Forum:"Setting" in story infoboxes and UNIT dating

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I noticed that the infobox for The Seeds of Doom (TV story) lists its main setting as "Antarctic base, the 1970s; Chase Mansion, the 1970s". Isn't that a bit problematic, coming three stories after "I'm from 1980"? Of course, this is a huge and unresolvable problem. But should we really be "taking sides" in the dispute by saying that these stories take place in the 1970s? At the moment, nearly all UNIT stories list their setting as "the 1970s", except for The Android Invasion, which gives "circa 1980". Would we do better to remove dates from all UNIT stories, or to say "the 1970s or early 1980s", with a link to UNIT dating controversy? —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 02:52, May 10, 2012 (UTC)

My suggestion is to remove the dates from the infobox, and put a reference and link to the UNIT dating controversy in the "Story Notes". Shambala108 ^{talk to me} 05:31, May 10, 2012 (UTC)

Unless the date is actually stated in the text (be it TV, novel, audio whatever really) I don't think the date should be stated, this should go for all stories, not just the UNIT ones. --Tangerineduel / talk 13:50, May 10, 2012 (UTC)

I agree. If a stories mention the date, we put it in the info, otherwise, we just make an assumption. This should go for categories as well. We should only include the date in the infobox/category. The only backlash with this is the category 'stories with unknown or disputed date' may get very large. MM/Want to talk? 14:22, May 10, 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, in the words of the great American, "if the glove don't fit, you must acquit." It really is all about direct evidence. And if we have no evidence we can't say anything. I would not even be a fan of a link to the UNIT dating controversy. I think the infobox should be silent, rather than make a guesstimate.

This does bring up a point from a month ago that Mini-mitch broached. Do we want to split that setting variable into two things, location and time? If we did that, then we could just avoid controversy in the infobox by simply not entering a time. Or would that make stories that have a lot of locations and times difficult to understand?

[tangent]

I wouldn't worry about category:stories with unknown or disputed dates, by the way. It's been removed. Any category which is, as its text description said, there to categorise "fan debate" is clearly something we can't allow. Besides, with dates, it's probably better to separately categorise "unknown" from "disputed". Those are two really different concepts when it comes to time. In the one case, you don't know what time it is. In the other case there are competing theories as to the time.

But the real problem with a category like stories with disputed dates is whose doing the disputing? Is it the characters? That is, is the story narratively confusing as to time? Good examples of this are those Eighth Doctor BFAs set in the Divergent Universe. Or is it, like the UNIT dating thing, a fan debate because what we're told in narrative makes no sense? The classic example is Mawdryn Undead. That story is specifically dated throughout, but the audience (okay, fans) would dispute that those dates are accurate.

See, it's just too confusing, so that category is now, um, history.

[/tangent]

czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 17:22: Thu 10 May 2012 

I think separating the field into time and place is a good idea. As for stories with multiple times and places, I know so little about telebiogenesis template programming, but might it be possible to have multiple fields ("time1" and "place1", "time2" and "place2" and so forth), with options to display them together if both are filled, but put them separately if one is missing? I'm envisioning something like this:

for Pyramids of Mars

|place1=Earth

|time1=1911

|place2=Alternate Earth

|time2=1980

|place3=Mars

|time3=1911

yielding something very similar to what's currently displayed in that story's infobox, but for Frontier in Space

|place1=Interstellar space

|place2=Earth

|place3=The Moon

|place4=Draconia

|place5=Ogron homeworld

|time1=2540

yielding "Interstellar space, Earth, The Moon, Draconia, Ogron homeworld 2540". Is that at all feasible? —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 03:20, May 11, 2012 (UTC)