Validity: The Book of the Enemy's Biographies of Authors

Opening Post

So. Historical background. When The Book of the Enemy was first being covered on this wiki there was some confusion on how to cover it, as there's a fair bit of linking material aside from just the short stories therein. User:NateBumber and User:Shambala108 have a small discussion about how to deal with this at Talk:The Book of the Enemy (anthology), and as an afterthought Nate decides to cite the author biographies as part of this linking material.

I end up doing my summaries for this anthology two years later, and find that this decision was made, technically validating these biographies, specifically on a page created by Nate, Wilhelm Liebknecht, who is listed as an author for one of the stories in the anthology but has an in-universe page, treating his author biography as a valid source. I mention how Biographies of Authors was treated as valid on Talk:Doctor Who (N-Space) during the time period when we were still having massive expansion of our coverage of the in-universe franchise. Nate noticed this and said that in no uncertain terms he did not intend for his own biography to be valid, and that until the forums were back we should cite the in-universe character biographies to their places in Prenarrative Briefings (more on that later). I was ambivalent, but he went ahead and did so during my absence. (Which is fair enough - I was gone. If you want to read more on the discussion, it can be found at User talk:NateBumber/Archive 3#Against Nature and User talk:Najawin/Archive 3#Sandbox4. Ultimately I don't think this has any real influence on the rest of this discussion, but I include it for completeness' sake.)

So, what exactly is the issue here? Well, if you want to read TBotE completely unspoiled, turn back now.

TBotE as a whole is a fairly ambiguous piece of work, in the grand tradition of Faction Paradox. What isn't ambiguous is that at least one person is recuperating from an encounter with The Enemy and is going through, effectively, debriefing, viewing memories of their encounter with The Enemy and/or other's encounters with The Enemy. (These constitute the short stories.) In between these psychologically harrowing experiences, there are briefings given that are relevant to the topic of The Enemy, to greater or lesser extent, often from characters or entities that are entirely fictional. (I believe all but two of them are written by Simon Bucher-Jones given comments in his biography. The other two are clearly indicated as such, and will be the topic of discussion.)

These biographies, those for clearly fictional authors of briefings, are at times the only context that can exist for these characters outside of simply saying that they authored a biography, see, for instance, the biography of "Irma Ebbinghaus", which discusses a human inductee into the culture of the Great Houses, or often provides crucial context to the stories in which they already exist, such as Malachi Yarrow's history with the Mal'akh, or Robert Scarratt's defection to Faction Paradox.

In the briefing authors there are two who aren't clearly fictional. (Well, three, but Alain Chartier is explicitly stated to be a pseudonym for the poem in the book.) "Lesley Drakken" and "Michael Simpson". Of these I think a case can be made that we might treat Michael Simpson's biography as valid as well, as it includes the section:

"The entity that later emerged from the library still called itself Michael Simpson (though whether you should believe it is up for debate) and declared itself a War historian and potential author to any sapient creature that would listen (which certainly brings the entity’s honesty into question)."

But this isn't necessary.

Okay, more weirdness. Back to Wilhelm Liebknecht. Who is Wilhelm Liebknecht? Well, he was a German politician. He did not write the story attributed to him in this anthology. Who did? I assume Simon Bucher-Jones, both due to him stating that anything not written by the others in the anthology was by him in his author bio, as well as its specific identity of The Enemy.

This leaves us with, roughly, five questions.

How do we treat biographies of authors who wrote narratives who aren't Wilhelm Liebknecht? Nate has stated that his biography wasn't intended to be a valid source, but there's some biographies in here where it's not trivial to me that their authors aren't trying to do a Contributors (short story) style thing. (I lean towards ruling all of these invalid, in spite of the blatant violation of T:NO SELF REF. I think the rule 4 statement is as unambiguous as we're going to get unless one of the others says they did intend their bio to be valid, and that's just going to be an even bigger headache.)

How do we treat "Wilhelm Liebknecht", given that his author biography is a very real, "in character" biography of the actual person that simply didn't write the story in question? (Is there precedent for this? I honestly don't know.) Do we keep saying he wrote the story in question? Do we treat him like a fictional character? I'm pretty sure this is Bucher-Jones, but this is inference, not explicitly stated.

