Forum:Request for a mod to edit First and Second Doctor Companions template

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some of these just don't belong

these have a couple of characters described as television companions who don't belong. I mean Travers, Morco Polo, Sabetha and others.

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Companions_of_the_First_Doctor http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Template:Companions_of_the_Second_Doctor

I could not edit this myself, presumably because I lack mod privileges (or don't have an account here). --74.94.186.19^{talk to me} 23:21, May 8, 2012 (UTC)

I'm not certain, but I'd guess that those characters are listed in that template so that List of companions can be both comprehensive and logical. The problem, as noted at Companion#What does the word "companion" actually mean?, is that there's no real definition of the word within Doctor Who itself, and no complete consensus in the real world either. On what grounds can we include the Brigadier and exclude Travers? Or include Jackson Lake and exclude Marco Polo? We can try to come up with rules — indeed, people on this wiki have tried before — but ultimately it's an arbitrary and insoluble problem. So the template lists people who shared multiple adventures with the Doctor ("multi-story") and people who accompanied him in a single adventure but acted like a companion ("single adventure"). It's not a perfect solution, but I don't think there's a better one, really. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 03:39, May 9, 2012 (UTC)

On what grounds can we include the Brigadier and exclude Travers?

well, I actually would exclude the Brigadier because he did not hop from planet to planet with the Doctor and get all the "where have we landed this time?" dialogue. (Liz Shaw never did, but the Doctor did have access to a functioning TARDIS at the time, rendering that pretty moot.)

to answer your question, though, a mixture of a) accepted consensus within and outside of fandom (official BBC site, DWM articles), b) publicity (i.e. did the actor appear in at least one photocall and have press articles about them as "the new companion") (I realize that a couple of companions did not have photocalls) and c) narrative logic. last one gets subjective, but Travers never appeared in the TARDIS.

so Travers fails a), b) and, in my opinion, c).

Or include Jackson Lake and exclude Marco Polo?

see above. in terms of c), the Doctor shared an adventure with Jackson Lake and Rosita, whereas in the case of Marco Polo, he had four companions already. --::66.31.31.107^{talk to me} 17:27, May 9, 2012 (UTC)

But of course Liz Shaw never appeared in the TARDIS either (at least, not on television). Any set of rules one attempts to use is going to have exceptions and cases which are subject to argument. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 01:37, May 10, 2012 (UTC)

Actually what happened is that we had a user who, probably with no real malicious intent, started adding companion categories to pages using the theory that "if Adelaide Brooke is a companion, then so is this person". Being less charitable, it could also be concluded from their editing pattern that they were just trying to bump up their score in the Game of Rassilon. Either way, we saw the ranks of the companion categories swell massively over the course of a week. Tybort alerted me to the problem and we set about a quick redaction of this user's work. I only later discovered that he — or someone else who had noticed that people in, say, Category:First Doctor companions didn't have {{Companions of the First Doctor}} — started going through and adding the templates to pages and pages to the templates. Worse, there was so much change happening to the templates, that people were actually beginning to break the coding on the templates. So they were sealed to non-admins, but not before some damage had been done.

Essentially, what was just GOR enthusiasm had a multiplied effect, and we've not quite recovered from it.

I've edited {{companions of the First Doctor}} to have only the two DMP people in it, largely on the basis that so many people seem to consider Sara Kingdom a companion, there's little logic in denying her brother the same status. Kingdom doesn't have a claim that Vyon doesn't also have, unless you're just going to say Kingdom has more episodes. And Edward Travers is gone from the Second Doctor template. It's arbitrary, but as Josiah Rowe pointed out, that's what we got.

Navigation templates shouldn't really pose a lot of debate and questions, although the companion debate is always going to be with Doctor Who fans. To the extent possible, the people included should be non-controversial, or at the very least, part of commonly held controversy. There aren't a lot of people out there arguing for Edward Travers as companion. There are a lot of people arguing for Sara Kingdom and the Brig. It has at least been a question on the table whether Chang Lee is a companion. Nobody has ever seriously wondered whether Altos is a companion. I think the point with the nav templates is just to allow enough people in so we don't get a constant barrage of "why isn't [my favourite character] on the list?" It's not meant to reflect list of companions (an ill-maintained page), nor is it intended as an exhaustive list of everyone who might possibly qualify as "Adelaide Brooke companions". It should be a list that people don't agree with on every count, but they can at least say, "Yeah, I've heard that argument before."

Of course, I'm talkin' mainly about the televised, book and audio companions. The comic and short story stuff is a little more obscure, but then those formats are in themselves more obscure.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 16:52: Thu 10 May 2012 

Ah! And here I was assuming that it was based on some discussion which I just hadn't been able to locate! Fair enough. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 02:59, May 11, 2012 (UTC)