User talk:RadMatter

From Tardis Wiki, the free Doctor Who reference
Welcome to the Tardis:About RadMatter

Thanks for your edits! We hope you'll keep on editing with us. This is a great time to have joined us, because now you can play the Game of Rassilon with us and win cool stuff! Well, okay, badges. That have no monetary value. And that largely only you can see. But still: they're cool!

We've got a couple of important quirks for a Wikia wiki, so let's get them out of the way first.
British English, please
We generally use British English round these parts, so if you're American, please be sure you set your spell checker to BrEng, and take a gander at our spelling cheat card.
Spoilers aren't cool
We have a strict definition of "spoiler" that you may find a bit unusual. Basically, a spoiler, to us, is anything that comes from a story which has not been released yet. So, even if you've got some info from a BBC press release or official trailer, it basically can't be referenced here. In other words, you gotta wait until the episode has finished its premiere broadcast to start editing about its contents. Please check the spoiler policy for more details.
Other useful stuff
Aside from those two things, we also have some pages that you should probably read when you get a chance, like:

If you're brand new to wiki editing — and we all were, once! —  you probably want to check out these tutorials at Wikipedia, the world's largest wiki:

Remember that you should always sign your comments on talk and vote pages using four tildes like this:
~ ~ ~ ~

Thanks for becoming a member of the TARDIS crew! If you have any questions, see the Help pages, add a question to one of the Forums or ask on my talk page. Doug86 ☎ 21:16, November 21, 2020 (UTC)

Re: Timeline

Ah, I see. Thanks for the response; it cleared it up.

22:58, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Baker's End

Hello! I saw your message on User:Epsilon the Eternal's talk page. I'll leave him to answer regarding Hoover, but as an administrator, I can confirm that the "crossover" (such as it is) in Mrs Frimbly's Festive Diary very much does count as sufficient evidence to open a new thread on the subject of Baker's End in the forums once they reopen.

Mind you, even setting protocol aside, it would not in and of itself shatter the current invalidity rationale; as noted at T:VS, the conclusion of the original debate was rooted in the notion that the series was explicitly intended to be a complete departure from the DWU. As such, while the more DWU licenses it includes, the more likely it is that we will consider it invalid rather than non-covered, the series would likely remain invalid under Rule 4 unless quotes can be found to outweigh those referred to in the original debate. (Or, indeed, unless the alleged quotes in the original debate turn out to have been spurious or misinterpreted.)

Also be aware that you should be personally familiar with any stories you want to discuss in an inclusion debate, so make sure to listen to at least some Baker's End before you launch into such a thread. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 13:45, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

Okay, as for The Christmas Hoover, there doesn't appear to be any mention of servo-furnishings, or anything DWU related. Unfortunately.
Secondly, the "invalidty rationale" of Baker's End was frankly libellous. Former admin Amorkuz, without any form of evidence, claimed that the series was meant to "be a role for Tom Baker to play a role that wasn't the Doctor". It was then determined that the only thing linking the series to the DWU was Vince Cosmos, and for some reason, Amorkuz' wild statement became the invalidity rationale.
I haven't listened to Baker's End yet, but I already have a great deal of evidence, including examples of how the series does use more DWU elements than Vince Cosmos, that will absolutely allow me to open an inclusion debate (once I've listened to the series, of course). Mrs Frimbly's Christmas Diary will definitely strengthen my case. 14:15, 28 December 2020 (UTC)


Margaret Rutherford

Done! But in the future, you can user "rename" tags on image file pages, you know. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 13:26, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Re: A Lady Doctor?

Nah — this has in fact been discussed before, I believe. But the short answer is, reread T:VS carefully: stories can be covered-as-invalid if they fail Rule 1 or Rule 4. But something which fails to be a valid source due to failing Rule 2 (that is to say, not being licensed by all the relevant copyright holders) is not to be covered at all. If it were covered it would be as valid, but it's not. The "Whoniverse Wiki" has a page on it, though, as I think could several other "supplement" or "fanon" Wikis existing in the general orbit of ours. And due to it being a use of the Iris license we can mention it at length in the relevant BTS sections, we just don't have a page about it individually. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 02:14, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Re: Homeworld treatment

I saw your message on User talk:Najawin, and I'd just like to point out that splitting the pages would be extremely unlikely, as contradictory accounts can all be housed on one page. You should see something like Mam (Fanboys) for something which is the same concept, but is contradictory between nearly every account.

