Forum:Quotes or transcripts

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Spoilers are strongly policed here.
If this thread's title doesn't specify it's spoilery, don't bring any up.

Obviously we couldn't host the actual video files of episodes here since that'd breach copyright, but I am wondering, what is our policy on the inclusion of quotations or even complete transcripts?

I am thinking if we could have complete transcripts of the spoken word in combination with general descriptions of occurances in each episode, that this would be a huge asset to verifying information about what characters say about various topics, and help us word the wiki more accurately. +Yc 06:27, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

See Tardis:Quotes for information concerning quotations.

Any transcripts would likely be fan creations and therefore fall into the T:NO FANFIC policy. --Tangerineduel / talk 07:14, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

How do you mean? The episodes are official productions, not fan fiction, so why would a transcript of them violate the no fanfic policy? --MrThermomanPreacher ☎ 18:49, September 26, 2012 (UTC)

We don't allow complete transcripts on the site for the very reason you've outlaid, MrThermomanPreacher. "The episodes are official productions", which means they are copyrighted, which means it's not fair use for us to reproduce the scripts in their entirety on this site. A passage here and there for academic study is fine, but the whole thing is strictly disallowed. From a legal standpoint, it's not more acceptable to include an entire script versus an entire video. Both things enjoy equal copyright protection.

The BBC have only very rarely released "official" transcripts. Most, if not all, of these were in the series of Doctor Who script books or in conjunction with Doctor Who: The Writer's Tale. Any other transcripts you see on the net are almost certainly a case of a fan transcribing episodes. And that's the aspect of "fan fiction" here. If you've spent any time at all around fan-transcribed scripts, you'll note revision numbers on them, which indicate exactly how inaccurate they really are. These fan transcriptions usually have some kind of stage directions. In the case of missing episodes, one has to wonder just how the fan could possibly give any stage directions at all. Equally, the sound quality in some patches of even the digitally restored versions of missing episodes is so incredibly poor that one wonders if the transcriber really got it right.

Of course, we do encourage you to briefly quote characters within the body of an article, or, less commonly, as a visual element on a page through {{quote}}. As you've pointed out, we want the exact wording where the wording is particularly profound, pithy or noteworthy. But, again, it has to be within the body of the article, and it has to flow with the point the article is making.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  20:18: Wed 26 Sep 2012