Talk:The Secret Lives of Monsters (short story)

Valid source?

Can somebody please advise of the difference between this page and The Secret Lives of Monsters (reference book). This page suggests that the book is a valid source, and I've noticed information from the book is being used on in-universe articles such as Wester Drumlins. The other page, however, suggests the book to be invalid and I've noticed other information from the book is used in the behind the scenes sections on pages such as Physics teacher (School Reunion). 66 Seconds ☎ 23:25, June 19, 2020 (UTC)

I think it's really quite straightforward. The Secret Lives of Monsters is a reference book which contains a narrative, in-universe portion — documented at "The Secret Lives of Monsters (short story)" — which is valid. However, material from the reference book that's not part of the short story isn't valid. This is the prose equivalent of how The History of the Doctor is valid, but The Ultimate Guide as a whole is not.

Of course, it may be that some pages on the Wiki misidentify which information comes from the short story, and which comes from other bits of the book. I don't know. The Wiki's not omniscient; mistakes can be made. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 23:31, June 19, 2020 (UTC)

Yes, what Scrooge MacDuck describes is accurate and was the reason I created this page. You can view most of the Cyberman chapter in the book via Amazon's Look Inside feature, to see how the book is split between the fictional story and separate Behind the scenes reference portions. As for in-universe information being in behind the scenes on some pages, the article for the separate story was only created fairly recently, so you will come across pages were stuff from the fictional portions were placed in behind the scenes from before a separate page existed.

As for the Physics teacher specifically, I believe if I remember right, I originally placed the name information in behind the scenes because there are so many different names for this lady. Two different names from the same website! The other two from two books by the same guy! Only in Doctor Who, eh? :P If you wanted, the info from TSLoM and The Time Lord Letters could be moved in the main text, since those are valid sources. I believe most "in-universe" websites have previously been deemed invalid sources except for the Martha Jones MySpace, so that would stay in behind the scenes. Not positive, though. Toqgers ☎ 02:03, June 20, 2020 (UTC)

Thank you both for the explanation. Just wanted to confirm before I started adding any info to the wiki, as the book isn't in the typical fictional prose format. 66 Seconds ☎ 23:47, June 20, 2020 (UTC)

Merge?

With the above discussion in mind, I propose that we merge this page with The Secret Lives of Monsters (reference book). Once merged, the fictional elements of each chapter of the book could be added as short stories under a "fiction" heading, similar to the layout of the wiki page for The Doctor: His Lives and Times; the two are both reference books in similar styles with similar layouts. Page titles for each chapter would, for example, include The Cybermen (TSLOM short story), The Daleks (TSLOM short story) and The Great Intelligence (TSLOM short story)- "TSLOM" being for both futureproofing and disambiguation purposes. 66 Seconds ☎ 22:46, June 22, 2020 (UTC)

Hard disagree. The Secret Lives of Monsters’s fiction is one single story in a way that the various short stories peppering up His Lives and Times are not. --Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 22:51, June 22, 2020 (UTC)