User:Epsilon/Opening posts/Non-narrative fiction
For around the past decade-and-a-half, this Wiki has drawn a Line in the Sand about what fiction can be a valid source for writing in-universe articles, by essentially judging a given source — aka a piece of fiction — based on a set of essentially four pieces of critera. But for a small amount arbitrary of arbitrary reasons, non-narrative fiction has been on the Other Side of the Line in the Sand, as it is treated as an "invalid source".
To quote Douglas Adams, "This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
In this Forum thread, I have several aims:
- To document the history of the coverage of non-narrative fiction on this Wiki, to provide context towards the invalidity of an entire genre,
- To address the two "core" types of non-narrative fiction,
- To address coverage of non-diegetic references to the real world that can be present in some non-narrative fiction,
- Removing the distinction in our validity system between narrative and non-narrative ficton,
- And finally, what we need to do to validate this content.
History[[edit]]
As extensively documented by @Scrooge MacDuck in Thread:282038, which is now by-and-large lost barring parts I've been able to recover, the history of this Wiki's treatment of non-narrative fiction is frankly an absurd little saga. What @Scrooge MacDuck wrote is contained within the box below.
Are the Dalek Annulas "canon"?[[edit]]
It all begins around Christmas 2008, in a forum thread called Forum:Canonicity_of_Dalek_Annuals, which should tell you all it needs to know about how archaic this stuff is. It’s over a decade old, for God’s sake, and from a time when not only did we still use “canon”, but it seemed plausible that the Dalek Annuals as a whole might not be canonical!
Of course, the sentiment was widely in favour of the Annuals being made “canon”, and someone even mentioned that strictly speaking there isn’t a canon in Doctor Who, even if it took some time yet for the Wiki to listen to them. It is in the closing statement from (then-admin? if not, that thread never actually had a closing statement) User:Trak Nar — the closing statement of a thread that wasn’t actually about that — that we find the unilateral decision to make non-narrative fiction invalid. To their credit, Trak Nar doesn’t just mean to invalidate reference material and let non-narrative fiction slip past; they genuinely, actively want to invalidate the pieces of non-narrative fiction from the Dalek Annuals. Why?
Oh, while reading through The Dalek World annual, there were some things mentioned that could be added to the Dalek article, but I am hesitant to do so as the information is really stretching it in terms of believeability. For example, page 70, panel 1 says "Did you know, due to the lightness of the metal, a DALEK weighs only two an a half Earth pounds?" I can see the mutant itself weighing only a couple pounds, they are roughly the size of a house cat. But with the casing combined? In the same annual, it says that the casing contains over nine-thousand components and eleven miles of wiring. And then in Daleks in Manhattan, when the two workers are shown struggling to lift three panels from Dalek Thay's casing, that seems to contradict that. Though, one could also say that the light-weight materials was a property of older Dalek models. Either way, some of the information just seems silly.
Strange to Tell… According to the Daleks (which remains invalid to this day) does say these things, but it isn’t more or less “silly” or “contradictory” than a given story in the Dalek Annuals. This is after all the same series that gave us The Small Defender, where Earth is saved from a Dalek invasion by a mole. Yes, you read that right.
It is a dull idea of Doctor Who indeed to which one would arrive, if one excluded every story that seems “too silly to be true”. There is no evidence at all that Terry Nation and David Whitaker meant for the non-narrative sections to “count” less than the short stories and the comics.
The Technical Manual and circular reasoning[[edit]]
Three years later, in 2011, Forum:Canon_policy:_Items_on_which_policy_is_unclear informs us that in those days, the “canon policy” (what we now know as T:VS) is still unsure of what to do with original in-universe information from invalid sources.
The relevance of The Doctor Who Technical Manual, the in-universe history presented in part of The Terrestrial Index, The Doctor Who Monster Book and similar items and their suitability for use in creating and contributing to articles in the TARDIS Index File is unclear at this time, and up for discussion.
