Talk:Charity publication

Individual publications

Because these publications are not a legal part of the Doctor Who franchise, a forum decision was made to not cover these publications on this wiki. Therefore, no pages should be created for these stories/anthologies. Shambala108 ☎ 04:48, March 3, 2015 (UTC)

Anthology section expansion?

Should this page be expanded so that an infobox could be included for each anthology, listing all of the stories within. The infobox could also note which stories were later adapted into stories that are covered on this site, as well as which stories feature licensed uses of characters from the DWU. PoolsideJazz ☎ 20:13, October 23, 2020 (UTC)

Please read the comment above yours, but in short, we do not cover charity publications on this wiki. Shambala108 ☎ 20:25, October 23, 2020 (UTC)

The comment above talks about not making pages for these stories, which I totally understand, but (as these publications are already listed on the page) I think it would be good to create infoboxes with each of the stories from these publications. The infobox could include; who wrote it (only linking to writers with other work within the DWU) as well as any licensed characters used such as; Miranda Dawkins in Iris Explains, etc.

This information is already available on this site but you need to go looking for it. Collecting all the information here would be extremely helpful. PoolsideJazz ☎ 20:43, October 23, 2020 (UTC)

I also agree that while the Tardis Data Core doesn't cover the stories, there should be a *little bit* more information at least on this page about the stories. Epsilon (Contact me) 21:05, October 23, 2020 (UTC)

While it is nowhere near complete as I have just whipped it up now, I was thinking about something like this for each anthology;

Walking in Eternity

Title	Writer	Licensed Characters	Unlicensed Characters	Adapted into
In the Sixties	Paul Magrs	Dr Oho, Iris Wildthyme		In the Sixties
Pop Culture Reference	Scott Longmuir
Over Your Shoulder	Simon Exton
Wetware	Alex Steer
Changing Rooms (With No Doors)	Mark Michalowski
What Does it Profit A Man?	Arfie Mansfield
Hall of Me	Mike Collins
Satisfaction Guaranteed	Arnold Blumberg
Mercy	Kelly Hale
Dark Time	John Smith
The Wee Man	Iain Hepburn
Cracks in the Pavement	Robert Parker
Cracks in the Pavement	Dave Smith
Dr Who & The Zodiac Of Death	David Bishop
The Rainbow Man	Robert Smith
Analysis	Mark Clapham
Pulp of the Black Lotus	Simon Bucher-Jones
Eucatastrophe	Mags L. Halliday
Caught in Margate: The Itching	Matt Marshall
Cabinet of Changes	Philip Purser-Hallard	Iris, Sally, Canine, Magda	Eighth Doctor, Fitz Kreiner, Compassion, Anji Kapoor, Bernice Summerfield

PoolsideJazz ☎ 22:19, October 23, 2020 (UTC)

I'll need to have a think on whether to proceed with this, but note that the Walking in Eternity version of In the Sixties doesn't have Dr Oho — it has, well, "Dr Who". (What Doctor is sort of ambiguous. The illustration depicts him as the Cushing Doctor, but he's mentioned to be in exile on Earth and a TV show show host, implying he's the Season 6B Second Doctor from the post-War Games TV Comics.) Dr Oho is a stand-in for him in the commercial version, similar to how El Jefe fills in for the First Doctor on occasion. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 22:30, October 23, 2020 (UTC)

I like this idea. Information about charity anthologies is almost impossible to find on the internet, making it an obvious candidate for this wiki, and this idea lets us do that while still keeping all the information confined to one page. Not to mention how helpful it would be for our coverage of valid, in-universe characters and concepts who originated in invalid charity stories, such as Carmen Yeh or Last Contact. – N8 (☎/👁️) 01:58, October 24, 2020 (UTC)

While I like this idea, I'm not sure if it conforms with current policy (this is not to say I think it doesn't, I'm just noting that my interest for this idea comes with the caveat that this wiki doesn't correspond with my idealized version of it, as I'd also prefer us to better cover, for instance, fan culture during the wilderness years, as that's a topic that is woefully documented elsewhere, or any number of such Doctor Who marginalia that aren't compiled elsewhere). If this was to happen, the licensed/unlicensed split might be difficult to actually do without asking the author. Najawin ☎ 02:14, October 24, 2020 (UTC)

Personally, I think tables like these are a very good idea! However, I think that the table should only have three columns: "title", "writer", and "additional notes". In the Sixties is actually a great example for why this would be beneficial, because it would allow us to note (alongside all the other information that the above table already includes, albeit in sentence form) that the setting of In the Sixties was almost returned to in a deleted scene in The Blue Angel.[3] With this and other similar cases, the ways in which charity stories are significant to the official DWU cannot be easily articulated without a notes section. CoT ? 04:27, October 24, 2020 (UTC)

I think this suggestion improves the original proposal considerably. Here's a (extremely abbreviated) version of the example table for Walking in Eternity, adapted to User:CoT's suggested format (and with some additional notes!) to show off how versatile this format would be.

