Forum:Timeline pages

Index → Panopticon → Timeline pages

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If this thread's title doesn't specify it's spoilery, don't bring any up.

This is something of a continuation of the discussion on the Talk:Eleventh Doctor - Timeline which has been made more prominent by a user going through every story page and linking the "Timeline" sub-heading to the appropriate X-Doctor Timeline page.

I think we should be taking a close look at these timeline pages and re-writing (or heavily re-editing) them based on our own information, the Doctor Who Reference Guide and Doctor Who - The Complete Adventures are both good sources (both of which are mentioned on the Timeline pages, but I think we should also be finding information directly from the stories themselves possibly using other information from sources like AHistory.

Alternatively we could just abolish and re-direct all these articles to a main "Timeline" article which would discuss how on this wiki we make educated guesses to place individual stories but placing everything in one master timeline we leave to dedicated sites (such as those I've listed above) to work it out. This (theoretical) article would also discuss various issues of inter-story continuity and how the novels, short stories, audio dramas and other things have complicated things along the way. --Tangerineduel 12:56, June 28, 2010 (UTC)

We should abolish timeline pages outright. It's all speculation. Most stories cannot be definitively linked in the way that the DWRG and other similar sites imply. And, as I've said elsewhere, DWRG "cheats" by having one page that seems to unambiguously order stories, while giving the "fine print" about that ordering only at the invidual story page. By suggesting this site is a valid resource, even just a secondary one, we are encouraging younger editors to simply copy the master story page listing of DWRG by rote. So my thought is:

1. Eliminate all "timeline of X character" pages. These are highly conjectural.
2. Eliminate most timeline sections on story pages, but encourage the placement of a detailed note about the continuity of the story where appropriate. Some stories, like Flesh and Stone, heavily depend upon their placement relative to other stories. That can be explained in the continuity section. Most stories, however, don't really take place in a definite order. Broadcast order is often substituted, rather lazily, for narrative order. For instance, the stories of season 25 don't take place in broadcast order, even though they're often listed that way. And, just to pick totally random stories, The Curse of Peladon doesn't have to come before Frontier in Space; nor does Planet of Evil necessarily predate The Masque of Mandragora, or City of Death before The Creature from the Pit. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 04:54, July 18, 2010 (UTC)

Oh dear…I say in my best Second Doctor voice.

I do believe we're opening something of a can of worms if we're going to start saying the broadcast order, something generally considered to be the order in which the adventures take place isn't the order they happen in.

That will lead to people trying to explain discontinuity and errors with 'well they just came from a different time and this story is set before this one' etc. I'm very much against this as, well it'd be impossible in some stories, if we removed the broadcast order to prove where they occur.

We could make the Timeline section to be a sub-section of the Continuity section, just as I think the Timeline section is still necessary as a separate field from Continuity. --Tangerineduel 13:47, July 18, 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a pretty good "story chronology" page for Doctor Who. All they're missing is the non-IDW comics. I suggest that for our timelines, we use that article & place the TV Comic, TV Action, DWM, & DWA comics where appropriate. Sodordude 02:27, March 21, 2011 (UTC)

Leaving aside that we're trying to establish a unique encyclopaedia away from Wikipedia's content for a moment. Wikipedia' Wikipedia:Chronology of the Doctor Who universe is in much the same vein as Lance Parkin's AHistory, the Timelines discussed here are 'which stories happen in which order for each Doctor', rather than listing stories chronologically based on when they're set (we've got individual year pages for that sort of thing). --Tangerineduel / talk 15:48, March 21, 2011 (UTC)

Revisiting

As nothing was really decided the last time this discussion came up, I'm bringing it up again and proposing some changes.

The problem with these Timeline sections is a lack of explanation of how we've arrived at the placement of that story occurring between the two stories cited. If it's based on what's on the CD or Book cover, then I think we should say that in in the subsection.

But I don't think we should just leave it at that, if we're going to place these stories between two others then we should be able to point to evidence from other stories around it.

The Timeline pages (like Eighth Doctor - Timeline) should be much bigger versions of this, more article, less list.

What I don't think we should be using is the Doctor Who Reference Guide, as many of the stories listed there, especially the short stories are placed in gaps where they could go, but there's not much reasoning on the DW Reference guide as to why. I'm not sure why the DW Ref Guide is used over any of the other guides on the web, and why we're not working out our own Timeline, as we should have a superior database of information to collect in and out of universe information from.

The "why" element of how we've placed a story between two other stories is as if not more important than just listing the two stories as it helps readers understand how the DW universe and its stories fit together (or try to). --Tangerineduel / talk 14:11, October 12, 2011 (UTC)

People tend to use the Doctor Who Reference Guide as a source simply because it's the only thing out there that has tried to work the whole thing into a cohesive hole. Unfortunately for our purposes, that site's resulting timeline is largely a work of fanon; many pages note that "we've opted to place it before/after X" based on the author's own theories, or even just arbitrarily feeling like it fits there, rather than solid evidence that it should be there. In the case of fitting novels in with audios, comics with TV, etc. where the order is not always clear, that adds up to a large helping of non-canon.

This isn't meant to be taken as criticism of that site, I love that page and use it often, but its timeline is made with very different goals in mind than our own and it shouldn't ever be used as a primary source on this wiki. Editors should keep in mind that the stories and what they actually contain are what we're cataloguing here, not a webmaster's additional insights and ideas regarding them. — Rob T Firefly - Δ∇ - 08:09, October 14, 2011 (UTC)

DWRG is flatly in violation of T:SOURCES. We can't use it and stay within a very long-held notion within the MOS. I've never understood how we ever came by the idea that it was okay to use the DWRG.