22:01, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Homeworld/Gallifrey

I mean, there are already nonzero differences between the two, though they're more a product of differences between how the VNAs/EDAs treated Time Lords/Gallifrey and how the show tends to do so. (See, for instance, Anchoring of the thread and how it's largely PROSE works that make up the page, and how very weird it is compared to what the New Series seems to suggest.) The wiki still treats everything as one entity. Najawin ☎ 22:06, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, as Najawin states, different producers with access to a given DWU concept will contradict each other and diverge. Famously, the Big Finish and BBC Books life stories for the Eighth Doctor are hard to reconcile, at least without making very weird timeline assumptions indeed. Indeed, both brands' Eighth-Doctor-era depictions of Gallifrey are largely incompatible unless you bring in cloneworlds and alternate timelines.
We don't separate things based on narrative contradiction then, so there's no particular reason we'd do so just because the contradictory takes happen to represent distinct legal licenses. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 22:41, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Re: Potential vandalism

Thank you for warning me! I have taken steps. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 00:31, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Re: Phoenix Court Iris / Edith Sitwell Iris

Ok, so it's on page three, before the 20th citation, where Paul Magrs describes the "Edith Sitwell" Iris as a "very old, imperious Iris, [...] A sagacious arachnid; a grande-dame glittering in a carapace of ebon pearls." I believe this mirrors the description of the "lesbian novelist" Iris, and while this is tenuous, you do have to remember how the "Katy Manning" Iris was initially intended to be the "Beryl Reid" Iris, so the line between incarnations is muddy.

14:10, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

I don't have the quote to hand right now, but I'll see if I can get it shortly. As for Magrs' depictions of sexuality with his characters... well, Simon, in his first appearance in Exchange, he was straight, through and through, but in Enter Wildthyme, he's gay, which is a weird contradiction with Exchange, as Enter Wildthyme is otherwise very consistent with the novel. 15:03, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
Whatever else may be true, @Rad, I think you're misunderstanding a key element: Iris's incarnations don't work like, well, Auteur's; "the Edith Sithwell Iris" is not posited to have been the actual Edith Sithwell, but merely to have looked and sounded like Sithwell — to, in other words, be a version that would have been played by Sithwell on TV if there had been an Iris Wildthyme TV series. As such, the personality (let alone sexual orientation) of the character needn't match that of the real-world person at all. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 15:04, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
Again, Epsilon was sort of answering besides the point — saying "the Edith Sithwell Iris" is gay is not alleging Sithwell herself to be gay any more than a story which has the Paul McGann Doctor say he's a bit genderqueer has anything to do with the actual Paul McGann's gender identity. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 15:29, 29 January 2021 (UTC)
Oh, I wasn't necessarily arguing that Sithwell was the lesbian novelist, merely that the Sithwell description doesn't prove anything about whether the incarnation may or may not be a lesbian. (I mean, Tom Baker has intentionally blurred the line between his Doctor and himself more than any other Doctor actor, and he got the famous line suggesting the Fourth Doctor was ace, which Baker is definitely not.)
If you want my opinion on this business, all lesbianism questions aside, it would be this: both the "lesbian novelist" and Sithwell occupy the same "spot" in Iris's regenerative history of potentially being "the original", maybe sorta; but that does not mean they are synonymous. Invalidity aside I'd liken it to Hartnell vs. Cushing. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 15:36, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Quickly chiming in here as a huge Marked For Life fan. What's the case in Bafflement and Devotion is that Paul Magrs is elaborating on all Iris-incarnations that had been featured in his Doctor Who novels up to that point, the Edith Sitwell-incarnation being the physically older version of Iris that shows up in The Blue Angel and lives in the Obverse. The way this character is presented in The Blue Angel makes it very clear that she is identical to the Iris featured in Marked for Life. These two passages should provide a good point of comparison: The Blue Angel and Marked for Life (1, 2) There are loads of other parallels and carried over characters between the Phoenix Court series and The Blue Angel, this is just one of them. Much regards! Poseidome ☎ 11:05, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Re; B&E

