The Panopticon/Counting companions. Again.

A discussion at Shambala's talk page is probably driving Shambala a bit mad, since she is undoubtedly getting a message alert every time one of the two main respondents posts something. For that reason, it seems sensible to move the discussion here, to a public forum.

A few matters are at issue, so I'll take them one-by-one.

Edit conflicts and how to survive them =

The first question in this discussion was, "What is the proper response to an edit conflict?" Shambala108's advice on her talk page was right — in general, the person who encounters an edit conflict message has the burden of starting a discussion to explain why they overrode that message, or why they think their original edit should stand — but lemme go ahead and expand on it a bit.

A lot of times, you'll find that you can avoid a discussion altogether and come up with a solution that pleases both parties. Though Wikipedia is our evil twin, WP:EDC is nevertheless instructive to that question. Basically, if you get an edit conflict warning, you should try to integrate material from the first editor's edit into yours before you publish. If that's not possible — perhaps because it's fundamentally opposed to what you're writing — you should open a discussion on the talk page, or on that user's user page, or — if it's an issue that affects more than just that one page — here at Board:The Panopticon.

However, don't get too worked up about which version has the "right" to persist while a discussion ensues. It kinda doesn't matter whether you go ahead and public your edits, as long as you preserve the other person's edits for the ensuing discussion. Alternately, you can not publish your edits and then share your edit on the talk page. As long as a discussion happens, it doesn't matter who temporarily "wins" the edit conflict. Truth is, edit conflicts often happen when you don't know the other person is editing. And Bob can publish 1 second before you do — hardly the stuff of which decisions are actually made.

No, the danger with edit conflicts is that they will turn into actual edit wars, and that should never happen. Bob edits once. Jane edits to correct Bob. Meanwhile Bob has realised he's made another mistake and tries to correct it, whereupon he encounters an edit conflict. At this point, Bob should either go ahead and publish — but Jane shouldn't change Bob's edit — or Bob should withdraw to the talk page without publishing his second edit. As long as it doesn't get into Bob's third edit from either party, all is well. If it gets into a fourth, you can probably expect to be temporarily blocked.

Who's a companion?

The second question, though, was the more important one. "Who counts as a companion of the Doctor?" is, as Shambala pointed out, one of the oldest and most intractable things this wiki has ever dealt with.

The reason is simple. As Companion#Behind the scenes points out, there is no in-universe definition of companion. Therefore, when Bold Clone speaks derisively of including companions on the basis of out-of-univeerse notions, two questions naturally arise:

• What else is there?
• Why would any reader think that a navbox which appears underneath the "behind the scenes" section of the article is a part of its in-universe content?

See the thing is, navboxes just aren't in-univese. Most of them contain story titles or actors names or real life years or series numbers. They are absolutely immune to the general strictures of Tardis:Point of view. They are, as their title suggests, a navigational aid only. They aren't a part of the article. For this reason companions listed in {{Companions of the Tenth Doctor}} aren't offered as the "definitive word" on who gets the moniker of companion. Rather, they're intended to include everyone who could reasonably be considered a companion by a definition that's broad, but not ridiculously inclusive.

Obviously there are going to be a fair few judgement calls to make. And in that case, the inability of this community to come up with a working definition leaves it in the hands of admin to essentially flip a coin. That's not a power grab. It's literally being a referee on a dispute that is as basic — and as unresolved — to Doctor Who fandom as "Which team gets to receive first?" is to American football.

Believe me, it's not a position admin like to be in. I tried to get other senior editors to answer this question this afternon, but no one would touch it with a ten foot pole.

And it's easy to see why: fandom as a whole has been arguing over the definition of companion since the 1970s. And there's never been a clear definition, because there can't be. No producer of Doctor Who, in any medium, is going to waste their time with something that's both so trivial and so narratively constrictive. Even Big Finish, when they had a story called Situation Vacant that was expressly about defining the role of the companion, shied away from specifics.

So the matter of determining which characters go into a navigational comes to a series of common sense questions, both in-universe and out-of-universe.

• Is there a press announcement that introduces their actor to the world as a "companion", "assistant", "regular" or "semi-regular"?
• Does the publishing company refer to them as a "companion" or "assistant", if not a televised character?
• Do their actor's names appear before the title of the programme on television, and are they not also a main antagonist?
• Do they occupy a narrative space equivalent to Wilf or Christina de Souza in a non-televised story in which no other, more obvious, companion also appears?
• Do they travel in the TARDIS in a single story when there's no other, more obvious companion in the story?
• Does the Doctor refer to them as his companion, assistant or maybe even friend during the course of the story, particularly, but not exclusively, when there is no other, more obvious companion in the story?
• Does any reference work refer to them as a companion or assistant?
• Were they under contract to appear as a regular or semi-regular in at least one series on TV, and are they protagonists?

If the answer to any of these questions is yes, chances are they belong in a companions of the nth doctor navbox. The point of a navbox, after all, is merely to guide people from one page to another. It's to suggest, "This person could well be considered a companion, particularly given the text at companion". The point is to get you to read the article and make up your own mind as to whether you'd call that person a companion.

Is this system perfect? No. Are there always going to be a few people in these navboxes that are going to make you scratch your head? Of course. But given that the source material gives us nothing to hang our hats on, and that fans have been arguing about whether the Brig is a companion for forty years now, it's as good as it gets.

Narrative ambiguity

Finally, there's the question of how to use the "narratively ambiguous" thing. To be honest, this wasn't a big policy decision. I never really envisaged it being used outside the case of Chang Lee, who is certainly a one-off on television. A lot of people do consider him a companion, but he is for a time the companion of the Master as well. It was a way to get him on the navigation template, for the benefit of those people who do think he's a companion. Such believers have a strong case, after all. The TARDIS does restore him to life, and at the end of that story he does exactly what Grace does — not travel with the Doctor.

I didn't really think it would be used in other circumstances, and I would far rather see it retracted from {{Companions of the Eighth Doctor}} than expanded for use elsewhere. If we start using it more broadly, tonnes of people might get moved around — Katarina, Liz and the Brig for a start.