Talk:Tom Baker stars in John Lloyd's lost Doctor Who adventure, The Doomsday Contract (webcast)

Validity?

Big Finish's analysis of this webcast refers to it as a trailer 3 times. As the policy currently stands, T:VS states that trailers aren't valid sources. Furthermore, it's referred to as a promo in that article, and T:VS also states that commercials/advertisements can't be valid. Regardless of whether it had been referred to as a promo, it clearly is an advertisement. As a result, I struggle to understand why this is a valid source under current policy. Danochy ☎ 07:40, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

I created the article as valid as the YouTube upload itself did not refer to it as a trailer.

Epsilon📯 📂

08:05, 26 April 2021 (UTC)

Given the information provided by User:Danochy this is marked as invalid until/unless it can be proven otherwise. Shambala108 ☎ 00:23, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

Two things I, as an admin, have to state here:

1. It's far easier to change from invalid to valid, than the reverse. Therefore , if something is in doubt, it gets the invalid tag.
2. If an admin changes something, ASK FIRST instead of reverting. Admins aren't always right but do have far more experience with the rules than the majority of users here.

Shambala108 ☎ 00:43, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

As much as I like this little webcast and homage to Hitchhiker's, I'm unfortunately going to have to say I agree that Big Finish made it pretty clear this isn't set in the DWU in the above article. It even says this isn't really supposed to be something from the Doctor's Five Hundred Year Diary as in-universe, it's just "pure whimsy". Now the thing is this webcast was already considered valid, so a decent amount of pages relating to it and Doctor Who (N-Space) will have to be changed, at the very least relocating information to a BTS/Invalid section. Chubby Potato ☎ 01:00, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm unconvinced that this fails Rule 4 in other respects (I would not hesitate to describe many other DWU stories, and indeed, perhaps Doctor Who as a wohole, as "pure whimsy"; I don't think there's a contradiction here). However, yes, if this is an advertisement by authorial intent, it does by policy fail Rule 4 of T:VS on that basis, and should be marked as {{invalid}} as per T:BOUND.

The clean-up work of an invalidation is never fun, but yeah, I'd argue that it's pretty urgent here. In fact, @User:Shambala108, in your place I might have asked that the cleanup be done first, and removed the tag then; it's untidy that for a few days readers can find information on valid pages, click the link, and end up at an {{invalid}} page, IMO. But you have already added the tag and it'd be weird to temporarily remove it now even though the root-level issue is not in question.

Thus, @User:Epsilon the Eternal, @User:Chubby Potato, I strongly invite you to do this relocation work, and do it quickly. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 09:44, 27 April 2021 (UTC)

@User:Scrooge MacDuck, for the record, I have a real world job that is very busy this time of year. I don't have time to spend hours on this wiki. So I really doubt that you, or anyone else, "in [my] place", would have had the time to do all the cleanup work either. My changing the tag prevented more misuse, but unfortunately I just don't have the time to clean up after someone else's premature determination of validity. Shambala108 ☎ 02:32, 28 April 2021 (UTC)

Sorry if I caused offence — but I did not mean to imply that you should have done the cleanup work yourself. Rather, I suggested that you could have posted a note asking other users to begin the cleanup work, and then come back to remove the tag. Besides, 'twas just a thought; it's not like I think you did anything actively wrong.

That being said I'll note that "premature determination of validity" isn't really an accurate phrase. In the absence of the quotes provided by User:Danochy, or reason to suspect they might exist, it was correct to create this as valid — and the fact of the matter is that it's not a matter of these quotes not having been found yet. They didn't exist. Big Finish hadn't posted that article yet. You are correct that "if something is in doubt, it gets the {{invalid}} tag waiting for the necessary Forum thread"; but in this case there was no particular grounds for doubt. IMO, we cannot start treating every Big Finish release as invalid-by-default on the off-chance that an ambiguous Rule 4 quote will someday be released about it.

In point of fact, even if it does mean some cleanup work now (which users like User:LauraBatham have kindly begun to perform!), I'd say the due process here was exactly right. The story was covered as valid by default in the absence of any grounds to think otherwise; someone brought up quotes that could be interpreted as suggesting a Rule 4 break; the page was thus marked as provisionally invalid; it'll presumably get a Forum thread to discuss it at greater length once we have Forums again. As things should be. Scrooge MacDuck ☎ 10:03, 28 April 2021 (UTC)