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User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Inclusion debates/@comment-cas-per
XXXXXX User:SOTO/Forum Test/Inclusion debates/Thread:255536
Hi there guys. I've started this thread to discuss the validity of 10,000 Dawns and whether it should be included here on the wiki.
Please discuss this matter here from now on, and keep it away from talk pages. Thanks!
- Scrooge MacDuck
I confess myself outright puzzled at all these sudden deletions. User:Amorkuz justified each one with T:NOT, but T:NOT is a very large policy — which part of it is meant? From what I recall of reading over the various pages involved, the short stories in question did use licensed Doctor Who concepts, no different from any other crossovers.
("What I recall" is, of course, an important modifier. The fact of the matter is that regardless of how this debate ultimately goes, it would be much easier for everyone if we still had access to the pages in question. Couldn't they at least be recreated as sandboxes for the time being, so that we know what we're talking about, exactly? The Internet Archive hasn't got it backed up, or at least not all of it.)
- Nikisketches
James Wylder is the owner of Arcbeatle Press, a for-profit print publishing house which publishes stories set in Who lore as well as non-fiction about Who. The Who elements in his stories (online novellas, upcoming print stuff etc.) are all used with explicit permission from their owners (Lance Parkin, Andy Lane, Simon Bucher-Jones, Andrew Hickey, Stuart Douglas and so on). The stories these characters first appear in are all covered by the wiki. Vote for inclusion.
- MMLV
The short stories have officially licensed Doctor Who concepts, therefore are part of the DW universe, therefore have a place on the wiki. Having read T:NOT, I can't see what part of it Amorkuz is citing. The stories aren't fanfiction, they're officially licensed crossovers. So they belong on the wiki.
- Shambala108
For information sake, I am re-posting here User:Amorkuz' explanations for why the items in question were deleted. And for future reference, inclusion debates must take place here, not on article talk pages and not on user talk pages.
First, at User talk:Borisashton:
"Hi, thank you for your inquiry. You are quite right that a community discussion should have typically taken place. However, I would like to correct your timing. A community discussion should take place at Board:Inclusion_debates before stories are added to the wiki, not after. Granted, we do not discuss every story or series there. However, for stories from a new series and from a new source, which constitute a crossover with few individually owned elements of a non-licensed spin-off to Doctor Who and which shares no elements with Doctor Who proper, such discussion was quite pertinent. When LegoK9 wanted to add the story Death's Head: The Body in Question by a holder of Doctor Who license mentioning the Doctor and featuring an (non-sentient) character from Doctor Who Magazine, they did start an inclusion debate, but the story was ultimately deemed invalid (and not by me). Death's Head: The Body in Question is superior to the three stories from 10,000 Dawns in every Doctor Who respect, meaning that the latter would have most probably lost an inclusion debate on merits alone, even discounting the fact that they were posted on the author's online blog.
But, correct me if I somehow missed it, no such inclusion debate took place. Nor could I see any admin consulted on whether this was indeed such a open-and-shut case, on par with Series 12 (Doctor Who 2005), that no inclusion debate was necessary. Without a community discussion in favour of inclusion, no such discussion need be held for deletion. And, unlike the inclusion, the decision to remove these stories from the wiki was taken jointly by three admin. I was simply assigned to implement this decision. Hope this clarifies things. Amorkuz ☎ 07:36, August 27, 2019 (UTC)"
and at User talk:NateBumber:
"Thank you, Shambala108, for explaining the standard etiquette. Indeed, when you message somebody and they do not drop what they are doing to respond, perhaps, messaging them two more times may not achieve the results you hoped for. As another standard reminder, please recall that admin perform their duties for free on a voluntary basis and have other non-wiki-related obligations, such as jobs and families (not to mention the necessity to eat and sleep from time to time). I certainly did not appreciate your insistence.
- As for the actual content of your inquiry, T:NOT states, "We are not a place to post fan fiction, information relating to fan fiction, or fan-produced titles of any kind." In particular, stories posted by someone on their blog here, here and here are not covered by this wiki. That this is a blog can be clearly determined from the word "blog" as part of the web address. I do hope that your personal involvement in at least one of these stories does not cloud your judgment regarding their status. Amorkuz ☎ 07:15, August 27, 2019 (UTC)"
(Bold text added to make this post more readable)
- Scrooge MacDuck
Thank you very much!
Though I still don't quite see why Amorkuz linked to T:NOT rather than T:VS, all else being equal.
At any rate, I find Amorkuz's implication that something being published on a blog makes it fanfiction by definition. It's not that I don't vaguely see where he's coming from, but in what tangible way does it differ from any other short story released on the web? So the text is embedded directly into a webpage rather than being a pdf up for download. Big deal.
In fact, here's a precedent pointing the other way for you: Martha Jone's MySpace blog was obviously released in the form of, er, a blog. Online. Yet a debate on the Panopticon specifically ruled it valid. So as long as it's licensed, and the people licensing it are presenting it as a story they're releasing, we already do cover stories released via blogs.
User:Nikisketches states above that “the Who elements in his stories (online novellas, upcoming print stuff etc.) are all used with explicit permission from their owners (Lance Parkin, Andy Lane, Simon Bucher-Jones, Andrew Hickey, Stuart Douglas and so on)”. Why would James Wylder have bothered to acquire such permissions if he deemed that what he was writing was "fanfiction"?
There are cases of prominent DWU authors writing fanfiction on the side, most notably Paul Magrs, as referenced and linked-to on the page of Towers of Canonicity and Likelihood concerning his assertion in such a fanfiction story that the Tower of Canonicity was where the Doctor was tried in The War Games. But there, the reason he published this as a fanfic is obviously that at this point he didn't have a license to use Gallifrey or the Second Doctor, even if he did have the license to Panda. If he'd bothered to ask for the BBC's permission to use the Towers, the mind boggles as to why he'd then use this shiny new permission to publish it as part of an Internet genre defined by its lack of licensing.
Of course, this is all reliant on Nikisketches' claim that Wylder did get full permission from the relevant authors, so a source for that statement would have to be procured. But if the statement is right, I don't see how it's fanfiction, whether it's released in print, on a blog or via a carrier-piegon mailing list.
- Revanvolatrelundar
The fact that 10,000 Dawns has crossed into Faction Paradox with stories in The Book of the Peace shows the strong link between them, with characters from there then crossing back into 10,000 Dawns in White Canvas. These stories also come from a publishing house (Arcbeatle Press), so its not as if Wylder's just gone onto a fan fiction site to publish his stories.
Another vote to include.
- TheChampionOfTime
To be clear, 10,000 Dawns has shared several elements with "Doctor Who proper". The Dawns story "White Canvas" included not only licensed elements from Simon Bucher-Jones' Virgin New Adventures and Short Trips stories, but also (with Lance Parkin's permission) the Doctor's own daughter and a location originally created for a Dr Who 35th anniversary story.
It's been clearly documented that the author intended these three stories to be set in the DWU. One struggles to imagine any other reason someone would seek the permission to use a random planet that appeared once in the third act of a now-obscure Bernice Summerfield novel, would seek the right to use all the various DW-related elements they did!
And, concerning medium. These stories have all been officially released, and they have in fact also been released in PDFs (The first with a PDF all to itself, and the latter 2 in a big PDF along with other, non-DWU stories). And, and I'm not sure how Tardis:Spoiler policy applies here so I'll keep it speculative and purely a matter of showing the publisher's credibility: it is by now standard procedure in the Dawns series that stories released online are later republished in a collected print edition.
...I don't think these things tend to work in votes.
- Arcbeatle
Hello. I'm not sure if it's productive or not for me to comment here, but I'm James Wylder, the writer/publisher in question. I run a small press called Arcbeatle Press, which has published original and tie-in sci-fi fiction and analysis.
I did gain permission to use the Whoniverse concepts in these three stories, and tried to be very meticulous about it. Let it be clear: we are a for profit company, and we do NOT illegally publish fanfiction.
All three stories were released in a print chapbook format and sold via mailings and at conventions, two of them were also performed live: one at Wholanta, one at Indy Pop Con. They will be released in a traditional paperback as part of a collection in the near future titled "10,000 Dawns: Sidewinders".
The stories are available for free because they were written as celebrations of fandom for different occasions, and I wanted people to be able to enjoy them. Though I should note that White Canvas was written in parallel with several stories in "The Book of the Peace" with co-operation from the writers in order to act as a sort of prequel and help promote the release of the book, as the folks at Obverse have been very kind to me over the years and I wanted to do my little bit to help them out. They're good people.
I am here to answer any questions, and will do my best to. This has been a surprisingly stressful morning, and while I don't enjoy having my work debated and certainly enjoy having it on the wiki (it's an honor!), I will of course respect whatever decision is come to here. Thank you.
I can of course provide proof of who I am if necessary.
- NateBumber
Since Revan sensibly requested we discuss this matter here rather than on talk pages...
Amorkuz wrote:
Thank you, Shambala108, for explaining the standard etiquette. Indeed, when you message somebody and they do not drop what they are doing to respond, perhaps, messaging them two more times may not achieve the results you hoped for. As another standard reminder, please recall that admin perform their duties for free on a voluntary basis and have other non-wiki-related obligations, such as jobs and families (not to mention the necessity to eat and sleep from time to time). I certainly did not appreciate your insistence.
Amorkuz, your kind reminders about eating and sleeping would be very helpful and relevant if I sent those messages while you were offline and got annoyed that you weren’t logging in. But that isn’t the case. Before, during, and after my messages (and Borisashton’s), you were actively editing the wiki and removing or deleting tens of thousands of words of content. For this reason I know how frustrating it is to see oodles of time-consuming work undone, and by preempting your cleansing of Special:WhatLinksHere/Rachel Survived (short story), Special:WhatLinksHere/White Canvas (short story), and Special:WhatLinksHere/The Gendar Conspiracy (short story) — a process which by my count took about ninety minutes — I was hoping to stop you from having to experience the same. I understand now that you were acting based on a secret admin consensus, but it’s clear that this discussion happened without any input from anyone familiar with the hard-to-find details — the details which originally made it so obvious to other editors that the stories are self-evidently valid.
A note about the scope of this conversation, then: for the record, we are not discussing the validity of the entire 10,000 Dawns series, in the same way that we would never discuss the validity of all of Star Trek based on Assimilation². The three 10,000 Dawns stories that cross over with the Doctor Who universe are specifically
- the short story Rachel Survived, which crosses over with the Faction Paradox novel Head of State;
- the novella White Canvas, which crosses over with the Virgin New Adventures novels The Death of Art and Ghost Devices, the BBC Eighth Doctor novel Father Time, the BBC Short Trips story War Crimes, the Comeuppance Comics story Miranda, and a plethora of short stories from the Faction Paradox anthologies The Book of the Enemy and The Book of the Peace; and
- the short story The Gendar Conspiracy, which, as a short sequel to White Canvas, also crosses over with the New Adventures novel Ghost Devices and two stories from the Faction Paradox anthology The Book of the Enemy.
All three of these were published (and sold for profit) by Arcbeatle Press, as well as kindly posted for free on the author’s website, as linked above. I hope that helps clarify the scope of the conversation for anyone who’s learning of all this for the first time.
Unrelated to all of the above, at the very least could Original Mammoths be un-deleted and given a rename or merge tag? Obviously I have a vested interest, but while the title may have come from White Canvas, I believe most of the page’s content came from the short story Cobweb and Ivory, which (last I checked) is still fully valid. Thanks.
- Revanvolatrelundar
I found the stance of only including 10,000 Dawns stories with links to the DWU very forward-thinking at the time the articles were created, Nate, and is exactly the way we should handle 10,000 Dawns. We're not treating it as a 100% spin off from Doctor Who, but as Nate provided with examples from Assimilation², and another with Death's Head, we have pre-existing examples of how we handle series' like 10,000 Dawns.
In other matters, its wiki policy that pages shouldn't be deleted until after a decision is reached, so until that happens here all 10,000 Dawns related pages will be restored. When consensus is reached they'll either remain or be deleted, which is the way this should have been handled all along.
- Amorkuz
This is a unique junction in the wiki's life. We have an inclusion debate dominated by authors, and by authors directly involved in the stories under consideration. James Wylder (Arcbeatle) argues why his stories should be valid. Nate Bumber (NateBumber) and Niki Haringsma (Nikisketches) argue why their copyrighted concepts loaned to Wylder should expand their presence on the wiki. And Revanvolatrelundar, an author-admin (whose level of involvement with the 3 discussed stories is not publicly known) violates T:BOUND to help other authors expand their presence on the wiki by creating pages for their stories and characters before this thread is concluded.
What remains to be seen is whether these authors are interested in the opinions of their readers and how all this author self-promotion squares against the purpose of FANDOM as the site for fans.
James Wylder volunteers helpful facts about himself and his company in defiance of the letter and spirit of T:NO SELF REF. Nate Bumber describes some unspecified helpful facts as "hard-to-find." Revanvolatrelundar does not disclose whether he is involved in these three stories, or 10,000 Dawns, or Faction Paradox, and whether he personally might benefit from the inclusion of these three stories.
Their proposal is that sharing some copyrighted elements should provide a key to including a story on the wiki, apparently without so much as an inclusion debate. Meanwhile, James Wylder offers his copyrighted elements from the 3 stories discussed for free to anyone [1].
So what will happen if these three stories, which, according to Wylder, are "[s]et in the same universe as [Wylder's] popular novel 10,000 Dawns" [2] (= not in DWU), what will happen if they become valid? Apparently, anyone will be able to get their story on the wiki by asking Wylder to borrow his character. I can see how it will benefit authors. Whether it is desirable for fans, or even simply reasonable, is a separate question.
There used to be another safeguard: books were expensive to make, and one had to persuade a publisher to invest in their book. Nowadays, technology made self-publishing cheap and easy. Some people argued upthread that simply posting a story on your website (or in your blog) is a publication. Some suggested that creating a pdf file makes it a publication. James Wylder claims that if he prints such a pdf, staples it nicely and sends it by mail or sells it to you at a convention, then it is a publication. And somewhere around March 2020, he promises, he will finally produce a real book with these 3 stories (judging by his previous books, printed via something like CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform [3], i.e., Amazon self-publishing services) from the imprint which he owns and operates.
All of this is self-publishing and can be done by absolutely anyone. And Wylder already promised to lend his characters to absolutely everyone. Which means that allowing such self-published stories onto the wiki would mean that anyone would be able to become a "DWU" author for a very reasonable price.
Self-publishing is fan fiction. It may be legal fan fiction (in fact, some authors, e.g., J.K. Rowling allow almost any fan fiction). Fan fiction may be sold (like fanzines, which are often distributed exactly the way James Wylder described the current "publication status" of the three stories).
However, self-publishing remains fan fiction. And according to T:NOT, "The administration of the wiki reserves the right to remove fan fiction or art — even from your user page — at any time, for any reason." I do not know any examples on this wiki of stories by a company formed to publish works of its owner.
This last step of persuading somebody else to publish your story is a crucial safeguard against a free-for-all and cannot be dropped.
- Scrooge MacDuck
Woah, woah. You're right in identifying that an inclusion debate full of authors is kind of an odd situation, though you appear to have overlooked my non-authorial (well, non-Doctor Who authorial) contribution. But:
Amorkuz wrote: So what will happen if these three stories, which, according to Wylder, are "[s]et in the same universe as [Wylder's] popular novel 10,000 Dawns" [4] (= not in DWU), what will happen if they become valid? Apparently, anyone will be able to get their story on the wiki by asking Wylder to borrow his character.
No, no, no, no. From the start, what has been proposed is to treat the short stories in question as crossovers. For the purposes of these stories, and theses stories alone, the DWU and the "Dawns Universe" become synonymous; but that association ends with the licenses involved. In much the same way that for the length of Assimilation^2, the narrative exists in both the DWU and in the Star Trek universe, but this does not mean we cover subsequent stories about Picard which treat his Assimilation^2 experiences as having happened to him. For that matter, this is the reasoning that invalidated The Body in Question: it clearly considers that Death's Head's DWU experiences happened to him, but it no longer has licensed DWU elements, so we don't cover it.
As such, your entire argument that Mr Wylder's authorization for anyone to use his 10,000 Dawns characters become rather null and void. It is these three short stories that are in question, and them only.
Moving beyond that, I find your assertions about what does and doesn't count as a publication extremely specious. Again, we already do cover free online PDF releases as "publications", so long as they were officially licensed. They were, of course, released by "reputable" sources such as the BBC or Candy Jar, but so what? A PDF's a PDF.
Rowling's endorsement of all Harry Potter fanfiction is quite a different matter to any of this. Rowling has kindly stated "I won't sue anyone for publishing online Harry Potter stories so long as you do it for free", not granted her readers a specific commercial license as it is Wylder's claim that Parkin & Co. have done for him.
In the usage of basically everyone ever, fanfiction is defined not by being self-published, but being unlicensed. (Heck, different medium, but is some of BBV's output really different from Wylder hypothetically selling his self-printed books at conventions? For a given value of "self-published", it too is self-published, since Bill Baggs also directed a lot of it. And as for budget, it's no secret that the whole thing was usually done rather on the cheap)
So… I don't think Tardis has ever needed to define what is meant in policy by "fanfiction", but I'll wager that few people thought it meant "self-published fiction, regardless of whether commercial licenses were obtained". You may wish to redefine fanfiction as far as Tardis's policies are concerned, but I think that's an entirely different kettle of rulemaking. You're pulling a new definition of "fanfiction" out of your hat, and using it to make policy say very strange things.
