it's set in a universe called the Daft Dimension where things are absurd. That's the point of the strip! Pluto2 ☎ 21:39, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm aware of the proposal! I look forward to being convinced. But as it currently stands these things are invalid and meet the criteria I'm discussing. So it's still an issue until then. Najawin ☎ 21:56, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Najawin, currently most "#Non-valid sources" sections are written from an in-universe perspective but use bullet points for each source. I think that's a decent way to present the information without imposing an artificial ordering. – n8 (☎) 13:25, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Seems reasonable! I'm just skeptical of a chronological ordering in this instance. Najawin ☎ 15:27, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I support this. "Undated events" sections already exist in valid biographies so I feel that issues of ordering are very much possible to overcome. Bongo50 ☎ 18:16, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I like this proposal. SherlockTheII ☎ 11:14, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

I too support this proposal.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

18:38, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

I've had more or less this exact idea in my head for a while now, so I'm glad it's finally being suggested. This has my full support. WaltK ☎ 18:21, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Proposal: `/Physical appearance`

Forum:Temporary forums/Subpages 2.0/Appearance

Discussion: `/Physical appearance`

Please put comments regarding the [[/Physical appearance]] proposal here.

I suppose this is a fine suggestion, I'm certainly not against it. And I could see it leading to better pages. OS25 🤙☎️ 21:55, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Whilst I don't see the overwhelming need for these pages, I do find it strange we currently have the section so close to the bottom of the entire article, so this would certainly make it more accessible. Additionally, as OS25 pointed out, it may encourage better coverage of physical appearances (and yes, I agree with that title). Cousin Ettolrhc ☎ 22:07, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I support this. Not really got any more to add. Danniesen ☎ 22:17, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

What perspective is this being written from? IU or OU? I'm most interested in an OU version of this page, as there's quite a lot of interesting details about how costumes for characters developed that simply aren't detailed on the wiki. Najawin ☎ 23:44, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

It would be IU, but I agree that the OU "Behind the scenes" section on this page would be my main interest. – n8 (☎) 23:50, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I hadn't considered adding a BTS section to this subpage, but I wholeheartedly support it. Cousin Ettolrhc ☎ 06:21, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I support this primarily for the possibility of giving it its own behind the scenes section to discuss costume design and changes from a production perspective. Bongo50 ☎ 18:16, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I see the appeal of the increased level of detail that could come from making this a subpage, but I'm wary of going too hard too fast on these subpages. I oppose this for now, but I won't pretend it's a strongly felt opposition. Schreibenheimer ☎ 19:55, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

I think I support this idea, but I'm not 100% sold on it. I do really like the idea of an OOU look for the behind the scenes section, but for in-universe coverage, we already have a lot of pages like Fourth Doctor's scarf which effectively is this subpage proposal, but split into seperate pages per item of clothing. So to prevent duplicating information across two pages (e.g. the page for the scarf and the general overview page of a given Doctor's attire) we could either just add more detailed behind the scenes sections to the existing pages or have shorter descriptions of each item on a subpage with the individual articles being linked to with {{main}}. While this may reduce the level of detail the proposal seeks to have on the subpages, I feel this issue is mitigated by an extensive behind the scenes section.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

18:42, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Proposal: `/Biography`

This is the big one. This is the main reason why I proposed Tardis:Subpage policy in the first place. According to Fandom's Editor Experience team,

"While there is both clear and unclear research on the topic, an informational article should likely take about 7 minutes to read, and be somewhere between 1000 and 2500 words (not bytes). There are legitimate reasons for individual articles with 4000–5000 words of prose if they engage the reader and stay on-topic; beyond 5000 words, contributors should review a body of text for opportunities to summarize and break out potentially independent text into new articles."Articles on Fandom

Currently, we fall utterly, hilariously short of this standard. Our pages Tenth Doctor and Eleventh Doctor are both over 60,000 words long, requiring (according to WordCounter.net) over 3 hours of reading time each. A version of Fandom's "don't make pages too long" guideline was established as a local rule years ago in Thread:264489#9, and {{cleanup}} templates have been gathering dust at the top of every Doctor incarnation page ever since, but no one has actually acted on this because there's no clear path forward. I believe subpages are that path.

In cases where an article egregiously exceeds Fandom's length guidelines, we can move a lengthy Biography section to [[/Biography]] subpage and replace it on the main page with a shorter summary. On Tenth Doctor/Biography, we can go into as much detail as we like, with up to dozens of sentences dedicated to each appearance. At Tenth Doctor#Biography, we present a {{main}} link to the subpage alongside a shorter summary of the content on Tenth Doctor/Biography, just as every article's lead section already presents a short summary of its contents. Here's how all this would look on Tardis:Subpage policy:

After moving material to a new page or subpage, you have to fill the gap on the root page. The Editor Experience team explains the {{Main|/Subpage}} + Summary method in this way:

"When a basic article becomes long enough, it could have long chunks that could reasonably be split into their own independent articles. […] The base article could then replace a long section with a spoiler-free summary with the most important points, linked by a context-link hatnote above it (such as {{Main|/Subpage}})."Categories and navigation on Fandom

In other words, replace the copied text with a shorter summary of the new subpage's contents and a {{main}} link. In exactly the same way that a lead section summarises the contents of its page, this summary should give a broad-strokes overview of the subpage's contents, with a particular emphasis on the details most relevant to readers. Like a lead paragraph, a well-written summary should "lead" its readers to want to learn more by clicking through to the subpage.

Note the Editor Experience team's emphasis on a summary being "spoiler-free". While this may not be possible in some circumstances, ideally a new fan should be able to read the summary of a character's biography without having the experience of the stories being totally spoiled for them. For example, a summary of Twelfth Doctor/Biography might mention that his travels with Bill, Nardole, and Missy concluded in TV: The Doctor Falls during an encounter with an old enemy, without explicitly spelling out that enemy's identity or the specific details of Bill's fate. A well-written summary should "lead" its readers to want to learn more – including actually experiencing the stories in question!

[[/Biography]] was the proposal which received the most pushback in the previous subpage thread. There were two main concerns:

Firstly, that edit wars might break out if editors disagree on what material belongs in the main page's summary section. I don't think this concern is warranted, since we don't often see edit wars over article leads across the wiki, even on highly-viewed and important pages like Tenth Doctor.

Secondly, that judging some stories to be more or less relevant to our users violates the "neutral point of view" policy. I don't think this is an accurate reading of the policy, given that we already make this judgment in every lead section, not to mention infobox variables like "main actor" which privilege some sources over others as a matter of course. As a corollary to this part of the proposal, language should be added to T:NPOV to clarify this concern.

Thirdly, that biography summaries for main pages might be written with a bias against non-TV material. To help ameliorate this concern, I'll commit to writing the new biography summaries for the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors if this part of the proposal passes, setting a precedent for a design inclusive of non-TV material: on Tenth Doctor#Biography, there will be one section each for series 2, 3, 4, his gap year, and his regeneration, each including paragraphs surveying tie-in material set in those periods of his life; and on Eighth Doctor#Biography, there will be one section each for comics, prose, audios, and Time War stuff, as well as a paragraph briefly discussing how those chunks and continuities do or do not intersect and overlap. Whether language should be added to the text of T:SUBPAGE to make this kind of inclusion explicit is something we can discuss below.

I hope that by spelling out these concerns and implications explicitly from the start, we can address them head-on and come to some sort of resolution in the "Discussion: [[/Biography]]" section below. – n8 (☎) 21:09, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Discussion: `/Biography`

Please put comments regarding the [[/Biography]] proposal here.

This is likely to be the most contentious out of the suggestions.

First of all, let me say that splitting some biography / history sections into subpages would really be a helpful idea. For instance, having a page called Dalek/Origin would be an awesome way to move all the various Dalek origin stories into one page. Same for Cybermen/Origin.

But I do think that once we start moving all Biography sections to a sub-page, as I said above, it's going to lead to these pages being treated as secondary on the website. We'll absolutely see an immediate drop-off of contributors adding info from new stories if we move the bulk of the info on Tenth Doctor to Tenth Doctor/Biography.

I also honestly didn't know article length was an issue we were facing, but I do understand the idea of wanting to make our pages more approachable. But I do worry that when we've attempting to only describe "important stories," that has just been code for "TV stories." For instance, ages ago I added to the intro of Fourth Doctor mention of Sharon Davies. This was swiftly reverted. The Tenth Doctor's intro does not mention Heather McCrimmon, Gabby Gonzalez, or Cindy Wu (a sneaky reference to Rose-the-cat does remain, however). Since we're apparently using these intros as a template for what would remain on the main page, I think it does imply that doing this will naturally create a setting where TV stories treated as primary.

In the end, I don't think I am against the proposal, and if everyone else agrees with it just ignore me. But as it stands, I think this could massively disrupt the hierarchy of the coverage on our website. OS25 🤙☎️ 22:08, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I generally like this proposal. I also think another good example of NPOV-compliance in it is the Eleventh Doctor - coverage of Alice Obiefune should be equal to Series 5. Cousin Ettolrhc ☎ 22:11, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I support this. Not really got any more to add. Danniesen ☎ 22:17, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Similar to Danniesen, I support this. Fractal Doctor ☎ 23:03, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Let's take it from the top.

I don't think this concern is warranted, since we don't often see edit wars over article leads across the wiki

I made two separate responses to this claim in the prior thread.

"Common sense" is applicable for ledes because everything is still grouped on one page. This approach you're suggesting immediately relegates some stories to second class status. Every editor will have their own pet stories that they will want to place on the main version of the page, regardless of the prominence of the character in the story.
The lede is usually populated by information about their character arc and personality. [Giving examples of two specific ledes being different lengths after the first season of their characters due to differing focus on characterization.]

The second comment never received a response. The first comment was responded to with 'your supposition about "second class status" is just wrong. Fandom's best practices guide says that both readers and search engines understand that subpages aren't separate articles but extensions of a single article, in exactly the same way as separate sections are'. It's important to note that while this is true for search engines, the best practices guide does not say this for readers. It merely says "A community can choose to split sections off as subpages or not, though some think erroneously that subpages are bad." Nowhere does it establish that readers understand that information on subpages is of equal priority as information not on a subpage.

Moreover, the best practices guide doesn't even think this. What they recommend is supposed to "preserv[e] the completeness of the original article, with deeper insights available to the reader with a desire to know more" - meaning that even when you remove the content that's relegated to the subpage the main article is still complete! It's explicitly second class status for certain sources.

But it's even worse than that, because in the prior thread we gave specific examples of how editors might disagree on what stories would make the cut on a potential biography. There was reasonable (not massive, but reasonable) disagreement within that thread as to what stories would be included in the summary.

[Violating T:NPOV] I don't think this is an accurate reading of the policy, given that we already make this judgment in every lead section, not to mention infobox variables like "main actor" which privilege some sources over others as a matter of course.

Again, I think this is a misunderstanding of how we write ledes. Consider The Eighth Doctor. Heavy attention is paid to his emotional journey, and we don't even mention The Night of the Doctor (TV story). It just so happens that for other characters we tend to base their ledes on their "native medium" because that's where their main character beats take place. Expanded media is something that fills in the cracks, for good or for ill.

