Forum:Temporary forums

From Tardis Wiki, the free Doctor Who reference
Revision as of 18:19, 15 March 2023 by Epsilon (talk | contribs)

Due to the current lack of a proper forum system, this temporary forum system has been created as a stand-in to allow essential community discussions to take place. This system will be used until the regular system is re-instated by those with the power to do so.

To propose a thread for discussion, add it to the bottom of the table in the proposed threads section below. If you would like an already created thread to be discussed, you can sign your name next to the proposed thread to show support.

To maximise the number of topics and issues that can be discussed in as short a time as possible, there can only be 6 active threads at once, each with a timelimit of 3 weeks. This is to encourage people to focus on a small number of issues rather than try to tackle too much and lose focus. If no consensus has been reached in this time limit, the thread will be closed as unresolved and may be discussed further at a later date. Threads closed as unresolved will be added to the bottom of the proposal table where they must regain signatures to be discussed again. When a current thread is closed, the thread idea with the most support (tiebroken by precedence)[1] will be selected from the proposal table to be discussed next. A discussion space for it will then be created by an admin in one of the slots listed below.

When proposing threads, please bear in mind that they should be actionable within the time limit and that they should affect a large number of pages or otherwise have a significant impact on the wiki and its readers. Proposed threads that don't meet these criteria may not be selected for discussion, at least until other threads that do meet these criteria have been discussed. Note that this does mean that, while you may still propose and support these proposals, specific validity debates about specific stories or series may not be selected for discussion in the immediate future as they generally do not have a wide enough impact on the wiki as a whole.

Current threads

Only 6 threads can be open at once, each with a timelimit of 3 weeks.

Thread slot Thread topic Deadline for consensus
Slot 1 Dab terms for unproduced stories 17th March
Slot 2 How to best deal with pages for slurs and derogatory terms 2nd April
Slot 3 Redoing the main page transmats and theme to bring it all up to date with the current era and branding and highlight more non-televised media. 17th March
Slot 4 Content warning templates 26th March
Slot 5 Validation of Legacy 26th March
Slot 6 Subpages 2.0 4th April

Proposed threads

To propose a topic to be discussed, please add it to the "thread topic" column of this table, alongside your name (see below for how to add it easily).

To support a pre-existing proposal, add your name to the "support" column by entering three tildes, i.e. "~~~" (note that this is only 3 "~", not the usual 4, as the date your signature was added is not important) as a new argument in the {{PS}} template: in short, before "}}", type "|~~~".

When an admin has decided to greenlight the proposed thread, they will indicate this in the "verdict" column, and the thread can be opened in one of the "slots" in the above section.

You don't need to have prepared a full opening post before your proposition is greenlit, but it can be a good idea, particularly for complex proposals. You can type out such a "draft OP" as a sandbox, and link to it in your proposal on the table. If you go this route, when the admin greenlights your thread, they will move your sandbox directly to the relevant slot's namespace.

Thread topic Support Verdict
Finding an alternative to using "(TV story)" for episodes that do not actually constitute a story, e.g. The Empty Child and The Halloween Apocalypse
Jack "BtR" Saxon
General validity debate for "commercial stories" such as DWBIT Dalek Wars and Big Finish Productions webcasts.
MrThermomanPreacher
Validity debate: Dermot and the Doctor
MrThermomanPreacher
Re-examining and discussing how the wiki understands "valid sources" and a potential proposed major change to T:VS to eliminate bias and arbitrary restrictions, hopefully preceding any validity inclusion debates. (Note: this itself does not intend to change the validity status of any sources, but is for when they are discussed.)
Chubby Potato
Validity debate: An Adventure in Space and Time
MrThermomanPreacher
Validity debate for the "alternate reality" online games (The Last Dalek, K9: Deja Who, Daleks v Cybermen).
MrThermomanPreacher
Validity debate: Introduction to the Night
MrThermomanPreacher
Validity debate: Biographies of Authors in The Book of the Enemy. Should be easy to solve within three weeks, but needs a thread.
Najawin
Formalizing some language into T:BOUND relating to how "policy" also means on this wiki "the way we currently do things".
Najawin
Formal rules regarding navboxes, similar to T:IBOX.
Najawin
Discuss conflict of interest rules regarding relatives/close friends editing wiki pages. See Russell McGee.
Najawin
"Splitting" UNIT. The UNIT page shouldn't cover info that really belongs on UNIT-UK, but there is more naunce to this I can't explain briefly here.
Interpreting the "neutral" in Tardis:Neutral point of view on in-universe pages.
Chubby Potato
Changing/tweaking of the Tardis:Video policy.
Danniesen
Validity debate: Doctor Who? and The Daft Dimension.

