User:Najawin/Sandbox 7

Trying to do a bit of a historical dive into forums/talk pages and flesh out what is important and for why. Might be subjective, but hopefully I can figure out what might give some insight into what other people care about. GAAAAHHH people didn't archive talk pages in the early days. They just deleted them. Makes things hard to find.

https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Reference_desk_archives

https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Forum:Tech_notes_archives?t=20201127150922

Talk pages, 2010

User talk:Sulfur - Nothing super important, but has a lot of details related to technical aspects of how bots are set up on this wiki.

Talk:Cyberman/Archive 1 - Starts in 2010, carries on into 2011, some of this is also briefly mentioned in Forum:Blood of the Cybermen - how to define them, there's a lot of discussion on how to merge the varying accounts of Cybermen, a problem the wiki has largely grown past.

Talk:The Vault of Secrets (TV story) - To see how our older spoiler policies allowed articles for shows to be created before air date.

Talk:Time field/Archive 1 and then by proxy Talk:Time field - dear lord. We had to have a thread years later, when I was on wiki, to sort this out. Awful, awful thing.

Talk:Fred/Archive 1 - Discussion of whether Party Animals (comic story) is valid and comparing it to BBV due to the character in question.

Talk:Whoisdoctorwho.co.uk - Small discussion of a tiny bit of plagiarism, as well as whether the site is "canon".

Talk:The Curse of Fatal Death (TV story) - Tangerine endorsing R4bp in 2010. :P

Talk:The Doctor - List of Mentions - Overly broad list article deleted.

Talk:Rory Williams (Auton) - Arguably the basis for continuity of consciousness? First serious discussion I've noticed about it.

Talk:Lad (The Next Doctor) - Say it with me everyone, "yet another prelude to Talk:Howling Halls/Archive 1."

Tardis Talk:Tardis Manual/Archive 1#Additions to the MoS - Small changes to the MoS that chronicle how it evolved.

Tardis Talk:Tardis Manual/Archive 1#Tenses Of Ongoing Objects - Proposal to allow present tense for IU recurring objects. No love.

Talk:Eighth Doctor/Archive 1#The Forgotten is not a reliable source - In general a reasonable comment, given that it emphasizes that the narrative is a dream within a computer, but, you know:

it just doesn't make sense that an American comic book company would decide that they were going to do what RTD has steadfastly refused to do. The BBC still have editorial control over IDW's DW output.

C'mon.

Talk:TV21 - I think this has the first reference I've seen to stage plays being invalid that I've seen. I could have missed something due to my own biases since I actually think it's uncontroversial that they stay invalid. So there might be something prior to this. Take me saying this is the first with a grain of salt. But there's a comment about it and it seems they were kinda ambiguous at the time.

Talk:The Simpsons - Discussion of merit of RW page based on IU references to the RW thing, or to the RW thing referencing DW.

Talk:Necronomicon - Making a comment about a particular entity in the DWU that is both fictional and real per different accounts and how it was difficult to deal with this. Apparently at the time only Sherlock Holmes had the same status. This is... No longer the case.

Talk:2000 - Discussion of how to deal with disagreement IU about dating systems on a structural level. It also contains the following:

If we take stories absolutely on their word, will articles like gravity end up looking satirical like TFWiki's articles (see hard hats)?

God I hope so.

User talk:Mini-mitch/Archive Talk#Request for adminship - Details some of the hoops that some of the older admins had to jump through. Interesting to note that it was thought that IU pages allowed for "greater creativity" than OOU pages.

Talk:Story arc - Just constant difficulties with defining this content. Repeated frustration over it.

Preludes to R4bp in the discussions here, here, here, and at Talk:The Curse of Fatal Death (TV story)#Part of the DWU

User talk:Ghastly9090 - As far as I can tell, this is the best place to go to look at the discussion surrounding the (failed) SJA wiki.

User talk:Tangerineduel - Old version of this page has a lot of discussion from Czech about main page revision and some coding stuff. Not policy informative per se, but useful to keep a link to somewhere.

Talk:Cobalt bomb - explicit statement of T:NO RW.