To help ameliorate this concern, I'll commit to writing the new biography summaries for the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors if this part of the proposal passes

I actually think something like this is a good idea, but before the proposal passes. We want to see if people disagree on these issues, right? I think it's a decent idea to choose a character that's got a reasonably long biography that we all have a semi decent understanding (so probably 9,10,11,12,or 13 - we choose the same one), and try to write a summary for it. See how much agreement or disagreement there is. (Obviously don't look at anyone else's before you write up your own.) Obviously it'll be a very rough job, that probably will just be c/p from the page that exists and then trimming down sources. But it will give us an idea of if this is feasible.

If we're going to do this, I think we should adopt the idea put forward in the last thread of simply not having a summary on the main page, forcing people to move to the subpage. Having two separate biographies will be a nightmare to maintain, and absolutely will lead to second class status for stories, in a blatant violation of the second sentence of T:NPOV. But I'd still suggest asking others, as it's a massive change to our design. Najawin ☎ 00:22, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I was kind of hoping to address this in another thread I proposed, as were you I think, but it's necessary here so maybe we can achieve both because these topics go hand in hand. The topic in question is, I don't think what you describe is quite the intent of that part of T:NPOV. "Giving all media equal weight" means considering all sources as equally valid viewpoints on describing the DWU (literally, having a neutral point of view). It does not mean that they are equally notable when describing a certain topic. Giving every source an "equal weight" in coverage would be a false balance and have the opposite effect, giving the idea that some stories are more important than they really are. This is what Wikipedia calls giving undue weight; see also WP:NPPOV on the particular meaning of the word "neutral". Now Wikipedia's specifics are of course different because they cover real-world info and we cover fiction (T:EVIL TWIN etc). This means they have to use "reliable sources", while any "valid source" is to us equally, inherently true, even if they might conflict. However, the point remains that certain "viewpoints" (i.e., descriptions of DWU events) are more prominent than others because they appear in more sources.

Excluding a source from a summary doesn't mean it "didn't happen" or that it's "second-class", it just means it wasn't notable enough as part of everything a character ever did to make the summary of their biography, because by definition a summary can't include everything. In general, our goal is to cover everything we can about a topic, which should indeed be done on the full biographies. But for summaries, we should provide readers with the key details of what's important, in this case to a character's life. Deciding what is most important to include should not be "taking a viewpoint" because the summary should be based on what the viewpoints (sources) themselves say is important.

As an example, User:Cousin Ettolrhc says about the Eleventh Doctor's page: "coverage of Alice Obiefune should be equal to Series 5." These aren't really comparable, so I assume what she means is "coverage of the Doctor's adventures with Alice should be equal to coverage his adventures seen in Series 5." Well as I said, I don't think coverage should necessarily be equal but consideration of sources should. In terms of "what happened in the Eleventh Doctor's life", his regeneration, meeting with Amy Pond, investigating cracks in time, etc. are significant to what he did. This is even backed up by EU sources referencing these events as part of his life, because they are by nature based on the TV show. This makes something like The Eleventh Hour more important (specifically to the Eleventh Doctor's life) than any random adventures he had with Alice, or indeed with Amy or anyone else, but not any more valid. However, the overall fact that Eleven did travel with Alice does appear in a significant amount of stories, indicating it is a decently significant part of his life, and should itself be noted in the summary in my opinion. For myself, the only content with Alice Obiefune I've read was specifically year 2 of the Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor comic series, for which I would say this arc is not quite notable for Eleven's biography as it's basically a single minor conflict for him, but would be for Alice herself, as well as characters like the Master or Abslom Daak due to featuring large portions of and/or pivotal events in their histories. That could be a good place to start on what to include in such summaries.

Meanwhile, for a character like Ace, her history (...or maybe histories in this case) set outside the TV show is larger and would likely merit much more mention than merely that seen on TV. The Eighth Doctor's biographical summary should almost entirely be made of non-TV material. And again, this does not mean we are saying these stories "happened more", it means we are saying they are more relevant to the topic at hand, a summary of a character's history.

... all that said, I'd personally even rather move everything on the Biography section of large pages to a subpage with only a {{main}} pointing there than keep it as is. It would keep things neater since either way, I think we agree the "full" biographies should cover everything. This would also finally get rid of those pesky "2-3 sentences" banners at the top of all the Doctor pages and allow histories to be covered with as much detail as we please, where everything is notable. Chubby Potato ☎ 09:34, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Luckily for everyone involved, I've been doing a deep dives on our forum archives to try and find the origins/dissenting voices of our policies! So I can offer the precise wording that inspired T:NPOV. In Forum:Archives of the original Panopticon User:Mantrid (I believe at the time an admin, but everyone was at the time, so w/e) stated the following, when the subject of canon came up:

The general feeling seems to be that this Wiki should be fairly relaxed about what can be included and I completely agree with this. I was quite disappointed by Memory Alpha's strict policy on not including entries from the Star Trek books etc as I don't see what the benefit is of such a ruling. As has already been said, canon in the Doctor Who world is a much looser thing and is open to personal interpretation. So, I would advocate that just about anything (be it audio, TV, novel or bubblegum card) be allowed and displayed in the same format but with the proviso that all sources of information are clearly sited. For example, an entry for Omega should say what information comes from "The Three Doctors", what comes from "Arc of Infinity" and what comes from the audio drama "Omega". With this information people can make their minds up themselves what they accept. Having said this, maybe a line does need to be drawn somewhere otherwise you could end up having masses of entries for someone's fan fiction stories featuring the Eleventh Doctor which only two people and a dog have actually read! So, might I suggest that the rule is anything that has been professionally produced or published qualifies for entry. [Emphasis mine]

User:Freethinker1of1, the site founder, responded with the following:

Mantrid, glad to see you're still with us. Your contributions and input are greatly appreciated. I think you summed up what our canon policy should be rather nicely, - perfectly, in fact.

Later, in Forum:Let's Get Organised, which Czech would go on to call the origin of T:NPOV in his archivist note, User:Mantrid said the following:

We need to finally establish a way of dealing with canonicity and contradictory information. Personally, I don't think the use of a separate 'Expanded Universe' section (eg see The Master) has worked particularly well - especially as some pages will contain information that is entirely based on Expanded Universe material. I'd like to propose the rather radical approach that we treat all information exactly the same, regardless of source, as long as it is a professional and/or BBC licenced product (ie not from fan-fiction). [Emphasis, again, my own]

Now not to get all originalist on you, but I think your reading of this policy isn't in line with its origins. It's also not in line with Czech's reading of it, circa 2011 in his archivist note:

the idea of treating all media as equal in terms of importance (something apparently I railed against in 2008). [Emphasis yet again my own]

That's all I've been able to find up to 2007 though. So the first 3 years of the wiki. I'm sure there's more stuff later. But this is the origin of T:NPOV, and it very much goes against your reading. (I glanced at what caused the page to be created in 2012, Czech did a general rewrite of POV pages, IU/OU for other reasons, and Tangerine asked him to add one for NPOV because the only place it was mentioned was a minor reference at a help page prior to that. So really we have to default back to the really old discussions here to figure out the intent, afaik, because Czech wrote it on his own based on those old discussions.)

As for the idea that there's a false balance effect, I'm not sure how this is applicable to what we're discussing. Nobody is suggesting that we change, say, wording like "according to one account so and so was the most important person in the 11th Doctor's life, but most accounts held it was such and such" to "accounts differed on whether so and so or such and such was the most important person in the 11th Doctor's life".

Excluding a source from a summary doesn't mean it "didn't happen" or that it's "second-class", it just means it wasn't notable enough as part of everything a character ever did to make the summary of their biography, because by definition a summary can't include everything.

Well I wouldn't say the first, but it's hard to deny that it's the latter. Readers who don't click on the subpage will know about one but not the other, there's excess space dedicated to one outside of the biography section, it's clearly preferential treatment. I honestly can't understand how this is something people can deny. Again, the best practices guide doesn't even attempt to.

These aren't really comparable, so I assume what she means is "coverage of the Doctor's adventures with Alice should be equal to coverage his adventures seen in Series 5."

I can't speak for her, but it's important to note that Amy appeared in more than S5, so much of your further line of reasoning here, which relies on the premise that Amy traveling with the Doctor is an important fact in expanded media, seems to evaporate. As that might or might not take place within S5. (Depends on specifics, again, can't speak for her.)

I'm somewhat sympathetic to your concerns, but just not what T:NPOV was intended to mean. Najawin ☎ 21:11, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of biography subpages. Over on Stranger Things Wiki, we decided to remove all Character History subpages, because:

They weren't being viewed much.
They were being edited less, and as a result, the overall writing quality decreased.
Some users started to haphazardly insert history section 'substitutes', essentially, into other parts of the article, especially in 'Relationship' sections.

That being said, Tardis Wiki is a whole other kettle of fish; the average edit quality is much, much higher (almost certainly due to an older overall user base), and in general, there's just way more activity, to the point that they can't really be compared. Even so: the benefits of keeping info consolidated should not be overlooked. If you make this shift, it's also your responsibility to communicate this to the average wiki reader, who'll otherwise be confused, or feel short-changed when viewing the main article. TheGreatGabester ☎ 01:32, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I have gone back and forth a bit with this type of suggestion since the last thread. I still feel that having both a shorter and longer biography would be ideal but I'm not entirely sure on the best way of deciding what goes on the shorter one. Bongo50 ☎ 18:16, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Hmm. I do think there is value in spinning off some of the history pages for species into subpages. Certainly the Dalek one is one I was going to suggest. Arguably we've sort of done this before with Gallifreyan history covering all the gritty details of Time Lord history whilst the history section of Time Lord takes a more overview style (I know it's not a subpage but its the same principle of spinning off the detailed history). But one thing I do want to emphasise is when I did edited said history section, I did take pains to include the expanded material as well as TV. Hence in that overview there's as much coverage of the classic serials as the novel/audios around Romana's presidency. Equally the biography section on the Doctor main page does show how you can summarise individual incarnations' lives in a way that acknowledges both TV and expanded. So I think summary biographies could be done along those lines, with subpages covering all the nitty gritty. But my concern about doing this for prominent individuals like the Doctors is debates about the balance between TV/expanded will become a regular issue and I'm just not sure how we prevent that.

I do take issue with the "spoiler-free" angle there, as frankly with so much Who material online I don't see the point of us constraining coverage like that. Even the summary on the official DoctorWho.TV site goes into more detail of the Twelfth Doctor's fate than the example offered in the proposed policy: https://www.doctorwho.tv/characters/twelfth-doctor Certainly when I read this wiki as a newer fan (many years ago!) it was never the spoilers that troubled me, but I could be the execption here. SherlockTheII ☎ 11:09, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Thabk you Najawin for your small correction; yes I meant "the stories with the Eleventh Doctor and Alice Obiefune should get as much coverage as the stories with Any Pond and Rory Williams". The main point here is to make sure we don't pretend there is an unknown gap between the end of series 5 and the beginning of series 6. But anyway, I now would much rather that we don't have a biography summary at all,and rather just link to the Biography subpage. Cousin Ettolrhc ☎ 06:19, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

This may have been proposed already, but I think I have a potential compromise. As mentioned in the OP, Thread:264489 established that biographies of major characters should only contain 3 sentances at most per story, something which is not followed by many major character's pages at all. Therefore, instead of having the main page biography summary consist of TV and "notable" non-TV media or something similar, it could make sense to instead include everything, just limiting each story to 3 sentances maximum, like is actually current but often unfollowed policy. The /Biography subpage could then go into more detail, still including everything but allowing as many sentances per story as is necassary. Bongo50 ☎ 19:25, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

I actually proposed something similar on Nate's original discussion of this, before it was a forum thread. Every story should be mentioned, but some might only merit a sentence or so. He was against it at the time, iirc. I'm perfectly content with this. Najawin ☎ 21:11, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

After mulling over OS25 and Gabe's responses above, I'm not as unconditionally attached to my "lede-style summary" idea as I have been, and I've started brainstorming some alternative solutions to the usability problem. A compromise in continuity with Shambala's old 3 sentence rule would be a possible middle-ground. – n8 (☎) 14:31, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

While I am very uncertain on "where to draw the line" for the contents of biography subpages... I nevertheless support them. I am currently Wikifying Have You Seen This Man?, and I am entering 99% of the meetings of the Doctor onto Ninth Doctor, but the issue is with nearly 150 different entries, the sheer volume of information I'm adding to Ninth Doctor#Encounters by the readers of Doctor Who? despite how truncated I've made it is presenting an issue to me, which would be entirely mitigated if I could place this section on a subpage, and be allowed to expand it in further detail, as I am having to leave out a lot.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

18:45, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

General discussion

Please put comments regarding the proposal as a whole here.

