Forum:Relaxing our fan works policy (within reason)

Index → The Panopticon → Relaxing our fan works policy (within reason)

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If this thread's title doesn't specify it's spoilery, don't bring any up.

Proposal

This is my first thread that I've written under the temporary forums system, so it might be a little rough around the edges. I would like to preface this OP by making it clear that nothing in this thread would allow for these works to be covered as valid sources, because they do fail Rule 2. This proposal is simply about extending the treatment that we give the Audio Visuals to other fan works that are of historical notability to the fandom, whether it's through being referenced/acknowledged in sources that are fully licensed, or by being mentioned in critical essays, articles, or books about the Doctor Who franchise and its fandom. These works would not be cited even on "/Non-valid sources" pages, unless there was a licensed concept included. And any further fan works beyond the ones that are mentioned in this thread would require individual debates to have articles created.

So, let's get started.

Specific examples

The Doctor and the Enterprise

It is important to note that The Doctor and the Enterprise formerly had an article on this wiki. It was deleted years ago, but I do not think this was the right call. It is very much something that is noteworthy enough to have an out-of-universe article. Copies of it were everywhere in the 80s - it became, by some accounts, THE most reprinted fanzine of all time. It has received professional notice - being discussed in John Kenneth Muir's A Critical History of Doctor Who on Television, being acknowledged on the website of Tor Books, and referenced on the blog of prolific Trek author Dayton Ward. I think that such a work is easily notable enough to qualify for its own page, which would just entail undeleting the existing page and perhaps cleaning it up.

Time Rift

Time Rift is one of those works that is notable due to its connections to licensed Doctor Who fiction. Written by Jonathan Blum, it introduced the character of Adrienne Kramer, who would later reappear in Vampire Science. Blum thanked the cast and crew in the opening pages of Vampire Science! It's also been mentioned in D. G. Valdron's A Pirate's History of Doctor Who. This one would probably qualify as a NOTCOVERED candidate, in fact, and be included in "/Non-valid sources" pages for Adrienne Kramer, etc. I don't really have much more to say on this one.

Devious

This is probably the "easiest" sell, because part of it was already included in an official release, in the form of Devious (home video). My proposal is that we would also create Devious (fan series) to cover the overall work, and slap an {{invalid}} template on the page. It's worth noting that the Daleks and TARDIS props built for and used in Devious were literally borrowed by the crew producing The Curse of Fatal Death to be used in that story, so there's a production connection as well. Not all of the Daleks in Curse were from Devious, but some of them were, and the TARDIS interior set seen in Curse was specifically built to be used in Devious and loaned out. Again, not much to say here, but it does segue into the last example.

Fan films where Doctor Who actors reprise their role

There are TONS of these. And honestly, I don't think every single one of these needs an article. It'd be too cumbersome to have one for Gene Genius, one for each of the various ones where Bowerman played Benny in those cruise films, etc. So I think we should roll all of these into a page titled something like List of fan works in which Doctor Who actors reprised their roles or something.

How to implement this

Fan work template

We're going to need a way to make clear that these works are not citable anywhere. I haven't worked on creating a template, but I think something like the old {{unprod}} template at the top of these pages, saying that these are fan works and cannot be cited on in-universe pages, is an absolute must. I'll defer to someone who actually knows how to make templates like this, because I have no idea how.

Dabbing

I really think that we need to give dab terms to these pages. Audio Visuals not having a dab is an eyesore. So I propose that we go with "(fan [medium/format])". Audio Visuals would become Audio Visuals (fan series). The Doctor and the Enterprise would be "(fan novel)". Time Rift would be "(fan film)", I guess, because "(fan home video)" seems absurd to me. You get the point.

Medium pages

We already have fan fiction, but I think we should also create fan film, summarizing the overall history of these things, and talking about stuff like "what was the first Doctor Who fan film created?", with links off to ones like Devious and Time Rift that are notable enough for their own articles.

Conclusion

What does everyone think of these proposals? I feel like this would be a positive improvement as it would allow us to actually talk about the fan aspect of Doctor Who while also preventing the floodgates from being opened so that some random story published on FanFiction.net gets an article. Please give your thoughts on each individual example I cited and my three ideas on how to implement these! Pluto2☎ 20:41, 16 April 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

I like this idea, and support it, but would like to emphasize that Devious (fan series) should be tagged with {{fan}} and not {{invalid}}, as the latter implies IU pages can be made about it. Also, I think having one long article on fan works might be better than creating fan film. So basically rename and expand fan fiction to fan work or something similar. Or, tbh, it could all still be at fan fiction, because films are fiction. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 19:14, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

This one is complicated, with many moving parts that I feel might be controversial. Firstly, I think I support most of the individual proposals without question.