WaltK

Differentiating between unproduced and unreleased stories (e.g. Absent Friends)
WaltK
Determining whether LEGO Dimensions trailers, spotlight videos and the like that only contain DWU links via gameplay footage (as opposed to specially-made footage) actually qualify for pages.
WaltK
Using the "Support/Oppose/Neutral/Lukewarm" structure to organize these forum discussions.
How exactly do we treat the Casanova crossover?
MrThermomanPreacher
Changing/tweaking of Tardis:Don't over-wikify.
Danniesen
Working out the most optimal way to cover alternate reality games. As they typically comprise of one narrative, and virtually every other resource on the internet treats each ARGs as a single story, we should not split it up in the way we have with FindTheDoctor (series), for example.
In/validating information that only appears in foreign language translations (see GoldenEye 007)
WaltK
Loosely related to the above: creating a series of "DWU around the world" pages, that go in depth about DWU media as it is presented in non-English-speaking regions (stuff like when it first arrived in that region, what has and hasn't been localised there, listing any notable translation quirks, et al.), with it being emphasised that no info from these pages should spill out onto the rest of the wiki unless editorially justified.
WaltK
Splitting the Doctor's sonic screwdriver
MrThermomanPreacher
Validity debate: Attack of the Graske
MrThermomanPreacher
Discuss creating a proper footer navbox to link all incarnations and versions of the Doctor (as opposed to the tiny, limited navbox currently seen under the infobox).
PintlessMan
Invalidity debate: The Curse of Fatal Death
Najawin
Validity debate: Fourth wall-breaking sources such as COMIC: Pugwash Ahoy!, especially as episodes of Doctor Who itself break the fourth wall (e.g. "The Feast of Steven"), and are unquestionably valid.
Cookieboy 2005
In contrast to the mere validity discussion User:Cookieboy 2005 is suggesting, I suggest we open up a larger discussion about how this wiki handles varying levels of metafiction in general, such as Life-Cycle or The Editor.
Najawin
Discussion of "Quickstart" guides and "cliffsnotes" recaps in preparation for the 60th and beyond, either in their own namespace, or in the theory namespace. (See discussion on updating our main page theme.)
Najawin
Figuring out the exact context of the jokes in the Knock! Knock! Who's There? joke book.
WaltK
2 supporters
Discussion of how best to cover lost media with missing narrative details, and a new set of templates a la {{unprod}} and {{unproduced stories}} to go alongside. This also covers unreleased stories, depending on how we decide to interpret "lost media".
Overhauling our citation system with {{cite source}}.
Bongo50
Clarifying the exact nature of The Trial of a Time Lord and Flux
Jack "BtR" Saxon
Creating guidelines to determine which characters should be considered companions in story infoboxes.
Jack "BtR" Saxon
Validity Debate: Children's Ward
Tellymustard
Validity debate: The Dr. Men series.
WaltK
Clarify T:DON'T COPY to reallow Timewalkerauthor's story summaries, which were removed because he had also posted them to his blog.
n8 ()
Reopening discussion, that was taking place in the deleted forums, of replacing "etc" with "et al" in sourcing.
Najawin
The introduction of unnamed individuals (and potentially other objects) pages in the same vein as Memory Alpha.
MrThermomanPreacher
