Talk:Wild Thymes on the 22 (illustration)

Deletion

This page should not exist --it is already covered sufficiently on the Wild Thymes on the 22 (anthology) page, which is pretty evidently demonstrated by the fact that the only content on this page is explaining that it's its own story and thus deserves a page rather than actually describing the "story" it purports to reflect. I once again want to point to the closing statement that allowed for illustrations to get pages:

While some things we already have pages on as "comic almost-stories", and things like graphics and maps, can definitely be validated on this basis, some degree of caution is warranted regarding the broader class of illustrations. Some illustrations are genuine works of fiction — some even functionally "tell a story" — but we shouldn't start creating bespoke source page on every single untitled picture of the Doctor printed in DWM. As a rule of thumb, illustrations with titles, or otherwise treated as their own items in whatever publication runs them (e.g. their own entry in the Table of Contents), can safely have pages created about them, but untitled ones should probably require their own case-by-case discussion.

An illustration of all of the characters from a book (and Janice) posing outside of a building is not a discrete piece of fiction. As the closing post said, “we shouldn't start creating bespoke source page on every single untitled picture of the Doctor printed”. At bare minimum, this should not be valid, but I am entirely convinced that the page's existence is unnecessary as well. NoNotTheMemes ☎ 15:44, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

This is an interesting one, for me; while it may not deserve a page, I do very much feel like it genuinely portrays a work of fiction. Iris is sitting in a cafe in France while writing in books about herself, while famous people she knows all watch her. It's all very plausible that this could happen to Iris, heck, she essentially does what with all the appearances of Paul Magrs (in-universe) and Obverse Books (in-universe); this sort of event essentially happened in Party Fears Two where she invited lots of her old friends and nearly everyone from Obverse Books to a party in Las Vegas.

If this had been released on Paul Magrs's blog, I don't feel covering this by itself would be an issue? I dunno. But it ain't clear cut and I feel discussion is warranted.

EPSILON^🔎 |📯|📂|📦|📝

16:16, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

We should definitely cover this, though whether it deserves its own page is another matter entirely. Aquanafrahudy 📢 16:34, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Anthology pages are usually pretty bare as it is. The place readers go to learn more about the anthology is the anthology page, so it seems pretty logical to talk about the cover of said anthology in the notes section of that page. If need be, I don't see why we can't cite it (or other covers in the same vein) as [[GRAPHIC]]: ''[[Wild Thymes on the 22 (anthology)|]]'', citing the anthology page itself. With the new citation template we can even specify further details. That last point might need a forum discussion, however. Danochy ☎ 03:53, 11 August 2023 (UTC)

The citation template won't currently work in this situation but I can see about making it work. Bongo50 ☎ 18:53, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Sorry for dropping in, this caught my eye because I was reminded of my own adverse-come-positive reaction when Scrooge first convinced me to make the pages The Dr Who Annual 1966 Contents (illustration) and The Dr Who Annual 1969 endpaper (illustration).

Concerning the sparseness of anthology pages: conciseness is often a byproduct of clarity. Other websites and wikis sometimes cover anthologies by listing all the stories on the anthology page, but this wiki has long aimed for clarity by separating pieces from their multi-pieced publications.

The first poster is right, its awkward how this page fights for its fictionality. However, its clearly fictional in the ways that matter for validity and would be advantageous to cover as such; the validity rules are to keep out non-fiction and this ain’t that. Look at the Portrait of Charlotte du Val d'Ognes (a likely influence on this piece); would you say that this single image contains within itself a created moment in time suggesting a surrounding artist-created past and present? If no, look at the Voord in the Doctor Who Storybook 2010 and think again.

A Paul Hanley book cover is a bad example for the arguments in this thread against (illustration) page coverage, because its filled with so many details and subtle in-jokes which I, as a wiki reader, really want to understand. Given how Hanley’s Obverse artworks are horizontal pieces which continue onto the backcover only seen on physical releases, there’s even an argument to be made that the full illustration isn’t available in the digital copy of the book. As a reader, I want the smart people of Tardis Wiki to have a page telling me all the smart and non-always-intuitive continuity the cover illustration has with the rest of the anthology.

