User talk:NateBumber

Faction Paradox

I completely understand my closure of the thread did not go the way you wanted. As someone who's repeatedly been on your side of the fence, I feel ya. It's rough when you've got a convincing argument, and someone -- worst of all someone you don't really know yet -- throws up a roadblock, maybe even for reasons you can't appreciate.

But it's important to understand some things about Tardis discussions. As compared to many -- heck, I'll say almost all other -- wikis, we allow debate on a grand scale. Some wikis have no forum activity at all. Some would have shut down a debate like your thread after the first post. Instead, we invite discussion, and we want it to be vigorous and well-attended.

That said, they work under a basic convention that, since you're a relatively new editor with us, you might not yet have picked up on.

We have a volunteer staff -- even I don't really get paid for my work here -- and so we don't have time for endless debates. At some point -- maybe a week after the thread is open, maybe years -- the thread closes one way or another and we move on with our lives. Once a decision has been made and the thread has been closed (preferably by an admin who has not yet attended that thread), it's bad form to continue that debate outside the forum.

Since you've been keyed up to debate this issue for a number of days now, I understand that you want to keep having it. Believe me, I'm the same way sometimes. But it's important to understand that a closing argument is not the same thing as an exhaustive one. If a conversation is a relatively long and detailed one, it's not reasonable to expect that the closing argument will touch on every single point raised in the preceding discussion. And so it's not fair to come back and say to a closing admin, "Hey, what about this thing I said in post #23 and this other thing I said in post #89?"

I and other admin who write closing arguments spend a lot of time editing them down to the most salient points.

However, because you're new with us and you have been extraordinarily respectful and well-reasoned in the thread, I'm going to answer some of the points arising in your latest message.

In the thread, you offered two options: re-merging with Tardis or installing a new admin staff at FP. I took you up on the second option, which means that one of your proposals was accepted. Yet in your latest message, you're suggesting that you weren't really serious about it, and you're distancing yourself from your own proposal. Now we're onto to some other thing that was never in the thread. Not fair.

Contrary to what you've been told by people who tried to edit there, there's nothing complicated about editing at FP that would in any way prevent the building of content there. No content page or policy page has ever been protected there, not even for an hour, since the split happened. I did a lot of work in 2012 to set up that wiki's basic structure -- wordmark, category tree, detailed instructions on how to edit the front page, some basic universal policies, site design -- so that an incoming group of editors would be set up for success. The claim that there is anything preventing the editing of the wiki to whatever standard FP enthusiasts would want is patently false.

Much of what exists there on the front page and some policy pages is absolutely placeholder text, and the fact that it hasn't been changed since 2012 actually baffles both me and, I don't think it's wrong to say, SOTO. We've both wondered to each other why so much time is being applied to the debate rather than simply editing FP Wiki to your liking.

You say that the FP Wiki has rules which prohibit writing articles there. So change them. There's only one policy page that has anything to do with what counts as a valid source, and it's very simply written. It's not protected, and never has been. It's also from another age, cause it speaks of "canon" in a way I would never do these days.

I think it's dumb, too, but the solution is just to edit it, not vilify it. In fact, a participant to the FP thread has edited it, so it must be known that it is editable, right? I guess I just don't see the problem because it has such an ordinary, easy solution.

You've suggested that even if the rule gets changed that there would be "unnecessary duplication of content". But I think that fails to grasp one of the central benefits of the Fandom platform.

There are plenty of closely-related wikis all over Fandom that have articles about the same topic written from different angles. What you'll get on disney:Tinker Bell is not the same article as w:c:disneyfairies:Tinker Bell; there's a good and useful difference. We actively try to make our actor pages Doctor Who-specific, so Julian Glover is not the same as w:c:indianajones:Julian Glover. muppet:Yoda is not the same thing as starwars:Yoda, nor the same thing as w:c:theclonewars:Yoda.

This isn't duplication: it's specialisation. For end users -- readers -- it will be very useful to have a clear distinction between the way that something is described within FP fiction, and the way that we find it in the main body of DW fiction. It's an exciting use of the Fandom platform -- not something to be regarded as second-class citizenry. It allows you greater freedom to explore how <whatever> is treated by FP writers in a way that readers can better follow. They can pull up one window at Tardis, one at FP, and literally compare the two. That's leveraging the software in a powerful and dynamic way that will provide more clarity to a reader than trying to hunt for FP material within the body of a larger article here.

And you know that other editors not familiar with the FP -- which is realistically to say the vast majority of the people who edit here -- are going to edit out FP material cause they don't know it or they view it as too minor to whatever topic they're editing. That was one of the things that was happening back in the day when we split.

The FP Wiki is a way to protect, clarify and amplify FP material. It's a way of making it possible to look at the DWU through the lens of FP stories. I honestly think the average reader would appreciate it, and that from an editorial standpoint, the clearest way to describe FP is from within its own wiki.

I've been writing this thing forever and I know I haven't answered everything you've asked about. So I'll do one more and call it quits.

Yes, as a matter of technicality, you can create a link back to an article in a revision note and that will satisfy our license. But as I pointed out in my response, that's not as clear as simply having an intact revision history. And it's super laborious; you have to remember to do it every single time, which is going to try anyone's patience in the case of a remerge. But more to the point, a link is only as permanent as the thing to which it links. If the FP wiki were to become truly unusued, after a period of time it would be automatically archived and then the link would go ... nowhere. That's why I'm saying the best and clearest protection for people's copyrights is the current situation.

Well, this has been massively long and probably, in your view, incomplete. For that I can only apologise -- and hope that the remainder of your holiday season is a good one.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  23:52: Wed 28 Dec 2016

The Concept of War

Hello.. Holmes to Homes here.

The Concept of War is a story available on paperback (as of today) at limited pressings at some DW conventions, but it also sees an eBook version. At the Amazon Kindle store.

HolmestoHomes ☎ 19:34, January 6, 2017 (UTC)