Title	Writer	Notes
In the Sixties	Paul Magrs	Features the licensed use of Iris Wildthyme. Later adapted into In the Sixties.
Pulp of the Black Lotus	Simon Bucher-Jones
Eucatastrophe	Mags L. Halliday
Cabinet of Changes	Philip Purser-Hallard	A sequel to The Blue Angel. Available on the author's website.[1] Notably annotated by Stuart Douglas.[2]
Man of Smoke and Dust	Sarah Hadley & Nick Campbell	Introduces Leutnant Johanna Adell, who would later appear as the Beauftragter in Hadley's A Star's View of Caroline.

– N8 (☎/👁️) 18:36, November 16, 2020 (UTC)

This definitely improves upon my suggestion. @ScroogeMacDuck have you had any more thought about introducing this sort of thing? PoolsideJazz ☎ 16:59, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Something like this has been implemented at The Brenda and Effie Mysteries. And I also have a sandbox covering a few publications. RadMatter ☎ 11:59, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

I too have a sandbox where I cover charity anthologies, but in the standard Tardis Wiki story page style.

Epsilon 📯 📂

12:02, 30 January 2021 (UTC)

Bafflement & Devotion: Iris at the Edges

Raising a discussion about the new Iris Wildthyme anthology from Obverse Books. This installment will include several stories from other charity publications;

• In the Sixties (from Walking in Eternity)
• Being an Extract from ‘The Amazing Adventures of Iris Wildthyme on Neptune’ (from Tales of the Solar System)
• An Unearthly Palaver (from the G’day for the Doctor convention)
• Entertaining Mr O (from Perfect Timing)
• It’s Raining Again (from Perfect Timing)
• Iris Explains (from Missing Pieces)
• A World Apart (from the Iris Wildthyme Pages website)
• No Place Like Home (from Shelf Life)
• Faking It (from the Iris Wildthyme Pages website)
• Iris Wildthyme and the Spiders from Magrs (from Walking In Eternity)
• Iris and the Outsider (from the Iris Wildthyme Pages website)
• Cabinet of Changes (from Walking In Eternity)
• Lost, Presumably Illogically Ignored (from an old FTP server)
• When Iris Met Billy (from A Second Target for Tommy)

This release will also include stories already covered by this wikia; Bafflement and Devotion, Hospitality and Deleted Scene from The Key Lime Pie 2 Time. I thought that I would raise the discussion on whether this anthology should be covered by this site - despite itself being a charity publication - before its release, if that's allowed, so that it didn't cause problems later down the line. Personally I think that this release should be covered by the site as it is an important part of Iris Wildthyme history. As most of these stories were released originally in charity publications some of them may include characters that they didn't have licensing for (Cabinet of Changes with the Doctor, for one) and these should be invalid. RadMatter ☎ 14:01, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

That is unfortunately not how any of this works.

Firstly, it's a bit of a toss-up whether T:SPOIL applies to things which the Wiki does not cover, but that is the only reason I'm not deleting the above post on sight. If we were going to cover this, even as invalid, then you could not give a table of contents like this, or indeed acknowledge the book's existence, earlier than its official release date.

Secondly, as documented at Tardis:Valid sources, the Wiki takes the view that charity publications inherently fail Rule 2 by virtue of not being commercial uses of whatever licenses the publishers might happen to possess. Some of the stories in this book, such as the ones which had previous been released on the defunct Iris Wildthyme Pages website, are worthy of coverage regardless, but we should not acknowledge their charity printing.

Thirdly, there is absolutely no precedent for stories being covered-as-invalid when they fail Rule 2 (except for Dimensions in Time, which is absolutely one-of-a-kind and should not be used as precedent for anything). Either we cover something or we do not — if any of the necessary DWU licenses are missing, then we kick it off the Wiki altogether.