1 supporter
Discussion regarding the reduction of human anatomy pages in favour of more consolidated pages. Along with discussion about potential page protection & what constitutes a 'reasonable' inclusion for such pages.
JDPManjoume
Discussion on what to do with certain previously-highlighted pages of a mature nature, in terms of potential consolidation.
JDPManjoume
Reconsideration of Doctor Who Guide as a valid source for casting information (on grounds of direct Wikipedia & IMDB lifts, and their unclear verification on their open-submission acceptance of biographies.)
JDPManjoume
Renaming Children in Need Special (TV story) to Born Again (TV story) or Untitled (CiN TV story), while establishing that pages named [[Untitled ([SERIES] [SOURCE MEDIUM])]] are placeholder names and should ideally be named with the first — or most widely accepted — name given.
Renaming Tenth Doctor (Journey's End) to Meta-Crisis Doctor on the basis that a. the name has been used in valid sources and b. the Fugitive Doctor and Unbound Doctor precedents.
Discussion of Category:Non-heterosexual real world people and Category:Non-cisgender real world people - we need to have a real discussion on these two since a lot of the arguments used against them explicitly violate T:BOUND and we need to work out how to proceed. (This can also discuss the proposed category for POC real world people.)
Najawin
Standardising "(disambiguation)" as a dab term for all disambiguation pages, to avoid confusion on whether a given dabless page e.g. Abby is a primary topic or a dab page, and thus, reduce rampant incorrect linking.
Scrooge MacDuck
Inclusion debate: The LEGO Batman Movie, as it featured licensed usage of the Daleks, and seems to have originally been specifically discluded due to people falsely believing it to be unlicensed.
Cookieboy 2005
Introducing subpages for plot summaries.
Bongo50
Potentially changing the fine text of T:VS (and, more specifically, the "four little rules") away from requesting stories be set in "THE Doctor Who Universe", and towards the stories being set in "A Doctor Who Universe". This minor change would help us enforce T:CANON more consistently, as we would no longer insist a story be consistent with the BBC Wales incarnation of the show for it to be counted as valid.
OS25🤙☎️
Creating a real world page about this very Wiki and reviewing our T:NO SELF REF policy due to some obvious issues it'll cause.
Italicising story titles within disambiguation terms. E.g., Ninth Doctor (Scream of the Shalka) instead of Ninth Doctor (Scream of the Shalka). This could easily be done with a bot.
Utilising promotional pictures of the Doctor for {{docpic}} — or the tabbed gallery that @Bongo50 proposed — instead of relying on bad, low-res screenshots. Images like File:Docpic15.jpg is horrendous. We could use Jeremy Enecio's illustrations, for example. Changes to Tardis:Image use policy to allow promotional images may need to be discussed.
(Update: as per the rulings about non-narrative fiction and images, a lot of images are now valid sources unto themselves so many character portraits are fair game.)
Validity of the 10,000 Dawns crossovers (Rachel Survived, White Canvas, The Gendar Conspiracy, Birthdays are Made for Memories and Sonnenblumen)
Borisashton
Converting {{you may}}, {{dab page}}, and {{for}} into a Hatnote a la Wikipedia's, considering... certain formatting issues it's creating.
See how bad this is?