- LegoK9
Amorkuz wrote: However, self-publishing remains fan fiction. ... I do not know any examples on this wiki of stories by a company formed to publish works of its owner.
Bill Baggs formed BBV Productions (aka "Bill & Ben Video") to produce his own DWU fanfilms. A number of these fanfilms that licenced character from their owner are valid on this wiki, inlcuding HOMEVID: When to Die which was writen, directed, and produced by Bill Baggs and released in 2015.
There used to be a safeguard: films were expensive to make, and one had to persuade a company to invest in their film. Nowadays, technology made film-making cheap and easy. Sound familiar?
- Arcbeatle
Correct me if I'm wrong, but does the no personal attacks clause here apply to Admins as well? https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Tardis:No_personal_attacks
I have just been falsely accused of conducting illegal and unethical business practices in that I am selling fanfiction.
I have been falsely accused of not running a legitimate small press. That these books are cheap and easy to make, and could be easily thrown together by any one. This is not the case.
I have been falsely accused of stating I would lend my stories out to anyone, when the tweet linked to clearly states I will allow use to "any other folks writing officially licensed Whoniverse works (that is, not fanworks)". This is a fairly limited set of companies (Obverse, Candy Jar, Thebes, etc).
I have been falsely accused of doing all of this for self-promotion and my own benefit. Creating these three stories took endless time I could have been spending creating profitable projects, and was done each time to give something to fandom for free.
The most serious of these accusations is that I am illegally selling fanfiction. This is a very serious accusation.
I am horrified how this conversation has gone. I came here curious as to the debate, unsure of how things would go, but I did not expect these personal attacks on my character and business.
- Revanvolatrelundar
For full disclosure, my upcoming DWU related story has yet to be published in a Cwej-orientated series, and has nothing to do with this current discussion (in fact, I've purposefully centred my argument on what is already released, to follow our rules here). The assertion of bias here is a funny one to me as, although there are a few users here who have an involvement with Arcbeatle Press, there are others in this discussion who don't.
The rules of the wiki have always stood that if a story is released with the consent of all relevant copyright holders, then it is valid. 10,000 Dawns' link to the DWU has all that. If you don't like that the series has that, then that's your personal opinion, Amorkuz. I myself was resiliant to the Lethbridge-Stewart series at its inception, but never opposed its inclusion on the wiki. That series turned out to be one of the best spinoffs I've read, despite my earlier opposition to it.
Copyright-wise, 10,000 Dawns' use of copyrighted characters such as Miranda Dawkins is no different to how Lethbridge-Stewart has used Adrienne Kramer. One day a new independant publishing press might come along using the rights to Fitz Kriener from Steve Cole in some bloke's series that had no links to Who previously - but it's still going to fall into our rules for us to cover Fitz's appearance. It's going to be hard to police a policy about future "fan-fiction" or "self-published" material when all the bigger companies do the same...
- Scrooge MacDuck
You may not like it, Amorkuz (it is obvious that you do not), but as you yourself acknowledge, media are changing. Webnovels that are only later published in print are an accepted form of literature these days. It is a form that official release of a work of fiction can take. Or are you suggesting that, say, Worm has never been "officially released"?
As LegoK9 has shown in more details than I had, we've long ago authorized several "self-published" works. You might think a BBV VHS "looks more professional" than a webnovel, but that's really neither here nor there (and even then, I'll note that fanfilms such as Rupert Booth's Timebase Serials were circulating at the same time as BBV in much the same format, and I'd be hard-pressed to say one is more professional-looking than the other, copyright matters aside).
- Revanvolatrelundar
I think its best to reign this discussion in to talk about the simple facts. The discussion is verging on the area of personal attacks, and we're here to talk about how 10,000 Dawns crossovers fits in with the wiki's rules, so...
Following our four little rules, we can justify it like this:
1. Only stories count: we're fine there.
2. A story that isn't commercially licensed by all of the relevant copyright holders doesn't count: James Wylder has obtained all the relevant permissions from copyright holders, and is willing to provide evidence of this for anyone who contests.
3. A story must be officially released to be valid: yep, all good there, and free stories are being collected in a volume. No problems there.
4. If a story was intended to be set outside the DWU, then it's probably not allowed. But a community discussion will likely be needed to make a final determination: the crossover stories are intended to be set within the DWU, and adjacent to 10,000 Dawns, so again no problem.
I think the problem here originates with Amorkuz' dislike and bias towards the series (and seemingly its contributors). I might remind all users that this wiki is run by a community. One user cannot usurp and overthrow any argument based on their beliefs, and ultimately the community decides what action will be taken here.
So does anyone dispute the 10,000 Dawns crossover stories when looked at against our Tardis:Valid sources policy?
- NateBumber
Amorkuz wrote: Nate Bumber (NateBumber) and Niki Haringsma (Nikisketches) argue why their copyrighted concepts loaned to Wylder should expand their presence on the wiki. ... What remains to be seen is whether these authors are interested in the opinions of their readers and how all this author self-promotion squares against the purpose of FANDOM as the site for fans.
Just to address the first few paragraphs here: I feel incredibly misrepresented by this. My “involvement” in these stories was restricted to giving an acquaintance an a-okay to build off a concept I came up with. I’ve been an editor since long before I was an author, and I’ve never stopped being a fan; the same is obviously true of User:Revanvolatrelundar. I think it’s unfair to suggest, in the absence of any other evidence, that I’m applying different principles here than I would in any other inclusion debate. I know I’ve said to you many times before that I don’t appreciate any insinuations that my objectivity is compromised, whether by some ridiculous wish to “expand [my] presence on the wiki” or otherwise.
I’d actually like to extend that to everyone here. In this thread I’ve seen assumptions, allegations, and/or insinuations that Amorkuz has some sort of bias or is trying to promote some sort of broader agenda. Even if I may not always live up to the promise, I’m a big fan of old-fashioned Wikipedian values, and a big part of that is assuming good faith. We should all keep in mind that we’re all trying to make the wiki better, even if we may disagree on what direction that takes. The less drama-filled and political we can make this process, the better for our sanity, and the better for the wiki!
(I’m splitting my reply to post #12 into three parts, not to be annoying and flood the thread, but so as to separate my individual points and prevent wall-of-text syndrome.)
- NateBumber
Amorkuz, the “slippery slope” argument outlined in your post seems to hinge entirely on this single tweet, which I will quote here in full:
Amorkuz wrote: Meanwhile, James Wylder offers his copyrighted elements from the 3 stories discussed for free to anyone [5].
Well, tell ya what, any other folks writing officially licensed Whoniverse works (that is, not fanworks), HMU if you want to use a character, species, planet, etc from those three stories that I created. I'll gladly let you for free.
Based on this tweet, you conclude that “anyone will be able to get their story on the wiki by asking Wylder to borrow his character.” But if you review the text of the tweet, Wylder specifically states that the offer only applies to people who are writing “officially licensed Whoniverse works” — that is, writers of existing Doctor Who universe series, which are already on the wiki! — and not fanworks.
The fact is that none of us want to see the “free for all” that you describe, including Wylder himself, and he’s already taken steps to ensure that something like that won’t happen.
(Besides, even if your reading of the tweet was correct, so what if some random writer uses a random 10,000 Dawns character in some story? As I clarified in my first post here, no one is arguing that the entire 10,000 Dawns series should be valid on the wiki, just these three stories. If Star Trek became public domain tomorrow, would that create some sort of panic here because of Assimilation²? I think not.)
Maybe I’m completely missing the logic of your argument, and if I am, please correct me. But from where I’m standing, I don’t think you’ve presented anything close to a convincing case that this scenario poses any sort of existential threat.
- Revanvolatrelundar
On the subject of objectivity, you can take a look at posts on my talk page by NateBumber a few months ago, where he explains that he won't edit pages relating to his own work. No user here wishes to bias the wiki by editing their own stories, as I certainly won't once mine is released. The assertion that any of us would borders close to a personal attack, which is why I've tried to steer the discussion back onto the matter in hand.
- NateBumber
Now for the specific statements about Arcbeatle Press and small publishers in general ...
Amorkuz wrote: And according to T:NOT, "The administration of the wiki reserves the right to remove fan fiction or art — even from your user page — at any time, for any reason." I do not know any examples on this wiki of stories by a company formed to publish works of its owner.
Neither do I! And that includes the stories we’re discussing. For instance, by my count, only two of the nine stories in the 10,000 Dawns Christmas 2018 series were written by Wylder; based on some cursory googling, Arcbeatle has also published (among many other things) a new printing of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and a book by Star Wars comics writer Nathan P. Butler. Just the number of writers in this 10,000 Dawns anthology alone should belie the claim that Wylder made or uses Arcbeatle Press solely to publish his own writings.
(Also, isn’t the point of that quote from T:NOT specifically that you shouldn’t use your user page to post fanfiction? I.e., that this wiki shouldn’t be used as an alternate to FFN or AO3? I don’t think anyone’s doing that in this discussion, lol.)
Amorkuz wrote: James Wylder claims that if he prints such a pdf, staples it nicely and sends it by mail or sells it to you at a convention, then it is a publication. And somewhere around March 2020, he promises, he will finally produce a real book with these 3 stories (judging by his previous books, printed via something like CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform [6], i.e., Amazon self-publishing services)
In one breath, you have condemned a publisher as amateurish both for (A) printing its own books and (B) paying a printer to print its books. Which seem like the only two options, actually. What exactly is the problem here?
The printing and distribution methods of several small publishers recognized by this wiki — Mad Norwegian, Telos, Random Static, Candy Jar, just to name a few — could be similarly described in reductive terms to make it seem like they’re worthlessly amateur. They often hire independent third-party printers to make their books, then the owner of the publisher (who is often the only staff) either uses their house as an informal warehouse before shipping them out, or they cut out the middle-man and have the printer send it straight to the customer. That’s just how small publishers work. Where, I might ask, does the cutoff need to be in the supply chain for a publisher to be official enough for this wiki, in your eyes?
... I might ask that, if our wiki based its criteria for validity on the “officialness” of the publisher. But we don’t. We have T:VS instead, and nowhere on that page are ebooks or self-publishing even mentioned. Which specific little rules do you think these stories violate?
Amorkuz wrote: This last step of persuading somebody else to publish your story is a crucial safeguard against a free-for-all and cannot be dropped.
If that’s where we draw the line, we must immediately purge all stories written by Stuart Douglas for Obverse; by AndyFA for Candy Jar (under any pseudonym); by Iain McLaughlin at Thebes; by David J. Howe at Telos; by Alan Stevens at Magic Bullet; by Gary Russell at Big Finish before 2006 and by Nicholas Briggs since then; the list goes on and on.
It’s true that not every small publisher grows up into Virgin Books or Big Finish, but I don’t think we should wait until that point before we can discuss their officially released, comercially-licensed, DWU-set stories on this wiki.
Cheers.
- Shambala108
Let's not forget Thread:223085, people, thanks.
- Nikisketches
In addition to Nate's comments, I would like to address the suggestion that seeing "whether these authors are interested in the opinions of their readers" would in any way impact the inclusion debate. I'll take the liberty of assuming I and my fellow writers won't have to "prove" our interests, as that would be nothing short of ridiculous. Aside from the hostile tone of that question, and the fact that Amorkuz is not the arbiter of anyone's sincerity... there's a heckin ton of Who authors who proudly do not give one iota about what their readers think. Which has precisely zero impact on whether or not their works become part of this wiki.
- NateBumber
I didn't take Amorkuz's comment to refer to the readers' opinions of a story's quality, which would indeed be very off-topic for the purpose of this debate. But even while saying that, I'm not sure what opinions Amorkuz was referring to. I'd be interested to hear some clarification on that line for sure.
- Revanvolatrelundar
Please leave that out of this thread though, guys. This topic is for the inclusion of the 10,000 Dawns crossovers to the wiki.
Would anyone else like to weigh in with whether or not to include these stories? I feel there isn't much more to discuss, and that by our rules they are valid, and we've basically gone a roundabout way to discuss why they are. But as it's a community decision, I'd like to hear some more yes or nos to the pile, otherwise at this point it's a given.
- Borisashton
I feel like everything has been covered at this point so just dropping in to give my support of the inclusion of the three stories discussed.
- LegoK9
I see nothing the break this wiki's "Four little rules", so I also express my support for the inclusion of crossover stories which have licensed DWU characters. They are in the same club as The Incomplete Death's Head, yes?
- Scrooge MacDuck
So they are, for my money. Although concerning whether it's "in the same club as The Incomplete Death's Head" — well, I think the meat of the debate this time around wasn't a matter of Rule 4, but rather of Rule 3: Amorkuz disagrees (disagreed?) on whether Wylder's way of distributing the works counted as properly "publishing" them.
- Revanvolatrelundar
Small printing presses related to Doctor Who are on the rise, that's something that can't be denied. We've had Obverse, Candy Jar, Thebes, Magic Bullet Productions (for audio) and I'm sure others, all who use other companies to print their books, or use modern methods to release their stories. If Candy Jar churn out a Lucy Wilson or Lethbridge-Stewart short story via a pdf we include it, and when Obverse released their short story tie-ins to The Book of the Piece on their website, we include it, so 10,000 Dawns is no different in that regard either. The world is changing, modernising, and, most importantly, advancing. Arcbeatle Press has got with the times. Thank Rassilon for that, if you ask me.
- AeD
To the best of my understanding of the four little rules and their intent, the stories that cross over pass all four easily:
- "Only stories count." It's not like they're recipes. Obvious pass.
- "A story that isn't commercially licensed by all of the relevant copyright holders doesn't count." Arcbeatle Press is a small press that clearly does business beyond exclusively self-publishing Mr Wylder's work, and I see no reason not to take Mr Wylder on his word that all elements that intersect with the DWU do so with the appropriate permissions of every copyright holder involved. Plans to sell the stories in some form indicate that these permissions cover the right to do so commercially. Any implication that Arcbeatle Press has not secured these permissions should come only with proof or evidence, and would otherwise venture into T:NPA areas, potentially into the range of slander or libel.
- "A story must be officially released to be valid." My understanding of Tardis:Official releases#Novels has always been that "official release" for our purposes really only refers to a policy of not covering stories before their official release date. So, yes, out and released, not an issue at all.
- "If a story was intended to be set outside the DWU, then it's probably not allowed. But a community discussion will likely be needed to make a final determination."
- From the introduction on the page for White Canvas: "this novella is a licensed crossover between the 10,000 Dawns, and characters from the universes of Doctor Who and Faction Paradox!"
- From the page for Rachel Survived: The title of the page and introduction explicitly refer to the story as "a 20th anniversary crossover," and to the titular character (and other elements) as "crossing over" from Head of State.
- From the page for The Gendar Conspiracy: The introduction again explicitly refers to the story as "a licensed crossover, pulling characters and settings from the universes of Doctor Who and Faction Paradox"
- Ergo, all three of the relevant stories have very clearly established that the authorial intent of them is to be crossovers between 10,000 Dawns and either or both of Doctor Who and Faction Paradox.
In addition, the BBC themselves have frequently made stories available exclusively as text on a web page or as PDFs -- The Lonely Computer, The Advent of Fear, Wish You Were Here etcetera -- so the idea that these forms of release are in some way inadequate is completely baseless, and irrelevant -- this wiki does not to the best of my knowledge have any policies whatsoever to this effect.
I could understand a hesitation to include these through the lens of a "slippery slope" argument -- if all fears to that effect were not completely baseless:
- Arcbeatle Press, though smaller, is clearly operating on a similar scale or level as Obverse, Telos, Candy Jar, whose published Doctor Who-adjacent works are today generally accepted here as valid without significant question. (Though I remember lengthy debates re: some of the further-removed-from-Doctor Who Obverse stuff.)
- Mr Wylder clearly travels in the same circles as, and has professional and/or personal relationships with, the authors from whom he has licensed characters and concepts. A random fanfiction author on the internet does not have these connections, and the odds that this wiki will ever have to deal with, like, buttenthusiast193's incoherent million-word licensed novel about Rachel Edwards' grandmother or Littlejohn's preschool days are pretty small.
- As has been pointed out above, the offer to loan out characters for crossover purposes is only extended to authors of work on the level of Candy Jar Books or Obverse, not to buttenthusiast193.
- Nobody is talking about including all of 10,000 Dawns as a valid work, though as a fictional universe that crosses over with the DWU, it's certainly reasonable to have a page about it.
TL;DR: If it's a yes or no you're looking for, mine is very much a yes.
- AeD
Scrooge MacDuck wrote: So they are, for my money. Although concerning whether it's "in the same club as The Incomplete Death's Head" — well, I think the meat of the debate this time around wasn't a matter of Rule 4, but rather of Rule 3: Amorkuz disagrees (disagreed?) on whether Wylder's way of distributing the works counted as properly "publishing" them.