I also invite you to go over T:NO FANFIC again as for this release being "an important part of Iris Wildthyme history". T:NO FANFIC is an arguably-arbitrary line-in-the-sand that the Wiki draws. Even things like Devious or Gene Genius, which most people in their right mind would consider of greater relevance to Doctor Who, and more "canonical", than, say, The Orbitus, can fail this rule, and if so, we are without mercy.

At an absolute stretch you could argue for the book to get a single overview page like the Audio Visuals, but that certainly wouldn't translate to individual {{invalid}} pages for the unlicensed stories. And even then, we don't have a page about Campaign despite it being a much more notorious charity-published footnote in the history of the DWU. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 14:15, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

I would personally want at least an overview page for this anthology, due to it's importance in the Iris Wildthyme series. Also, I would prefer greater coverage of charity publications, due to there not being much information about these books on the internet. It's in the interest of the readers, and we wouldn't have to cover the unlicenced stories anyway - and yes, I also believe that this Wiki should have pages for thins like Campaign, Gene Genius and Devious. One final thing: fan fiction is an extremely nebulous term, as it could be applied to even the 2005 revival of Doctor Who, so when the forums re-open, I would want to discuss how "fan fiction" is extremly vague.

Epsilon 📯 📂

14:24, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

By all means present a case in the forum to give Audio Visuals-style coverage to other unlicensed works. However, a cursory investigation of T:NO FANFIC will show that there is nothing ambiguous about our usage of the term. When we use the term "fanfiction" in policy matters, we are referring to works which revolve around licensed concepts to which they do not have the rights; to things, in other world, which fail Rule 2 of T:VS.

The wording of T:NO FANFIC acknowledges that licensed works can sometimes be called "fan works" or even "fan fiction", and that this is not what is being meant when we say T:NO FANFIC. It is, as you say, very easy to imagine Russell T Davies saying an interview that The Stolen Earth was "fanfiction that he somehow got away with broadcasting for real", or some other such thing; and that is neither here nor there for our validity rules.Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 14:36, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

The compromise position here seems to be the table-of-contents approach from the above "Anthology section expansion?" proposal. That way we can avoid creating an invalid page for the anthology, which would open a whole can of worms about where to draw the line between charity publications, fanzines, fanfic, etc; but the anthology can still be referenced in the "History" section of Iris Wildthyme (series), along with a pointer to this page for more information. – N8 (☎/👁️) 16:29, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

An amendment to this idea, proposed on Talk:The Brenda and Effie Mysteries (series), would be to only list the stories that are noteworthy (literally: those which deserve notes; those which have been mentioned in the BtS sections of in-universe articles). This would definitely make the page much shorter; I initially felt very strongly against it, since the lists of stories in charity anthologies are often very difficult to find and this would be good information for a wiki to compile, but it could always be relegated to one of the many other Dr Who wikis in the FANDOM network. – n8 (☎) 17:35, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Oh good gravy, most of the supplement Wikis are terrible. _{(Though not all!)} I think trying to keep as much info on this Wiki as possible is the best option.

Epsilon 📯 📂

17:41, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

I honestly see no need for this compromise. It is made very clear at T:NO FANFIC that we are not affiliated with the existing "Who Fanon Wikis" like DWExpanded, so we cannot officially rely on them to do a job we do not do, in the way we can rely on the Lockdown!, Legacy or Faction Paradox Wikis for some things which fall between the cracks of our T:VS, because those Wikis are our descendants, and remain our esteemed associates.

With this in mind: I actually came to this page to rule the following, discussion having largely wound down: that if an anthology has noteworthy contents — whether because some of the stories in it are by people we already have pages about, or because they have some sort of interesting tie to legal Who — we give it a whole table on this page.

However, under no circumstances are we to give individual charity anthologies pages. Even the "make more Audio Visuals-type pages" proposal I mentioned earlier was geared more towards things like Campaign or Gene Genius than charity anthologies for which this very page is already a satisfactory record.

Where applicable, interwiki links pointing to the Faction Paradox or Lockdown! Wikis can be added in the tables for stories which fail Tardis's T:VS, but not theirs (such as that Time Wrestlers thing). Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 17:47, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

I think this is the correct ruling, Scrooge.

