Forum talk:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes/Major inconsistencies and retcons

Proposed deletion

As with Doctor Who 2009 Specials dating controversy, this is just an ill-focused, un-citable collection of things a particular editor or two wanted to throw together. It has no focus and therefore no potential end. As far as the article title is concerned, information from every episode ever made could appear on this page. What would be the point? And the stuff that's there now is frankly debatable anyway. Personally I don't think inconsistencies should be a particular focus of this wiki, but where they exist they should be on either a specific topic page (like binary vascular system) or a story page (like Spearhead from Space) A general page like this is something that can't be easily linked to — I honestly can't think of a sentence I could write which would naturally use this term —�nor is it something worth spending any more time editing. The wiki must deal in specific topics not broad generalities. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 01:16, February 6, 2010 (UTC)

It does cite the stories that are said to contradict / be inconsistent. I'm relatively sure I could find some sources that backed up some of these assertions (The Discontinuity Guide, the I, Who, About Time series of ref books and The Programme Guide would be useful in this).

I don't think inconsistencies should be the focus of this wiki, but I would rather have a researched article than several forum postings going on about these things. Some broad generalities can make for interesting articles, provided they've been researched. --Tangerineduel 12:13, February 13, 2010 (UTC)

I don't agree with deleting this page after all one of the many beauty's of this Wiki is that fans who don't understand parts of a doctor who story, can have there questions answered by ones who do. So I say we shouldn't delete this page. General MGD 109

Retcons is an important topic and deserves to be part of the Index File. I am not commenting on this page as presented or on it's contents but on the subject of retcon itself and it's possible subject matter. People use this wiki to further their knowledge of the Whoniverse and important or signigicant changes to established axioms, cannon, lore, or the Doctor's personal history/time line should be presented and clarified, particularly in relation to broadcasted TV stories. I can imagine a lot of pages' story notes or plot lines linking to a page where such issues are addressed and easier to reference than from the forums or another, particular, story's page. It is true that entries on a retcon page would need research and citations. For instance it mightn't be enough to simply link to somebody else contributed plotline but rather one should look into source materials and external mediums, or to multiple pages that are in concert . Being a fan of Doctor Who takes both suspension of disbelief and a grain of salt. If the Doctor says something of great import that is contradictory or retroactively changes the Whoniverse, and presents it as truth without indicating it is otherwise, then such things should be noted in a real world perspective and not dismissed as speculation or forum fodder; some items deserve more than a simple single entry smoothing over of Whoniversal possibility. A retcon page might take a lot of work and suffer a huge degree of scrutiny but it has it's place withing this wiki. --Stillnotginger 05:01, February 20, 2010 (UTC)

please don't delete this page because many people find it a place to list problems in the DW timeline

Well, this suggestion to delete was made before the consensus agreement to create Forum:Doctor Who television discontinuity and plot holes. In the light of that decision it would be consistent not to delete this page, but to move it to the Forum namespace. In fact, this page really should be incoporated as a part of the above-named forum page. That way, all the work that's been put into the article remains on the wiki, but it's moved to the centralized "hub" for discontinuity discussions.

Furthermore, moves to create similar pages have been deleted from the main article namespace. There's no logic to continuing to have this article in the main namespace. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:15, April 18, 2010 (UTC)

Alright so into the Howling this goes?

Or as a sub-page of TV discontinuity page? --Tangerineduel 17:22, April 18, 2010 (UTC)

Sub-page, I should think. Just to keep it all together. I'd argue that maybe it should even go at the top of that page somewhere, under a heading like "General discussion of television discontinuity". CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 03:37, April 19, 2010 (UTC)