I make this point in the post above, but just in case it gets lost in there: The BBC themselves have frequently made stories available exclusively as text on a web page or as PDFs -- The Lonely Computer, The Advent of Fear (short story), Wish You Were Here, etcetera -- so the idea that these forms of release are in some way inadequate seems to me to be baseless -- and if this wiki has policies to the effect that the form of release matters at all in this way, I'm not aware.
- Scrooge MacDuck
Oh yeah, I quite agree with you - and, while I hadn't any titles in mind at the time, mentioned the BBC's own numerous online prose releases in proof of my point upthread.
Amorkuz seemed not to, though, and so I was merely pointing out that contrary to what LegoK9 was perhaps unwittingly implying, what was in question wasn't a matter of rank-and-file DWUness as with The Incomplete Death's Head, but a much more unusual concern of Rule 3 compliance. Doesn't mean I think this concern was founded.
- Revanvolatrelundar
I've asked three admins who have been online recently (and haven't had a hand in the actual discussion) to take a look at the thread and pass a judgement on whether the inclusion discussion is over. I think that's the fairest way to end this debacle. I hope you all feel the same.
- Shambala108
I think at this point we need to hear from the three admins who participated in the original decision to delete this material from the wiki. I'm sure they had their reasons, and I think it would help the discussion to hear how they reached their decision.
(Please note that, as posted above, User:Amorkuz did not make the ruling on his own; he merely implemented the decision reached by three admins.)
- Amorkuz
Apologies to those who wanted to know what I meant in the preceding posts. Revanvolatrelundar put his foot down that there is nothing more to discuss. I'm glad, however, that he lets other admin deal with the closure. And I sincerely thank Shambala108 for reminding that there might exist opinions not yet expressed in this thread in all two days of its existence.
I am also very happy that more non-author fans gathered to participate in this discussion and express their opinion.
I, however, strongly disagree that everything has been discussed.
I am glad that finally my objections have been understood. My main concern was always about Rule 3 of T:VS. For instance, if these three stories were published by Obverse instead, there would have been no need for this inclusion debate. Then the situation would have indeed been clear.
The reason this debate was necessary before the pages were created was that it was a heretofore unknown to the wiki publisher, releasing their first DWU stories for free online, on his personal website.
Many people seem to agree upthread that these stories have been officially released. However, I am not sure whether everybody is talking about the same release. Take, for instance, the first of three stories. From publicly available sources I can find at least three different release dates:
- 8 December 2017 (free release online) [7]
- August 2018 [8] (during this month Wylder started sending printed pamphlets (a more common British term for chapbooks [9]) with the story to his backers on Patreon)
- Estimated March 2020 (printed book with these stories) [10]
Since this inclusion thread is likely to create a precedent that will be used for years to come, it is necessary to be precise. The release date on the page Rachel Survived (short story) corresponds to the first of these three dates.
If someone upthread in fact meant a different release, please restate your position.
As already stated above, this online release came in a form of a webpage and a pdf [11]. However, neither mentions anywhere that this is a publication of Arcbeatle Press. The pdf contains the website address (jameswylder.com), states the copyright as James Wylder, and states that 10,000 Dawns is available from Arcbeatle Press.
So I would like to ask, in which sense is this story released by Arcbeatle Press on 8 December 2017 if Arcbeatle Press is not mentioned as the publisher anywhere?
To be clear, even to this date, the story cannot be found on the website of Arcbeatle Press [12].
The blog post [13] that is allegedly the release of the story does not mention Arcbeatle Press either. Instead here are excerpts from the description of this release:
- "I love it, and I wanted to do something to share that love with my readers"
- "I’ve gotten permission from a Faction Paradox author to write a story"
- "So thank you to Andrew Hickey for trusting me with his creation"
- "Thank you as well to all my backers on Patreon who make this weird stuff possible."
This should make it clear why this was deemed to be fan fiction. The author is mentioned multiple times but no statement is made about any kind of publisher. And the express purpose of posting this story is to share it with other fans (which was also expressed by Wylder upthread), a hallmark of fan fiction.
Since James Wylder considers a suggestion that he, among other things, writes fan fiction a personal insult, let me clarify that I do not consider it and do not mean it as insulting. Fan fiction can be legal (when permissions are obtained explicitly or implicitly). One of my favourite Doctor Who writers/producers, Nick Briggs, began with producing fan fiction at Audio Visuals. I hope this satisfies Tardis:No personal attacks.
To make things even clearer, a publisher is firmly separated from the story by being mentioned as a publisher of 10,000 Dawns within the pdf of the story itself, not as a publisher of the story.
- Scrooge MacDuck
I continue to disagree that fiction published personally (that is to say, released personally by the author, as opposed to released via a publishing company, whether or not it is one the author happens to also own) is automatically fanfiction. Fanfiction's primary characteristic is not that it is published on the Internet, but that it is published without a license.
Again, the notorious novel Worm was released on the Internet, without a specific "publisher", but that doesn't make it fanfiction, because the author wasn't using any concepts he didn't have the rights to. Nor would any sane person say that means Worm hasn't been officially released. Same thing here: if he had been writing fanfiction, Mr Wylder wouldn't have asked for permission prior to publishing the damn thing.
You say there is "legal fanfiction where permissions were obtained", but by most people's definition, this is an oxymoron. As I said above, equating this with J.K. Rowling's endorsement of Harry Potter fanfiction is a false equivalence. Fanfiction can be tolerated, authors can and do say ‘I love that fanfiction exists, so I won't sue anyone who writes fanfiction of my stories, pinky-promise’. But that's along the same lines as DW charity publications where the BBC kindly does not sue a publisher because they've said they'd give the money to charity so it would kind of be a douchey move to sue them. Wylder explicitly getting permission from the copyright-holders ahead of time, and planning to reprint the stories commercially, is quite another thing.
Whether through Arcbeatle Press or not, Wylder had, by all appearances, every right to release a story featuring those DWU concepts. He did. How he chose to do so, and whether that story is later rereleased in print through Arcbeatle, doesn't make the prior, modern-style, webnovel-style release "fanfiction". He had every legal right to publish these stories; and he did release them, in the common-sense meaning of the term that he made them accessible to any audience whose fancy it caught to read them.
…All this being said, just checking: you do agree that even if we forget about Release #1, Releases #2 and #3 would be enough for the stories to pass Rule 3, yes? (In which case, though this is nitpicking, you can't say you disagree with "everything" that has been said in this thread.)
- Doug86
I am also adding my support for the inclusion of these stories.
- AeD
Stories have multiple release dates all the time -- Candy Jar Books frequently puts out short stories for free online that then get collected in print/digital collections, often slightly edited. Big Finish tend to release stories digitally a couple days or weeks before a physical release gets mailed out. Rose aired on March 26, 2005, came out on a single DVD on May 16, 2005, and then in a boxset on November 21, 2005. Were we supposed to wait cover Rose until the Blu-Ray release on November 4, 2013?
- Amorkuz
Okay, so it appears that I was right and the criterion under which the validity of these stories is proposed is this:
If a person obtains rights to use at least one character/concept from any story already valid on this wiki, writes a story about this character, posts this story on their personal blog and describes it as a DWU story, then this posting is considered the official release of the story according to T:VS and the story becomes automatically valid according to our four rules.
I mentioned earlier the tweet, but actually that is redundant. According to the rule above, Gareth Roberts can start posting stories on his personal blog, and we will have to cover them. For those who missed it, Gareth Roberts has recently been dropped from a BBC anthology for "trans-misogynistic" posts online, according to our own description. If he turns these posts into stories, complete with transphobic slurs he used, and posts it on his blog using some of his multiple DWU creations, the rule above would mandate us to cover these stories.
After 50+ years, many of the original writers are not with us anymore. Hannah Hatt, the granddaughter of Mervyn Haisman, entrusted the rights to the Brig to Candy Jar Books (where the already mentioned AndyFA writes a lot of stories but is not the owner). Another grandchild may not be that careful. In fact, with the sheer amount of writers involved, there are statistically good chances that one of the grandchildren is a racist, white supremacist, or belongs to any other deplorable creed. Having inherited some rights from his/her grandparent, they can open a blog, say, on 8chan and post any vile stories there. The rule proposed above would force us to cover these stories, link to 8chan and all.
I talked about guardrails before. If any of those hypothetic vile stories is proposed for publication in a publishing house, no matter small or big, like Candy Jar Books, like Obverse, etc., there would be editors to stop it, and there would be owners to veto it. As an example of such sanity control, here is a pitch that Andrew Hickey had to submit to Candy Jar before starting to write Head of State.
I am frankly surprised that people are still so trusting of everything posted on the Internet after Cambridge Analytica, after Sri Lanka had to block Facebook to stem the violence [14], after all the recent manifestos.
And no, I am not saying that James Wylder's writing is in any way comparable to all of the above. I am saying that the Internet does not have a filter to separate the Wylders from extremists of all vile ideologies. The requirement to obtain rights for at least one of the DW elements is woefully inadequate as such a filter.
The already mentioned BBV Productions already "blessed" us with adult-only Zygon: When Being You Just Isn't Enough. If the rule above is approved, we will see much much worse, and in large quantities.
- Nikisketches
Not a valid argument. Discriminatory Who content has been published on numerous occasions, and will continue to be released by publishing houses and even within DW TV episodes, simply because Who writers, editors and company owners can all hold discriminatory and/or ignorant views. Discrimination is not in any way a distinction between publishing methods you personally accept and the content you deem less official.
Also, it's seriously not okay that you drag in a sudden affinity on your part for trans rights after, not so long ago, writing the words "I am asking you and any other trans people that feel offended to stand down and give us time to make this decision in peace and quiet." This debate is not about trans rights. And the ways in which people might hypothetically discriminate against us should not be used as a straw argument to prove your completely unrelated point.
- Revanvolatrelundar
As Niki says, this debate has nothing to do with the views of people who write/publish their work, in fact I don't know how we even got there.
Bringing us back on topic, do we have your agreement that these stories are valid, Amorkuz? It'd be nice to get this debate behind us and move on.
- Liria10
I just want to pop in and add my support for those stories.
As for Arcbeatle Press, there are quite a few pages showing it is in quite a similar situation as Candy Jar, Obverse, and Thebes. You can find an official Facebook page here, and for 10 000 Dawns itself, which is the series in question here, there is a Facebook page as well as a wiki.
And about the page were the stories are published, calling it a personal blog because of a word in an url, while disregarding that the site itself is used for commercial purpose and is never once described as a personal blog in the content themselves, seems like a bit of a leap of logic?
As well, I feel it really is going a bit far and totally away from the subject of this thread to go on about a potential (and as far as it currently known, inexistent) racist grandchild and Gareth Roberts' blog posts, when neither are in anyway, shape of form related to the matter at hand?
I know you did not mean to compare James Wylder's stories, nor insult his reputation with such comparison, but I must admit they do feel out of place in this discussion.
- Scrooge MacDuck
Amorkuz, I agree with Niki and Revan that the possibility that stories you find ideologically horrid might end up valid is neither here nor there. No one's asking you to approve of all valid stories, just to document them.
If Roberts ends up taking Wylder's offer to borrow a character from one of the three crossover stories (but are there even any new characters or concepts in these stories that this could happen to? can someone who's read all of 10,000 Dawns chime in there? I'm only halfway through the first novel, myself, so I can't be sure), and in the improbable event that he includes offensive statements in them, it won't be any harder to cover than The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Celestial Toymaker, or, for that matter, A Town Called Mercy.
Nor is it a certainty that writers who have said some offensive thing off-DW will always stop being published by the BBC; it seems to have happened with Roberts for once (and even then I have my doubts; according to our covering of the events, it seems that his short story was cut because other writers threatened to pull out of the project if it wasn't; whether the BBC itself remains willing to print novels by him and him alone remains to be seen), but need I remind you of Mark Gatiss and the whole League of Gentlemen thing, which didn't stop him from continuing to write Doctor Who stories?
Either way:
Liria10 wrote: And about the page were the stories are published, calling it a personal blog because of a word in an url, while disregarding that the site itself is used for commercial purpose and is never once described as a personal blog in the content themselves, seems like a bit of a leap of logic?
I think we've been missing the forest for the tree and Liria has just straightened out something that's been staring us in plain sight. I still think an author legally entitled to it isn't, in any way, shape or form, publishing "fanfiction" when publishing a story on the Internet through their personal blog; and that if you want to exclude such materials from the Wiki, Amorkuz, we will need a new policy that doesn't use the term "fanfiction". But wherever one may stand on the debate about personal blogs, this isn't actually what's happening here. Wylder may say "I", but the blog is the 'blog' feature of the commercial 10,000 Dawns website, not his personal tumblr account or something!
- AeD
I don't think any of the 10,000 Dawns material should automatically be rendered invalid even if it were all posted on his personal tumblr account -- the posting of Martha Jones' MySpace blog on MySpace clearly does not in any way have that effect on it, either.
I think at this point the central point Amorkuz, as the main person arguing against inclusion, is making, is probably roughly as follows: "The 10,000 Dawns material should be considered invalid for the purposes of this wiki because stories released by Arcbeatle Press/James Wylder do not have to meet the standards of some kind of 'sanity control', be that an editor, editors plural, or a larger organisation that in some other way oversees the publication of the story itself and/or the use of the licensed characters and concepts. To allow these stories to be considered valid would be a slippery slope."
Is that accurate?
- Scrooge MacDuck
I got the impression that at this point he's saying the somewhat more restrained "The 10,000 Dawns material should be considered invalid for the purposes of this wiki for now because stories released by James Wylder do not have to meet the standards of some kind of 'sanity control', be that an editor, editors plural, or a larger organisation that in some other way oversees the publication of the story itself and/or the use of the licensed characters and concepts. To allow these stories to be considered valid would be a slippery slope. If the stories are ever printed properly by Arcbeatle Press they might be valid but that hasn't happened yet, and even if it was, we certainly wouldn't link to the blog version or consider it the actual first release."
But I would appreciate confirmation, and at any rate do agree with AeD that even if it was on his tumblr blog or something, that shouldn't invalidate the release — even though this is not the case here to begin with, and a print release has already happened either way; what Amorkuz termed "release #2" when he broke down the three forms of release under discussion in an above message.
- Shambala108
I'm going to ask anyone who has posted two or more times in this thread to hold their comments for a bit. We don't need this debate to get longer and longer with the same people saying the same things over and over.
I'm still waiting to hear from the rest of the three-admin team that ruled on deleting this content. Until then, there's no need to keep repeating the same comments over and over; these inclusion debates can be hard enough and long enough to read without people repeating themselves.
This debate is still very young. There is no rush to close something that may have far-reaching effects on this wiki.
- AeD
Regardless of whether that is Amorkuz's argument, or if that's even a standard that stories need to meet to be considered valid -- I don't think I see it in the four little rules anywhere -- we do not at this time know at all if Arcbeatle Press/Mr Wylder ran either the intended use of the licensed elements of the stories or the finished stories themselves past their respective rightsholders. It is perfectly possible that this happened. It is perfectly possible that it is not.
(Certainly, as an aside, if somebody asked to use one of my own characters with the intent of producing a crossover between their work and my own, I'd definitely set down some basic rules -- i.e., don't be too specific about the Space War, don't reference any past romantic relationships, that kind of thing, and if in writing you find yourself breaking those rules, run it past me.)
(EDIT: Wrote this while the previous two comments were posted.)
- AthenodoraKitten
I do strongly believe, to paraphrase a post earlier in this thread, that not everything in this case has been discussed—specifically, I would like to bring attention to a number of apparent fallacies of both matter and reasoning that, so far, have not been commented on.
A community discussion should take place at Board:Inclusion_debates before stories are added to the wiki, not after. Granted, we do not discuss every story or series there. However, for stories from a new series and from a new source, which constitute a crossover with few individually owned elements of a non-licensed spin-off to Doctor Who and which shares no elements with Doctor Who proper, such discussion was quite pertinent. [. . .] But, correct me if I somehow missed it, no such inclusion debate took place. Nor could I see any admin consulted on whether this was indeed such a open-and-shut case, on par with Series 12 (Doctor Who 2005), that no inclusion debate was necessary. Without a community discussion in favour of inclusion, no such discussion need be held for deletion.
This extract is from the post at User talk:Borisashton reproduced earlier on this thread (emphasis original) justifying the deletion without community discussion of the articles covering the 10,000 Dawns crossovers in question; providing reasons is literally its whole purpose. But how can we assess the validity of its reasoning? I propose we use the simple and straightforward device of the syllogism—"All men are mortal beings, Sokrates is a man, therefore Sokrates is a mortal being" is, after all, literally a textbook example of logical argumentation.
So what, exactly, is the key feature of the case that justifies such a conclusion, according to this post? Perhaps it is the "no such inclusion debate took place" part. Now, the post does acknowledge that while community discussions are not required for all stories, but it qualifies the matter by stating that these discussions happen to be “quite pertinent” for a specific class of stories to which these 10,000 Dawns crossovers belong. In other words, the argument can be put in proper syllogistic form as:
- Major premise: "For stories from a new series and from a new source, which constitute a crossover with few individually owned elements of a non-licensed spin-off to Doctor Who and which shares no elements with Doctor Who proper, such discussion was quite pertinent."