Talk:Earth - List of appearances/Archive 1 - "list is too big" is explicitly affirmed as a reason for deletion, as priorly stated with "mentions of Doctor".

Talk:List of planets - Affirmation that main namespace pages shouldn't creep into replacing categories.

Talk:Howling Halls/Archive 1 - The basis for our idea of "no article too small".

Template talk:Hospitals - Arguably the discussion that establishes the basis for allowing navboxes for a wide variety of things.

Threads, 2011

Forum:How to update front page - Some historical context about how the philosophy of front page design has evolved.

Forum:Tech note: Howling in Recent Wiki Activity - The decision to remove Howling:The Howling from recent activity.

Forum:"Mentions" field being deactivated - More discussion of the idea of "mentions" lists.

Forum:Tech note: Forum and talk page upgrade - Not sure if there was ever an update on this. But there would potentially be extensions for the wiki where users auto indent and sign forum posts.

Forum:Tech note: Image use policy change - Unilateral image policy change. Yay.

Forum:Near-human - Oh my god no this is a horrible idea how was this not immediately shot down. Wild violation of T:NO RW for just pure speculation based on some vague references. See Talk:Near-human and Thr:120763 as well. Good on Czech for purging this page in 2013 with extreme prejudice.

Forum:Where are the two Human Natures set? - Dismissal of reference works.

If we were to cite reference works, Polly Wright would be Polly Lopez (REF: The Universal Databank), Oswald Danes would be Oswald Jones (DWM 427), and we'd be at a real loss to explain which of the various cutaway schematics of Daleks was "correct". (various Dalek annuals and other reference works) We'd also have to take The Doctor Who Technical Manual as an important work that, for instance, gives us a totally true and accurate schematic of K9 and the sonic screwdriver. All these reference works, are of course, fine to cite in behind-the-scenes sections. But we must resist the urge to use them in our in-universe sections, because they are largely just the opinions of particular authors, writing to a commercial deadline.

Because nothing else on this wiki is weird or contradictory. Not one bit.

Forum:Wirrn vs. Wirrrn - A pretty nuanced point about what "official" sources tell us and what the actual author's intent was for a concept's name - when the "official" sources have limited legal rights to the concept. Doesn't get a ton of love.

Forum:Release date of early DWM issues - Question about "cover" release dates vs actual release dates. No real movement, and it's a problem we still occasionally encounter in some areas today.

Forum:Sycorax's planet of origin? - Yet more dismissal of ref works.

Forum:Bayldon Copper? - Ultimately I think this becomes precedent for the question "can a redirect exist based on bts info and/or early editions of a script".

Forum:2entertain Shada - Beginning of the discussion on how to handle the nuances related to Shada.

Forum:Alienation of new and IP users - Floating ideas on how to make the wiki more accessible. It's something we still struggle with to this day, and I know I'm not innocent in this problem, as I can be a bit feisty. But we really do need to address this, and there are some interesting thoughts on how to start. Maybe a place to revisit.

Forum:A few changes? - Useful ideas we might want to revisit. Recently (2023) there was some discussion of having "short summaries" in addition to long ones, and there's a vaguely similar idea here. Also a suggestion of an official recommendation to leave edit summaries when reverting others' work.

Forum:Background - Some technical work related to background images, as well as detailing where policy stood at the time.

Forum:Character information on novels, etc - Oh my God, this was near incomprehensible without looking at the pages referenced in the time frame. It's premised on a way of writing articles that just doesn't exist anymore. (EG) Absolutely disgusting, great change. See also Forum:Should novels & audio stories have a plot description?, which established that novels and audios should have plot sections - when up until 2011 they didn't. That and lack of editors willing to write them explains why so many are empty.

Forum:Charity anthology short stories RIP charity anthologies, all of three people.

Forum:Clarification on what a pseudo-historical is. - Yes, historical and pseudo-historical are bad terms, but clearly these people are overthinking it because history ended in 1992.

Forum:Could we create article for each Cybermen Mark/Model?, Forum:The Unspecified Cyberman Debate - GAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. These threads. These threads these threads these threads. These threads caused reference works to be totally and completely invalid for 10+ years as opposed to just "secondary sources". Why. Just why.