User:CzechOut answers — and closes the ‘debate’ with no further ado — by asserting that these publications “contain material which could potentially be used on in-universe articles, but probably shouldn't be”. Half of his argument makes sense, but falls under what we covered in Part 1 of this thread: it goes that some “reference books” like The Terrestrial Index are rather like this Wiki itself: summaries of information given in TV stories, plus theories from the author to glue them together. If the Wiki started reporting archivists’ theories from other encyclopedias, the whole Doctor Who universe would risk turning into Chinese whispers.
All these reference books are one step removed from the source material, the episodes themselves.
But CzechOut admits that this is only true of some non-narrative sources (the “reference books”). There are in fact non-narrative works which aren’t meant to be “reference material” for TV Who, but rather new works of fiction in their own right. CzechOut, with all due respect, makes oddly short work of these:
They contain information about, for example, the technical specs of K9 or the operation of the TARDIS, or details about the sonic screwdriver — a substantial amount of which has never been confirmed in any narrative. (…) But I can't see the rationale for including the Technical Manual's ideas of what makes the sonic screwdriver tick in the main body of sonic screwdriver. Primacy must be given to narrative works on in-universe pages.
Again CzechOut just flatly… asserts that primacy must be given to narrative works; that new in-universe information doesn’t “count” if it appears elsewhere than in the context of a story. He holds this to be self-evident, and so the whole thing turns into circular reasoning — in-universe info that doesn’t come from a story is invalidated because… it doesn’t come from a story.
Growing dogma[[edit]]
The saga continues in October 2011 with Forum:Brilliant Book 2011: a valid source?, where we see that the earlier, unilateral decision from CzechOut chafes with one of the highest-profile Doctor Who releases that year: the Brilliant Book 2011, which, on top of comic stories and prose stories, also contains snippets of non-narrative fictional information. On the basis of CzechOut’s earlier decision, now enshrined in policy, information not from a story is decided to not be valid, despite the common-sense sentiment from newbies that it ought to “be canon”. This isn’t justified or anything. And there’s even a question of whether stuff not from the increasingly-narrow category of “invalid sources” should even have pages, though thankfully the Wiki thought better of this eventually.
In December 2011, a grim epilogue: at Forum:The_original_inclusion_debates#REF, OS25 tries to initiate conversation on this still-controversial subject, but it never gets off the ground.
…And… that’s it. That’s, as near as I can tell, how “only stories are valid” became an established part of policy. One user complained that they don’t think Daleks should weigh half a pound because (Graham Chapman voice) that is much too silly; and three years later, another said that information that doesn’t come from stories is automatically suspect because it doesn’t come from stories, and that therefore, information that doesn’t come from stories is non-canon.
I don’t mean any insult towards any of the participants in those early conversations, but surely, in hindsight, we can all see that this isn’t exactly sensible policymaking behaviour. This isn’t a solid base on which to write the first of the four most important rules of this Wiki’s validity policies!
Now, I feel this fills in the blanks that @Najawin covered in his historical overview, due to a lot of it coming from the Long-Gone Forums. It was eventually discussed, but based around discussion of "discontinuity equalling non-canonicity", "this seems stupid so it's not canon", and lots and lots of circular logic without explanation or debate to back it up. It is sad about Thread:282038, which began as an inclusion debate for TARDIS Type 40 Instruction Manual but evolved into changing rule one entirely, as it had unaminous support and consensus to overturn this absurd outlawing of an entire genre, but @CzechOut put a pause on it until Fandom had finished migratating to the UCP, but this ended up deleting all of the Forums from time faster than Angel Bob, and @CzechOut never restored the Archives. RIP.
As pointed out by @Najawin on my talk page, there are still parts of this history that are missing: @Freethinker1of1 referenced a discussion at Tardis talk:Canon policy that doesn't seem to exist; @Tangerineduel referenced the idea that the FASA guides were made invalid because there was a suspicion that non-narrative fiction would have authors making things up in order to fill a page count; and the final being the actual synthesis of narrative primacy as opposed to it just being vaguely implied by T:CANON.
The Two Types of Non-Narrative Fiction[[edit]]
In my time Wikifying non-narrative fiction, I have found that it can be sorted into one of two types. Type A, as I will dub it, is non-narrative information told from an "in-universe" perspective, and Type B, non-narrative information told from an "out-of-universe" perspective.
