Forum:Name of the wiki - revisit

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Just to revisit this topic (originally started here). The current title 'Doctor Who Wiki' doesn't really fully wrap up the idea of this wiki.

I'm suggesting we rename the wiki as what the logo says "TARDIS Index File", and then follow it with 'the Doctor Who universe Wiki'. So titles would read "Article Title - TARDIS Index File, the Doctor Who universe Wiki".

Just as Wookipedia is "Wookipedia, the Star Wars Wiki". Though we're not just a Doctor Who Wiki, we cover the whole DW universe. I also think this may help us to better define this wiki as not just a Doctor Who Wiki (which is what the title is currently), but rather one covering the whole DW universe. We are after all the TARDIS Index File and we're very much like our namesake, a searchable database that's bigger on the inside than its outer structure may indicate. Thoughts? --Tangerineduel 16:02, November 21, 2010 (UTC)

I agree totally, theres been too much deviation with some users making Sarah Jane Wikias and Torchwood wikias (not to mention the latters plagurising). As many people have probably noticed im trying to expand the wikias entires for spin offs such as Iris Wildthyme and Faction Paradox as there is so much more than just Doctor Who that needs to be covered. "a searchable database that's bigger on the inside than its outer structure may indicate." that could be worked as a very good tag line too. Revanvolatrelundar 16:12, November 21, 2010 (UTC)

I've enacted this for the pages for now to see what it looks like. The main page is still titled 'Doctor Who Wiki' as I'm fairly sure when/if that's retitled it's renamed so the templates that support it need to be moved (EDIT, actually no I think the title can be changed without effecting anything else).

The lengthier title of "TARDIS Index File, the Doctor Who universe Wiki" is only noticibly long when you go to something like Forum:The Sarah Jane Adventures television discontinuity and plot holes/Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith. --Tangerineduel 16:10, November 26, 2010 (UTC)

Well, you're mostly right about the impact of changing the main page name. Don't forget that the main page templates are based upon the name of the main page being "Doctor Who Wiki". So long as the name of that page is "Doctor Who Wiki", then the templates are called using shorthand, like [[/Audio]] You can change the name of the page without changing the name of the main page templates, but then you'd have to type out a longer version of the name in the main page code (i.e. template:Doctor Who Wiki/Audio). For simplicity and elegance, you would want to move the names of the templates to the new name of the page. Since the doc pages are also based on the title of the main page, you'd need to move them, too. But that's a discussion for another day.

I myself dislike that you're lengthening the name of the wiki. I never have liked that the name of this thing isn't simply, The Doctor Who Wiki. I get what you guys are saying about wanting to change the name to try to stave off "copycat" wikis that specialize in SJA or Torchwood. But there's nothing that can be done about that. It's super easy to start a new wiki, and Wikia are encouraging multiple wikis covering the same ground. And no one's plagiarizing anyone; check the terms of your submissions.

I don't think that the average person will give much thought to the distinction between Doctor Who and the broader Doctor Who universe. The DWU is not a term that gets much play in the popular press or even really on the official site. I remember having a hell of a time convincing people on Wikipedia that the article wikipedia:Whoniverse should even be kept; most believed it to be simply a fan term. And though there have been a few mentions in the popular press, the term is really only known to harder-core fans. If we call ourselves The Doctor Who Wiki, that's a branding that most people will understand. The "universe" in Doctor Who universe not only fails to register with the vast majority of casual readers, it is also potentially problematic with hard-core readers. I can imagine some people thinking that we only deal with the wider universe, not the main Doctor Who programme itself. (This, mainly because within other fandoms like ST and SW there is the concept of an "expanded universe", and because there are longstanding wikias, like MemoryBeta, which explicitly deal with only the broader universe.)

You mention Wookipedia as a template for your new name. But Wookieepedia never uses the term "Star Wars universe", even though there is such a thing. Hits are retuned, "Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki". It's simple, clean, elegant and funny. Our "TARDIS Index File" isn't funny. It's not a clever play on Wikipedia. It just buries the words "Doctor Who wiki". Our complete ref now is, "TARDIS Index File, the Doctor Who universe Wiki". Which is massively long.

Let's look at how some other wikias covering similarly complicated properties name themselves. There's a DCU and a Marvel Universe, but the DC and Marvel wikias go by the simple names "Marvel Comics Database" and "DC Comics Database". There's a Stargate Universe, but it's just the "Stargate Wiki". Family Guy has a "universe" now thanks to spin-offs but Google returns simply "Family Guy Wiki".

And let's also think how all this might look in a Google search. Depending on the size of type you set your browser to, and the length of the article name, our super-long name runs the risk of being truncated in such a way that the user never sees the words "Doctor Who" or "wiki". That's bad.

We should be using strong, clear branding. The more words we add onto our title, the more it will look like we're not the main DW wiki. Since doctorwho.wikia.com redirects to us, I don't see why we can't simply rebrand as The Doctor Who Wiki. Everyone, except for the extremely picky über-geeks like us, will completely understand what that means instead of having to initially stumble over TARDIS Index File. Then, from our front door, it's completely obvious we cover the whole universe.

Failing simpler rebranding, the word "universe" should be immediately excised. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 00:27, December 12, 2010 (UTC)

As for the templates this discussion is precisely why I didn't move anything.

Isn't what's been done exactly what can be done about it? As to plagiarising that's not completely true, there have been fits and bursts of plagiarism from this wiki to other related wikis (that is unattributed copying of articles), the Torchwood Wiki I recall some months back was doing exactly that. There's nothing against other wikis using our information as long as it's attributed, but that wasn't what was happening.