I support this. Not really got any more to add. I’m sorry it’s not a lot, but I already supported all of this completely on the first thread that was finished weeks ago (of which only a few points were approved out of many). Danniesen ☎ 22:17, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Adding more Subpages is a brilliant idea. I think many of these pages are excellent ideas, and others are concepts that I fear would not be for the best. But I support the general precedent suggested here. OS25 🤙☎️ 22:39, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I also support this. Fractal Doctor ☎ 23:02, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I support this. I think that the wider use of subpages will also help some of our more bloated location pages such as London or Earth, where there's so much information already on the page that any new information can often fall by the wayside. We could perhaps also have subpages for [[London/19th century]], [[London/20th century]] and [[London/21st century]]. This could describe the history of these eras, and have geography sections on how the the location appears during these centuries, as the geography of a location obviously changes over time. 66 Seconds ☎ 16:54, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

Note that I've written more about this in the locations section below. 66 Seconds ☎ 10:44, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Commentaries

So this isn't a topic that was pitched in the original OP, but I wanted to bring it up here since it's really the best time.

For some period, I have wanted to create some sort of subpage or separate page for commentary tracks. In my opinion, a commentary track on a piece of media is a little more than a limb of said media. It's an important historical record which just happens to have immediate visual aid. And furthermore, there are often a lot of commentary tracks for established Who stories. The Five Doctors, from my memory, has a commentary track for the broadcast episode, a commentary for the Special Edition, AND a secret commentary track recorded by Russell T Davies, David Tennant, and Julie Gardner (with others I think) recorded during the production of TV: Gridlock. So just saying "this info is sourced from the Commentary track" isn't enough.

Allowing the creation of an entire subpage for documenting which commentaries exist and what information comes from each version will really help people source information about classic serials. The idea is we'd have one page per story, and then subsections on each page for each version of the commentary.

So, The Five Doctors (TV story)/Commentaries could have a section talking about the Special Edition commentary, the regular commentary, the RTD era commentary, and every further example that has ever existed. In each section, one could list topics and trivia from each one, and maybe even quotes.

That's the pitch. OS25 🤙☎️ 21:14, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

I like this idea a lot. Bongo50 ☎ 19:26, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Great idea. – n8 (☎) 14:11, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

I still like this idea, but I've been thinking some more and I'm wondering if we could possibly make it more general somehow, to include not just commentaries but also other commentary-style information released in other formats, such as interviews and reference books? – n8 (☎) 22:26, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

What about [[\Production]]? It could also cover info text. Bongo50 ☎ 17:11, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Mm, that makes it sound like it'll be about filming blocks and locations and such – which is an interesting idea on its own, but quite separate from the initial idea.

What about [[/Commentary]] in the singular? It's a light touch, but it opens it up to other sources of discussion. Imagine a header for each commentary but also for the relevant TCH volume and Black Archive. – n8 (☎) 12:10, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

That works with me. Bongo50 ☎ 18:57, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Centuries for location pages

I put something above which probably deserves a discussion of its own.

As N8 states above, articles "should likely take about 7 minutes to read, and be somewhere between 1000 and 2500 words". Some of our location pages are notably very long. I'm thinking of pages like London and Earth. Never mind 7 minutes, I'm petty sure you could write a novel on the history of London with the DWU, and that appears to be what our London page is slowly turning into. They are so packed full of information, that any new information often falls by the wayside.

Hence, my proposal is that we split some of our larger location pages into centuries. Using London as an example, we could potentially have pages for [[London/19th century]], [[London/20th century]] and [[London/21st century]]. We would still have a the whole history of London on the main London page, but as a broader, less detailed, overview. Any in depth details about these centuries would be placed on the subpages. This would allow us to go into much greater detail about specific eras of London's history. We could also have geography sections on how the the location appears during these centuries, or government sections on how a city or country is governed during these periods. Locations change over time. I think by using subpages in this way, we can enhance the readability of our location pages, while also increasing the amount of content. 66 Seconds ☎ 10:44, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

I 100% support the idea of splitting our pages like London and Earth, but after reviewing T:SUBPAGE#When not to use a subpage, I'm less sure where these pages should be located. It would be different if they were nested under London/History/19th century, for instance, but since we also want to cover geography it's a bit awkward. Plus, I could see other pages wanting to link to these pages, just like The Master's early life. Maybe we could achieve this split with pages like 19th century London rather than subpages specifically? – n8 (☎) 14:11, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your response, and pointing me to T:SUBPAGE#When not to use a subpage. From a technical standpoint, happy to go with 19th century London, and similar pages, rather than subpages. Think it will greatly improve our coverage of these topics, if others agree. 66 Seconds ☎ 15:39, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

I like this idea a lot. I'd rather have 19th century London but I don't hate London/19th century if it came to it. Bongo50 ☎ 18:07, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Promotion

Another idea that I forgot about when writing the OP, which I'll toss in at the 11th hour just in case it proves non-controversial: [[/Promotion]] for series pages. For instance, [[Series 9 (Doctor Who 2005)/Promotion]] and [[The First Doctor: Volume One/Promotion]]. This would provide a place for covering the trailers, news articles, promotional tweets, interviews, and/or "next time" segments associated with a release in depth. – n8 (☎) 14:11, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea, provided that individual material that has enough depth to warrant its own page (like Big Finish "trailer"/webcasts/minisodes) receieve one with a {{main}}-link. Bongo50 ☎ 18:07, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Absolutely fantastic idea. So much of the cultural context around why certain episodes or series have the reception they do in the community in the past ~10 years is because of the marketing for them. At this point if you weren't in the fanbase at the time you don't really understand why discussion of them is so emotionally charged. Like two weeks ago I was talking to someone (nightowl, Nate, if you recognize his name from being in the comments of most Who Cares? videos) about the marketing for Hell Bent in particular, since he had skipped out on the Capaldi era and came back to the show later and he was really surprised at what they chose to focus on. Najawin ☎ 08:01, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Great idea, n8. Full support from me. Fractal Doctor ☎ 14:31, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Definitely support. Seems like a good idea. Cousin Ettolrhc ☎ 17:53, 26 March 2023 (UTC)

PROSE illustrations

So this one's pretty basic. Usually, I understand that it's a bad idea to have a /Gallery page for stories. It's arguably not fair use. BUT...

I feel like we should make an exception for when we're covering prose, and specifically prose stories where we seek out people adding the illustrations and promotional work as galleries on-the-page. For something like Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks, there are just too many editions and too many translations to keep them all on the main page. I've personally just scanned all the Japanese illustrations, and I have no idea where they would fit.

So I either think we should have [[Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks/Gallery]], or, better yet, [[Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks/Ilustrations]]. OS25 🤙☎️ 09:09, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I like this idea. I'd rather have [[Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks/Gallery]] so that it is clearly inclusive of covers as well as interior illustrations. I do feel that it needs to be limited to non-visual stories (prose and audio stories), though, and only in extreme cases like Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks which have an abnormally high number of illustrations and covers. Bongo50 ☎ 19:21, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

LegoK9's already taken initiative in the direction of "expanding Gallery subpage usage" by creating Andrew Skilleter/Gallery; I agree story gallery pages would be a natural next step. Besides Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks (novelisation)/Gallery, I would also appreciate Lungbarrow (novel)/Gallery, since right now Lungbarrow (novel)#Illustrations – as lovely as it looks with so many entries – features two or sometimes three versions of every image. We could more clearly demarcate which images are versions of each other on a fuller Gallery subpage. – n8 (☎) 13:07, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

Gameplay

This one's very last minute so I completely understand that it'll probably need its own proposal, but what about /Gameplay subpages? These could be used to cover the gameplay aspects of the various video and role playing games that we cover in much more detail than you can in a single section on the page. Perhaps subpages of this subpage could then be created, such as /Gameplay/Characters in order to document the gameplay stats of the various characters in hte game? I feel that this could be a very useful resource for those looking to either better strategise in currently available games or better understand older and unavailable games. Bongo50 ☎ 22:22, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I'd defer this to another thread. There's something here that's good, but I think it needs more fleshing out. I think subpages are going to be an integral part of whatever solution we find to wikifying CYA books, for instance, though not the full solution. In addition, User:Najawin/Sandbox 0 SPOILERS is on its way, and has the potential for a subpage when it hits. (As does Worlds Apart if anyone cares to write one for it.) And FASA does too. And we really need to have a discussion on how to handle The Sekimeiya: Spun Glass. All of these are subtly different and require slightly different approaches. Najawin ☎ 22:33, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm not really referring to subpages here to help cover multipath stories: that is very much a matter of plot which is different, in my eyes, to gameplay. In this regard, I disagree that each of your examples require different approaches: each would likely already have a "Gameplay" section and, if there is enough detail that could go here, this could be split into a subpage. While each would contain different content, each follows the same approach of creating a subpage when there's too much detail to reasonably place on the main page. To better illustrate my points, I'm going to use Lost in Time as an example. Gameplay mechanics are entirely separate to plot in this game. Plot is covered as normal and the "Gameplay" section/subpage is entirely concerned with, well, gameplay and could contain tables summarising the stats and upgrades of each character and waypoint. This would probably end being quite a lot. Hence, it could be split off onto a subpage. Anyway, I agree that this will probably deserve its own thread; I just wanted to clarify my idea. Bongo50 ☎ 10:29, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

I would support this. I think a subpage for gameplay would be really useful. If you look at other wikis designed for video games (see Fallout Wiki for example), the majority feature statistics such as health/abilities etc. Doctor Who is a multimedia franchise, and I feel video games are currently unfairly treated by this wiki. This would somewhat improve our coverage. We have contents sections for books, I don't see any issue with having a gameplay section for video games, and it would make sense to put this on a subpage. 66 Seconds ☎ 14:03, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Final Thoughts

Now we're in the day of closure, I thought it may be sensible to collect anyone's final thoughts for this thread. Me, I just hope that "/Other realities" and "/Physical appearance" definitely get passed, and I hope for "/Plot" based on n8's solution to Bongo's problem in that sub-heading. And personally I'd like "/Biography", but I'm okay if that one doesn't pass, as it appears to be more complicated. But overall, I'm really glad we managed to come together to discuss these subp age ideas, and I think most, if not all, people here like the idea of subpages, and only disagree on how they are implemented. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 07:38, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

/Promo, /Appearance, /Non-Valid, /Other realities, with the caveats discussed. Mixed emotions on /Biography but probably against. Maybe it could be brought up again for more refinement in round 3. Or if people disagree with me we can go ahead. But I'm skeptical. Not 100% "no this can't happen, not ever", completely open to reconsidering. But I'm still really skeptical. /Plot hard against. I don't think the arguments I presented were addressed at all.