The decision to remove stories from B&E pages that were not DWU-related (despite being contained within the same publication) confused me greatly as the pages for anthologies; Twelve Stories, Team Up, Resurrection Engines, etc, were all practicing mentioning each story that was contained within the publication even if some lacked DWU-related content. RadMatter ☎ 17:53, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Is my recent edit to this page acceptable under the new ruling? RadMatter ☎ 17:59, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

I must once again emphasise that a series page is an entirely different beast from an anthology page (and that Charity publication is yet another, unique thing; my ruling here applies to it and naught else). If nothing else, an anthology is a single physical release, so we can expect a collector of DWU works to own the thing in full whether they like it or not; so its non-DWU contents are immediately more relevant than other works in a series which includes both DWU and non-DWU stories.

At any rate — your edit has got the right spirit, but we should work on this thing's structure; there should probably be an introductory sentence explaining the nature of the anthology before the actual table, for example. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 18:00, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks Scrooge. Yes, a paragraph beforehand is needed - I have done something similar below for The Chronosmith Chronicles. RadMatter ☎ 18:03, 31 January 2021 (UTC)

Prose and audio placement

After scratching my head for a while about how to best arrange things on the page, I interspersed the charity novels and charity anthologies. RadMatter reverted it because it was an unexplained change, which is fair enough, so here are my reasons:

1. It's better for logical organizational purposes. For instance the "Seasons of War" series, which includes an anthology (Tales from a Time War) and a novel (Gallifrey). Right now those are separated into completely different sections with no clear connection between them, when in reality they're best understood as a single series. Similarly, Obverse's Cushing novelisations are best considered as part of their "Target for Tommy" series: quite literally, they're Target novelisations published to support Tommy Donbavand! But splitting by format means they're hidden in a different section entirely.
2. Another upside: it joins together releases which were prompted by a singular event. Like the Tommy books, Time's Champion and Shelf Life were each inspired by the passing of Craig Hinton. This connection becomes obvious when the releases are placed next to each other in chronological order, but disappears when they're separated into separate "Anthology" and "Novel" sections.
3. There are currently books that don't fit into any of the categories. For instance The Fescan Threat, which is neither a novel nor an anthology, but is currently orphaned in the "Anthology" section. Separating neatly into "prose" and "audio" would erase this confusion.
4. From a purely practical perspective, ===== headers are tiny. Tinier than regular article text, in fact! By merging together the "anthology"/"novel"/"novelisation" levels of organisation, the tiniest header becomes ====, which is far more readable.

Please let me know your thoughts. I'm hopeful that we can move back to the chronological arrangement sooner rather than later. – n8 (☎) 21:05, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree, though, I would suggest, following the format used at The Brenda and Effie Mysteries (series) (which I know is not uncontroversial, so I do expect this to generate discussion), we trim down the page a bit by removing reference to stories in anthologies that are not "notable", ie, do not have a link through licensed usage of characters or a writer who has a page already on this wiki, such as Before the Beginning etc. We can then change the header to read,

Because of this, a community decision was made to not cover these publications in full on this wiki, however, many of them still have ties to the DWU, such as contributions from people who have worked elsewhere in notable capacities, and occasionally act as tie-ins to fully licensed works, and so merit some documentation.

(Obviously feel free to quibble over the wording). Najawin ☎ 21:17, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Do not agree with Najawin, I think that this page is incomparable to the Brenda and Effie series. The Brenda and Effie releases which are omitted from that page have no connection to the DWU, however all of these releases are connected to the DWU (as all are intended for DW anthologies) even if only some have specific links.

Nate, you do make a good point with The Fescan Threat, but I would much prefer an entire new section to cover this release rather than using this anomaly to ammend the rest. In my opinion the novels and novelisations are completely lost when among the anthologies, and separating the releases make them far easier to find.

In regards to the ==== heading, this heading would still be on the page whether the anthologies / novels were all together or not. ===== was added to separate the releases, which I do agree is quite small, however if we removed the headings for a series of releases then we are back to four ='s only. For example; we currently have Perfect Timing as the heading for Perfect Timing and Perfect Timing 2 - but I do not think that the extra Perfect Timing is necessary, these releases could simply be listed after each other and it would be understood that they are connected due to their titles. RadMatter ☎ 22:15, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

RadMatter, you've ignored my strongest arguments (1 and 2)! I don't think the novels and novelisations were lost on my version of the page, since by design I'd separated the novels and novelisations into their own sections. And each novel was clearly visible in the Table of Contents, which wasn't the case in the former formatting version. (I'll note also that if we follow Najawin's proposal, the ease of reading and the prominence of the novels would be even better!)

