Content warning templates

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Opening post

Opening this as suggested by User:WaltK. There isn't currently an opening post draft that I know of, but then, this isn't so much a new proposal as the revival of an ongoing point of community discussion from before the Forums' collapse.

The issue is simple. The Wiki isn't "family-friendly", because the DWU isn't. But that is no reason to knowingly inconvenience or even harm our readers by letting them stumble upon shocking or triggering information by chance on pages where common-sense, from the perspective of the not-we, didn't lead one to expect it. Who visits the page of Dodo Chaplet expecting to read about her contracting an STD? Is it fair on people unfamiliar with The Talons of Weng-Chiang's infamous reputation to hit them with an image like this, uncontextualised?

Our status as an in-universe Wiki makes this hard — but not insurmountable. Hatnotes of various kinds, spoiler tags, {{invalid}} tags are all already designed to quickly frame a page's content for readers who've just clicked on it. The solution, then, may be in templates for content warnings and trigger warnings, which could, as the case requires, be included at the top of a page or in a particular section. They would need to be noticeable, but not so large, of course, that their prominence becomes triggering in itself. Aside from their design, the other big question is how broad to make them — how many possible triggers/offensive elements to award warnings to, and how to decide which pages get them.

To give but one example of the sorts of questions we must examine: I don't think anyone would disagree that e.g. stories, and in-universe pages citing those stories, that discuss sexual assault should get TWs; but things quickly get more complicated. Tagging systems on, say, writing sites like Archive Of Our Own filter concepts like "character deaths", but the fact is that although it's often bloodless, at least one minor character is likely to die in any given episode of Doctor Who. "Just this once, everybody lives!" was special for a reason. We could dab any story with a character death in it anyway, I suppose, but that would risk diluting the noteworthiness of the content warnings, and make people who don't mind the occasional bloodless laser-blast overlook warnings on other pages that they really, really should have paid attention to.

So, here's the proposal, here are the problems. (Primarily, this thread should discuss the how more than the whether — I think the necessity of having such templates to some degree is sort of a no-brainer at this point. But of course, if someone has an impassioned argument against the whole concept to make, they can air it out here too if they want.) Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 12:23, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

I would agree. We should take the precedent that most older TV shows do in the modern age and slap a warning on the pages that could potentially trigger some people. As a wiki, we need to cover it, not to mention it would be a shame to leave out certain information. It would be outrageous to not cover it, and we shouldn’t go that route just because some people might take offense to it as has been also seen in the real world. A content warning allows the content in question to be fully available while also warning some of our more sensitive readers. Danniesen ☎ 13:43, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't know how this will be implemented.

Are there any examples of other wikis implementing anything like it, like Memory Alpha or another wiki that has a similarly large amount of in-universe pages and long history to contend with?

We do present the wiki as covering everything from before the start of the universe to its end, I struggle to know where we'd start with the content warnings especially in-universe.

I think Scrooge MacDuck bringing what's fair into it skews the discussion. It doesn't matter. If we go down that path then we'll end up making value judgements about every article / what information they cover.

And that is a messy road to go down as we've seen with valid sources and spoiler policies for which we have an existing frame work to make to define and work it out.

Also how do we go about quantifying a content warning and the threshold for them, and how we judge that? --Tangerineduel / talk 13:49, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I share these concerns. Jack "BtR" Saxon ☎ 13:51, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

I would disagree that it "doesn't matter" what's fair. We do need to balance the ideal against what's practical, but this strikes me as an extension of the balance that had to be struck between Wiki practicality and the obvious ethical concerns involved with deadnames, when we agreed on an ethically-motivated policy change there. Sure, we can't be perfect, but we cannot allow ourselves to act like the narrower concerns of what is, ultimately, a hobby for us all is blankly more important than the actual safety of our readers to such a degree that we don't expend any efforts on accommodating them — even if it's hard.

As for the practical hurdles of quantifying content warnings and thresholds, well, that's exactly what this thread is meant to figure out! We definitely need to work out easily-policed standards and stick with that, if this is to work at all. But I think it's worth the effort. These aren't hollow concerns, we're talking about real potential harm to actual human people.

Going off of possibly-faulty recollection of the pre-Forum-collapse discussion (it's possible that this stuff may originate in off-Wiki conversations I had with fellow editors around that time, rather than the Forum thread itself), one notable possible implementation would be to give up on tagging in-universe pages, but to include some sort of section on story pages on potential triggers. That wouldn't so much be a matter of smoothing over the Wiki-user's experience qua browsing the Wiki, as it would be improving out usefulness as a reference guide for people thinking of experiencing a given DWU story; but that's part of our remit too, and I think that avenue is worth exploring, whether or not TWs on in-universe pages are deemed feasible in the final analysis. - Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 13:59, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

I agree that we should have something like this. I put together some potential templates that could be used for this ages ago. If we do decide to implement some form of content warning system, I don't mind if they're used, with or without changes, or not. Bongo50 ☎ 15:49, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

I also agree with implementing content warnings. The primary ones that I could think of that we should probably have content warnings for are rape/sexual assault, racism, homophobia/transphobia, ableism, etc. I don't think we should be doing a content warning for character death, for the reasons outlined above - most DWU stories are going to feature at least one death over the course of the story. Pluto2☎ 16:50, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

In the prior thread I was taking a very hard line stance, iirc, saying that content warnings being implemented for phobias as well was viable. And I still think that, at least in the long term. But I don't think that it behooves us in this point in our discussion to bite off more than we can chew. Starting small and making sure that we get this right is more important than having some pure system of tags that we can apply to everything.

