Forum:Temporary forums/Dab terms for unproduced stories

Proposal

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

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

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

Discussion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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