Formalising/codifying a deadname policy (which could also be inclusive of personal identity in general) that also overrides T:NO RW, as currently our policies would force us to deadname any in-universe counterpart of a real world person who was mentioned/appeared prior to their real world transistion, which is harmful.
A Wookieepedia-style overhaul of how we source things, in particular the use of "ref name" (example).
MrThermomanPreacher
1 supporter
The incorporation of mentions/references and archival footage appearances in Appearances pages.
MrThermomanPreacher
Introducing fields for pronouns in {{Infobox Individual}} and {{Infobox Person}} based upon Wookiepedia's recent update.
Making a more detailed guide as to what does and doesn't constitute getting a page under the Real world series with DWU connections category.
WaltK
Validity debate: The Doctor Appears and The Doctor Drops In.
WaltK
A couple of things about dating certain stories: 1) making a rule about citing an in-narrative source for a story's setting, and 2) interpreting a story set in "the present" as being set in the year of release unless evidence from other stories say otherwise.
WaltK
Incorporating a more define usage of the actor section of character infoboxes; "actor" for when the character has the same actor in television and audio, and "main actor" for when they are replaced with a "main voice actor" for audio dramas, while "actor" is used when they just have "other voice actors" replaying their portrayals.
BananaClownMan
Working out a consistent naming scheme for alternate universes/timelines/realities etc as opposed to naming them all things like Jackie Reeve's universe, Godfrey Porter's universe, etc.
Acknowledging that the Marvel crossover characters from The Incomplete Death's Head and its ilk originate in Earth-616.
Slackening T:NO SELF REF as it is prohibiting a lot of citations from individuals associated with obscurer works.
The modification of THIS PAGE to include new columns for this table, eg, "support with low priority", "ambivalent", "support in order to argue against".
Najawin
Validity debate: The Lonely Assassins and similar video games which are currently marked as invalid as the storyline/dialogue is not the same for each player. Note: This could potentially be merged with the topic of branching narratives raised by Pluto2 below.
66 Seconds
Validity debate: The Prime Computer advertisements, since they are brought into continuity by Christmas on a Rational Planet.
PintlessMan
Decoupling our Category:Help pages from the CC help pages. It allows for more specialized feedback for our community.
Najawin
Creating categories (perhaps hidden ones) for stories that don't have summaries. This would allow users to better coordinate where their efforts are needed.
Najawin
Validity debate: LEGO Dimensions, preferably with discussion on how to cover it (e.g. just DWU-connected voice clips, main story, & TDEoE; voice clips, main story, and all other level packs (some containing TARDIS travel points); voice clips, main story, TDEoE, maybe all other level packs, and Doctor Who adventure world; or everything, including all voice clips, levels, adventure worlds, etc.). May require a prior discussion on non-linear sources such as this.
Cookieboy 2005
Dropping the past tense requirement for real-world pages and out-of-universe sections of pages. Now we've changed T:SPOIL and cover future content more broadly, it just doesn't make sense.
n8 ()
Covering individual VHS/DVD/etc. releases with their own pages like we already do with graphic novel compilations.
WaltK
Discussing "Rule 1" (which is either "Only narratives count" or "only fiction counts" depending on how things go) and how it relates to advertisements with narratives. It has long been said in debates, at least by a few admins, that "commercials are not narratives." I think this isn't always true. While some commercials do indeed lack narratives or might not be "fiction" per se, others are fully fledged stories which happen to also serve a unique purpose, such as: Dr Who and the Turgids, the Prime Computer spots, On the Icy Edge of the Galaxy..., On Through the 80's!, Sprout Boy meets a Galaxy of Stars, Doctor, Doctor, Doctor; the famous "TARDIS with Reindeer" idents, along with many Big Finish trailers and Collection trailers. The goal of this debate would be to agree on an official policy. OS25🤙☎️
(EDIT: Epsilon has an OP they've drafted that's quite good, I think that's what we should start on)
Splitting "the Magistrate" from The War King and addressing their relationship with The Master.
n8 ()
How do we deal with Doctor Omega?
(I'd prefer if Scrooge wrote up this OP, I'm sure he knows more than I.)
Najawin
Overturning stories with branching narratives being invalid under T:VS.
Pluto2
13 supporters
Changing how we cover multi-part stories to make the wiki more useful as a reference source and better aligned with DWM and TCH on story counts and titles.
n8 ()