Tangerine, forgive me, I'm not sure I understand. We already use templates of various types on in-universe articles. It's not ideal when we do so within a section of the page, but it does happen, and there are other tricks we use as well. Maybe I'm misreading you, is this about where on the page the templates would go? I just don't understand this objection.

As for the topic of trying to avoid value judgements. Look. I'd love for editing a wiki to be pure and pristine and completely separate from the rest of life. But that's not the world we live in. (Notably, this is an often made criticism of Wikipedia, see, for instance, this article, by someone I know you're familiar with.) We had this discussion to some extent already in the racism thread. I also note that our mountainous discussions on validity are the exception. The vast majority of stories are neatly sorted into valid/invalid boxes and it's only those at the fringe where we have a conversation. I see no reason why this won't be similar. We can all agree Talons is racist. We can all agree Dodo's page could be surprising for some people. We can all agree 8.46 should probably never have been written. Are there going to be marginal cases? Sure. But those are going to be the exception, imo, so long as everyone is approaching the issue in good faith. Najawin ☎ 17:40, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for everyone who's added to the discussion since I posted mine. It's made me think more about the position I took. Also to state I'm not against the use of content warnings, just looking to wider implementations on the wiki.

I think Najawin with regard to the templates wise, how Bongolium500 has laid it out is a fine starting point. If this policy change goes ahead we will need to look at templates on the pages closer to cut down the noise of the amount of templates at the top of pages, but that's a discussion for another time.

I also agree that character death shouldn't be in the content warning given it'd probably simpler to have a template when that doesn't happen.

I suppose my question is where do we stop with the content warnings? Should all pages have a content warning that says something to the affect of "this media was produced in <YEAR> and has content that don't represent current values"? As Danniesen suggests at the top of this discussion. —Tangerineduel / talk 04:10, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

While I do agree to some point that content warnings would be valuable, I do have my doubts as to how workable it is. There is never an obvious line when it comes to this. A character getting an STD for instance, does not require a warning in my book. (What makes dying from an STD more triggering than dying from cancer?) I would understand a content warning on Dodo's page for mentions of sexual assault, but even then the warning would suggest the content is more descriptive than what it actually is.

However, if we do wish to attempt it, I strongly advise to make it so that random editors cannot add the warnings. LauraBatham ☎ 05:55, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Design-wise, I would ordinarily support the 'usual' template boxes as seen in Bongo's suggestion here but I fear it could lead to quite cluttered headings on a lot of pages. Would a smaller, more compact warning template be therefore better, perhaps immediately under the page title? I'm no design or Wiki expert but here's an example of what I mean. I just feel as though it's neater, cleaner, and less intrusive - whilst also being immediately noticeable right after the page title.

Fractal Doctor ☎ 12:02, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

I quite like that example. Short, generic, and doesn't cause any extra clutter. LauraBatham ☎ 13:28, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

I like this bit of text. Although, I would make it a bit bigger because it’s very easy to miss imo. Danniesen ☎ 14:27, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Hey, I don't really have anything to add, since my position on this is already clear considering the thread was my idea to begin with, other than wanting to thank Scrooge for whipping up such a detailed and concise opener on my behalf, and to everyone who's chipped in their two cents so far. WaltK ☎ 16:46, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

I'd like to congratulate Bongo for that amazing temaplet first of all. Secondly, i agree with FractalDoctor's proposation of making it smaller and under the title, although im also okay with Bongo's version if people prefer that. Cousin Ettolrhc ☎ 17:50, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

That too! Thanks Bongo. WaltK ☎ 03:56, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

An admin would have to comment as to whether we can restrict adding these warnings to certain user groups. I'm not sure if this is possible. (If it is, it might be more difficult to do than editing the source code.) (I'll also say that I've thought about creating a proposal to expand usage of user perms since they're dramatically underutilized on this wiki. We only have user/autoconfirmed/admin/bureaucrat when there are a few other groups we could use to segment people into. Discussion for a later day.)

My suggestions as to what is tagged is bigotry and abuse (emotional, physical, sexual, etc). All of that gets a content warning. Hopefully that's a decently flexible yet reasonably well understood set of criteria. (Cue people disagreeing.) Najawin ☎ 04:39, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

What counts as physical abuse? Jackie slapping the Doctor? A villain killing someone? Domestic violence? And I'm not even sure what you mean by tagging emotional abuse. LauraBatham ☎ 05:31, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

I think it's fairly clearly the third one. As for the second question, generally something like constant manipulation, gaslighting, stuff that I don't think has really featured in the DWU but, you know, should be tagged if it does.

The point of content warnings, as I understand them, is not so that people who object to the content can avoid said content, or so that people can ignore our parents page warning. While that's a nice side feature, that's not the general goal. (Not a psychologist, so, of course, any actual psychologist can correct me here.) I believe the idea is that after a traumatic event it's generally thought to be healthy for people to live their life as best they can while still avoiding things that remind them of that trauma, over time taking small steps back into uncomfortable areas until they no longer need to avoid reminders of the event. So the question becomes, what can reasonably remind someone of a traumatic event? In my mind, at least. Najawin ☎ 19:09, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

On the subject of what counts as abuse: I think intent should be a factor here. Jackie slapping Nine in Aliens of London is clearly not intended as anything more than a valid, if a tad extreme reaction from a character who has been wronged. Fear Her, on the other hand, straight-up portrays a mother and daughter with PTSD from living with an abusive husband and father. WaltK ☎ 00:31, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