I'm not sure what you mean about heading styles; as I said in my original comment, I have no problem with ====. And I disagree strongly about series headers being unnecessary: while Perfect Timing and Perfect Timing 2 may be obviously connected, the connections between Tales from a Time War and Gallifrey or A Target for Tommy and the Cushing novelisations are far, far less obvious, especially when separated by so many other releases.

Najawin, that's really a completely separate topic, and I'm of two minds about it. On one hand it would certainly shorten the page, which is hurtling its way up Special:LongPages at alarming speed; and frankly I'll take any excuse to not include all 270+ drabbles in A Time Lord for Change. (Maybe we can all just agree to leave that one a permanent stub. Dear lord.) But I'm also hesitant for a few reasons. Firstly, including every story is futureproofing: just because a story isn't recognised as notable now doesn't mean it won't be in the future. Secondly, for many of these anthologies, this page is the only complete table of content on the internet - several of the story lists I've added have been manually transcribed from my copy of the book. Sunk cost fallacy aside, it still seems wrong to delete 90% of the stories in each list. A compromise position would be to just move the full lists elsewhere; personally I don't like relying on other wikis due to the relative likeliness of negligence and permanent vandalism, but maybe there'd be some way to store the information at Tardis Data Core without actually giving the books their own pages? Charity publication/A Time Lord for Change, perhaps? – n8 (☎) 22:42, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

I did think about that, and my view was that the edit history will always have the completed ToC etc. Obviously this is not easily searchable for someone, but it's not like we're just deleting the information, it's still there, and you can direct someone to an old version of the page if you want. But a lot of my concern here is that in the last week we've added 21k bytes, or something like a third of the current page. Obviously at a certain point we're going to approach asymptotic growth, but we're not there yet. Najawin ☎ 23:01, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree it's a problem, and considering that the release rate of charity anthologies has picked up a bit in the last few years, I'm not sure there'll ever be a limit. Hell, when I was putting together Unbound, my plan was for the print edition to be limited in length but for the ebook to include every submitted story or pitch. That part of the plan didn't come together - fortunately, for the wiki's purposes, given how many pitches I received! - but I can't count out the possibility that someone else will take up the idea one day.

You're technically correct about the edit histories, but it's an unsatisfying solution to the problem for about a hundred reasons, all of which you already know. Given that this wiki is for the not we, it seems a tad bit unreasonable to ask someone to learn how edit histories work just to find the table of contents for Shelf Life. – n8 (☎) 23:59, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

To clarify, my comment re:edit histories was more that I'm not entirely sure this wiki should be the place where we list the table of contents for Shelf Life. (At least, not under current policy. I would love if it was, my personal view of the ideal form of the wiki is substantially larger and more engaged with fan culture/history than it currently is. [If this is confusing to a reader, think of the distinction between legal and moral.]) Having these ToCs in full form in an edit history that could then be linked to other people, say, through a Sandbox or a reddit thread, or a Tumblr post seems to me to be reasonable. Maybe I'm wrong, but it just feels outside the scope of the wiki's current policy. Najawin ☎ 08:40, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

We have pages for fanzines, so I would support each anthology being given a page of its own. Obviously the pages would need to state why these individual stories do not qualify for pages of their own. RadMatter ☎ 11:27, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree with you both, in Najawin's vision of the wiki's ideal form, and RadMatter's suggestion. The best analogy to Category:Fanzines, which contains pages for fanzine series rather than individual issues, would be a page for each book or series of books: Perfect Timing would cover Perfect Timing and Perfect Timing 2, whereas Shelf Life would just have Shelf Life, since it was the only release in the Shelf Life series. I support this proposal wholeheartedly, but it would probably merit a full forum discussion. In the meantime, RedMatter would you be okay with me merging the novel and anthology sections again, in the knowledge that it's a temporary compromise? – n8 (☎) 18:59, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes. RadMatter ☎ 19:14, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

I would like to remind everyone of my earlier ruling (a.k.a. the current policy on this issue). We do not give the full ToCs of every charity publication. We give the full ToCs of anthologies with "noteworthy contents" — “whether because some of the stories in it are by people we already have pages about, or because they have some sort of interesting tie to legal Who”. Charity anthologies that don't have such links to legal Whodom can be listed by name, but they should not be awarded full tables.