Time Rift is an obvious candidate. I believe that any fan/unofficial work which later influenced a Doctor Who Universe story should have a page on the wiki. This can be something like a character turning up later in a Short Trips adventure or even, more controversially, the reuse of assets by official productions. Devious (fan film) justifies creation simply because the props and sets from the film were used in The Curse of Fatal Death. These should not be fleshed out "covered" story pages in my opinion, they should instead discuss the connections to other covered stories, probably with a plot rundown, but no use for the other detailed sections.

The Doctor and the Enterprise is a whole other discussion I feel. We could cheat in this instance and say that the story might have been influential to Assimilation², but if we're going just on the grounds of "This is a historically important fan project," I think it's valid to call that too vague a definition. But I think I do believe that The Doctor and the Enterprise should have either a page or some mention elsewhere.

One thing I feel strongly about is that we need to have more pages like Fan fiction. In particular, I support the creation of Fan films, not as a complete 100% overview of every Who fan film ever made but instead as a historical look at how fan films got started. What was the first fan film? Did the franchise's growth in America influence fan film culture? Who was the first female Doctor in a fan film? Things like this could easily be covered on a single page without there being any threat of us fully covering fan film in general. I often feel we need more "real world" pages discussing the fandom's history, because it's one of the areas where our wiki is very lacking.

Finally, Fan films where Doctor Who actors reprise their role... This one's weird, because I would love to have this as a resource. But I think many of the people on the wiki who have done fan films featuring a "returning actor" would not agree! It would be less of an issue if 99% of these films were not simply filmed at conventions, meaning getting a returning actor in your fan film is far far easier than you would think. However, I do understand the natural appeal of having that info somewhere on the internet in one place.

Generally, I do agree this is an area where we need to expand our coverage, I am just weary about the extent I suppose. A final note is that I have for a few months been thinking that we need to split Template:Invalid at least into two pieces - one for stories which are invalid and one for stories which we have pages on but do not themselves justify coverage on in-universe section (AKA "not covered"). If we end up with a third one for fan works, that's fine, but I do think a NOTCOVERED template would cover that ground. OS25🤙☎️ 19:22, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Ahhhh! I didn't see this at first. Okay, I have thoughts. So, the relevant policy is T:NO FANFIC which is part of T:NOT, written in Dec 2009. The fanworks discussions in 2009 that I can find are Talk:TARDIS key, Talk:Enlightenment (fanzine), and to a lesser extent (because it shows that charity works were around) Tardis talk:Prefixes/Archive 1. I don't think any of these caused the policy, I think it was people treating the wiki like wikipedia, leading to the creation of the original policy, which User:Tangerineduel wrote based on his needs at the time and policies from other wikis. I could be wrong, he and others are free to correct me. Partially on the basis of this charity works were booted off the wiki in 2011, see Forum:Charity anthology short stories. (Really the policy would be used as a catch all on the issue later, this discussion didn't default to it.)

But this is one of those early policies that didn't have clear discussion that I can find. Talk:DWIN does say that we can't have a list of Doctor Who Fan Clubs (and this extends to Fan Sites) because such a list would be endless and we would miss some. And it's quite right to do so. But Talk:Doctor Who Club of Australia, a year later, explicitly acknowledges, if tentatively, that notable clubs and sites might still be worth mentioning. But Category:Fan websites is incredibly empty - for a variety of reasons. Talk: Doctor Who fan music, Talk: The Doctor and the Enterprise/Archive 1, Talk: I Am the Doctor: The Unauthorised Diaries of a Timelord, User talk:Stardizzy2, and Forum:Canonicity of ''I Am the Doctor'' all touch on the issue, but none of them ever establish clear precedent that fanworks can't have pages here imo. Insofar as there's an issue, it's that R2 -> no page, not just invalid. But that doesn't apply to all fanworks, and it's not immediately obvious from T:VS, it's more a convention.

I have a thread in the works that may surprise some of you that will touch on R2, (though it's weeks if not months away) and while I'm not convinced that it will change R2, it should force us to critically examine it.