I believe that's trigger warnings; "content warnings" is a broader category that includes, but is not limited to, trigger warnings. (Warnings for e.g. discriminatory language might occasionally function as trigger warnings, but I think they are more generally understood to be content warnings.) That being said, you are absolutely correct that our prime concern is with content that would be genuinely distressing to people, not something they might intellectually object to. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 19:12, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

I've always interpreted contented warnings to be a relabeling of trigger warnings to avoid the bad PR. Fair enough if I'm wrong! Najawin ☎ 19:15, 19 February 2023 (UTC)

"What can reasonably remind someone of a traumatic event?" And that's where we hit our problem. Because there is no answer to that question. Everyone has different ideas of where the line should be based on their own experiences and there is very little that we would all agree is "reasonable". Do we put a warning on the Clara Oswald page for her emotional blackmail in Before the Flood because it may remind someone of a partner that did similar to them? Do we put a content warning for a simple "they experienced rape" sentence that does not go into any detail whatsoever? Personally I don't think so. We want to be considerate of people's triggers, yes, but we don't want to become condescending. Most people know how to manage their own mental health, and it is not our responsibility to nanny those who don't - that's a job for a professional. And while you may think "physical abuse" clearly means domestic violence, there will be many people who will see it as other things as well.

And even if the people on this thread do find an agreement on where to draw our line, once we put it into practice, we are opening it up to people who have not been privy to the discussion and who will make their own assumptions. LauraBatham ☎ 00:31, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

I just don't think we're ever going to agree that there's no intersubjective standard of what's "reasonable" in any given situation. You're going to have a very hard time convincing me of that. I'm perfectly willing to just say people are wrong about what is and isn't reasonable. Whether or not others in the thread agree with me, well, I'll let them speak for themselves.

As for your two examples, I would say yes and yes. I would also note to your "nannying" objection, the entire point is that there are many pages on this wiki where you can go and have no clue that there will be content you might find distressing to your mental health. See, for instance, Erasing Sherlock. I tried to be as circumspect with that novel summary as possible, but at the end of the day some fairly prominent plot points in the character arcs could be triggering to anyone who just wanted to read summaries for all the Faction Paradox books. (Like, sure, Racism is obviously going to be a problem. So, as a result these tags would apply to that page as well. But the idea that people are good at managing their own mental health is absolutely not a rejoinder. The entire point is that they can't do so.)

So there are two ways to read that last comment Laura. The first is that we just end up missing things and others think we're wrong for drawing the lines where we do. As to that: I agree that it would be ideal if more people than just us discussed this issue! I posted it in Discussions. If others wanted to post it on reddit, or twitter, or Discord, or wherever, I'd support that. I like having more discussion over less. Completely support that idea. The other is that people just misapply the rule. But having policies that people misapply has never been a reason to not have them, so I don't think this is a defeater to the proposal. Najawin ☎ 06:03, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

I think that no matter what we end up agreeing on here, I’d say we should not make the “content warnings” available for the general reader to apply in “Editing”… I’d say the warnings should be a fixture within the code of the wiki, unable to be removed by an editor who, for example, don’t think the warning in question should be on a specific page. Or a vandal. Danniesen ☎ 08:52, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Najawin, yeah I don't think we are going to agree on this. Having a warning for "if you love me in any way, you'll come back" sounds ridiculous to me. To be honest, this whole thing sounds like it's going to turn into something where a discussion will be needed for every single uncomfortable thing, and that sounds exhausting. Are we gonna put content warnings on every Torchwood episode? Every Dalek episode where the allegory to the Nazis is obvious? Maybe instead of adding individual content warnings, we should focus on editing our current content warning by making it more obvious on the home page and adding some of the more serious topics, such as rape and racism, including adding the big examples, such as the yellowface in Talons. LauraBatham ☎ 12:10, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

I have to agree with Laura here… we’re not going to put a warning on everything that just feels a little icky. Something like the things Laura mentions are big controversial topics whereas something such as a bad language word is not. Danniesen ☎ 12:26, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Blood and gore is the whole essence of Torchwood, so people should already know what to expect when going into those pages, for example. Danniesen ☎ 12:27, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

I am in agreement with the proposal of content warnings. It is going to be a difficult thing to put an exact scope on this, so aside from saying that I would hope for few rather than many - instead I would like to start digging into this by noting specific examples of pages that I would hope to try and push a precise consensus on. (and then we can work out further from there, as needed.)

Dodo's page is an immediate in-universe example, on two fronts: firstly that as a TV companion, she has a prominently visited page relative to most pages... and secondly that the attempted sexual assault to her in Who Killed Kennedy? is something that comes rather suddenly in-between far more innocent content. I think moreso than the average page, we ought to be careful about companion pages when it comes to such topics as sexual assault, extreme abuse, abuse as a child etc. - and absolutely need to give fair warning upfront about that. Dodo's page is an immediately brought-to-mind example even in the OP here because it's one that readers have highlighted as well as being a point of contention for us editors. [As an aside to this, one would hope the format of a content warning box would denote the exact subsection of a page that said content appears so that people may not only make an informed decision about reading the page, but also read the majority of an important character's bio whilst knowing what to omit if thus inclined.]

Further to that, and it was said way back at the time when I came in to discuss what to do with the slur/derogatory pages (that we'll no doubt have course to revisit further soon enough), Racism and Homophobia ought to have content warnings for the slurs. That was part of the feeling and intentions of consolidating the content that was from those individual pages into those two. So that we not only got rid of unduly-needed pages, but also so that we would have central points for gathering all such remarks for reference. Central points that we could then work to have an upfront warning on about slur usage.