If there's a way to track page views (which I doubt, but we might want to talk to FANDOM staff about) we might test out some temporary subpage changes to a few big pages (such as the "single sentence" approach, or the "only have a subpage, no main page summary" approach) and see what conversion rates are from going main page -> subpage. But I think that's going to be difficult to do (and those are the only options I've seen so far that I think are viable). Najawin ☎ 07:51, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Oh yes, thank you Najawin, I forgot about "Non-valid sources". Strongly hope this is passed as well Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 07:58, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

As I have expressed before and in the original thread, I’ve not really much to say except that I support that these go through. Although, I am, like Najawin (I know, shock) skeptical of /Biography and would for the most part be against /Plot. But I would make exceptions, such as if they end up being too long. We already have a problem with pages that are too long (as per an old Forum thread from the Old Forums).

I think if it becomes a case like the video game Lost in Time, I would say creating /Plot as a subpage would be a good idea. I mean, the game currently has 30 Episodes and all of them need given their own sub-section on the Plot-section, not to mention the Event-storylines which are seperate from the main game. And the game will only get more Episodes, all of which need coverage too. And that’s in addition to the Header, Infobox, Synopsis, References, Notes and Continuity sections, which just makes for an overly long page. In such a case, I would say we should be able to create /Plot subpages. Danniesen ☎ 08:13, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

My, how time flies! I've just read over the thread and I think the case is especially clear for "Other realities", "Non-valid sources", "Promotion", and story and artist "Gallery" pages. More arguable are "Physical appearance", "Commentary", "Plot", and "Biography", roughly in that order. Testing the latter couple of these on a big page or two, ideally with polling of users and FANDOM cooperation on conversion rates, might be a good bridge between rejection and wholesale adoption. – n8 (☎) 12:30, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Here's where I stand:

/Plot: Full support following Nate's demonstration that solved the issue raised by Najawin for me.
/Other realities: Full support
/Non-valid sources: Full support
/Physical appearance: Full support
/Biography: Support of having the main biography section allow only up to 3 sentances (as is current policy) with a subpage allowing more than that (as much as is required)
/Commentary: Full support of including commentaries, info text, The Complete History issues, The Black Archive issues, DWM The Fact of Fiction articles and anything else like this
/nth century: Support having these as actual pages (e.g. 20th century London) rather than as subpages
/Promotion: Full support provided that individual material that has enough depth to warrant its own page (e.g. Big Finish trailers/webcasts/minisodes) receieve one with a {{main}}-link.
/Gallery for stories: Support for non-visual mediums (prose and audio) and only in extreme cases
/Gameplay: Full support seeming as I proposed it

Bongo50 ☎ 19:41, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Conclusion

Phew. Apologies for the slight, unorthodox delay in closing this, but it's a big one and I was detained at the last moment by other matters.^[1]

Right. So here we are again, fleshing out our usage of subpages after Tardis:Temporary forums/Archive/Subpage policy enshrined them as a part of our Wiki's ecosystem. I wish I could say that this would be the final one, but I think it's by now been agreed by most that we'll have to make a trilogy of it to tie off remaining loose ends.

But that doesn't mean we can't get a lot done here! So let's review all these case-by-case.

/Plot

This has proved one of the more controversial ones, and taking a bird's-eye view of the discussion, I think this is because it ran into ongoing controversies about how to do plot synopses at all, whether on a talk page or otherwise. This then derailed the discussion^[2], such that we actually saw more talk of the merits of various kinds of synopses than of the actual pros and cons of putting the longest form of the summary on a subpage, per se.

Regarding that question, I just don't think the current discussion has found a fitting answer to the twofold issues raised by User:Najawin:

So as the person whose plot description was used for the example of "extreme levels of detail", I don't think this is unfair, per se, but it is something that removes motivation. (…) We can't trust Fandom's best practice's guide. Fandom has different motivations than us. They want every user to use Fandom as much as possible, click on Fandom links, and then feel like they got a complete, reasonable, happy experience, whether or not they did. (…) Creating subpages shunts off information into pages that people are less likely to click on (especially if there's a minor substitute on the main page so they already feel somewhat satisfied), so it runs directly counter to their motivation.User:Najawin

The first half of this is honestly what I find most concerning, even though it's technically "up" "to" "editors" and I'm not unaware of the possible precedent for "emotional blackmail" that this kind of sets. Users willing to write detailed plot summaries are a rare and extremely precious commodity, and as much as we must strive to be easily-legible to readers, we do also have to consider what will attract more such editors/make the current ones continue their difficult and helpful work.

So for the time being, I am closing this against /Plot subpages, and not just as "unresolved" but with some degree of prejudice against. i.e. "Subpages 3.0" is not barred from revisiting this issue but the onus would be on the pro-/Plot side to present new arguments countering these issues, as in the case of a proposal to change an existing policy, rather than simply to codify something which hasn't been agreed upon yet either way.

However, what this discussion has allowed to come to light is that Publisher's Summaries are bad substitutes for Actual Short Summaries. As User:Bongolium500 explained:

The thing with (publisher's) summaries is that I think they server yet another purpose:
• (Publisher's) summaries provide a mostly spoiler-free way to decide if you're interested in a given story without giving away much of the plot.
• Shorter plot summaries allow people to get the gist of a story without going into all of the details. It allows people to get a quick refresher on a story they've already experienced.
• Longer plot summaries that we already have allow you to effectively experience a story without experiencing it, providing details on all plotlines, all characters and all little moments.
In my mind, these 3 concepts are all different but each one has their separate uses. Ideally, I'd like to see them all in some form or other.User:Bongolium500

As demonstrated by User:NateBumber's Zagreus demo, what we need is to introduce short, one-to-three-paragraphs plot breakdowns. Unlike the typical Publisher's Summary, they aren't spoiler-free or otherwise designed with a teaserlike, promotional edge — but they should also remain compact enough that no one would mistake them for the real, full, scene-by-scene plot summary. All source pages should endeavour to have these, even if they also already have one or more Publisher's Summaries. So, Zagreus might, from now on, have three plot-related subsections: "Publisher's summary", "Summary", and "Plot".

/Other realities

This is essentially accepted, but I want to reframe the problem that it solves.

As User:NateBumber quoted from T:MERGE (here updated from "alternate timeline" language to now-standard "other realities" language):

As a rule of thumb, if there's no more to say on the separate page than what can already be stated on the prime version's "Other realities" subsection, it's not worth creating a separate page for the alternative version.T:MERGE

This isn't "the seeds of a solution" — it is the solution. But it does give rise to an issue where a character might have a lot of alternative versions, who don't individually appear at enough length warrant their own pages, but are numerous enough that they make a mere #Other realities subsection unreasonably long and cluttered. Indeed, even when alternative versions do have their own pages, they still need to be cited in the "Other realities" section of the primary version, so the problem is orthogonal to whether these versions individually get their own pages, per se.

I think the discussion from User:66 Seconds, though well-intentioned, is something of a false trail. The question isn't the somewhat wooly question of to what extent divergent versions of a character share a past and thus an "identity", but moreso how the story treats them. Amy Pond (The Girl Who Waited) is narratively a different character from Mainline Amy, both in the sense that emotionally her survival distinct from the young version is treated as morally desirable, and in the practical sense that it's much easier to write a summary of events if we can say things like "the Eleventh Doctor sacrificed Amy Pond to save Amy Pond" than if we have only one page to link to.

Contrariwise the Shadow World Moira very probably doesn't have any kind of continuity-of-consciousness with the flesh-and-blood one (she lives in a subtly different world where the Veritas has existed throughout history, and her psyche is running on software that is incapable of randomness!), but she's still narratively treated as an extension of the primary Moira. Indeed, we can compare this to the Shadow Doctor who is Watsonianly speaking in the same boat, but who narratively falls more on the side of the GWW!Amy, being treated as his own person with his own moral weight, and taking character actions where he interacts with the meatspace Doctor.

So: let us agree that any character with more than three entries in their ==Other realities== subsection may have it {{main}}ed to a [[/Other realities]] subpage, which should continue to afford more or less one paragraph per counterpart at most, past which threshold we should seriously consider the given counterpart their own page {{main}}ed-to from their "Other realities" section.

None of this really changes the T:MERGE standards for whether to give a counterpart their own pages, which continues to rely on the same necessarily-somewhat-case-by-case calculus of how the story treats a counterpart's identity or lack thereof, what's most practical, how much we have to say about them, and whether we have a convenient name for the new page. (The likes of Quiquaequod could have been a mere note on Eighth Doctor#Other realities, slash Eighth Doctor/Other realities, long ago, if he had also simply been called "the Eighth Doctor", particularly as dabbing him would have been very difficult without a reality name and with other Eighth Doctors in The Glorious Dead. But as he has his own name and image, it is more efficient to give him his own short page.)

(Yes, for those keeping track, this does mean that Moira (Shadow World), assuming it is as long as it can be from the available data, ought to be merged into plain old Moira#Other realities.)

Two additional notes:

"Other realities" should definitely be standardised as the heading/subpage name across the Wiki. For my money this is already the current policy and it's just a matter of dusting up application, but if enshrining be needed, let this be it.
The suggestion to alter something like Pete Tyler (Pete's World) to Pete Tyler/Pete's World, or heaven forbid Pete Tyler/Other realities/Pete's World, is rejected with extreme prejudice. Have mercy on the pipe trick. (Yes, we could use redirects, but we don't need to and this would just make everything more confusing.)

/Non-valid sources

I'm surprised and delighted by the wide, essentially unanimous support this one has gotten. I expected that the inclusion of non-covered sources like charity stories, and works from series that crossed over with the DWU, would remain controversial even if splitting off proper {{invalid}} information to its own page would not. But I guess not! So, it passes, along similar lines to "Other realities" above: if we have information from non-valid or non-covered sources that needs to be documented in a BTS section as more than a couple of sentences overall, this is justification for the creation of a [[/Non-valid sources]] subpage. With some caveats belowed, Nate's Notes on Implementation should be followed.

However, a few things must be clarified:

This policy applies to fiction. Rule-1-breakers like statements in interviews are not-covered because it's hard to cover sanely at all, and indeed the citation proposals at Template_talk:NateBumber/NCmaterial#Notes_on_implementation don't account for that kind of scenario. Relevant info from such un-sources can continue to be discussed in BTS sections — if available and sensible, the BTS section of the Non-Valid Sources subpage, although in some cases, such as The War Chief#Statements by writers, such information is best kept within a broader BTS overview to which it connects.
As regards coverage of stories from non-DWU series that had crossover, we should remember that we are doing this as an extension of what we'd be doing in the BTS section for context; unlike coverage of {{invalid}} or charity-DWU appearances, we should not aim for exhaustivity. That is: to editors' discretion, the Blake's 7 parts of Carnell/Non-valid sources should focus on information which gives helpful context to his appearances in sources we do cover. It should not replicate the Carnell page on the Blake's 7 Wiki and proceed to document every aspect of his biography across his Blake's 7-branded appearances.
As regards coverage of partial Rule 2-breakers, we must remain very careful to avoid falling into T:NO FANFIC territory. Iris Explains certainly belongs at Iris Wildthyme/Non-valid sources — but not, to a first approximation, at Eighth Doctor/Non-valid sources. This could be altered by a second discussion, but I don't think there's been enough (indeed, not any) discussion here of the implications of that part of the policy, to justify such a radical opening of the gates. As with the first item, where it is at all relevant, this information should for now remain confined to in-universe pages.

