Forum:Coverage/validity: A Better World

Index → Inclusion debates → Coverage/validity: A Better World

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Opening post

It was recently ruled that charity stories that have commercial licenses for all DWU elements that they use are eligible to be covered as valid sources on this wiki. Based on this, I think that A Better World should be both covered and valid as writer Aristide Twain, better known on this wiki as Scrooge MacDuck, obtained a commercial license from Jayce Black for Auteur and was careful to use veiled stand-ins for any BBC-owned elements. Cgl1999 ☎ 21:33, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

No.

This story uses far too much unlicensed material to even come close to be considered for valid coverage. Shan Shan, the Brigade, Donna Noble, Time Vortex. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 21:47, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I would like to make a note for the record that I didn't view my closure on that thread as applying to this story — which wasn't technically excluded for being a charity work (which the Gallery wasn't really). If I had, I wouldn't have been within my rights to close it. A better World and the Fan Gallery as a whole were always their own beast. If memory serves the original thread which voted the Fan Gallery off the Wiki left the door open for a Better World inclusion debate, it's only that (very understandably) no one ever got round to it.

And indeed, in my opinion A Better World in its current form probably doesn't belong on the Wiki (as a valid source, anyway — it … would presumably be a {{NCmaterial}} source for Auteur/Non-valid sources? — but that's not up to me). I wrote it in the FPesque "thinly-veiled" style as an aesthetic choice, but I was nevertheless labouring under the misconception that the Fan Gallery was BBC-endorsed, and so freely name-dropped a few things which I never would in a purely standalone work. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 21:52, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I thought that this story might be eligible for coverage if those charity stories were because the page for Auteur says that it was disqualified from coverage due to the Lockdown Fan Gallery being a non-commercial medium of release. Cgl1999 ☎ 21:59, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Oh, it's quite understandable. I'm contextualising the arcana, not chiding you for not having realised something obvious! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 22:03, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

It's just that the way you talked about it made it seem like you practically wrote it so that it could be covered by this wiki. Cgl1999 ☎ 22:08, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

While we're here, let me just note that Corrie's comment above is premised on a misunderstanding we should nip in the bud here and now. It's explicit policy that the IU elements may be in some sense "unlicensed" if they're referred to in a way that they're blurry. See Ceol and Kelsey Hooper. We'd have to talk about Donna being "A Noble Woman", etc etc, instead, but this isn't grounds for disqualification.

The issue is, again, that Scrooge thought that this project was BBC approved rather than just something Cook did for people to post fanfic during quarantine, so it changes things a bit. Najawin ☎ 22:16, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

You don't have to nip anything in the bud regarding what I've "misunderstood". There was no "blurry" reference to Donna, rather the text stated it explicitly. Her first and second names were given in the story - repeatedly, as was "Donna's World". What is so blurry about those clear references? Faction Paradox stories which actually blur the lines, like Ceol, do not go that hard on the reference.

Scrooge's misunderstanding that these were for the BBC changes absolutely nothing. He knew at the time of writing that they were fanfiction. Therefore there is no authorial intent for this story to be considered valid. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 22:29, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I think there's enough leeway in how it's described that you could easily make a case, your view here is far too extreme. But I wouldn't, and Scrooge himself isn't. Najawin ☎ 22:41, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Nah. This story was created with the knowledge that it was fanfiction, there was no authorial intent for it to be valid. The use of unlicensed material is so strong - there's hardly any blurry lines - that there's literally no possibility for a case. This isn't a situation where Ceol Hooper meets up with her old friend Maria (which is ambiguous). This story is literally just a retelling of Turn Left with a few words changed in an attempt to get it covered. This red-headed Donna character (with the name "Noble") being attacked by a beetle of the brigade is not ambiguous in the slightest. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 22:47, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

You're somewhat misdescribing the situation about her name there. And see your comments as to the Brigade or the idea of a Christmas Star. These are fairly generic terms. Again, I'm not gonna try to defend it. Scrooge isn't. But I think it's not as bad as you're suggesting. (Still not great.) Najawin ☎ 23:03, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

You accuse me of misdescribing a situation but then refuse to defend it. That's ridiculous, show me how I am misrepresenting something or don't throw out the accusation.