[Aside to this, the academic quotations needed for The Talons of Weng-Chiang (TV story) to be put in appropriate context required noting the slurs used within the story... and as such, I would argue for a content warning on that page resultantly too. There is no way to dodge that Talons contains that kind of language in the course of effectively noting the racial overtones, issues & critiques of the story. And as the editor who handled carefully creating and referencing the majority of that section - it always has been my hope since I did so that we would add such a warning once Forums returned to us.]

On the flip side, I am less concerned about 8.46 - much as its contents as a story personally annoy me... from a Wiki perspective, the page lead effectively warns you that you're on the page of a story that is entirely about the topic of racism and historical examples of it. And given that it is well-noted that the Toymaker is in-fact not meant to be a racial depiction but instead a white man wearing such attire (carefully reused from Marco Polo no less) and quotes exist to assure that there, the term "celestial" was meant in the then-current cosmic sense & not the historical derogatory manner... I would see it as an inaccuracy to note that on the Toymaker's character page as a warning. (Though, of course, the matter of the rhyme should be noted on The Celestial Toymaker (TV story), if we ever add a section to denote that aspect of the understandable criticism towards the story. Ditto this for Four to Doomsday (TV story) if we ever get to contending more with its lesser-known-but-critiquable usage of slurs.)

In terms of forwards thinking: I think we can also effectively discount Torchwood and Class story pages from 'content warnings' as the stories themselves do that upfront. But on the other hand, stories of Doctor Who in its various mediums do need to be considered here. For instance, Warmonger as a story drops very flippantly mentions of rape. If a plot summary was written up that made note of this - I would hope to see allowance for that to be actioned on. Ditto for the implied content of similar nature in Nekromanteia. Because again, both these stories do not remotely fairly warn people about that content going in. And in accurately detailing those stories at length, we ourselves would likely not want to make those same mistakes when we have the ability to do otherwise.

I think it will also be immediately noticeable that in terms of content warnings: my thinking here is primarily to focus for now on two subjects: that of quoted slurs/derogatory language (in-universe and out-of-universe, even utilised in the needs of quotations for an academic purpose) & that of sexual assault (attempted or otherwise) in story ranges that do not have fair upfront content warnings.

Aside from those, the only other pressing concern that comes to mind for me is denoting that A Fix with Sontarans (TV story) contains Jimmy Savile in a physical appearance. Yes, the lead denotes it as part of an episode of his show, and distinguishes it from the recent re-edit release - but we really ought to have some form of upfront clarity to a reader that the page deals with a physical appearance of that man. As he is, it must be said without tiptoeing the point, a very horrific and particular individual in the history of sexual abuses en masse... JDPManjoume ☎ 14:07, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Add to that the Fan Show episode in which Marek Kukula appeared as well, actually. It is safe to say that nobody expects to wander into the family-friendly pages of that 'supplemental show' and come across those charges. JDPManjoume ☎ 14:15, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

I disagree about A Fix With The Sontarans. Warning on the Jimmy Saville page itself, I would agree with, but the story page merely mentions his name and a "controversy". LauraBatham ☎ 14:37, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Well, the nature of my thinking there is that the original AFWS just by nature of its narrative... the plot summary has to suddenly drop on you that he shows up appearing as himself and then leads into mention of 'controversy' thereafter (which, to be honest, we DO need to revise to be more blunt about the details because honestly, being vague there is not doing anyone any favors in my opinion). I think that's an exceptional one-off situation to warn against that ought to be noted. (By contrast, his actual page... well, I can't imagine many people - if anyone - is going to navigate to that page let alone read it without being painfully aware of what they're going into. But I wouldn't say no if anyone wanted to put one there also.) JDPManjoume ☎ 22:01, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

In response to Danniesen's comment about not having this be something that any editor can add, that's not really possible. Something could be done with JavaScript (and maybe even just with CSS), but that would have the very major issue of not appearing on mobile (there is no current way around this) and that would defeat a lot of the point as the majority of readers are on mobile. Bongo50 ☎ 16:38, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Oh that’s too bad. Danniesen ☎ 17:32, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Laura, forgive me if I misunderstand you

Are we gonna put content warnings on every Torchwood episode? Every Dalek episode where the allegory to the Nazis is obvious?

Under my specific thoughts on how to implement this, would either qualify? Mayyyyyybe the latter, if you want to reach, it depends on what you mean by "made obvious", but certainly not the former. Are we no longer discussing the specifics of my suggestion and instead just your generic dislike of the idea?

Let's approach this from another perspective. Supposing that we were to have content warnings Laura, do you think that all reasonable people would agree that Talons should be tagged with one? How about Dodo's page? Discounting the fact that the page will obviously be objectionable, how about racism and 8.46? And in this hypothetical where content warnings existed, would you agree that no reasonable person would suggest that Newsreel be tagged with one? Or perhaps Sari, or Miranda (moon)? As I said above in response to Tangerine, I'm fairly confident that on it will be trivial on the vast, vast majority of pages how these content warnings are applied. Much like validity debates, discussions are likely to be the exception, rather than the rule. Najawin ☎ 18:10, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Najawin, I agree that the majority of pages will be obvious, but we have over a hundred thousand pages, so even a minority is still capable of being a lot of pages. There is a common ground, for sure, but there is also a hell of a lot of grey area, and my question is, is it worth it when most mature people already know that the internet is not a safe space and that they can be subject to uncomfortable issues at any given time. As for my Torchwood and Daleks examples, they are things I would consider on par with an emotional blackmail warning in terms of what I consider "reasonable", which is that they aren't reasonable at all. I wasn't implying that you yourself were suggesting them. Apologies if it seemed that way.