With all of this said, I'm not sure where I stand on specifics. Time Rift, sure, Devious, yeah, Enterprise, ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. The talk page for this one makes me feel a little squeamish. But I'd also suggest that we allow Charity publication style articles for particularly notable fan productions in general. If we know a fan production has a direct DWU link, through licensed characters or cast/crew, we create a page that notes that and discusses the production in the broadest possible terms. Similarly if the fan production goes on to inspire DWU work and this is stated in interviews by DWU cast/crew. Najawin ☎ 19:57, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

I do like this proposition in theory. I am all for expanding our coverage of real world topics, and having created a few real world articles I do have some concerns about how far our real world scope should go, as T:VS doesn't tell us what real world articles are okay and which ones aren't, given its predominant focus on in-universe articles. I do feel like our scope, however it exists, should allow us to cover fan works.

I do support covering Time Rift and Devious, but I do perhaps have a little doubt about Enterprise, given it's lack of any official connections, even retroactive, but I feel the argument about it being a very notable fan work is mostly convincing. (This is where a Tardis Expanded Wiki might be ideal, for these edge cases of fan works with official connections. And I don't mean the DWExpanded Wiki, that one is a mess and is not exactly compatible with this Wiki, and covers straight-up fanfic.

One question I do have is: how does this affect the coverage of The Fan Gallery? A Better World ought to be covered, given its licensed connections to Auteur, but a few others may also need to be covered, such as that one with Bernice Summerfield, as well as one other I shan't go into detail about yet given the fact that I wrote it and I do have plans regarding a rerelease without any of the copyrighted elements I don't own. And it is at this point I feel issues may arise with Tardis:Don't wikify your own material, given how some of us Wiki editors are also writers of fanfic with official connections. It's something to mull over.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

20:25, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Enterprise does have very tangential official connections, Jean Airey wrote Travel Without the TARDIS. I just think that particular one is a can of worms because of the talk page.

And yes, WIKIFY OWN does leave some of y'all in a weird position, as does NO SELF REF and our very vague conflict of interest rules. We should probably figure out how to handle this sooner rather than later. Najawin ☎ 20:45, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

This thread addresses two questions: (1) what fan works should we cover? and (2) how should we cover them? Setting aside (1) for now, regarding (2), there's no need to reinvent the wheel: we can and should cover them in the same way that we already cover other real-world content with Doctor Who connections! I've thought about this a lot, and I believe this path provides the clearest design for coverage while allowing for the clearest enforcement of whatever answer we determine for (1), whatever that may be.

For instance, The Brenda and Effie Mysteries is a series of novels, audios, and an anthology, none of which we currently cover. Rather than creating individual pages for the individual releases in that series, or even just one for the audios and one for the novels, we instead just lump all of the releases onto a single series page so that we can cover all of The Brenda and Effie Mysteries' many connections to Doctor Who in a single place. The same is practiced on Blake's 7, Star Trek, etc. We only create pages for series with concrete links to Doctor Who; an episode of Phineas and Ferb may have referenced Who, but we do not have Phineas and Ferb (series).

This precedent extends to fan works in a very straightforward way: Create pages for series, not stories. If any individual fanwork meets our criteria for real-world coverage, we cover it not on its own page but on a page for the series it belongs to. If it is not part of a series, it can be covered on a series-like overview page like Charity publication. Only create series pages for fan works which are notable enough for the wiki to cover under (1); if a fan work does not meet this criteria, we do not create pages for it or its series, just as we do not have Phineas and Ferb (series).

I'm not merely speculating when I say this precedent would work for fan works; I know it does, because I've recently created a number of pages for fanzines and charity anthologies for compatibility with {{NCmaterial}}, and the above precedent is how I've been doing it!

• Rather than making a page for the short story Iris Explains, I made Iris Explains (short story) a redirect to the series that story was published in, Missing Pieces (in keeping with our treatment of valid anthologies as series of short stories).
• Rather than making separate pages for the releases Perfect Timing and Perfect Timing 2, I covered both anthologies on a single series page, just as we would cover multiple Brenda and Effie anthologies on a single page.
• In a case like the story Blink of an Eye, which was published on fanfiction.net separate from any series, I redirected Blink of an Eye (novel) to Fanfiction.net, a new series-like overview page of noteworthy stories published on Fanfiction.net.
• I've only created series pages and redirects in cases which meet our current notability requirements: for instance, with the scope of {{NCmaterial}}, to my knowledge no story in the charity anthology The Twelve Doctors of Christmas meets our requirements, so there is no series page for that anthology.

