Forum:When can we create "The Impossible Astronaut" page?

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Spoilers are strongly policed here.
If this thread's title doesn't specify it's spoilery, don't bring any up.

I've been away for a while and basically want to know the details of creating a page now so...

When can we create "The Impossible Astronaut" page?? Michael Downey 17:45, April 10, 2011 (UTC)

Don't hold me to this but I think that the policy is to create the Admin-protected "skeleton page" one week before broadcast. --Revan\Talk 15:37, April 11, 2011 (UTC)

Is there anyone who can show me where to access that information please? Michael Downey 17:32, April 11, 2011 (UTC)

The Spolier policy has some information but no time scale as to when we create the page. Give it a few more days, maybe friday and I will create the page and protect it myself. --Revan\Talk 17:58, April 11, 2011 (UTC)

Our spoiler policy is a little more specific than you're making out, Revan.

Stories that have been confirmed, but have not been broadcast, are routinely created with their basic layout and infobox, and then fully protected to prevent further edits until the stories have been broadcast or releasedtardis:spoiler policy

Okay, there's not an exact date there as to when the article can be created by an admin. That date doesn't need any specificity because the article is created as a locked article. But there is an exact date as to when it can be opened to editing. That doesn't happen until the credits roll on the first broadcast wherever in the world has the debut. In other words, The Impossible Astronaut will be open to editing at approximately 8pm British Summer Time, 23 April 2011.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">18:49:46 Mon 11 Apr 2011 

Can we decide a time/date when the page should be created and locked? I think, personally it should be two weeks before. -- Michael Downey 18:55, April 11, 2011 (UTC)

Two weeks sounds good to me for the first episode of a series, then one week for each following episode in the series. --Revan\Talk 19:02, April 11, 2011 (UTC)

I can see that 2 weeks prior to the start would be beneficial from a linking / page creation POV as that's often when we start getting editors doing the "Story name (episode)/(Doctor Who)/story" and variations on that theme.

A week prior also seems to make sense for subsequent episodes. --Tangerineduel / talk 14:36, April 12, 2011 (UTC)

Can we put that in place then? and create The Impossible Astonaut page? -- Michael Downey 14:39, April 12, 2011 (UTC)

In a word, Michael, no.

I strongly disagree with creating the article prior to air date. We got bitten hard last series on both The Vampires of Venice and The Pandorica Opens. Starting both of these articles prior to watching the episodes forced us to go back and do a lot of "busywork editing" on the wiki, as people had begun to link to what turned out to be the wrong article names. We have to remember that not only is it exceedingly easy to change the name of an episode just prior to broadcast (as happened with Vampires), spoiler policy is not the only thing we're concerned about. Spoiler policy actually intersects with disambiguation policy, because we need to know whether the name of the episode describes a DWU item within the episode. The only way we can know that for sure is to — wait for it — watch the episode. That's how we got burned on The Pandorica Opens, which turned out — in a surprise predicted by precisely nobody — to be the name of a painting within the DWU. Thus we had to go back and change all the pre-broadcast links to The Pandorica Opens to The Pandorica Opens (TV story).

Now, I don't know about you, but that kind of editing, even with a bot, is not what I want to do on this site. I'd much rather wait until after broadcast to create the article correctly than to create it wrongly a week out and have to go back and fix things.

So I'm in favor of keeping creation of The Impossible Astronaut locked up until about 8pm BST on 23 April — given the current policies that are in force on this wiki.

The other option, it seems to me, is something for which I've long argued on this site. We could change the disambiguation policy so that either:

1. TV stories always had the disambiguation (TV story) (i.e. they — and all stores — got a consistent nomenclature. Thus short stories would always have (short story) appended, comic stories would always have (comic story), etc.)
2. TV stories never had the disambiguation (TV story) [i.e., they get priority over in-universe items of the same name)

Of the two options, I prefer the first, even though it involves the most bot work, because it means that there would be less need to disambiguate in-universe items. That would be preferable, because if you allow people to just start disambiguating pages how they want to, you force a choice between The Pandorica Opens (painting), The Pandorica Opens (van Gogh painting), The Pandorica Opens (art) — or, worse, A Christmas Carol (novella), A Christmas Carol (novel), A Christmas Carol (short story), A Christmas Carol (Dickens story).

I'm perfectly prepared to allow for the fact that the situation with The Vampires of Venice was highly unusual. It hasn't happened often at all that names given to us by official sources just a couple of weeks out were actually changed on transmission. But it has often happened that the name of an episode turned out to be the name of something within the episode. If we changed disambiguation policy such that every story was automatically disambiguated, we'd take this issue completely off the table. In fact, it would help with a lot of coding issues if story names had the same consistent disambig. If TV stories were always (TV story), parser functions, bot scripts, and regex expressions would all be massively simpler to write.