The story literally has the following: "Her Name is Noble. [] Feed her to the Beetle.", and "I’d set the Beetle on Donna. [] free my Donna of the Beetle’s curse". That is as explicit as explicit can be. There's no blurry lines there. The beetle was set upon Donna Noble. And, as for "these are fairly generic terms" maybe they are (they are not!) but not when they are all used together. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 23:11, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it's ridiculous to claim that someone's argument is overly broad without saying that its ultimate conclusion happens to be wrong. Seems quite normal to me. I also think that there can be a variety of names that are noble without them happening to literally include the word "Noble" in them, and that the word "Brigade" is a quite common one in English and that a Christmas Star is a rather archetypal sort of thing - which is why it's even referred to in the first place. Najawin ☎ 23:27, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

With no ill will or bad faith intended, this story reeks to me as an attempt to piggyback off the Fan Gallery event to trojan horse a fanfiction story into being covered by this Wiki (even as invalid). At the time of writing I believe Scrooge had no writing credits considered to be valid by this Wiki, so I can understand the desire to try and bypass the publishing process by seeking out a licensed DWU character and including them in fanfiction to try and get the story covered. Obviously, the story still had to relate to the episode at hand so a workaround was devised where minimal references were made to the existing concepts (no, I do not believe it was an "aesthetic choice" as claimed earlier in this thread). Even in this thread Scrooge does still seem to be dangling the hook about potential coverage while trying to act like they are not bothered about coverage ("A Better World in its current form probably doesn't belong on the Wiki, as a valid source, anyway"). I find it disingenuous, again no bad faith intended but I think that it is correct to get my actual feelings out so that Scrooge has a chance to defend themself. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 23:33, 19 August 2023 (UTC)

Sigh. I meant to stay out of this thread, I did. But I must say I do resent the accusations of bad faith here, and User:DrWHOCorrieFan seems to want me to respond, so here goes…

I think you're missing some key context. At the time I wrote the poor old thing, the whole Wiki was working under the misapprehension that the Fan Gallery stories were all being published with a BBC seal of approval; they all got pages, albeit as {{invalid}} because their framing as "endorsed fanfics" was held prima facie to imply they failed Rule 4. This is to say that, as far as I knew at the time, the Auteur appearance had no impact on whether the story would be covered on the Wiki because the assumption was that it would be, regardless. (Not that it was the motivation for writing it, either. But it certainly wasn't — couldn't have been — the motivation for licensing Auteur. That's just ahistorical.)

Again, if I'd known the BBC hadn't really authorised them and I'd wanted to actually insure myself against copyright issues, rather than lightly pastiche the style because that's the sort of world Auteur belongs in… well, I could have done it a lot better. I probably wouldn't have used the name "Donna", for a start.

As far as "dangling the hook…"… look, all cards on the table, with big screaming all-caps disclaimers that this is not any kind of admin ruling and you should ignore me: it seems logically inevitable to me that "a fanfic featuring a licensed appearance by Auteur but a lot of BBC-licensed stuff" is a shoe-in for the {{NCmaterial}} area of coverage. (I don't think anyone could reasonably accuse me of having written the story with this in mind, what with NCmaterial not having remotely existed yet three years ago.) I was trying to thread the needle between acknowledging the plainly obvious, and not sounding like I was encouraging such coverage in an inappropriate way. The hemming and hawing and "probablies" are all in service to making it clear that this is not my decision to make, at all, and I'm not trying to claim the authority to make the decision.

(And the "in its current form" has to do with — T:SPOIL forgive me, but it's a mild thing — the significant possibility that a significantly rewritten version of the tale might someday find its way into an actual, professional, printed book.)