How do we treat the biographies of authors of briefings aside from Drakken, Simpson, and Chartier, given that all of them are fictional. Do we treat them as individual short stories? Eg, "Scarratt defected to Faction Paradox. (PROSE: Captain Robert Scarratt (TBotE Short Story))"? Do we then attribute the briefings in question to these fictional authors? (I would hope not, but, you know, it could happen. Especially if we attribute The Map and the Spiders to "Liebknecht".) (I think I'm gonna say these should be valid but the precise way in which we implement this is up for debate.)

How do we treat the biography of Chartier? Pretty easy, just valid/invalid. Chartier didn't actually write the poem so it's an explicitly fictional biography (involving references to "time active powers") that explicitly didn't write anything in the book. imo this depends on how we treat the above category.

Finally, how do we treat the biographies of Drakken and Simpson? Drakken writes a poem in her briefing, and her biography makes no reference to any suggestion that she's an in-universe character. Simpson's biography contains the section I referenced above, and his briefing, one I deeply dislike, is completely consistent with the in-universe characterization given in that biography, treating himself as a historian of The War. I'm.... Not sure about how to handle these two. I think I lean towards invalidity here as well, just because of Drakken's, and the fact that it's a bit of a mess otherwise. But I think Simpson intended for his to be in-universe, tbh. Do we treat Simpson as being a solely out of universe author, or give him pages for both his in-universe and out of universe versions? This is a somewhat relevant question, because while I haven't fully wikified TBotE, in part due to these issues, the page Whig should probably include the section:

Michael Simpson compared the Great Houses to the Whig Party. (PROSE: Pre-narrative Briefings)

Or similar. Hopefully that would redirect to an in-universe version of Simpson, and if so, without his biography, we're left with something like:

Michael Simpson wrote a briefing comparing the Great Houses to the Whig Party. (PROSE: Pre-narrative Briefings)

As his in-universe page. Which, again, I don't think his is intent. So this one is a bit messy. Though, again, I think I lean towards invalidity.

I hope you all can understand why this is an issue that required the forums to resolve it. It's thorny enough that there needs to be serious discussion, but I'm bullish on it getting done in 3 weeks. Najawin ☎ 05:43, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

I personally think all of the biographies that are up for debate should be considered valid, just because it makes coverage easier, but I understand why others might disagree. But consider me a vote for validity. Pluto2☎ 21:16, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Forcing Nate to be a DWU character by hook or by crook, nice. Najawin ☎ 22:03, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

I have read the anthology cover to cover, and while I'm not in a position to say one way or the other on Nate's thing, I have been in contact with SBJ and we have discussed his work on Faction Paradox numerous times. I may be able to get more information on the subjects in question. Fingers crossed there's a way to figure this out that doesn't violate T:NO SELF REF or T:WIKIFY OWN. LilPotato ☎ 04:41, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

I think these should pass rule 4 by default, but if an author (like Nate) specifically says they did not intend for their biography to be DWU, then that one should be invalid. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 05:12, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Etty, have you read the book? Some of these biographies at the end... Well. The ones for regular authors are a mixed bag, some are pretty obviously just standard author biographies.

Andrew Hickey is a writer of both fiction and non-fiction. His previous work in the Faction Paradox universe includes a novel, Head of State, and the short story ‘The Adventure of the Piltdown Prelate’ in Tales of the Great Detectives. He has also written The Mind Robber, in Obverse Books’ Black Archive series, and many books on TV, comics, and music. His third novel, The Basilisk Murders, will be released in November 2017.

Others are a bit more subtle and are written in a bit of a joking way that could be taken as in-universe.

Philip Purser-Hallard is an author, editor and civil servant based in Bristol, and absolutely not a ravening prehistoric scorpion-god. His fiction includes the urban fantasy trilogy consisting of The Pendragon Protocol, The Locksley Exploit and Trojans, as well as the Faction Paradox novel Of the City of the Saved, and various short stories and novellas. He edits the Black Archive series of monographs on Doctor Who stories for Obverse Books, and has also edited six volumes of fiction. His hobbies include good food, board games and consecrating the faithful with the sacrament of his holy venom. He is married and has a son with a perfectly normal number of limbs.

