Forum:References into Worldbuilding

Index → The Panopticon → References into Worldbuilding

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Opening post

Just a short one, this, but a good 'un.

On this Wiki, we have a section for references on source pages (not the academic kind, but a collection of in-universe elements with their own pages that are "referenced" in a given source). I dunno where this practise started, but today, you can see it on pages from Rose (TV story) to The North West Historical Society (feature) to The Lonely Assassins (video game). It is quite a good section, although, as evidenced inadvertently in Forum:Non-valid Continuity sections, categories, and prefixes, perhaps not the most intuitively named.

In said Forum, after @Najawin highlighted the fact that he didn't understand the difference between the References and Continuity sections of articles, given that "references" generally is more akin to a list of citations outside of this Wiki; @Scrooge MacDuck stated that, to be more precise when he was building the Jenny Everywhere Wiki, he renamed the "References" section to "Worldbuilding".

So yeah, that's the proposal. Follow the Jenny Everywhere Wiki's suit and rename "References" into "Worldbuilding". It is more concise and illuminates the subsection's purpose effortlessly. This change wouldn't even be difficult to accomplish, it'd take just a bot sweep. Thoughts? – The preceding unsigned comment was added by Epsilon the Eternal (talk • contribs) .

Discussion

Well, I wrote a section for this for my forthcoming R4bp post. (It's coming, it's coming, I promise. Almost done.) But briefly I don't believe this solves the issue in any way. See the comment I made at Forum:Non-valid Continuity sections, categories, and prefixes just for the most obvious example of the problem.

Continuity is similar to the "references" section, really, except that it usually includes things of narrative significance.

I swear to God, I could not tell you what this means concretely. Quite frankly, I have no idea if I'm for or against this proposal because I don't understand what a continuity section is as opposed to a reference section.

If we just rename "references" this doesn't solve the problem - it just changes the words used to express the fundamental underlying issue. The issue is that "continuity" is poorly defined in terms of the wiki, not that "references" has a confusing name. See Thread:117229 in User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon I for more. Czech's criticisms in this thread are about the epistemic differences between continuity and references - how no user can ever be confident at placing any fact in either section, as well as the fact that based on how our wiki defines the DWU the definition seems perhaps slightly incoherent. I really do encourage everyone to read that thread. Najawin ☎ 22:56, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Even if it doesn't fix the underlying problem, as you say, there isn't any harm in renaming the section regardless.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

22:58, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Sure, but I do want to note that I don't think it's related to my concerns in the thread in the OP. If people wish to do it they may. Najawin ☎ 23:16, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

So firstly, I don't think this proposal, in order to be worth implementing, needs to single-handedly resolve the confusion on precisely what these sections are. It's enough that it makes it significantly easier to have a discussion on that confusion. Because as it stands, any attempt to explain what the "continuity" section does tends to start talking about "continuity references" in the plain-English sense of the phrase, and pretty soon it devolves into gibberish. If we give "references" a less ambiguous name, we can at least be free to talk about the items in ==Continuity== as "references to past stories" without needlessly confusing the debate! I think that's reason enough to make the change even if we don't thereby believe ourselves to have solved the broader issue.

But with that being said, I agree “Continuity is similar to the "references" section, really, except that it usually includes things of narrative significance” is gobbledegook. It's just that I think this thread is completely confused about what the sections even are; it wholeheartedly fails at capturing the underlying rules which I think editors have intuitively converged on, even without a pithy summary to guide them. And perhaps those were not the purposes that the originators of these sections had in mind, but, you know, new-T:BOUND. The way editors now do things across the Wiki is what matters, even if it should turn out that the whole thing started as something of a misunderstanding 90,000 pages ago.

By my reckoning, in terms of current practice:

"Worldbuilding" (hitherto "References") is for summarising in-universe tidbits that are present in the source, but are not plot-rlevant and thus not included in the plot summary. It basically ensures that every in-universe page that uses a given story as a source, will be linked to from the source-page, as well as linking back to it.

Examples: "The Doctor mentions the [[Urgulbons]] of [[Planet 15]], who are stated to have five legs." "[[Albert Einstein]] makes a cameo among the guests at at Santa Claus's Halloween bash."

"Continuity" is for discussing the ways in which the present source makes references to, or was later referenced by, other covered sources.

Examples: "The Doctor summarises the events of TV: Classic Story to Amy Pond", "A panel from this story was later shown as a flashback in COMIC: Anniversary Continuity-Fest when the Doctor's memories were extracted by the Muddlon Brain Machine".