- Minor premise: These particular stories belong to the class defined above, but no such community discussion had taken place for them.
- Conclusion: These particular stories are to have their articles deleted without a community discussion.
Here is the problem though—what does "such discussion was quite pertinent" actually mean? If “pertinent” somehow has the meaning of unnecessary then yes, one could expect this to work as a premise for an argument about why a community discussion was unnecessary when deciding on the inclusion of these stories. But that is not how pertinent is commonly defined (cf. Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed., s.v. “pertinent, adj. and n.” [online entry, fully revised December 2005]); given these premises one would thus expect the line of argument to be instead:
- Major premise: For stories belonging to so-and-so class, community discussion is quite pertinent.
- Minor premise: These particular stories belong to the class defined above, but are without a community discussion in favour of inclusion.
- Conclusion: For these stories, a community discussion is quite pertinent.
Logically then, someone operating from these premises should have ended up initiating a community discussion, not acted as if a discussion was not needed—and I do not see any steps included in the original post to lead from here to its actual conclusion.
So for the argument of “without a community discussion in favour of inclusion, no such discussion need be held for deletion” to work, what major premise would be needed? So far we have:
- Major premise: [. . .]
- Minor premise: These particular stories belong to so-and-so class, but are “without a community discussion in favour of inclusion.”
- Conclusion: “No such discussion need be held for deletion” of articles covering these particular stories.
Put it this way, I do think it’s obvious that the missing premise here should be something along the lines of For stories of so-and-so class, only those with a prior community discussion in favour of inclusion need to have a community discussion held for deletion of their articles. But the problem is that there’s no such policy on the Wiki—inclusion on this Wiki is regulated by T:VALID, and here is what T:VALID has to say about community discussions:
Except in the most obvious of cases, community discussion is required to declare a story invalid. In these discussions, sufficient evidence must be provided that that the story either doesn't have permission from all relevant copyright holders, or that there are solid non-narrative reasons to believe the story does not occur in the DWU.
In its current form, T:VALID makes no distinction whether or not something is a crossover; the clause quoted above applies to this case no less than it does to Series 12 (Doctor Who 2005). Any claim otherwise would simply be factually inaccurate. The argument of “without a community discussion in favour of inclusion, no such discussion need be held for deletion” is thus fallacious; furthermore, these stories must be considered valid in-universe sources, in accordance with T:VALID, unless/until their lack of validity has become evident.
Perhaps, then, the key point here is, unlike what the post at User talk:Borisashton suggests, not the lack of community discussion after all, but rather that these 10,000 Dawns crossovers constitute one of those “most obvious of cases” mentioned in T:VALID. Elsewhere in this post, as well as in other posts on this very thread, the argument has indeed been made that these 10,000 Dawns crossovers are certainly invalid sources. In that case, the first thing I’d like to note is that the focus on the absence of a prior inclusion debate in this post is misleading, forming a presumably-unintentional red herring that distracts from the main point.
Nevertheless, let us move on then to examine the evidence offered for the exclusion of these stories.
1/
As already stated above, this online release came in a form of a webpage and a pdf [15]. However, neither mentions anywhere that this is a publication of Arcbeatle Press. The pdf contains the website address (jameswylder.com), states the copyright as James Wylder, and states that 10,000 Dawns is available from Arcbeatle Press. So I would like to ask, in which sense is this story released by Arcbeatle Press on 8 December 2017 if Arcbeatle Press is not mentioned as the publisher anywhere?
As we can all see, this post from earlier on this very discussion thread alleges that the 8 December 2017 online release of Rachel Survived (short story) “states that 10,000 Dawns is available from Arcbeatle Press” (emphasis original) while, at the same time, “Arcbeatle Press is not mentioned as the publisher anywhere” in this online release. In other words, we have here a premise, and a conclusion:
- Major premise: the online release contains only one mention of Arcbeatle Press.
- Minor premise: [. . .]
- Conclusion: This online release does not identify Arcbeatle Press as its publisher anywhere.
Logically, these two claims can both be true only if there is a minor premise of The lone mention of Arcbeatle Press in the online release does not indicate that Arcbeatle Press is its publisher.
Now, I must confess that the description “the pdf contains the website address (jameswylder.com), states the copyright as James Wylder, and states that 10,000 Dawns is available from Arcbeatle Press” does make it sound like this publication contains a bunch of random elements not necessarily connected to itself. I looked up the actual text of the publication though, and it turned out this sole mention of Arcbeatle Press is far from random, but occurs as part of a distinct section of legal info at the end of the publication, clearly separated from the narrative-text:
As we can all see, this section contains four lines: The first describes the copyright status of Rachel Survived (short story) itself, the second describes the copyright status of the character Rachel Edwards and how she appears in this publication with permission, while the third describes the publication status of the work this Rachel Edwards originated from. So now the line of reasoning here is:
- Major premise: the online release contains only one mention of Arcbeatle Press, in the section that contains legal info concerning its own publication.
- Minor premise: the online release’s lone mention of Arcbeatle Press in the section that contains legal info concerning its own publication cannot be understood as having any relevance to its own publication.
- Conclusion: This online release does not identify Arcbeatle Press as its publisher anywhere.
If anybody knows any case of a publication that randomly name-drops a completely unrelated publisher in the middle of its own legal info section, please enlighten me. Furthermore, if anyone can offer evidence that Rachel Survived (short story) is not, in fact, part of 10,000 Dawns, I’d very much like to see it too.
2/
The blog post [16] that is allegedly the release of the story does not mention Arcbeatle Press either. Instead here are excerpts from the description of this release:
- "I love it, and I wanted to do something to share that love with my readers"
- "I’ve gotten permission from a Faction Paradox author to write a story"
- "So thank you to Andrew Hickey for trusting me with his creation"
- "Thank you as well to all my backers on Patreon who make this weird stuff possible."
This should make it clear why this was deemed to be fan fiction. The author is mentioned multiple times but no statement is made about any kind of publisher. And the express purpose of posting this story is to share it with other fans (which was also expressed by Wylder upthread), a hallmark of fan fiction.
This is another extract from the same post on this thread quoted just above in section #1 (emphasis original). I must confess I’m not sure what the argument here even is, however. The post offers up four quotes as evidence for its conclusions. The first one clearly shows Mr Wylder stating that he wanted to share his love [for Faction Paradox] with his readers—in fact I see nothing here or elsewhere on the blog post in question about “[sharing] with other fans.” The second and third sentences talk about reaching out with the relevant copyright holder to acquire permission before distributing the story, and the fourth explicitly identifies this as a commercial project—neither of which is currently a hallmark of fanfiction. So the four pieces of evidence offered all seem to be the opposite of what the conclusion alleges them to be.
3/
As for the actual content of your inquiry, T:NOT states, "We are not a place to post fan fiction, information relating to fan fiction, or fan-produced titles of any kind." In particular, stories posted by someone on their blog here, here and here are not covered by this wiki. That this is a blog can be clearly determined from the word "blog" as part of the web address.
This extract is from a post at User talk:NateBumber (reproduced earlier on this thread); elsewhere on this thread the author of this post again characterises the online venue of publication of these 10,000 Dawns crossovers as a “personal blog.” Now, etymologically speaking the word “blog” is a shortening of weblog (OED, 3rd ed., s.v. “blog, n.” [online entry, first published March 2003]), so the root elements of the word specify the medium (the World Wide Web) and the format (log-style, with entries arranged according to some chronological schema), but say nothing specific about a “personal” purpose. In terms of common usage, a quick Google search turns up the official blogs for such companies and franchises as YouTube, Microsoft, or, indeed, Doctor Who—none of which is a person and thus by default cannot post any personal content. And with jameswylder.com, following the URL does lead me to a website where a “10,000 Dawns” button is clearly marked as a key feature on its header menu, and clicking on that button leads me to sections where 10,000 Dawns stories can be found—including works from other persons than Mr Wylder, such as this story by Michael Robertson. So to conclude that jameswylder.com is a but “personal” repository for fanfictions, I believe, would be to insist on a particular interpretation of the word blog in a way not justified by the etymology of the word, or the common usage, or the actual facts of the website itself.
To summarise: the case for the 10,000 Dawns crossovers’ exclusion, rather than being too obvious to require discussions, is instead built on several instances of fallacious reasoning and/or factual inaccuracy—I have tried to represent the facts of the case as best as possible (hence the abundance of direct quotes), and if I’ve got anything wrong please do correct me, but I do believe I have made the logic of my arguments very clear. And the laws of logic don’t lie.
⁂ So far I have stuck to addressing the arguments themselves, with no reference to who made them. At this point, however, I believe it is pertinent to mention the source of the arguments. Let us go back to the post at User talk:Borisashton quoted above:
And, unlike the inclusion, the decision to remove these stories from the wiki was taken jointly by three admin. I was simply assigned to implement this decision. Hope this clarifies things. Amorkuz ☎ 07:36, August 27, 2019 (UTC)
These lines follow directly from the section I quoted earlier. Here User:Amorkuz, the author of the post, states that the decision to consider these 10,000 Dawns crossovers invalid was made jointly by “three admin [sic]” (indeed, these lines are rather ambiguous on whether User:Amorkuz was one of these three admins, or just the person implementing their decision). In any case, none of the other admins involved in this decision has so far publicly expressed their views, and the arguments for the exclusions of these stories that I have addressed all came from posts written by User:Amorkuz.
This is very unfortunate, because while I do believe in assuming good faith, and personally think that it would be unfair to criticise the three (two?) other admins involved without even knowing for sure what they have to say, someone with less scruples than me can easily point to this case as evidence for some sort of conspiracy of admins, which operates without transparency and deletes articles without regard for either the fact of the case, or the actual clauses of T:VALID. If we don’t resolve this properly, the reputation of the Wiki may be in danger.
As the saying goes, there is no crying over spilt milk. I’m certainly not delusional enough to be demanding User:Amorkuz or any of the other admins to go back in time and change what has happened—just because the Wiki has “TARDIS DATA CORE” as a header on every page doesn’t mean its administration has access to trans-temporal technology. I would merely like to request that the other admins in this case make their voices heard, even if only to confirm they have been represented correctly, and confirm their support for the arguments conveyed to us by User:Amorkuz—if nothing else, that would stop User:Amorkuz as an individual from having to be the lone representative of a joint decision.
- Revanvolatrelundar
I'll just place the final anthology release here:
http://www.jameswylder.com/blog/a-little-surprise-a-new-collection-of-old-stories
- Shambala108
Please everyone if you haven't read Thread:223085, do so now.
As for hearing from the other admins, I have been informed that they are currently busy with real life stuff and will post here as soon as they are available. There is no rush to close this thread, it is far newer than the several open debates we have going. Let's give them some time to gather their arguments.
And if any of you are, like me, in the path of the hurricane, stay safe.
- Amorkuz
I usually think in terms of potential and actual threats to the wiki. But AeD's last comment presents another side of the same coin. Their question How do we know whether the rights were indeed secured? is very prescient indeed. Granted, in this specific case, many of the rightsholders take part in the debate and can set the record straight. But let us be clear that this is an exceedingly rare situation. Even so, not all rights holders are represented. For instance, we do not have a confirmation that Lance Parkin gave his permission. (To avoid the all too common misinterpretations of my words upthread, I do not assert that he didn't; I simply second AeD's point that we do not know whether he did.)
Let us now think of this in terms of the proposed policy: Every story posted by anyone on the Internet should be considered valid provided the proper rights have been procured. This places a burden of verifying whether the rights have been procured on us, on the wiki. I presented above some plausible scenarios how rights can be obtained, and I see no way for us to distinguish a situation where that happened from the one where the poster of a story is simply lying. We have neither the legal power, nor the legal wherewithal, nor the resources to fact check copyright claims posted by an individual on their blog. We cannot start harassing authors and their estates for a confirmation, nor should we.
In fact, the copyright laws are so complex (as we have already discovered in some past debates) that even authors and/or publishers themselves sometimes misunderstand which permissions were given and how far they extend. For instance, the already mentioned Hannah Hatt, the granddaughter of Mervyn Haisman, tried to stop the re-release of Downtime on DVD claiming the rights had been obtained only for straight-to-video release. Reeltime Pictures disagreed. (See details here.) Clearly, only one of them was right, making the other mistaken about the presumably written copyright agreement between them.
Thus, if a story is posted on the author's website with a note that the copyright has been obtained, this might even be true but not constitute a permission for a commercial release, in effect, equating it with J.K. Rowling's permission to publish fan fiction as long as it is not commercial. (And she has successively sued fans for attempting a commercial release of something that had been freely available on the Internet.[17])
In summary, the idea of validating stories posted on websites would create a dangerous loophole in our validity rules, a loophole that can be either exploited as it stands due to the insufficient protections or circumvented due to the unenforceability of these protections.
It surprises me that this is being supported at all, with all the consequences being waved away as if we would not be responsible for them by creating this policy. But it surprises me even more that this policy is being pushed through and fast-tracked for the sole purpose of delivering three stories to the wiki approximately half a year earlier than would happen ordinarily (when they are published commercially in a book). This is risking long-term damage to the wiki and its reputation for negligible short-term gain.
- LilPotato
This is the most ridiculous thing I have seen on FANDOM. You are making the argument that every story posted online by a publisher should have "receipts" from every author involved. Regardless of the obvious privacy concerns that come with posting others' messages on a public forum, you wish to needlessly complicate the Four Little Rules seemingly to spite a creator of licensed Doctor Who fiction. Speaking of having arguments being "waved away," you have completely ignored the fact that Erimem, Lethbridge-Stewart, and even Big Finish have had stories posted, for the time being, exclusively online. Are you in favor of taking such stories off the Wiki? A simple yes or no will do. I am trying to stay civil and cool-headed, but this is just so silly.
It's a yes on inclusion from me. This runs far deeper than three stories. It's the principle that matters, and I am very disappointed in the Wiki's staff for not seeing that, or choosing to ignore it.
- Borisashton
I really think a public forum discussion should have taken place regarding this before any action was taken to minimise the risk to this wiki's reputation.
I think your point about your surprise regarding the speed of this debate is a little contradictory, Amorkuz. Surely, the speed of the discussion reflects the fact that while this thread is open there is a serious jeopardy of our reputation diminishing and that the sooner it resolved, the better? I expect this conversation does not look great to outsiders, especially when there is a new user who feels he has been personally attacked by an admin, the first port of call for new users.
Furthermore, when Wylder took to Twitter to voice his concerns, the statement received lots of support with one person even commenting "people are assholes sometimes". This very debate was also the reason for the early release of Arcbeatle's most recent anthology, linked above by Revan.
Surely you can't argue it would be beneficial to the wiki's reputation for this debate to continue for months more?
- Shambala108
OK, let's not have a repeat of late 2016 when inclusion debates started to get nasty. Tardis:No personal attacks will be enforced. Remember to assume good faith and please don't accuse those who disagree with you of ulterior motives.
- Shambala108
And my above remarks are in response to User:LilPotato, not User:Borisashton, who posted his comments pretty much the same time as mine, making it look like I was responding to him.
I will be addressing other concerns on people's talk pages later, once I have some free time.
- Revanvolatrelundar
The question of "How do we know whether the rights were indeed secured?" is the height of being nitpicky here. We never challenged Obverse when they got the Faction Paradox licence, not did we for Candy Jar when Lethbridge-Stewart popped up on the scene. To ask each new spin off series that arises to personally provide us here at Tardis with their legal documents is absurd, and in most cases is never going to happen. Sure, if the original copyright owner does end up disputing the use of their character, then we'd whip the content off the wiki ASAP.
I honestly feel with this debate that Arcbeatle Press is being singled out here, and treated as a business wholly different to that of Candy Jar, Thebes or Obverse. It's a commercial business, and can release their products in any way they see fit. They, like Obverse or any other publisher have done that, and suddenly it's a problem.
This debate has created a mountain out of a molehill, and should have been ended a week ago. The time the debate goes on for is irrelevent, it's the content of that debate that matters, and in this debate we've had almost a dozen users (including some admins) support these stories, with very few opposing it. We are a community here, and the majority of that community has spoken. To ignore the majority here is to ignore the rules that Tardis is built upon.
- Arcbeatle
I will not be posting here further, aside from issues relating to Tardis:No personal attacks. This has been a deeply unpleasant experience, and I will be happy to leave it behind me. However, after seeing that no action has been taken towards Amorkuz for his accusatory statements towards me, while another user was swiftly blocked, I have decided that I must make a further statement.
Reading Nate’s comment about an assumption of ignorance, I will take this stance to explain why Amorkuz’s statement was a serious accusation towards me and my company. So let us assume that Amorkuz genuinely does not understand how his statements were serious allegations, and I hope that these statements will be informative towards any future interactions he has with publishers.
Fanfiction, as a legal issue, is not defined how Amorkuz has attempted to define it. In all the meaningful professional and legal senses, it could be quickly summarized as:
Fanfiction is a derivative work based on intellectual property that is created without a commercial license from the party who owns those intellectual property rights.