Hey Rad, I have indeed read all the Brenda and Effie novels; I find reading the stories one make edits about to be necessary. Been meaning to add all the Brenda and Effie stuff to the wiki for years, but it's never seemed the right environment or the right mood. To quickly answer your queries: Mr Danby is a villain who appears throughout the Brenda and Effie books, and also has appearance in 666 Charing Cross (from what I hear, I've only ever read the first half of the book (didn't interest me enough when I borrowed a library copy)). I have no clue about Mrs Danby and Company and if it fits into the wider Magrsverse, and would be glad to see someone else on the wiki figure that out (although, now I say it outloud, it's very possible that Mrs Danby is Mr Danby's mother). The Soames mention in 666 Charing Cross is only one page out of hundreds, I think it's very minor when reading the book on its own terms, but also I think it's important to cover on the wiki and I intend to sometime within the next few months give the wiki a thorough coverage of Fox Soames. I was the one who mentioned Soames' mention to Epsilon, for what it's worth. Also, the two stories which the Books of Mayhem could actually be said to feature in are Kept Safe and Sound and Mystery Lady (I'm planning on dealing with Mystery Lady on the wiki soon, there's no rush). Also, 666 Charing Cross Road is overall thematically similar to Brenda and Effie and features Bessie, who is Brenda's sister. CoT ? 17:59, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Yo, I'm curious, what'd ya dig up about Mrs Danby? CoT ? 05:07, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Re: Karlotte at the Colette-Willy

Interesting! I think I'll buy a copy of the PDF and see if these should be included on the Wiki.

02:37, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

I hadn't read it! Well, seeing as it does feature Mrs Claus (who is actually a different character from Mary Christmas, despite the the former redirecting to the latter (that was a mistake on my part; I assumed they were one and the same, but I'm wrong, but I don't know enough about Mrs Claus to write a page about her)), as well as the fictionalised Paul Magrs, I'll be creating a page for that story shortly! 02:53, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Charity publication

Hey, great work at Charity publication, but could you make sure to not delete the line about when the anthology was published, who edited it, and what charity it benefitted? It's important to retain that information alongside the chart, like I've done for Seasons of War and the Iris anthology. – n8 (☎) 18:27, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

All good! Sorry for preempting your edits. – n8 (☎) 18:33, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Just letting you know that I explained my removal of the Novel/Anthology division on charity publication at Talk:Charity publication#Prose and audio placement. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts there so hopefully we can build a consensus on the best organisational structure for the page. – n8 (☎) 21:07, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

"Enter Wildthyme" plot summary

Hey! Please stop immediately with your edits to Enter Wildthyme. Brevity is only the goal for biographies of recurring characters. Plot summaries on story pages should be as detailed as possible and your edits are entirely counterproductive. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 14:27, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