In short: I wrote it under the presumption that it would be covered on the Wiki regardless of the Auteur connection; the fact that we were all wrong about this has left it an awkward oddity in a way which annoys me more than anything else, but does seem to me like it somewhat-unavoidably falls within User:NateBumber's NCmaterial area of semi-coverage; if it were up to me the unintentionally-unlicensed version currently available to the public would stay off the Wiki for good. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 00:14, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

(For the record, I actually disagree with Scrooge on a fair bit of this! But I fundamentally agree that the issue is more complicated than it's being portrayed. Which is all I was trying to say.) Najawin ☎ 00:19, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

I knew that I would be accused of bad faith here despite stating several times that it was not my intention to be doing so. That sort of gaslighting that I see people like Scrooge doing in every discussion (I can go through and find multiple examples of this) only proves to stifle other people's opinions in fear of being banned. Newsflash, it is bad faith to accuse people of accusing others of bad faith. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 07:11, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Corrie, I think you're right about what Scrooge's intent with this story was, as his Tumblr page for it describes it as follows:

[A] “canonical” Doctor Who story where a girl strongly implied to be Rose Tyler punches a Faction-member in the face to prevent him from interfering too badly in the life of a woman strongly implied to be Donna Noble.Aristide Twain, aka Scrooge MacDuck

While the page for his next Lockdown story actually contrasts it with A Better World by saying the following:

Unlike A Better World (which, while certainly a tribute to televised Doctor Who, only explicitly used the fully-licensed Auteur), this one, The Last Secret of the Emperor, was fanfiction in the full meaning of the term — not just a homage by a fan, but an unlicensed one.Aristide Twain, aka Scrooge MacDuck

Cgl1999 ☎ 07:45, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Whether Scrooge intended it to pass the four little rules is entirely superfluous to the thread, especially as at the time, he thought that if he used other DWU elements, they would be licensed. Therefore, the only question is whether this is written ambiguously enough to just about pass Rule 2. I will elaborate further on this after I've reread the story.

(Oh, and if we decide it doesn't pass r2, I think it's definitely a {{NCmaterial}} candidate for Auteur/Non-valid sources.) Aquanafrahudy 📢 09:01, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Right, so I'm going to play devil's advocate here and say that I think that I think that the story is written ambiguously enough that it might just pass Rule 2, albeit by a hair's breadth. The name-dropped DWU elements are just that - name-dropped, and don't have any relevance to the plot at all that I can see, or else are ambiguously enough worded that they can easily be construed as something else. With that said, I do think that the argument against coverage is also fairly strong, and am ideologically firmly in the middle of this debate; I am just bringing up arguments for coverage because someone has to. Aquanafrahudy 📢 09:22, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

To say that the referenced elements have no relevance to the plot is insane. The entire story is retelling of Turn Left with no ambiguity whatsoever - that was the whole point of the Fan Gallery.

All of these elements individually could be ambiguous but to have Donna Noble, Shan Shen, a beetle, a Wolf-Woman, the Brigade, the Taskforce. Far less is sued for in copyright cases on the daily, believe me. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 09:53, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

we could just treat the Doctor Who concepts in the Stories as different concepts so instead of the links to Donna being on the page Donna Noblethey would instead go on a page like Donna Noble (a better world) it may seem weird but if we treat them as entirely different characters who just happen to share the same name it could work? I don’t know this just a vague idea. Anastasia Cousins ☎ 14:49, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

I do want to note that Najawin was correct that the ambiguity of "her Name is Noble" was intentional. The name is not meant to unambiguously be "Donna Noble". It just skirts closer to that than I would have done if I hadn't believed it to be a BBC-overseen event. Again — not my determination to make, but I don't think the story really passes Rule 2. It wasn't meant to. The quotes found by @Cgl1999 postdate the Lockdown website going down, by which point we knew the truth; and at that time, I did flirt with the idea that Better World might still skate by, but… since then I've come to believe that was wishful thinking on my part. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 15:07, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

There's no ambiguity. It was an attempt to trojan horse a story onto the Wikia, nothing more. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 15:14, 21 August 2023 (UTC)