The Annuals illustrations I linked above are an example of how obscure DWU art is improved in coverage by having a page. Who knows, perhaps in six years some future wiki geek will go on a deep dive to find where the other monsters in the 1969 endpaper come from; it’s room for growth! It’s the “yes, and” rule of collaboration! Someday I think it would be good to have pages for all the unique and weird Annual art, including the painted covers of the 1960s (although perhaps not the photo covers of the 70s and 80s; I agree with NoNotTheMemes that pictures are rather different from illustrations.), so I think a good example should be set here. All of these complicated obscure-detail-rich Obverse book covers would be better covered on their own pages. Good day. CoT ? 22:51, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

A further point that occurred to me, forgive the overflow, is that perhaps the core issue is that of anthologies. Compare the covers of The Grel Escape (audio story) and Secret Histories (anthology). Both are quite similar, but I find one much more understandable/legible than the other in terms of meaning. When a cover illustration is paired with a singular release that we have a single story page for, it functions as would an illustration within the book itself; when a similar cover is paired with an anthology, the fact that we split the anthology into many pages means it is unclear what the cover is actually illustrating and what Tardis Wiki story pages it represents. I believe the most accurate way to cover this relationship is to sometimes split the anthology cover much as we split the anthology prose, and to consider it as a piece in itself which has continuity with the other pieces of the anthology.

That is my re-justification for the current form of the page we are discussing. CoT ? 15:55, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

What a mess this is. CoT makes very sound points. The root of the issue is that covers of singular release can be cited as part of that release, and it seems odd to have no method to cite anthology covers that are of much the same breed…

Still, the fact of the matter is that (unlike the Annual illustrations, I would argue, though they be edge-cases!), covers are distinctly outside the boundaries set by my original thread closure. I did not mean to open the door to such pages, and this was quite plain from my wording at the time. T:BOUND can and must apply. Covers with discrete fictional content are a case that simply was not debated in the thread, and we cannot sneak such a broad class of sources into validity in through the backdoor via a spurious page-creation followed by a brief talk-page. That's just not sound policy making.

I mean, it's all very well with Hanley's gorgeous little graphics, but if we inscribe such a precedent into policy, I don't see how we could stop the creation of "(illustration)" pages for the photo-manip covers of BF box sets, for example. That… does not seem productive to me. Perhaps there's some way to carve one out from the other in the text of the policy, but I am not hopeful. We must think about this carefully.

So in short — we've discovered an issue here. There must be some way to document Hanley-type anthology covers in as much detail as this does, and ideally, to include them in lists of appearances. But whether the best way forward is as a subtype of "(illustration)s", to establish a framework for citing the anthology page itself, or what… that remains to be determined, and we should have a thread about it. In the meantime, no further "(illustration)" pages are to be created for anthology covers.

Is someone interested in undertaking the writing of an opening post, or should I do it? Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 01:06, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Not going to lie, I don't think that this makes a very good argument for it being a separate page. I'm not saying that the fun little easter eggs shouldn't be covered --because you're right, that's the exact kind of thing we SHOULD be covering, but we have a perfect page for it! That's where the smart people of Tardis Wiki should be telling me about it. The notion that it's "all very plausible that this could happen to Iris" is not a decision that Wiki editors should be making, lest we start making separate pages for every Big Finish cover. After all, I don't recall the Eighth Doctor standing amongst bubbles floating pink bubbles, but that is certainly something that could very plausibly happen to the Doctor. By the logic imposed above, we'd be justified in making pages for every cover for a Doctor Who story. Heck, lets go for the less abstract ones, like the Virgin New Adventures covers. The cover of Head Games depicts the Seventh Doctor posing with a gun while Mel screams. No such scene exists inside of that story, but it is an entirely plausible thing that could happen to Mel or the Seventh Doctor. Should we have a separate page for that? I shouldn't have to say that the obvious answer is no. (This was all written before Scrooge made his comment, so my apologies). NoNotTheMemes ☎ 01:09, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

As NotTheMemes said, the perfect page to talk about the anthology cover is on the anthology page! DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 01:28, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I certainly don't want to invoke my authorial intent to shut down discussion, not least of which because it's admins who write policy, but to add on to Scrooge's comment, I didn't even intend for Forum:Temporary forums/Non-narrative fiction and Rule 1 to apply to illustrations generally. This isn't to say that I wanted it to explicitly not apply to them, the thought literally did not cross my mind when I wrote that opening post. And I don't think I'm alone in this, nobody ends up discussing it until the closing post. (For the record, now that I am thinking about it, I definitely do think at least some non narrative images should be valid, such as technical drawings or maps.) But I think the fact that we just didn't really talk about this issue and, I suspect, really consider it in the thread, is what's causing some of the difficulties here. For which I take some share of the blame, I fully admit. I absolutely do think we need to have a new thread discussing the issue and refining it - if only for edge cases such as these. I'd write it up myself, but, well, I've got another forum post I'm trying to shepherd through to the finish line atm. Najawin ☎ 01:40, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

A forum’s a great idea! I support whoever starts it!