Forum:Gallifreyan history and History of the Daleks? - Alluding to the idea that we should maybe move some rather convoluted and contradictory histories to an "essay" namespace.

Forum:Home Era, and Forum:Home Era layout (and earlier Forum:20th/21st century individuals). - Discussion over part of the infobox that has long since fallen out of favor. Useful for seeing why it did so, I guess. It's a mess.

Forum:Magazine Reference - Interestingly, something like this for individual (non recurring) articles was kinda sorta tried and explicitly shot down earlier.

Forum:NO SPOILERS at the Panopticon - An understandable worry, but one that actually harms editing of upcoming issues! Making it clear where there are spoilers and to what extent they exist, while being as vague as possible, is probably the best we can do while still doing our job effectively.

Forum:Next Time trailer - And with time all things move on. BBC does this now, we now link these trailers.

Forum:No colourised pics, but what about comics? - Discussion of colorized comics, relevant to recent (2023) changes to our image policies.

Forum:References and continuity: what exactly is the difference? - I have no idea, to this day.

Forum:Tags on talk pages - lmao, nothing has made me think fandom is better than going through the old archives and seeing how wikia responded to people.

Forum:Story pages should have reception sections - A surprisingly nuanced discussion. I think a section for "critical analysis" of an episode done through the lens of focused scholarship is something we might want to reconsider. Where precisely we draw the line at the critics to include...? Not sure. But I don't think an out and out reception section is a good idea, often times the mainstream discussion of episodes doesn't have the context to properly analyze the episodes aside from "wow, huh, I enjoyed it". Or "I really don't like this writer, either on a personal or stylistic level, so I'm going to complain". (Yeah, you have to understand who the Morbius Doctors are to be able to comment on The Timeless Children (TV story) - don't @ me. Cold Fusion (novel)? You need to have at least heard of it. Lungbarrow (novel)? Sacred text.)

Forum:Should we class Big Finish's Doctor Who Unbound series as non-canon? - Relevant to a discussion going on at the time of writing, as well as the reform of T:CANON to T:VS. With that said, I've skimmed through some of Rec.arts.drwho. To say

Our problem is that we have never adjusted our use of the word "canon" from those early days in 2005 and 2006 when it wasn't the dirty word it is today.

is wild revisionism. Maybe it wasn't for you, but people would often complain about it in the 90s. Cornell's comments don't just come from competing accounts of Human Nature but from 3 different and conflicting accounts of 8's adventures fractioning the fanbase.

Forum:Users should be allowed any youtube video on their user page - Discussion of loosening T:VID in some weird ways imo.

Forum:Novelisations info - Not inuniverse - Discussion of "canonicity of novelizations". No longer applicable.

Forum:Alternate timelines vs. parallel worlds - A problem that still plagues us to this day, see Talk:Dust Devil (audio story).

Forum:UNIT aren't really companions, Forum:Add Ganger Amy as companion in series 6, Forum:Companions - who counts? - Companion discussions never get resolution. Horrible topic.

Forum:Judeo-Christian God: how to title the article - Somewhat topical as of time of writing, see discussion at Talk:God (mythology).

Forum:Clarification on how to cite of out-of-universe information - It's almost like in-universe reference works should have been "primary sources" the entire time and never invalidated. :P

Forum:Speculation - What is and what isn't? - A lot of meaty discussion here, and I'm now convinced that Howling Halls is the single most important page on this wiki.

Forum:How should we deal with link rot? - Something to revisit. We really need to think about this, as well as also archiving all of our forum threads when finished, just to make sure we don't lose archives again.

Forum:How to categorise Virgin New Adventure preludes - Helpful precedent for later issues, but not super interesting.

Forum:Implications of US premiere for our Torchwood Miracle Day coverage - Hmm, some hinting towards differences in versions around the world and how that might impact coverage. No clear resolution, or if it was even a real issue at the time.

Forum:TVM Bruce and Miranda: Gerhardt or not? - Overturned, but explicit statement that novelization name additions can't be used.

