User talk:BelcherMorganJames

Welcome to the BelcherMorganJames

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Thanks for your edits! We hope you'll keep on editing with us. This is a great time to have joined us, because now you can play the Game of Rassilon with us and win cool stuff! Well, okay, badges. That have no monetary value. And that largely only you can see. But still: they're cool!

We've got a couple of important quirks for a Wikia wiki, so let's get them out of the way first.
British English, please
We generally use British English round these parts, so if you're American, please be sure you set your spell checker to BrEng, and take a gander at our spelling cheat card.
Spoilers aren't cool
We have a strict definition of "spoiler" that you may find a bit unusual. Basically, a spoiler, to us, is anything that comes from a story which has not been released yet. So, even if you've got some info from a BBC press release or official trailer, it basically can't be referenced here. In other words, you gotta wait until the episode has finished its premiere broadcast to start editing about its contents. Please check the spoiler policy for more details.
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Aside from those two things, we also have some pages that you should probably read when you get a chance, like:

• the listing of all our help, policy and guideline pages
• our Manual of Style
• our image use policy
• our user page policy
• a list of people whose job it is to help you

If you're brand new to wiki editing — and we all were, once! —  you probably want to check out these tutorials at Wikipedia, the world's largest wiki:

• How to edit a page
• Editing, policy, conduct, and structure tutorial
• Picture tutorial

Remember that you should always sign your comments on talk and vote pages using four tildes like this:

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Thanks for becoming a member of the TARDIS crew! If you have any questions, see the Help pages, add a question to one of the Forums or ask on my talk page. Josiah Rowe ☎ 15:12, January 3, 2018 (UTC)

Spoilers

Please, acquaint yourself with Tardis:Spoiler policy. We define spoilers differently from the everyday usage of the word. Your latest edits offended this policy in two ways: first of all, no images from unreleased stories are allowed. Hence, series pages where spoilers are allowed in text cannot contain any such images because there is no way, technically speaking, to introduce these images within the page only. Secondly, your edit summary provided information that related to something from the unreleased episode. Edit summaries are present in multiple places including "recent edits" list. They are not confined to the series page either. Please make sure you comply with the spoiler policy in the future. It is one of the most often violated and most diligently enforced policies of the wiki. There is no reason for you to risk a block because of that. Amorkuz ☎ 09:14, February 21, 2018 (UTC)

Images

A spot check of images uploaded by you and then deleted by admin showed that (as is very common during the first 100 edits) the images violated several of our image policies. Please acquaint yourself with Thread:148148 to avoid this in the future. As for other edits, If you point to a particular one, I could try to explain why it was reverted. In general, the right place to ask admin is not Discussions (most admin do not check there as we have a separate mod for that), but at the talk page of one of Tardis:Administrators. Amorkuz ☎ 22:21, March 9, 2018 (UTC)

Deleted page

Actually, I think I can see which deleted page you mean. Generally, I would recommend you to read the edit summary for the deletion, left by the deleting admin. It usually provides an idea of the reason as well as points to a specific admin to ask. In this case, the page "Bow Ship" was deleted because there is already a page for these Time Lord spacecraft at Bowship. Please feel free to improve it if some of your points are missing there. Amorkuz ☎ 12:15, March 10, 2018 (UTC)

Page moves

Hi, please note that per Thread:128198 only admins are permitted to move pages on this wiki. Shambala108 ☎ 12:11, April 10, 2018 (UTC)

Cast lists

I’m glad you showed interest in those. However, before continuing editing them, please familiarise yourself with Tardis:Cast lists, Tardis:Cast and crew lists and T:CREW. Thank you. Amorkuz ☎ 15:39, April 17, 2018 (UTC)

Cliffhanger lists

You are right that we don't have all the audio cliffhangers. This is something we can work on. However, it is hardly problematic to have them all on one page. After all the List of televised cliffhangers contains cliffhangers for all TV shows since 1963 and works without any problems. That page is 818 lines, which is smaller than 1191 lines of Eleventh Doctor or 1268 lines of Tenth Doctor. If the pages in question become significantly longer, say, more than 10k lines, we may return to this question. But for now there is nothing that would prevent these pages from efficient functioning. Especially given that they get natural subsections, making navigation easy through contents. Amorkuz ☎ 19:35, April 22, 2018 (UTC)

