User:Cousin Ettolrhc/Sandbox/Timeline rules

Please feel free to edit these timeline pages to improve accuracy, but please contact me on my talk page if you wish to make stylistic changes. Cousin Ettolrahc ☎

Defining "era"s

As the goal of this timeline system is to use subpages, this means that varoius sections must be separated more definitively. For this reason, there must be certain rules for when one era ends and another begins, and what should have a subpage and not.

Eras should generally be defined by the real world series they are published in, as an acronynm.

For example, "EDA" refers to the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures and "MR" to the "Main Range". It should be noted that series like The Seventh Doctor Adventures, which star Doctors 5-8, should use the acronym "7DA", not "SDA".

Titan Publishing Group comic series should be subpaged as "Titan", not that particular series's name. This also applies to "New Doctors" (post-2005), or any Doctor before the Fifth, Big Finish Productions series, which should be subpaged as "BF" rather than, for example, "10DA". The reason this is different from Doctors 5-8 is because they also had their Main Range series, before their boxset releases, and these may have drastically different timeline placements.

Short Trips and other such stories which are not published as part of a particular series-as-era. For details, see #Citing sources outside of the normal series for an era

It should be noted that although a subpage may be called "MR", it can contain content not from the main range, or even audio content. Where an era actually "begins" and "ends" is aproximate at best.

Citing sources outside of the normal series for an era

Sources from ranges like the Short Trips series where placement is not collected to a particular "era" can be placed in segements pertaining to other ranges, although they must be noted as "- part of Short Trips series" (or whichever series it is from) and a short note establishing why it fits there, including a disclaimer to how this placement may not be accurate.This is required (any story without a reason given for its placement, or a citation, should be removed or placed in the "unplaced" section, potentially still within its era if evidence suffices for that) A citation is heavily prefered over in-text analysis.

Don't duplicate timelines

For many characters - especially companions] - their timeline, or a part of it, is the same as another character. Duplicating this information is bad because if it is found to be inaccurate, it needs to be edited twice. In general, place the actual timeline content on the character with more overall appearances - for example, a Doctor over a companion - and then simply link to that page in the relevant part of the other character's page.