Forum:BBV and canon policy - Much has been revised, but of clear historical importance. I note that User:Tangerineduel actually brought up The Adventure of the Diogenes Damsel, which was later used in the 2017 discussion that reinstated FP. See also Forum:How do we best include Faction Paradox on the wiki?. Based on some fundamental misunderstandings of the issue and some outdated perspectives. But of clear historical importance. (Licensing Sutekh and the Sontarans for a distinctly different fictional universe, a la humans in Star Wars? Absurd.)

Forum:Canon policy: Items on which policy is unclear - More of the history of reference guides becoming invalid.

Forum:Is The Curse of Fatal Death canon? - And six months after proto R4bp is floated, it dies a death. CoFD is very much fatally dead for the next 9.5 years.

Forum:Proposed change to spoiler policy - Useful historical note that went nowhere. Specifically about cast/crew not necessarily being a spoiler, at least in one proposed change.

Forum:John and Gillian - Since been overturned.

Forum:Cliffhangers in Plot breakdown - Deserves documenting, I get why the format is the way it is. I just don't like it, as someone who write plot summaries, I think plot writers should have creative freedom. With that said:

Thus, if you wished to change that policy, you'd have to prove a case against it.

Forum:Exception to video policy: advertisements - Need to look more into the surrounding changes to FANDOM's vid stuff, but possibly useful.

Forum:Moving the tables of content to the right - Interesting design notes here, nothing super important, but useful to note.

Forum:Site fonts: your opinion needed - Interesting, imo, because of the comments about how to enforce MoS vs educate people on MoS.

Forum:Doctorwhospoilers.com is not a valid resource - Astonishing prejudice against Arkansas, and I think this is saying that even rumors should come from trusted sites? (Especially in conjunction with Forum:What makes a rumour?)

Forum:Brilliant Book 2011: a valid source? - It is now!

Forum:Leads on story pages - Classified as a policy changer, not really sure it is. Most of our ledes aren't like this, and one of the things Czech says is most important is no longer present. Seems to be more page specific? idk.

Forum:Edit warring prevention policy - Should be noted, not much here.

Forum:Production team members who become characters in the DWU - Aha, here's the "TV Action" precedent. See Talk:Hugh Grant, Talk:John Hurt (in-universe), and our new T:DAB IU.

Forum:"Human" shouldn't be capitalised - Sure, whatever, but

Honestly, you'd think this wiki was written by Germans Who Speak English as a Second Language sometimes.

is a banger line.

Forum:Meanwhile in the TARDIS - Thread says TV, but currently we use HOMEVID.

Forum:Story names should be automatically disambiguated - Thread that establishes postfixes for stories.

Forum:Image appropriateness issue - Suffice it to say that... This thread took an unrealistically optimistic stance towards what people would try to sneak on the wiki from the DWU. This has since been slightly amended.

Forum:We need a species tab on the homepage - Weird origin stuff for transmats?

Forum:The Master - 1 article recapping Forum:The Master which has been overturned.

Forum:Can we disable visual editor please? - Can we do this again please?

Forum:Copying your own work from Wikipedia to TARDIS Index File wiki - Somewhat related to T:DON'T COPY.

Talk pages, 2011

Talk:Dalek history - some early discussion of the possibility of an Essay namespace or suchlike. Interesting discussion of an analysis that doesn't really translate, I think, to a timeline quite right. But it's the genesis of timeline pages, even if they're not 1-1.

Talk:Series 6 (Doctor Who)/Archive 3#Death is the Only Answer canon? - "Every canonical televised Doctor Who must be on BBC One. It can't be canon." Compared to A Fix with Sontarans (TV story). People were not convinced.

Talk:Blue Humanoid - See also Forum:Proposed Deletion of Blue, Red and White humanoids - Yes or No. Not even sure what to say about this except some very strong statements against speculation, perhaps on the subject of visual appearance? idk

Threads, 2012

Talk pages, 2012

Threads, 2013

Talk pages, 2013

Threads, 2014

Talk pages, 2014

User talk pages to explore:

For sorting later: