Talk:Voyager

Split

This page should be split as Jacob Black's version had no legal connection to the original. The same case as Astrolabus/Auteur. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 19:55, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Mmh. I don't know. There's also the precedent of the Cyberman namedrop in PROSE: An Ordinary Man to consider (among others), where it was noted that mere mentions, since they are not legally copyright-infringement, should not lead to separation on the Wiki. So the question is: is Voyager's little cameo substantial enough that it would be copyright infringement if we held it to be Voyager, or is it in the same realm as Candy Jar getting one (1) Cyberman name-drop, as a treat?

I don't mean to dismiss your concerns here, I think this is genuinely an ambiguous case and I think it's a discussion worth having. Just saying it's not necessarily as clear-cut as it may seem! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 20:41, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

You have a very interesting view on the legality of things. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 20:47, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

It's not my view, it's the Wiki's jurisprudence, the result of much discussion and research conducted by other users in previous discussions. Talk:Legacies (short story), among others. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 20:49, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Also, as a little side note: why on Urizen's Beard do so many Wiki editors take licensing so seriously? We're not the damn BBC, we needn't be so overboard with it anyway. If the readers, aka fans, can see characters are the same, and considering we are readers/fans, not BBC employees, we should treat things as the same.

I fully understand that policy doesn't support this, but I do like to bring it up every now and then.

Epsilon📯 📂

21:43, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

The comments directly above mine (the "little side note") have no bearing on the editing of this article and in the future should not be brought up in similar situations. Shambala108 ☎ 21:47, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

It is a dangerous precedent to allow a publication that has no legal rights to a particular character/concept to impact the information on their page beyond the BTS section. Very dangerous. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 21:58, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

It is a precedent that already exists, because — again — it would have been very silly to exclude the licensed Lethbridge-Stewart novel An Ordinary Man from the Wiki over a single, non-prosecutable mention of Cybermen; and equally silly to create a Cyberman (An Ordinary Man) page and tie ourselves up in knots saying that "According to one account the Brigadier was turned into a Cyberman, but according to one account he was turned into a Cyberman (An Ordinary Man)". Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 22:01, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

The An Ordinary Man page doesn't seem to make any reference to the Cybermen at all, so how is it already a precedent? Regardless, I think that there is a difference between a publication making a minor reference to a character/concept that they do not own from a story involving characters/concepts that they do own, rather than this case where Jacob Black owns nothing from the original story whatsoever. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 22:07, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Let's keep the name-calling out of this discussion. It should be possible to make one's point without calling other users names like "silly" when a neutral word like "unnecessary" or "redundant" would have sufficed. Shambala108 ☎ 22:09, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

@Shambala108: begging your pardon, nobody in this discussion has called anyone "silly". As far as I can see, I was the only one to use the word, and I did so while referring, not to any users (let alone ones active in this discussion), but to a hypothetical course of action which the Wiki correctly elected not to take, years ago.

Though you're right that this discussion seems to be getting a little heated.

@DrWHOCorrieFan: The relevant information appears at the end of Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart#Resurrected as a Cyberman (and I think on a few other pages as well). At any rate, the standard you propose is an interesting supposition, but it is not current policy. As I said, the current standard is to ask "is this substantial enough that it would constitute copyright infringement if acknowledged as the original thing". Which, again, I have not said the Voyager mentions necessarily pass. Maybe they don't. I'm just clarifying that that is the standard by which this discussion must be conducted.

Rather than going around in circles, could somebody bring up the direct quotes from the story that (possibly) reference Voyager? So that we can all know what it is, precisely, that's at stake. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 22:14, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

I do question whether you are the best admin to be involved in this discussion in the first place. Could there not be a conflict of interest due to a thinly veiled "Noble-woman" appearing in your story that could be later assessed as being "enough" to pass as an appearance by Donna Noble if this example withstands. DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 22:24, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

As a matter of fact I would be quite against conflating the Noble-woman with Donna, if it came to that. But this is irrelevant because we are not creating precedent here. The policy and precedent already exist. We are discussing how to apply it to the specific Voyager case, but in no way are we altering the rules in a way that could trickle down to other cases. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 22:27, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

Hey. Let's reel this back in, shall we? We seem to have lost our thread. As user:Scrooge MacDuck said, we need to examine the information first, and then determine which precedents apply here. (This is already well-trodden territory.)

Before we go any further, I would like to remind everyone about talk page etiquette. Discuss the point, not the person. And though it pains me that we don't have a space right now for these important conversations, high-level discussion about wiki philosophy is outside the scope of this talk page.

So while we're here, let's refocus our energies. First, we'll need some direct quotes. Next, we'll compare and contrast with past decisions, to make sure we're following policy here. This is always our guide through the dark. Now, who'd like to start us off with some quotes?
× SOTO (☎/✍/↯) 23:30, 22 April 2022 (UTC)