If User:Epsilon the Eternal's plot summary actually quoted the text that would certainly be improper, but that is not, as far as I know, the case. He merely summarises every event, great or small, in the story, much as many TV summaries do. I recognise that you meant well, but there is nothing wrong with Epsilon's summary nor any other very long summaries. Keep off of them. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 14:56, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
By all means add more details, or reword certain things! My mass reversal was an emergency measure, not a pronouncement that your edits were all bad and there could be no improvement on Epsilon's version. I am merely saying that your fundamental philosophy was misguided: length and detail are not flaws in a plot summary; there is no such thing as an unnecessary detail. If it's an event that happens in the story, and someone spent the time to summarise it, it has its place in the summary. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 15:08, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
Hm. I would be interested to see the precedent of which you speak, but I remain doubtful. At any rate, there is no reason the Wiki should cater to "lazy" readers. There is nothing about a lengthy summary which makes it "inaccessible" to an average reader; this is not a matter of being intelligible to casual fans, as some similar policies are.
Additionally, removing details from the plot summary, even if it were desirable, could only be proper if these data were recorded elsewhere in the Wiki (on the relevant incidental-character biographies, for example). We cannot have loss of information. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 15:14, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
If you feel the need to involve other admins we shall have to make a thread of it when the Forums reopen. But I fear we are still talking at cross purposes. I do not think it matters if you removed no details that were "important" to the plot. (How do you define "important" in Wiki-acceptable terms, anyway? That's a very subjective concept.) I think any events in the story have their place in the summary, even if they are incidental.
As for "inaccessibility"… again, in what way is a very detailed summary "inaccessible"? "Daunting", maybe. Taking longer to read, sure. But anyone can take the time to read a very long summary if they're courageous enough; and if they're not, that's their problem; as I said, we have a duty to remain legible to people with a casual knowledge of the DWU. But people with a casual commitment, people who don't want to put in the time and effort to read through what we have to offer (let alone understand it), have only themselves to blame and are not our target audience.
Also, before bothering any live admins, I think you should try to track down the previous decisions you mentioned. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 15:21, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
You yourself mention something that was lost! "A dog barked at Magda". That is an event which is no longer recorded. Maybe it is not "important" to the plot, but it is an event in the story which was no longer present in your version of the summary, and I consider this a loss, especially if it is not recorded anywhere else on the Wiki. (I might think differently, or at least be more tractable, if you had created Dog (Enter Wildthyme) to record this information even as you removed it from the plot summary, or something. But you did not.)
At any rate, thank you for the precedent, I will investigate it and get back to you. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 15:27, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
I feel I ought to chime in, seeing as I'm the one who wrote that thing.
Firstly, gimme a little slack - it was my first major plot summary, and while I did omit details like the Memory Crystal, do bear in mind I have a lot of work yet to be completed on the Wiki, such as finishing adding characters into the featuring slots in Down the Middle, and the task of having to create all the pages red linked on pages such as Hospitality, The Story of Fester Cat, as well as updating many pages with relevant information. I had been meaning to go back and add it in.
Secondly, the length of the plot summary does serve a purpose. Each paragraph represents around a chapter from the novel, making it easy to locate information in the novel, if one has only read the plot summary, for example. Granted, this formatting isn't perfect on Enter Wildthyme, but this should just be fixed, not removed. 15:33, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
Oh, don't worry, @RadMatter, I was referring to the plan to create a temporary forum this very week, not to the arbitrarily-far-off resurrection of the true Forums. I'm not trying to stall this, if that's what you were afraid of.
Having reviewed the Fallen Angels case, it would appear that User:PicassoAndPringles's criticism was as much that the summary was badly written in the first place as that it was overlong; and Picasso defined "overlong" as "the paragraphs are longer than the action itself", which is a very different, and much more easily followed, standard than defining whether something is "relevant to the plot".
I do think this supports your view that the Enter Wildthyme summary should perhaps be a little shorter, but I think you went overboard, and again, "relevant to the plot" is a subjective concept that the Wiki does not, indeed cannot, recognise. Nor is the problem "accessibility". Epsilon's above explanation that a paragraph of his summary corresponds to a chapter of the book satisfies Picasso's "summary should be shorter than the action in the story" criterion very nicely.
At any rate, this all is not specific to Enter Wildthyme, but rather a general point about how Wiki policy works, and therefore, my knowledge of the specific story is irrelevant (although in point of fact I did read it some time ago). Besides, it is in fact established policy that admins don't need to have experienced a particular story to make rulings; it is incumbent on users to present the necessary facts so that admins can make informed decisions. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 15:37, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Please stop. It's not that important that you need to run to another admin when you don't get the answer you want. Also, I kinda like the longer plot summaries. It's certainly better than the countless pages whose summaries are just to be added but are full of stuff like "food from the real world: The Doctor eats a cream bun.". NightmareofEden ☎ 23:12, 2 February 2021 (UTC) Sorry about the tone of that last message. I'm a bit stressed today and obviously that's coming out in my writings more than intended. And, while I do maintain the merits of long summaries, I suppose a second opinion never hurt anyone. NightmareofEden ☎ 23:36, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Hm… well, while you and I may have lapsed into talking about "plot summaries", on the actual page you have a section called "Publisher's summary" and a section called "Plot". TV story pages have a similar setup without the "Publisher's" bit, such that we actually separate the (very short) "Synopsis" and the "Plot". This signifies, to me, that the short "Synopsis" or "Publisher's summary" section on a story page is there for the "quick summary", while "Plot" should decant all the events in a story into Wiki form.
Also, the fact remains that it's impossible to find a non-subjective definition of what "plot-relevant" means, which I think is the big policy roadblock here. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 23:46, 2 February 2021 (UTC)
Chiming in again - what constitutes as short, brief, etc, is arbitrary. Most of the plot summaries on this Wiki are for short stories, where they are brief- but heres the thing: novels aren't short. They're long, often clocking in at several hundred pages. So of course the plot summary will be long, and to try and argue that it should be shorter, well, I feel that's bordering on infringement upon T:NPOV. I genuinely put hours and hours into that plot summary for Enter Wildthyme, and yes, while it's certainly not perfect, I don't appreciate that work being undone.
And another thing: nearly all the information cited by Enter Wildthyme on this wiki is referenced in the plot summary, so when one follows the citation to Enter Wildthyme, they can find the corresponding part of the plot summary. On many occasions I've found something being cited with little to no mention of it in the plot summary, in the rare occasion there is one. 00:40, 3 February 2021 (UTC)
Okay, to be perfectly honest, do feel free to trim it. Perhaps not to the same extent as you were, but for instance, I wrote 58 paragraphs, for a 32 chapter long book. So in that respect, could you please shorten the plot summary to 32 paragraphs maybe? Try to keep everything link intact, and also try to mention information that's being cited elsewhere.
And as for the Memory Crystal and that other character I missed, I thank you for adding them. Also, could you see about creating pages for those Valcean sacrifices, the Parisian bartender, etc, and other nameless characters? 01:16, 3 February 2021 (UTC)

T:NPA warning

Hey!