As regards formatting, I don't think the idea if continuing to present it as a series of bullet point is warranted. The bullet points are in part an attempt to curtail detail that would be excessive in a BTS section, but the whole point of this change is to allow more thorough coverage of these elements' places in invalid/non-valid sources; we might want to have three, four, five paragraphs, complete with illustration, discussing a character's appearance in a given NV source. The bullet points just don't work.

I think a format that avoids unwarranted "welding" will likely emerge on its own; I think it will look something like the more essay-like avatars of in-universe pages, such as The Master's early life. Broad section, clustering by common threads and outlooks, not attempting strict chronology.

Additionally, as a special decision, given the imminent discussion of deeming Daft Dimension and DW? parallel universes whose respective versions of character should be covered as their own entities, they are momentarily excluded from this policy. Once we have had that thread, if they remain invalid and the proposal to treat them as parallel universes (albethey invalid) is not passed — only then will coverage of them on [[/Non-valid sources]] be encouraged. I think that's the best way to avoid probable unnecessary cleanup work at this juncture.

/Physical appearance

Not very much to say about this one. Except for User:Epsilon the Eternal's mild concerns about duplication of information which didn't gather much support, this proposal seems to have been met by broad if somewhat-lukewarm approval, and so it passes. As with other cases, it should merely be a {{main}}able option when such a section gets too big, not a "default" subpage like [[/Spoiler]].

/Biography

This one remains the great white whale. To be blunt, I do not believe the T:NPOV concerns have reached consensus yet. They're closer. We've had some great discussion.

But just look at how quickly every single proposal breaks down as soon as it's operationalised. User:Chubby Potato argues that The Eleventh Doctor: Year Two is, "in terms of 'what happened in the Eleventh Doctor's life'," "not quite notable as it's basically a single minor conflict for him" (as compared to Series 5 depicting "his regeneration, meeting with Amy Pond, investigating cracks in time, etc."). I had to reread this several times to wrap my head around this: to my way of thinking it's obvious that Year Two is as major an event in the EU life of any Doctor as you can get. Aside from Day it's the main instance of the Eleventh Doctor interacting with the War (arguably the most important event in the history of the universe, short of the anchoring); and in terms of his emotional journey it sends him into a deep spiral of guilt and self-examination, to the point of disappearing into the depths of a TARDIS to stew in his own self-reproachfulness, above and beyond his exile to Victorian London from The Snowmen.

And that's from Chubby_Potato grasping for what I assume he intended as a fairly uncontroversial example!

But fortunately, we do not have to close this as wholly unresolved. The end of the discussion brought forth what I have always considered the storngest, almost overriding argument for splitting off Biographies: Thread:264489's ruling on preventing pages about highly-recurring characters from getting "too long". It's absolutely terrible that under current policy there is no way to get a biography of Amy Pond that includes all relevant information from her stories. (Which doesn't mean scene-by-scene summaries of her comings and goings, just — well, about the level of plot-mechanics detail of the mid-length summaries discussed back in /Plot, really. Something that gives you intelligible cliffnotes without having to click through to other pages. I frankly don't believe it's possible to summarise Amy's dual part in The Big Bang in just three sentences in a way anybody would understand without having seen it first.)

So, as a first measure, as per the loose consensus, my ruling is this: pages falling under the influence of Thread:264489's three-sentences ruling, or of similar breadth/length, should have [[/Biography]] subpages where the biogrpahical info can be covered in full detail. The biography on the main side shouldn't exclude any stories, but should give only limited, one-to-three-sentence coverage to most. Indeed, for some minor stories, we could go as compact as the current, in-this-case-unjustified way that the TV Comics adventures of John and Gillian are "speedrun" on both their pages.

Let's try and do this, and see how it goes. Subpages 3.0 might of course choose to fine-tune, extend or alter this in one way or another.

The Optional Add-Ons

Some people made additional suggestions in the "General discussion" area. I am leery of these as a concept, for the same reasons I recently outlined at Tardis:Temporary forums/Slot 3: Inclusion debates speedround#Gameplay-based LEGO Dimensions trailers. However, two of them seem to have received unanimous, uncontroversial support: "/Promotion" subapges, and the extension of "/Gallery" subpages to pages about non-visual media which pass the original gallery standards (i.e. more than ten images). So I guess those pass. /Gameplay, the century pages, and however we sort out the /Production, /Commentary and/or /Commentaries issues should be left for "Subpages 3.0".

Final thoughts

Well, I have a headache. But thank you, everyone, for participating in this discussion and making it, if I might add, a much nicer and more productive experience than the first attempt!

As a final administrative note, please take heed of the fact that subpages, though generally uncategorised, should at the very least be kept in "Game of Rassilon" legacy cats: for example, Sarah Jane Smith/Biography should be placed in the hidden category Category:Companions of the Doctor so that people who edit it (which is functionally like editing Sarah Jane Smith) still get their rightful GoR XP. If there are any further subtleties I'm missing, with regards to Categories or anything else — well, that'll be material for Part Three.

Also to be discussed in Part Three is a tabbed display format that User:Bongolium500 has been hammering away at lately, but which isn't quite ready yet. For the time being, let's stick with the existing {{Main}}, {{Appears}}, {{Spoilerlink}} and {{Gallerylink}} constellation of templates. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 18:47, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Footnotes

↑ For the amusement of future archive-spelunkers, I'll make a historical note that these matters, though they also comprised non-Who-related business, included this little debacle.
↑ I use the term loosely; I don't mean to say anyone went off-topic in a policy-breaking sense.

[1] For the amusement of future archive-spelunkers, I'll make a historical note that these matters, though they also comprised non-Who-related business, included this little debacle.

[2] I use the term loosely; I don't mean to say anyone went off-topic in a policy-breaking sense.

[1]

[2]