I just don't think there's that much overlap when you put it that way. There are, I think, two main sources of confusion besides the current names. Firstly, sometimes "Worldbuilding" items (or "References" items) aren't original to the source; sometimes they're things that have shown up before. "The Doctor mentions the [[Zygon]]s". But the aims are different. In a "References/Worldbuilding" section we should not care whether the mentioned Thingie has been mentioned before, just document the mention/cameo and its context. In a "Continuity" section, the fact that mentioning the Zygons is a continuity reference to a specific past source is what we're interested in. Indeed, the same factoid might belong in boths sections, cast in dfiferent lights.

The second is that we used to word Continuity points as in-universe statements, i.e. very much like "References". In both cases the line would have read "The Doctor mentions the Zygons.", it's just that the Continuity version would have appended "([[TV]]: ''[[Terror of the Zygons (TV story)|]]'')". But, you know, that's been deprecated as of Forum:Non-valid Continuity sections, categories, and prefixes. Now, in terms of best practices, Continuity sections should wear their out-of-universe perspective on their sleeve, and that makes it abundantly clear that they deal with ways in which a given story connects with other stories, which I don't think anyone in their right mind would confuse with the "Worldbuilding" points which explicitly should not bring knowledge from other sources into their wording. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 23:22, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

I mean, I strongly disagree that there's little to no overlap, we can easily just apply the argument Czech gave from the thread I referenced to your hypothetical examples. Suppose there's a story where the Doctor decides to travel with scientists in the 31st century across the deserts of planet 15 and they've heard competing stories about how many legs the Urgulbons have but no editor has read the story because it's in some obscure short story collection from the 70s. Any piece of "worldbuilding" can be part of continuity and we just might not know it.

But I also am not convinced that this is how we consistently use the continuity section. See, for instance, Dalek. It's just the fact that the super phone appears that places it in the continuity section, not that it was upgraded in a past episode. Or just a joke being repeated. Hell.

The Doctor has previously had a group of soldiers aim their guns at him. (TV: Aliens of London, World War Three)

C'mon. If we're invoking T:BOUND as to what these things mean I'm really skeptical that your suggestion is at all accurate. Lest you think I'm cherry picking, I encourage everyone to click through, say, the Dalek stories from the new series. There's quite a few stretches. Najawin ☎ 02:03, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

To be honest that example from Dalek is a broad statement and should just be removed. Even without this discussion, it should be removed.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

02:12, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Examples like that are relatively common. From Journey's End (TV story):

The Doctor's TARDIS has been captured before. (TV: The Poison Sky)

This is not me tilting at windmills or cherrypicking examples. (I literally chose Dalek because it was rewritten as a test case from one of those "continuity v references" threads.) These sections are a mess. Najawin ☎ 02:20, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

@Najawin, after having the differencs explained to me by Scrooge MacDuck once, I think I fully understand and struggle to see your difficulty understanding. The current "references" section, terribly named and should be named "worldbuilding" (as I support, let the thread note) is for, basically, "new bits of lore this source introduced which may be referenced in another source's ==continuity== section". That's it. You should never see any citations in the Worldbuilding section, because it's all information from this source.

Also, I think that we should have two subsections for "continuity" - "references from other sources" and "references to other sources". But that's less vital than what this thread aims to do. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 06:01, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree with renaming References to Worldbuilding, it's a lot more intuitive and makes more sense. (Although the line between Continuity and References/Worldbuilding is still somewhat thin.) Aquanafrahudy 📢 07:44, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

I would welcome more clarity on the references/continuity divide, and renaming it in this way seems like it might help. SherlockTheII ☎ 09:36, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

I grant that you're not cherrypicking, Najawin, but I maintain that such items are overreach and should be rewritten or deleted. People holding the Doctor at gunpoint is not a continuity reference to an earlier story. We probably needn't get bogged down in T:BOUND technicalities because the present thread will just be able to rule on whether such notes should be deleted or not, whatever the past state of affairs.

As for the hypothetical Urgulbons continuity point… again, what you're missing is that in my view this is not an either-or proposition. I say the item about the Urgulbons belongs on "Worldbuilding" whether or not it also belongs in "Continuity". It should be placed under "Worldbuilding" on principle, and if such a 70s Annual story is later discovered, we should additionally write "the Urgulbons were previously seen in PROSE: The Obscure Odyssey" in the "Continuity" section — but that does not thereby make the earlier "Worldbuilding" note incorrect. We can and should have both. If you bite that bullet, the only remaining issue is that the "Continuity" section can only be complete if editors have the required information to add, which, I mean, that's true of anything. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 10:51, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Ettolrahc, I've had that same distinction told to me over years. I still do not understand it. It's epistemologically bankrupt.