Amorkuz is correct in that there is legal fanfiction, but legal fanfiction must meet a variable set of qualifications, such as being sufficiently transformative, being free or for charity, etc. However, all fanfiction shares one thing in common: it is non commercial. The very aspect of a commercial release means that a work is either 1. Not fanfiction 2. In violation of the law. Being that I don’t think my three stories could be perceived by most people as a parody or satire, and were not intended as such, it must fall into categories 1 or 2. Fanfiction is not allowed to have a commercial release. While there are cases of companies allowing fanfiction to be sold for profit, these are companies who have explicitly allowed another party to violate their copyright without seeking to challenge it. This is a toleration of illegal copyright violation, and does not change the legal stance of it.
Let me restate this: There is no case where selling fanfiction for profit is legal.
It is publicly available information that Arcbeatle Press has sold copies of these three stories by mail and at conventions, as well as doing two of the stories as live for-profit performances in partnership with the Southgate Media Group.
By saying that works I have sold are fanfiction, Amorkuz has, perhaps unknowingly, accused myself and my company of illegal activity. Such accusations coming from a high-up member of a site that is widely used by a fandom whose members are the target audience for future publishing endeavors of Arcbeatle Press (for example, the upcoming “Sheffield Steel”, which I did not write) could be damaging towards my company, and it’s future business.
Amorkuz has also made many statements implying that Arcbeatle Press or myself are not reputable or real publishers who can be trusted to release material, or trusted to tell the truth about the nature of the books and stories we release. As a publisher, our reputation for fairness and honesty pays our bills. Consumer trust is important to us, and sowing doubt about that (including adding asides that we only “promise” to release the future releases that our supporters have entrusted over $600 dollars into to receive from us) could negatively impact the reputation we have worked hard to achieve.
Considering that Amorkuz is in a position where these sort of interactions may come up again, I feel he should be aware that his post was much more serious than he understood it to be.
Amorkuz also made several other incorrect statements, but let us focus on these two:
-Amorkuz states that Arcbeatle Press’ work is self-publishing, a factually incorrect statement as I have published several works by or featuring other authors in my role of Publisher at Arcbeatle Press: “The Greater Good and Echoes”, “10,000 Dawns: Poor Man’s Iliad”, my reprint of “Dracula”, the out of print “Tales from the 10,000 Dawns” and the digital only “The Black Mass”, “A 10,000 Dawns Christmas”, and “A Lady Aesc Christmas Duet”. Not to mention “An Eloquence of Time and Space” which features extra content from two other authors. Arcbeatle Press has published, and will publish more work that I have written by myself, but all of that work has also employed proofreaders, editors, and artists who are not me.
-Amorkuz misquoted me, distorting a statement in a tweet to mean something completely different than it’s clear intention.
I am hoping that Amorkuz understands the problems with his statements, and while I do hope for an apology/correction, unless there are further developments this likely ends my interactions with this site for the near future, if ever. It has been stated that Tardis:No personal attacks.will be enforced. I hope that this is true. While I certainly hope that future interactions with other publishers go better here, for now this has not been worth the time and stress it caused myself and the other folks at Arcbeatle Press. This situation has left me troubled in ways I never expected to be, and I can only hope that it perhaps leads to a kinder future. I thank all of you for your time. -James
- Amorkuz
I guess Mr. Wylder really cares what a random man on the Internet says about him.
So first off, regarding Tardis:No personal attacks, a personal attack is by definition an attack against a person, not a company. I am entitled to my opinion about Arcbeatle Press even if Mr. Wylder does not like it. (I do not, in fact, see anything especially wrong with this publishing house and never believed or stated that it was doing anything illegal or unethical. But that is besides the point as the cited policy is simply inapplicable. And I sincerely hope that the business of Arcbeatle Press depends more on the quality of their publications than on words of a random guy on the Internet.)
As for personal attacks on Mr. Wylder himself. There have been plenty of statements that are incorrect or incomplete in this thread (I plan to talk about it eventually). But incorrect statements are not personal attacks. I can (and have) discussed what I meant by my statements and stand by them. But even if it turns out that some of them were wrong, the reaction to an incorrect statement is to correct it and persuade everyone that you are right. We do not block people for disagreements. We block people for attacking other people because of disagreements.
Even were I to misinterpret / misquote Mr. Wylder, it would have been no more a personal attack than his constant misspellings of my name. When people make mistakes, it is not a personal attack.
I found the original complaint by Mr. Wylder bizarre and unfounded, which is why I did not respond directly. I did respond to some of his complaints by clarifying my position in prior posts.
I once again repeat that I never asserted that Mr. Wylder or Arcbeatle Press violated any copyright. In fact, I never doubted that he did his best in obtaining the rights. I stated the simple fact that the wiki cannot (nor should be required to, for all the privacy concerns voiced by LilPotato) verify claims made by an individual on their personal website. When Mr. Wylder says that I "implied" something, it means that I did not say this and that this is Mr. Wylder's interpretation of my words, which in many cases demonstrably differs from what I said or meant.
What seemingly incensed Mr. Wylder most is that, for the time being, I consider the three stories posted on his personal blog (and not posted on the website of Arcbeatle Press) fan fiction. The idea that an opinion about stories written by someone could be an attack on that someone really strains credulity. (If you doubt me, I invite you to our Discussions where a couple of threads thoroughly trash stories of the latest TV series.)
But the question of fan fiction is actually relevant to the discussion, so let us talk about it. Clearly, Mr. Wylder and I have different definitions of fan fiction. His desire to force me to accept his definition (and thereby accuse him of wrongdoing) surprises me. He does not believe that one can legally sell fan fiction, which is his right. I believe this is possible, which is my right, hence, I never meant that he was doing anything illegal.
Several users were very authoritative on what fan fiction is and is not, using the words like "In the usage of basically everyone ever" or "In all the meaningful professional and legal senses" to describe their opinion. Unfortunately, the situation is more complex. Firstly, (one of) the dictionary definition(s) of fan fiction is
Fan fiction (noun): stories involving popular fictional characters that are written by fans and often posted on the Internet
Whether any of us likes this definition or not (I do not as it is too wide), the three stories in question satisfy it. Hence, any of us may choose to call them fan fiction according to the dictionary definition (plus, there is always the freedom of speech).
But if, like me, you do not like it, you might want to know what is an accepted view among fans regarding fan fiction. I tried to find it, and it turns out that there is none. Here is a poll where 3,500 fans were asked to explain their views on the subject: [18]. The main findings that are relevant to this debate are that
- Only 10% stated that fan fiction cannot possibly be endorsed by its original creator.
- Although admittedly many (41%) think that fan fiction must be free, the slight majority (54%) believe that fan fiction may also be sold.
- Still many (36%) believe fan fiction cannot be produced for profit, but an even larger majority (57%) think that fan fiction may also be produced for profit.
- More generally, regarding almost every criterion discussed in the poll, the majority of respondents did not believe this criterion to be decisive in separating fan fiction from everything else.
This wiki does not have a separate definition of fan fiction, and my views (with one exception of the first question in the poll) fall squarely within the majority. I hope this finally puts this complaint to rest.
Finally, I fully support Mr. Wylder's decision to abandon this debate. He seems to have enough supporters to be able to focus on attracting more readers by writing and publishing stories, rather than persuading fans of the type or quality of these stories in a debate. I wish Mr. Wylder all the best in his future creative endeavours.
Apologies to the moderators for a mostly off-topic post. Since fan fiction is not really being discussed anymore (it was simply a reason for the original deletion), I hope we can return to discussing the matter at hand:
Should we validate every story posted on a personal website of a person who claims to have obtained the copyright?
- Scrooge MacDuck
If I may just drop in for a moment, I disagree with the way Amorkuz is voicing the crux of the debate. Whether we should "validate every story posted on a personal website of a person who claims to have obtained the copyright?" is a question that should be resolved as well, but as it surfaced, isn't actually the matter at hand here, because the website under discussion isn't a personal website and Wylder short stories is also to be released in print, in both cases under the aegis of Arcbeatle Press — as demonstrated by User:AthenodoraKitten. Whether we should cover stories on personal websites not affiliated with a publisher is another, and quite interesting, question, and it arose in the middle of this debate, but only at a point in the conversation where we were working based on erroneous data.
This dictionary definition of yours, by the way, seems patently not to be the one used on the Wiki, since unlicensed commercially-released offline works written by official DWU authors rather than mere 'fans' (i.e. Hinton/McKeon's Time's Champion, Magrs' short story about Panda on Gallifrey) are also dismissed based on T:NO FANFIC. Isn't there a legal definition we could go by?
- NateBumber
Amorkuz wrote: I guess Mr. Wylder really cares what a random man on the Internet says about him.
Please note that, because of how search engines like Google prioritize major wikis, should the 10,000 Dawns content be deleted from Tardis, this debate will almost certainly appear as one of the top Google results for the phrase "10,000 Dawns" if not also "Arcbeatle Press".
- AthenodoraKitten
Amorkuz, can you please clarify: so did you delete these articles as “a random man on the Internet,” or as an admin of this Wiki? Because as NateBumber’s post above has just pointed out, this thread is going to be a prioritised Google search result presented to members of the public, and thus your actions in this incident are liable to be seen as representative of the Wiki's administration as a whole (well, more than is to be expected for the conduct of an administrator, anyway).
- Shambala108
Reminder to stay on topic and in case you haven't read this before:
Amorkuz is not the only admin to make the original decision, we are still waiting to hear from the other two.
- Liria10
While it is true that the decision itself was a group one, and therefore it is only fair to assume that Amorkuz comments on James Wylder and Arcbeatle Press as a whole do not represent the opinion of Tardis wiki, but only his own, I feel it is quite on topic to discuss those accusations of illegal activities and attacks on the reputation of this independent company, especially as Amorkuz himself isn't a random man on the internet, but rather an administrator of this wiki. Therefore, his words are to be taken as representative of the Wiki itself, which, as Nate pointed out above, matters as far as the online presence of 10,000 Dawns and Arcbeatle Press is concerned.
Hopefully, this whole matter was just a misunderstanding, which could easily be fixed by an apology on the mistaken words spoken in this debate.
As for the stories in question, I am still wondering how exactly they breach this wiki Four Little Rules? I believe it is unnecessary to repeat arguments that have already been made above, but as far as I am able to tell, proof has been brought up that said stories fulfill all the required conditions?
And again, they were not posted on a personal blog, so I feel debating the status of stories published on personal web pages is irrelevant to the matter at hand, which is the validity of those three crossover stories on the Wiki.
- Shambala108
OK, per Tardis:Discussion policy posts on talk pages and forum/board pages must be on topic. Off-topic posts will be removed. If you wish to discuss User:Amorkuz' actions, do so either on his talk page or the talk page of another admin thanks.
- Revanvolatrelundar
What has never been made clear is who the other two admins are, or how their decision to delete 10,000 Dawns was relayed to Amorkuz, as there is no record of such conversations on the wiki. Surely any such action should have been conducted here in the first place. I'm a little concerned that such decisions were made off site. The community should be deciding what we include and what we don't include, and should be discussed here. A transcript of the original discussion would be nice to see.
- Bwburke94
I agree, for once. If the transcript still exists, we should take a look at it - perhaps it contains information we can use in the discussion.
- Revanvolatrelundar
So, now that we have an "official release", I don't think (unless I'm mistaken), there was any other stipulation against the inclusion of the stories into the wiki at this point in the debate. If that is correct, can I propose we start to bring this debate to a close?
Final points: we're not covering the whole of the 10,000 Dawns series here, just the crossovers. If that wishes to be proposed by someone we start a new inclusion debate. On the subject of this debate, the three 10,000 Dawns stories are to be treated as crossovers, not a spin off series, in the same way Assimilation2 is treated in relation to the Star Trek universe.
If I'm missing anything here, please feel free to apprise me.
- Scrooge MacDuck
Amorkuz wrote: In view of this development, I propose to consider 29 August 2019, the post date of this new pdf anthology, to be the official release date of these stories by Arcbeatle Press and switch to discussing their inclusion to the wiki based on this latest pdf.
This might be best considering the confusing circumstances of the earlier releases, yes. I support such a move. (Although I don't think this should serve as a precedent. Whether stories published with copyright but not through a publishing company should be valid is a debate that still needs to be properly held, without the specific context of the James Wylder stories to cloud the issue.)
- Bwburke94
If James Wylder's stories are unambiguously released, the only reason to distinguish between the 2017/2019 "releases" is those few cases where release dates matter?
- Revanvolatrelundar
Amorkuz wrote: In view of this development, I propose to consider 29 August 2019, the post date of this new pdf anthology, to be the official release date of these stories by Arcbeatle Press and switch to discussing their inclusion to the wiki based on this latest pdf.
So in relation to this comment, we should have the new anthology release granted an article on the wiki, and the articles for the individual stories designated as part of that anthology in their respective infboxes? In the notes section we can mention the previous releases, and a brief note why they're not definitive here. If that's the case, I'm all in agreement with that.
- Bwburke94
I'm not convinced the previous releases shouldn't count, but no matter which release is the one that counts, the stories in question have been released.
The larger question of stories without a publishing company still needs to be addressed.
- Revanvolatrelundar
The question of stories without a publishing company is a debate for another thread. As in most inclusion debates, we are starting to find a compromise between the opposing arguments. The discussion should now focus on how to integrate these stories into the wiki while still being fair to both sides of the debate.
- Amorkuz
I am sorry to report that Arcbeatle Press seems to be in violation of BBC copyright. According to the legal notice already alluded to earlier [19],
- "All content on this website is either the property of Arcbeatle Press, or has been used with permission by its creator."
- "Fiction and non-fiction published on jameswylder.com are digital publications of Arcbeatle Press."
Therefore, Arcbeatle Press claims to have published a Twelfth Doctor comic story featuring Clara Oswald, Danny Pink, Missy, etc. by Annie Zhu here and here.
The copyright for all these characters belongs to BBC. And while I never before doubted that Arcbeatle Press has obtained all necessary copyrights, the evidence of my own eyes makes me wonder how plausible it is that Arcbeatle Press has obtained a permission from the BBC to publish a comic story featuring the Twelfth Doctor.
- Bwburke94
The words "or has been used with permission by its creator" are very relevant here. In this case, "its creator" is the BBC, and Wylder earlier in this thread claimed he obtained the necessary rights.
- AeD
Oh for crying out loud, Amorkuz, surely you can see that this is ridiculous. What's next? Where does this end?
- Bwburke94
The existence of Lil' Doctor Who certainly raises some questions, because it seems obvious the BBC wouldn't give permission for such a story. But just because something seems to be the case doesn't mean it is the case. (Besides, this isn't a Lil' Doctor Who debate.)
Wylder directly claims he had permission to use the DWU elements in question in the 10,000 Dawns crossovers, which makes it extremely hard to prove he didn't.
- AeD
Li'l Doctor Who is very blatantly a fan work by a third party, presumably friends of Wylder's, shared by him. It has absolutely nothing to do with the 10,000 Dawns conversation.
What's next, we're gonna dig through Mr Wylder's trash cans and debate the validity of his empty ketchup bottle? This is absolutely above and beyond ridiculous.
- Arcbeatle
I said that I would not return unless there were further developments related to TARDIS: No Personal Attacks. Unfortunately I must return.
Amorkuz has now falsely accused me of violating BBC copyright.
Will these personal attacks never end? Friends of mine are sending me messages scared about Amorkuz looking through their personal information. I am begging the wiki to take action to stop these personal attacks on me, as this has begun to effect not only myself but people I care about.
Regardless, while this should never have been in an issue, in the near future I will be revising the legal statement on my website to hopefully prevent any more misrepresentation of the truth.
- Bwburke94
There are two parts to the 10,000 Dawns conversation: whether the crossover as a whole is valid, and whether the 2017 release is valid.
The 2017 release appears on the surface to follow all four rules.
- These are definitely stories.
- They were commercially released, and Wylder directly claims to have obtained permission.
- Again, they were commercially released. The rules as currently written don't block self-published stories.
- Wylder has more or less stated these stories are what we describe as DWU.
- Bwburke94
In response to Arcbeatle, it does certainly seem odd that Amorkuz accused you of copyright infringement, given the earlier discussion. Perhaps "all content on this website" was taken a bit too literally!
- AthenodoraKitten
Amorkuz wrote:
- "All content on this website is either the property of Arcbeatle Press, or has been used with permission by its creator."
User:Amorkuz, your own eyes should have told you, when they saw this piece of evidence, that it is describing two disjoint sets. Either/or.
With the 10,000 Dawns crossovers that constitute the topic of the current discussion, the fact that they have been published by Arcbeatle Press as part of its 10,000 Dawns series has been quite well-established throughout this thread, and if I understand your recent posts correctly, you yourself do not dispute that point. But with these comics though, in which way can they be construed as publications by Arcbeatle Press? And, more to the point, in which way do these comics not qualify as fair dealing/fair use?
And, even more to the point, in which way is pointing toward this unrelated case on-topic to the case at hand, in compliance with Tardis:Discussion policy?
The only connecting logic I can think of is if one argues that more than one type of content cannot exist on the same website—in which case, doesn’t that mean the sheer fact that this Wiki has copyrighted images on it means the legal claim on every image file tagged with the “Public Domain” copyright tag must be considered suspect?
- Bwburke94
AthenodoraKitten wrote: ...doesn’t that mean the sheer fact that this Wiki has copyrighted images on it means the legal claim on every image file tagged with the “Public Domain” copyright tag must be considered suspect?
