Forum:Validating non-fiction: Difference between revisions

Forum:Validating non-fiction (edit)

Revision as of 18:20, 9 July 2023

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PintlessMan

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 ::::But I just don't see an argument here? It's that perhaps we should document things in the BTS sections better - indeed we should - or there being an assumption that BTS sections are somehow inferior given the issue at hand, or that the thing described is "plainly true within the narrative itself" (I'd love some examples for this, just to see what you're referring to, if you don't mind). These aren't arguments per se. There's no fleshed out reasoning for ''why'' we should validate non-fiction. Do you have one? Or is this just that you would prefer certain comments to be seen as IU and don't see a reason why they aren't already? [[User:Najawin|Najawin]] [[User talk:Najawin|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 17:30, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
+:::::I think I made my case pretty clearly, given that everyone else has been capable of engaging with it, and I am not going to be drawn into an endless pedantic back-and-forth over whether my arguments are "arguments per se".
+:::::I am putting this as plainly as I can: There is a large corpus of fully licenced Doctor Who Universe material - stretching back nearly 60 years to the various toys and merchandise of the Hartnell era - all information from which is currently segregated to BTS sections. This information is not "behind the scenes": it is part of the fictive content of the Doctor Who Universe. If an officially published BBC reference book is stating things as fact about Doctor Who characters, then the Doctor Who wiki should report those facts as what they are, i.e. facts about those characters, not as BTS trivia. All this information should be fully integrated across in-universe prose section, article titles, and the category and template systems, just as information from fiction is. Allowing this would also have the effect of motivating editors to dig up and wikify such lesser-known materials, as they will be writing coverage that people will actually see. Article titles are frankly far more important than any BTS section; to a large extent they determine how casual fans will talk and think of a character or other element. They should accurately reflect the official sources, regardless of the personal preferences of particular editors.
+:::::To pick a random example of the kind of coverage I would like to see improved: why isn't Character Options' Personal Tardis Arm Worn Time Travel Device covered as an in-universe device, and categorised as a TARDIS variant? That is what is it presented as. Currently, it does not even have an article. There are multitudes of similar offbeat and obscure contributions to the DWU that could and should be covered, but are not because of the wiki's arbitrary nonsense.
+:::::By "plainly true within the narrative itself", I'm referring to cases like the Child Master from Titan Comics, who is explicitly given the name "the Child Master" (including that proper-name capitalisation) in lead-in teaser text at the start of one instalment, yet whose article is still bizarrely located at [[The Master (The Then and the Now)]]; and the Morbius Monster, an objectively official name which was reverted to the fan-fiction name "the Second Morbius" (though that should be resolved soon, as another source has been discovered). My proposal is that, rather than waste time endlessly arguing whether or not to use official names (a decision a fan wiki really has no right to make, and which often ends up privileging fan coinages over official sources), we should just use the official names whenever available. [[User:PintlessMan|PintlessMan]] [[User talk:PintlessMan|<span title="Talk to me">☎</span>]] 18:20, 9 July 2023 (UTC)