Type A[[edit]]
Type A is your non-narrative fiction that is presented as in-universe documents, blueprints, schematics, posters, and what have you. These are pieces of fiction that are styled to look, well, like something that has been plucked out of the Doctor's universe and into our own; they often use unfiction, a type of fiction that attempts to convince its readers it is actually real.
This type of non-narrative fiction, I feel, is what we associate when "non-narrative fiction" is mentioned, and is what we want as a Bare Minimum to be a valid source at the end of this Thread.
Examples of this can include:
Type B[[edit]]
Type B... is a little more complicated. This your non-narrative fiction that is told from an out-of-universe perspective.
A given Type B source can (but not necessarily) be written essentially as a real world article, where its author contributes new fictional information from a real world perspective. But the core issue isn't truly perspective, as arguably all stories told from the Third Person perspective are being told from an out-of-universe perspective, but rather, how much does the real world bleed into it. Type Bs usually involves an author's pre-existing research, complete with citations and/or non-diegetic references to the real world.
So an article may give an overview of, let's say, the culture born on Skaro from the Kaleds. This would involve either citations, or a sentence/paragraph beginning with "As first seen in The Magician's Apprentice..." or something of that ilk. Non-narrative fiction like this, I ideally want to be a valid source, as citations/non-diegetic references aren't meant to be taken as part of the overall "fiction" being told by the source, it is meant to be an indicator to a reader for context.
Now, it should be clarified that we do have precedent of recognising non-diegetic references as such in valid sources. In many comic stories, there can be little "Editor's Note" boxes that may tell a reader that Ace died appeared in DWM 238-242, and there are examples of this in valid short stories such as The Fantastic, Fabulous Gallery of Characters That Nearly Made It Into Closing Time but Didn't for Some Reason, which does make non-diegetic references to Closing Time.
Now, I feel that these citations/non-diegetic references, as I've explained, should not be taken as cause for invalidity, but I can respect dissenting opinions on this matter. I feel, ultimately, some of these Type B sources can have biases, where the author talks about their thoughts or opinions on what they're documenting or if half way through the production history of the Dalek casing props is brought up. If a Type B source has these, then it should remain invalid. But if it unbiased and purely factual, contains only in-universe information, and just so happens to say that the Saxon Master first appeared in Utopia (although not necessarily), then the source should be valid.
Furthermore, it should be heavily clarified Type B does not necessarily have to have any refence to the real world; something like Strange to Tell... According to the Daleks fits into Type B, but it essentially just a comic strip that instead of telling a story presents new facts.
Examples of this include:
This following section is also written by @Scrooge MacDuck from Thread:282038. and I feel its inclusion can help clarify the distinction between "non-narrative fiction" and "non-fiction", of which is still evidently a large issue on the Wiki given the bizarre usage of {{non-fiction}} on non-narrative source pages.
Reference material vs. non-fiction: clarifying the difference[[edit]]
As I mentioned above, the only argument presented in those debates that doesn't flagrantly conflict with T:NPOV — the only argument that doesn't rely on "I personally feel that non-narrative sources are less important" — is the fear of Chinese whispers. The idea that reference books are, essentially, doing the same thing we do, and as a result, if we try to cover them, we're covering their coverage of existing valid stories, and it turns into an echo chamber.
So let's refute that, shall we?
There is an ongoing problem on this Wiki, reflected in another active thread, of conflating "non-narrative", "non-fiction", and "reference works", which are all very different concepts. When you look at something like Strange to Tell... According to the Daleks, it has basically nothing in common with something like AHistory. Strange to Tell is almost entirely a vessel for the reveal of new information about the DWU — it's doing something entirely different from AHistory, which is indeed a Wiki-adjacent sort of project, collecting and curating data from existing works.
(And, for that matter, AHistory, which tries to present a repository of in-universe information, is doing a rather different thing from, say, The Nth Doctor or Queers Dig Time Lords. It is as bizarre that we call all three of those "non-fiction reference books" as that we act like Strange to Tell is in any way the same thing as AHistory.)