Formatting tip

Hey, I noticed you have an interest in adding to the "continuity" section of stories. I'm dropping by to leave a formatting tip: I've noticed in a few pages that you tend to use [[TV|TV:]] when sourcing info, like in this edit. The tip is that this is not necessary; simply typing [[TV]]: (putting the comma outside the prefix link) is the correct/preferred format. Hope this helps, and good editing :) OncomingStorm12th ☎ 23:11, April 27, 2018 (UTC)

Patience and categories

Please, do not create new pages in place of existing ones in the queue for renaming. It creates a mess and denies credit to all editors who worked on the original page. Note that the history of changes is an important document that cannot be retained if you just create a duplicate yourself.

If you really are in a hurry to get the renaming done, please, provide me with a time stamp of the dialogue in the story where "Ellis" is stated as their name. I do not have time to relisten to all 2 hours of it, but could quickly check a specific place. Note also that renames are quality controlled by admin, which is why the rename will not happen until one of us has time to verify the name.

Thirdly, please remember that every page you create requires at least one category (stubs does not count). Try to look at similar pages to see what suits it best.

Happy editing. Amorkuz ☎ 21:29, May 8, 2018 (UTC)

Companion edits

Hi, I've been spot-checking your rewrites of leads of various types of articles and appreciate your hard work on this. But with companions, a course correction is needed. On this wiki, we have a strict separation between Tardis:In-universe perspective and Tardis:Out-of-universe perspective. You cannot write that someone is a companion of the Doctor and that they were portrayed by some actor in the same part of the article. Each article is either in-universe, in which case actors belong only in infobox and "Behind the scenes" section or the article is written entirely from the out-of-universe perspective. I would appreciate it if you could go over your recent edits, especially of in-universe pages and removed real-world information you've added. Thank you in advance. Amorkuz ☎ 12:38, June 20, 2018 (UTC)

Leads for stories

Heya :) Thanks for your recent work rewriting the leads of some of our TV story articles. However, I'm going to need to ask you to change tack. We generally want the leads give readers important, interesting facts about the production which set that story apart from others. It's also important not to just regurgitate information that's available in the infobox.

For instance, in your recent change to Robots of Death, you've basically shifted the most interesting stuff down a paragraph, just so that you could put information already covered in the infobox — basic details like season, actors, directors, broadcast date, etc. — at the top of the article proper.

Please don't do this.

We determined a long time ago that we were going to prefer leads that characterised the story in some helpful way, or gave information about its production importance — rather than simply saying "this is story X, part of season Y, produced in year XXXX". To be sure, we haven't gotten around to doing it for all stories in all media — but in general the TV episodes have these fuller, more interesting leads. (I know that stories in other media sometimes, even often, give very mundane information in the lead — but this is only because we still haven't gotten around to fixing them yet.)

One modern consequence of this decision: our mobile readers get a better deal. As you may be aware, on mobile devices, the infobox is served first. Then comes the lead. So if the lead paragraph is full of info found in the infobox, we're immediately repeating ourselves. The longer the thumb scroll before they hit new info, the less likely it is that mobile readers will stick around.

So, please, let the infobox convey basic information, and let the lead explain and contextualise the story. Thanks!
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  14:28: Tue 26 Jun 2018 14:28, June 26, 2018 (UTC)

Oh, we don't want you to give up editing here! I know of no one on the admin team who questions the sincerity of your efforts. If it helps, know that I've got a healthy "deleted contributions" list here, too. On very many wikis across FANDOM, I have been alerted to how I've mis-edited. Confusingly, there are things that are completely standard practise here at Tardis which are forbidden on other wikis. So having an admin show up on your talk page isn't much to worry about. It's simply a part of the process of learning how to be a good editor on that wiki.