All of these examples concern fan fiction, but the same precedent would easily extend to fan films and other forms of fan work via overview pages like Fan films, Cruise fan films, etc. Whatever fan works this thread chooses to cover, I have a stong conviction that the existing precedent I've described here is the way to do it. – n8 (☎) 22:17, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

I want to quickly mention that one historical case I strongly disagreement is the banning of fanzines. Fanzines, for the most part, aren't fan fiction, they're usually just reference books on a budget. If we're going to have pages on Downtime – The Lost Years of Doctor Who and Vworp Vworp!, we should be able to cover fan zines which feature important interviews and such. Again I'm speaking purely on a historical nature here. I know at least one fanzine literally made up some of the names for Hartnell stories which are still in-use today, alongside others which were used as recently as the early DWM issues.

As for N8's proposal, I'm not sure I agree with such a limiting level of coverage for relevant stories. I find the Fanfiction.net page very unconvincing as an example of this done well, for instance. OS25🤙☎️ 23:11, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Though I understand that this proposal would not be striving for validity for these items it raises... And I would, at least, be agreeable to Devious as is - I have a bit more of a question about how we should be generally handling the matter of 'Dark Season scenarios' of things like Time Rift where a pre-existing character enters the DWU. Rather than an individual page, mightn't it be more practical to have a list page to notate these instances. (perhaps titled 'List Of Licensed Characters That Predate DWU Debuts') That list page could then be a general home for detailing these characters, their original debuts & potentially link out to Wikipedia coverage of those debuts (if one exists)?

The thing I am wary of is that if we expand ourselves to the extent of full articles on these original debuts - then we might stretching our article coverage in a way that is more than it should be. Sort of like if we opted to start giving all the Cultural References articles... Thinking of that, the 1980s Cultural References list includes Ishmael, a licensed Star Trek novel notable to us for including unlicensed cameos of the Doctor & the wider history of fan culture for those and the numerous other elements outwith Star Trek that it invokes... And we redirect that out to its Wikipedia page rather than having a page for it here. (I am as yet undecided about The Doctor and the Enterprise.)

With the upfront admission of vested interest, I am rather against the notion of having a list of fan films or fan audios in which people (main cast, guest cast, supporting artists or crew) reprise their official roles in an unofficial capacity. Aside thinking that the remit of covering fan films and audios would be either the scope of a new supplemental Wiki of ours (or the external purview of the DW Expanded Wiki), I am also hesitant about the logistics of necessarily notating some fan productions. Something that DW Expanded has already been rather careful about is the matter of generally letting the creators do the coverage - as a sign of their wishes to be notated. (Some we, of course, can't allow on OWN WIKIFY basis; so we'd need to find a new yardstick on how to ensure that the creatives of a particular production want to be notated so relatively closely to officially produced items.)

The next question to me in this would be that we should - precautionarily - think on how to handle any such instances where a privately commissioned fan production not intended for public viewing or knowledge featuring any such reprisals might become accidentally known in a public sphere. (And also, how we might handle instances where cast and/or crew did their work under intention that the production was not meant for a wider consumption. Gene Genius, if I recall correctly, was initially meant only as a birthday present to be screened for the child, their family and friends. Its appearance online is somewhat outwith that.)

The other matter, as has already been raised, is the odd position this would put a number of our regular editors into in relation of WIKIFY OWN and NO SELF REF. I cannot think of any other instance where - as a list page - so many of us would be a little caught up in that. And there is, of course, the question of interests. It is understandable that any of us might, in all well-meaning and good faith, notice a fellow editor has done a fan production that fits such parameters for including... And add it. But would that necessarily be a proper thing to allow scope for occurring? I'm not so sure.

In terms of dabbing - at least for Devious, at this stage of my feeling - would (fan work) or (fan production) not suffice? Beyond this, as much as I can else say is of my vested interest: I've been on the helm of fan productions that have featured contributions of those previously officially involved... And as far as any productions I've been involved in go, I'll immediately make it known now that I do not wish those to be notated upon this Wiki amidst official materials. (In terms of any future potential 'character who existed before their DWU debut within a fan work or other media' scenarios I might one day cause, I'd say a whole article on here regarding the non-DWU item where they debuted would be a bit excessive. In terms of any future potential 'I let an unlicensed fan production use a DWU creation of mine, in the spirit of good fun.' situations, the same also applies.) JDPManjoume ☎ 18:41, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

In answer to Nate, I have to agree that I'm not convinced by the proposed solutions to notable fan-works that aren't meaningfully part of a series or anthology. I agree that the policy should match what we with non-fanfic "works with DWU connections"… but as a matter of fact, I have long wanted to reform Category:Real world series with DWU connections to allow for pages on standalone works, such as various standalone works of Paul Magrs's (Exchange comes to mind).