I think this limits the page down to manageable levels without having to retreat to this complicated "Edit history" business, at least for the present. By the time the page grows too long again just from that, I'll expect we'll have held the thread I've been pondering, proposing to have a few more overview ages along the lines of Audio Visuals for unlicensed series with direct ties to official Who and/or lengthy coverage in valid REF sources. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 19:23, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Note re. Time Scope

Just noting for future reference incase it should become decided that it would also be considered notable to mention on this page, that Time Scope does also feature brief interviews with some cast and crew as well as pieces of fiction. Additionally, there is a story between Dave Ladkin's Note To Self and Blair Mowat's Words for the Overture that is missing. I had left the space for it blank as I cannot add it myself (being the author of said piece) but since someone has understandably removed what would've looked like an error - I suppose it's worth noting here incase anyone wants to complete that at some point. JDPManjoume ☎ 23:03, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Notes section

I do not wish to edit war, so after my third revision I have taken this discussion to the talkpage (another user is onto their fourth revision by now but it is not my place to call them out).

The releases covered on these pages are not just invalid, but they aren't even eligible for coverage on this site aside from this page. Here we note necessary licensed information, so not plot summaries like the following example; "The "Katy Manning" Iris takes Sooty, Sweep, and Matthew Corbett to the beach while Panda and Soo take Iris' bus and have a date in Paris." The majority of that information is irrelevant. We do not cover these stories, we do not care about the appearance of Sooty or Sweep as they have no DWU connections. RadMatter ☎ 09:43, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Nowhere do I recall that the information has to be licensed to be added - I do believe it is relevent information that is to be added - and seeing as the the entire story is framed as an episode of The Sooty Show, I very much believe that it's relevent.

And mentioning this is quite useful. Imagine that years down the line, you recall a crossover between Iris Wildthmye and The Sooty Show - you come to the Wiki, expecting information about it to be documented, but you can't find it because somebody didn't believe that it should be acknowledged becuase "its unlicensed".

Epsilon📯 📂

09:48, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

You shouldn't expect story information to be documented when these stories themselves are not eligible for coverage on this site. RadMatter ☎ 09:51, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

I should, seeing as this is the only place on the internet that actually documents this information, and like I have already mentioned, is relevent and useful for the not wes who peruse this Wiki for story info.

Epsilon📯 📂

09:57, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if this is the only place on the internet that this information can be found - it isn't allowed here either. That has already been ruled by @Scrooge above. Each individual publication is allowed a full ToC if “some of the stories in it are by people we already have pages about, or because they have some sort of interesting tie to legal Who”. Those are the only circumstances as to where these releases even get a ToC. RadMatter ☎ 10:01, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

However, with The Fox Files and Gadget Goes to Launch, it is not immediately obvious that these stories have DWU connections - unlike most charity anthologies, The Curse of Fanfic! is not "Doctor Who charity anthology", but a general charity anthology with some stories that have DWU elements. Therefore, if the elements in The Fox Files and Gadget Goes to Launch are not noted, then the readers will be scratching their heads why these stories are even in the Wikitable.

As for Its Raining Gin, it is worth mentioning the Soooty Show elements as they are integral to the story, and let me reiterate, is unhelpful to the readers looking for "that one story were Panda was the father of Soo's child".

Epsilon📯 📂

10:06, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

It is "immediately obvious" that The Fox Files and Gadget Goes to Launch have DWU connections as the opening paragraph states "and included 26 stories, three of which were crossovers with the Doctor Who universe". If these two releases have no other notable legal information regarding the DWU then the notes section can remain blank (like the hundreds of other blank entries).

As for Its Raining Gin what is integral to the story doesn't matter... we do not cover these stories. All we are interested about is legal connections to the DWU, or other necessary information like republications. RadMatter ☎ 10:15, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

I disagree with you reagrding The Fox Files and Gadget Goes to Launch.

Also, let's take another look at @Scrooge MacDuck's words, shall we?

“whether because some of the stories in it are by people we already have pages about, or because they have some sort of interesting tie to legal Who”@Scrooge MacDuck

"Interesting tie to legal Who". Why, The Sooty Show elements do in fact have interesting ties to Doctor Who, or rather Iris Wildthyme - Panda is literally the father of Scampi, a recurring character in The Sooty Show. Additionally, another way it's an "interesting tie", is that is a crossover between Iris Wildthyme and The Sooty Show, as within the narrative, Iris and Panda are tantamount to guest stars. Scrooge specified that they must have an interesting tie, but didn't sepcify that it had to be a legal connection.

Epsilon📯 📂

10:23, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

The legal ties in Its Raining Gin are the appearances of Iris Wildthyme, Panda and the Celestial Omnibus. That is all that needs to be stated. The plot summary and references to the Sooty Show are not relevant. RadMatter ☎ 10:32, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Did you read my reply?