You're at an especial disadvantage on a wiki that's been around for 13 years now. You've necessarily missed whole conversations upon conversations upon still further talks about how we do things around here. And, believe me, I understand the impulse to add the information you did, in exactly the place and style that you did. After all, we used to have that very same content there.

And, yes, it's likely confusing that we haven't gotten "proper", TV-style leads to all stories of all media. But I hope you'll appreciate how much work that is, considering both the sheer number of stories and the relative difficulty of writing a proper lead.

Here's an thought. For the next little while, when you get an idea of some project you'd like to do, reach out to me or another admin. Give us a general idea of your project. And then we'll help you figure out if it's something the wiki has already tried and rejected, or if it's an innovation worth pursuing. Deal?

In the meantime, yes, it would be very helpful if you could revert your edits from The Armageddon Factor all the way back to An Unearthly Child. Thanks!
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  15:06: Tue 26 Jun 2018

Just swinging in to confirm that I believe you are working to improve the wiki and that I too started by blundering into some rules. In my case, I lined up a bunch of contemporaneous photos for a story set in the 19th century. Since I was unaware of Tardis: The real world doesn't count, all photos had to be deleted and all info cleaned from the pages. And, as almost everyone at first, I couldn't format images according to the rules. So happy editing and don't worry about mistakes! That's how everyone learns. Amorkuz ☎ 18:18, June 26, 2018 (UTC)

References

Sorry for a delay in answering. This required some time to think through and write up. I would premise my answer by saying that there are no guidelines set in stone and that different admin at different times had subtle differences in how to construe the references section and how to distinguish it from continuity and notes. Thus, what I am telling you is my opinion and should serve as guidelines, not as a final word on the subject.

The reasonably universally accepted position is that each bullet point in the references section must contain a link to another wiki page. It should also be written from the in-universe perspective. The main purpose, in my mind, is to establish the connection of an object to a story. If the object is already mentioned in the plot section (or continuity section), you need not add a separate entry to the references as the connection is already established. You also do not need to provide detailed information about the object in references: it is more appropriate on the page of the object itself. Just a short description of how this object appears in the story that establishes hyperlinks. (Red links are also fine, as long as you follow the Tardis:Naming conventions for this type of objects.) By the way, make sure to check the link: sometimes the undabbed term may point to a disambiguation page, so make sure you're linking to the right page.

Notes are more for out-of-universe stuff (director, release, actors, etc.), so it is easy to tell what is a reference and what is a note. As for continuity, the simple way of looking at it is this: if you want to refer to an event, then put it in the continuity section and state the story, where this event happened/was described (one event can also span multiple stories). If, on the contrary, you are referencing an object, then it is more appropriate in the references section.

Note that this separation can be quite fuzzy. For instance, maybe you want to refer to an obscure monster that only appeared once, for instance, Rills are close enough. Should you make it a reference or a continuity to (TV: Galaxy 4), the story they are mostly known from? I would say it could go either way, depending on what is more important for the story you're editing: that they are Rills or that they encountered the Doctor earlier. If putting something in continuity requires to list too many stories, it might be an indication that it is better suited for references. After all, even some events have their own pages. Perhaps, a good example here would be World War I. It is present in so many stories that, unless a specific story is referenced, it is better to code it as a reference.

As I said, the subtler the case, the more freedom you have in coding it. A good idea is to look at pages for classical episodes: they have been edited quite thoroughly, so you will get a good idea of good practices. Amorkuz ☎ 16:31, June 30, 2018 (UTC) Amorkuz ☎ 16:31, June 30, 2018 (UTC)

To date or not to date: that is the question

Alas, not is linear in the Doctor Who universe. It would have been nice if time of each story could be determined unambiguously. But writers make mistakes, writers do not do research, writers are not aware of other stories, writers do not care. Sometimes, some writers, that is. Of course, there are cases when a writer even undertakes to correct a dating mistake pointed out here at the wiki. But more often than not, dates do not make sense. The most famous, perhaps is the UNIT dating controversy. There dates are explicit and do not make sense. (I should perhaps mention that Lethbridge-Stewart at some point stated that they fixed, but I cannot provide any details.