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-{{retitle|{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}[[Category:Temporary forums]]
+{{retitle|{{SUBPAGENAME}}}}
+{{archive}}[[Category:Policy changers|{{SUBPAGENAME}}]]
 == Introduction ==
 A few weeks ago, we finished [[Tardis:Temporary forums/Archive/Subpage policy|our discussion of subpage policy]]. In that thread I suggested a wide array of potential subpage types, but the only ones which were ultimately approved were <code><nowiki>[[/Appearances]]</nowiki></code> and <code><nowiki>[[/Covers]]</nowiki></code>. These have both seen broad acceptance across the wiki: all lists of appearances have been moved to their new homes (hello [[Ninth Doctor/Appearances]]!), as have all cover pages (eg [[Faction Paradox (series)/Covers]]).
@@ Line 69: / Line 70: @@
 You do realize Zagreus is the worst possible example you could give for this, yes? Our tv coverage is already fairly sparse, isn't it? [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 19:50, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
+:::I'd say our TV coverage is anything but sparse. [[Heaven Sent (TV story)#Plot]] is over 3500 words, and for Classic, it can get much longer: [[The War Games (TV story)#Plot]] is over three times as long! – [[User:NateBumber|n8]] ([[User talk:NateBumber|☎]]) 17:30, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 : Why is it the worst possible example that I could have given? [[User:Bongolium500|<span title="aka Bongolium500">Bongo50</span>]] [[User talk:Bongolium500|<span title="talk to me">☎</span>]] 23:31, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
@@ Line 79: / Line 82: @@
 ::::: I could see that being very useful. [[User:Bongolium500|<span title="aka Bongolium500">Bongo50</span>]] [[User talk:Bongolium500|<span title="talk to me">☎</span>]] 00:31, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
+:::Najawin, I just mocked up for ''Zagreus'': "Following the explosion of an anti-time casket in the TARDIS, both the Eighth Doctor and the TARDIS are infected with Zagreus and have to fight for control of themselves. During its struggle, the TARDIS takes the Doctor and Charley through a series of separate holographic projections. Through these, Charley learns that the Divergence was trapped outside time by Rassilon, and she witnesses three times it reentered history: at the Foundry in ancient Gallifrey; during the Dionysus Project on 20th century Earth; and in Winkle's Wonderland near the end of the universe. From his Dark Tower, Rassilon ensnares President Romana and Leela in his plot to ally with the TARDIS' Zagreus personality, embodied in the form of the Brigadier, to stop the Divergents. However, with Charley's help, the Doctor defeats Rassilon and the Divergents both by giving in to Zagreus. To stop this Zagreus personality from reemerging, the Doctor leaves for exile in the Divergent Universe, and Charlie stows away on board."
+:::Does it capture every detail? No. But is it an accurate overview and sufficient to meet the goals Bongo has described? Yes. I believe this demonstrates that these kinds of summaries are very possible, and I agree with Bongo that they're also very valuable. – [[User:NateBumber|n8]] ([[User talk:NateBumber|☎]]) 15:47, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
+:::: Wow, that's great. It achieves my goals far better than I was expecting. This would have been very useful when I was starting ''[[Scherzo (audio story)|Scherzo]]'' and the [[Divergent Universe|Divergent]] arc which was quite a bit after I finished ''[[Zagreus (audio story)|Zagreus]]''. It inlcudes everything I would need to know for a brief reminder. [[User:Bongolium500|<span title="aka Bongolium500">Bongo50</span>]] [[User talk:Bongolium500|<span title="talk to me">☎</span>]] 17:12, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
+I'm unconvinced, but if Bongo is, perhaps it can work! As I said, this is skepticism, not an outright dismissal. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 18:49, 31 March 2023 (UTC)
+That is perfect, n8. I think that simple summary proves this subpage idea could well work. {{Unsigned|Cousin Ettolrhc}}
 == Proposal: <code><nowiki>/Other realities</nowiki></code> ==
@@ Line 156: / Line 169: @@
 : I too support this proposal. {{User:Epsilon the Eternal/signature}} 18:38, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
+I've had more or less this exact idea in my head for a while now, so I'm glad it's finally being suggested. This has my full '''support'''. [[User:WaltK|WaltK]] [[User talk:WaltK|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 18:21, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 == Proposal: <code><nowiki>/Physical appearance</nowiki></code> ==
@@ Line 183: / Line 198: @@
 {{/Biography}}
-=== Discussion: <code><nowiki>[[/Biography]]</nowiki></code> ===
+=== Discussion: <code><nowiki>/Biography</nowiki></code> ===
 :'''Please put comments regarding the <code><nowiki>[[/Biography]]</nowiki></code> proposal here.'''
@@ Line 196: / Line 211: @@
 In the end, I don't think I am ''against'' the proposal, and if everyone else agrees with it just ignore me. But as it stands, I think this could massively disrupt the hierarchy of the coverage on our website. [[User:OttselSpy25|OS25]][[User Talk:OttselSpy25|🤙☎️]] 22:08, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
-: I generally like this proposal. I also think another good example of NPOV-compliance in it is the Eleventh Doctor - coverage of [[Alice Obiefune]] should be equal to [[Series 5 (Doctor Who)|Series 5]]. [[User:Cousin Ettolrhc|Cousin Ettolrhc]] [[User talk:Cousin Ettolrhc|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 22:11, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
+: I generally like this proposal. I also think another good example of NPOV-compliance in it is the Eleventh Doctor - coverage of [[Alice Obiefune]] should be equal to [[Series 5 (Doctor Who 2005)|Series 5]]. [[User:Cousin Ettolrhc|Cousin Ettolrhc]] [[User talk:Cousin Ettolrhc|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 22:11, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
 ::I support this. Not really got any more to add. [[User:Danniesen|Danniesen]] [[User talk:Danniesen|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 22:17, 14 March 2023 (UTC)
@@ Line 231: / Line 246: @@
 ::::: Excluding a source from a summary doesn't mean it "didn't happen" or that it's "second-class", it just means it wasn't notable enough as part of everything a character ever did to make the summary of their biography, because by definition a summary can't include everything. In general, our goal is to cover everything we can about a topic, which should indeed be done on the full biographies. But for summaries, we should provide readers with the key details of what's important, in this case to a character's life. Deciding what is most important to include should not be "taking a viewpoint" because the summary should be based on what the viewpoints (sources) themselves say is important.
-::::: As an example, [[User:Cousin Ettolrhc]] says about the [[Eleventh Doctor]]'s page: "coverage of [[Alice Obiefune]] should be equal to [[Series 5 (Doctor Who)|Series 5]]." These aren't really comparable, so I assume what she means is "coverage of the Doctor's adventures with Alice should be equal to coverage his adventures seen in Series 5." Well as I said, I don't think coverage should necessarily be equal but consideration of sources should. In terms of "what happened in the Eleventh Doctor's life", his regeneration, meeting with [[Amy Pond]], investigating cracks in time, etc. are significant to what he did. This is even backed up by EU sources referencing these events as part of his life, because they are by nature based on the TV show. This makes something like ''[[The Eleventh Hour (TV story)|The Eleventh Hour]]'' more important (specifically ''to the Eleventh Doctor's life'') than any random adventures he had with Alice, or indeed with Amy or anyone else, but not any more ''valid''. However, the overall fact that Eleven did travel with Alice does appear in a significant amount of stories, indicating it is a decently significant part of his life, and should itself be noted in the summary in my opinion. For myself, the only content with Alice Obiefune I've read was specifically year 2 of the ''[[Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor]]'' comic series, for which I would say this arc is not quite notable for Eleven's biography as it's basically a single minor conflict for him, but would be for Alice herself, as well as characters like [[the Master]] or [[Abslom Daak]] due to featuring large portions of and/or pivotal events in their histories. That could be a good place to start on what to include in such summaries.
+::::: As an example, [[User:Cousin Ettolrhc]] says about the [[Eleventh Doctor]]'s page: "coverage of [[Alice Obiefune]] should be equal to [[Series 5 (Doctor Who 2005)|Series 5]]." These aren't really comparable, so I assume what she means is "coverage of the Doctor's adventures with Alice should be equal to coverage his adventures seen in Series 5." Well as I said, I don't think coverage should necessarily be equal but consideration of sources should. In terms of "what happened in the Eleventh Doctor's life", his regeneration, meeting with [[Amy Pond]], investigating cracks in time, etc. are significant to what he did. This is even backed up by EU sources referencing these events as part of his life, because they are by nature based on the TV show. This makes something like ''[[The Eleventh Hour (TV story)|The Eleventh Hour]]'' more important (specifically ''to the Eleventh Doctor's life'') than any random adventures he had with Alice, or indeed with Amy or anyone else, but not any more ''valid''. However, the overall fact that Eleven did travel with Alice does appear in a significant amount of stories, indicating it is a decently significant part of his life, and should itself be noted in the summary in my opinion. For myself, the only content with Alice Obiefune I've read was specifically year 2 of the ''[[Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor]]'' comic series, for which I would say this arc is not quite notable for Eleven's biography as it's basically a single minor conflict for him, but would be for Alice herself, as well as characters like [[the Master]] or [[Abslom Daak]] due to featuring large portions of and/or pivotal events in their histories. That could be a good place to start on what to include in such summaries.
 ::::: Meanwhile, for a character like [[Ace]], her history (...or maybe histories in this case) set outside the TV show is larger and would likely merit much more mention than merely that seen on TV. The Eighth Doctor's biographical summary should almost entirely be made of non-TV material. And again, this does not mean we are saying these stories "happened more", it means we are saying they are more relevant to the topic at hand, a summary of a character's history.
@@ Line 307: / Line 322: @@
 :: Great idea. – [[User:NateBumber|n8]] ([[User talk:NateBumber|☎]]) 14:11, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
+:: I still like this idea, but I've been thinking some more and I'm wondering if we could possibly make it more general somehow, to include not just commentaries but also other commentary-style information released in other formats, such as interviews and reference books? – [[User:NateBumber|n8]] ([[User talk:NateBumber|☎]]) 22:26, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
+::: What about <nowiki>[[\Production]]</nowiki>? It could also cover [[info text]]. [[User:Bongolium500|<span title="aka Bongolium500">Bongo50</span>]] [[User talk:Bongolium500|<span title="talk to me">☎</span>]] 17:11, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
+::::Mm, that makes it sound like it'll be about filming blocks and locations and such – which is an interesting idea on its own, but quite separate from the initial idea.
+::::What about <nowiki>[[/Commentary]]</nowiki> in the singular? It's a light touch, but it opens it up to other sources of discussion. Imagine a header for each commentary but also for the relevant [[TCH]] volume and [[the Black Archive|Black Archive]]. – [[User:NateBumber|n8]] ([[User talk:NateBumber|☎]]) 12:10, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
+::::: That works with me. [[User:Bongolium500|<span title="aka Bongolium500">Bongo50</span>]] [[User talk:Bongolium500|<span title="talk to me">☎</span>]] 18:57, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
 === Centuries for location pages ===
@@ Line 322: / Line 347: @@
 === Promotion ===
-Another idea that I forgot about when writing the OP, which I'll toss in at the 11th hour just in case it proves non-controversial: <code><nowiki>[[/Promotion]]</nowiki></code> for series pages. For instance, <nowiki>[[</nowiki>[[Series 9 (Doctor Who)]]/Promotion<nowiki>]]</nowiki> and <nowiki>[[</nowiki>[[The First Doctor: Volume One]]/Promotion<nowiki>]]</nowiki>. This would provide a place for covering the trailers, news articles, promotional tweets, interviews, and/or "next time" segments associated with a release in depth. – [[User:NateBumber|n8]] ([[User talk:NateBumber|☎]]) 14:11, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
+Another idea that I forgot about when writing the OP, which I'll toss in at the 11th hour just in case it proves non-controversial: <code><nowiki>[[/Promotion]]</nowiki></code> for series pages. For instance, <nowiki>[[</nowiki>[[Series 9 (Doctor Who 2005)]]/Promotion<nowiki>]]</nowiki> and <nowiki>[[</nowiki>[[The First Doctor: Volume One]]/Promotion<nowiki>]]</nowiki>. This would provide a place for covering the trailers, news articles, promotional tweets, interviews, and/or "next time" segments associated with a release in depth. – [[User:NateBumber|n8]] ([[User talk:NateBumber|☎]]) 14:11, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
 : I think this is a good idea, provided that individual material that has enough depth to warrant its own page (like [[Big Finish]] "trailer"/webcasts/minisodes) receieve one with a {{tlx|main}}-link. [[User:Bongolium500|<span title="aka Bongolium500">Bongo50</span>]] [[User talk:Bongolium500|<span title="talk to me">☎</span>]] 18:07, 24 March 2023 (UTC)
-::Absolutely fantastic idea. So much of the cultural context around why certain [[Hell Bent (TV story)|episodes]] or [[Series 6 (Doctor Who)|series]] have the reception they do in the community in the past ~10 years is because of the marketing for them. At this point if you weren't in the fanbase at the time you don't really understand why discussion of them is so emotionally charged. Like two weeks ago I was talking to someone (nightowl, Nate, if you recognize his name from being in the comments of most Who Cares? videos) about the marketing for Hell Bent in particular, since he had skipped out on the Capaldi era and came back to the show later and he was really surprised at what they chose to focus on. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 08:01, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