I'm not blocking you on this, even for a short amount of time — in part because we are engaged in a (I hope, good-natured) Wiki-editing disagreement at the moment and it'd feel unfair for me to effectively silence you. Nevertheless, please pay attention to the following, and know that it very well could have resulted in a ban:

No matter your opinion on the usefulness of details in plot summaries, your characterising User:Epsilon the Eternal's writing as "long-winded waffle" is not acceptable under Tardis:No personal attacks. I found this out the hard way back when I was a new user; I got banned for referring to something somebody had written as "poppycock", and this even though I meant it in a light-hearted, jokey way. Please try to assume good faith at all times when referring to other people's edits, especially those of steadfast editors like Epsilon's.

Again there's nothing personal here; this is just how the policy is, and this an Official Warning(TM). I do not take issue with your contacting User:Shambala108 as such, and look forward to hearing her own thoughts on this matter, if she finds the time to give them! It's just this specific line which you wrote in a style that the Wiki frowns upon. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 23:14, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Oh, come now; "long-winded waffle" may have a specific meaning, but it's also inherently pejorative. You cannot call something "long-winded" in a positive, or even a neutral, way; it's an insult, albeit a very mild one. And "poppycock" is quite mild too as these things go.
Again, I bear you no ill will here, and I don't think Epsilon will either; it's just the principle of the thing. As I said I'm not even bringing any sanctions against you, just warning you of the policy's existence! Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 23:23, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Re: NightmareofEden

Well, see, I'm actually not sure NightmareofEden intended to come across as aggressive anymore than you did with "long-winded waffle". So there y'are!

But yes, that comment is a bit aggressive in its wordings, I'll have a word with them too. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 23:29, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

If it wasn't clear my "ruling" (if that's the right word in this sort of case) was to also tell off Nightmare for the tone of their comment, and indeed I did leave a T:NPA warning at User talk:NightmareofEden just now, so I'm… not sure what you're referring to? To be clear my point wasn't that Nightmare wasn't aggressive. It's that your "long-winded waffle" comment was too! Not a serious offence in either case, but from a bird's-eye-view, hard to differentiate without personally knowing either of you in real life. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 23:34, 2 February 2021 (UTC)

Re: Twitter thing

Ah, I'd replied to your vague reference on the talk page itself, but hadn't quite realised what you objected to.

Well, my reading is that Amaral is concerned with the continued existence of "the page about the in-universe Antonio Amaral", although I agree he's being rather rude about it (and careless; remember, I only got involved because he was under the impression that the admins, i.e. me in this situation, had been the one arguing for its removal!). Converting the page back to a real-world one, and replacing the in-universe Antonio Amaral page with one about "a Minyan who happens to look like Antonio Amaral", would, I think, functionally be removing the page that the real-world Amaral wants to keep around.

But if you feel this strongly about it, I'll head back to Twitter presently and clarify your proposal.

(EDIT: Done.) Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 04:30, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Re: The Other Side of the World

Hmm. Interesting. From what I know, The Other Side of the World was an early, very different draft of the book which ultimately became Against Nature; the missing link between Smoking Mirror and Against Nature, in other words. I was unaware that Burton had somehow published that draft. It is possible that he did so through scraping Miles's trademarks from the text, in which case, provided it contained preexisting DWU characters owned by Burton, it would, prima facie, warrant coverage as a spin-off.

However, it's equally possible that it's just a Time's Champion/Campaign situation; what used to be a draft for a licensed story that never materialised in that form being printed "unofficially". That would warrant no more than choice BTS mentions (although it may deserve full coverage at the FP Wiki, which is less touchy about charity works and whatnot than we are).

If The Empty Days is a real-world-focused reference work, though, it seems a pretty safe bet for coverage; there's no licenses involved in whether we cover those. So provided it is indeed non-fiction, feel free to create that one at any rate. But I'm going to need more data about The Other Side of the World before we can make any kind of preliminary pronouncement. This is typically the sort of situation that a fact-gathering inclusion thread would be idea for… Cursed be yon inability of ye Forummes! Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 01:52, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Sandbox infobox

I think I know why the infoboxes in you sandbox aren't working - try changing "|title" to "|name".

18:21, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

Category:Individual ghosts

I would just like to ask you in which source is Robert Louis Stevenson, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, and Oscar Wilde are ghosts?

01:04, 17 March 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. However, from the page is written, it seems to indicate that they weren't actually ghosts, but only somebody said they were? 01:09, 17 March 2021 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://tardis.wiki/w/index.php?title=User_talk:RadMatter&oldid=3098715"