I wouldn't immediately classify these as valid by default, since quite a few of them are like Hickey's biography, written almost entirely straight. (Maybe Nate could help us by saying what the prompt for the author bios were?) Najawin ☎ 19:02, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Najawin, no I haven't. Thought the case was simpler than it is. Oh well, disregard my comment. If this thread is still open due to an extension or more, I'll chime in when I have my copy, as I do plan on reading it soon. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎ 05:26, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

No worries! That's the first question out of the five I mentioned. The situation with Drakken and Simpson is almost directly parallel, with Drakken writing a 100% serious bio afaik, and Simpson writing a bio that talks about a being calling itself Simpson emerging from a library and being a war-historian - with the added complication that the two of them wrote briefings rather than narratives, so there should be versions of them that exist in the DWU. Najawin ☎ 06:37, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

Okay I have my Copy of book of the Enemy in front of me I think we should cover the ones which could be argued to be fictional those are
1. Simon Bucher-Jones
2. Nate Bumber
3. Alain Chartier
4. Irma Ebbinghaus
5. Entarodora
6. Wilhelm Martin Philipp Christian Ludwig Liebknecht
7. Marko Marz
8. Philip Purser-Hallard
9. Captain Robert Scarratt
10. Michael Simpson
11. Willian Shakespeare
12. Profesor Gen Volst
13. Xerenia Who Survived
14. Colonel Malachi Yarrow
these ones all have some level of Faction or implied Fiction to them. And thus I believe they should be covered. We cover them all even not overtly Fictional ones as Bucher-Jones’ entry implies that none of them are real and may just be products of a deranged mind. Anastasia Cousins ☎ 07:08, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Politely, Nate's cannot be valid. He's told us it's not, that's R4. The question is what this implies for the rest of these biographies, since some of them would be nice if they'd be valid, but it's hard to draw clear lines. Najawin ☎ 17:45, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Right, so — my stance on all this.

I share Najawin's ambivalence about the current practice of citing the already-valid ones to their matching Pre-narrative Briefings; indeed I will go further and say that I am strongly against it. It's confusing and part of why we're in this mess. Information should be cited precisely, and if that means creating individual pages for Captain Robert Scarratt, William Shakespeare, Professor Gen Volst, and so on, that's just how it goes. I would point to the recent decision to start covering the Vignettes of an Uprising individually as perhaps being instructive in this regard. Following that precedent, a Biographies of Authors (series) overview would probably be warranted, and would allow us to discuss the OOU ones as well.

At worst, another workable way would be to create a single Biographies of Authors page whose summary and cast-list would cover only the in-universe ones, but also list and outline the OOU ones in the "Story notes" — in a way more or less analogous to what we do about running fictional content in part-fictional part-BTS anthologies like the title feature of Dalek: The Astounding Untold History of the Greatest Enemies of the Universe.

I would still strongly prefer individual pages, but as a second choice, would still vastly prefer the above option to lumping them in with the Briefings — which seems to me to be a slippery slope to lumping the briefings with the stories!

This being said, what about the ones whose validity is contentious? And how do we cover them?

I think Alan Chartier and Wilhelm Martin Philipp Christian Ludwig Liebknecht  should pretty clearly be treated as fictional. It is necessary context for The Map and the Spiders that it's a case of a fictional text within the FP universe, attributed to a real-world historical figure who we now learn was mixed up with a Wartime power; it should be valid as much as the biographical material on Percy Shelley in Book of the War, that's my take. And we can and should understand TMatS to be written, in-universe, by Liebknecht. I don't think this forces us to acknowledge X or Y pre-narrative briefings as having been written by Scarratt or Entarodora: the Liebknecht biography actually says in so many words that he wrote The Map and the Spiders:

During this period — when he was in office, but the Social Democratic Party was not yet legal — he wrote a number of socialist parables including The Map and the Spiders and The Spider and The Fly.'Wilhehlm Martin Philipp Christian Ludwig Liebknecht

Until we get confirmation of Simon Bucher-Jones's authorship, I would then move that we simply list the actual authorship of The Map and the Spiders and Wilhelm Martin Philipp Christian Ludwig Liebknecht as unknown; we would treat this like any other case where a story is metafictionally attributed to an in-universe character (such as the Doctor) in the place where we would expect the real credit.

