Forum:Script editor conundrum

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Revision as of 06:26, 21 April 2010 by Tangerineduel (talk | contribs) (reply)
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On recently adding a page for Elwen Rowlands, I noticed that none of the BBC Wales script editors had at all been included in category:Doctor Who script editors, nor placed on the page script editor. I added Rowlands and Raynor to the cat, then started to think about why there would be pages for all the BBC Wales SEs, but none of them would be grouped in any way with the old SEs. And of course the reason probably is that the position is entirely different nowadays than it used to be. "Script editor" used to mean "head writer", and now it's a semi-creative position that is kind of part-fact checker, part-copy editor, part-continuity supervisor.

Do you think this lack of inclusion of BBC Wales SEs is a conscious decision to separate out script editors into their separate world, or just a case of no one figuring out how to integrate the two? For instance, I basically wrote wikipedia:List of Doctor Who script editors and (I think) effectively explained the difference in one article, thanks largely to a great quote by Raynor. In other words, it is possible to combine the two together under one umbrella. But there's also an argument for making a hard line between the two. Seems to me there are three ways forward, and I'm not sure how we want to go on this wiki.

  1. We could quite easily have script editor (2005) and script editor (1963), a disambig at script editor, and Category:script editor (2005) and Category:script editor (1963).
  2. We could have one single article that explains the whole thing and two separate categories.
  3. We could have one article and one category.

Any thoughts on a preference? CzechOut | 14:09, April 20, 2010 (UTC)

I like the idea of one article and one category, while noting the difference in classic and modern definitions on the article page. That way we keep our work in-line with the single job title as seen on-screen, and easily inform anyone surfing in of whichever definition of "script editor" they happen to be looking for. I believe it can all be done without making the article too unwieldy.Rob T Firefly 21:58, April 20, 2010 (UTC)
Yeah, I'm partial to the one article idea, too. This isn't like Designer/Production designer, where there are actually two different titles. It's easier to note the distinction in one place when the tietles are exactly the same. But it's the categories that are really troubling me. I'm not sure it makes all that much sense to group Terrance Dicks together with Helen Raynor. They're really not doing the same job at all. And you can't really do some higher automated functions like #categorytree, if they're all together. I mean, you could use #category tree to automatically dump a list of the BBC Wales script editors, but not if they're mixed in with the old guys. CzechOut | 05:19, April 21, 2010 (UTC)
I also like the idea of a single category and page.
I suppose, re: the category the question is whether the category is describing the role they fullfil now/then, or the title that role was give.
As we're going to define the role of script editor on the article page that should tie into the category, defining it and therefore making the category make more sense. --Tangerineduel 06:26, April 21, 2010 (UTC)