IU DAB Terms

Opening Post

A spectre is haunting this wiki - the spectre of Doctor Who (N-Space).

There was substantial discussion on how to handle the in-universe iteration of the Doctor Who franchise in the now hidden forums. At first the page was dabbed using The Thief of Sherwood, but the situation was always complicated, as Remembrance of the Daleks had an allusion to the show, and earlier works began to pop up as the thread went on. (In addition, it came to light that Thief was intended to be in a completely separate universe as well.) In the end, due to this nuance, (and, I believe, the fact that the earliest story known at the time to reference the in-universe franchise also had a dab term, making the thing clunky) it was decided that T:DAB OTHER would be applied to the situation, in a... creative interpretation of this policy. Since then, as {{Doctor Who}} shows, the situation has become more and more convoluted, we've (mainly Epsilon, but others as well) discovered a wealth of information relating to in-universe analogues of the real world franchise or people involved with it. I think it's time we reconsider.

Aside from Doctor Who (N-Space) these pages are dabbed through a hodgepodge of various rules, sometimes not having dab terms at all (Bbcdoctorwho), sometimes being dabbed through the story they first appear in (The Woman Who Lived (The Zygon Isolation)), and sometimes through other means entirely (Give-a-show Projector (device)).

Is it plausible to go backwards? Can we return to this patchwork system of dab rules for the franchise in its entirety, and call it Doctor Who (Story Name)? Well, the first instance I could find of the franchise appearing in the DWU, at least on this wiki, is TV Terrors (TVC 709 comic story). If we consider this a parody, the second is Lady Penelope Investigates the stars of the Sensational new film Dr. Who and the Daleks! (short story). And I believe the first unambiguous DWU reference (that is, you can't quibble that it's a parody, you can't argue that it's TV Century 21 which some (wrong) people might take umbrage to) to the franchise is A Letter from the Doctor (DWM 1 short story). Of these three options, two have dab terms themselves. So this won't work.

Alright. We can't go backwards. Does staying still cause problems? Yes. A patchwork, inconsistent system is inherently a problem. But even if we ignore that, see the discussions at Talk:Give-a-show Projector (device), and Talk:The Woman Who Lived (The Zygon Isolation), two criticisms have been leveled at our current situation, that the current dab term framework makes in-universe counterparts harder to find (and, yes, Epsilon's template has made this less of an issue, but ideally it would be nice to make them easily searchable as well as having a navbox), and that for some of our undabbed in-universe counterparts there's some inherent level of confusion between them and their real world counterparts. (Against Nature, TARDIS Wiki, BBC iPlayer, etc)

So. Backwards is out. Staying still has problems. How do we proceed? A single unified dab term. But there are at least two open questions.

1. What is this dab term? Currently we're using (N-Space) on the franchise page, and there's been some suggestion that it will be the single unified dab term. Since we're here to define an entirely new dabbing policy, I'm not wedded to this idea. I would accept (N-Space) if others were set on it, but I think the better option is just to move everything over to (In Universe), and this is what I support. I think this dab term is simpler for the average user to understand, and is easier to search. The only reason to use (N-Space) was to apply T:DAB OTHER, which isn't necessary if we're defining new policy, or for sentimental reasons, given that we've lived with it for almost 3 years.

2. What is the scope of the dab term? This may seem like a trivial question, but it's not. Are we concerned with things related to the in-universe counterpart of the DW franchise, in-universe counterparts of things related to the DW franchise, or the intersection of the two? I think the first is clearly out, if something is stated to be related to DW (IU) but has no real world counterpart, there's no clear reason to dab it. The second might be doable, but it seems... questionable. Notable problems with this line of thought are Niki (For the Girl Who Has Everything), Antonio Amaral (Omega), and Vitas Varnas (Omega), (yes, those last two are only very tangentially related to the real world DW franchise, being backers of Omega, but technically they would qualify). I think the third is the most viable, but it does run into some issues when we consider that the in universe versions of Faction Paradox, etc, haven't been explicitly stated to be related to the in universe version of DW, so we have to do a little bit of sleight of hand to make everything work.

I think pursuing this reform of our massively convoluted approach to the in-universe franchise, a T:DAB IU, if you will, will benefit both editors and readers, in providing a unified approach to the subject that has frustrated many of us for years, and removes confusion that the average reader might experience. Najawin ☎ 17:21, 12 February 2023 (UTC)