Strawman argument. Besides, Amorkuz didn't actually mention Dawns within the post in question; it was entirely about Lil' Doctor Who, with Dawns only mentioned by implication.
- Scrooge MacDuck
I would agree with User:AthenodoraKitten that while 'loving' examples of the genre, the two Li'l Doctor Who comics would seem to fall within the realm of parody, and therefore fair use. (Anyone questioning that those are parodies should consider that the plot of the first story, whose title is Deep Breath concerns Clara challenging Missy to a breathing contest for the right to hang out with the Doctor. This is also all taking place at a version of the Time Academy which looks like a preschool, and where the Paternoster Gang and Clara are students alongside the Twelfth Doctor and Missy. The second story has Danny Pink and Journey Blue as the new kids at said school. …I mean come on.) Whether they're violations of copyright is therefore fairly debatable.
But even if they were, what bearing has this on the crossover short stories? Are you suggesting that because of that supposed breach of copyright, we should distrust Wylder's statements about having the proper authorizations for the crossover elements in the short stories? That seems really weird to me. Consider the debate on Legacies: there was a sentiment, though the debate seems to have moved away from it… I think?… that in this specific instance Candy Jar had overreached their legal rights, the specific story was not properly licensed, and therefore it shouldn't be valid.
But that didn't translate to distrust of other Candy Jar releases, because in those cases they had explicitly stated they had obtained all the relevant licenses, and that statement was not challenged. So let me ask you: how does this situation differ from Li'l Doctor Who vs. Rachel Survived? It's broadly the same situation where in one case, it's not clear that relevant copyright permissions were acquired, and the publisher certainly doesn't claim they were; and in the other, the publisher explicitly says they have the licenses.
So the question is: what reason do you have for arguing for the short stories' invalidity based on Li'l Doctor Who, that wouldn't also lead to us no longer covering the Lethbridge-Stewart series in the event that the Legacies debate ended with its deletion from the Wiki?
Bwburke94 wrote:
Amorkuz didn't actually mention Dawns within the post in question; it was entirely about Lil' Doctor Who, with Dawns only mentioned by implication.
But that implication's really the main thing, isn't it? This isn't a Li'l Doctor Who inclusion debate. Li'l Doctor Who is of interest to us here inasmuch as it does or does not change the way we look at Arcbeatle Press's legitimacy as a publisher of licensed DWU fiction.
- Bwburke94
(Let's wait for Amorkuz to return, instead of arguing our mutual approval of Dawns with each other. We're on the same side here...)
- RingoRoadagain
Although I agree that these specific stories should be covered by the wiki, per my understanding of the 4 rules, I also am afraid of the precedent it could set.
In my humble opinion, it is a combination of conditions that we have already accepted taken separately:
- A self published company (we already accept BBV)
- They are released freely (we already accept such stories as Big Finish's wining entries to the Paul Spragg opportunity or CandyJar's free pdf's)
- The characters license do not belong to the BBC (plenty of cases with BBV, Faction Paradox, Virgin's Bernice Summerfield range or even Big Finish's very first series of Bernice stories).
Which means that taken together we could have someone create their own company to publish pdf after claiming to have the license (i am assuming good faith) to an obscure character by a guest writer barely anyone remembers and we could then cover it on the wiki.
If we do, then I would not be surprised that at some point some obscure corner of the internet decide to register a company just to put a pdf online filled with hate speech staring a character by an obscure guest author to make us put a page about this. (Honestly, we have seen wilder things happen online in the recent years haven't we)
We can't ask for the publisher, the authors or the license owners to go forward each time, do we? Nor should stalk them online obviously.
Tangentially related, I would like to bring up that we currently already have some pages with unsubstantiated claims: for instance David Burton who claimed to have shot an unreleased story as the Eighth Doctor for the BBC during the Wilderness Years.
PS: I want to state again that I do not doubt for a minute Arcbeatle's claims in the specific case.
- Scrooge MacDuck
Here we go again with the matter of offensive content in stories.
Look, again, rules of validity shouldn't be based on what we editors wish was, or wasn't, a part of the Doctor Who universe. And as a matter of fact, tons of stories deemed offensive, or downright malevolent, by many (or even most) critics are obviously valid because they're part of the TV series; or are you suggesting Talons of Weng-Chiang or The Unquiet Dead should be declared invalid?
You say we shouldn't have to investigate the copyright status every time. Why not? It's not like new publishing companies are going to spring up every day and start churning out DW spin-offs, whether hateful ones or not. It's perfectly viable to give it a look and ask for some proof as needed every time it happens, because every time is realistically going to be something like "once a year at most".
As an aside, I think the justification for having the David Burton page is that his claims were discussed (though not confirmed) by DWM, making him of relevance to the history of "official" Doctor Who whether that relevance is as "the almost-Eighth Doctor" or as "the fraud who almost made DWM believe he could have been the Eighth Doctor" or as "the alternate timeline detected by the DWM's timey-wimey scanner" or whatever one chooses to believe. I certainly don't think, all else being equal, that we would have the page if this reference in DWM didn't exist.
- AeD
Yeah, the "potential offensive content" argument has absolutely nothing to do directly with this 10,000 Dawns debate -- Arcbeatle Press has not put out anything offensive, to the best of my knowledge -- and, frankly, this franchise as a whole crossed that line in 1966, if not earlier.
Would this wiki stop covering material put out by Big Finish if, for whatever reason, they suddenly announced a box set where Li H'sen Chang teams up to do crimes with all the other racist stereotypes? Would it cease coverage of Candy Jar Books stories if they released Lethbridge-Stewart: The One Where He Does A Bunch of Racially Charged Violence For Racist Reasons? I can't imagine that would be the case.
- RingoRoadagain
Sorry, I did not explain myself properly.
I am not accusing Arcbeatle of anything, as I said I think the stories should be covered.
I am just wondering --and frankly i was not sure it was the place and even less the time to voice it-- if someone could abuse the rules we have by mimicking how we allowed Arcbeatle stories. (maybe even with a license from a controversial writer)
By doing so, they could make us consider talking about actual hate speech (and not just something as mondane as Weng-Chiang, Toymaker or the Crusade but something truly vile that actively promotes racism). My belief is that we should deal with it only when and if it actually occurs and not now since it all is highly hypothetical.
But anyway, i just re-read fandom's terms of use and I don't have any potential reservations anymore. Indeed, even if it comes up, then we would simply not be able to talk about it (even the admins would not have a say in it in my understanding) since that would "transmit [...] content that contains homophobia, ethnic slurs, religious intolerance" (8chan's doctorwhogeneral.wikia was deleted for this reason)
- Borisashton
The scenario of apparently valid media promoting hate speech should be discussed at the forums if it ever happens but Arcbeatle has done nothing of the kind and the point is frankly irrelevant to the debate of the three crossover stories.
- Revanvolatrelundar
Can we get back on topic, please. As Borisashton says, this thread is for the inclusion of three 10,000 Dawns stories.
- AlanSmithee1963
This conversation has been so grueling watching from the sidelines that I've decided to make an account. Bouncing off of u/Revanvolatrelundar, can we focus more on:
A) Getting the names of the other two mods who called for the deletion? I'm frankly growing suspicious since we've not heard from them yet.
B) Talking more about how u/Amorkuz has repeatedly slandered people involved in this discussion and made others feel like their privacy might be invaded?
These newer tangents seem to be an attempt to move away from the real issues at hand.
- AeD
The only element of the original debate still on the table is which release date counts as the "official" release date, with one side arguing for the original date of the blog release, and Amorkuz arguing for the date the pdf collection of the three stories was released. (It remains unclear to me why the story being posted on a blog is in any way invalidating, or different from being released as a pdf.)
That said, I agree with AlanSmithee1963 -- at this point, the other two (three?) mods/admins involved in the original decision are growing increasingly notable by their absence, and some further insight into why this group came to the decision they did might be good.
I also agree Amorkuz's behaviour deserves to be discussed further, be it here, in another thread, or in some other context -- Amorkuz had repeatedly made various serious accusations, and has now clearly veered into the realm of, let's say, harassment-adjacent behaviour. If any non-staff user behaved like this, we'd surely be facing bans, blocks, or other punitive measures, so this can't possibly be appropriate behaviour for staff.
- Bwburke94
Getting back to the original discussion again, why would the 2017 release not count as a release? If Amorkuz has some actual evidence from the old decision, now would be the time to present it.
- LegoK9
For clarity, the three stories and their original release dates:
- Rachel Survived (8 December 2017)
- White Canvas (25 December 2018)
- The Gendar Conspiracy (5 March 2019)
Proposed new release date (The Book Club Collection anthology): 29 August 2019.
Amorkuz seemed willing to accept these stories under the new date as they were officially under Arcbeatle Press and I have no objection. This situation is similar to Colin Baker's The Wings of a Butterfly which was first published in an unlicesed anthology in 2000 but officially released by Big Finish in 2010.
(edit) As such, part of Rachel Survived could read: "Originally released by James Wylder on 8 December 2017, Rachel Survived was officially released under Arcbeatle Press on 29 August 2019."
This establishes a precedent for works to be explicity under a publishing house, even if they are self-published. (This prevents posting works on a blog.)
- Scrooge MacDuck
The difference being that by all appearances the original releases of the three Wylder stories were licensed in their original releases, unlike Wings. But yes, that is an interesting precedent, although not a perfect parallel.
- Bwburke94
The original releases were licensed. This isn't a Wings case, because Wings in its original form was unlicensed.
- AlanSmithee1963
And yet again, neither of my questions have been answered! Who are the other two mods involved in the original deletion, and how will Amorkuz's uncalled-for behavior be dealt with?
I should amend my earlier statement: I really made this account because I was upset by the behavior by Amorkuz towards Mr. Wylder and others involved, and want to see a due reprimanding carried out.
- Bwburke94
Is this even the place to discuss Amorkuz' behaviour? We should be focusing on the original release of Dawns, not on Amorkuz.
- AlanSmithee1963
I understand that, entirely. My feeling is, we seem to mostly have resolved the 10K Dawns discussion, even as new evidence has repeatedly come forward. I just want to make sure that these other issues aren't lost in the shuffle.
If there's a better place to continue that conversation without cluttering up the talks here, I'll gladly jump there!
- Borisashton
This is most certainly not the place to discuss Amorkuz' behaviour. That can be discussed after this thread has concluded on his talk page or maybe even a forum thread given the volume of complaints. This debate is being complicated by tangents that are mostly irrelevant; can we please stay on topic?
If Amorkuz cannot provide a transcript of the original discussion then I think it would be appropriate for him to name the admins involved so we can direct our points more suitably. Indeed, it is ambiguous as if his more recent posts are his own views or if he is still the sole representative of these nameless admins.
EDIT: Just to note, this was written before I saw AlanSmithee1963's last post.
- Amorkuz
The relevance of Lil' Doctor Who stories is very simple. If we include the three 10,000 Dawns stories because they are published on Mr. Wylder's blog, where, according to the legal disclaimer,
- "All content on this website is either the property of Arcbeatle Press, or has been used with permission by its creator."
- "Fiction and non-fiction published on jameswylder.com are digital publications of Arcbeatle Press."
If we include the 10,000 Dawns stories based on the blog release and not the actual book published, then we will have to include also the Lil' Doctor Who stories because they are also published on Mr. Wylder's blog and because they also fall under the same legal disclaimers. I do not see a way of including one without including the other (other than waiting for the release of the book).
- AlanSmithee1963
Once again, I'm baffled by the logic used here. Why does sharing a comedic, parody fan-comic on the website suddenly make the legitimate and (God help me) canon stories null and void?
- Borisashton
The Lil' Doctor Who strips are clearly parodies and parodies fall under fair use. Therefore, as it is fair use the BBC do not need to be consulted in any way so the legal notice still stands.
- Borisashton
Amorkuz, can you also confirm the identities of the admins involved in the original discussion please?
- LegoK9
This is so off topic; this thread is not an inclusion debate for Lil' Doctor Who.
Lil' Doctor Who clearly does not pass the Four Little Rules (namely rule 2). Wylder has made no attempts to have it included on the wiki so it should not even be a topic of debate. Lil' Doctor Who is a parodic fan-comic that falls under "or has been used with permission by its creator":
I really want to share this wonderful comic made by my friend Annie Zhu (aka Cazdinal), and her collaborator Tumblr user Saintoswald with you guys. Annie of course does all of the wonderful art for 10,000 Dawns right on this site, and does a lot of incredible Doctor Who art, so with the finale of Doctor Who series 9 this weekend now is the perfect time. You can find more of her art at her Tumblr page: http://cardinalcapaldi.tumblr.com_. Spoilers: This comic is adorable. -Jim
Welcome back to Lil' Doctor Who! This is the second time we've featured this comic here. It was made by Annie Zhu (who does the 10,000 Dawns art, aka Cazdinal) and Saintoswald, and features tiny versions of Clara and the Doctor having adventures! You guys loved the last one, so has a compliment to the new Christmas Episode of Doctor Who (and as a Christmas treat!) Here is a sequel! I hope you guys enjoy! You can find more of Annie's awesome art at: http://cardinalcapalditumblr.com -Jim
Ergo, Lil' Doctor Who is not under "the property of Arcbeatle Press".
Edit: Furthermore, Wylder has since updated his website to clarify:
All content on this website is either the property of Arcbeatle Press, or has been used with permission by its creator excluding content in guest posts. Guest posts are the property of their creators, and their creators are responsible for all content in them. Fiction and non-fiction published on jameswylder.com are digital publications of Arcbeatle Press, excluding guest posts and outside links which are the property of their creators. Arcbeatle Press and James Wylder are not responsible for the content of outside links or guest posts, or the conduct of their creators.
- AthenodoraKitten
Amorkuz wrote: If we include the 10,000 Dawns stories based on the blog release and not the actual book published, then we will have to include also the Lil' Doctor Who stories because they are also published on Mr. Wylder's blog and because they also fall under the same legal disclaimers. I do not see a way of including one without including the other (other than waiting for the release of the book).
T:VALID (section 1.1.2, "What doesn't count") very clearly states that explicitly parodical stories cannot be included as valid in-universe sources as, by their very nature, they fail to qualify under Rule 4. This is true regardless of whether they have been officially released, or who they may have been officially released by—certainly, the fact that this Wiki counts many Dalek stories from the BBC as valid in-universe sources has never compelled us to do the same for the BBC’s “many appearances of parody Daleks [. . .] not licensed by Terry Nation” described in Doctor Who parodies.
So even if—hypothetically—we consider these Lil' Doctor Who posts as non-commercial digital publications of Arcbeatle Press, the above statement from post #103 would still be a fallacious conclusion: it depends on a major premise of a radically different set of terms on T:VALID compared to the one that actually exists. I am quite willing to assume good faith, of course, and assume for the moment that User:Amorkuz did not deliberately attempt to misrepresent one of our core policies as part of his argument; however, I would like to note that if User:Amorkuz wishes us to adopt a different set of terms for T:VALID, T:CHANGE dictates that he must make his proposal at Board:The Panopticon, not here.
For the purpose of the present discussion though, T:BOUND applies.
- Bwburke94
We still haven't resolved the original version of Dawns, have we? So the Dawns discussion is far from over, even with the Lil' Doctor Who argument discredited.
- AeD
Again, I genuinely do not understand why "a story released as part of a blog post" is supposed to be meaningfully different from things like the short stories released through the BBC's Doctor Who site's annual advent calendar.
Does this wiki, at this time, have a policy clarifying exactly what, for the purposes of the wiki, a story's official release date is?
The only wording I can find at T:VALID#Explaining the rules or anywhere else on the page is "Is a Sarah Jane Adventures audiobook that you've downloaded from AudioGO something you can use on the Sarah Jane page? Of course, because if it's downloadable it's by definition officially released," emphasis my own. A page on a blog is a thing your browser downloads, ergo, the posting of the blog would be the original release date.
- Bwburke94
I'm fairly certain T:OFF REL was meant to clarify this, but it doesn't have a clear section for blog posts because the situation's never come up before.
My best guess is that the "Novels" section applies to all prose fiction, in which case the release date is whatever the publisher claims the release date was. (Problem is, Dawns was self-published...)
- AeD
Thanks, and, yeah, there doesn't seem to be an immediately applicable rule -- T:OFF REL#Novels is clearly about paper prose fiction, of the kind Amazon can physically deliver to your door, and doesn't meaningfully keep ebook releases of any kind in mind.
No such rule has been needed for BBC site short story releases, which seem to be are considered valid and get coverage the moment they come out, which means the closest applicable rule are the ones for audio and TV, the only ones to keep a digital release in mind:
Emphasis my own:
- "For Big Finish audios, the moment of public release is when a story is made available to download by the official Big Finish website."
- "Class episodes premiere on BBC Three at 1000 BST/UTC every Saturday morning. Even though they air on BBC One later on, the online release on BBC Three is the premiere broadcast."
(I left out of the first quote a bit about CD releases not made available digitally, and from the second quote the bit about not covering Class until the end of the hour, because those are clearly not applicable to digitally-released prose fiction.)
Both of these establish a clear precedent: Being made available for download satisfies the requirement of having to be officially released. Later forms of release do not factor into this.