Again this is not to say we would have individual pages on short stories in charity anthologies, nor even on individual entries in Brenda & Effie (or the Sci-Fi Sea Cruise films!). Indeed, though I am obviously not qualified to make any kind of ruling on the matter, I want to submit that I don't see why there would have to be a page on A Better World — surely The Fan Gallery would suffice? But I don't think we should try and make up loopholes like FanFiction.Net when we find ourselves faced with resolutely standalone works. I think the fact that no analogous solution was ever found for Exchange is fairly strong evidence of the unintuitive nature of the requirement.

As regards private fan-works, this is news to me regarding Gene Genius but I am not sure it sways me. Private fanfilms are private; we wouldn't cover them simply because we couldn't reliably source their existence. Ones that were intended as private twenty years ago, but leaked, and are now a single Google click away from fans' enjoyment… well, it's unfortunate for their creators, but their creation has become a de facto part of the DWU's history by that point. You worry about fan-creators wanting their stuff covered, but I am just as dubious of the suggestion that (as concerns stuff that is already in the public sphere either way) we should lose any sleep about the feelings of fan-creators who want their stuff not to be covered. It's not as though we would oblige should a DWU rightsholder tell us that they'd rather we deleted our page on The Master (The Destination Wars), or The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Man Inside, or [Etc. etc. Insert Old Shame Here]. If it's out and relevant, it's out and relevant.

In any case I'm not entirely sure what the T:WIKIFY OWN concerns are here. It is already the case that many writers of licensed fiction edit to one degree or another; it is already the case that a non-themself-COI-laden editor might notice a recent licensed release by a fellow editor, and create that, in a way that some particularly anxious COI-avoider might bristle at. And those cases are surely more COI-involving than fanfiction which, generally, is released for free, and thus constitutes no actual financial stake for the creator involved. If we can live with one, we can surely live with the other. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 10:59, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

That's definitely a hypothetical that's crossed my mind wrt my upcoming conflict of interest thread Scrooge. Suppose I completely misunderstand your story in [REDACTED UPCOMING WORK] and my summary of it is awful, from your perspective, or I make some notes that correct perceived errors in the work - similar to the ones I made at Pre-narrative Briefings. There's definitely some chance that I get a very polite talk page message. As far as Wikify own specifically is concerned, my thought was that only a few editors work in the fan works side of editing, and those are the same few editors most likely to have contributed, and there's definitely a non zero chance that this causes an issue - especially if one of them decides to wikify a work that they think is notable but nobody else is aware of. I'm not sure this is a problem per se, but it's definitely something we need to be aware of and have very firm ideas on. Najawin ☎ 18:55, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Here's my take. If Paul Magrs made a statement "I'm releasing a new novel, it features the Celestial Omnibus in a cameo, and I do not want it covered on Tardis Wiki," then I think it would be fair to call said story non-valid or even to go against having a page on it. However, if Paul Magrs requested that we don't even mention said novel as a single sentence behind-the-scenes blurb on the Celestial Omnibus page, I would say that isn't reasonable. Recognizing the existence of something we don't cover is very typical, and in the case of Gene Genius we've long referenced that story on the page for Do You Have a Licence to Save this Planet? and 24 Carat. I don't see any issue with a statement like:

Sylvester McCoy and Sophie Aldred briefly reprised their roles of the Seventh Doctor and Ace in the unofficial fan film Gene Genius. Aldred also appeared as Ace with Deborah Watling as Victoria Waterfield in Crossed Lines, a fan film featured in The Megéve Experiment.

It would not be uncommon to see statements like these on our wiki right now. If there's anyone who regrets the production of Gene Genius, we don't dox them, we don't list the cast members, we don't list the writers... It's just a statement of fact which is pretty reasonable. OS25🤙☎️ 19:51, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

I guess the discussions at User talk:Doug86/Archive 1#Page deletion, User talk:CatherineMunro#Page deletion, and here are kinda relevant? Not exactly analogous. Najawin ☎ 20:13, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

The main reason I don't like the practice seen at FanFiction.Net is that I think these stories deserve, at the very least, a blurb. Limiting them to a list or a table is just underselling how interesting the concept is. The minimum these topic deserve is a couple sentences recapping the plot and then explaining how this unofficial thing was influential to something that was ultimately released. OS25🤙☎️ 02:02, 1 June 2023 (UTC)