Forum:Speculation - What is and what isn't?

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Prefiguring conversation

See Forum:Hypothesis and speculation for the original conversation about this topic.

This conversation

Due to recent discussion in the Howling Halls, we need to discuss what counts as speculation, what is not speculation and maybe create a policy regarding speculation. The Howling Halls page current stand like this, but some User do not regard the sentence at the bottom as speculation. Putting the sentence on the Howling Halls page under a 'Behind the scenes' heading work? (see here). So what so we do as regards to speculation? Mini-mitch 18:43, January 31, 2010 (UTC)

What definately is not speculation is meanings not explicitly stated in the text or show such as meanings behind concepts or obvious things that are not directly stated as being the obvious. --Revan\Talk 21:29, January 31, 2011 (UTC)

Speculation is, quite simply, anything which isn't stated as a fact. However, in the example above, it's more of an analysis of the text, rather than pure speculation. I'd be fine with it in a behind the scenes section, but not on the main article, the main reason being the main section should be in-universe, and anything out of universe, like analysis of the script, should be in the behind the scenes section. --The Thirteenth Doctor 22:47, January 31, 2011 (UTC)

Well, in terms of reasonable, but clearly-stated, rules and regulations, Wikia doesn't have any finer example that Memory Alpha. Thus, I think one of the upshots of the "Howling Halls incident", for lack of a better term, should be the immediate adoption of the following policy, adapted from Memory Alpha's "Don't disrupt to prove a point" policy, itself largely adapted from Wikipedia policies:

Discussion is the lifeblood of a wiki. The give and take of discussion leads to better articles. Participants to discussions should endeavour to add new points each time they respond to a discussion, and all sides should seek ways to include some portion of others' views in the progress of the wiki.

That said, there are a few things discussion is not. It is not merely the opposition, or gainsaying, of another's point of view. Nor is it simply belabouring of the same points. Additionally, it should not involve the abuse of the rules of the wiki in pursuit of a point.

In other words, don't disrupt other editors just to have an argument or to prove a point. Several examples of this behavior follow.

Gaming the system

For further information, see Gaming the system.

Gaming the system means using our policies and guidelines in bad faith, to deliberately thwart the aims of the Doctor Who Wiki and the process of communal editorship. Gaming the system is subversive and, in some cases, a form of disruption. It usually involves improper use of (or appeal to) a policy, to purposefully derail or disrupt the Doctor Who Wiki's processes, to claim support for a viewpoint which clearly contradicts those policies, or to attack a genuinely policy-based stance.

Examples of gaming include (but are not limited to):

1. Wikilawyering
2. Playing policies against each other
3. Relying upon the letter of policy as a defense when breaking the spirit of policy
4. Mischaracterizing other editors' actions to make them seem unreasonable or improper
5. Selectively 'cherry picking' wording from a policy (or cherry picking one policy to apply such as verifiability but willfully ignoring others such as neutrality)
6. Attempting to force an untoward interpretation of policy, or impose one's own view of "standards to apply" rather than those of the community
7. False consensus
8. Stonewalling (willfully stalling discussion or preventing it moving forward)
9. "Borderlining" (habitually treading the edge of policy breach or engaging in low-grade policy breach to make it hard to actually prove misconduct)
10. Abuse of process

Gaming can sometimes overlap with policies and guidelines such as disruptive editing (including "disruption to illustrate a point"), incivility (including posting of repeated spurious "warnings"), personal attacks, and failure to assume good faith.

If there is no evidence of improper intent or there is a genuine mistake, it is not usually considered to be gaming. It may well be, however, if the action is deliberate, or it is clear there is no way they can reasonably claim to be unaware.

Refusal to "get the point"

In some cases, editors have perpetuated disputes by sticking to an allegation or viewpoint long after it has been discredited, repeating it almost without end, and refusing to acknowledge others' input or their own error. Often such editors are continuing to base future attacks and disruptive editing upon the erroneous statement to make a point.

The Doctor Who Wiki is based upon collaborative good faith editing and consensus. When a stance passes the point of reasonableness, and it becomes obvious that there is a willful refusal to "get the point" despite the clear statement of policy, and despite reasoned opinions and comments provided by experienced, independent editors, administrators or mediators, then refusal to get the point is no longer a reasonable stance or policy-compliant – it has become a disruptive pattern, being used to make or illustrate a point.

Note that it is the disruptive editing itself, not the mere holding of the opinion, that is the problem.

Hoaxes

On a related note, please do not attempt to put misinformation into the Doctor Who Wiki to test our ability to detect and remove it; this wastes everyone's time, including yours. See Do not create hoaxes.

As to the specific question of speculation, I've always favored these guidelines from Memory Alpha. None of them actually use the word speculation (or at least not prominently). Rather, if you follow them all, you'll tend to find that you aren't writing in a speculative way.