+::Absolutely fantastic idea. So much of the cultural context around why certain [[Hell Bent (TV story)|episodes]] or [[Series 6 (Doctor Who 2005)|series]] have the reception they do in the community in the past ~10 years is because of the marketing for them. At this point if you weren't in the fanbase at the time you don't really understand why discussion of them is so emotionally charged. Like two weeks ago I was talking to someone (nightowl, Nate, if you recognize his name from being in the comments of most Who Cares? videos) about the marketing for Hell Bent in particular, since he had skipped out on the Capaldi era and came back to the show later and he was really surprised at what they chose to focus on. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 08:01, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
 :::Great idea, [[User:NateBumber|n8]]. Full support from me. [[User:FractalDoctor|Fractal Doctor]] [[User talk:FractalDoctor|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 14:31, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
@@ Line 342: / Line 367: @@
 ::[[User:LegoK9|LegoK9]]'s already taken initiative in the direction of "expanding Gallery subpage usage" by creating [[Andrew Skilleter/Gallery]]; I agree story gallery pages would be a natural next step. Besides [[Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks (novelisation)/Gallery]], I would also appreciate [[Lungbarrow (novel)/Gallery]], since right now [[Lungbarrow (novel)#Illustrations]] – as lovely as it looks with so many entries – features two or sometimes three versions of every image. We could more clearly demarcate which images are versions of each other on a fuller Gallery subpage. – [[User:NateBumber|n8]] ([[User talk:NateBumber|☎]]) 13:07, 29 March 2023 (UTC)
+=== Gameplay ===
+This one's very last minute so I completely understand that it'll probably need its own proposal, but what about /Gameplay subpages? These could be used to cover the gameplay aspects of the various video and role playing games that we cover in much more detail than you can in a single section on the page. Perhaps subpages of this subpage could then be created, such as /Gameplay/Characters in order to document the gameplay stats of the various characters in hte game? I feel that this could be a very useful resource for those looking to either better strategise in currently available games or better understand older and unavailable games. [[User:Bongolium500|<span title="aka Bongolium500">Bongo50</span>]] [[User talk:Bongolium500|<span title="talk to me">☎</span>]] 22:22, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
+:I'd defer this to another thread. There's something here that's good, but I think it needs more fleshing out. I think subpages are going to be an integral part of whatever solution we find to wikifying CYA books, for instance, though not the full solution. In addition, [[User:Najawin/Sandbox 0 SPOILERS]] is on its way, and has the potential for a subpage when it hits. (As does [[Worlds Apart (video game)|Worlds Apart]] if anyone cares to write one for it.) And FASA does too. And we really need to have a discussion on how to handle [[The Sekimeiya: Spun Glass (novel)|The Sekimeiya: Spun Glass]]. All of these are subtly different and require slightly different approaches. [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 22:33, 2 April 2023 (UTC)
+:: I'm not really referring to subpages here to help cover multipath stories: that is very much a matter of plot which is different, in my eyes, to gameplay. In this regard, I disagree that each of your examples require different approaches: each would likely already have a "Gameplay" section and, if there is enough detail that could go here, this could be split into a subpage. While each would contain different content, each follows the same approach of creating a subpage when there's too much detail to reasonably place on the main page. To better illustrate my points, I'm going to use ''[[Lost in Time (video game)|Lost in Time]]'' as an example. Gameplay mechanics are entirely separate to plot in this game. Plot is covered as normal and the "Gameplay" section/subpage is entirely concerned with, well, gameplay and could contain tables summarising the stats and upgrades of each character and waypoint. This would probably end being quite a lot. Hence, it could be split off onto a subpage. Anyway, I agree that this will probably deserve its own thread; I just wanted to clarify my idea. [[User:Bongolium500|<span title="aka Bongolium500">Bongo50</span>]] [[User talk:Bongolium500|<span title="talk to me">☎</span>]] 10:29, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
+::: I would support this. I think a subpage for gameplay would be really useful. If you look at other wikis designed for video games (see [https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Deathclaw_(Fallout_4) Fallout Wiki] for example), the majority feature statistics such as health/abilities etc. ''Doctor Who'' is a multimedia franchise, and I feel video games are currently unfairly treated by this wiki. This would somewhat improve our coverage. We have contents sections for books, I don't see any issue with having a gameplay section for video games, and it would make sense to put this on a subpage. [[User:66 Seconds|66 Seconds]] [[User talk:66 Seconds|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 14:03, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
+== Final Thoughts ==
+Now we're in the day of closure, I thought it may be sensible to collect anyone's final thoughts for this thread.
+Me, I just hope that "/Other realities" and "/Physical appearance" definitely get passed, and I hope for "/Plot" based on n8's solution to Bongo's problem in that sub-heading. And '''personally''' I'd like "/Biography", but I'm okay if that one doesn't pass, as it appears to be more complicated. But overall, I'm really glad we managed to come together to discuss these subp      age ideas, and I think most, if not all, people here like the idea of subpages, and only disagree on how they are implemented. [[User:Cousin Ettolrhc|Cousin Ettolrahc]] [[User talk:Cousin Ettolrhc|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 07:38, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
+:/Promo, /Appearance, /Non-Valid, /Other realities, with the caveats discussed. Mixed emotions on /Biography but probably against. Maybe it could be brought up again for more refinement in round 3. Or if people disagree with me we can go ahead. But I'm skeptical. Not 100% "no this can't happen, not ever", completely open to reconsidering. But I'm still really skeptical. /Plot hard against. I don't think the arguments I presented were addressed at all.
+:If there's a way to track page views (which I doubt, but we might want to talk to FANDOM staff about) we might test out some temporary subpage changes to a few big pages (such as the "single sentence" approach, or the "only have a subpage, no main page summary" approach) and see what conversion rates are from going main page -> subpage. But I think that's going to be difficult to do (and those are the only options I've seen so far that I think are viable). [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 07:51, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
+Oh yes, thank you Najawin, I forgot about "Non-valid sources". Strongly hope this is passed as well [[User:Cousin Ettolrhc|Cousin Ettolrahc]] [[User talk:Cousin Ettolrhc|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 07:58, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
+:As I have expressed before and in the original thread, I’ve not really much to say except that I support that these go through. Although, I am, like Najawin (I know, shock) skeptical of /Biography and would for the most part be against /Plot. But I would make exceptions, such as if they end up being too long. We already have a problem with pages that are too long (as per an old Forum thread from the Old Forums).
+:I think if it becomes a case like the video game ''[[Lost in Time (video game)|Lost in Time]]'', I would say creating /Plot as a subpage would be a good idea. I mean, the game currently has 30 Episodes and all of them need given their own sub-section on the Plot-section, not to mention the Event-storylines which are seperate from the main game. And the game will only get more Episodes, all of which need coverage too. And that’s in addition to the Header, Infobox, Synopsis, References, Notes and Continuity sections, which just makes for an overly long page. In such a case, I would say we should be able to create /Plot subpages. [[User:Danniesen|Danniesen]] [[User talk:Danniesen|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 08:13, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
+::My, how time flies! I've just read over the thread and I think the case is especially clear for "Other realities", "Non-valid sources", "Promotion", and story and artist "Gallery" pages. More arguable are "Physical appearance", "Commentary", "Plot", and "Biography", roughly in that order. Testing the latter couple of these on a big page or two, ideally with polling of users and FANDOM cooperation on conversion rates, might be a good bridge between rejection and wholesale adoption. – [[User:NateBumber|n8]] ([[User talk:NateBumber|☎]]) 12:30, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
+::: Here's where I stand:
+:::; /Plot
+:::: Full support following Nate's demonstration that solved the issue raised by Najawin for me.
+:::; /Other realities
+:::: Full support
+:::; /Non-valid sources
+:::: Full support
+:::; /Physical appearance
+:::: Full support
+:::; /Biography
+:::: Support of having the main biography section allow only up to 3 sentances (as is current policy) with a subpage allowing more than that (as much as is required)
+:::; /Commentary
+:::: Full support of including commentaries, [[info text]], ''[[The Complete History]]'' issues, ''[[The Black Archive]]'' issues, [[DWM]] ''[[The Fact of Fiction]]'' articles and anything else like this
+:::; /nth century
+:::: Support having these as actual pages (e.g. [[20th century London]]) rather than as subpages
+:::; /Promotion
+:::: Full support provided that individual material that has enough depth to warrant its own page (e.g. [[Big Finish]] trailers/webcasts/minisodes) receieve one with a {{tlx|main}}-link.
+:::; /Gallery for stories
+:::: Support for non-visual mediums (prose and audio) and only in extreme cases
+:::; /Gameplay
+:::: Full support seeming as I proposed it
+::: [[User:Bongolium500|<span title="aka Bongolium500">Bongo50</span>]] [[User talk:Bongolium500|<span title="talk to me">☎</span>]] 19:41, 4 April 2023 (UTC)
+== Conclusion ==
+<div class="tech">
+Phew. Apologies for the slight, unorthodox delay in closing this, but it's a big one and I was detained at the last moment by other matters.<ref>For the amusement of future archive-spelunkers, I'll make a historical note that these matters, though they also comprised non-''Who''-related business, included [https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Faction_Paradox_(series)?diff=3473067&oldid=3433411 this little debacle].</ref>
+Right. So here we are again, fleshing out our usage of subpages after [[Tardis:Temporary forums/Archive/Subpage policy]] enshrined them as a part of our Wiki's ecosystem. I wish I could say that this would be the final one, but I think it's by now been agreed by most that we'll have to make a trilogy of it to tie off remaining loose ends.
+But that doesn't mean we can't get a lot done here! So let's review all these case-by-case.
+=== /Plot ===
+This has proved one of the more controversial ones, and taking a bird's-eye view of the discussion, I think this is because it ran into ongoing controversies about how to do plot synopses at ''all'', whether on a talk page or otherwise. This then derailed the discussion<ref>I use the term loosely; I don't mean to say anyone went off-topic in a policy-breaking sense.</ref>, such that we actually saw more talk of the merits of various kinds of synopses than of the actual pros and cons of putting the longest form of the summary on a subpage, ''per se''.
+Regarding ''that'' question, I just don't think the current discussion has found a fitting answer to the twofold issues raised by [[User:Najawin]]:
+{{quote|So as the person whose plot description was used for the example of "extreme levels of detail", I don't think this is ''unfair'', ''per se'', but it is something that removes motivation. (…) We can't trust Fandom's best practice's guide. Fandom has different motivations than us. They want every user to use Fandom as much as possible, click on Fandom links, and then ''feel ''like they got a complete, reasonable, happy experience, whether or not they did. (…) Creating subpages shunts off information into pages that people are less likely to click on (especially if there's a minor substitute on the main page so they already feel somewhat satisfied), so it runs directly counter to their motivation.|User:Najawin}}
+The first half of this is honestly what I find most concerning, even though it's technically "up" "to" "editors" and I'm not ''unaware'' of the possible precedent for "emotional blackmail" that this kind of sets. Users willing to write detailed plot summaries are a rare and extremely precious commodity, and as much as we must strive to be easily-legible to readers, we do also have to consider what will attract more such editors/make the current ones continue their difficult and helpful work.
+So for the time being, I am closing this '''against /Plot subpages''', and not just as "unresolved" but with some degree of prejudice against. i.e. "Subpages 3.0" is not ''barred'' from revisiting this issue but the onus ''would'' be on the pro-/Plot side to present new arguments countering these issues, as in the case of a proposal to ''change'' an existing policy, rather than simply to codify something which hasn't been agreed upon yet either way.
+'''However,''' what this discussion has allowed to come to light is that '''Publisher's Summaries are bad substitutes for Actual Short Summaries'''. As [[User:Bongolium500]] explained:
+{{quote|The thing with (publisher's) summaries is that I think they server yet another purpose:<br />• (Publisher's) summaries provide a mostly spoiler-free way to decide if you're interested in a given story without giving away much of the plot.<br />• Shorter plot summaries allow people to get the gist of a story without going into all of the details. It allows people to get a quick refresher on a story they've already experienced.<br />• Longer plot summaries that we already have allow you to effectively experience a story without experiencing it, providing details on all plotlines, all characters and all little moments.<br />In my mind, these 3 concepts are all different but each one has their separate uses. Ideally, I'd like to see them all in some form or other.|User:Bongolium500}}
+As demonstrated by [[User:NateBumber]]'s ''[[Zagreus (audio story)|Zagreus]]'' demo, what we need is to introduce short, one-to-three-paragraphs plot breakdowns. Unlike the typical Publisher's Summary, they aren't ''spoiler-free'' or otherwise designed with a teaserlike, promotional edge — but they should also remain compact enough that no one would mistake them for the real, full, scene-by-scene plot summary. '''All source pages should endeavour to have these, ''even if'' they also already have one or more Publisher's Summaries.''' So, ''[[Zagreus (audio story)|Zagreus]]'' might, from now on, have ''three'' plot-related subsections: "''Publisher's summary''", "''Summary''", and "''Plot''".
+=== /Other realities ===
+This is essentially accepted, but I want to reframe the problem that it solves.