So I'm totally willing (and, at last, able) to make that kinda switch happen. However, I don't have the time to do it as far as The Impossible Astronaut is concerned. And I might not have time to do it for the first half of the series. But could it be up and running for the autumn "season"? Absolutely.

Thus it would be possible for us to have this "create-but-lock-one-or-two-weeks-ahead-of-transmission" thing that you guys are talking about by autumn, if and only if people agree to change disambiguation policy in the manner I've described above. But for right now, I'd argue for not starting articles prior to the date of first transmission.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">15:12:49 Tue 12 Apr 2011 

I agree. But another reason would be it would get too chaotic, we would have too many red-links, too many rushed character pages, non-registered users creating pages judged on things that appear in things like the coming soon trailers, details added to pages, such as River Song's page in the case of The Impossible Astronaut, that would in some cases be false and stubs covering loads of categories such as character stubs. Perhaps, and I've already asked Tangerineduel but didn't get a chance to take it to the forums, we should consider a lock that covers the whole wiki (is this possible CzechOut?) that permits registered or even just admins edit the wiki so that the above does not happen or we just block any pages related to the episodes such as Canton Everitt Delawere III aren't created with false info. --Ghastly9090 15:21, April 13, 2011 (UTC)

I think a wiki-wide lock is a bit too much, But I think we should take precautions. Perhaps protect the relevant major pages (Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond, etc.) until after the episode airs? Something else that occured to me was that even if the staff created a proto-page before the episode aired, the page would be protected, and we might want to institute a 'don't link' rule--don't link to the proto-page until after the staff have filled it up and the episode has aired. --Bold Clone 18:16, April 13, 2011 (UTC)

When we protect a page, every article that the page links to is also protected so this is not a problem. --Revan\Talk 18:18, April 13, 2011 (UTC)

To cover a few things.

A wiki-wide lock is possible (I think by Wikia staff) but very ill-advised just for one (small) portion of the DW content, the broadcast stories are a rather small part of the DW spectrum of releases and it's an even smaller portion of the stuff that we cover that's already been released that many non-registered users edit.

All of the "main" pages like the Eleventh Doctor, companions, Daleks etc are protected and anything else is often identified by admins and given a year long protection.

Just to clarify on Revan's comment we do this manually, rather than a cascading protection which is a little problematic. A cascading protection protects every page that's included on that page. Which is a little problematic as it would also protect stuff like that date and year (which is included in the infobox) and other minor things like that which we generally don't protect. --Tangerineduel / talk 14:20, April 15, 2011 (UTC)

Wiki-wide lock? If by that you mean, Ghastly, that the wiki would be completely locked to editing but by registered users, yes, this can indeed be made a "private" wiki. But it ain't happening. In the words of the guard in Tooth and Claw "you will dismiss all further thoughts of it". I find in these forum discussions that people are often down on IP users, but trust me, they make some fabulous contributions. We don't need to lockdown the whole damn wiki; it's more than enough to prevent creation of the article until the appropriate time. Furthermore, I kind of disagree with protecting "main" pages like Eleventh Doctor, Dalek, etc. from editing. From moving, yes, but not from editing. I'm not sure, but I think on balance we're preventing some good edits to happen. Not everyone wants to create an account, and I think we need to consider the fact that there are many times where users will legitimately want to IP edit, such as when using a public computer. Sure, anonymity is the cloak of troublemakers, but IP users aren't the antichrist. So this wiki will go on lockdown precisely when my body goes cold.

Bringing the discussion back to the original question, I'd like a little feedback, if you guys would, on this notion of converting all story titles to automatically disambiguated ones. Again, if we make all TV stories end in (TV story), all novels end in (novel), all short stories end in (short story), all audio stories end in (audio story) — and the like — then we could, in my view, create new story pages, say, a week prior to broadcast without too much fear that it would be the wrong name. And we'd also get an honestly huge boost in the ease with which the entire database could be maintained.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">13:01:06 Sat 16 Apr 2011 

Well...Czech, you don't have the final authority to say whether or not the wiki will get shut down. This wiki is not a monarchy ruled by you; it is more like an autocracy ruled by the Staff collectively. I would appriciate it if you rememebered your proper place in the scheme of things. However, I agree with you: the wiki does not need to get shut down. That's just overkill.