I can see how new readers may think that we deal with the DW universe, seen within the context of other wikis. But TARDIS Index File is the name of the Wiki, there isn't anything that can be done about that given the 'tardis' bit is part of this whole project.

Renaming wise, removing the universe part would make it, just to confirm; TARDIS Index File, the Doctor Who Wiki.

My problem with this is that we're not just the Doctor Who wiki, we do cover the whole the DW universe. That's the shared theme through the series we cover; that they all exist within the Doctor Who universe, and with, as it is at the moment this is made clear on every page title. --Tangerineduel 14:53, December 13, 2010 (UTC)

Fine, TARDIS stays (though I think it could, technically, be changed, were we willing). But "universe"? No, that's using a term that most people (aside from us editors) don't even appreciate.

I mean, I do get your point. You're trying to make us seem "bigger" than these supposed copycat wikias. But you're adding doubt and size to the name, not clarity and concision. Look up the term "Doctor Who universe" in Google. Do it in inverted comas so that you're looking for all those words together. What you'll find is the return of an awful lot of titles of works, as well as a ton of hits on just our new "byline" for lack of a better word. The pages returned very, very rarely have to do with the Doctor Who universe, in the "Whoniverse" sense that we're using it. You get a lot of returns for the AHistory book, for some videos on YouTube, for reviews of The Big Bang, where journalists are using "Doctor Who universe" to mean the universe that got rebooted in Doctor Who. But very few hits are about "the broader fictional universe in which Doctor Who and its spinoffs occur".

But the bigger point might well be this: we're making a definition of the universe that even some of our own editors don't agree with. The inclusion of K9, in particular, is highly controversial; many people, even within our own ranks, don't believe that K9 is in the same universe as DW, TW, and SJA. (See, for instance, the first section of Talk:K9 (TV series); Talk:K9 Mark 2; and Forum:Is the K9 TV series canon?.) So calling us the DWU wiki, given our policies on what the expression means, is kind of arrogant, or at least errant. We allow K9 on this wiki because we do, not because it is indisputably indivisible from the DWU. But that doesn't mean that even the average fan of Doctor Who, much less the casual viewer, will regard K9 as an indispensible part of the universe in which Doctor Who occurs. Forcing them to believe, by calling ourselves the "Doctor Who Universe Wiki", that K9 is a part of that universe is wrong. Give me 10 reputable, independent sources that make this claim and I might reconsider my opinion. But you won't find that it has ever been seriously claimed in mainstream periodicals that K9 is a part of the DWU. Heck, the producers can barely identify it as somehow linked to Doctor Who.

We also cover things we explicitly label as being outside the DWU. Not just the non-canon stuff, but the behind-the-scenes stuff. This isn't a wiki that's just about the fictional universe; it's about everything related to Doctor Who. Given how much editing I've done on the real world side of things, I actually take offense at the diminishment of my work implied by the new title.

When it comes right down to it, "The Doctor Who Wiki" is a phrase that is absolutely true. By saying we're "The Doctor Who Universe Wiki", we're saying something that isn't indisputably true. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 18:52, December 13, 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and about the plagiarism thing, which caused you to change the wiki name in the first place, I think you're getting upset over stuff you can't really do anything about. If I were to make a wiki on Wikia tomorrow, and I didn't change the CC-BY-SA license that is default Wikia-wide, it would be possible to take every bit of content from this Wikia wiki and use it on my Wikia wiki without visible attribution. All I have to do when copying within Wikia (according to wikia:Licensing#Importing text) is to just put an attribuion in the edit history. (It only has to be a visible attribution when you're out from under the Wikia umbrella into your own website.) And even though that's a nominal obligation, inter-Wikia copying without attribution is not likely to be something Wikia admins will actively discipline. Wikia is actively encouraging the production of "competing" wikis these days, so I'm not sure you're going to get a Wikia admin to care too much about "theft" from this wiki to another Wikia wiki. (I direct your attention to this archived Central forum thread.)

Now, I don't know if these TW/SJA wiki people gave attribution in the edit history. Maybe they didn't. But even if they didn't, what's your real recourse here? All you can do is ask them to put the line in their edit history, and hope that a Wikia admin might back you up. Or you can hope that they are such complete plagiarists that they never edit the copy that they have "stolen", nor give credit in edit histories. Only when those two things happen —non-attribution and abject failure to reshape the text in any way —does Wikia say they'll close a wiki. That doesn't stop anybody from appearing to "take" "our" articles as the base for "their" wiki, since visible attribution isn't required. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 20:25, December 13, 2010 (UTC)

OR we could have "The TARDIS Wikia" - everything inside and outside the Doctor Who Universe. its a shorter title and we have more information inside the universe than we do outside of it. Revanvolatrelundar 20:50, December 13, 2010 (UTC)

Alright, I understand where you're coming from, the universe bit does imply we only deal with the fictional universe.

I think we're moving away from the topic of this forum with the plagiarism thing, the wiki I was thinking of torchwoodbbc.wikia.com no longer exists, but did contain significant plagiarised material and we did attempt to show them how to correctly use the material. But it's in the past now.

I'm not sure Revanvolatrelundar, about 'The TARDIS Wiki', the word TARDIS is about as ubiquitous as 'Doctor Who'. TARDIS outside of the DW universe is more often used to describe a structure deceptively larger inside than out. While that's technically true of this this wiki it'd also apply to all wikis and Wikipedia.

I'll remove the disputed universe portion for now and then we can move forwards from there. --Tangerineduel 15:28, December 14, 2010 (UTC)