I'm afraid, Series 4 (Doctor Who 2005) is a similar case. At the very least, this is not a trivial mistake. I know of one place where editors were trying to square off the contradicting information about this, at Talk:Partners in Crime (TV story). But I frankly is not an expert on the matter.

Thus, I would ask you not to go changing pages, but rather join the above mentioned discussion. IF everyone involved comes to a consensus, great, change it. Otherwise, maybe, in the end, we will be forced to make a page for Donna dating controversy. Amorkuz ☎ 22:38, July 16, 2018 (UTC)

Categories

Hi, please do not add categories to pages any more, unless you first ask an admin. Your recent category additions break so many policies that I am not going to name them (because I'd probably forget one or two); however, I would like to point out two forum posts you should read:

• Forum:LGBT categories in-universe and real world - Prop delete
• Category:LGBT characters?

Thanks, Shambala108 ☎ 19:49, July 29, 2018 (UTC)

I understand your frustration. Unfortunately, we are dealing with a 14-year-old wiki, with over 65,000 pages and 53+ years of material. Thus we've had to make a ton of rules over the years to keep the place organized and relatively chaos-free. And no one wants to come to a wiki and spend their time wading through a bunch of rules. So most new users and many long-time users still run afoul of the rules. And in my opinion, categories are the worst situation: I wouldn't be surprised if we have more categories than pages; some are incredibly broad, some annoyingly specific; some poorly-named or poorly-described. And the nesting of categories is extremely poorly maintained, mostly because no one has the time or knowledge to clear them up.

At any rate, you're not alone in your frustrations. Thanks for your patience, Shambala108 ☎ 21:27, July 29, 2018 (UTC)

Species article names

It's an early decision that was made, largely based on how Wikipedia does things. As there, the rule here is to go singular, unless the thing is actually named in the plural. To use examples from T:NAMING, it's nation, but United Nations; beetle, but The Beatles.

But it's not just arbitrary. It actually makes it easier to form plurals in wikitext. If your article name is Dalek, then you form a plural link by typing [[Dalek]]s, which gives Daleks. If the article were named Daleks, then you'd have to type a whole lot more: [[Daleks|Dalek]]. In other words, it's easier to add than subtract. :) Hope that helps!
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  21:50: Sat 01 Sep 2018

Image Categories

Hi, you have been adding categories like Third Doctor audio stories to images like BF A Home From Home cover.jpg. Please note that audio stories categories are only for pages and the appropriate category to be added in this situation is Third Doctor images. Best wishes, --Borisashton ☎ 15:56, September 29, 2018 (UTC)

In use tag

Hi. I just thought I would let you know that when a page has an "in use" tag at the top, such as the one I have put on the List of audio cliffhangers page, please do not edit the page until either the tag is removed, or the 72 hours are up. I am working on the page, and if someone else makes an edit, it risks creating an edit conflict which means that my edit will not be able to be published and the time I spent on it will be wasted. In the case of your last edit, it did not conflict so I was still able to publish my edit, but I would appreciate it if you refrained from making further edits on that page until I have finished. Hopefully it shouldn't take too much longer. Thanks :) LauraBatham ☎ 10:12, September 18, 2020 (UTC)

It didn't end up causing any grief so no worries. The tag has been removed now since I have finished what I was doing. It was only up there for about two hours so it would have been easy enough to miss. Oh, and good job on filling in all the missing cliffhangers on the page :) LauraBatham ☎ 01:19, September 19, 2020 (UTC)

Re: help

Hi it looks like User:Jack "BtR" Saxon fixed your problem. I suggest you look at the difference between your edit and his so you can see what went wrong. Shambala108 ☎ 23:24, September 23, 2020 (UTC)

For(u)m Letter

Hey there, I hope your Halloween was decent. As you might know, we've not had forums for over two years at this point. A few of the regular editors have been having a discussion on this topic at Forum talk:Index and we'd like the input of other prominent editors if you have the inclination. Cheers. Najawin ☎ 08:50, 1 November 2022 (UTC)