Forum:Non-valid Continuity sections, categories, and prefixes

Intro
''here I will talk about editing ideology and how we need to, and are, restructuring the Non-Valid space to be something on "equal but opposite" footing. A key reason for this is that we are soon going to run into stories which should remain invalid but some people still want to wikify for fun. Something not being valid for the mainspace should not be a death sentance, and we should be able to tell people "edit any corner of the wiki you want."

The following three topics are minor issues in our rules which I believe stop the non-valid subspace from functioning correctly.

Continuity sections
''This will set-up that not-valid stories should have continuity sections. This does not mean valid stories will link to not-valid stories in the continuity section. I will discuss the history and why I disagree with our rule here.''

examples of issues: Some invalid stories have continuity to each-other. Invalid stories do not all fail Rule 4. Many readers come to our wiki to research general topics, and don't really care about if they pass some arbitrary four little rules. Someone wanting to know about a stage play doesn't care about the politics of the wiki.

Game of Rassilon categories
So this is one that's not really stopping the wiki from functioning, it's just the principal of the damn thing.

When the Game of Rassilon rewards program started some ten years ago, it was quickly decided that categories featured in the game needed to be over-used on purpose to make the game actually work. For those who never pay attention to the system, one category in the game is Category:K9 television stories. So every K9 television story that is a valid source has this category, even when branching tree categories make this redundant. This way, you get points for the "K9 Television stories" reward, no matter if you're editing The Five Doctors, A Girl's Best Friend, the SJA pilot, or any episode of the K9 spin-off show.

However, from day one, non-valid stories were excluded from this. I'm not one to go searching for old quotes, but I recall being directly told at the time that this because the admin team preferred that people edit valid sources and not non-valid ones. So if you want to go and edit K9's Question Time, you won't get rewarded for it because it's not a valid source. And, low and behold, a lot of invalid story pages are unhelpful stubs!

Now, the Game of Rassilon is not going to be around forever. If you make a new wiki today I don't think you can add this feature, you can't add new badges, and you can't remove old ones. So probably in the next 5-10 years there will be some point where FANDOM decides to just throw it away. But until then, again for the principal, I think we should follow through and get rid of the "no non-valid sources/pages in the Game of Rassilon" rule...

BUUUT as an extra thing, I also generally feel this way about subpages. A recent ruling in the forums held that if a story has a biography that's "overly detailed", it should be moved to a /Biography page. The argument has been that this does not diminish the motivation to read or edit this page. If that's our understanding, then I think we have to have the GoR categories on all relevant subpages. So Tenth Doctor/Biography should have Category:Individual Time Lords.

Again, this is just a matter of principal, and a temporary one as I expect the Game may be over sooner than we think.

PREFIX change
Okay, so this is another really minor one, but I think it'll be really helpful for making these invalid subspaces more... functional to use.

For the longest time, it has been set-in-stone that NOTVALID is the prefix to be used for all stories we do not cover. If you want a quick history lesson, I think we once had an NOT-CANON prefix, then it was replaced by NOTDWU which later became NOTVALID after a debate in the Thread:##### system.

In terms of how much space it takes up, this is our longest prefix, and has been for a while. From my memory, the reason this was done to make it very LOUD and OBVIOUS that stories tagged with this prefix are not valid sources on the wiki. The prefix might as well have been... (NONONONOTHISDOESN'TCOUNT: Dimensions in Time)

I think that's fine and makes sense. Really! I think for the most part of this website, NOTVALID is just what we need it to be. However, I think it becomes a problem on pages which are, themselves, in the NOTVALID "subspace." Here, readers might want more clarification about what is happening and what kinds of stories are being discussed. And in this case, NOTVALID is a frustratingly redundant prefix.

As an example, let's use a page I just recently made: Ninth Doctor/Non-valid sources. In this page, two stories are currently cited: NOTVALID: Blue Peter special 2005 and NOTVALID: Dalek: Spoof Scenes. I believe readers have the right to know that one of these is a TV story and the other is PROSE, and simply telling them HEYTHISISN'TVALID is silly because... Yeah, we know. It's Ninth Doctor/Non-valid sources.

Originally, I thought of suggesting we just retire the NOTVALID prefix in the not-valid subspace. But I realized that there might be cases where a /Non-valid page might want to cite a valid story, and there still needs to be a difference. So here's my idea.

On non-valid subspaces only, we double up prefixes. I just discovered that NV is actually a redirect to NOTVALID already. So my pitch is we do NV+another prefix. So...


 * The Doctor told the humanoids he was busy and to come back later. (NV TV: The Web of Caves)

As a very specific example, so I can review my case for you, let's look at Konnie Huq. This is a page that, based on recent debates, need to be split into three parts. Konnie Huq (for the real world performer who played herself and also wrote a notable entry for a Doctor Who book) Konnie Huq (in-universe) (for in-universe character from Invasion of the Bane), and Konnie Huq/Non-valid sources (for the version of her in the Ninth Doctor blue peter sketch)

So the page on the "actor" should say:


 * Konnie Hug was a Blue Peter presenter who appeared as herself in TV: Invasion of the Bane and NOTVALID: Blue Peter special 2005.

Then the page on the character should just talk about the Invasion of the Bane character.

And the /Non-valid sources page might say:


 * Konnie Hug was present as the Ninth Doctor arrived in the TARDIS to destroy the Dalek compost bin, after searching through time for it. (NV TV: Blue Peter special 2005) Konnie was a host of Blue Peter. (TV: Invasion of the Bane)

We can also do a hyphen if y'all think that makes it look better (NV-PROSE: etc). I'm also fine with (NOTVALID GAME:) or (NOTVALID-HOMEVID:) and anything else you could think of.

The only hiccup here is that we deleted our prefix for stage plays ages ago. So implementing this might mean restoring or replacing SP.

"NC"
This is just a bonus. Sorry if it's an annoying sub-clause... I love Template:NCmaterial. It's a great idea, great template. Can we please pick literally any other name for it. I just hate NC as an acronym. It looks like it stands for non-canon. I'm sorry, that's how I read it every time. It's just a bad template name.

I'd like to move it to Template:NOT COVERED or Template:NON COVERED.

I additionally feel the same way about NC. For those out of the loop, NC is a new prefix that is to be used for things we might cite but won't "cover." So, for instance, on Death's Head, a /non-valid stories subpage might link ''[https://tfwiki.net/wiki/Wanted:_Galvatron_%E2%80%94_Dead_or_Alive! Wanted: Galvatron — Dead or Alive!]'' with this.

However, I would prefer to again use something like NOTCOVERED. NC is just a big no-no for me, even if I agree with how it's being used I am anti-that-specific-acronym.


 * note, i did not invent this prefix, so if you disagree please don't yell at me about it existing

With that, those are my... 3.5 minute policy changes I'd like to see to help easy the "valid/invalid" battle which seems to never end on this website. Please tell me your thoughts! OS25🤙☎️ 23:58, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Discussion
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