(Perhaps changes to the rules for comics and prose fiction to that extent would be appropriate, to preemptively head off some potential weird situations -- ebooks from smaller publishers occasionally come out some time before a paper release, comics might hit Comixology despite a global distribution delay, etc.)
I, again, do not see anything here that would invalidate a story for having been released as part of a blog post. There does not seem to me to exist in the rules as they currently exist any such bar for a story to clear.
- AthenodoraKitten
I do think the issue is a lot simpler than that, actually.
With the Lil' Doctor Who argument having demonstrated itself to be fallacious, we are back to the state of the conversation before it was introduced. To wit:
Amorkuz wrote:
It surprises me that this is being supported at all, with all the consequences being waved away as if we would not be responsible for them by creating this policy. But it surprises me even more that this policy is being pushed through and fast-tracked for the sole purpose of delivering three stories to the wiki approximately half a year earlier than would happen ordinarily (when they are published commercially in a book).In other words, by that point—post #52 in the discussion—the consensus has been reached that these 10,000 Dawns crossovers unambiguously pass the rest of the “four little rules” of T:VALID enough that an official release would automatically allow them to pass Rule 3 and be qualified as valid in-universe sources (and that Arcbeatle Press is a legitimate enough publisher that an official release of these stories by Arcbeatle Press would automatically allow them to pass Rule 3). If anyone has changed their mind since post #52 and would like to rescind their words, please let us all know, but as far as I can see the the only point of contention left since post #52 has been which, if any, of the releases of these stories at present counts as an official release by Arcbeatle Press.
Now, T:OFF REL says (italics in the original):
We consider something officially released when it is made available to the general public, in venues that are ordinarily and legally used for that particular medium.
That web-based venues are considered appropriate for the official releases of stories in the medium of writing—not only by this Wiki, but also by a non-negligible number of content creators and rightsholders working with the DWU—is clearly demonstrated by the many valid in-universe sources in Category:WEB_short_stories.
That Arcbeatle Press considers jameswylder.com to be one of the venues through which it officially releases its publications—and, by extension, that Arcbeatle Press considers the releases of these 10,000 Dawns crossovers on jameswylder.com to be official Arcbeatle Press releases—has been a fact beyond doubt at least since the latest edits to the relevant info sections on both jameswylder.com[23] and Arcbeatle Press’ website[24] (the section on jameswylder.com has been quoted in post #107 above; out of a desire to stay on-topic, I shall, for the moment, make no comment on how evident the status of jameswylder.com as an official Arcbeatle Press venue might or might not have been before that point).
In other words, the 10,000 Dawns crossover stories that constitute the topic of this discussion have, indeed, been officially released by Arcbeatle Press, and as such they have passed Rule 3 of the “four little rules” on T:VALID. Given that, as stated above, the consensus has been reached on this thread that these stories have also passed Rules 1, 2, and 4, this means they all qualify as valid in-universe sources for this Wiki, according to the same standards used on other valid in-universe sources on this Wiki.
(Sidenote: seeing as the Wiki has not audited the licensing contracts and other relevant legal documents regarding other stories currently considered valid in-universe sources, it is clear that We have to rely on the statements by the publisher/on the publication’s Copyright info section does not qualify as sufficient evidence to declare a story invalid according to our standards. If anyone is not satisfied with this policy, they are free to propose changes at Board:The Panopticon in accordance with T:CHANGE; for the purpose of the present discussion, however, T:BOUND applies.)
Furthermore, the actual wording of relevant part of T:OFF REL#Novels is that
For prose fiction, release date is whatever is given by the publisher as the release date.
I can see no actual clause here saying that these terms only apply to paper prose fiction. And with regards to these 10,000 Dawns crossovers, Arcbeatle Press has already included release dates on the relevant jameswylder.com pages, so I believe this aspect of the discussion has been settled as well.
- AeD
You're completely right, of course -- I probably shouldn't post here first thing in the morning, haha.
Does that leave anything else to discuss?
- Revanvolatrelundar
I honestly don't think there can be. The 10,000 Dawns crossovers and the means of their publication have been examined more than any other story in recent memory, and through all that they have held up to scrutiny. I'd like to push for this thread to be closed, and the stories be reinstated in their respective places on the wiki.
- Bwburke94
I agree with Revan. There's nothing left to discuss re: Dawns, because the stories' validity has clearly been determined.
Any further discussion would be about the actions of specific users, which isn't healthy for the wiki.
- Borisashton
I mean, it is a shame not to hear from the other admins that originally discussed this matter however I also cannot see anything new to the debate that they would bring at this stage.
- Amorkuz
We have indeed achieved quite a lot. From some stories from the Wild Wild Internet, which also encompasses manifestos of 8chan and videos for streaming absolutely anything, we have arrived to stories officially published by a legal company, with legal notes and copyright statements supplied. And even better, you all have contributed to the writing of these legal notes. When I pointed out that their first version claimed permissions from the BBC, you came up with the legal stance why these permissions were not necessary. What's more, Arcbeatle Press agreed and implemented most of your suggestions in the revised version of the legal notes. The fair use clause and the parody idea all came from you. You have helped Arcbeatle Press create the current ownership/permissions statement. That's what I call the power of the community.
This is some welcome sense of normalcy: publishers publishing stories instead of bloggers posting posts.
I was just going to say that for me this concludes the question of Rule 3, but, unfortunately, there is a discrepancy in the latest anthology: it provides two seemingly incompatible statements:
- "All stories are publications of Arcbeatle Press."
- "Publisher: James Wylder"
So which is it? I am a bit confused.
- AeD
Oh for--
- "Publisher," in my understanding, is also a word to refer to the primary proprietor of a publishing company.
- Has any other company whose publications this wiki covers been subjected to this, frankly, ludicrously close-up investigation? Have you gone this in-depth on Candy Jar Books, too? Have the friends of the fine people of Obverse Books reported feeling scared by your close look into their personal lives, too?
- In a thread where you've been throwing accusations of criminal behaviour around like it's candy at a children's party, you really wanna throw a comparison between the publications of Arcbeatle Press and 8chan manifestos out there? Really? That's what you're doing? Seriously? Seriously?
- Borisashton
A quick Google search would reveal that the word "Publisher" can mean an individual that leads a publishing company (in this case Arcbeatle Press). In short, both statements are perfectly accurate.
- GordoB95
It's alarming to see a moderator continue to act in such a needlessly antagonistic manner with little to no repercussions, especially given the silence of the other two mods behind the original decision.
- Bwburke94
James Wylder is Arcbeatle. There's no discrepancy.
- AlanSmithee1963
Yet again, Armokuz proves themself to be ignorant of basic concepts related to writing and publishing fiction, and also displaying fragrantly bullying and, as Gordo said above me, antagonistic behaviors.
I suggest that this discussion be closed for good, since the majority of people involved seem to be in agreement that the 10K Dawns articles should remain online. And secondly, a new discussion re: Amorkuz's behavior should be initiated.
- LegoK9
- "Arcbeatle press is owned and operated by Editor and Publisher James Wylder." [25]
- Publisher: A company or person that prepares and issues books, journals, or music for sale. [26]
I hope this clears up any confusion.
As stated many times above, stories such as Auld Acquaintance by Iain McLaughlin of Thebes Publishing have been released as free PDFs are valid on this wiki. [27] Or does this wiki subscribe to a different (stricter) definition of "publisher"? And if it does, it seems Amorkuz would gladly accept these three stories as validly published if "Publisher: James Wylder" was omited from 10,000 Dawns: The Book Club Collection. I'm sure fixing this simple oversight can be arranged.
- AthenodoraKitten
Except in the most obvious of cases, community discussion is required to declare a story invalid. In these discussions, sufficient evidence must be provided that that the story either doesn't have permission from all relevant copyright holders, or that there are solid non-narrative reasons to believe the story does not occur in the DWU.
User:Amorkuz, I am in the process of writing an in-depth response to your latest argument, but first can you please confirm you have read the above part of T:VALID#In-universe_sources, and can you please confirm precisely where you think it says the onus probandī lies in a case like this?
Thank you very much for your co-operation.
- Shambala108
I can answer that one. Things that are a continuation of existing series and things that are obviously DWU, don't require an inclusion debate. Things that are brand new and/or only tangentially related to the DWU require investigation.
- Bwburke94
And in most cases, the "investigation" can be resolved quickly by lack of evidence against. This one was out of the ordinary because we've been working the other way around - we're trying to prove validity rather than invalidity. And we did a good job of it.
Though I don't believe Amorkuz should have gone as far as he did, I think I understand his position. The original three-admin discussion, which the public can't access, must have significantly affected him on Dawns heading into this present discussion.
- AthenodoraKitten
Thank you very much for your response. My question, however, is more on where the burden of proof rests in a case that has come under a community discussion: as far as I can tell, the terms of T:VALID (as quoted above) clearly states that the burden of proof rests on the party seeking to “declare a story invalid”—that the onus is upon them to provide “sufficient evidence” to prove what is alleged; User:Amorkuz, however, seems to have been operating on a quite different understanding of T:VALID, and I would like to make sure that we are all on the same page.
(edit: this is in reply to Shambala108's post above, not Bwburke94's)
- Shambala108
In practice, especially over the last three years with the dozens of inclusion debates, the procedure you describe mostly applies to things with some closeness to DW. With something completely new, discussion must happen first. On a practical basis, it's much easier to manage a transition from invalid to valid than the other way. That's why it's always best with something new to declare invalid until/unless proven valid.
In general, the size of this wiki combined with the very small number of users/admins who do the cleanup work means that sometimes when procedures evolve (usually gradually), they are not always reflected in the written policy.
- Pacifist Doctor
Hello, Shambala. Thank you for joining the discussion. So, what are the current issues with inclusion of the 10K Dawn stories that cross over with Who? The stories are published on a professional site, and are from a professional company; they involve DWU characters that are used with the official permission of those characters' creators, including some authors who have written BBC Who works (and thus we can safely presume is very familiar with how licensing and copyrights works, esp. in the context of working with the BBC/with Doctor Who). I understand the newness of the stories meant that the stories required greater inspection, but at this point I'm having difficulty seeing any reason for any problems. As you can see, post #120 above has cleared up the confusion over "publisher", and the other responses in the thread indicates that the consensus of the thread is that there is no longer any confusion, so is there anything else that needs to be discussed, or can this discussion be considered closed? What, if any, are the current issues with letting 10KDawn crossover stories be included? I'm just a Wikia reader, but this matter appears to be settled. Thank you in advance, Shambala.
- Amorkuz
I could not understand why, after being so forceful and clear that the stories were published by Arcbeatle Press, why would Mr. Wylder, in the middle of this discussion, state the publisher as "James Wylder" and not "Arcbeatle Press"? It seemed to have been counterproductive.
So I tried to investigate. This is an unexpected result of my investigations.
First, a short explanation of the method. Each professionally printed book is supplied with a unique code called ISBN. An ISBN makes it easier to find a book online or in a store. Wiki pages for books typically include an ISBN in the inbox, which is a clickable link leading to a page with links to Amazon and other online book sources. Naturally, books published by Arcbeatle Press have ISBNs too.
Given that this standard is well established and global, there are multiple search engines, allowing to search books by ISBN. I have run some of the ISBNs of books listed on Arcbeatle Press website on such a search engine https://isbnsearch.org/, but they were not listed as published by Arcbeatle Press.
Fortunately, with this search engine one can also search by the publisher's name, so I tried to search for the publishing companies producing Doctor Who prose, including the small presses mentioned upthread. Here are the links to the search results (note: the search field may not be displayed correctly, but the search results are):
- Candy Jar Books [28] - 9 pages worth of published books;
- Obverse Books [29] - 6 pages worth of published books;
- Thebes Publishing [30] - 2 pages worth of published books;
- Random Static [31] - 1 page worth of published books (only 5 books, of which 1 is a false positive);
- Mad Norwegian Press [32] - 7 pages worth of published books;
- Telos Publishing [33] - 26 pages worth of published books;
- BBC Books [34] - 100 pages worth of published books;
- Arcbeatle Press [35] - 0 books.
While the search is not specific to the publisher's name and may return some false positives with the search term in the title or other metadata (as happened when "Random static" appeared somewhere else in a book), there do not seem to exist any books published by Arcbeatle Press. Or at least, an aggregation engine that seems to contain all the books covered by the wiki does not register any books by Arcbeatle Press. I was surprised to discover such a stark difference between Arcbeatle Press and every other publisher of Doctor Who prose, including other small presses.
The situation was not made any clearer by the following statement from Mr. Wylder:
My first book I'm the publisher on just released! It's an amazing scifi thriller filled with mystery and time travel :). I hope you check it out! #bookstagram #booklaunch https://www.amazon.com/Greater-Good-Echoes-Nathan-Butler-ebook/dp/B07VPY2894/
This statement is unexpected because this post was made this summer, whereas Arcbeatle Press website lists books published as early as 2013.
- Bwburke94
Are you claiming that Arcbeatle Press is not the publisher of the ebooks in question?
And more importantly, what actually changes if the ebooks were published by CreateSpace instead of Arcbeatle? They still obviously pass our rules.
- GordoB95
Post is off-topic, perhaps it would be better to address the arguments the wider community has raised in the thread.
- Bwburke94
Actually, that's a good point. We shouldn't even be talking about ISBNs, because blog posts don't have ISBNs under normal circumstances.
- Shambala108
Ok let's get one thing straight. Only admins are permitted to determine when a thread should be closed, when there is consensus, or what is/isn't off-topic. Please confine your remarks to the topics at hand and let the admins take care of the pain-in-the-ass part of this business.
- Bwburke94
So, the way I'm seeing things right now:
Even if Arcbeatle Press is not the publisher of the August 2019 ebook, that doesn't affect the status of Dawns in any way, because the identity of the publisher does not matter for validity in this case. (In addition, if the blog posts are deemed a valid release, the August 2019 ebook contains no new material.)
- Borisashton
Anyway, as Bwburke94 alluded to in their previous posts, several books by Wylder are found on the ISBN searcher published under the name "CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform". Going to the CreateSpace website (which now seems to have merged with another company) reveals the reason for this in their FAQs. Books that they have given a (free) ISBN to will give CreateSpace as the publisher of the work. I can only speculate the reason for this business decision but a logical conclusion is to save money. This page gives several reasons why it is more cost effective and better to use their services.
Finally, although I personally think this whole ISBN thing is completely unrelated to the debate, 10,000 Dawns (Volume 1) is still clearly marked as being published by Arcbeatle Press on the inside cover as evidenced by this free preview. I'm not even sure what your argument was even trying to accomplish here but I hope I have explained some of it to you.
- LegoK9
Let's keep this simple.
Which rule of T:VS is not being met by these three stories? Is it rule 3?: "A story must be officially released to be valid"?
I see nothing in that requirement that says valid stories cannot be published by James Wylder of Arcbeatle Press of "CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform".
ISBNs are irrelevant for the digitally released stories in question, so discussion on the ISBNs of 10,000 Dawns books not in question is not relevant information.
- AeD
Amorkuz, if you're going to keep coming up with completely new, entirely arbitrary bars these stories have to clear, perhaps you could tell us in advance some of the things you're going to try next? It might save us all, you included, a lot of time and energy if we can just dismiss them all at once instead of having to go through them one by one.
- Revanvolatrelundar
I might state that none of the stories published in the The Book of the Peace Dossier had ISBNs, and they are deemed valid. Using one example from the Lethbridge-Stewart range Pirates of the Prime Meridian, the pdf release there contains no ISBN in the copyright page, so does that mean they are automatically invalid, too? It does not.
So now I feel like I'm lecturing, because I thought I'd forgotten what "consensus" means, but after looking it up, I found this clear explanation: "a generally accepted opinion or decision among a group of people". A consensus can't be decided by one person, because then that's not a consesus.
By that definition, consensus on this subject has been reached.
- HappyCanvasCloud
After first discovering this shouting match through Twitter, I am surprised nobody has mentioned a precedent that does exist for the stories in question. Lawrence Burton's Smoking Mirrors is a full novel, published freely on the authors own blog. We do not cover it here. It is fanfiction that only exists officially as a curio that eventually became Against Nature. The page that exists with that novel's name serves only to explain the situation. Information is contained to how the book relates to things that are allowed on the wiki.
As such, if 10,000 Dawns is to remain, I cannot see why it requires more space than a footnote and a spot on a character's list of appearances.
As a quick aside, I would like to question what Mr. Wylder's assortment of friends think they are doing? As noted above, this thread is likely to be what a curious reader first finds were they to search for Mr. Wylder, Arcbeatle Press, or 10,000 Dawns. They would see a mountain of immature reasoning, all insisting that 10,000 Dawns is nothing if it is not allowed on, of all things, a fan wiki for a science fiction children's show. I assume that Mr. Wylder would claim he is worth more than that, but the evidence of this thread does suggest otherwise.
I look forward to the inevitable response where I am told that Smoking Mirrors is actually totally irrelevant for some nebulous reason.