Epsilon📯 📂

10:34, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

The reply that was just restating points that you have already made? Yes. RadMatter ☎ 10:36, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Not quite - you see, I believe @Scrooge MacDuck's word have some room for interpretation, and that they, at least to some degree, back me up. Hence why I quoted him.

Epsilon📯 📂

10:41, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

I already quoted that comment, and believe that you have completely misinterpreted the comment. RadMatter ☎ 10:45, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

I completely disagree, and I would like to see Scrooge's opinion on the matter seeing as we're going around in circles.

Epsilon📯 📂

10:48, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Hmm. Well, User:RadMatter is correct in the basic principle that we have no mandate to give information about these stories even if it is relevant to the stories themselves, so long as it's not very relevant to the official DWU.

In this particular case, though, I do see the sense of having some way to highlight what stories in a non-DWU-focused charity anthology use DWU concepts. However, those notes shouldn't be a summary of the plot, just something along the lines of "Features X, Y and Z, being one of the few DWU-related stories in this book". Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 11:24, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm following this debate closely, and RadMatter, I think you might be misinterpreting your quote of that comment. You seem to be interpreting it as "interesting legal ties to Who", which would indeed mean we only write about stories which feature licensed use of DWU characters or concepts. But what he actually said was "interesting ties to legal Who", namely, interesting ties to licensed stories that we do cover. So the fact that Forgotten Lives features the Morbius Doctors is interesting and ties it to the legal Who story The Brain of Morbius means that we can mention it on those stories. – n8 (☎) 15:45, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Well… Sorta, if I may detail the intended meaning of my own words. What might constitute an "interesting tie to legal Who" in a charity story would be something like an author of official stories writing the charity story, especially if they use this medium to weigh in on a point of continuity. A charity story where a Faction Paradox author explicitly treated the Master as the War King, for example — that would be "interesting" regardless of whether this story was written with any license whatsoever. (The other and perhaps more important kind of "tie to legal Who", albeit less common, is if a later and commercially-released story references the charity story in some form.)

It sort of goes without saying that in a very literal sense, any Who fanfic is going to have "ties" to a legal Who story or other. "This unofficial DWU story has [X DWU character] in it" isn't really a world-class scoop. A story having an obscure or "important-to-continuity" character might qualify under some circumstances, though; Lance Parkin writing about Patience or Marc Platt writing about Rassilon, those are things we would definitely want to take a closer look at regardless of licenses.

I'm honestly not sure whether the Morbius Doctors appearing counts by that standard. The Notes can definitely highlight how Lance Parkin's Forgotten Lives story might tie into his earlier official Morbius Doc material in Cold Fusion — but is the sheer fact that the other charity stories feature specific other Morbius Docs? I dunno. We can probably get away with just spelling out "each of these stories features a Morbius Doctor" in the intro to that section, without confusing the matter of what the Notes are for. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 15:53, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

The fact that the Morbius Doctors appear in a charity publication entirely based around them... is not interesting or notable. As @Scrooge stated, and I left alone in my revisions, the publication's intro line of "each of these stories features a Morbius Doctor" is enough (and mention about Lance Parkin's use of the Doctor from his previous story of course).

Why would we note the Morbius Doctor's appearances when we don't mention the likes of Jackie Tyler appearing in Paul Magrs's Meal on Wheels? Look at the notes for Iris Explains, we mention Miranda's appearance as this is a notable licensed appearance but we do not mention the Eighth Doctor's appearance.

Right now, looking through the entire page you can easily spot the individual stories that have licensed links to the DWU. If we start changing that up to mention the appearance unlicensed characters made in each story or God forbid planets from the real world (as had previously been added onto the Tales of the Solar System) we lose that completely and start straying into the territory of promoting fan fiction over legally licensed appearance. RadMatter ☎ 16:25, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Aye. Though again — I think the fact that a given character is licensed is not the only possible point of relevance. Although there are more nuances, it ultimately boils down to: "does the use of Concept X in this charity story by Author X shine any new light on the official works of Author X?".