As for Scrooge's point, the issue is more subtle than this, and it's about deciding where on the page it belongs based on the subjective mental states of editors, not that we simply don't know about certain things. We recognize the thing is important, but not what section it's to be properly placed in. As for the idea that it belongs in both, in potential solution to this issue, this is only leaving me more confused as to what your new proposal actually is. Do you mean not plot relevant for the specific episode? If this is the case - as opposed to relevant to the relevant DWU plot's being referenced, then continuity is practically (not completely, but largely) a subset of worldbuilding/references.

And while we don't need to get into T:BOUND here as the thread can change things, I do think it's important to note that what you're proposing isn't current practice, we use continuity for all sorts of wide and varied things, such as, say, recurring thematic motifs. (That's a rare one, but it happens!) Najawin ☎ 14:30, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

I support the proposal, not least for how it frees up the word "References" to be used for <ref>. Currently, editorial footnotes are messily interspersed with external references, such as in Faction Paradox (series)#Footnotes; Wikipedia separates these into "Footnotes" (using {{notelist}}) and "References" (using {{reflist}}), and so should we. I move that this be explicitly allowed in the eventual closing statement. The word "Worldbuilding" is a bit editorial for my tastes – it doesn't feel like a section header for a serious encyclopedia, does it? – but I haven't thought of a better alternative.

Regarding #Continuity, I understand neither the confusion nor the relevance. The practical difference is that bullet points in #Continuity include links to one or more other stories, whereas bullet points in #References don't. Relatedly, #References is where Shambala108 puts links to orphaned pages. We could spend thousands of words arguing about what bullet points fall under one or another definition of #Continuity, but this thread's proposal isn't about changing the title of #Continuity! A more relevant question might be, are there any bullet point in #References which can't be described as "Worldbuilding"? I've looked at many, and I'm coming up blank. – n8 (☎) 15:06, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

@Najawin: I do mean "not plot-relevant for the specific episode", yes. That is, not plot-relevant enough to already be linked to within the plot summary. That is the sole reason "plot" enters into it, it has nothing to do with continuity or other DWU plots being referenced!

Again, I think the sane way to divide them, and the one on which editors have largely converged, is that the difference is not in content but in focus, and it is absolutely normal and expected if a lot of the same elements of the story are documented in both sections, from different lenses. "Worldbuilding/References" just collates in-universe information from the story, with no external background given; "Continuity" discusses the ways in which this story relates to other stories (and some of those ways might involve some of the tidbits of in-universe information also listed in "Worldbuilding").

To what extent current practice matches this model is just the sort of T:BOUND debate I didn't want to get dragged into. I agree there are things like "the Doctor was previously shot at in [XYZ stories]" across the Wiki; but I can't help but think that their continued existence goes against the spirit of my ruling on how to format 'Continuity' sections at Forum:Non-valid Continuity sections, categories, and prefixes, and falls under the umbrella of practices which that ruling encourages the gradual abandonment of. But, you know, this falls into the same sort of "probing admins' mind-states when they made adjacent rulings that relied on certain assumptions without formally clarifying them" issues as our discussion on Rule 2 and DiT.

Note that, given the OOU focus of the new-and-improved Continuity sections, actual thematic motifs are not necessarily out of bounds — it's just that the inference needs to be that it's actually a reference to a specific past story, as opposed to happenstance. If an Iris story is an extended riff on the storyline of a particular Classic episode, for example, I think that should go in the "Continuity" section even if there's no actual diegetic connection because everything is a goofy spoof-version of its equivalent in the Classic story. Or if a shot in a new TV story pays conspicuous homage to a famous one from an earlier story. Things like that.

@Nate, I think the Footnotes/References model has merit, but it probably bears discussing at greater length. I would be okay with a closing post to this thread declaring that a "References" section for {{reflist}} is now hypothetically fair game if a future thread rules in favour of that split, but I'd want to see more discussion of the practicalities of the split before agreeing to the split itself, and I feel like such discussion would be a off-topic for this thread. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 16:21, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Here's a fun one, what do we do with things like Doom's Day or TLV? They're written to interconnect, right? Even if they're published in sequential order, there will be calls forward in earlier works. Why does your notion of continuity only flow one way in this case? Najawin ☎ 18:20, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

I never said it did; in fact I said exactly the opposite! See the second example under "Continuity" in my definitions above. "This story was later referenced in [Later Story] in such-and-such ways" is a perfectly valid continuity point. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 20:33, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

But this is precisely the confusion I had! Perhaps I was unclear.