- AeD
I was unfamiliar with the Smoking Mirror situation, but, uh, that looks to me like a story featuring the Sixth Doctor, pitched to BBC Books, rejected, and then published without the appropriate permissions or rights from the BBC, unlike the 10,000 Dawns stories discussed here, of which all elements that cross over with the Doctor Who universe are appropriately licensed. Smoking Mirror is equivalent to Jim Mortimore's Campaign, or maybe to the pre-Big Finish adaptation script release of Farewell Great Macedon, but not to 10,000 Dawns.
So, yes, this is actually totally irrelevant, for the patently clear reason that Smoking Mirror is unlicensed, illegally published fanfiction, while the 10,000 Dawns stories are not.
- Bwburke94
If Smoking Mirror is indeed fanfiction, it fails Rule 2. (It's a trickier case than that; it was written as potentially licensed, but was published unlicensed, so Rule 3 also gets involved.)
- AeD
We don't cover Campaign, either.
- Bwburke94
And Smoking Mirror is more similar to Campaign than it is to Dawns.
- LegoK9
HappyCanvasCloud wrote: I would like to question what Mr. Wylder's assortment of friends think they are doing? ... They would see a mountain of immature reasoning, all insisting that 10,000 Dawns is nothing if it is not allowed on, of all things, a fan wiki for a science fiction children's show. I assume that Mr. Wylder would claim he is worth more than that, but the evidence of this thread does suggest otherwise.
Surely accusing Wylder (and his fellow writers) of being improper for using the wiki's primary functions violates No Personal Attacks.
How can you claim superiority over Wylder when you yourself are debating on the same "fan wiki for a science fiction children's show"? This is also an insult to this wiki, all of it's admits/editors, every Doctor Who writer, and to Doctor Who itself. Doctor Who is far more than a children's show and this wiki exists to prove that fact. If you are coming from a place of ignorance (since you are new here), please feel free to explore all the non-TV and not child friendly content this wiki's users have curated.
At the end of the day: "There's no point in being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes." —The Doctor
- HappyCanvasCloud
That is correct. We don't cover Campaign. We also do not cover Paul Magrs' expanded bibliography, despite the author's open admission that everything he writes is set in the same universe. We don't even include Iris Wildthyme's pre-Who appearances. Why? Because even with authorial intent, only selected works are included here, and works which are further out from Doctor Who's umbrella are only listed as trivia/notes.
Authorial intent means nothing. Rights are what matter, and there has been a consistent misunderstanding of how they work.
Mr. Wylder is perfectly allowed to use the individual characters and concepts permitted to him. He is not allowed to then claim a story exists within a licensed universe because of this. Obverse Books did not give him the right to do this. He does not have the right to claim that these stories take place within the Doctor Who universe, the Faction Paradox universe, or any other set of rights from which he may have borrowed characters or settings.
- AthenodoraKitten
Amorkuz wrote: I have run some of the ISBNs of books listed on Arcbeatle Press website on such a search engine https://isbnsearch.org/, but they were not listed as published by Arcbeatle Press.
Now, this sentence intrigues me, both for what it says, and what it does not—it does not say these books were not listed altogether, but just that they were not listed as “published by Arcbeatle Press.” Who they were listed as published by, we are not told.
Intrigued, I set out to replicate the investigative steps outlined in post #131, to see the results myself. And indeed, running some of the ISBNs of books listed on Arcbeatle Press’ website on https://isbnsearch.org/ does show them listed, as published by a “CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.”
So what could be the meaning of this? I wondered when I saw that name, and investigated further.
As it turned out, CreateSpace (or more precisely, “On-Demand Publishing LLC, doing business as CreateSpace,” to quote its Bloomberg profile) was a company which provided on-demand printing services, “[allowing] publishers and authors to publish their work” (emphasis added). Now, according to the International ISBN Agency,
It is always the publisher of the book who should apply for the ISBN. For the purposes of ISBN, the publisher is the group, organisation, company or individual who is responsible for initiating the production of a publication. Normally, it is also the person or body who bears the cost and financial risk in making a product available.
Furthermore, in the info section about “Assigning ISBNs to joint publications”, the International ISBN Agency further states that
In the case of a joint publication, both publishers are entitled to have an ISBN on the book. It should be made clear which number identifies which publisher. However, if only one publisher is to hold stock and distribute the publication, then it is recommended that the ISBN of the publisher who is responsible for distribution appears in bar-coded form on the back cover of the book.
As a print-on-demand business, CreateSpace naturally would be “responsible for initiating the production,” in the sense of starting the printing process once a copy had been ordered), as well as distributing said copy once it had been produced, with the demand for the company’s service—and the profit the company might make from providing said service, through fees and suchlike—tied to the demand for the publication itself. There is nothing surprising, then, for CreateSpace to be considered “the publisher” for the purposes of ISBN.
That is not all, though. I was intrigued by post #131’s logic of using ISBNs to determine what does or does not count as “officially released” for the purpose of Rule 3, and looked further into the information provided by the International ISBN Agency. This is what I found:
ISBNs are assigned to text-based monographic publications (i.e. one-off publications rather than journals, newspapers, or other types of serials).
Any book made publicly available, whether for sale or on a gratis basis, can be identified by ISBN.
[. . .]
With regard to the various media available, it is of no importance in what form the content is documented and distributed; however, each different product form (e.g. paperback, EPUB, .pdf) should be identified separately.[37]
The ISBN is an identifier and does not convey any form of legal or copyright protection.[38]
In principle, publications that are monographic (i.e. one-off publications not periodicals or serials etc), text-based (or predominantly text-based) and available to the public are considered eligible within the scope of the ISBN Standard.[39]
As everyone can see, the International ISBN Agency’s understanding on who counts as a publisher, or what counts as a publication, is very, very broad. And, well, . . .
I own a printer.
Per the International ISBN Agency’s terms, in theory I could print out just about anything tomorrow and have it be given an ISBN with just a few simple steps. I would not need to do any proofreading or quality control, or worry about copyrights, or even convince anyone to put money into my so-called book (given that the International ISBN Agency counts books made publically available “on a gratis basis”) like Arcbeatle Press and other traditional publishers have to do, but so long as mine was the hand that turned the printer on, “AthenodoraKitten” would count as a legitimate publisher for the purposes of ISBNs—and thus for the purposes of T:VALID, according to the logic of post #131.
In practice, of course, I am not going to do any of that—I am too much a believer in the ethics of environmentalism to ever waste paper in such a way—and in any case it is very unlikely that a DWU rightsholder would ever grant me a license (especially given that DWU rightsholders are almost by default professionals familiar with copyright and licensing, and would have some proper understanding of professional standards), so the chances of my hypothetical book actually passing our “four little rules” as currently defined is virtually nonexistent. Nevertheless, this broadening of the scope of Rule 3—this apparent broadening of the scope of T:VALID into something along the lines of Every story printed by anyone with a home printer should be considered valid provided the proper rights have been procured—is so uncharacteristic compared to the position the author of post #131 has otherwise been advocating for since the beginning of this discussion, that I would like to take a moment to ask: User:Amorkuz, can you please confirm that this is actually what you are arguing for?
In any case though, the methodology described in post #131 is flawed, anyway. To wit:
Here is a screenshot of my Kindle copy of Rose (novelisation). As everyone can see, there is an ISBN for this edition clearly listed. Nevertheless, there is no record of this edition on https://isbnsearch.org/, post #131’s nominated ISBN database of choice. So, then, which option here is more likely—that https://isbnsearch.org/ cannot be taken at face value as a completely comprehensive and authoritative source, or that BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing must have its legitimacy as a publishing entity and its rights to publish e-books brought into question? Do we need to start a community discussion on the validity of Rose (novelisation) as well?
Out of respect for TARDIS:No_personal_attacks and for the members of this Wiki, I will not insult everybody’s intelligence by spelling out the answer here: the evidence can speak for itself.
(For accuracy’s sake, I would like to note that the print edition of Rose (novelisation) indeed has its ISBN listed on https://isbnsearch.org/. However, the print edition has a different ISBN from the one assigned for the e-book edition—as recommended by the International ISBN Agency terms quoted above—and thus https://isbnsearch.org/ is still missing an entire set of ISBN on its database.
For accuracy’s sake, I would also like to note that the statement of “Each professionally printed book is supplied with a unique code called ISBN” in post #131 is factually incorrect—as explained by the International ISBN Agency here and elsewhere on their website, having an ISBN assigned for one’s book is merely beneficial, not universally mandatory. Furthermore, the main benefit of having an ISBN is to make it easier for bookstores and the like to maintain records of the book for distribution, and I can easily see a publisher which handles distribution itself having its own in-house cataloguing system.)
⁂ Amorkuz wrote: I was just going to say that for me this concludes the question of Rule 3, but, unfortunately, there is a discrepancy in the latest anthology: it provides two seemingly incompatible statements:
- "All stories are publications of Arcbeatle Press."
- "Publisher: James Wylder"
So which is it? I am a bit confused.
Amorkuz wrote: I could not understand why, after being so forceful and clear that the stories were published by Arcbeatle Press, why would Mr. Wylder, in the middle of this discussion, state the publisher as "James Wylder" and not "Arcbeatle Press"? It seemed to have been counterproductive.
As has already been explained in post #120 and post #124—apologies for everyone else if I am just being repetitive here, but post #131 above indicates that its author still experiences some confusion over the matter, and I would like everything to be as clear as possible—common usage does allow for the word “publisher” to refer to a publishing company, or an individual person with responsibility for the publication. Furthermore, Arcbeatle Press’ website explicitly states that “Arcbeatle Press is owned and operated by Editor and Publisher James Wylder” (emphasis added), clearly indicating that Arcbeatle Press understands “Publisher” to be a title/position within its organisational structure, and that this title/position is currently held by Mr Wylder.
For the sake of accuracy, I looked up this “latest anthology” that post #118 above spoke of, to see whether these allegedly “incompatible statements” did indeed occur as quoted, and what context they might have occurred in. For the records (because post #118 did not provide any in-line citation to facilitate access to, and review of, the document cited), here is the URL to the anthology in question: http://www.jameswylder.com/blog/a-little-surprise-a-new-collection-of-old-stories. Let anyone who doubts the veracity of my statements about its content have a look through it themselves, and see the truth of my words.
It is indeed the case that the lines "All stories are publications of Arcbeatle Press" and "Publisher: James Wylder" both occur on the front matter of the e-book edition of this anthology. The previous sentence does not, however, give the contexts—plural—within which these lines occur:
- "All stories are publications of Arcbeatle Press": this line is part of a section describing the publication status of the stories in the anthology.
- "Publisher: James Wylder": this line, however, is part of a credit section naming the specific persons involved in the production and publication of this particular anthology—in context, this line immediately precedes the credit for the Cover Artist and Illustration Artist, making it clear that it belongs to a section wherein individuals are addressed by their job titles.
These two sections are quite clearly separated from each other (both in the sense that all sections within the front matter of this publication are clearly distinguished from each other typographically, and that there is a fair amount of text between the two on the page), making it difficult for most readers to confuse the Job Titles section with the Publication Status section.
To use an analogy—if one looks at the screenshot of the copyright page of Rose (novelisation) above, one can see at various points both “BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing” and “Penguin Random House UK” named. This may seem like a contradiction over who the publisher of this volume is, if one misses some crucial context (in this case, the fact that Ebury Publishing is a part of the Penguin Random House group of companies[40]). Once that context has been taken into account, however, what seemed contradictory before will reveal itself to be not contradictory after all.
Hope this has cleared any confusion.
- LegoK9
If Wylder is not allowed to claim these 10,000 Dawns stories take place in the DWU without the approval of Obverse Books, then the Faction Paradox writers of Obverse Books are not allowed to claim their works take place in the DWU without the approval of the BBC.
But that is not the rule of this wiki. Please refer to Doctor Who spin-offs, which conveniently lists the many DWU spin-offs not approved by the BBC but are deemed valid by this wiki.
- Bwburke94
To avoid any confusion: Wylder is using "DWU characters" but (if Happy's argument is valid) cannot claim a connection to Doctor Who. Per precedent, these stories are allowed.
- Scrooge MacDuck
Quite. Whatever else may come of the Wylder debate, "authorial intent of DWUness + at least one licensed already-DWU element = DWU" is such a cornerstone of how this Wiki defines validity that to change it (which, in my opinion, would be as unrealistic as it would be detrimental) would be a whole other thread.
- Revanvolatrelundar
LegoK9 wrote: If Wylder is not allowed to claim these 10,000 Dawns stories take place in the DWU without the approval of Obverse Books, then the Faction Paradox writers of Obverse Books are not allowed to claim their works take place in the DWU without the approval of the BBC.
Interestingly on this matter, there is this Facebook post by Obverse Books at the time White Canvas was published: https://en-gb.facebook.com/obversebooks/posts/10156310057043752?__tn__=-R
The post by Obverse Books states that (as far as they're concerned) the story is a crossover with Faction Paradox. Should this not also clear up the earlier accusation that Wylder may not have gained permissions for his work?
- Scrooge MacDuck
Fantastic find! I really can't see how it wouldn't clear that up beyond reasonable doubt.
- AeD
Honestly, the three 10,000 Dawns stories up for debate here must, at this point, be the most vetted stories in the history of this wiki. Has anything else so thoroughly cleared the bar?
- AeD
HappyCanvasCloud wrote: We also do not cover Paul Magrs' expanded bibliography, despite the author's open admission that everything he writes is set in the same universe.
If anything, this is actual precedent for this situation:
- Everything Magrs writes is set in the same Magrsiverse, but this wiki only covers the stories that cross into the DWU.
- Mr Wylder is the creator of a larger 10,000 Dawns universe, but this wiki only covers the stories that cross into the DWU.
- Revanvolatrelundar
And similar with Rachel Redhead's Judy Collins series. We only cover its crossover into Faction Paradox in Judy's War, and not the actual series.
- Bwburke94
And the Marvel Universe, and Star Trek, and so many others. We only cover the crossovers.
- Scrooge MacDuck
Indeed, I don't see how the Magrs case could be twisted into supporing "the Wylder stories are invalid". What was the idea?
Also, @AeD: is this the most-vetted story ever? I don't know, but I do know that this may be the longest inclusion debate ever. Definitely in the Top 5, at least, but we might actually be beating the record.
- Bwburke94
Longest inclusion debates:
- Thread:211845 (The Lego Batman Movie, 263 replies)
- Thread:207499 (Scream of the Shalka, 182 replies)
- Thread:125464 (Vienna, 174 replies)
- This one (10,000 Dawns crossovers, 159+ replies)
- Thread:176459 (LEGO Dimensions, 131 replies)
Non-inclusion threads with 160 or more replies:
- Thread:123537 (50th anniversary wordmark, 482 replies)
- Thread:183627 ("to be continued"/multi-parter, 386+ replies)
- Thread:121062 (multiple Clara articles prior to Series 7B, 343 replies)
- Thread:121256 (days of the year articles, 334 replies)
- Thread:154017 (Rose vs. Clara, 213 replies)
- Thread:171578 (Romana III/Trey, 202+ replies)
- Thread:183821 (multiple Osgood articles, 197 replies)
- Scrooge MacDuck
Top-5, I knew it. Thanks for digging all that up, even if it is only very tangentially relevant (in that it puts into perspective the oddity of this whole thing).
- LegoK9
Well this is interesting!
"Judy, Enigma, Violet, and Trudiode were originally created by Rachel Redhead for her 2012 NaNoWriMo book The Enigma Variations, the sequels to which introduced the characters of Kat and Yardley James. These books were all self-published by Redhead. Concepts from her self-published novels had previously been referenced in the 2013 Faction Paradox story Against Nature."
A crossover between a self published series and the DWU has been accepted before. The Judy Collins series being self published was not relevant for an inclusion debate because only the crossover stories in the DWU are in question. The only difference is that Readhead's crossovers were through Obverse Books while Wylder's crossovers were released online. But overall this thread supports their inclusion at large; we accept web published stories from other publishers.
- Bwburke94
After reading through those past long discussions, I discovered a tiny problem.
The Lego Batman discussion was closed on an apparent lack of licensing for the Daleks, despite it being a commercially released work in which the creators claimed they had the license. So there's a past case of a creator's licensing claim being ignored, albeit under much different circumstances.
(To be clear, I don't support revisiting the validity of Lego Batman. But ignoring the other three rules, it has a stronger Rule 2 argument than the Dawns crossovers do.)
- Scrooge MacDuck
Unless memory fails, I think the Lego Batman thing wasn't so much that we didn't believe the creator's claims, as that the creator's claims were incomplete to begin with; someone claimed to have gotten rights for the Daleks "from the BBC", but as we all know, the BBC alone don't control the copyright to the Daleks. Moreover, the Daleks weren't named in the final cut of the film itself, and their design was "Legotized" to fit the film's artstyle, so whether we could even formally identify them as Daleks (be they licensed or otherwise) was called into question.
So Lego Batman was a very tricky situation (I think in an ideal world we should deem it valid, but I also think we should deem Dimensions in Time valid in such an ideal world; it's an opinion that is neither here nor there), but not one so very like this particular tricky situation.
Also, User:LegoK9 dug up a confirmation from Obverse Books that it is a proper crossover a few posts ago, so as a matter of fact we're not relying on just Arcbeatle's claims anymore, right over there.
- Bwburke94
I must have missed that. The posts were flying by so quickly at the time.
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