JDP, if the notes were to expand on the controversy, I would agree a warning would be reasonable for that. But as the page stands, a warning would simply be for "a real life bad man appeared in this story before we knew he was bad". As for the warning on the Jimmy Saville page, I disagree that anyone navigating that page will be aware of it's content. Plenty of people (younger fans and/or those from outside the UK) would not have a clue who Savile is. LauraBatham ☎ 23:52, 20 February 2023 (UTC)

Well - you stated that

"What can reasonably remind someone of a traumatic event?" And that's where we hit our problem. Because there is no answer to that question. Everyone has different ideas of where the line should be based on their own experiences and there is very little that we would all agree is "reasonable".

I don't think this is true. The vast majority of this we would agree on. It's corner cases where there's disagreement. As for the idea that

most mature people already know that the internet is not a safe space and that they can be subject to uncomfortable issues at any given time

I again reiterate that my understanding of the issue is that it's beneficial for people to go about their daily lives, including browsing the internet, such as fan wikis, if they're so inclined to do so, as best they can while trying to recover from trauma. Providing content warnings allows them to do this with minimal interference. The idea that they should isolate themselves in order to avoid potentially harmful things is itself harmful.

(I also note as an aside that as an American (I apologize) I only learned of Saville from watching Sherlock. Laura's quite right that non Brits might not know who he is.) Najawin ☎ 00:44, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

They shouldn't have to isolate themselves, no, but they do need to learn how to cope with unprompted reminders. That's life. An excess of content warnings slows that process. It is a much debated topic. LauraBatham ☎ 01:06, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Again, from my understanding, the "debate" is either from people outside the field, or people who don't understand the intent of these warnings, for instance, Bellet, whose research requires participants to view the potentially harmful content regardless of the warning. (No duh telling people about the issue before hand is going to trigger anxiety. That's not the issue. The point is to allow them to avoid it, not to force them to both think about it and then live through it.)

But you're not wrong that they do, eventually, need to learn how to deal with unprompted reminders. However, that's not for us to force on them, that's between them and their therapist. Najawin ☎ 01:19, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

I was more referring to the debate as to whether they cause unreasonable expectations and damage people's resilience. Or that they reinforce the importance of the very trauma people are trying to get over - like how a parent making a big fuss when their child scrapes their knee will bring focus on that pain and make their reaction worse.

But I digress.

In relation to our implementation of warning, we have two options that each have issues:

Option 1) A general "this page contains content that may be distressing to some viewers" blanket statements. I favour this option but we risk the problem of too many content warnings making them useless. "Distressing content" could be anything and therefore does not adequately warn at all.

Option 2) We get into specific trauma related warnings "this page contains mentions of sexual assault that could be distressing to some viewers". The issue with these however is that the warning may make things out to be worse than they actually are. Putting a warning for sexual assault on The Keys of Marinus (TV story) for example would give the impression that the content of the page is more detailed than it actually is and creates that increase in anxiety those studies mention. "Is the sexual assault in the plot description? The behind the scenes notes? How much can I safely read?" And of course we would also run into the aforementioned objectionable racism page, where we have a silly "The page titled Racism contains mentions of racism" warning.

I hope that makes sense. Apologies if it doesn't. Currently operating on less than four hours sleep. LauraBatham ☎ 02:25, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

I think there's a middle ground here. Do the "section" warnings that Bongo has mocked up for something that is only mentioned in a single section, and if an issue is suffused throughout multiple sections (we can quibble, could be >1 or >2, this is open to discussion) we make it a header, though being explicit with what the issue is each time. In this way we narrow down the specifics of where in the article the issue actually is. As for how bad it is, well, again, not for us to judge. Najawin ☎ 05:29, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

But we are judging it by simply putting a warning up in the first place. Is that not one of the purposes of this discussion? To decide which pages have content "bad" enough to require warnings. To use my Keys of Marinus example: "This story contains a controversial scene in which it appears that Vasor attempts to rape Barbara" is not that different from "This thing contains mentions of sexual assault". The plot section merely describes the event as "He then attacks Barbara", so the page itself is not descriptive, and I don't believe it is "bad" enough to require a warning seeing as the one mention of sexual assault on the page is essentially a content warning in itself. Content warnings do not need content warnings.

I still stand by my opinion that updating the current content warning page by making it more specific and giving better examples would be more workable. It would also solve the problem of random editors adding non-agreed upon warnings and lessens the issue of new content being added to/being removed from pages that would affect the warning. We could also put it somewhere in the header or sidebar or the little collapsible spanner icon thing where "My Tools" is so it is findable from any page. Even if we do go ahead with individual warnings, I'd like to give the page an overhaul. The ratings/content infoboxes look clunky on desktop and sorting by medium would not be my preferred choice. Though I understand if this is something that should be discussed elsewhere. I can do up a basic sandbox if anyone is interested in what I am thinking. LauraBatham ☎ 06:49, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I think there's a fundamental miscommunication here.

But we are judging it by simply putting a warning up in the first place. Is that not one of the purposes of this discussion?

