Template talk:The Doctor

Proposed Deletion

Thread:193167 is currently given as the reason for this template's possible future deletion, but I cannot find anything in the discussion concerning this template. It was closed because I was getting off topic and talking about this template instead of the template that the thread was created to talk about. There is nothing in it that talks about creating a navbox. Because of this, I will remove the Proposed Deletion from this page in two weeks time if no explanation is given. The Champion of Time ☎ 21:19, April 29, 2016 (UTC)

While I kinda understand where you're coming from, I've gotta say that I support the proposed deletion, and I do think Thread:193167 speaks to at least some good reasons why. I note that the sections of even the version showing today are arbitrary, as SOTO stated. Indeed, the purpose of the whole template is not readily apparent. Why does the line starting with The Blue Angel appear where it does? Why are they not considered alternate versions of the Doctor and put below in the Alternate section?

Also, the Doctor from The Cabinet of Light has a very shaky hold on legitimacy because the follow-up story Child of Time was published under no license at all from the BBC. That story naturally pulls The Cabinet of Light into serious question, so how is this the Doctor at all?

Further, Eighth Doctor (puppet), is a puppet. It's not a copy. The article even says, correctly, that the Doctor thought the likeness was lousy. Copies can't have lousy likenesses or else they're not really copies, are they? (You may well disagree with that question, but even disagreement proves the point that this is a very subjective thing that the template is trying to assert.)

And Xoanon is not a copy of the Doctor except visually, and except for a limited amount of time. If we put this up as a "copy of the Doctor", it will, I'm afraid, prove that we've never actually seen The Face of Evil.

And I suppose I could go on and pick apart many which are at present on the template right now.

But the biggest faults with this thing are two-fold:

1. This is your interpretation of what counts as a Doctor. We have long experience with the companion templates just how divisive such assertions can be. From an administrative standpoint, we don't want templates to be lightning rods for reinterpretations, and thus edit wars. Templates which appear on a wide number of our most-visited pages should be as stable as possible. We allow the companion nav templates to exist because we understand that this is something fans need, and because we keep those templates locked. The fact that no one has created such a thing in the 11 years of this wiki's existence suggests to me there's no great rush for this table. And again I think this is because it's a highly subjective undertaking.
2. This creates a ton of irrelevant links that will reduce the functionality of Special:WhatLinksHere. It's not immediately apparent why Second Doctor should have links to Ganger, or Silver Doctor, or any one of half a dozen "Dr. Who"s or "Clone"s. This template increases by about 100 the number of links on each real Doctor's page — to the absolute detriment of the commonly-used WLH tool.

I understand the impetus for this template, and I commend your use of navbox code to create it. But I'm afraid it's going to be deleted, as SOTO, Shambala108, and now myself have expressed a desire to see it go, and you've failed to get any supporters in the several months this discussion (and the forum one) have been ongoing. Please don't take personal offence at this; everyone, including myself, have had work deleted from the wiki.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  21:10: Fri 17 Jun 2016

Thank you for explaining why this should be deleted. I just wasn't getting it from SOTO's short explanation and this was very helpful. Why, the only personal offence I'm taking from this is your snide suggestion that I've never seen The Face of Evil.

At the time, this was the only path I could see to take, but now I see that this same sorting could be achieved with categories. Well... partially. Category:Alternate versions of the Doctor will definitly clean up the mess that is Category:Incarnations of the Doctor, but I just don't see a good name for the "copies" of the Doctor (copy of course not meaning copy at all, more "a being modelled after the Doctor, but not necessarily perfectly"). Category:Intentional look alikes of the Doctor would cover most of them, but then things like the Silver Doctor and the "copy" of the First Doctor's mind will not be included. But then, the "Copies" section is where most of your problems with this template stem. For now I'll just categorize the alternate Doctors and leave the duplicates till later.

But anyways, as I stated in the first sentence: you won't find any protest here. Although, it does sadden me a bit that the Doctor pages will only be sorted alphabetically and not chronologically. On the plus side, this template has led me to create several rather interesting pages.

P.S. Was it important to bring up The Cabinet of Light. All I did was include include a link to the page. If for some hypothetical reason you were making a list of pages on this wiki which are about an incarnation of the Doctor, wouldn't you include all of them? It seems like you just needed another argument against this template, even if it actually had nothing to do with it.

P.P.S. If you have the time, do you have any suggestions on what to do with the "copies" of the Doctor?

C o T ☎ 00:37, June 18, 2016 (UTC)