As Rob points out, the reason likely was that there was no other source available. And that's true. There is no other single source which attempts to order every story ever produced. But the DWRG isn't peer-reviewed, it hasn't got the blessing of the BBC, and, as Tangerineduel points out, the DWRG's logic for placement isn't always given. Worse, when it is given, we haven't usually given it on our pages. We've largely just accepted the master list on the DWRG's front page, without clicking on the individual titles to find out the details. (Often, the individual DWRG placement rationales include words like "arbitrary", "because of the costume the companion is wearing", or other such frivolous things.)

Taking that all into consideration, it's pretty obvious we don't really have a legitimate source for timeline articles. Logically, if we don't have a source, we don't have an article. So you know what I'm gonna say next.

All timeline pages should be scrapped immediately, and without exception. An explicit ban should be placed on them, using exactly the same rationale (and a lot of the same wording) as T:QUOTES.

Timelines are not encyclopaedic. They're fanwank.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">17:30: Fri 21 Oct 2011 

Well, I think Deleting the Timelines is going a little far. I do agree that timelines on this site are in the need of a fix, however, I think they are also very useful. Maybe we should statr over, and make a timeline pages based on what we knew, such as:

A) Episodes, episodes, except for ones like Death Is the Only Answer, are strait forward.

B) BFA

C)Books or other media that clearly list the placement.

Just a few thoughts. I think deleting the pages it a bit far, however, I soppose my word means little to nothing. --OttselSpy25 ^{talk to me} 05:03, October 22, 2011 (UTC)

Eighth Doctor - Timeline/Work in progress is what I propose the timeline pages should look like.

It is still a work in progress, but I think rationales need to be given for the placement of stories. As I've started to do on the page.

I'd still like to try and work to keep the timeline pages, they're a helpful resource (and an interesting one) if we can use narrative information to make it work, they whys are I think as interesting as the order.

I also think we need to acknowledge we're never going to be able to place every story, and shouldn't try to (and not just arbitrary place stories as the DWREFG does). --Tangerineduel / talk 14:24, October 22, 2011 (UTC)

@OttselSpy25: Episode placement is not straightforward. Surely that's the lesson from series 6. I still maintain the point that Tangerineduel dismissed a year ago: once you leave the 1960s, broadcast/release order is not the same as chronological order. Saying that Inferno comes after The Ambassadors of Death is pure speculation. Examine the two serials and you'll find nothing which necessarily puts the one in front of the other. Does Nightmare on Eden have to come before The Horns of Nimon? We know that The Greatest Show in the Galaxy narratively comes before The Happiness Patrol, despite broadcast order. And that's just the TV show. Get into BFAs and you find all sorts of time-wimey stuff there that has nothing to do with release order. Evelyn Smythe's stories, for instance, aren't told in release order.

But I will agree with you on one point: if we are going to keep these atrocious pages, they need to be nuked first. Completely, utterly nuked. As in, delete and start with a brand new edit history. If they're going to stick around, then the pages should be protected against random reversion to a point before we changed our tack.

@Tangerineduel: We don't want rationales do we? Rationale is just another word for "reasoned speculation". We want sourced facts, surely. And, again, there are no sources.

I just don't see how we can possibly administer a system which is an obvious exception to our general rules. I can tie this whole system up in knots so easily. As soon as you say, I dunno, [[Underworld] comes after The Sun Makers, I can say, "Oh yeah? Prove it." And I don't think you'll be able to. As far as I know, there's nothing to indicate order in either narrative. And I can do that in most seasons of the series, post-Troughton, save the Davison years.

I mean, look, I know we slip the odd unsourced comment into the continuity sections of story articles. And I readily admit that unless we get an admin who decides that policing story pages is going to be their "thing", we're not really going to defeat that.

But timeline articles are a whole different kettle of fish, because they are entirely about the timeline. That is their topic. And we've said from the beginning that for a topic to exist, it must have a source or it must exist in the real world. The article, First Doctor - Timeline, does not describe an in-universe object we can source to a story. It also does not describe an out-of-universe piece of merchandise. It is simply an essay. Period. Especially the route you're going now at Eighth Doctor - Timeline/Work in progress.

I don't doubt that the things are kind of fun to write. Nor do I think it's anything but typical for a Doctor Who fan to want a timeline. But they're not encyclopaedic because they don't reach the threshold we've established as necessary for either in-universe or out-of-universe articles.

So, how bout this by way of a compromise? We delete what we have right now (except /Work in progress), cause most timeline pages are truly garbage. That's not an insult to those who have worked on them, but, really, most of the timeline pages have at their core a straight copy and paste job from DWRG. And I think we both agree that's not at all a good starting point. So delete the timelines as they currently exist. Then, start them again, but within the pages of a new forum area called "Time", making the nomenclature for the articles Forum:Time/First Doctor. Or maybe we make another namespace called "Time", so that the nomenclature becomes Time:First Doctor. Whatever — point is, we remove them from main, just as we did with discontinuity. Then we can make different rules for all the pages in category:Timeline forum or namespace:Timeline. Cause honestly, what's bugging me is less the existence of the pages than the fact that they're incompatible with the ruleset for the main namespace. So let's keep the fun, but put it in a different place.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">18:44: Sat 22 Oct 2011 

Now I like that idea. Deleting them might be going a bit far, but I don't think makeing a Time: forum would be a bad idea.

Lemme note, by the by, that The Master - Timeline was created w/out the use of DWRG, I don't even know what that is. I think some timelines are created out of studying the story pages, and those that use exterior websites are the ones that are the issue. Glad we could come to a compremise. --OttselSpy25 ^{talk to me} 20:44, October 22, 2011 (UTC)