To try to clear any miscommunication, I’d note my main points are those which Scrooge has succinctly re-summarized in his response. The issue is of anthology versus single release. One thing I’d clarify is that when I referenced “other websites and wikis” I had in mind the big superhero comic book wikias, and how their pages are for publications, containing info on both story content and the covers. Food for thought. We’ll sort this out in the forum, but I would agree with NoNotTheMemes that Big Finish audio anthology covers are covered well as we do it currently; when there’s only 3-4 stories, generally the cover image will be pretty legible in terms of what is representing what, and notes on the anthology page fill in the gaps. The rub is with prose collections of 10+ pieces which have equally idea-dense covers, especially when the complexity of the cover is such that it is conceptually additive and in conversation with other parts of the anthology.

Additionally, an important duality in the upcoming discussion may be ‘cohesive scene’ vs ‘abstract representation’; I certainly think its a big factor in why Wild Thymes on the 22 is legible as an in-universe event in a way that the pink bubbles aren’t. I agree with Najawin though that the ‘cohesive scene’ of it all isn’t a factor that should apply to all illustrations. (I don’t personally think single releases are relevant to this talk, but its worth noting that Virgin required their covers be direct representations of scenes from their books to the point that Lance Parkin had to write a giant floating face into The Dying Days to get the cover he wanted! (Also, that's Dr. Who on the cover of Head Games, accurately depicting the part of the book where he kidnaps Mel.)) CoT ? 03:30, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

(Oh, I misremembered. Parkin had a scene in the book with a giant face to try to get that cover (as an echo of Timewyrm: Genesys), but ultimately it was simply too visually abstract to be approved, hahaha.) CoT ? 03:37, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Ah it's been a while since I read Head Games, so I had forgotten the scene in question. That said, I want to push back on the notion that there is a "rub" with prose collections of 10+ pieces having their covers covered (heh) on the anthology page. The entire contents of this page could very easily be placed on Wild Thymes on the 22 (anthology) and no problems would arise. I'll be frank, describing this cover as "conceptually additive and in conversation with other parts of the anthology" feels like bigging up its nature. It's a beautiful cover that's very well put together, but it can best be described as a picture of Iris sitting at a cafe while various characters from the anthology peer at her. The contents of this page could very easily be placed under "Notes" and "Continuity" with not a feather ruffled. NoNotTheMemes ☎ 03:44, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

To demonstrate my point, I've put together a draft of the Wild Thymes on the 22 (anthology) page the way it should have been drafted to begin with: User:NoNotTheMemes/Wild_Thymes_on_the_22_(anthology). I'm sure we can agree that this sort of cover is definitely one of the most complicated we'd be dealing with on the Wiki, and I think that this sandbox demonstrates it can be covered on one page without losing detail or making things too confusing. If we REALLY wanted to, we could start pushing for coverage of the cover artwork to be done under a subheading, but I really must insist that creating a new page wholecloth is unnecessary and would make for bad precedent. NoNotTheMemes ☎ 03:54, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Whoops, I’m very bad at making decisions. Thinking it over, I could totally start the forum. A lot of the concerns here are about scope, so I sense if someone else started the forum it might be very broad and my not-broad take on the issue could be a sort of derailment. I’m the one making the fuss after all, its my responsibility to do so so that I can be soundly dealt with. If this page creates a precedent, it reasonably should not be one for the creation of 100s of new pages which nobody will read. Therefore, I will start a forum on the specific issue of covers like this.

Thank you for the page creation Memes! It shows that no matter how this ends up, a growth-oriented precedent will be set! It’s a strong proposition, so you have my apologies for still disagreeing with it. CoT ? 04:45, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Like I said, I think the main issue is not about covering the information itself on a page, but on linkage and citation. What of Janice (Wild Thymes on the 22) if we collapse the cover page into the anthology page? Without going all the way to characters who only ever appeared on a cover, what of preexisting characters who appear on the cover but not in any of the prose? (I don't believe Napoléon Bonaparte appears in any story in the book.)

I feel such things really ought to be represented in lists of appearances. I suppose there'd be nothing wrong with citing the anthology itself — [[PROSE]]: ''[[Wild Thymes on the 22 (anthology)|]]'' for that sort of thing. But (although it's similar to the obscure precedent about citing The Dalek Book in gestalt) there's not really any policy allowing such a thing yet. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 11:39, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Would it be possible to have a hidden Template:Infobox Story SMW on Wild Thymes on the 22 (illustration) if it were a redirect to Wild Thymes on the 22 (anthology), and cite that with Template:Cite source? Aquanafrahudy 📢 11:51, 19 August 2023 (UTC)