+As [[User:NateBumber]] quoted from [[T:MERGE]] (here updated from "alternate timeline" language to now-standard "other realities" language):
+{{quote|As a rule of thumb, if there's no more to say on the separate page than what can already be stated on the prime version's "Other realities" subsection, it's not worth creating a separate page for the alternative version.|T:MERGE}}
+This isn't "the seeds of a solution" — it ''is'' the solution. But it does give rise to an issue where a character might have ''a lot'' of alternative versions, who don't ''individually'' appear at enough length warrant their own pages, but are numerous enough that they make a mere [[#Other realities]] subsection unreasonably long and cluttered. Indeed, even when alternative versions ''do'' have their own pages, they still need to be cited in the "Other realities" section of the primary version, so the problem is orthogonal to whether these versions individually get their own pages, ''per se''.
+I think the discussion from [[User:66 Seconds]], though well-intentioned, is something of a false trail. The question isn't the somewhat wooly question of to what extent divergent versions of a character share a past and thus an "identity", but moreso ''how the story treats them''. [[Amy Pond (The Girl Who Waited)]] is ''narratively'' a different character from Mainline Amy, both in the sense that emotionally her survival distinct from the young version is treated as morally desirable, and in the practical sense that it's much easier to write a summary of events if we can say things like "the [[Eleventh Doctor]] sacrificed [[Amy Pond (The Girl Who Waited)|Amy Pond]] to save [[Amy Pond]]" than if we have only one page to link to.
+Contrariwise [[Moira (Shadow World)|the Shadow World Moira]] very probably ''doesn't'' have any kind of continuity-of-consciousness with the flesh-and-blood one (she lives in a subtly different world where the ''[[Veritas (text)|Veritas]]'' has existed throughout history, and her psyche is running on software that is incapable of randomness!), but she's still ''narratively'' treated as an extension of the primary Moira. Indeed, we can compare this to the [[Twelfth Doctor (Shadow World)|Shadow Doctor]] who is Watsonianly speaking in the same boat, but who ''narratively'' falls more on the side of the ''GWW''!Amy, being treated as his own person with his own moral weight, and taking character actions where he ''interacts with'' the meatspace Doctor.
+So: let us agree that any character with more than three entries in their <nowiki>==Other realities==</nowiki> subsection may have it {{tlx|main}}ed to a <nowiki>[[/Other realities]]</nowiki> subpage, which should continue to afford more or less one paragraph per counterpart at most, past which threshold we should seriously consider the given counterpart their own page {{tlx|main}}ed-to from their "Other realities" section.
+'''None of this really changes the T:MERGE standards for whether to give a counterpart their own pages''', which continues to rely on the same necessarily-somewhat-case-by-case calculus of how the story ''treats'' a counterpart's identity or lack thereof, what's most practical, how much we have to say about them, and whether we have a convenient name for the new page. (The likes of [[Quiquaequod]] could have been a mere note on [[Eighth Doctor#Other realities]], slash [[Eighth Doctor/Other realities]], long ago, if he had also simply been called "the Eighth Doctor", particularly as dabbing him would have been very difficult without a reality name and with other Eighth Doctors in ''[[The Glorious Dead (comic story)|The Glorious Dead]]''. But as he has his own name and image, it is more efficient to give him his own short page.)
+(Yes, for those keeping track, this does mean that [[Moira (Shadow World)]], assuming it is as long as it can be from the available data, ought to be merged into plain old [[Moira#Other realities]].)
+Two additional notes:
+* '''"Other realities" should definitely be standardised as the heading/subpage name across the Wiki'''. For my money this is already the current policy and it's just a matter of dusting up application, but if enshrining be needed, let this be it.
+* The suggestion to alter something like [[Pete Tyler (Pete's World)]] to [[Pete Tyler/Pete's World]], or heaven forbid [[Pete Tyler/Other realities/Pete's World]], is rejected with '''extreme''' prejudice. Have mercy on the pipe trick. (Yes, we could use redirects, but we don't ''need'' to and this would just make everything more confusing.)
+=== /Non-valid sources ===
+I'm surprised and delighted by the wide, essentially unanimous support this one has gotten. I expected that the inclusion of non-covered sources like charity stories, and works from series that crossed over with the DWU, would remain controversial even if splitting off proper {{tlx|invalid}} information to its own page would not. But I guess not! So, '''it passes''', along similar lines to "Other realities" above: if we have information from non-valid or non-covered sources that needs to be documented in a BTS section as more than a couple of sentences overall, this is justification for the creation of a <nowiki>[[/Non-valid sources]]</nowiki> subpage. With some caveats belowed, Nate's [[Template_talk:NateBumber/NCmaterial#Notes_on_implementation|Notes on Implementation]] should be followed.
+However, a few things must be clarified:
+* '''This policy applies to fiction'''. Rule-1-breakers like statements in interviews are not-covered because it's hard ''to'' cover sanely ''at all'', and indeed the citation proposals at [[Template_talk:NateBumber/NCmaterial#Notes_on_implementation]] don't account for that kind of scenario. Relevant info from such un-sources can continue to be discussed in BTS sections — if available and sensible, ''the BTS section of the Non-Valid Sources subpage'', although in some cases, such as [[The War Chief#Statements by writers]], such information is best kept within a broader BTS overview to which it connects.
+* As regards coverage of stories from non-DWU series that had crossover, '''we should remember that we are doing this as an extension of what we'd be doing in the BTS section for context'''; unlike coverage of {{tlx|invalid}} or charity-DWU appearances, we should not aim for exhaustivity. That is: to editors' discretion, the ''Blake's 7'' parts of [[Carnell/Non-valid sources]] should focus on information which gives helpful context to his appearances in sources we ''do'' cover. It should ''not'' replicate the Carnell page on the ''Blake's 7'' Wiki and proceed to document every aspect of his biography across his ''Blake's 7''-branded appearances.
+* As regards coverage of partial [[Tardis:Valid sources#Rule 2|Rule 2]]-breakers, we must remain ''very'' careful to avoid falling into [[T:NO FANFIC]] territory. ''Iris Explains'' certainly belongs at [[Iris Wildthyme/Non-valid sources]] — but not, to a first approximation, at [[Eighth Doctor/Non-valid sources]]. This could be altered by a second discussion, but I don't think there's been enough (indeed, not any) discussion here of the implications of that part of the policy, to justify such a radical opening of the gates. As with the first item, where it is at all relevant, this information should for now remain confined to in-universe pages.
+As regards formatting, I don't think the idea if continuing to present it as a series of bullet point is warranted. The bullet points are in part an attempt to curtail detail that would be excessive in a BTS section, but the whole point of this change is to allow more thorough coverage of these elements' places in invalid/non-valid sources; we might want to have three, four, five paragraphs, complete with illustration, discussing a character's appearance in a given NV source. The bullet points just don't work.
+I think a format that avoids unwarranted "welding" will likely emerge on its own; I think it will look something like the more essay-like avatars of in-universe pages, such as [[The Master's early life]]. Broad section, clustering by common threads and outlooks, not attempting ''strict'' chronology.
+Additionally, '''as a special decision, given the imminent discussion of deeming ''Daft Dimension'' and ''DW?'' parallel universes whose respective versions of character should be covered as their own entities, they are momentarily excluded from this policy'''. ''Once'' we have had that thread, ''if'' they remain invalid and the proposal to treat them as parallel universes (albethey invalid) is not passed — only ''then'' will coverage of them on <nowiki>[[/Non-valid sources]]</nowiki> be encouraged. I think that's the best way to avoid probable unnecessary cleanup work at this juncture.
+=== /Physical appearance ===
+Not very much to say about this one. Except for [[User:Epsilon the Eternal]]'s mild concerns about duplication of information which didn't gather much support, this proposal seems to have been met by broad if somewhat-lukewarm approval, and so it passes. As with other cases, it should merely be a {{tlx|main}}able option when such a section gets too big, ''not'' a "default" subpage like <nowiki>[[/Spoiler]]</nowiki>.
+=== /Biography ===
+This one remains the great white whale. To be blunt, I do not believe the [[T:NPOV]] concerns have reached consensus yet. They're closer. We've had some ''great'' discussion.
+But just look at how quickly every single proposal breaks down as soon as it's operationalised. [[User:Chubby Potato]] argues that [[Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor#Year Two|''The Eleventh Doctor: Year Two'']] is, "in terms of 'what happened in the Eleventh Doctor's life'," "not quite notable as it's basically a single minor conflict for him" (as compared to Series 5 depicting "his regeneration, meeting with Amy Pond, investigating cracks in time, etc."). I had to reread this several times to wrap my head around this: to my way of thinking it's obvious that ''Year Two'' is as major an event in the EU life of any Doctor as you can ''get''. Aside from ''Day'' it's the main instance of the Eleventh Doctor interacting with [[Last Great Time War|the War]] (arguably the most important event in the history of the universe, short of the [[Anchoring of the thread|anchoring]]); and in terms of his emotional journey it sends him into a deep spiral of guilt and self-examination, to the point of disappearing into the depths of a TARDIS to stew in his own self-reproachfulness, above and beyond his exile to Victorian London from ''[[The Snowmen (TV story)|The Snowmen]]''.
+And that's from Chubby_Potato grasping for what I assume he intended as a fairly uncontroversial example!
+But fortunately, we do not have to close this as ''wholly'' unresolved. The end of the discussion brought forth what I have always considered the storngest, almost overriding argument for splitting off Biographies: [[Thread:264489]]'s ruling on preventing pages about highly-recurring characters from getting "too long". It's absolutely terrible that under current policy there is no way to get a biography of Amy Pond that includes all relevant information from her stories. (Which doesn't mean scene-by-scene summaries of her comings and goings, just — well, about the level of plot-mechanics detail of the mid-length summaries discussed back in /Plot, really. Something that gives you intelligible cliffnotes without having to click through to other pages. I frankly don't believe it's possible to summarise Amy's dual part in ''[[The Big Bang (TV story)|The Big Bang]]'' in just three sentences in a way anybody would understand without having seen it first.)
+So, as a first measure, as per the loose consensus, my ruling is this: '''pages falling under the influence of [[Thread:264489]]'s three-sentences ruling, or of similar breadth/length, should have <nowiki>[[/Biography]]</nowiki> subpages where the biogrpahical info can be covered in full detail. The biography on the main side shouldn't ''exclude'' any stories, but should give only limited, one-to-three-sentence coverage to most'''. Indeed, for some minor stories, we could go as compact as [https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/John_Who?oldid=3459793#Travels_with_the_First_Doctor the current, in-this-case-unjustified way that the ''TV Comics'' adventures of John and Gillian are "speedrun" on both their pages].
+Let's try and do this, and see how it goes. Subpages 3.0 might of course choose to fine-tune, extend or alter this in one way or another.
+=== The Optional Add-Ons ===
+Some people made additional suggestions in the "General discussion" area. I am leery of these as a concept, for the same reasons I recently outlined at [[Tardis:Temporary forums/Slot 3: Inclusion debates speedround#Gameplay-based LEGO Dimensions trailers]]. However, two of them seem to have received unanimous, uncontroversial support: "/Promotion" subapges, and the extension of "/Gallery" subpages to pages about non-visual media which pass the original gallery standards (i.e. more than ten images). So I guess those pass. '''/Gameplay, the century pages, and however we sort out the /Production, /Commentary and/or /Commentaries issues should be left for "Subpages 3.0".'''
+=== Final thoughts ===
+Well, I have a headache. But thank you, everyone, for participating in this discussion and making it, if I might add, a much nicer and more productive experience than the first attempt!
+As a final administrative note, please take heed of the fact that subpages, though generally uncategorised, should at the very least be kept in "Game of Rassilon" legacy cats: for example, [[Sarah Jane Smith/Biography]] should be placed in the hidden category [[:Category:Companions of the Doctor]] so that people who edit it (which is functionally like editing [[Sarah Jane Smith]]) still get their rightful GoR XP. If there are any further subtleties I'm missing, with regards to Categories or anything else — well, that'll be material for Part Three.
+Also to be discussed in Part Three is a tabbed display format that [[User:Bongolium500]] has been hammering away at lately, but which isn't quite ready yet. For the time being, let's stick with the existing {{tlx|Main}}, {{tlx|Appears}}, {{tlx|Spoilerlink}} and {{tlx|Gallerylink}} constellation of templates. [[User:Scrooge MacDuck|'''Scrooge MacDuck''']] [[User_talk:Scrooge MacDuck|⊕]] 18:47, 6 April 2023 (UTC)
+=== Footnotes ===
+{{reflist}}
+</div>

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Forum:Temporary forums/Subpages 2.0: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 20:14, 25 April 2024

Introduction

Proposal: /Plot

Discussion: /Plot

Proposal: /Other realities

Discussion: /Other realities

Proposal: /Non-valid sources

Discussion: /Non-valid sources

Proposal: /Physical appearance

Discussion: /Physical appearance

Proposal: /Biography

Discussion: /Biography

General discussion

Commentaries

Centuries for location pages

Promotion

PROSE illustrations

Gameplay

Final Thoughts

Conclusion

/Plot

/Other realities

/Non-valid sources

/Physical appearance

/Biography

The Optional Add-Ons

Final thoughts

Footnotes

Navigation

Wiki tools

Page tools

Categories

Proposal: `/Plot`

Discussion: `/Plot`

Proposal: `/Other realities`

Discussion: `/Other realities`

Proposal: `/Non-valid sources`

Discussion: `/Non-valid sources`

Proposal: `/Physical appearance`

Discussion: `/Physical appearance`

Proposal: `/Biography`

Discussion: `/Biography`