Do you mean not plot relevant for the specific episode? If this is the case - as opposed to relevant to the relevant DWU plot's being referenced, then continuity is practically (not completely, but largely) a subset of worldbuilding/references.

How is it not just a subset if we allow for time reversal symmetry? Is it because we allow things like recurring themes, or similar? What would you put in continuity that doesn't go in references? I'm struggling to understand the difference. One is things we think are in reference to events and objects in the DWU as portrayed in other DWU works that we somehow think "intend" to "reference" other stories I guess (imagine my eyes rolling to the back of my head, etc etc), and the other is references to events and objects in the DWU as portrayed by this work or in other works (that we don't think "intend" to "reference" the other works, even if they reference the specific things in them? I have no clue what this even means). But that little parenthetical at the end is just there to exclude continuity from references/worldbuilding. It's not a natural delineation we find in the world or necessarily in the works. We're just making it up as we go along.

And there's nothing fundamentally wrong with using a socially constructed metric here, we do it for so much, but dear lord would I like a clearer standard than "well I think it intended to reference that prior work and not just the things mentioned in that prior work" and then other people agreeing or disagreeing. As I've said before, all standards are ultimately somewhat arbitrary in how we choose them, but they shouldn't be arbitrary in how we apply them. Najawin ☎ 20:59, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

(that we don't think "intend" to "reference" the other works, even if they reference the specific things in them? I have no clue what this even means)

No! No! No! I never said this! [cries]

I don't know how much more clearly I can put it: the same data-point can, and often should, be present in both sections. We don't need to carve "Continuity" out of "Worldbuilding". The points in the "continuity" section will very likely have been included either in the plot summary or in "Worldbuilding"! This is fine! This is normal! "Plot" documents the narrative throughline of the story; "Worldbuilding" documents the remaining page-worthy fictional contents of that specific story, for their own sake; "Continuity" documents the ways in which the story relates to other stories, which it likely does through plot-points, minor fictional elements, or both.

Let's say we have a story that's, say, the return of the Slitheen, and they're causing trouble in Geneva. The Doctor might have a line that goes: "Slitheen in Switzerland? Well, why not. I've fought Zygons in Scotland, Judoon on the Moon and Urgulbons in Uganda!"

In the "Plot" section, we would discuss the general business of the Slitheen in Geneva, but not say anything about Zygons, Judoon and Urgulbons, because it's just a quip and our plot summaries aren't that granular.

In the "Worldbuilding" section, we would have an item that goes "The Doctor mentions having fought Zygons in Scotland, Judoon on the Moon and Urgulbons in Uganda". We would not mention the Slitheen or Geneva, as those are plot-points, already covered in "Plot".

In the "Continuity" section, we would have a line that goes "This story is a sequel to Aliens of London/World War Three, featuring the return of the Slitheen"; and also two lines that go "The Doctor's lines about fighting 'Zygons in Scotland' and 'Judoon on the Moon' reference the events of Terror of the Zygons and Smith and Jones, respectively". This time the Urgulbons would be the odd ones out, because they wouldn't be a reference to any other stories, nor referenced in any later ones. (But if five years later a Short Trip decides to show us the Eighth Doctor finding Urgulbons in Uganda, or if other stories decide to name-drop the ever-offscreen Urgulbons, we would then add notes about that.)

Do you see now how those sections do different things? Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 21:12, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

No! No! No! I never said this! [cries]

Well I do rather think you said things that implied my confusion as to us reading intention here.

Firstly, sometimes "Worldbuilding" items (or "References" items) aren't original to the source; sometimes they're things that have shown up before. "The Doctor mentions the [[Zygon]]s". But the aims are different. In a "References/Worldbuilding" section we should not care whether the mentioned Thingie has been mentioned before, just document the mention/cameo and its context. In a "Continuity" section, the fact that mentioning the Zygons is a continuity reference to a specific past source is what we're interested in.

I think the issue here is that I'm trying to emphasize the ways in which one might fail to be a subset of the other. I'm simply not seeing a clear way for you to do this. If it were to be the case that continuity was not a strict subset of references/worldbuilding then references/worldbuilding would have the definition I gave above. But if it's not the case, and continuity is a strict subset... I... just... don't understand the point? And the criticism I gave at the bottom still seems applicable to me. Najawin ☎ 23:13, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

But my Slitheen-sequel hypothetical included an example just now showing that "Continuity" isn't a strict subset of "Worldbuilding"! To wit, sometimes plot points, or indeed the entire premise of a story, might be worthy of a "Continuity"-item. There's no way, say, "This story is a sequel to TV: The Daleks" on Return to Skaro could be rephrased as a "Worldbuilding" item. So that, right there, is an example of a "Continuity" item that's not also a "Worldbuilding" item.