Regarding Michael Simpson, I am also strongly in favour of validity. As Najawin stated in the OP, even if it's odd that he'd be the single real writer whose biography is indeed intended to be part of the story, it really does seem like it ties in directly with the briefing. I think it's easy enough to draw a line between a biography like this, which has a tie-in to its briefing and mentions FP concepts in the text ("War historian"), from tongue-in-cheek ones like Purser-Hallard; the "scorpion-god" thing may make it fiction of a kind, but not, in fact, recognisably DWU fiction. (Likewise Bucher-Jones's bio makes an allusion to time-travel, but in the context of explicitly calling the War mythos a fictional "mythology" to which Bucher-Jones, and the people who retconned him out of his rightful creative primacy thereupon, "contributed".) I don't think there's anything wrong with taking this on a case-by-case basis and concluding that Simpson yea, Drakken nay. Babies, bathwater, etc. — I don't think this stance will surprise people who've been keeping up with my recent Forum/talk page activities! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 18:15, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure to what extent I'm allowed to weigh in here, but for what it's worth, I agree with Scrooge's assessment of the contentious biographies. I also agree that "information should be cited precisely" – but let's remember that creating individual pages is far from the only way of being precise! For instance, some of us want cite novel content more precisely, but we'll do that by using a fancy citation template, not by creating individual pages for each entry in The Book of the War. In light of this, I still think my Pre-narrative Briefings-linked approach is the most parsimonious solution, but I understand the criticisms and will be happy with whatever we end up with.

Najawin, thanks for writing up this thread and for echoing my stated preferences several times above. To elaborate briefly, my BotE bio says I'm involved in a project which (in the real world) I subsequently departed due to abject time management failures, and I am extremely interested in there not being a wiki page named after me which credits me for work that I ultimately didn't do. Thanks everyone for respecting this wish, even though it has made the coverage conversation rather more complicated than the "all in or all out" approach we've used in the past! – n8 (☎) 20:36, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Well, as I see it, that's all very well for Book of the War because we are in fact talking about things that are "physically" part of the whole. The Briefings and the Bios are printed on different pages of the physical book altogether, with other material in-between. So it seems, again, more like the sort of thing we would do if we also merged Prelude to Against Nature with Against Nature or even The Great Detective with The Snowmen. I'm sure the expanded citation templates could make such things viable, but that's just not the option the Wiki has taken in the majority of the, IMO, comparable cases; and we ought to be consistent. Furthermore, in this particular case, a page (whether "short story" or "series") for Biographies of Authors which can clearly explain the gimmick and spell out which bios are valid and which aren't, seems like a very useful thing to have to prevent further confusion; and its existence is much less logical and much less intuitive if we consider the valid bios to be part of Pre-narrative Briefings (short story). Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 20:52, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Sure, all that's fair. But another instance of information printed on different pages of a physical book altogether, with other material in-between, is a footnote – and since briefings deliberately blurred the lines between footnotes and the bibliography entries, using one to point to the other in some cases if I recall correctly, the logic behind the Briefings approach was to treat the biographies as footnotes to the stories attributed to those authors, i.e. the briefings. Again, I'm not seeking to defend the status quo, and I'll be happy with whatever we end up with, but as a historical note that was the reasoning. – n8 (☎) 21:55, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

I see! I guess that makes sense, though I think the benefits of a separate page outweigh those concerns (and I'm glad you're fine with that). Thanks for the explanation! Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 22:21, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

I think Nate's idea does segregate off most of the clearly fictional works on one side of the divide, and most of the clearly nonfiction biographies on the other. Most. It's just that there's still enough cross over to render it an implausible solution, even if it wasn't inaccurate. The issue with Wilhelm Liebknecht is a pretty big flaw in it as a complete solution, which is what I mentioned at the time. But I understand why he went ahead with it.

My response to Scrooge is that while Philip Purser-Hallard's bio isn't obviously Doctor Who fiction, neither are some of the works in Contributors, and we treat them as valid. (To the level that Epsilon almost got in trouble. :P) I don't think the issue is quite as easily as dismissed as that, and I think the better response is that there's just no clear line between them - as has been stated multiple times throughout the wiki's history, rules must be easy to enforce and manage. Toss 'em all out. I'm just trying to keep some of these biographies as best I can. (Basically, I'm trying to stop the coastline problem from becoming too fine grained.) But obviously, Nate, someone should just reference your bio and then it will be valid through R4bp and we won't have this issue.