My point is, it is very easy for anyone with a pair of eyes to tell the difference between a "reference work" (which compiles information about existing stories) from "non-narrative fiction" (whose purpose is to present new facts about the DWU, just as a story might). Even though it currently tags the latter to be invalid, the Wiki is already doing a pretty good job of telling these apart.
Incidentally, here's what the Oxford Learners' Dictionary has to say about "fiction":
1. A type of literature that describes imaginary people and events, not real ones.
2. A thing that is invented or imagined and is not true.
And here's how it defines "non-fiction":
Books, articles or texts about real facts, people and events.
Things like Inside a Skaro Saucer are, by any reasonable definition, fiction. They are certainly not "non-fiction", and to call them "reference works" is equally inaccurate.
The conclusion is inescapable: Rule 1, as currently formulated, ends up excluding a significant body of Doctor Who fiction.
When the Distinction of Whether Fiction is Narrative (or Not) Matters[[edit]]
So, when does something being narrative, or not, actually matter? I feel the crux of this question is whether or not it matters to a Not We or if there is a technical, Wiki-based reason for such as distinction. After all, virtually every other Wiki, such as Wookieepedia, does not make such a meaningless distinction. The only criteria that ever actually matters is: does this attempt to contribute to the DWU in any way?
I think the only time where specifying that something is non-narrative — although this terminology should be abanonded in favour of something like... "fact file", "infographic", or "article" as that actually clarifies what a given source actually is — is in the lead for a real world source page article, or in the behind the scenes section if such a distinction needs to be made (and we should also apply this to "narrative" sources too). We should not say "in the non-narrative feature Inside a Dalek" any more than we should say "in the narrative story A Bright White Crack".
I've more to say about this below.
Proposal[[edit]]
Ultimately, this proposal seeks to validate non-narrative fiction, both from in-universe and out-of-universe perspectives, and rework this Wiki's policies, general terminology, and categorisation. So ideally, all non-narrative fiction — both Type A and Type B — should be validated unless if real world information goes beyond a non-diegetic reference, which is only present in a small portion of non-narrative fiction. Of course, if non-narrative fiction fails any of the other rules in T:VS — such as not being intended to be set in the DWU, isn't fully licensed, etc, then it should remain invalid.
I'm not sure how this affects the validity of merchandise, as if narrativity is of non-concern, then the fictional bits of info on merch surely should be fair game? I hope so, but unfortunately I have a feeling our (regrettable) policies on trailers may have some impact here.
What We Need to do to Validate This Content[[edit]]
One of the first things that must be done is giving every non-narrative work of fiction the disambiguation term "(feature)". This is currently on some pages but not consistently, and in case if you are wondering, "feature" is a bit of terminology first used by the Doctor Who annuals to refer to everything that wasn't a story or game. However, this fits fiction pieces comparable in length to a short story. Calling a whole non-narrative book a feature seems misleading, and so we need to come up with a dab term for books of this type.
We may need to introduce a new prefix. Personally, I do not feel this is necessary and that PROSE is perfectly acceptable considering we use that prefix for pages with "(novel)" and "(short story)", however, if we must, I would feel FEATURE would be the best fit.
Tardis:Valid sources will need to be overhauled; first and foremost, rule one will need to be rewritten. For example...
| 1 | Only fiction counts. |
Any mention of narrativity deciding a source's validity should also be expunged, for the most part, from T:VS. Not even a column saying that non-narratives are valid sources, with a link to this discussion, absolutely not, as we don't apply that same standard to "stories". The ultimate point we need to make there is if something is fiction; the distinction of whether or not the fiction is narrative or not is meaningless.
The only other place where the distinction should be made is in categories. We should have a category such as Category:Dalek features to parallel Category:Dalek comic stories, Category:Dalek webcasts, etc, but the master categories, such as Category:Stories, should be merged into Category:Sources. The latter category was created by me as when I was Wikifying non-narrative fiction, as I needed a master category to place the smaller categories into and for obvious reasons Category:Stories wouldn't work.
