Tardis talk:Do not disrupt this wiki to prove a point

Don't open a discussion on a topic that has already occurred? Seriously?

"Don't waste other editors' time by opening up discussions that are materially the same as other, concluded discussions. You may open up discussions on matters that have already been decided only when you have arguments which have not formed a part of that discussion, or other, precedent discussions on the same topic."

How is a new user supposed to know the content of every concluded discussion that has occurred on this Wiki? I'm sure that even Admins aren't aware of every discussion that has occurred in the Forums or thousands of Talk pages. I think this is unrealistic and if it was posted as a disclaimer on your Forum Pages as a mandatory policy, plenty of people would either ignore it or decide that searching through 5 year old archives to see if anyone had ever asked a similar question is more hassle than it is worth. It is easier to just go some place else to find knowledgeable Doctor Who fans.

I think that you have to weigh your admins' love of structure, consistency, organizational purity against the fact that users, especially new users, will NOT read all of your policy pages before they decide they want to ask a question or make a contribution. There is a tiny percentage (I'm guessing 0.01%) who will seek out to read over all of the rules before they dare make a post or edit. But they are the exception, not the rule.

Of course if what you are striving for at the TARDIS Data Core is an elite clique of editors who have an encyclopedic knowledge of the site, its history and its policy, I think you have already reached that goal. But that is an awfully heavy burden on a few people (probably who think of themselves as martyrs). If you looking for more wide-spread contribution from enthusiastic Doctor Who fans, you are going to have to accept that most of the people coming to your site are casual visitors who do not have the inclination to read all of your policies and comb through the Forum archives.

In other words, loosen the heck up. Change your perspective from an uptight, Wiki enforcer to that of a curious, first-time visitor. Is your site welcoming? Perhaps you'd rather not have them mess up your second home, so all of the guard dogs are warranted. It has always been my understanding that a Wiki is owned by and a creation of all of its users, not just by the top 0.05% of users who spend most of their days and nights thinking of how they can improve the Wiki. 63.143.217.227^{talk to me} 20:45, April 12, 2013 (UTC)

You raise some interesting points, but this policy isn't really novel to this wiki. It's basically just an adaptation of WP:POINT. You ascribe a lot of negative intent to the administrative staff that isn't really justified, but it's good to receive criticism so that we can all re-examine our actions from time to time.

This policy would not likely be interpreted as you seem to allege. Imagine that user Stan starts a discussion about, I dunno, the use of exclamation points in January 2010. But the conversation doesn't go his way. So he opens up another conversation on the same subject in March of 2010, and then September and then February of 2011. This is disrupting the wiki. Same user continually bringing up the same subject.

But if Stan brings up the subject in January 2010 and new user Mary brings it up in June 2011, Mary hasn't violated this policy. In fact this policy doesn't apply at all to the genuine new user. This policy is all about stopping a single user continuing to talk about the same thing ad infinitum. That is a waste of administrative time.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  23:22: Sun 14 Apr 2013

Example

The example used doesn't actually make a lot of sense. Maybe this is just me being pedantic, but, as far as I'm aware, T:HONOURIFIC doesn't actually forbid us from using the name "Dr. Who" to refer to the Doctor if the source uses that name. Aquanafrahudy 📢 12:28, 8 October 2023 (UTC)

Certainly, but the example given is referring to Doctor Who Magazine as Dr. Who Magazine, and that would be very incorrect. I've clarified the language somewhat, but as I understand it (and this matches the spirit of Czech's reply to a different question immediately above), the spirit of the example is someone who, because they want to prove a point about how "Dr Who" isn't any more correct in the grand scheme of things than "Dr. Who" is, starts to systematicaly replace every "Dr Who" or "Doctor Who" with "Dr. Who" to rub it in. Scrooge MacDuck ⊕ 12:50, 8 October 2023 (UTC)