Judging that X is in (a category, C, of things that could be potentially harmful, no matter how minor an example it is of this C) is not the same thing as judging that X is so minor an example of C that its potential harm isn't worth mentioning. The first is assigning something to a category, the second is ranking something within a category. These are qualitatively distinct actions. Ostensibly we could be making these assignments without the slightest hint of a value judgement. As for the rest, it's getting quite late here, I'll return in the morning. I'd love to hear other's thoughts on mine and Laura's back and forth though. :P But I'll respond in, idk some number of hours. Najawin ☎ 07:07, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I too would love to hear other people's thoughts (especially on overhauling the parent page regardless of this discussion). Have a nice night, Najawin :) LauraBatham ☎ 07:16, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Once again, I have to agree with Laura that not everything needs a content warning. Something as simple as a mention of an event happening should not require a content warning. As Laura said, it is itself a content warning. The fact that Daleks are an obvious reference to the nazis does not mean we slap a content warning on every page with Daleks. Neither should this be done if this reference is ever brought up in-universe. This content warning should be reserved for big, triggering events such as Racism or The Talons of Weng-Chiang or Jimmy Savile. As Laura said, we ARE actively judging here. Danniesen ☎ 07:50, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Neither should death or destruction events, for that matter, require a content warning. Danniesen ☎ 07:54, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I personally don't like this proposal because it leads to ambiguity, endless conflicted interpretations - it sort of opens a Pandora box, with certain small group of people having to judge and decide what is appropriate and what isn't, and who will draw the final line in the sand. The question is - is content warning the addition that's really something at all necessary, where is the demand for it, was it somehow wrong all this years to not have it? Dmitriy Volfson ☎ 08:55, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

There's no real need for it, no. It's more of a curtsey to our readers. Which is nice to have, but as you say, hard to implement. LauraBatham ☎ 09:10, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Forgive me - I've only skimmed the thread so far, but would it be viable to add disclaimers/warnings to obvious (and pretty unanimously agreed) pages such as Talons/etc. and then merely add polls to Talk pages of any which users feel should have one? So instead of trying to work out which pages should get one or what the strict 'rules' are - it's done on a case by case basis. Maybe it could be noted somewhere that we are adding content warnings but due to how complicated and messy it can be (as evidenced here), we'll be using Talk pages whereby anyone can contribute a "Yes I feel this page should have a warning for ____" or "No I don't believe this page warrants a warning" and then people can add their reasonings. A mini-vote to get a bit of a consensus and reasonings for each page on a case by case basis? People who feel strongly would put forward their arguments, and anyone who believes a page which has a warning which doesn't warrant one would thus also have a chance to put forward an argument on said Talk page? Fractal Doctor ☎ 11:13, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

We would still have to decide on what is "obvious" and find that unanimous agreement. People have different definitions of where the line is. LauraBatham ☎ 11:35, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Re:Danniesen, I note that what you're proposing, a content warning for the Daleks, doesn't seem to be something anyone here has endorsed. The argument seems to come down entirely to "well someone could argue that". But multiple people have provided clear demarcations for how to provide these warnings in ways that wouldn't apply to these hypotheticals. Also, again, you're confusing grouping things into categories with ranking things within the categories. These are not the same thing. For instance, I know multiple editors (or former editors) have differing opinions as to the acceptability of classism, be it against the wealthy or the poor, as a form of discrimination. Unlike racism, where everyone agrees that such a thing is bad, we can still acknowledge classism is present in a story even if a particular editor thinks that it's good. There's no value judgement inherent in our classification. (Now, one could argue that we're smuggling in a value judgement in even caring about these classifications as opposed to any other classification, such as, say, stories that contain socks, and while you're not entirely wrong, these categories are justified from a statistical point of view under any standard view of ethics.) Najawin ☎ 01:24, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

I think you are well aware we disagree here, but I just make two observations for "we can still acknowledge classism is present in a story".

The warnings are for page content, not story content. They often overlap but are not the same.

People have different definitions of what is and is not varying forms of bigotry. I for one think Steven Moffat is - or at least has been - classist and sexist, but I'm sure many disagree (I wouldn't put a warning on his page for it even if I thought it was something worth warning for, as to my knowledge criticism of his work is not discussed and I haven't checked the interviews). People will call other people transphobic for merely liking Harry Potter, regardless of if that person knows of the controversy surrounding JK. Not even buying it, just liking it. There is discourse within the LGBT+ community as to whether "queer" is a slur. And while we may be able to come to an agreement, we are not the only ones who use the wiki. LauraBatham ☎ 01:48, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Some of this has been said before, but I feel that any warnings we issue should only be for things that are not expected within the franchise. Putting a warning for death/murder, for example, would go on far too many pages, but I feel that anything involving sexual assault definitely deserves a warning, because this generally isn't that sort of franchise.

Given how often sci-fi works make commentary on classism, I do feel that is one that is too common to be included as a warning. Schreibenheimer ☎ 15:19, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Apologies Laura, didn't see your response until just now. My response is that as someone who thinks of themselves as primarily writing story summaries, I have a tendency to lapse into thinking of the wiki as being story summary first, other pages second. (Also, Moffat, classist? I've never heard that criticism before. Huh.)