The related pages shouldn't be protected for an entire year--that's just going to drive away the IPs. We should simply protect the realted pages for a month or so. That should be enough time for the Staff to add in the new stuff. Is the page going to be created today, or next week? --Bold Clone 14:24, April 16, 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say Czech, I agree with Bold Clone. It's not you that makes the decisions, it's the Users collectively. Don't forget that. A wiki wide block is a stage to far in my opinion, and as Bold Clone stated, it should only be for around a month or so, that could be a way forward. As for the page, I will create it tomorrow night if no one has by that time, but the policy will stand as being 'locked' for a week, then 'protected' for x amount of time (2 months, end of the first half of the Series (should be discussed). Mini-mitch\talk 14:45, April 16, 2011 (UTC)

Hmmmm. I'm sorry that you've taken my comments as an expression of dictatorial will. This was not my intent. I take way more time than any dictator would to communicate my points and solicit opinion. So let me clarify the language that I used, above. A wikia lock, of the kind Ghastly was suggesting, requires virtual unanimity from users, according to similar cases that I've followed at Wikia central. So I'm not being an autocrat at all. I'm saying that I will never assent to this wiki going on lockdown, and therefore Wikia staff will not likely agree to any such change. Not because I dictate policy, but because such a serious contravention of basic Wikia principles requires unanimity of assent from users. In this particular instance, judging by past Wikia behavior, a single user can indeed prevent this particular major change from happening. But of course I'm not a single user. Both of you, and I assume probably Tangerineduel and Skittles, agree, too. So I'm not sure why you've chosen to tell me to "remember my proper place", since I'm on your side.

Now as to mini-mitch's move to "create [new policy] tomorrow night" unilaterally, I don't understand your rationale. Not sure why you're saying the policy will stand at being "locked" for a week then "protected" for x amount of time. As I've explained above, policy doesn't currently say that at all. We will have to change policy to make that so. That is the point of this discussion, which isn't resolved, as far as I can see.

"My proper place", Bold Clone, is in trying to find compromise on issues, which I've done more often than any other single user on this wiki, judging by the percentage of my edits that are in the forum and discussion pages. (Close to 3000 of my edits have to do with starting or continuing discussions.) And I've certainly offered a compromise in this case, twice, but no one seems to want to talk about it. As long as we change our naming conventions for story articles, as outlined above, I've no problem with adding some definition to the question of when we create blocked articles. If we don't change our disambiguation policy along the lines I've suggested, then I am strongly opposed to the kind of change — and, just to emphasize, it is change — that mini-mitch is suggesting.

Whatever happens, though, I would advocate making our changes in the gap between the two halves of the series, rather than trying to rush it through here at the last minute. Remember, this is our first real test of the policy as it stands now. It was made in response to what happened last year, and so has really only covered SJA series 4 and the Christmas special. Maybe we can learn something by letting it stay in place as is throughout this first part of the series.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">21:10:46 Sat 16 Apr 2011 

New policy tomorrow night, I never said that, I was saying I would create a page for TIA then if it has not already been created. The policy I was thinking about, which happened with SJA series 4 and ACC, was to create the page (a skeleton article) then fully protect it (locked).

The matter for how long we protect page after the episode airs is up for discussion, which you suggest should not decide till June (end of the first half of the series). As far as I know, and this has happened for SJA and ACC and Space/Time is to create the page, fully protect it until after the episode airs. Once it has aired, it is move to "semi-protected".

The only problem, which you also pointed out is some unregistered User do make really good edits, and I agree with this. I seen these users do small thing like correcting spelling mistakes to adding large chucks of information to pages and even create some, which are really good. Nothing should prevent them for editing pages, as we can easily revert vandalism and warn User because we have a large amount of Users and vandalism can also be rolled backed by the new, larger amount of admins we have this year.

All I have stated is to change the protection policy, (or even make on), I don't see how this affects the disambiguation policy. Mini-mitch\talk 21:28, April 16, 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I misunderstood what you meant by "it" and "the page". Anyway, I've explained the relationship between disambig policy and starting a page prematurely twice in the thread already. The fullest explanation is in my second post in the thread. I think the reason you might be having a problem with understanding the relationship is because you don't understand why this ban on creating articles was implemented in the first place. It wasn't really about preventing rumours and bad information on the story page, although that was certainly a part of the discussion. It was because there were two instances last series where we had to go back and change dozens of links because we got the name of an episode wrong. We can't really help it if the BBC changes the name of an episode at the last minute, but that doesn't happen that often. The Vampries of Venice is a fairly unique case. What we can prevent is when we create an episode title unaware that the title actually names a thing in the DWU. Every single BBC Wales series has at least one episode with a title that describes something in the DWU. If we change disambig policy so that all TV stories are disambiguated story name (TV story), then we'll never have a case like The Pandorica Opens (or Midnight or Utopia or New Earth or Rose) again. And that's what really concerns me about starting a page too early. We can easily edit a page so that its rumors and errors are spirited away. What's harder is if we have to find all the little links that have been made prior to the episode broadcast, or, as in the case of TPO, prior to the point when someone realises the title describes something in the DWU. There were literally dozens of links that needed to be changed once we realised that The Pandorica Opens was a painting.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">22:53:53 Sat 16 Apr 2011