Creating subsections for THIS SECTION, and separating the table into multiple tables to match, based on month of proposal, so that editing becomes easier for users and so that earlier threads with lots of votes are more easily identifiable.
Pluto2
2 supporters
Relaxing Tardis:Honourifics further to encourage the use of honourifcs for further disamguition, for example moving Sabbath (Movers) to Godfather Sabbath with a redirect. For characters where this does not help disambuguate, they should probally not be moved, unless they excusivley refered to with their honourific. This is simply an extension of our current policy, as it already allows for some honourifc use in the case of disambuation, such as Grandma Connolly, but this aims to prioritise honourifcs over story dabs.Plus additional nuance for Faction Paradox characters, who often have honourifcs are deserve at least redirects from them. (EDIT - made an OP) Cousin Ettolrhc
Changing the "Non-DWU" in our "invalid categories" to "invalid" or "from an invalid source" or something similiar, in order to strive away from attempting to declare a canon of what is and isn't in the DWU. (EDOT: made an OP) Cousin Ettolrhc
Reviewing whether the temporary forums meet the wiki's needs and discussing potential changes people would like to see.
Bongo50
Revisiting the validity of The Pilot Episode, as it has been officially released as a complete story and multiple other stories, including Unnatural History, have provided a case for its validity under Rule 4 by proxy as a version of history that was later "overwritten" in-universe.
Pluto2
Improving our coverage of fan works that are of historical notability in the fandom, while still making sure that any articles created stay entirely of a real world nature. This would entail giving works that have had a significant impact on the Doctor Who fandom, such as the fan film Time Rift and the fan novel The Doctor and the Enterprise, articles in the same vein as the Audio Visuals, discussing the impact they had during the Wilderness Years. We could also discuss revamping our coverage of charity publications at the same time.
Pluto2
Allowing articles on invalid sources to have a continuity section. The current prohibition is an archaic holdover from when we still had a canon policy as opposed to a valid sources policy, and sources that we consider invalid still have continuity with valid sources, distinct from our decision to not consider them in-universe sources.
Pluto2
Restoring categories cataloging stories based on them being of the pure historical genre. This genre is easily defined and removing categories related to it has arguably hindered our readers' ability to find them.
Pluto2
Whether or not to make unique pages for "fictional" versions of in-universe individuals, as we already have for the Doctor.
WaltK
Creating Shada (home video) as a separate article for the 1992 release featuring linking narration by Tom Baker, and reclassifying it as a valid source as it bears far more resemblance to reconstructions like Ian Chesterton: An Introduction (home video) than to deleted scenes.
Pluto2
Doing a "speed round" of validity debates, basically covering a number of stories which should be valid but are too minor to take up a full slot. I'm going to begin outlying an OP at this sandbox. At the moment, I intend to cover stories like Dermot and the Doctor, Doctor Who and the Fangs of Time, and Friend from the Future. OS25🤙☎️
Creating a subclause for Rule Four By Proxy for deleted scenes/stories, so we can more broadly validate The Pilot Episode, Shada (1992), Spider Dalek, and P.S.. In this thread we would heavily have to consider authorial intent as most of them weren't just not intended to take place in the "main" continuity but in any continuity.
0 supporters
Working out how best to create a "Tardis Expanded" Wiki for technically-unlicensed-but-semi-official works ranging from charity publications to fanfilms with established authors/actors and the merging of the Doctor Who: Lockdown Wiki.
0 supporters
As the categories were barely addressed in the non-narrative fiction thread, I feel we should discuss that; if we should either use the terminology "works of fiction" or "sources" and whether to make those new categories or rename the already existing hub categories such as Category:Stories that crossover with non-DWU series to Category:Sources that crossover with non-DWU series.
0 supporters
Working out the best way to display names of characters with multiple names, diminuitives, and nicknames and all that. I personally feel primary name(s) should be in the lead and anything more should be in a new == Name == section.
0 supporters

Archived threads

Main article: Tardis:Temporary forums/Archive

Once consensus has been reached and a thread has been closed, or once a thread has reached the 3 week limit, it will be moved by an admin to a subpage of Tardis:Temporary forums/Archive. An index of archived threads can be found on this page.

Footnotes

  1. In the case of a tie, the thread proposed earliest generally gets priority. This should be the thread higher up in the table as threads are ordered by date added.