Anyhow, if Liebknecht stays valid, he's currently listed as an author for The Map and the Spiders on three pages, the page itself, War in Heaven/Appearances, and The Book of the Enemy. Only in the first is his name in scare quotes, in the infobox, no less. We just blank this, as well as all the attributions for the other bios? Another option is to treat Liebknecht is a pen name, but given the context and precedent I think I agree that might not be the best option. (If we find out that it was Bucher-Jones from LilPotato, I assume we just swap that in.) One further wrinkle is how to deal with the fact that Wilhelm Liebknecht is an IU page, so it refers to The Map and the Spiders as something Liebknecht wrote. Should that refer to an IU version of the story, which we obviously, absolutely know nothing about /cough/ T:NO RW, should that link to the actual story and just merge the map and the territory, which is clearly the intent of this entire venture, as evidenced by the story itself, or do a The Cosmology of the Spiral Politic, The Cosmology of the Spiral Politic (feature) style thing?

Basically, what I'm saying is: I hate this book, I hate all of you who wrote for it, never contribute to the DWU again, this is the worst mess I can imagine, and I'm sure it's only going to get worse when I wikify The Book of the Peace. :P Najawin ☎ 22:49, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

I honestly don't really get what you're getting stuck up on re: Liebknecht. My roadmap is:

• Consider The Map and the Spiders/The Map and the Spiders (short story) to be a Who Killed Kennedy/Who Killed Kennedy (novel) situation. The real-world thing is a source for the contents of the in-universe one.
• Consider the credit to Wilhelm Liebknecht to be a mere metafictional gimmick, like James Stevens appearing on the cover of the IRL Who Killed Kennedy as a cro-writer, or Doctor Who Discovers being attributed to the Fourth Doctor.
• Accordingly, leave the author fields on The Map and the Spiders (short story), War in Heaven/Appearances, and The Book of the Enemy (anthology) blank (or list it as "N/A", as appropriate) until such a time as we get confirmation that SBJ is the one to blame/thank.

Doesn't this seem pretty straightforward? I dunno, his seems the clearest of all these cases.

As for the rest: sure, "rules must be easy to enforce and manage", but only within the boundaries of what we can do while remaining accurate. We cannot compromise coverage of even a single source for the sake of "ease"; we would be failing our duties, as indeed the Wiki has failed many times in its history, each one a black mark on our record — which we must atone for as best we can, by using our shiny new Forums to be precise and accurate without shrinking from the task. If there is one thing which has held the Wiki back more than any other, it's the fact that some editors, even some admins, ever publicly espoused the notion that we could dispense ourselves from covering even a single sentence of DWU fiction, and just dismiss it as "who cares", just because it sounded like hard work; without then being laughed out of Wiki-office. No more. Never again.

Regarding the matter at hand, if there is substantial controversy/doubt, the Wiki should as always err on the side of validity until proven otherwise by "extraordinary evidence". Nate's authorial statement only concerned his own bio, and indeed his endorsement of the boundaries I propose to draw shows that he never intended such a statement to apply to any degree to the works of authors other than himself. So I think the default should if anything be to cover all of them (or perhaps "all the ones with fictional content") as valid, with Nate's as the specific exception owing to a specific authorial statement. But I honestly think "does this bio tie in with its briefing and/or established in-universe elements of the FP cosmos" is a pretty clear and intuitive line. "War historians" yes, scorpion babies and purely non-fictional ones no.

(Also, regarding that cheeky R4BP point — I realise you're not being serious, but I feel compelled to clarify for posterity that R4BP only applies to things which pass Rule 1, in the first place, do bear in mind. Something like the scorpion-god one may possibly be R4BPable, because it is fiction, but Nate's bio is one of the entirely factual ones. Nate's statement is not so much a Rule 4 statement as a Rule 1 statement confirming that he didn't intend to be fiction at all. R4BP is powerless; it can't be validated by R4BP any more than The Doctor Who Programme Guide.) Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 23:14, 5 May 2023 (UTC)