This doesn't only happen when Concept X is used under license (if Lawrence Miles writes a charity story about the Daleks' role in the War in Heaven, then that is highly noterworthy even though the Daleks' own presence wouldn't be licensed!), although the reverse is true; Concept X being used under license always makes it noterworthy, insofar as it adds to the authorially-intended history of Concept X as defined by the concept's creator/owner. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 16:47, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

All that being considered, I don't understand why The Sooty Show should be in the notes of It's Raining Gin? These are not licensed appearances nor are notable in the instance that you have just described. The notes for It's Raining Gin should only be "Features Iris, Panda and the Celestial Omnibus" (as I originally changed it to). RadMatter ☎ 16:54, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Likewise, the notes for The Fox Files and Gadget Goes to Launch" are "UNIT, the Brigadier, and Zygons are mentioned" and "Inspector Gadget, Penny and Brain face off against the Cybermen" respectively. Neither of these stories have licensed appearances, and neither are notable in the instance that you have just described. These entries should be blank. RadMatter ☎ 16:58, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Ah — well, that's the other and really quite unrelated problem of how to mark out, in non-DWU-focused charity anthologies, the stories with some (unlicensed) DWU connection, to distinguish them from the plainly non-DW-related ones. I think it is right that in these "mixed" anthologies, we should have some means of telling our readers which stories have some DWU tie-in and which are just completely irrelevant. But maybe the Notes aren't the right way to do that. I dunno. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 17:03, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Completely irrelevant stories aren't listed at all. It seems reasonable to me to list the ways that relevant stories in such anthologies are Doctor Who related, especially if it's as easily missable as mentions of UNIT and Zygons. Likewise, when an anthology is tied together by a DWU-related theme, I don't think it's unreasonable to briefly list which stories correspond to which element (eg incarnation or DWU planet). A criterion so strict as to exclude these would make me regret wasting time on this page in the first place. But I'm not going to try arguing about it until the forums are open and we can revisit RadMatter's proposal of separate pages like Category:Fanzines. – n8 (☎) 17:19, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

It was obvious that this page would end up being used for backdoor coverage. RadMatter ☎ 19:55, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

That should not be so. As concerns this specific issue, I think the solution must be that for "mixed" anthologies that contain both DWU-based and non-DWU-based stories, we only list the DWU ones. That way, there's no need for notes; the intro of the section can mention that there are non-DWU-based stories, but by definition the only ones listed in the table will be ones with DWU elements. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 19:58, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

That's what's been done on the page from the start. – n8 (☎) 21:33, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

I would like to see the policies from this page in bold writing to be honest. Because I think that Scrooge isn't totally understanding my current issues with what people are adding, as he has stated something that nobody has a problem with and has been accepted since the start. RadMatter ☎ 21:38, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Ugh, sorry, and thanks for the brutal honesty.

What I was trying to get across was: the only good argument for including "This story has Inspector Gadget meeting the Cybermen" in the notes of one of the not-just-DWU anthologies was that it highlighted which stories were DWU-related and which were not. However, this argument falls apart because it is sufficient that we start out with only DWU-related stories getting entries (which, yes, is already the current practice). Therefore we do not need to comprise the clear-cut policy on the subject of what the "Notes" are for by starting to include such 'notes' as "This story has Cybermen in it". Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 21:42, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

I don't know if I am being slow, but I am still not entirely sure what you are saying here?

Is the "This story has Inspector Gadget meeting the Cybermen", and suchlike, note acceptable or not? RadMatter ☎ 21:58, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

It is not. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 22:04, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Oh good, thank you.

I shall make the changes again. RadMatter ☎ 22:05, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Speed issues

Is anyone having speed issues with this page? Perhaps it is due to the article's length? DrWHOCorrieFan ☎ 21:56, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

I haven't encountered it on this page yet, but I wouldn't be surprised – there's often significant lag for me on The Master and even War in Heaven, and while Charity publication isn't that long (yet), it's still pretty far up there on Special:LongPages. – n8 (☎) 22:07, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

I got significant lag when editing it just now. Not when loading it. Najawin ☎ 22:08, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

What are you calling "significant lag"? I get multiple seconds' lag when trying to edit, in much the way I do other LongPages, but that doesn't strike me as anything to really worry about. Are you getting something worse than that? Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 22:15, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, it's similar to other long pages. Enough that it effects the flow of editing, you can't buffer inputs, trying to do so will cause the wrong things to be typed in the wrong places. Not the end of the world by any stretch of the imagination. Najawin ☎ 22:30, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Yes – that "phantom cursor" thing where it hangs in space and then types in the wrong spot just drives me nuts. – n8 (☎) 22:32, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Would it be possible to make these tables collapsible? Perhaps that wouldn't do anything, but my impression of wikia is that it might. CoT ? 00:55, 16 December 2022 (UTC)