• define and describe
• nitpicks
• This little snippet of tolerance in valid resources, in which they state that the validity of a resource shall not be compromised because of:

"The archivist's [or editor's] assessment of the trustworthiness of the character who is the source of the resource (for example, [the charlatan] Harry Mudd), or the archivist's assessment of the overall accuracy of the information contained in the resource. (Note that archivists are free to describe the resource's data in the article as "Character X stated that..." if there is a desire to imply that the resource may not be entirely accurate; however, any further commentary on the perceived accuracy of a resource should be confined to the "Background" section rather than in the body of the article.)"

That ruling perfectly describes what was attempted at Howling Halls: Precise account of a character's statement about the topic, followed by a background (or what we call "behind the scenes") note.

Well, those are some ideas that hit me as of now. Enjoy :)
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

...and the background note was a fan guessing at what the meaning of 'escape' meant. In other words, a user added unsubstantiated information unprovable. It was, quite frankly, out-of-universe speculation. Again, to go beyond what the canon says in any way is to speculate. --Bold Clone 02:14, February 1, 2011 (UTC)

I found, looking at the Howling Halls article that the BtS note was somewhat lacking in a neutral point of view. We don't actually have a Neutral point of view policy.

I found the behind the scenes note is analysis rather than information.

When I first looked to the Howling Halls discussion it made me think of neutral point of view, something that's often tacked to Wikipedia articles, here's the Harry Potter Wiki:Neutral point of view policy as with Memory Alpha it's based on the Wikipedia policy, but has the benefit of being shorter.

Reading the behind the scenes note I found it wasn't neutral.

I agree that anything from behind the scenes, like script notes, commentaries, interviews or anything like that is a valid behind the scenes note. But the note on the Howling Halls article wasn't that.

It is analysis done by the user that tells the reader that it's could be a prison. Now if that's the case, why not present the information and allow the reader to draw their own conclusions based on the information presented.

We don't say for instance that the one individual is "evil" or not, the idea is to present information and for readers to read and interpret the information and if need be draw their own conclusions. So it is enough to say the script doesn't say anything and leave it at that, anything more is telling the readers something.

I think the we should look sooner or later adding the 'don't disrupt' policy (or maybe including within Editing/discusion policies). I'd also like to look around for some other less-polished examples than MemoryAlpha, on occasion less polished polices can foster a better/less imposing editing environment. We also don't want to become too over run with policies. --Tangerineduel / talk 12:14, February 1, 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure if your full meaning came through there, TD. It seems like you didn't quite finish your thoughts at the top of your post. In any event, pointing out the dictionary definition of a word in a script is not, in my view, speculation, nor does it display bias. It's simply saying, the script used this word, and according to a valid resource (the dictionary), that word means this. I'm not sure I see how it's speculation to define what words in the English language mean.

And BC, please stop using the word "fan" to describe me and my edits. I have a name, or at the very least a neutral title like "contributor" or "editor". You are not superior to me. By using the word "fan" you are suggesting that my contributions to an article are somehow less valuable than yours — that I am editing with a typicially "fannish" disregard for the strict letter of the text of a script. And that just shows a blatant disregard for my editing pattern on this wiki for the past three years. My wording does not advance some fanon position, because, honestly, no one in fandom cares about the Howling Halls. As we've long established in this argument, you can't disprove and I can't prove. Our positions are equally defensible. I honestly don't know why you keep taking these sly potshots at me, since I'm closer than anyone here to your position and I've actually agreed with you in the vote. I'm fine with the statement about prisons not being in the article as long as there's the statement about the script not giving greater definition to the term. What I'm not fine with is your continued maintenance that the original edit was "fanon", "speculation" or in any way inappropriate to this wiki. Or that your edit is "better" than mine. I'll compromise with you, sure — but I'm not a "fan" and you're not a professional who's "doing his job".
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

From the OEDO

Speculation: the forming of a theory or conjecture without firm evidence

Canon: a general law, rule, principle, or criterion by which something is judged

There was no definition for 'fanon'. Firm evidence, in my opinion include scrpited material, and to use it to come to a suitable conclusion e.g. escape - generally means to escape from prison. I am not trying to say that we are now to use the OEDO to find the meaning of every word, but that I researched Speculation and Canon, so we can have a clearly definition on what these words means, instead of having different User's view on what they mean, as I think we have had in the past Mini-mitch 19:17, February 1, 2011 (UTC)

@Czech: I am a fan. You are a fan. Your complaint is null and void. Is that clear? We are both editors of this wiki, and are equal. Stop overracting and trying to get me into trouble. Thank you. Again, to go beyond what the script says is speculation. To say that 'escape' implies 'prision' is true, but completely worthless because the script says nothing regarding it either way. To point out that 'escape' implies 'prision' is to begin to conjecture. --Bold Clone 20:50, February 2, 2011 (UTC)

The page shouldn't say prison, unless it was actually called a prison in an episode. Although a prison is one type of place that one can escape from it is not the only place. In The Stolen Earth Rose escaped from Pete's World, in The End of Time the Timelords escaped from the Time War. There are countless places that the Eternal Shade could have escaped from, so it is speculation to say that he escaped from prison.Icecreamdif 21:34, February 2, 2011 (UTC)

Beyond the Howling Halls

Let's draw a line under discussion of the Howling Halls and leave the specifics of all that to Talk:Howling Halls. What I think the point of this page should be is the discussion of the general nature of speculation. So let's look at some other examples to see if we can come up with any general guidelines.