I've also never heard someone say that merely liking HP is transphobic, though I have heard people question the taste in books of an adult calling it their favorite series. (I've also seen people side-eye some others for the racial issues in the books, but not transphobia.) As for queer, well, that's not really my place to comment. Najawin ☎ 18:07, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

No need to apologise about the delayed response. It's all good. And yeah, there are many different takes on the internet, some of which are surprisingly common, even if they aren't in majority. And by introducing the concept of content warnings, we are opening the doors to all of them. I'm afraid this is not something that we can just slap a few rules on and expect people to interpret the same. LauraBatham ☎ 04:10, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Again, I just don't agree. We can pretty easily dismiss unreasonable approaches to the subject. And I do think there's a non subjective measure of what's reasonable. With that said, we have a week left, and I don't think the two of us are going to get past this disagreement. I don't see further conversation along the same lines as productive in the context of the thread, no offense. (I don't think it will help admins make their ruling, it will reiterate points of disagreement that we've already covered, and it will, in my mind, add to the length of the thread that people feel obliged to read before commenting.) Hopefully the discussion below will be fruitful! Najawin ☎ 04:28, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Wow, that time went by quick. And no offence taken. I completely agree that it's probably best we let other people spearhead the discussion from now on. LauraBatham ☎ 04:54, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

This seems to have stalled ten days ago without a consensus yet. This is important, and although we've now reached the theoretical deadline, I'm going to give this an extension. the new deadline is March the 26th. I hope we won't need all that time, but let's give ourselves some buffer, eh? We need to do this right. As you were! (Or to be more exact: more active than you were, please!) Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 18:43, 5 March 2023 (UTC)

Continuation

With the extension to this discussion and no real clear path forward with regards to warnings because of the very wide scope of these potential warnings. I'd like to suggested a page or a series of sub-pages that cover all the stories that we cover. As everything feeds from the stories.

The page would explain that Doctor Who has been around since the 1960s, it's been produced by multiple people, multiple stakeholders and presents different perspectives and some of it is confronting to a modern consumer.

It may be seen as a cop out a bit, but I think we should state that we as a wiki can't judge stories for content because we're just here to present the information. That the stories are where everything feeds from so the page covers those.

The page will then be a real world page like Canon or Cartmel Masterplan, with citations, definitions and explanations. Plus probably some sub pages, tables etc to cover different mediums etc.

Any story that's listed would need to be cited, so we're not making a judgement call, or if the community thinks we need to make a judgement call (that we can't find a citation for) then that should be cited to a talk page / forum discussion. With a page / table etc with citations that help identify what the content warning might be, we can help state plainly without people needing to read through the article in question, it would mean there's less exposure for people if they get half way through an article an see a warning for a particular section. Also citing stuff, rather than us making the judgement removes us from needing to make these judgments (or at the very least if we have to make them moves it to easily citable discussions) and helps make this a bit more of an independent judgement.

A link to this page would go on the main page, plus all stories we think are controversial enough, or even all stories if the community thinks that's the best way forward. --Tangerineduel / talk 00:59, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

This is a very interesting proposition and I can already say that I support it, at least in part. A single content-warning template that can be put on all pages that warrant it, and links to this "cheat sheet", sounds like a very clever solution.

I'm not entirely sure about citation, though — whether a story uses a slur, or features sexual assault, etc. isn't in the eye of the beholder. Citations would be good to clear up contentious gray areas if those arise, but I don't think we need nor will feasibly obtain a citation for every story that features a slur or a depiction of sexual coercion or what-have-you. Every TV story maybe, but we need everything relevantly tagged, a Candy Jar short story as much as a prime-time TV Who episode. -User:Scrooge MacDuck 01:10, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I think that we should agree on specific CW categories in the forums, so that new ones would require discussion (at least an admin closing post on the relevant talk page). This way, for each category, we can have established lines in the sand to follow, rather than leaving it to users to make judgements on individual stories in a vacuum.

And I agree that requiring citations for all stories would not be a great idea, for the reasons outlined above.
× SOTO (☎/✍/↯) 01:22, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

The citations is in part to absolve us from needing to make judgement calls, or to head off forum / talk page discussions that have been well gone over. The oft cited Talons or Nekromanteia are obvious to people who have seen/listened (and would incidentally be easy enough to find a review or other type of citation that points out the same).

I understand it may seem a daunting task to cite all stories, and of course we will likely have to self certify some things, but it's more about shifting some of those identifications to outside sources so we can point to a source and say 'this is how we've come to this information to cite this'. As one of the issues raised above is who can add a warning to a page, if we have it so anything that's on this page need to be cited it adds a requirement for a page having a warning,

As the lengthy discussion above has shown there is nuance when trying to work these things out and the more we can cite others' work the less burden it's going to be to explain and show our working on this.

And I'm not suggesting we try to leap out of this discussion into a page or pages citing every page, it'll need to be something that will take time to cite and work up. If we go ahead with this we get the frame work in place and then it'll be an evolving article, probably edit locked to new users. --Tangerineduel / talk 05:22, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

I've worked up a quick example of what a content warning page / article might look like with some examples of a tabled list, some sections / ideas of how it would be covered etc

• Content warning article (sandbox). --Tangerineduel / talk 13:55, 7 March 2023 (UTC)

Is this page for anyone to edit? Because I certainly have some things to contribute to that chart. Also is citing the story itself or the bbfc rating reasonable in cases when a story simply shows something so obviously that there is no debate? Tellymustard ☎ 20:58, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

Here are the only pages I can think of that would need content warnings. They all fall under one of three categories, so I think we should do it with 3 different headings.

1. Racism/Homophobia

The Crusade

The Celestial Toymaker

Talons of Wein Chiang

2. Exceptionally disturbing story that is of course described in the plot description.

Jubilee

Spare Parts

The Holy Terror

Creatures of Beauty

3. R rated content

Countrycide

Children of Earth

Zygon (might not need a warning)

Cyberwoman definetely has R rated content in the episode but I dont think there is anything on the page.