Though I don't think this is key. Like… take characters. Let's look at Astrolabus. "Astrolabus reappears, having first been introduced in COMIC: Voyager" is obviously a shoe-in for the #Continuity section of his second appearance, COMIC: Polly the Glot. But no matter what, he should also be listed in the #Characters subsection. The same data-point — Astrolabus's presence in Polly the Glot — needs to be recorded both as a fact about the contents of the story, and as a point of continuity between it and other stories. I don't think this is confusing or redundant.

And to my mind, it is by the same, intuitive logic that "The Doctor mentions fighting the Zygons before" belongs in both sections, but cast under different lights. We include it in #Worldbuilding no matter what, as a fact about the contents of the story; then, if it's not just a fact about the story's contents but also a continuity-reference, we state as much in #Continuity.

If I'm reading you right, I think you've somehow misinterpreted me as saying that we should try and probe the writer's intention: put the Zygon line in #Continuity if it's "intended to reference that prior work" and in #Worldbuilding if it's "just intended to reference the things mentioned in that prior work". I agree this would be insane and unenforceable, but that is not at all what I'm saying. The Doctor mentioning that he once fought Zygons in Scotland is objectively both an in-universe reference to the Zygon species, thus warranting inclusion in #Worldbuilding, and a continuity-reference to the particular story Terror of the Zygons, thus warranting inclusion in #Continuity. And we should thus cover the line in both sections, at the same time, but from different points of view — much as we functionally write "Astrolabus is in it" twice over the length of the Polly the Glot page, for different reasons. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 00:55, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Hmm. I guess the Slitheen example shows this insofar as you've walled off plot relevant things from references/worldbuilding, maybe. Surely this is a woefully inelegant solution at best. (I note that this walling off should have us question the usage of the Astrolabus metaphor, no? We hardly wall off plot relevant characters.)

I think you've somehow misinterpreted me as saying that we should try and probe the writer's intention: put the Zygon line in #Continuity if it's "intended to reference that prior work" and in #Worldbuilding if it's "just intended to reference the things mentioned in that prior work". I agree this would be insane and unenforceable, but that is not at all what I'm saying. The Doctor mentioning that he once fought Zygons in Scotland is objectively both an in-universe reference to the Zygon species

See: Android boyfriend. There is no objective standard here that you're proposing. There's a subjective standard - what we decide. I would very much like a coherent, clear standard. But it's very obviously true that there are cases where comments are veiled and there's just no metric you've given for how we can try to place things in the appropriate sections. Najawin ☎ 01:22, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

I am running out of different ways to put it, but let's try this one more time. I think "trying to place things in the appropriate sections" is the wrong way to think about this. There isn't a mass of undifferentiated "things" that you're trying to place in one section or another!

The #Continuity section is here to discuss the ways in which a given story relates to other stories. It is not, in and of itself, a place to collate tidbits of in-universe information; some might just get brought up in the business of discussing the way in which the story relates to other stories. If any elements of the story that come up in #Continuity weren't already reflected elsewhere on the page, that would, if anything, be abnormal.

To my mind — if you take a given story, then all the raw, Wikifiable fictional information therein should be reflected on its story-page. Events in the plot go in "Plot", featured characters are listed under "Characters", and whatever is left that's Wikifiable enough to be cited back to this story on other (in-universe) pages, we list out in "References/Worldbuilding". Those three sections are the ones between which you divide the raw pile of in-universe data.

Then, the #Continuity section is something else entirely. It's the one place in the story page where, instead of using exclusively what's in the source, you're going to start bringing up the contents of other stories. It's where you look back at all those events and characters and miscellaneous-worldbuilding-details that you've extracted from the raw source, and you discuss the ways in which some of this stuff ties in with what was depicted in other stories; whether that be the consequences of a plot-beat, the reappearance of a character, or something else.

A measure of subjectivity might exist in terms of what we identify as continuity-points — but that's a different question. There is no subjectivity involved in what goes in the other three, this-source's-contents-only sections of "Plot", "Characters" and "Worldbuilding/References". Maybe "whether X is a continuity-reference or not" is sometimes debatable, but it's no argument against including "X" in #Characters if "X" is a character; it doesn't create a basic confusion between what the #Characters and #Continuity sections are. Why should it be otherwise if "X" is a name-dropped planet, and thus belongs in #Worldbuilding? Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 01:41, 1 August 2023 (UTC)