• The Stolen Earth, the Doctor: "Someone tried to move the Earth before". Is it wrong to therefore say that the Doctor referenced the events of The Dalek Invasion of Earth? The script doesn't.
• The Fires of Pompeii, the Doctor: "Before you ask, that fire had nothing to do with me. Well maybe a little bit." Can we say he's referencing the events of The Romans? The script doesn't.
• Is there a problem with calling the song "Voodoo Child", "Voodoo Child"? Or for that matter, can we call most of the songs in category:songs from the real world by their real world names even though the script doesn't specifiy them?
• Can we identify familiar things by their visual appearance, even though the script doesn't specify them. Is, for example, the Doctor watching EastEnders at the beginning of Army of Ghosts, even though we don't hear or see the EE title sequence?
• Escape Velocity falls short of calling Babylon 5 a television series. So can we safely assume that it is, in fact, a television series, and that it's the one from the real world?

See, I just don't think we can say, "if it's not in the script/book", it doesn't count. Authors don't need to spoon feed us a lot of exposition for us to come to a reasonable conclusion of what they're talking about. Do they? Isn't there a place for the sly reference and the well-written background note?
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

Well, I can see your point--it's reasonable to draw some conclusions from the story, without the story itself being explicit. For example, when the Doctor claims he can regenerate 507 times, we can reach the conclusion that he was joking, based off of the entire situation, his tone of voice, and the fact that what he said contradicted 40+ years of continuty. However, I do think that there should be some sort of distinguishing line between "reasonable conclusions" and "mindless nitpicking". Mindless nickpicking (no offense to anyone involved) would be looking at the word 'escape' in the Howling Halls page and placing a speculatory interpretation of the Doctor's statement. Escape implies a prision, yes, but does that have to be placed on the page? Couldn't we leave it at 'we don't know what the Halls are' and let the individual reader reach their own conclusion without the conjectural sentence? (I'm well aware that one might call me a 'mindless nitpicker' by instigating this incident in the first place, but I would like to point out that I was removing mindless nitpicking material in the first place.) --Bold Clone 00:54, February 3, 2011 (UTC)

Follow-up: sly references are fine, Czech, but to say that 'escape implies prision' is too tenuous a leap for me. It still sounds like you the editor are trying to convince the reader of something that we just don't know of for sure. --Bold Clone 00:57, February 3, 2011 (UTC)

Well, we don't know for sure that the Doctor is kidding in Death of the Doctor. Why are you so willing to accept a reading of the line that's contrary to the denotation of the script in Death, but unwilling to accept the flat denotation of the script in L&M? Understand, I really have given up the ghost on the "prison" line. I don't even think it should be there anymore, which is why I voted with you. But I don't get your internal logic here. On the one hand you're saying we can't trust the common definition of words that are in the script; on the other, you're saying we should disregard the very clear statement of a script altogether. Are you saying it's a judgment call on a case-by-case basis?
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

To me, to say that the Doctor was kidding in Death of the Doctor is on the same line as to say The Howling Halls are a prison. Using the word may can make it sound like fanon, but it is not e.g The Howling may have been a prison...Mini-mitch\talk 17:00, February 4, 2011 (UTC)

You can tell the Doctor was joking by his tone of voice (It may not be in the script, but it's in continuity). Additionally, the statement contradicts virtually the entire history of the show. So...on the one hand, a very clear statement from a simgle episode in a spin-off TV show, and on the other hand, 40+ years of very clear statements from the 'parent' show. A casual, offhanded referance does not overthrow dozens of explanations. The prison...either it is a prision, or it isn't. If we don't know what the Halls are, then we need to say so and leave it at that, to avoid adding to the continuity. To say that the Doctor was joking about the regenerations is not to add to the canon, because the statement cannot be true in and of itself. It is a fact that Time Lords can only regenerate 12 times. The flippant statement by the Doctor is worthless by itself, unless it is repeatedly backed up. --Bold Clone 21:20, February 5, 2011 (UTC)

Well, no, canon is muddled on the issue of how many regenerations are possible. I'd put The War Games 10 up against The Deadly Assassin any day of the week. I myself prefer the second Doctor's "We can live forever, barring accidents" — especially given the Master's resurrection and obviously more-than-12th regeneration in Utopia. Come on now: canon is not as rock solid as you describe. The only truism is that Time Lords seem to have as many lives as the writer requires.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 

Did anyone read the title of the discussion? Why are you talking about Time Lords? But in reference to the real discussion, jumping to conclusions that are ridiculous is speculation as is interpretation of events.--Skittles the hog--Talk 18:46, February 6, 2011 (UTC)

Archivist's note

Moving this on to the archives. As the conversation died without any clear consensus, it's being tagged as a discussion without resolution.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍ 15:47:59 Sun 29 May 2011