Tellymustard ☎ 20:25, 12 March 2023 (UTC)

At the moment it's just a concept so we can get an idea if this is the sort of direction we want to go. It's not currently policy, or even the path we'll take at the end of this discussion (if we don't manage to resolve a way forwards). --Tangerineduel / talk 05:59, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm not certain that a simple yes/no is sufficient for every story if we're doing a chart. Consider Warlords of Utopia. Its a story about two groups of fascists fighting each other, and our protagonists are still fascists. They still have all the cultural differences that Imperial Rome had, ones we'd almost certainly regard as moral failings, slavery, different standards for what age people get married, treating people like cattle, as well as discussion of all the horrors of Nazi Germany. These things are explicitly called attention to in the story, with one character explicitly being repulsed upon learning some of the context. For a content warning it kinda makes sense because you're informing people so they can avoid subjects they might need to avoid on a personal level. But if we're doing this more expansive discussion we probably need to discuss how each of these stories treat the subjects therein. Some of them do so in a critical, interrogating manner, some do so uncritically. Najawin ☎ 06:28, 14 March 2023 (UTC)

Honestly, I feel doing content warnings for story pages will be the easy part. It's how we tackle in-universe pages (and maybe certain real-world pages on certain BtS individuals) that I'm more concerned about.

There are some pages where it's pretty clean-cut, like a character who's entire story revolves around them being a murderous child rapist, but then you have characters who have an extensive in-universe biography that just so happens to include a dark chapter about them being sexually assaulted and contracting an STD. WaltK ☎ 23:45, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

As this discussion goes on, and kinda loops around, I become less sure of some elements – like the chart of stories I suggested above.

I don't think any of it will be easy.

I think what we will end up with is a page which satisfies no one, and is only vaguely helpful. I think we can define what a content warning is, I think we can talk about the various eras and texts, for example how the Virgin Publishing era really pushed the adult content, how Torchwood also pushed the maturity/adult content. I think we can highlight the classic series with Talons and other stories. We can explain and explore the various spin-offs and how they've taken the universe in different directions exploring different elements which have explored subjects that the main series might not and those can be confronting or revealing. I think through this sort of page we can provide sources and links off to other pages and other places who can give an indication of content and what they might expect.

But I think there's a lot that comes from reading / watching / experiencing a text, and there is nuance to all of this. --Tangerineduel / talk 13:26, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

I do not believe calling Something R rated would be helpful as Doctor Who is a British Show and and in Britain we rate things U PG 12A 12 15 and finely 18 this of course can not be used either as it is not used internally perhaps instead we could go Universal (or General) PG (parental Guidance or Mature?) and Adult content or perhaps we could rate page of an adult nature similar to how AO3 does it G, T, M, E. this would not work for everything and other warnings could be put alongside them, but these could act as a general warning with the more in depth explanation of the stuff in a drop down box?Anastasia Cousins ☎ 15:59, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Parent Page

As noted in the main discussion, I'd like to revamp what acts as our current content warning page, regardless of warnings on individual pages. I have made a sandbox of a very general idea of what I mean, with examples subject to change, and would love some feedback but I don't want to disrupt the main discussion. Ideally, the page would be titled something along the lines of "parental guidelines and content warnings".

If this is something that would need it's own thread, please feel free to tell me to bugger off and be patient :) LauraBatham ☎ 00:49, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

I do think we need to update the parent page, not least of which because of the Disney+ move. But I'm more a fan of the infoboxes and being as dry and informative. Less likely to date the content. But that's just me. Najawin ☎ 01:54, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

A valid point. My main issues with the infoboxes was page formatting on desktop. LauraBatham ☎ 01:58, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Real quick, while we're on this subject: for quite a while now, the parent page has been showing up on my end with the far right end cut off. Laura's sandbox version does too. What's happening here? WaltK ☎ 20:53, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

I think it's because of the use of CSS to create a column-like affect which should probably be removed alongside any update to the page's text. This sort of thing often fails on smaller screen sizes. Bongo50 ☎ 21:35, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

I did think that was rather odd when I was making my sandbox, but had no idea how to fix it. LauraBatham ☎ 03:40, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

(Fixed by substituting width for max-width, so it doesn't force a column width that's greater than your window. That's been bugging me for years, but I never checked where the problem was.)
× SOTO (☎/✍/↯) 01:09, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

@LauraBantham Feel free to echo that same edit in your sandbox. I didn't touch that one up, out of courtesy.
× SOTO (☎/✍/↯) 01:12, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, I appreciate it. Though I have no problem with other people touching up my sandbox by fixing typos and formatting and the like :) LauraBatham ☎ 01:34, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

End of discussion

As we approach the end of this extended discussion date without a clear path forwards, I thought a summary of a way forward would help wrap up this process.

The Tardis:ParentPage update would be useful, especially as we move into the Disney+ international distribution era.

As far as content warnings for pages, I'm marking it as unresolved. There are too many unsolvable issues of classification and designation to be resolved at this time.

At the close of this discussion a page Content warnings will be created to cover the generalities of it, with citations off to various pages, reviews etc highlighting others' analysis of stories. But will only cover content warnings in a general sense, rather than with specific tables or whatever.

If in future other large wikis find a path forward of how to manage warnings we can always revisit this. --Tangerineduel / talk 03:36, 23 March 2023 (UTC)